The Mojo Collection. Various Mojo Magazine
time: 45.52
Current CD: Delmark DLM6152 adds: I Don’t Want No Woman (alternate take)
Further listening: Follow-up Black Magic (1969); Easy Baby (1990), a collection of his early sides reissued by Charly
Further reading: Living Blues magazine, issues 125 (January–February 1996) and 127 (May–June 1996); www.laze.net/magicsam/ (fan site)
Download: Not currently legally available
In the early 1960s, no fresh African-Americans were breaking out from the Chicago blues bars, and it seemed that the music might one day become a museum piece until a young entrepreneur named Robert Koester began a talent hunt for his small label. He found it. Samuel Maghett was young yet already an experienced performer, easy on the eye, a gentleman in his dealings, charismatic, an incredible guitarist with his own style, a dramatic singer and the author of some bruising blues songs. Sam had already recorded for Cobra in 1957, Chief in 1960–61 and Crash in 1966 when Delmark signed him, but this time around he was promised a free hand. Thus, on a sticky summer’s day, he entered a small Chicago studio to make blues history.
Sam knew to appeal to the young Caucasian college fan just discovering blues music as well as to his regular crowd: the album had to hang together musically, had to be of one piece like a rock album. Maghett lived on Chicago’s West Side where he and his cohorts were much more ready to embrace music beyond the blues – rock’n’roll, soul and Latin – than his contemporaries on the South Side, the Chess Records crowd who were blues purists. It was this distinction that gave the album its uptempo drive and its title.
Sam’s staccato lead guitar (he played with his fingers and thumb, forcefully plucking the strings) pushed through a Fender amp with reverb on full was a new sound in blues, and after West Side Soul’s release Sam briefly toured with The Grateful Dead, wowing Jerry Garcia when his Stratocaster was heard through a state-of-the-art PA system.
‘Looking Good, his show-stopping boogie, blew guitar players’ minds,’ remembers ex-manager Denny Bruce. ‘Ry Cooder came to my house to meet Sam and learn a few finger-picking tricks from him. Sam never showed him. He never got his due as a singer but his Mama Mama Talk To Your Daughter and Sweet Home Chicago are role models for so many out there.’
Alas, it was not to last. After two years of growing fame, Magic Sam Maghett called to his wife one morning complaining of heartburn. It was a cardiac arrest, and within minutes Sam was dead. He was 32.
Billy Nicholls
Would You Believe
Long-lost harmony-laden psych-pop rarity.
Record label: Immediate
Produced: Steve Marriott, Ronnie Lane and Andrew Loog Oldham
Recorded: Olympic Studios, Barnes, and IBC Studios, London; late 1967–early 1968
Released: April 1968
Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Billy Nicholls (ag, v, bv); Steve Marriott (g, bv); Ronnie Lane (b); Ian MacLagan (o); Kenny Jones (d); Big Jim Sullivan (g, ag); Caleb Quaye (p); Nicky Hopkins (k); John Paul Jones (b); Joe Moreti (g); Denny Gerrard (bv); Barry Husband (bv); Jerry Shirley (d); Arthur Greenslade, John Paul Jones, Denny Gerrard (ar)
Track listing: Would You Believe; Come Again; Life Is Short; Feeling Easy; Daytime Girl; Daytime Girl Coda; London Social Degree; Portobello Road; Question Mark; Being Happy; Girl From New York; It Brings Me Down
Running time: 33.33
Current CD: Castle CMQDD1358 adds Would You Believe (Mono Single); Daytime (Mono Single) plus a second CD of demos and outtakes.
Further listening: Love Songs (1974); lone, self-titled album by a group that included Nicholls and White Horse (1976), both available on Nicholls’s Southwest label
Further reading: www.billynicholls.co.uk
Download: HMV Digital; iTunes
Immediate Records’ head, Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham was bowled over by the precocious talent of the 17-year-old singer/songwriter, who had been recommended to him by no less a person than George Harrison.
As Nicholls puts it, getting signed was a teenage dream; ‘Getting paid £20 a week, with my own room full of Revoxes, Mellotrons, and the Stones’ guitars.’ Between writing songs for the album Oldham produced for Del Shannon, Home And Away (not released at the time, though tracks eventually turned up on various collections), and doing uncredited vocals on the Small Faces’ classic Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake, Nicholls got to make his own single, Would You Believe. Initially produced by Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane, but an overambitious Oldham overlaid it with an orchestra, killing its commercial chances. (One wag called it ‘the most overproduced single of the ’60s’.)
While the ensuing Would You Believe album was comparatively modest, it fell foul of Immediate chaotic management and was left in the can, save for a few promo copies that became highly prized among collectors, some selling for over £1,000. Its reputation was enhanced by the knowledge that its credits included a veritable Who’s Who of British late-’60s rockers: the Small Faces, John Paul Jones, Nicky Hopkins, Caleb Quaye, the great session guitarist Big Jim Sullivan, and Humble Pie drummer Jerry Shirley. Songs like the vibrant Girl From New York testify to what a great time Nicholls must have been having in the studio.
In 1998, Nicholls, by then a successful songwriter and musical director for The Who (and father to Morgan Nicholls of Senseless Things, The Streets and latterly Muse), took pity on those lacking a large disposable income and made Would You Believe available to the masses for the first time, on his own Southwest label. It is greatly to his credit that the result was not a collective sigh of disappointment, as can be the case when long-hyped rarities are finally brought to light, but rather unanimous shouts of praise from critics and fans of song-oriented ’60s pop.
Simon & Garfunkel
Bookends
Massively successful breakthrough album for former folkies.
Record label: CBS
Produced: Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Roy Halee, Bob Johnson and John Simon
Recorded: September 1966; January 1967; June 1967; October 1967–February 1968
Released: April 3, 1968
Chart peaks: 1 (UK) 1 (US)
Personnel: Paul Simon (g, v); Art Garfunkel (v); Hal Baline (d, pc); Joe Osbourne (b); Larry Knechtel (p, k); Jimmie Haskell (ar)
Track listing: Bookends Theme; Save The Life Of My Child; America; Overs; Voices Of Old People; Old Friends; Bookends Theme; Fakin’ It (S); Punky’s Dilemma; Mrs Robinson (S); A Hazy Shade Of Winter (S); At The Zoo (S)
Running time: 29.13
Current CD: Sony 4950832 adds: You Don’t Know Where Your Interest Lies; Old Friends (previously unreleased)
Further listening: Old Friends the Simon & Garfunkel boxed set (1997)
Further reading: The Complete Guide To The Music Of Simon & Garfunkel (Chris Charlesworth, 1997); The Boy In The Bubble: The Paul Simon Story (Patrick Humphries, 1988); www.simonandgafunkel.com
Download: iTunes; HMV Digital
Bookends was the fourth album from Simon & Garfunkel but the first