Chuck Berry – “Some People” 1970 from Back Home. This album, if it’s known at all, is familiar as the one with Berry’s last masterpiece, “Tulane.” That doesn’t mean the rest of it isn’t worthwhile. This song is an oddity in Berry’s catalogue. It’s a blues about wealth disparity, with the opening couplet, “Some people live each week in toil and play / From sweat by you, child, and me.” The song is full of tension, as Berry sings no more than three or four words at a time, with a simple harmonica response at each pause. The band, which includes Berry overdubbing at least three guitar parts, chugs along as he sets himself up in the middle – “While we share that woe / With those who have no walls at all.” (Walls is what I hear – LyricFind thinks that word is woe; honestly, I’m not sure woe is even the word in the first line here.) At the end, Berry has a blast picking his three guitar parts, each with a distinctive tone, in counterpoint with each other.
Gene Clark & Carla Olson – “Gypsy Rider” 1987 from So Rebellious a Lover. I played the heck out of this album in 1987 because I owned it on cassette, and I had very few tapes to play in my car. This teaming of the founding member of the Byrds and the leader of the recently broken-up Textones remains, to my ears, an Americana classic. This particular song, written by Clark, is full of melancholy because of its stately feel and Clark’s elegantly sympathetic vocals. It’s the tale of a biker who loves them and leaves them because the road is always calling – nothing we haven’t heard before in a million songs. But it’s not a victorious song, there is awareness of the toll this takes on the biker, who tries so hard to convince himself he’s doing what he has to do. “Sing that two-wheeled melody / The highway symphony / You know she’ll never understand.” Olson sings a distant harmony on the chorus, as if she’s the ghost of the lover he’s just left. Two acoustic guitars, bass, and drums (the latter using that clipped on the edge of the snare thing that’s always so effective) back up the vocals, and there are twin mandolin solos near the end which are just devastating.
Roy Wood – “Strider” recorded 1975 released 1999 on the expanded Mustard. Millions of people love the band Wood co-founded but left after their first album, Electric Light Orchestra. A significant number have probably heard “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day” around the holiday season, either in his original or in a cover version. Some people know of his role in the Move, the greatest 60s English band that barely dented the charts in the U.S.A. That leaves us with his ultra culty projects Wizzard, and the solo albums from the 70s. Mustard, like the slightly more famous Boulders before it, was a record wherein Wood played all the instruments and sang most of the vocals himself. “Strider” is one weird hodge podge of a song that meshes segments together showing off his keyboard skills, his twin guitar lead lines, and his saxophone prowess. It makes little sense why any of these parts are in the same song, but as long as you don’t mind sharp left turns every thirty seconds or thereabouts, you just might find this entirely compelling.
Earl Hines – “Gator Swing” recorded 1939 released 1944 available on more Earl Hines compilations than you can count. If you want to hear the best piano playing before 1950, turn to Earl Hines. He was a constantly shifting, technically ridiculously adept, and just plain entertaining master of the 88 keys. When big bands took over the world, Hines led an excellent one himself – some greats passed through his orchestra, including Billy Eckstine, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie. His role with bebop players was in the future when he recorded this jumping, swinging gem which, as near as I can tell, didn’t even get released in America until years later. There were so many recordings made by the big bands they couldn’t all get pressed on shellac. Hines bounces around on pianos before the brass coos over soothing saxes, then there’s a short sax solo, followed by a clarion trumpet call that lasts a few choruses. Clarinet takes the whole thing up a notch, soloing over alternating brass and reeds, and then the saxophone is back for a hot interlude alternating with the clarinet. Oh, and then they modulate! The clarinet soars over the band, the sax takes a solo, and then the clarinet wails. Hines gets the last word, though, with a chorus showing off his dazzling techniques before a quick band blast to end it. Smartly arranged, completely enjoyable.
Brenda Lee – “Fool #1” 1962 from Brenda, That’s All. Listening today, this is clearly a perfect example of Nashville countrypolitan from the early 1960s. The record itself was actually a huge pop hit, rising to #3 on the Billboard charts when Lee was just 17 years old. Man, she sounds like she’s had plenty of experience with heartache, even though most of it was probably experienced coming out of her record player and radio. The chunky Nashville guitar, bass, and drums combined with the bubbly piano, subtle strings, and swooning background vocals are all there in support of Lee’s intimate crooning. She pulls some neat tricks on the reiteration of the first verse on the back end – I love the little Elvis Presley bit she does when asking “Or am I fool number two?” There are a lot of pop songs in history about feeling fooled by a lover, but Lee sings this one as if it’s the only one that matters.