The Mojo Collection. Various Mojo Magazine
of our time,’ says Kenny Jones. ‘We were fortunate that we had Glyn Johns; he was in our opinion the best engineer in Britain. He got us some amazing sounds and he encouraged us to be experimental.’
The contrast with the group’s first album on Decca (confusingly also titled Small Faces) – a nervy but one-dimensional R&B outing – is abundantly clear. Complementing Steve Marriott’s legendary lungs, Ronnie Lane sings on five tracks, while McLagan tackles his own utterly charming Up The Wooden Hills To Bedfordshire. Though Small Faces spawned no singles, and was soon eclipsed by the stellar success of their Summer Of Love Number 1, Itchycoo Park, it arguably captured better than any other contemporary British album the excitement, optimism and sheer fun of like-minded spirits journeying together through the acid era.
Albert King
Born Under A Bad Sign
Breakthrough album for an unorthodox blues giant.
Record label: Stax
Produced: Jim Stewart
Recorded: Stax Studios, McLemore Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee; March 3, September 3 and November 2, 1966; May 17 and June 9, 1967
Released: July 1967
Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Albert King (g, v); Steve Cropper (g); Booker T Jones (p); Isaac Hayes (p); Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn (b); Al Jackson Jr (d); Wayne Jackson (t); Andrew Love (s, flute); Joe Arnold (s); Jim Stewart (supervision)
Track listing: Born Under A Bad Sign (S); Crosscut Saw (S); Kansas City; Oh Pretty Woman (S/US); Down Don’t Bother Me; The Hunter; I Almost Lost My Mind; Personal Manager; Laundromat Blues (S/US); As The Years Go Passing By; The Very Thought Of You
Running time: 34.41
Current CD: Collectables label reissue has slightly different tracklisting: Born Under A Bad Sign (S); Crosscut Saw (S); Down Don’t Bother Me; Funk-Shun; Kansas City; Oh Pretty Woman (S/US); I Almost Lost My Mind; Personal Manager; Overall Junction; Laundromat Blues
Further listening: Live Wire/Blues Power (1968), live recordings from the Fillmore shows mentioned above; Ultimate Collection (1983), a 2-CD round-up
Further reading: Soulsville, USA: The Story Of Stax Records (Rob Bowman, 2003); www.bluesnet.hub.org/artists/albert.king.htm
Download: emusic
King – a left-hander who finger-picked an upside-down, right-handed Flying V – was into his forties with only a couple of R&B hits to his name when he signed to Stax. Admittedly, he already had a smokin’ reputation, but the Stax house band were to help him reach his true soul-blues potential.
After a trio of unsuccessful singles, two studio stints in mid-’67 provided the bulk of an album which was to exert massive influence on other guitarists, and at the same time launch King as a darling of the white college and stadium circuit. Wayne Jackson, who played trumpet on these and literally hundreds of other hit-making sessions for the label, said: ‘Albert was the sweetest man you could imagine: a man of the Old South. He used to call me his whistle-tooter. It was a very happy studio. Steve Cropper and Al Jackson ran the recordings. Jim Stewart [company boss] wasn’t a producer – Al knew all the chords and lyrics better than anyone. He would stop things if they were going wrong. Albert’s guitar was always out of tune with everything else, but he was such a strong man he would just bend those notes back in! The band kept things simple because we were all young guys learning together. We didn’t know how to play it any better!’
The 10-bar-blues smoulder of the title track opens proceedings (‘Sometimes the funk got so thick you could spread it on bread and eat it’), and the bad-ass syncopations of Crosscut Saw keep the heat on. The jump-shuffle of Kansas City is a welcome throwback, and his rendition of The Very Thought Of You proves that King could sing. But ultimately the guitar’s the thing. The stinging, howling, weeping solo on Personal Manager is, simply, one of the greatest ever: King may have played from a relatively small stock of phrases but he made every one of them count.
The following year, on the back of the album’s artistic success, King opened for Hendrix at San Francisco’s Fillmore. As a teenager Hendrix had worshipped King. He never stopped, even recording Born Under A Bad Sign in 1969.
The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Part One
Drug-free psych made to satisfy the lusts of an eccentric millionaire.
Record label: Reprise
Produced: Bob Markley and Jimmy Bowen
Recorded: United Western Recording Studios, Los Angeles; late 1966
Released: July 1967
Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Bob Markley (v, p); Shaun Harris (v, b); Danny Harris (v, g); Michael Lloyd (v, g); Ron Morgan (g); Hal Blaine or Jim Gordon (d)
Track listing: Shifting Sands (S); I Won’t Hurt You; 1906 (S); Help I’m A Rock; Will You Walk With Me; Transparent Day; Leiyla; Here’s Where You Belong; If You Want This Love; ’Scuse Me Miss Rose; High Coin
Running time: 30.36
Current CD: Sundazed SC6173 adds: Help I’m A Rock (Single Mix); Transparent Day (Single Mix)
Further listening: A Child’s Guide To Good And Evil (1968); A Group (1970) Bob Markley ‘solo’ LP which reunited the original members
Further reading: http://members.chello.nl/cvanderlely/wcpaeb.html
Download: iTunes
If ever an album demonstrated the haphazard way in which much psychedelic music of the late ’60s was recorded, Part One must surely be it. After going to see their heroes, The Yardbirds, play at a hip Hollywood party, teenage hopefuls Michael Lloyd and the Harris brothers found themselves locked into a Faustian pact with the host, eccentric millionaire Bob Markley. The deal? He would promote their band and buy expensive equipment if they let him bang a tambourine on stage. According to Lloyd, music was the last thing on Markley’s mind: ‘He had seen the incredible amount of girls and that was his only motivation.’
Coining the ludicrously cumbersome name, Markley used his society contacts to secure the group a three-LP deal with Reprise, but once in the studio his younger bandmates soon began to tire of their patron’s increasing dominance. As Shaun recalls: ‘The part that was frustrating was that he had no musical aptitude of any kind and so what he was trying to do to be different and innovative ended up sounding contrived. It was an embarrassment.’
Well, time can tell a different story. Recorded without the influence of drink or drugs, it is precisely the palpable tensions within the band – and the unexpected juxtapositions within the music – which make Part One so extraordinary. Alongside passionate, harmonic pop songs like Transparent Day and the cover of PF Sloan’s Here’s Where You Belong lurk the hard-edged, distorted weirdness of Leiyla, Zappa’s Help I’m A Rock and 1906. The latter, with Markley eerily reciting his lyrics, attempts to convey a dog’s premonition of the San Francisco earthquake: ‘See the frightened foxes/See the hunchback in the park/He’s blind and can’t run for cover/I don’t feel well.’
Another of Bob’s Tinseltown friends, Baker Knight (who had written for Elvis and Ricky Nelson), composed two of the album’s highlights: a beautifully sparse arrangement of Shifting Sands and If You Want This Love. As Danny recalls, the latter was transformed by a driving time signature: ‘When Baker Knight first heard the playback