The Mojo Collection. Various Mojo Magazine
issue it Stateside. Several extracted singles flopped before DJs unexpectedly picked up on Time Of The Season. In the spring of 1969 the song soared to Number 3 in the American charts. Nevertheless, Rod Argent resisted pressure from CBS to reform the band and The Zombies’ curious career, book-ended by two huge hits, was finally laid to rest.
Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison
Cash’s big-time comeback, after five years of declining sales and battles with pills and the law.
Record label: CBS
Produced: Bob Johnston
Recorded: Folsom Prison, California; January 13, 1968
Released: April 1968
Chart peaks: 8 (UK) 13 (US)
Personnel: Johnny Cash (v, g); June Carter (v); Carter Family (v); Marshall Grant (b); WS Holland (d); Carl Perkins (g); Luther Perkins (g); The Statler Brothers (v)
Track listing: Folsom Prison Blues (S); Busted; Dark As The Dungeon; I Still Miss Someone; Cocaine Blues; 25 Minutes To Go; Orange Blossom Special; The Long Black Veil; Send A Picture Of Mother; The Wall; Dirty Old Egg-Suckin’ Dog; Flushed From The Bathroom Of Your Heart; Jackson (S); Give My Love To Rose; I Got Stripes; Green Green Grass Of Home; Greystone Chapel
Running time: 55.49
Current CD: Sony 82876766582 adds: Live At San Quentin album plus extra tracks recorded at Folsom: Busted; Joe Bean; The Legend Of John Henry’s Hammer
Further listening: Johnny Cash At San Quentin (1969); American Recordings (1994)
Further reading: The New Johnny Cash (Charles Paul Conn, 1973); Johnny Cash: The Autobiography (Johnny Cash with Patrick Carr, 1998); www.johnnycash.com
Download: iTunes; HMV Digital
By 1968, Johnny Cash was a tired old C&W performer who seemed all washed up. Languishing on the Columbia label, he hadn’t had a real hit in years and faced a middle age of playing two-bit roadhouses for declining audiences and diminishing returns. A live album might be his only salvation.
Cash had been held behind bars a number of times, and Columbia bosses agreed with him that an album recorded in one of the prisons where he’d done time might revive his moribund career. Cash chose Folsom Prison as the venue: he had several times enthralled inmate audiences there with his honest blue-collar life stories and sympathetic banter. Cash returned to Folsom with high hopes, a full mobile recording crew and his future wife June Carter.
His music was the same as it always had been. Kicking off with his old Sun hit Folsom Prison Blues and following his usual formula of performing equal parts Cash originals and folk/country covers, he had the inmates of Folsom in the palm of his hand as his formidable storytelling abilities rose to the occasion. Lyrics about poverty, cocaine and whisky abuse, about endless days of coalmining and the horror of life behind bars are stock-in-trade American folklore to Cash’s many fans, but of course resonated even more strongly to the inmates he sang for on that chilly January evening.
Cash remains justifiably proud of this recording, which not only re-ignited his career in the States but signalled a turnaround in his previously chaotic private life: ‘(You) listen closely to this album and you hear the clanging of doors, the shrill of the whistle, the shouts of the men – even laughter from men who had forgotten how to laugh. There’s some stuff here I’m proud of.’
Flat Earth Society
Waleeco
Teenage prodigies create Willy Wonka-style curio.
Record label: Fleetwood
Produced: Quinn & Johnson, Inc. and Charlie Dreyer
Recorded: Fleetwood Studios, Revere, Massachusetts; 1968
Released: April 1968
Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Jack Kerivan (p, o, v); Phil Dubuque (g, recorder, v); Rick Doyle (g, pc, v); Curt Girard (d); Paul Carter (b, v)
Track listing: Feelin’ Much Better; Midnight Hour; I’m So Happy; When You’re There; Four And Twenty Miles; Prelude For The Town Monk; Shadows; Dark Street Downtown; Portrait In Grey; In My Window; Satori
Running time: 32.16
Current CD: Arf-Arf AA-042
Further listening: There’s nothing at all, unfortunately. But the Arf-Arf label has lots of similar curiosities in its catalogue.
Further reading: www.arfarfrecords.com
Download: Not currently legally available
For some bands obscurity seems almost inevitable: for the Flat Earth Society it was assured. When the Boston-based FB Washburn Candy Company decided to promote their tasty new Waleeco candy bar by holding a competition amongst local groups to write a radio jingle, the prize they offered the winning band was the chance to cut an album. After submitting the chosen song, the Flat Earth Society, a group of talented teenagers from Lynn, Massachusetts, assembled at Fleetwood Studios. With no previous recording experience they found that they had only rehearsed enough songs for half the album and so the rest had to be written on the spot. Time was at a premium and the studio facilities were crude, but with considerable ingenuity the results were remarkable. Paul Carter recalls that in order to give his bass more definition he had to place his amplifier in the studio’s bathroom: in Feelin’ Much Better, a phasing effect was achieved by spraying an aerosol can into a bucket!
The band were heavily influenced by Jefferson Airplane and, of course, The Beatles, but also by folk music, which comes to the fore on When You’re There and Prelude For The Town Monk. There’s a beautiful electric piano rendition of Midnight Hour – the only non-original track – but it is on the second side that the group, forced to improvise, really show their talents; the atmospheric Dark Street Downtown; Portrait in Grey is an extended instrumental with haunting recorder playing; Satori, the album’s mysterious, psychedelic climax, a wash of backwards piano spiked with sitar-like guitar. As the hype on the back cover put it: ‘Their bag is that they’re in no particular bag at all.’
Unfortunately, anyone who wished to hear the album was required to send off $1.50 together with six Waleeco wrappers. Few bothered and, with little else in the way of promotion, the record was destined to become a land-fill. Happily, now that it’s reissued on CD, everyone can hear it without rotting any teeth.
Magic Sam
West Side Soul
The record that announced a new generation of American electric blues.
Record label: Delmark
Produced: Robert G Koester
Recorded: Sound Studios, Chicago; July 12 and October 25, 1967
Released: April 1968
Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Magic Sam Maghett (v, g); Mighty Joe Young (g); Stockholm Slim (p); Earnest Johnson (b); Odie Payne (d); Odie Payne III (d); Mack Thompson (b)
Track listing: That’s All I Need; I Need You So Bad; I Feel So Good (I Wanna Boogie); All Of Your Love; I Don’t Want No Woman; Sweet Home Chicago; I Found A New Love; Every Night And Every Day; Lookin’ Good; My Love Will Never Die; Mama Mama Talk To Your