New Reissues Recall the History of Rock Comebacks

The Early Rock ‘n’ Roll Comeback Albums
By Steven Rosen
(This was written for sonicboomers.com and published on June 26, 2009)

When the album-rock revolution hit full force in 1967, blues veterans were immediately in a great place to benefit. Revered by the new, young rock stars and guitar gods who had appropriated and updated their music, many were still middle-aged and creatively vital. So after years -- decades, really -- of releasing often-lo-fi singles and occasional singles-collecting albums, they were treated as possibly important acts. Royalty.

Results were mixed, both creatively and commercially, but it represented rock looking backward while looking forward, and acts like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, B.B. King, Otis Spann and others really began to benefit. The sons were honoring the fathers, to paraphrase the title (Fathers and Sons) of a successful Chess Records album of the time.

It followed, then, that the Fathers of Rock ‘n' Roll (and a mother or two) might also benefit from well-produced, high-profile albums aimed at Boomers. Many weren't even middle-aged yet, but they had seemed to drop off the map when their 1950s/early 1960s hits stopped in the wake of Beatlemania and the growth of album rock.

There were a few exceptions. The pioneer with the most distinctive guitar sound, Chuck Berry, had more or less stayed current in the 1960s, developing a countercultural following by playing the hippie ballrooms. Meanwhile Jerry Lee Lewis had crossed over to country. Elvis, who as the 1960s wore on released irrelevant minor hits like "Do the Clam," reentered the arena on 1968's rootsy From Elvis in Memphis TV special.T

his beginning era -- or movement -- of rock comebacks and reinventions produced some strange and interesting albums. Also many forgotten ones, since it produced few hits. Today, some of those early rock comebacks are getting a second hearing, thanks especially to the reissue program from mail-order house/custom label Collectors' Choice Music.

It has just re-released the three early-1970s albums that Little Richard put out for Reprise Records, which with sister label Warner Bros. comprised the hippest company at the time. There are new liner notes by Gene Sculatti. (Songs for a fourth CD, Southern Child, were also cut and belatedly came out as part of Rhino Handmade's Complete Reprise Recordings limited-edition set.)

Little Richard posed a problem for the label. Not yet 40, he had a lot of music left in him but was starting to be seen as a kind of outré nostalgia act a la Tiny Tim. As he remerged on the pop scene, he appeared on talk shows all glammed up and bellowing "shaddup" at everyone else. He was kind of a comedy act.

Yet Reprise didn't see him that way, and didn't sign him with that in mind. The label first sent him to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to make a rootsy, contemporary rock ‘n' roll album. And he came back with a pretty good one, 1970's The Rill Thing. But it emphasized Southern rock and grit at the expense of the horn-blasting, piano-pumping, squealing "roll" that had made him famous in the 1950s with "Long Tall Sally," "Tutti Frutti" and others.

The title song was a long, funky-soul-stew instrumental jam that simply wasn't then -- and still isn't -- what anyone still interested in Little Richard wanted. The leadoff track and first single, "Freedom Blues," was weird. His a cappella shouts of "La, la, la da da da" undeniable had conviction and an allure. But the song struggled with hard-rock sluggishness and clichéd lyrics. Still, he sang his heart out on this self-penned number, and overall it was compelling if not earth-shattering.

The album came to life best on those songs featuring the familiar Little Richard sound ("Dew Drop Inn," "I Saw Her Standing There"). But there weren't enough. One assumes at the time, record executives probably felt he needed some modernizing. But it's hard to improve upon a classic...just let it rip.

King of Rock and Roll, recorded with producer H.B. Barnum, is the best of his Reprise albums. It had some borderline hokey, faux-gospel, call-and-response shouting with a crowd, but today that sounds like what Little Richard really enjoyed the most.

Overall, the album is heavy on pop hits rearranged for his squealing, growling voice and upbeat, horn-driven sound -- "Joy to the World" (which became a sermon in his hands), "Brown Sugar" (a great scream here), "The Way You Do the Things You Do," and "Born on the Bayou." There's also a moving version of "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry." This album gives a distinctive old voice some new but familiar material, and then watches the sparks ignite.

His third album, the very loose and relaxed but still energetic The Second Coming, used his former Specialty Records' producer "Bumps" Blackwell and featured four tracks with New Orleans musicians who played on his Crescent City-recorded 1950s hits. Good stuff, but not powerful or memorable enough to break through at the time.

Actually, Warner-Reprise had already had experience with career-reinventions before the high-profile Little Richard venture. It smartly realized that the Everly Brothers, who it had signed in 1960 and then watched as the steady hits stopped in 1962, were a natural fit with the growing country-rock movement and released Roots in 1968. (Collectors' Choice reissued it in 2005.)

It didn't sell and the duo split up in the 1970s, waiting until the 1980s to reunite, sign with Mercury and release the classic comeback LP EB ‘84. (It's also worth noting that Rick Nelson, a teen idol who lost his following -- while still in his mid-twenties -- when Beatlemania hit, started moving in the same direction as the Everlys even earlier, with 1966's Bright Lights & Country Music on Decca. Strangely, his country-rock albums never clicked, but he did have one of the biggest hit singles of any of the 1950s rockers -- 1973's "Garden Party," which actually criticized rock nostalgia.)

Reprise also smartly realized that the Beatles' early-1968 hit "Lady Madonna" sure sounded like a Fats Domino song with its cascading piano and hip saxophone. So it signed New Orleans' larger-than-life Fat Man, himself, and assigned rising pop-rock producer Richard Perry (Tiny Tim) to work with him. The result was the fine Fats Is Back, from late 1968. Again, Collectors' Choice has made this available on CD with notes by Sculatti.

Domino had just turned 40 and was languishing in obscurity; he hadn't had a big hit since 1960's "Walking to New Orleans." (He still hasn't, actually.) But he also was prickly, declining to play his piano on all but one song ("I'm Ready"). However Perry got James Booker, a great New Orleans pianist in his own right, instead. With King Curtis providing horn, Eric Gale guitar, and the Blossoms harmonies (and the Holy Mackerel providing handclaps), the overall playing was first-rate.

Among the 11 tunes -- after a too-softly recorded "Fats Is Back" medley of old-hits snippets -- were infectiously likeable versions of the Beatles' "Lady Madonna" and "Lovely Rita." Booker provided a song that sounded like classic Domino, "So Swell When You're Well," and the writing team of Pasquale Zompa and Bernard DeCesare offered another new one that was a comfortable fit, "Honest Papas Love Their Mamas Better."

Although there was a minor boomlet in the late 1960s of R&B stars having hits with Beatles tunes (Ray Charles' "Yesterday," Steve Wonder's "We Can Work It Out," Wilson Pickett's "Hey Jude") Domino's single version of "Lady Madonna" inexplicably never caught fire. Nor did the album. Today, it sounds like the hit that got away. (He subsequently cut "Everybody's Got Something to Hide But Me and My Monkey.")

Collectors' Choice also has available Fats, which Warner Bros. released in 1971 in England. It consists of material he and collaborator Dave Bartholomew had recorded before signing in 1968.

There are too many other comeback attempts from these years to mention fully. But one that deserves attention, since it has become a template for soul divas, is the 1973 self-titled Chess album Etta James recorded with Gabriel Mekler (Steppenwolf, Janis Joplin). It pushed her toward contemporary singer-songwriters as Randy Newman ("Leave Your Hat On," "Sail Away" and "God's Song") and Tracy Nelson ("Down So Low"). Hip-O Select reissued it in 2006.

Elsewhere, there was a lot going on. Carl Perkins recorded with NRBQ; Jerry Wexler and Tom Dowd took Ronnie Hawkins to Muscle Shoals to sing with such stellar session musicians as Duane Allman and Eddie Hinton; tragic Gene Vincent in short order put out three albums for contemporary rock labels Dandelion and Kama Sutra before his death in 1971 from a bleeding ulcer (at age 36).

Finally, a personal note. I was a high-school/college student at this time, and when I'd read about these comeback albums in Rolling Stone I thought, "God, these guys are so old to be doing this." Today, Chuck Berry is almost 83 and reportedly at work on a new comeback album.

Rock ‘n' roll really is about constantly renewing oneself and staying in play -- age is secondary. If I'd realized it then, maybe I'd have bought Fats Is Back when it was new. I'd have liked it then as much as I do now.
— 06/26/2009

Steven Rosen Wins "Best in Ohio" Award for CityBeat

CityBeat Wins Statewide Journalism Awards
By John Fox
June 22, 2009

CityBeat was among Ohio's top media performers recognized Friday night at the 31st Annual Ohio Excellence in Journalism Awards, hosted by the Press Club of Cleveland.

More than 1,000 entries were received from a variety of daily and non-daily newspapers, radio and television stations and trade and business publications from across the state — the contest was for work published or broadcast in 2008.

CityBeat won two awards in the "Best in Ohio" competition within the competition, which pitted all media against each other regardless of size.

Steven Rosen won first place in Best in Ohio: Reviews/Criticism for a selection of his movie reviews.

The paper won second place in Best Non-Daily Newspaper in Ohio: Alternatives(Columbus' The Other Paper took first place).


Other CityBeat awards were first place in Single Illustration: Non-Daily Newspapers to Woodrow J. Hinton III for his pre-election cover illustration "Crossing Over;" first place in Multiple Illustrations/One Story: All Publications to Dylan Speeg for his pig illustrations in the 2008 Best of Cincinnati issue; and second place in Features/Personality Profile: Non-Daily Newspapers to Brian Baker for his profile of cartoon artist Justin Green, "Up from the Underground."

Find all the Cleveland Press Club winners here.

Remembering Colorado's Golden Age of Song

Tributes, reissues evoke golden age of Colorado songs
By Steven Rosen
Special to The Denver Post
06/21/2009


"Would you like to go to Colorado
Heaven's there I'm told in Colorado
Well, I'm leaving in the morning and I'd like to take you with me
I feel that Colorado is a place we could be happy
In the mountains . . . Rocky Mountains."

With songs like that on their minds — Hoyt Axton's glorious "On the Natural" from 1969 — hordes of young people arrived in Colorado following neither gold nor coal but the sounds of pop music.

They had visions of a hip, mellow, wildflowers-in-your-hair utopia, a world away from the hard, hot, even at times bloodstained streets of urban America in those years.

In Colorado, the times they were a-changin' — but in a more earthy way.
Defining all those changes was the golden era of Colorado song. It was certainly as big as a fourteener in its heyday.

Colorado transplant John Denver, who died in a 1997 plane crash, sold millions of albums with such 1970s anthems as "Rocky Mountain High," "Aspenglow" and "I Guess He'd Rather Be in Colorado."

At the same time as Denver's rise, Dave Loggins had a Top 40 hit in 1974 with the romantic plea "Please Come to Boston," its verse about "Please come to Denver with the snowfall . . ." being its most memorable.

The purity of Coloradan Judy Collins' soprano voice on her best-selling folk-pop albums like "Wildflowers" was compared to the clean, clear air of the state she loved.

With those songs, a new Colorado emerged, a place where the radically eccentric Hunter S. Thompson almost got elected sheriff of Pitkin County on a Freak Power ticket that called for decriminalization of drugs; where communes inspired by the visionary Drop City near Trinidad were cropping up statewide; where music enthusiasts clogged winding mountain roads to reach the new Telluride Bluegrass Festival; and where a recent arrival to Denver like activist lawyer Gary Hart could get elected to the U.S. Senate at age 37 and be received like a superstar.

Fast-forward to today. Colorado has continued to grow, but the era of that kind of West-worshiping music from disaffected youths topping the charts has passed.

Yet several timely events — an upcoming John Denver tribute concert at Red Rocks, a new Steve Earle album in tribute to songwriter Townes Van Zandt, the CD release of Axton's album containing "On the Natural" — illuminate that time when Colorado beckoned the youthful and idealistic through contemporary music.

On Saturday, public-television station KBDI sponsors "John Denver — The Tribute" at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, featuring a Denver-like singer, Roy Rivers of Hot Springs, Ark., performing with Denver's lead guitarist, Steve Weisberg, and a six-piece band. It marks the 20th anniversary of Denver's last concert at Red Rocks.

Some of the best golden-era Colorado anthems came from the late Townes Van Zandt, whose spare, largely acoustic recordings have only recently built a sizable national following. He was a Texas troubadour and Colorado devotee whose introspective, often-pining compositions like "If I Needed You" and "Waiting Round to Die" serve as the archetype for today's Americana (or alternative-country) music.

This spring, Earle — today a bard of contemporary Americana himself — released a tribute album called "Townes." On it, Earle covers Van Zandt's 1969 "Colorado Girl." Van Zandt briefly attended the University of Colorado at Boulder in the 1960s, and during the 1970s he spent summers in the state, writing such other songs about it as "Snowin' on Raton," "Our Mother the Mountain" and "My Proud Mountains."

"Townes used to say there are two kinds of music — blues and zip-a- dee-doo-dah, and a lot of songs written about Colorado tend to be zip-a-dee-doo-dah," Earle says. "But Townes' stuff is not that."

Earle was a teenager in Texas, just beginning to play music in public, when he first met the older Van Zandt. Van Zandt heckled him; improbably, they became lifelong friends. (Van Zandt had a lifelong alcohol-abuse problem; Earle too went through periods of substance abuse.)

"Colorado was a huge part of who he was," Earle says. "He had a horse he kept in a stable in Aspen, and he'd pick the horse up and ride across the mountain to Crested Butte every year. Sometimes the trip didn't get completed, and I think he had to be rescued one year, but it was one of the places where he felt as close to home as he ever felt.

"He felt like Colorado was a cleansing thing for him, beginning of the cycle where he renewed himself."

But Van Zandt also knew Colorado — and the cleansing it provided — would never last, which gave his songs such a bluesy presence, Earle says.

That search for a "Rocky Mountain High" as an antidote for substance abuse propels another early Colorado song, the late Axton's "On the Natural" from 1969. The long-out- of-print album containing it, "My Griffin Is Gone," was released on CD recently through Omni Recording Corp.

In the song, Axton (who later wrote Three Dog Night's "Joy to the World") romanticizes escape to the mountains — Crested Butte, specifically — as an antidote for "little blue pills."

The liner notes explain the reference was to Stelazine, a drug prescribed for an urban friend with a mental problem whom Axton wanted to help.

There were plenty of songs about Colorado before the golden era: CU-Boulder's library names such early-20th-century compositions as 1924's "Where Rails End and Trails Begin," 1926's "Happy Colorado," 1930's "Colorado Midgets Waltz" and 1953's "Colorado Skies."

The latter was co-written by Judy Collins' father, Chuck, shortly after moving to the state with his family. "Even though my father was blind, he said, 'I've never seen a place so beautiful,' " Collins says.

"So he and Eddy Rogers wrote that together. It was a beautiful song about Colorado." And then she sings it over the phone.

There have been songs about Colorado written after the golden era — Collins considers her great Colorado song to be "The Blizzard (The Colorado Song)," written in 1989. Warren Zevon's goofy "Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead" even inspired a movie by the same name. And the healthy bluegrass scene continually spawns songs name-checking the state.

But still, given Colorado's growth in population since the 1970s, as well as the "green" movement, one would figure there would be more such huge hits today. But there aren't.

Leland Rucker, a Colorado music historian, blames that on the changing nature of how we listen to music. "We were all listening to the same thing back then — we all listened to the same songs. Today, a teenager doesn't just listen to one kind of music; they make playlists on iTunes. We don't have the kind of world where very many songs rise up to the top like then."

But there may also be a reason today's Colorado musicians are reluctant to attempt a Colorado anthem.

"Those (older) songs are still from our era of rock/pop/rhythm-and- blues modern music," says Robert Schneider, who as a Coloradan founded the indie-rock band the Apples in Stereo. (He now lives in Lexington, Ky.)

"So in a way you're ripping them off."