DIG THIS WITH BILL MESNIK AND RICH BUCKLAND- THE SPLENDID BOHEMIANS

STREET CRED -by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band (Elektra, 1972) EXTENDED DELUXE VERSION!!

When talking about Paul Butterfield there’s a lot to cover, and I can’t do it all justice in this small space. I recommend the documentary HORN FROM THE HEART to get all the nuances in Paul Butterfield’s story. However, listening to this compilation, one can get a nice view of the shapely arc of this band’s journey from young-turk, blues afficionados to Americana pioneers - each step along the way characterized by a stirring evocation of authentic feeling.

It’s hard from this distance to understand how massively important this group was in terms of fusing blues with folk, rock, and jazz, not to mention world music. At the center of it all was the harmonica prodigy, born on the south side of Chicago, trained at the feet of the blues masters, but then adopted by Dylan and the Newport folkies, and instrumental to the explosion that became our modern music of the 60s and 70s. 

East-West (1966) still blows my mind. This 13 minute magnum jazz-raga opus, featuring the amazing Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop on guitars with Paul wailing on harp remains stubbornly on my Sunday morning playlist. Joe Boyd and Paul Rothchild at Elektra discovered them and lovingly brought their sound to our turntables, and on this cart from six years later, the highlights from that company’s influence is captured for all time. It was important for Elektra’s transition from folk label to one of the premier purveyors of quality rock; it was important for Dylan’s transition from troubadour to rock god, and it was an important liaison for us white American teenagers appreciation of our blues heritage. You might argue that this was another example of “white savior” appropriation, but The Paul Butterfield Blues Band was an integrated outfit, featuring Howlin’ Wolf’s rhythm section of Sam Lay and Jerome Arnold, and Butterfield, born in Chicago and raised at the master’s feet had all the right moves.

• - Side 1 -
• 1 Born in Chicago
• 2 Shake Your Money-Maker
• 3 Mellow Down Easy
• 4 Our Love Is Drifting
• 5 Mystery Train
• 6 Look Over Yonders Wall
• - Side 2 -
• 1 East-West
• 2 Walkin' Blues
• 3 Get Out of My Life, Woman
• 4 Mary, Mary
• - Side 3 -
• 1 Spoonful
• 2 One More Mile
• 3 One More Heartache
• 4 Last Hope's Gone
• 5 In My Own Dream
• - Side 4 -
• 1 Love March
• 2 Driftin' and Driftin'
• 3 Blind Leading the Blind

For a deeper dive: https://www.hornfromtheheart.com/

The man trudges on, to where he doesn’t know. He just needs a place to land. The air is hot and choking, his brain is racing. Then, he realizes: it’s Santa Ana season. 

“The baby frets. The maid sulks. I rekindle a waning argument with the telephone company, then cut my losses and lie down, given over to whatever is in the air. To live with the Santa Ana is to accept, consciously or unconsciously, a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior. ...[T]he violence and the unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability. The wind shows us how close to the edge we are.”— Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. (1968)

https://futurerocklegends.com/Artist/Frank_Sinatra/
Not in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
Eligible since: 1965
First Recording: 1939
Previously Considered? No  what's this?
Kennedy Center Honoree: 1983
Inducted into Rock Hall Revisited in 1994 (ranked #13 in the Influences - Pre-Rock Era category) .
R.S. Top 500 Albums (?) | Rank | Version
In the Wee Small Hours | 282 | 2020
In the Wee Small Hours | 101 | 2012
Songs for Swingin' Lovers! | 308 | 2012 ... etc., etc....

In acknowledgement of the unabated parade of beloved ones passing - (the latest being the lovely Christine McVie), and the mind boggling proliferation of American mass shootings, we are reposting these "anti" holiday favs for the more dyspeptic seasonal celebrants among us.

As the man struggles to collect his memories, he finds himself getting lost in the labyrinth of his disordered mind. 

Labyrinth (From “The Book of Symbols”):

The essentially dual, paradoxical nature of the labyrinth is both circular and linear, simple and complex, historical and temporal. Contained within a compact space, a long and difficult path constantly doubles back on itself, leading circuitously to a mysterious and invisible center. From within, the view is extremely restricted and confusing, while from above one discovers a supreme artistry and order.

De Vorzon founded Valiant Records in 1960.[5] During the 1960s, he signed the Association to Valiant, and produced its first single, a cover of the Bob Dylan tune "One Too Many Mornings."

De Vorzon wrote "I Wonder What She's Doing Tonight" for the Cascades, but the group did not record it. In 1963, De Vorzon recorded the song himself, with his group Barry and the Tamerlanes. Also in 1963 he co-wrote the ballad "Shy Girl" which was recorded by the Cascades.

De Vorzon wrote the tune "Girls" for Johnny Burnette. It reached No. 37 in the UK 1961 charts.

He composed the soundtracks to many 1970s and 1980s films, and one of the tunes, "Cotton's Dream" (from Bless the Beasts and Children) was retitled "Nadia's Theme" and re-released by A&M Records for the television soap opera The Young and the Restless. "Nadia's Theme" hit No. 8 on the US Top 40 in 1976 and the album from which it was taken peaked at No. 42 on the Billboard 200; in 1977, it won a Grammy Awardfor Best Instrumental Arrangement. The main title song, "Bless the Beasts and Children," was recorded by the Carpenters and received an Academy Award nomination.

De Vorzon composed the tune "It's Christmas Once Again in Santa Barbara," which was re-recorded with various other city names, such as San Francisco and San Diego. He also wrote the "Theme from S.W.A.T.", and co-wrote the Eagles' hit "In the City" with Joe Walsh. In 1979 he wrote the music for the movie The Warriors.

De Vorzon was one of the developers of the MasterWriter creative software for songwriters and lyricists.[6]

Shit. I’ve burst into tears three times just trying to get through the opening track on this cart, He Stopped Loving Her Today. What is it about good country music that provokes such gut wrenching spasms of lonely grief? And here, the keening majesty of Mr. Jones’ voice proves he was the undisputed master of the emotional body blow. 

He Stopped Loving Her Today revived Jone’s career, even though he hated the song initially. He was quoted as saying that his: “…4 decade career had been salvaged by a 3 minute song.” It won him a Grammy and CMA Song of the Year. Producer Billy Sherrill loaded up the album with a raft of songs that reflected George’s reputation for out of control drinking and self destruction, and the recording feels like an intimate tell-all. Sherrill testified that the singer was in such bad shape during the making of the album that he had to record the recitation portion of the hit song 18 months after laying down the first verse. The track became inextricably linked with The Possum, making the top country charts, for the second time, a week after the singer’s death in 2013. 

The toxic co-dependency between the singer and his wife Tammy Wynettte is the stuff of legend, and one of the most compelling soap operatic storylines in Country music history. And, it underlines every lyric offered here. The couple divorced in 1976, but kept working together, all the while as the dissipated Jones kept hoping for a reconciliation. (They recorded their single “Two Story House” in the same year as this album). Thankfully, in 1981, George met and married Nancy Sepulvado who provided a stabilizing influence for him. She managed his career and got him sober (mostly), and surviving to the age of 81. 

This is a classic recording by one of the all time greats.

Welcome to Mesmerized with Bill Mesnik.
Presenting "Summer Journey,"  a 10 episode story in song. 
Setting the scene: 
It's a sweltering summer day  in Los Angeles, California, and choking fires are raging all over the area. A middle aged man falls in the street from heat exhaustion, and suddenly becomes amnesiac - He is without ID, and cannot remember his name or where he lives. 
Throughout the ensuing episodes he will become homeless and endeavor to find his way back to himself. 
The first episode is entitled "Impact" and this is where we come upon him.  

From Purple Hearts to Flying Crosses, veterans can hold any number of decorations, but few can boast the title of Oscar winner.

For his role as double amputee Homer Parrish in 1946's The Best Years of Our Lives, actual veteran Harold Russell earned unique distinction as the first non-professional actor to win an Oscar and the only one in history to win two Oscars for the same role (Supporting Actor and a Special Oscar for "bringing aid and comfort to disabled veterans through the medium of motion pictures").

Russell wasn't a star or even an aspiring actor when cast as Homer Parrish. After signing up to serve in the army, Russell was stationed at Camp Mackall in North Carolina where he trained army paratroopers. There, while demonstrating to his trainees, a defective fuse on a stick of TNT caused an explosion and Russell lost both of his hands. Russell opted for practical hooks — as seen in the film — over prosthetics because of their functionality (prosthetics have significantly improved since the 1940s).
Following his accident, Russell was recruited to appear in the day-in-the-life short Diary of a Sergeant. "It was basically to show the day in the life of a disabled veteran and to inspire other veterans that you can still live a normal, fruitful, happy life," says Jill Blake, writer and cohost of film podcast Criterion Now. Russell had no dialogue in the short, but instead went about his day underscored by voiceover narration.

But his performance got him noticed by government higher-ups, who recruited him to do appearances for the eighth war loan drive, a war bond campaign. At events around the country, they would screen Diary of a Sergeant and Russell would come out to speak about his own experiences.

At one of these events, The Best Years of Our Lives director William Wyler was in attendance — and he was struck by inspiration. The character that would become Homer Parrish was originally written to be suffering from a traumatic brain injury, but Wyler decided casting Russell and making the character a double amputee would serve the story better.

The 1946 film remains a paragon of depicting the challenges that soldiers face readjusting to life back home, in part because Russell's life was incorporated into Homer's story. "What makes this film unique is a person with a disability is playing a person with a disability," adds Blake. "The spirit of the film and that authenticity in Russell's performance is timeless."

Part of that authenticity was inspired by Russell's appearances in the bond drives. Looking to connect with people, he would find ways to break the ice and get people to focus on him as a person rather than his disability. These tactics included extended his hook to shake someone's hand, encouraging them to set aside any discomfort. Additionally, he'd light cigarettes with a match until it burned out, noting that he couldn't burn his fingers anymore. And he'd often joke that one thing he couldn't do was pick up the check. All these moments found their way into the Years script.

"He went through so much in his recovery," notes Blake. "But he chose to be optimistic and use it to his benefit and the benefit of the people around him. And I think that's what really drew Wyler to him."

Several years ago, I wrote a time-travel film treatment called “Song Trippers” about a quartet of lonely, damaged people who found solace through music. Each lost soul connects to a song that transports them back in time to the place in their youth when they were the happiest. Of course, we all know that music has magic power. There are songs that can trip my memory far from the here and now to earlier states of joyful wonderment, and sadness, too, if that’s what’s called for. It’s strong medicine.

For each episode in this series, I’ll take an 8 Track down from the shelf and share it with you, along with some special memories, bonded by that spiritual epoxy that has forged the framework of my life’s scaffold. - Captain Billy

"A FANCY COVER BAND"

PROCOL’S NINTH by Procol Harum (Chrysalis, 1975)


Gary Brooker passed on recently, and the outpouring of grief for this titan was enormous. It had been a long time since Procol Harum’s Whiter Shade of Pale dominated the airwaves, but the baroque timelessness of that tune has stayed in our consciousness throughout the decades, and the chesty rumblings of it’s golden throated frontman definitely had staying power. Moreover, the Reid and Brooker songbook boasts an epic collection of enigmatic narratives that invite repeated listenings. They were a unique outfit with a singular sound and style.

I suppose the reason this album suffers by critical comparison to some of the others - is that it plays it safe. Produced by Lieber and Stoller with the goal of producing a hit (which it did with Pandora’s box - the group’s last top 20), it is a spare set: clean, tight, poppy, and mixed well, albeit a little cramped sounding. But, why the flaccid covers? L&S had them record their own I Keep Forgetting, (to which the band reportedly objected) and, God help me), …. a sluggish, tired sounding rendition of Eight Days a Week. 

There are some decent originals: The Unquiet Zone, and the Final Thrust come to mine, yet it’s interesting to note that two of the Brooker/Reid compositions on the record - Without a Doubt and Typewriter Torment - seem to be about writer’s block, which makes perfect sense: the team was clearly writing about what they were experiencing. To be fair though, the album isn't as bad as had been described, even it the band sounds hand-cuffed, and the production is clean to the point of sterility. Despite this, Procol Harum is still Procol Harum, and that’s ok by me.

1 |  | Pandora's Box | 3:37
2 |  | Fool's Gold | 4:00
3 |  | Taking The Time | 3:39
4 |  | The Unquiet Zone | 3:40
5 |  | The Final Thrust | 4:37
6 |  | I Keep Forgetting/  3:28
7 |  | Without A Doubt | 4:31
8 |  | The Piper's Tune | 4:28
9 |  | Typewriter Torment | 4:29
10 |  | Eight Days / 3:00