The Mojo Collection. Various Mojo Magazine
along with three standards done Jobim-style (the closest he got to recording a songbook album, he didn’t consider that the English lyrics were sufficiently good at the time to make it an all-Jobim set), Sinatra fashioned one of his most majestic recorded achievements.
With by far the gentlest singing of his career, Sinatra’s tender-strong voice is a wonder, respectfully piping through the Brazilian’s graceful, economic tunes, as if to acknowledge the greatness of this new generation of standards. Sinatra said ‘I haven’t sang this soft since I had laryngitis’– it’s the polar opposite approach of his bluesy snarling on That’s Life.
Like a more minimalist version of Jobim’s Verve recordings – arranger Claus Ogerman and Jobim’s ‘personal drummer’ Dom Um Romao were key figures of those sessions – Sinatra kept urging Ogerman to remove elements of the arrangement until the air played its part. A magical ingredient was Jobim himself, picking at his gut guitar and murmuring a Portuguese counterpoint on four of the tracks, less a duet partner than a wise composerly appendage. Jobim described Sinatra as ‘Mount Everest for a songwriter’ while Frank rated ‘Tone’ (as he called him) ‘one of the most talented musicians I have ever met’; the album they made together outdid the praise they had for each other and is probably the last essential Sinatra record. An attempt to follow it up two years later was compromised by palpably lower-grade performances and flip side rock-ballad programming.
Tim Buckley
Goodbye And Hello
Landmark in the shift from folk to singer-songwriting music.
Record label: Asylum
Produced: Jerry Yester
Recorded: TTG Studios, and mixed by Bruce Botnick at Sunset Sound, Los Angeles; June 1967
Released: November 1967
Chart peaks: None (UK) 171 (US)
Personnel: Tim Buckley (v, g, sg, kalimba, vibes); Lee Underwood (g); Brian Hartzler (g); John Forsha (g); Jimmy Bond (b); Jim Fielder (b); Eddie Hoh (d); Carter CC Collins (pc, congas); Dave Guard (kalimba, tambourine); Don Randi (p, harmonium, harpsichord); Jerry Yester (o, p, harmonium); Henry Diltz (hm)
Track listing: No Man Can Find The War; Carnival Song; Pleasant Street; Hallucinations; I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain; Once I Was (S/UK); Phantasmagoria In Two; Knight-Errant; Goodbye And Hello; Morning Glory (S)
Running time: 42.53
Current CD: Warner Brothers 8122735692 adds Tim Buckley album
Further listening: Happy Sad (1969) – jazz/folk lullabies; Blue Afternoon (1970) – his most focused songwriting; Starsailor (1972) – wild avant-jazz and Song To The Siren; Greetings From LA – soul-inspired and drenched in sweat; Dream Letter – Live In London 1968 (1990)
Further reading: Blue Melody: Tim Buckley Remembered (Lee Underwood, 2001); Dream Brother: The Music Of Jeff And Tim Buckley (David Browne, 2000); www.timbuckley.com
Download: Not currently legally available
Recorded in June 1967, the month the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper, Tim Buckley’s second album is drenched in the musical freedom of that mythologised time. ‘We saw ourselves sailing along in the direction that Bob Dylan was taking lyrics and that The Beatles were taking instrumentation,’ says poet Larry Beckett, Buckley’s old school friend, then creative collaborator and co-writer of half the songs on Goodbye And Hello. ‘That is, toward making rock’n’roll into art songs, where they’re so beautifully made that they’re meant to last in the culture.’
According to producer Jerry Yester, ‘When Buckley and Beckett came to me, the only idea they had was that the album would be free of restraint or commercial consideration. There was to be no compromising on the songs or how they were presented. Working with Tim was a stretch. When someone says you can do anything you want, it’s a little intimidating at first, and then it’s totally exciting.’
Though Goodbye And Hello feels like an orchestrated album, in fact only the ambitious title track was orchestrally sweetened. The album’s broad spectrum of sound is suggested through the flexibility of relatively few instruments and Buckley’s most diverse collection of songs: the topical folk-rock of No Man Can Find The War; a blistering dialogue with drug dependency in Pleasant Street; and the cathartic I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain (addressed in part to his ex-wife Mary and son Jeffrey Scott). The tender, lamenting Once I Was (‘Soon there’ll come another/to tell you I was just a lie’) is a cousin of Fred Neil’s The Dolphins (which Tim performed regularly); Morning Glory (‘write me a song about a hobo’ was the singer’s entire instruction to his lyricist) became Buckley’s most covered song, and closes the album with a brief, exquisite wave of choral harmony.
What holds Goodbye And Hello together, and animates its occasionally bombastic conceits, is a string of vocal performances of staggering authority for a young man not yet twenty-one. The musical freedom trumpeted so clearly here was something Tim would insist on for the rest of his career, to the dismay of those who hoped he’d linger a little longer at some of the stops along the way.
Buffalo Springfield
Buffalo Springfield Again
Landmark album recorded in the brief space between inventing West Coast rock and falling apart.
Record label: Atco
Produced: Buffalo Springfield
Recorded: Sunset Sound, Gold Star, Los Angeles; March–June and August–Ocotober 1967
Released: November 1967
Chart peaks: None (UK) 44 (US)
Personnel: Neil Young (v, g); Stephen Stills (v, g); Richie Furay (v, g); Bruce Palmer, Jim Fielder and Bobby West (b); Dewey Martin (d); Don Randi (p); Jack Nitzsche (electric piano, ar); James Burton (dobro, g); David Crosby (v); Charlie Chin (banjo); Norris Badeaux (bs); Jim Messina, Ross Meyering, Bruce Botnick, William Brittan, Bill Lazarus (e)
Track listing: Mr Soul; A Child’s Claim To Fame; Everydays; Expecting To Fly; Bluebird; Hung Upside Down; Sad Memory; Good Time Boy; Rock And Roll Woman; Broken Arrow
Running time: 33.56
Current CD: WEA ATL332262
Further listening: Buffalo Springfield (1967)
Further reading: The Story Of Buffalo Springfield: For What It’s Worth (John Einarson and Richie Furay, 1997); www.thebuffalospringfield.com
Download: Not currently legally available
‘A great group,’ said Neil Young. ‘Everybody was a fucking genius at what they did – but we just didn’t get it on record.’ For such a short-lived outfit, Buffalo Springfield would have a huge influence: much of the ’70s West Coast rock movement, from The Eagles on down, could trace its ancestry back to the stormy combo founded when Young, his folk-singing career in Canada going nowhere, jumped the border in a hearse with his friend Bruce Palmer and headed for Los Angeles in search of old acquaintance Stephen Stills.
Buffalo Springfield – named after the steamroller tearing up the road outside their house – found themselves in quick succession endorsed by The Byrds, made house band at the Whisky A Go Go and given a major label deal. Just as quickly, its members were busy falling out. Even during the recording of their eponymous debut there were arguments over whose songs would be included. It gave them their first hit single – the Stills-penned Sunset Strip protest song For What It’s Worth – and was