Rubber City Review

Let’s say you’ve put together a little bar band – something that won’t set the world on fire but might get you a gig at some corner dive. Or maybe you’re the manager… work with me.

A couple folks in the band are starting to write originals, but they’re not quite there yet. So rather than spend countless hours trying to take a handful of songs from “mediocre” to “promising,” you need to come up with a couple sets’ worth of material, fast. Songs that play to every little strength your band can muster – maybe a soulful singer, flashy guitarist, funky rhythm section, nasty harp player, yakety sax… And maybe more important, songs that don’t make you want to hide in stall #3 every time you play (or hear) them.

As always, RCR is here to help. A couple of us have been in this very situation, with a bandmate or two who you’d struggle to describe as “not offensive.” The easy way out would be to flog a few old warhorses, like Mustang Sally or Got My Mojo Working or, for you bluegrass pickers out there, Rocky Top (or, how about a time- and soul-killing medley, like Gimme Three Steps on the Stairway to Freebird?). But that, my friends, is what those of us with the proper musical training like to call a big ol’ bowl of suck. If your day job leaves you pondering whether it’s physically possible to rip off your own head, why pursue a hobby that reveals the answer? That’s what bowling leagues are for.

I’ll risk yet another argument with bro’-in-law Chuck “If It Ain’t Original, It Ain’t Shit” Auerbach by pointing out that there’s a real art to picking the right songs to cover. Hell, Ry Cooder’s made a whole career out of it. And it really boils down to a few basic rules that should guide all of your song selections:

1. Don’t play the obvious. Some of us have played Stormy Monday every goddam day of the week. When I played it for the 1,214th time, I pictured a mighty eagle soaring into the bar to gouge out our guitar player’s eyeballs at roughly the 15-minute point in his solo. A fleeting image of great beauty, then it was gone. And the song had barely started.
2. Cover tunes that everyone will think you wrote. Don’t worry – most people in the bar stopped listening to new music back in the Eighties, when men were, eh, how do I put this… fabulous? Find a song you can sell like Gordon Gekko. I’ve got literally thousands to choose from. Songs about love lost or a lover found… about faith and freedom… hard living and heavy drugs… songs about camels, pointy boots, snack crackers and girls named Little Debbie (wait, that’s all in the same song: Camel Walk). Tell the audience you wrote it in prison. Then try to win them over as they head for the door.
3. Leave Stevie Ray Vaughan alone. Guys who want to play guitar like Vaughan remind me of those hapless jazzbos from the Fifties who tried to play alto sax like Bird. Just put it down and walk away. Nothing good can come of this. And remember, even SRV got sick of playing Pride & Joy (in the end, he was more interested in sounding like Kenny Burrell than Albert King).
4. Find new meaning in an old song. Turn a happy song into a dirge, and vice versa. Give a soul nugget a reggae beat (see “Toots in Memphis”) or turn a reggae song into a steamy little shuffle, like Charlie Hunter did with this Bob Marley tune: Lively Up Yourself Take some hoary, over-produced rock song from the ‘80s and reinvent it as a stark acoustic ballad. People will know you didn’t write it, but they’ll go insane trying to figure out where they’ve heard it before.
5. The Stax-Volt catalog is still the motherlode. Back in 1979, ZZ Top scored a huge hit with a fairly obvious Stax number, Sam & Dave’s I Thank You. Seven years later, The Fabulous Thunderbirds climbed the charts with a more obscure Sam & Dave tune, Wrap It Up. Then Michael Bolton… OK, I can see this is going nowhere. If you’re looking for more unsung Memphis soul, I highly recommend “The Complete Stax-Volt Singles: 1959-1968.” That’s where I found this hidden gem by a largely unknown soulman, Prince Conley (with the legendary Steve Cropper laying down a snaky guitar riff in his first session at the label): I’m Going Home

The previous example underscores another important point about picking the right covers. Sure, 10-minute blues tunes can be fun to play, especially after several hours of self-medication. But they’ll only take you so far as a band. I once read where John Mellencamp made his bandmates learn a whole boatload of soul and garage-rock songs from the Sixties so they’d be in the right frame of mind to tackle his rootsy originals. Now if Mellencamp had dropped dead during rehearsals (not an unlikely scenario), the band would still be far better off for the effort. I’d certainly book them for my next house party.

Here’s just a short list of some tunes that I’ve been able to persuade other band members to cover, mainly so we wouldn’t have to suffer through yet another rendition of Sweet Home Chicago.

How about a cover of a cover? I know, sounds pointless. But we couldn’t resist jumping all over this remake of a ‘60s classic by Buffalo Springfield – a song that I’ll forever equate with paranoia. Louisiana bluesman Tab Benoit takes that trippy, California vibe and drags it through the swamp in the middle of the night. Now I’m really worried. For What It’s Worth/Tab Benoit

Here’s a tune by Bob Marley’s son Ziggy that sounds like it came from Memphis instead of Kingston. But it still has enough of the island in it to not sound the least bit rushed. Deliberate, maybe… but still laid back. And who can argue with a universal lyric like “got to be true to myself”? Never quite nailed this one live. I’ll blame the drummer, who picked a bad time to give up ganja. True To Myself/Ziggy Marley

Everybody loves rockabilly. It might not be queued up in your car stereo, but when you hear it done right in a club, you want to trade in your Nikes for a pair of two-tone mesh-top swing shoes. Here’s a tune I never got tired of playing. It combines a Secret Agent Man groove with a killer turnaround riff. It’s actually a cover of a far more obscure tune by Johnny Faire. Clint Miller’s remake entered the Billboard 100 in 1957. Miller went on to pursue a career in law and politics and even ran for Governor of Virginia in 1996. Apparently, voters weren’t at all interested in conjugating with him. Bertha Lou/Clint Miller

If you’re going to cover a blues tune, stay away from the ones that seem to say “caution: shitty white blues band at work.” The Excello label is a good source of obscure blues nuggets, performed by Louisiana masters like Slim Harpo, Lonesome Sundown, Lightnin’ Slim and Lazy Lester. Then there’s journeyman harp player Frank Frost, who recorded this number in 1966 for the Shreveport-based Jewel label as a tribute to Harpo’s Baby Scratch My Back. The session was produced in Nashville by Elvis Presley’s original guitar player, Scotty Moore, who must’ve convinced Frost to crank up the tremolo on his amp. Sheer genius. My Back Scratcher/Frank Frost

The Tailgators (original lineup)

I’ll close with a little something for you garage-rockers out there. I’ve played this song in two different bands – one now defunct, and the other now playing mostly original material – and I’ll give Ray Fuller credit for running it down. It’s by a “swamp rock” band from Austin called The Tailgators, fronted by the very dangerous Don Leady (guitar, lap steel, fiddle and accordion). The original lineup from 1985 included the late Keith Ferguson on bass (who also was a founding member of The Fabulous Thunderbirds) and Gary “Mud Cat” Smith on drums. I’m not sure if The Tailgators are still active, but at least they have a web site. You’d be hard-pressed to find another band on the planet covering this tune – mainly because you’d be hard-pressed to find this song. It’s total nonsense and great fun to play. Mumbo Jumbo/The Tailgators

Let’s give it up for our favorite bar band, Blues Hammer. From the film “Ghost World,” directed by Terry Zwigoff. A classic piece of movie music, along with a cringe-inducing encounter between Steve Buscemi’s character and a potential date. I couldn’t post this on my site, but you can watch it here. On second thought, bring back the opening act and have him play Stormy Monday.

Remember the box set? Actually, in a year or two we might be asking ourselves, remember compact discs?

I came fairly late to the CD party – which is probably a good thing, because a research team comprising the world’s leading acousticians recently found that first-generation CDs from the mid-‘80s sound like complete dogshit. All that tinny, undefined high-end noise and hardly any bass. Which is probably fine if you’re listening to tinny, undefined, noisy and baseless pop music from the Eighties, but virtually useless if you’re trying to get your groove on to James Brown and The Fabulous Flames.

Once I started buying CDs, I became one of those maniacal completists who needed to replace virtually his entire record collection with what most of us considered to be a clearly superior format. Yes, I was part of a small army of consumers that kept the major labels propped up about 20 years longer than they deserved.

I won’t even argue that CDs sound better than vinyl. I’ve listened to heavyweight virgin vinyl records played on high-end turntables hooked up to tube-driven amplifiers, and it’s truly a heavenly sound. Just a few weeks ago, nephew Dan convinced me that some 45s actually sound even better than LPs – something about more music data per inch of groove, greater presence and resolution, etc. He played me a French rock ‘n roll single from the early Sixties (might have been Johnny Hallyday), and I couldn’t deny it was sonically superior to the album he had on earlier. Check here for more on this late-breaking news.

But I’m still no audiophile (as evidenced by the term “complete dogshit,” which doesn’t pop up much in Sound and Vision magazine). All things roughly equal – in other words, as long as it wasn’t a Wang Chung CD released in 1984 – I preferred the convenience of slapping a few compact discs in a carousel changer and letting it play all night long. And from there it was just a short walk to endlessly streaming, easily organized mp4 files… preferably played through a tube-driven amp.

Even if CDs become the next casualty in the continued demise of the music industry as we know it, I’ll miss the sheer, tactile pleasures of the box set.

There’s something about those sturdy, attractive booklets with exhaustive information on each recording session – date, studio, producer, engineer, instrumentation, label, chart position, etc… The way everything neatly fits together, like a set of building blocks for kids (appropriate, since we usually give or get box sets for Christmas)… The sense that you’re holding in your hands the most important works of a major recording artist’s entire career – which is probably as enjoyable for me as it is humbling for the artist.

Based on these and other important criteria – like whether I own it – RCR’s research subordinassociates are proud to offer this carefully calibrated list of the 10 Greatest Box Sets of All Time (in no particular order). We’ll apologize in advance for the fact that a few of these are long out of print… and that we’re only covering half of them in this post.

Boogie Uproar: Texas Blues and R&B, 1947-1954… The good Brits who run the JSP label deserve some sort of royal commendation for their consistently first-rate and affordable box sets. If anyone asks me where to start with musical giants like Charlie Parker, Django Reinhardt or Louis Jordan, I just tell them to plunk down $30 (or less, depending on where you shop) and buy one of their budget-priced, five-disc sets – you’ll have just about all the Bird, Django or Jordan you need. Granted, most of that stuff had already been available elsewhere… but you’d be hard-pressed to find virtually all of Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown’s classic Peacock recordings in one place. For those who like slashing Texas blues guitar backed by a tough-as-nails horn section, this is the motherlode. Rounder Records gave us a stingy 12-song Peacock collection back in ’92; JSP ups the ante with 38 cuts of prime Gatemouth… PLUS 35 cuts by an even harder-edged Goree Carter… PLUS four by another overlooked and underrated Texan, Zuzu Bollin… PLUS 18 by the virtually unknown but notable blues shouter/guitarist Lester “I can’t lose with the stuff I use” Williams. And, of course, it took a British label to deliver the goods. Here’s just a small taste… That’s Your Daddy Yaddy Yo/Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown

Grant Green Retrospective: 1961-1966… Next to JSP, the best source for quality box sets is probably the Blue Note jazz label… but it appears they might have released their last set several years ago (another great box-set label, Rhino Records, seems to be struggling). If you can still find them, I highly recommend virtually all of these collections – the complete Blue Note Sixties sessions of Dexter Gordon and Herbie Hancock, the complete Blue Note and Roost recordings of Bud Powell, the Horace Silver retrospective, etc. But if you follow RCR on a fairly regular basis, you know that all of us get a little light-headed when it comes to guitarist Grant Green. We believe every young guitar-shredder in America should be required to listen to Blue Note’s Grant Green Retrospective. It may not stick, but at least they’ll know what a true master sounds like. The first two discs feature some of the best organ-combo tunes ever recorded, including this funky workout featuring the great Big John Patton: Soul Woman And the last two discs show off Green’s prodigious jazz chops in a number of different settings, including one he used to play spirituals (love Hancock’s churchy piano on this one… some jazz is meant to be played loud): Go Down Moses This is beautifully recorded, deeply satisfying stuff – and once you get hooked, you may end up sounding as evangelical as we are about the real pride of St. Louis.

Sonny Boy Williamson: The Chess Years… This is one of my most prized possessions – all of Sonny Boy II’s Chess recordings (originally released on its Checker subsidiary), with a bonus disc of alternate takes and studio chatter. There’s just so much to savor on these discs – the dazzling guitar of eventual Cleveland resident Robert Lockwood Jr., the amazing piano of Otis Spann, the world’s greatest blues rhythm section – Willie Dixon on bass and Fred Below on drums… and, of course, Sonny Boy. His worst stuff sounds better than most of the blues recorded since the mid-‘60s. Sonny Boy always gets his due for his deeply soulful harp playing, but I keep coming back to his voice, which is unlike any other in blues. That little vibrato he’d throw in, especially on the lower notes, gets me every time. It’s like he’s mimicking the same guttural sound he gets out of his harp, which blew away the competition (except for Little Walter, of course) with no amplification at all: Help Me On one tune, he even mimics the howl of dogs on the hunt. And hard-core blues hounds always like to bring up the famous exchange with Leonard Chess on Little Village (hey, I’ve already shared it with you twice… check it here). Unfortunately, this set is long gone – but you can pick up most of the pieces as part of various Chess re-releases, like the Essential Sonny Boy Williamson (on mp3).

Five Guys Walk Into A Bar (Faces)… At RCR, we like our rock ‘n roll ragged but right, with no overdubs or apologies. And in this case, amazingly, it involves the same guy who spent much of the last decade snuggling up to the Great American Songbook. Hard to believe that Rod Stewart was once among the world’s pre-eminent rockers. And he had one hell of a band to keep him honest – Ian McLagan on keyboards, Ron Wood on guitar, Ronnie Lane on bass and Kenney Jones on drums. The beauty of “Five Guys” is that it goes far beyond a glorified collection of greatest hits. Sure, you get the best of their studio recordings, like Cindy Incidentally, Ooh La La and Miss Judy’s Farm. But this set is packed with live recordings, rehearsal tapes, BBC broadcasts and other oddities that showcase the Faces in all their drunken glory – just letting it rip like a red-hot bar band near the end of a long night. Most of the credit for “Five Guys” goes to McLagan, who selected the songs (some from his own archives) and sequenced them out of chronological order for a better listening experience. He also gets extra points for coming across in interviews as one of the coolest guys on the planet. And he’s a pretty damn good player to boot: Miss Judy’s Farm (live)/Faces

The Complete Stax-Volt Singles: 1959-1968… If Memphis soul is America’s greatest musical treasure, then this is Fort Knox. I borrowed this box set from a friend of mine, a fellow musician who played keyboards and sax. We spent hours studying these arrangements and even worked a few Stax-Volt nuggets into our band’s set list. Then he passed away suddenly at the young age of 44, which somehow gave greater meaning to a cardboard box and nine shiny discs that both of us already revered, in an unhealthy, music-nerd kind of way. So this one’s dedicated to J.D., who truly was the coolest guy on the planet. And getting back to the subject at hand, it’s hard to hold back the superlatives. Sure, you get the tunes that all of us know and love, like Green Onions and Soul Man and Try A Little Tenderness and Knock On Wood. But there’s also a lot of unsung soul on these discs – shockingly good material that remains almost completely overlooked, probably even by a few people who actually own this collection. I’ll leave you with samples of three hidden gems… and I’m proud to say J.D. and I came close to nailing the third one (R.I.P., John). I’m Glad To Do It/C.L. Blast Able Mable/Mable John I’m Going Home/Prince Conley

To be continued…

Sam and Dave on video… The first clip, from the 1967 Stax-Volt Revue in Europe, shows why none of the other performers wanted to follow Sam and Dave. By ’69, they’d gotten the whole band in on the act.

The Ohio Players

This is really just a cheap excuse to share a few samples of some pretty cool tunes I’ve been listening to lately. So if you’re one of those Northern Soul nuts from the UK, don’t expect me to illuminate you on stuff that you don’t already own.

But I can’t help but feel we’re in the midst of a major soul music revival in the U.S. – and since RCR’s research team is currently on vacation, I can only point to a few pieces of second-hand or anecdotal evidence. (If you’re one of our faithful readers, you already know that this is the last place you’d go to calibrate your barometers of hip.)

The first is an article in the New York Times from 2007, which reported that soul music is back with a vengeance. So if I recalculate for Flyoverland and adjust for the paper’s previous inaccuracies, I can say without qualification that the soul music revival may or may not arrive here by 2015.

Aloe Blacc

The second is the theme song to a great new series on HBO: “How To Make It In America.”  My daughter turned me on to the show, which is sort of the NYC equivalent of “Entourage,” but without its constant references to celebrity/showbiz drivel. “Make It” has a lot going for it – a couple of winning lead actors (Bryan Greenberg and Victor Rasuk), crisp writing, sharp images of street life in Manhattan and Brooklyn… And any show that features the luscious Lake Bell and character actor Luis Guzman – not to mention Cleveland native Kid Cudi in a nice supporting role – gets on my preferred list right away.

Back to the music… The theme song, I Need a Dollar, is by Aloe Blacc, an LA native of Panamanian heritage. And it’s an outstanding example of contemporary soul with an ear to the past. In fact, I thought it was recorded in the Seventies until I did a little digging to find out otherwise. And judging from some of the online chatter I’ve come across, the song is probably generating a little more buzz than the show itself (which still hasn’t been greenlighted for a second season on HBO… Don’t make me send the RCR Nation to your doorstep, HBO programmers!). I Need A Dollar/Aloe Blacc

Exhibit C involves a trip I made a few nights ago to a local watering hole. Now the Rubber City’s a lot of things, but trendsetting probably isn’t one of them (unless you count Devo, Chrissie Hynde, The Black Keys, LeBron James and the invention of the zipper). Still, I couldn’t help but notice – beyond the fact that I was easily the oldest person in the room – that the relative youngsters in the bar were listening to vintage soul music, and digging it! I can’t tell you that this same scene is being played out in bars around the country (I’m not allowed to travel out of state). But I have to say this makes me feel slightly less depressed about the future of today’s youth.

I also have a strong hunch that there’s a lot of first-rate soul music out there that remains buried or very hard to find, maybe more so than any other genre. And some of these tunes sound like they sprang from the rich catalogs of Stax-Volt and Motown instead of some obscure label in Nashville.

It could have something to do with the proliferation of smaller, independent studios as recording technology became more widely available and affordable in the Sixties and Seventies – places like Malaco in Jackson, Mississippi, where aspiring, road-tested soul performers could go and spend some gig money to record fairly decent “vanity” projects, either with their own bands or local musicians. It could also have a lot to do with the gospel tradition and the churches, which served as kind of a farm system for up-and-coming talent.

Whatever the reason, I feel like I’m just scratching the surface of America’s greatest musical export… and I could easily spend the rest of my life being surprised by the quality of stuff out there that you can only find in someone’s lettuce crate at a flea market. But my crate-diving days are over, so I’ll continue to count on the kindness of relatives and friends to bring me the goods.

Thankfully, some of these gems are showing up on recent collections like Rhino’s “What It Is! Funky Soul and Rare Grooves.” And one of my favorite cuts on that 4-CD set is the tune Fairchild, written and produced by Allen Toussaint and performed by the relatively unknown Willie West. It was released on the New York-based Josie label in 1970, but it features the fearsome rhythm section of The Meters from New Orleans. I’m not sure what happened to West, who plays acoustic guitar on Fairchild. But it’s a shame he didn’t put out more cuts like this one – a prime slab of southern soul. Fairchild/Willie West

Here’s another tune written and produced by Toussaint (let’s just agree this guy is an American icon). It’s sung by Zilla Mayes, who recorded a few R&B sides on the Mercury label before unleashing this minor soul masterpiece in 1969 on SSS International, based in Nashville. I’ll thank nephew Dan for turning me on to this one… All I Want Is You/Zilla Mayes

Some of you may be familiar with Johnny “Guitar” Watson’s slick funk hits, like Ain’t That A Bitch and A Real Mother For Ya. Others might prefer his legendary blues recordings on the RPM label in the mid-‘50s – amp-melting workouts like She Moves Me, Hot Little Mama and Too Tired (if you don’t have those in your collection, leave the site now and go get them… we’ll wait for you). But Johnny went through a little transition period in the early-‘70s when he recorded a couple of albums for the Fantasy label – home of Creedence Clearwater Revival and whole slew of straight-ahead jazz acts. Although clearly in the soul/funk vein, Johnny’s Fantasy recordings never stray too far from the down-home blues that he perfected on the streets of Houston. Check out his patented, stinging attack on this cut from “Listen”: Why Don’t You Treat Me Like I’m You’re Man/Johnny “Guitar” Watson

Even a well-regarded soul label like Stax-Volt had a few treasures buried in the vaults. Carla Thomas scored big with hits like Gee Whiz and B-A-B-Y, but this tune easily tops both of those with a deep soul groove that only Steve Cropper, Donald “Duck” Dunn and Al Jackson Jr. could deliver. It’s from the appropriately titled “Hidden Gems,” a collection of 20 outtakes recorded for Stax-Volt between 1960 and 1968. Another potent reminder that the Memphis label simply couldn’t miss in its heyday… Sweet Sensation/Carla Thomas

Albert Washington is one of those fine but obscure soul performers who never quite made it to the big time. Born in Rome, GA, and raised in Cincinnati, Washington started out in the gospel tradition (the Gospelaires) but eventually made the move to more secular pleasures, playing for years at local blues joints like the Vet’s Inn near the Ohio River. He cut some first-rate singles in Cincinnati, mostly for the Fraternity label and often with the great Lonnie Mack on second guitar. One of his songs – Turn On the Bright Lights – was even covered by Jerry Garcia for a solo project. This next tune was recorded at King Studios in 1970 (for a nice overview of Washington’s career and the Cincinnati blues and soul music scene, check out “Going to Cincinnati: A History of Blues in the Queen City” by writer/harp-player Steve Tracy). Loosen These Pains And Let Me Go/Albert Washington

If you think you don’t know Fred Wesley, think again. He spent years anchoring James Brown’s horn section, blowing his fine funky ‘bone on cuts like Hot Pants, Doing It To Death (a million-selling single), Mother Popcorn and many other of the Godfather’s hits. And his later recordings – with artists ranging from the Count Basie Orchestra to the Klezmer collaboration Abraham Inc. – betray Wesley’s more adventurous spirit… not to mention a highly eclectic taste in music.  This next cut was released in ’74 (without J.B.) under the name Fred & The New J.B.’s… It’s a steamy slice of funk from a true master of the form. Breakin’ Bread/Fred Wesley & The New J.B.’s

Eddie Hinton might be the most unsung hero in the history of soul music. He spent most of his career as a session guitarist and songwriter, most notably at the fabled Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, where he contributed to a string of hits recorded by other artists. You can hear his tasty guitar on a cut we featured in a previous post (“Those Chimeless Holiday Classics”) – Every Day Will Be Like A Holiday by the Sweet Inspirations. But he saved the best stuff for himself, and some of his demos blow away tunes that other artists were recording as singles on major labels. Build Your Own Fire and 18 other demos are included on “Dear Y’all: The Songwriting Sessions.” If you’re a fan of deep southern soul, just get it… Build Your Own Fire/Eddie Hinton

I’ll close this out with a recent release on the wonderful Daptone label (for a great piece on the label and its driving force, Gabriel Roth, go here). For a short period of time, the label was offering a generous sampler for free on amazon’s mp3 site – definitely the best (legitimate) steal I’ve ever come across online. Based on a near-religious experience I had seeing Sharon Jones live at a small club in Cleveland, I view these folks as modern-day missionaries, spreading the good word of true funk and soul while struggling against the forces of evil unleashed by antichrists like the Black Eyed Peas. And guitarist Binky Griptite must host one hell of a radio show. If you don’t have any Sharon Jones in your life, you should fix that right now. This next tune features one of her labelmates – Lee Fields, a former chitlin’-circuit performer who seems to epitomize the term “rare soul.” Here’s the title song to his excellent new release, “My World”… Enjoy! My World/Lee Fields

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings on the BBC’s Later with Jools Holland… Accept no substitutes — this is how it’s done: