Author Archives: Joseph Neff

Celebrating Dennis Coffey, born on this date in 1940. —Ed.

As a guitarist, Dennis Coffey was a member of the storied Funk Brothers’ studio band and the architect of the million-selling instrumental groove monster “Scorpio,” while as a producer his credits include the initial LPs by Sixto Rodriguez of Searching for Sugar Man fame; the recent emergence of a 1968 live set spotlights Coffey’s talents as part of a trio perched at the intersection of soul, funk, jazz, and rock. 

The vast studio-based brilliance that helps to shape the musical prestige of the 1960s is by now well established. Alongside the Wrecking Crew, the Nashville A-Team, and the assorted members of the Stax and FAME studio bands, the group of Detroit musicians known as the Funk Brothers stands tall, their talent lent largely (but not entirely) to the immortal product of Barry Gordy’s Motown enterprise.

Dennis Coffey was part of that band, and his work with producer Norman Whitfield on a slew of Temptations recordings, including the classic hits “Ball of Confusion (That’s What the World Is Today),” “I Can’t Get Next to You,” “Just My Imagination (Running Away from Me),” and “Psychedelic Shack” are enough to secure the guitarist’s place in the narrative of Motown and in the story of Detroit’s musical heyday overall.

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The late Jon Hassell remains one of recorded music’s great explorers. A diligent collaborator with an adventurous mind right up to the very end, Hassell’s talents are on vibrant display during Music Is Invisible (Pentimento Volume Three), which is not only his final concert recording but also the last piece in the Pentimento Trilogy (available as a CD box set). Few musicians are well served by their late works, as Hassell and his cohort blur the distinction between studio and live recordings. Music Is Invisible is out now on vinyl, compact disc, and digital through Hassell’s Ndeya label in partnership with Warp Records.

A trumpet player, composer, and a sonic architect of the highest rank, Jon Hassell debuted with the still striking Vernal Equinox in 1977 through Lovely Music, Ltd. and followed it up the next year with Earthquake Island on Tomato. But Hassell’s big splash came with his Brian Eno collaboration Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics, released in 1980 by Editions EG.

Dream Theory in Malaya: Fourth World Volume Two came out in ’81, also on Editions EG, as Hassell’s musical approach was firmly planted at the crossroads of ambient and world music. Back then (less so today), many derided these overlapping categories (and related genres such as new age, environmental-space music and neo-classical) as insubstantial and lacking in substance, but there was plenty of good stuff stocked in this corner of the record store during this era (late ’70s-late ’80s), with Hassell ranking high in mix.

That’s because there’s just so much going on in Hassell’s best stuff, and what’s going on is often wonderfully strange. It’s not background music, but there are plenty of subtleties that can give finicky attention spans the fidgets, and Hassell’s trumpet playing, while clearly influenced by jazz, and by Miles Davis in particular (and Chet Baker to a lesser extent), drifts and ripples and occasionally surges rather than rips and wails and swings.

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Al Cisneros carries a solid rep as the singer and bassist for two of the finest bands to have churned and thudded at the intersection of stoner rock and doom metal, Sleep and Om. However, Cisneros also has a rewarding string of solo forays into the hissing, echo-laden realms of dub, with the new “Dragonaut Dub” EP his latest dive into this heady style. The set is out now on vinyl with an absolutely splendiferous cover illustration by Arik Roper via Eremite Records.

Prior to Sleep, there was Asbestosdeath, a gang of doom crushers who released a pair of 7-inch slabs in the 1990 timeframe that were later compiled by Southern Lord on the “Dejection Unclean” 10-inch in 2007. With some personnel changes, Asbestosdeath quickly morphed into Sleep, releasing Volume One in 1991 through Tupelo Recording Company, and then Sleep’s Holy Mountain the next year through Earache Records. From there, the band became a defining outfit in the slowly unfurling stoner rock scene.

It was Dopesmoker (originally Jerusalem) that really put Sleep on the map when it was released after a hiatus in 1999 by The Music Cartel and then in an updated version with the band’s preferred title in 2003 by Tee Pee Records. Subsequent expanded editions have hit racks through Southern Lord and Third Man, as the latter label has released Sleep’s last two albums, The Sciences from 2018 and Hemispheres from earlier this year.

In one of Sleep’s dormant stretches, Om was formed by Cisneros and Sleep drummer Chris Hakius, though through a slew of studio and live recordings Om released between 2005- ’14, Cisneros has been the constant member. Such is obviously the case with his solo output, which commenced in 2012 with the “Dismas” 45 on his own label Sinai.

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When it comes to labels that specialize in the revitalization and growth of traditional roots styles, Free Dirt Records has been one of the most consistently interesting. The Long Memory: 20 Years of Free Dirt Records, a new anniversary set featuring unreleased demos, B-sides, and live cuts from a diverse range of the label’s acts, reinforces Free Dirt’s success in its worthwhile mission. The vinyl and digital are out on November 6.

It took two decades to get to the occasion that inspired this album. That’s a very long time for a record label to survive. Free Dirt hit this milestone by focusing on the work, so let’s do the same. Nashville-based Liv Greene opens the album with “I Can’t Know Now (Demo),” offering just vocals and guitar, warm and resonant, the strings boldly strummed, the singing pretty but powerful. It’s the kind of demo that can make one wish for a whole album of the same.

The St. Louis-based Rum Drum Ramblers are next, teaming up with another guy with St. Louis roots, the mandolinist and singer Pokey LaFarge for “Brick by Brick,” a sturdy and nimble tune halfway between hokum and the sort of contemporary string band flair that knocks them dead at summer festivals.

Durham, NC-based Viv & Riley (that’s Vivian Leva and Riley Colcagno) join with Nashville’s Rachel Baiman for the next selection. The three have recorded a whole album as kissing other ppl; for “The Long Game” here, the sound is country-inflected indie folk with robust vocal harmonies, crisp banjo and edgy guitar licks. It all goes down quite nicely.

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Remembering Bert Jansch, born on this day in 1943. —Ed.

By its very nature, instrumental music is a study in form, and frequently to such an extent that listeners nurturing vocally focused comfort zones can feel left out in the cold. Bert Jansch’s non-vocal debut Avocet is well-poised to overcome this obstacle; a trio effort of welcoming beauty devoted to the glory of British birds, the whole stands amongst the lauded Scottish guitarist’s most fully realized achievements. 

The making of Bert Jansch’s twelfth LP transpired in February of 1978, a point on the calendar roughly coinciding with the nasty storm of punk rock, and wherever the eye of the squall traveled across the landscape of the UK, it can be safely surmised Avocet was elsewhere. Over time, the guitarist would come to be revered by a heaping dogpile of alternative-indie figures with creative DNA directly traceable to the punk upheaval, but it’s well established that the late ‘70s proved to be a tough stretch for practitioners of non-clamorous sounds, not limited to veterans of the Brit-folk scene.

Of course, it’s not all so simple. As related in Colin Harper’s excellent notes for Avocet’s reissue, Jansch’s prior set A Rare Conundrum, released in the UK in ’77 on Charisma, had been well-received by the Brit music press in part because it was viewed as a sort of homecoming affair after two full-lengths cut out California way (those would be ‘74’s L.A. Turnaround and ‘75’s Santa Barbara Honeymoon).

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Pianist Matthew Shipp and double bassist William Parker are among the most vital musicians to have hit the scene in any genre in the last half century. It is easy to argue that, on their respective instruments, there is no one better. On November 6, two releases by this duo make the case for their exceptional qualities. One is Zo, an explosive set originally released in 1994 and reissued by ESP-Disk on vinyl for the first time, along with compact disc and digital. The other is the astoundingly communicative A Whole System Of, a brand-spanking-new encounter available through TAO Forms, also on LP, CD, and digital.

Over 30 years have passed since Matthew Shipp and William Parker first entered a studio to record Zo as a duo, and if so much of the world has changed during that period, and not for the better, with the arrival of A Whole System Of, there is at least the reliability of Shipp and Parker’s creative cyclone stirring things up with so much dexterity. That’s not to infer that the partnership is static. Recognizable, most certainly, but predictable, no.

Shipp and Parker had played together a fair amount prior to Zo. There is a pair of earlier Shipp LPs, Points (a quartet) and Circular Temple (a trio), both recorded in 1990 and released in ’92 by the Silkheart and Quinton labels respectively. They were also in the band of saxophonist David S. Ware for four discs on Silkheart and DIW issued between 1991 and ’93.

The association exploded after Zo, but there were only two more duo recordings in the stretch leading up to A Whole System Of. The first was DNA, released in 1999 by Thirsty Ear, and the third Re-Union, released by Rogueart in 2021. Those two other duo sessions were documented: DNA five years after Zo, and Re-Union five years before A Whole System Of, reducing much of the aura of special occasion that might surround the latest duo team-up and replacing it with the reality of perseverance and growth.

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Remembering Denny Laine in advance of his birthdate tomorrow.
—Ed.

Though the music they produced was only fitfully successful, the Denny Laine-fronted incarnation of The Moody Blues deserves to be remembered for more than a momentary chart fling topped by a gem of a single. In ’65, they released an album at home and another in the US under distinct titles, both with a dozen tracks, and with a third of each LP unique. The better of the two, Go Now–The Moody Blues #1, was issued in the States by London Records.

Heavy on covers and by extension lacking in gestures toward originality, the ’64-’66-era Moody Blues are unlikely to be many people’s (I’ll stop short of saying anybody’s) most beloved component in the British Invasion. In fact, talk of the group today reliably focuses on the post-Denny Laine/Clint Warwick lineup, which saw new members John Lodge and Justin Hayward helping to transmogrify the Moodies into one of the leading, if artistically lesser, examples of Symphonic Rock. I won’t sully the Prog genre with an inapt association since there was hardly anything progressive about The Moody Blues Mk 2.

Instead, they exemplified the Middlebrow impulse, though that’s ultimately a separate discussion. This piece concerns a band that came together when the leader of Denny Laine and the Diplomats joined up with a bunch of nameless Birmingham hopefuls; their main desire was to hit it big or even just making a good living; they briefly played as the M & B 5, the initials an attempt at landing sponsorship from two local beer brewers (last names Mitchell and Butler). And, like many of their contemporaries, The Moody Blues’ method, at least initially, was the borrowing and alteration of Rhythm and Blues.

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Harmonica man and hearty singer Walter Daniels has hit the studio with Jack Oblivian on more than one prior occasion, with the recorded evidence frequently giving Daniels’ bluesy heft an infusion of garage punk grit. There is some of that on their latest collab, the 4-song EP “Sailing the Concrete Seas,” but as the title illuminates, there are also two versions of vintage truck-driving songs that are downright swank as they hit the ear. This 7-inch vinyl platter is available now as a split release between Black & Wyatt Records of Memphis, TN, and the Ghost Highway label of Madrid, Spain.

This short player spins at 33 1/3 rpm, and in extending the teamwork of Daniels and Oblivian, it can’t help but bring to mind the stuff they kicked out with former Gibson Bros manic Monsieur Jeffrey Evans. This is because back in 1990 the Gibson Bros (at that point still a four-piece) released a collab Punk Rock Truck Drivin’ Song of a Gun with the Workdogs (that’d be Rob Kennedy and Scott Jarvis), the LP’s title a direct reference to country singer Dave Dudley’s 1965 album Truck Drivin’ Son-Of-A-Gun.

Half of the contents of “Sailing the Concrete Seas” are versions of songs from that Dudley record, “I Got Lost,” written by noted country singer-songwriter Tom T. Hall, and “Two Six Packs Away,” a song credited to rockabilly cat Ronnie Self. “I Got Lost” works up a big-guitar groove halfway between a Nashville honky-tonk and an all-night Bakersfield diner, and that’s just killer. There’s a touch of Daniel’s mouth harp in the mix, but the blowing is harder and longer in the midst and also in the waning moments of “Two Six Packs Away.”

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With roots in the psychedelic ’60s and stature as a key punk antecedent, Roky Erickson stands as one of rock’s great cult figures, inhabiting the fringe partly due to personal struggles that kept him from maintaining his true potential. He did hit some significant high points, and anybody desiring an entry point into the man’s post-13th Floor Elevators work should get acquainted with The Evil One, the debut album from Roky Erickson and the Aliens, originally released by CBS Records in the UK and 415 Records in the US, and freshly reissued in a 15-track 2LP 45rpm edition by Fire Records, out October 30.

In the days prior to the internet, there were numerous avenues that could lead inquisitive young ears to the doorstep of Roky Erickson. Most prominent was his third band, The 13th Floor Elevators, formed after Erickson left The Spades, that band having released two singles including “We Sell Soul” and the original version of the Elevators’ hit “You’re Gonna Miss Me” (prior to The Spades, Erickson was in The Roulettes, an unrecorded outfit later known as The Missing Links).

Debut album The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, released in October 1966 by Texas label International Artists, is one of the essential rock albums of its decade. Its follow-up, Easter Everywhere, from the next year is also unmissable, and in fact, everything recorded by the band prior to disbanding is worth hearing, even the exploitative Live album (that’s really not a live album).

Back in the day, the Elevators’ records were sought out by anybody whose interest in psychedelic rock expanded beyond the US West Coast, the UK, and Jimi Hendrix. The inclusion of “You’re Gonna Miss Me” on the original 2LP Nuggets comp also meant that anyone with a jonesing for garage rock was hip to the Elevators.

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Celebrating Keith Hopwood on his 80th birthday. —Ed.

Amongst the insults lobbed at Herman’s Hermits over the decades: fabricated, shallow, calculatedly commercial, utterly safe, disposable. At home, they scored hits, and in the US, they became one of the most popular imports of the mid-‘60s. However, for many, they are simply a Brit Invasion phenomenon that connects the Frankie Avalon/Fabian ‘50s scene to the eventual rise of bubblegum. Any folks curious as to what the fuss was all about might want to look into Their Greatest Hits.

Herman’s Hermits can be considered the UK equivalent of, and a predecessor to, The Monkees. However, they had to fight longer for redemption, which is still in progress, as many persist in viewing them as eternal inhabitants of Squaresville, damned to never ascend from the circumstances thrust upon them by their era.

The ever-growing legion of Pop scientists will chalk this up to plain Rockism, but it’s a little more complex than that. Before being captured in the vise-like clutches of Mickey Most, Herman’s Hermits were a highly amiable, small-time, Manchester-based gigging band, initially shouldering the rather unimaginative moniker of the Heartbeats; it was after Peter Noone’s arrival that a name change, reportedly inspired by managers Harvey Lisberg and Charlie Silverman, occurred.

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Remembering Ellie Greenwich, born on this date in 1940. —Ed.

The late Ellie Greenwich’s well-deserved fame derives primarily from her activities as a songwriter, specifically as one half of the behemoth Brill Building duo Greenwich-Barry, a pair that penned some of the most brilliant and enduring tunes in the rich history of the ‘60s Girl-Group sound. But she was also a gifted vocalist, and while her talents behind the microphone will never eclipse her abilities as a composer, a little enthusiasm for her performances can only serve to deepen an already impressive legacy. Exhibit number one should be her fabulous single from 1967, “I Want You to Be My Baby” b/w “Goodnight, Goodnight (What’s So Good About It?).”

Once upon a time, the highly rewarding phenomenon of the ‘60s girl groups was firmly in the grip of the formidable tentacles of nostalgia. Such was the intense power of the “golden oldies” experience. While the same can be said of the numerous other rock-based genres that also remained in cultural memory through widespread popularity, those forms were separated far more easily from their sticky status as representatives of a supposedly simpler and somehow preferable past.

As such, younger folks often come to grips with the greatness of Stax before they integrate the more sophisticated pop direction of Motown into their listening diets. And to this day, whole hypothetical countries can be populated with Beatles fans that care nothing about the concept of the ‘60s as a great time to be alive, mainly because they weren’t around to form any memories of that nature.

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Remembering Bobby Fuller, born on this date in 1942. —Ed.

Inspecting chart history proves otherwise, but due to the ubiquitous nature of that one song everybody remembers, Bobby Fuller is considered by many as a One Hit Wonder. Others view him as the true-blood ‘60s extension in art as well as life of fellow Texan Buddy Holly, which overlaps with the assessment by some that Fuller was maybe the last gasp of rock ‘n’ roll innocence before the ‘60s became The Sixties. But he was also just a passionate young guy with a boatload of talent for whom music was paramount, and nothing communicates that better than a listen to The Bobby Fuller Four’s 1966 LP, I Fought the Law.

The Bobby Fuller Four’s second and best long-player opens with what is probably my pick for the band’s greatest moment and certainly one of their leader’s finest compositions. It’s not the title track, for “I Fought the Law” was penned by Sonny Curtis of The Crickets, a group most famous for backing Buddy Holly (Curtis joined after Holly’s plane crash; the original appears on 1960s In Style with the Crickets).

The tune is “Let Her Dance,” a delicious slice of guitar and vocal harmony-driven pop-rock and easily one of ’65’s best singles. Perfectly calibrated for airplay, its 2:32 flows with expertly layered simplicity. Once established, none of the song’s elements drift far in their roles; not Fuller’s lead singing of his wounded-heart love lyrics or the gorgeous chiming and jangling of his and Jim Reese’s guitars, not the beautiful but non-grandiose backing vocals, not Randy Fuller’s bass, and definitely not DeWayne Quirico’s drumming, which, with subtle alterations, follows the same pattern throughout.

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Celebrating Ron Elliott on his 83rd birthday. —Ed.

The Beau Brummels are mostly remembered for the exemplary folk-rock of “Laugh Laugh” and “Just a Little,” both Top Twenty hits in 1965. But they also crafted one of the earliest and best examples of country-rock, the masterful 1968 LP Bradley’s Barn.

I find it hard not to be somewhat conflicted about The Beau Brummels. Not in terms of quality, for they were one of the USA’s finest (and earliest) acts to emerge in the wake of the British Invasion, but simply in defining their historical legacy. For starters, they were signed to disc-jockey Tom Donahue’s small Autumn label during their early period of widespread popularity. This circumstance limited the distribution of their two biggest hits (“Laugh Laugh” stalling at #15 and “Just a Little” at #8, respectively).

And yet they were considered legitimate teen idols of the time, appearing not only in two motion pictures but also on TV’s The Flintstones (as the uh, Beau Brummelstones). It’s enough to make a mind contemplate what might have transpired had the band been in the hands of a more capable label, for their first two LPs, Introducing The Beau Brummels and Volume 2, stand amongst the best records issued by American acts in the immediate post-Beatles aftermath.

But when the group switched to Warner Brothers, they were initially mishandled. Beau Brummels ’66 was an ill-advised (if not at all bad) covers-only LP conceived because the label didn’t initially control the band’s publishing. Their first “real” record for Warners, ‘67’s outstanding slice of baroque-psyche Triangle, remains one of the better psychedelic excursions of the period.

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Live at the KiMo Theater, Albuquerque, 1979, throws a fabulous wrinkle into the discography of Cecil Taylor, uncovering an impeccably recorded quintet performance as remarkable in its ensemble energy as anything in the great pianist’s extensive body of work. Black Editions Archive has released this discovery as a 2LP set in a deluxe heavy tip-on gatefold jacket, with a color-printed 12-page listening guide featuring words by Taylor expert Ben Young.

To borrow from boxing parlance, Cecil Taylor is often characterized as a bruiser, indeed an utter pummeler of the ivories, and while that’s certainly true, he’s also as fleet and fascinatingly unpredictable as a featherweight, unleashing artistry that blossomed into a quickly recognizable sound. Easily the most singular pianist to have arrived on the jazz scene post Thelonious Monk, Taylor’s uniqueness was immediately apparent even as his style developed gradually.

Listening to Taylor’s discography in chronological order is one of the most rewarding adventures in modern music, at least for those who are amenable to his approach. This blend of studio dates and performance recordings begins in 1957 with Jazz Advance, released by the Transition label, capturing Taylor as already something of an iconoclast, if one with a tangible connection to modern jazz. The set fittingly opens with a version of Monk’s “Bemsha Swing,” Taylor situating himself at the vanguard of jazz piano and then spiraling out from there.

Taylor’s quartet for Jazz Advance featured Steve Lacy on soprano sax, Buell Neidlinger on bass, and Denis Charles on drums, an aggregation that also comprised one side of At Newport, released in 1958 by Verve Records (the Gigi Gryce-Donald Byrd Jazz Laboratory gets the other side). For the 1959 Contemporary Records’ set Looking Ahead!, vibraphonist Earl Griffiths replaces Lacy.

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The sole studio album (thus far) by Willis Alan Ramsey was released in 1972 by Shelter Records, the label of musician Leon Russell. The lack of a follow-up should hopefully provide adequate insight into the album’s commercial reception, although it did inspire numerous other artists through better-known cover versions. But Willis Alan Ramsey holds up in its own right as yet another undersung artifact of folky, country-tinged singer-songwriter goodness from an era abundant with the stuff, the early 1970s. A first-time vinyl reissue is freshly out by Superior Viaduct subsidiary Antarctica Starts Here.

Some of these rediscovered folky singer-songwriters are total obscurities that cut records for small, often regional labels, or even self-released their stuff. Even when the albums have an aura of excellence about them, the chances these musicians would’ve found “success” in an already overcrowded field were infinitesimally small.

Willis Alan Ramsey’s percentages were much higher. That he cut a record for Shelter in itself is evidence of a considerable level of achievement. It’s just too bad the album didn’t sell. That a few of the LP’s songs were recorded by other artists, and with “Muskrat Love” a sizable hit for Captain & Tennille, underscores that Ramsey could’ve easily sold some records had the chips fallen just a little bit differently.

That “Muskrat Love,” which was titled “Muskrat Candlelight” on the original pressing of Willis Alan Ramsey, should reinforce a level of soft-rock in its composer’s disposition. And that’s alright. Before Captain & Tennille skyrocketed the song, America had a smaller hit with it as it landed on their 1973 album Hat Trick. That Waylon Jennings chose to cut a version of this album’s “Satin Sheets” for his 1977 album Ol’ Waylon highlights the country side of Ramsey’s personality.

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