5 Songs February 16 2024

Two Folk songs, two Jazz songs, and the Trashmen!

Shirley Collins – “False True Love” 1967 from The Sweet Primeroses. Shirley Collins is the eldest (as near as I can figure) of the great English folk performers still standing. I never read any biographical info on her, so I was surprised to learn today that she was for several years the live-in partner of the folk music collector Alan Lomax. This is the second recording she made of this song, the first having come the year after she and Lomax went to the Appalachians in America to look for songs. “False True Love” is an Americanized take on an old English folk ballad, with all the murder and horror stripped away to leave a compelling, haunting look at unfaithfulness. Collins accompanies her beautiful soprano vocal with her own simple arpeggiated banjo combined with a quieter arpeggiated acoustic guitar. Collins, like many folk singers, lets the words tell their own story without exaggerated expression, though she definitely captures the bitterness of a woman encountering her lost love for the first time since the betrayal several months before. If you haven’t encountered Collins before, be prepared to hear an elegant soprano with just enough edge to make her sound of the people rather than in opera or something.

Steeleye Span – “Gaudete” 1972 from Below the Salt. Who doesn’t love a good a cappella close harmony song in Latin? Certainly the British public was down with it, as this song actually rose to number 14 on the pop charts that year. Steeleye Span, like their closest peers Fairport Convention, were constantly shifting line-ups. This particular grouping included as always Maddy Prior and Tim Hart, as well as Peter Knight, Rick Kemp, and Bob Johnson. I’m not sure how many of them are singing – Prior, obviously, as she gets the high parts and the verses. The guys in the band sing so closely, with lots of overtones as if they were in a medieval church. I never heard that the third Sunday in Advent is called Gaudete Sunday, and that the word means “rejoice.” But you don’t need to know that to enjoy the immense sound these singers put out, and the catchy little tune.

The Trashmen – “Bad News” 1964 single available on Tube City! The Best of the Trashmen. It wasn’t easy to hang ten in Minneapolis, but the Trashmen sure did sound like they could have pulled off all the surfing tricks. Everybody’s heard about the “Surfin’ Bird,” but these guys recorded several dozen tracks during their early 60s heyday. This particular one is practically a template for what TV shows and movies of the time insisted was the sound coming from transistor radios held by teenagers. All that reverb, the basic 1-4-5 chord progression with catchy riff, and the furiously energetic turnaround at the end of each verse. What makes it different are the vocalizations accompanying the turnarounds. “Bad news” is grunted out like Wolfman Jack in slow motion. There are cries suspiciously like a man having an orgasm. And there are the intensely oddball sounds we all know from the build-up in “Surfin’ Bird.” This record comes closer than most to the majesty of their biggest hit.

Lenny Breau – “Undecided” recorded in 1961 released in 2003 on The Hallmark Sessions. Breau was a Canadian guitarist who combined country and jazz techniques. He died young, at 43 in 1984. This early session is spectacular – some cuts on this album feature the young Rick Danko and Levon Helm backing him up, but this song has jazz bass and drums accompanying Breau’s guitar. They set a solid swinging backdrop to this pop standard tune, which Breau picks neatly and cleanly before going off in wildly unpredictable improvisations. He dazzles with single note runs and rhythmic chords, he twists and riffs off the melody and he jumps across the strings as if they were multiple high wires. I hadn’t heard this before. What a nice thing to discover!

Count Basie – “The Huckle-Buck” 1965 from Pop Goes the Basie. I wish I could remember what version of this song I had on a 45 when I was very young, but since there were dozens and dozens of covers of “The Hucklebuck” with and without the dash in the title, that is something I’ll never know. It wasn’t this one, though, since this was an album cut, not a single. Count Basie was trying to stay connected to the youth throughout the 60s, which is why he put out this record of pop songs arranged by Billy Byers. Now, “The Hucklebuck” was originally a tune performed by Lucky Millinder called “D Natural Blues,”  which was related to a Charlie Parker tune called “Now’s the Time.” Paul Williams arranged it with a greater emphasis on r&b in 1948. It became quite the dance craze, and because it’s easy to adapt it to different styles, everybody seemed to have recorded it. Unlike many songs on Pop Goes the Basie, this one comes closest to the style Basie made famous in the 40s, so “The Huckle-Buck” here sounds like a typically smartly arranged Basie big band number. There’s his spartan piano, the reed section playing the riff, and horns commenting around them. In other words, it’s great.