5 Songs May 31, 2024

5 Songs tonight, 21 Albums tomorrow

Joe Williams – “Stop, Pretty Baby, Stop” 1959 from One O’Clock Jump (album also features Ella Fitzgerald). “Stop, pretty baby, stop / ‘Cause I want to talk with thee.” I love the archaic use of the second person here, because it only exists to rhyme with “I want to tell you pretty nothings about how good you look to me.” Joe Williams made a bunch of records with Count Basie in the late 50s, and they are all terrific. This one is a trifle of a song, but he sings it as if he’s just discovered that this woman he sees is the one who means the most to him. Basie plays all sorts of piano underneath the vocals, and it’s always a delight when you get more than a few notes from him (not that his minimalist forays aren’t magnificent, too.) The orchestra blasts from the git-go, and then ebbs and flows throughout the record. The brass and reeds have an extended call and response section that works exclusively through dynamics rather than melody – Basie and the drummer interject in there, too. “Now for the best of all I’ll talk about your charms, They arouse my mating call, I want you in my arms.” Really, Joe Williams deserves to be better remembered.

Jefferson Airplane – “Crown of Creation” 1968 from Crown of Creation. Can we start by acknowledging Jack Cassidy’s bass here? He achieved a tone that sounded like the bottom end of a jet engine, and he roars throughout this record. You can hear him zooming across the fretboard, sliding and slamming notes into each other. It’s magnificent! Jorma Kaukonen’s guitar lines are perfect, too, twisting around on that middle eastern psychedelic thing he mastered. Spencer Dryden is on top of his game on the drums, too, pushing and pulling beats on the tom toms and cymbals. And I love Paul Kantner’s twelve string guitar sound, as always, negotiating some tricky chord changes. Speaking of Kantner, he and Grace Slick sing this mysterious melody more in unison than in harmony. “Life is change / how it differs from the rocks.” I love those lyrics. I first gravitated to the Airplane and Starship back when I was transitioning from comic book geekery to music fandom. They reminded me of the Avengers, because they were always changing members. I like a lot of the other line-ups, but the classic late 60s six-person group – Marty Balin was sitting around the studio somewhere on this song – is one of my all-time fave bands.

Sleepy John Estes – “Mary Come On Home” 1940 available on Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order Vol. 2. By the time he made this record, Sleepy John Estes had been a blues performer for over 20 years – he would keep on recording and playing live for almost 40 more years. His guitar playing was almost punk blues – he got by on sheer energy and aggression rather than technique. This eight bar blues number finds him forgiving the transgressions of his lover, and asking her to come on back home – I can’t quite make out the key line, but it sounds to me like “Knowledge you’ve done wrong” or “Now that you’ve done wrong.” There is a verse where Estes himself does the wrong. You can’t go wrong with Estes singing, though – he has a high tenor voice which often sounds plaintive, but here sounds anxious and determined.

Charles Mingus with Spaulding Givens – “Darn That Dream” available on Debut Rarities Vol. 2. In the early 1950s, Mingus and drummer Max Roach started their own label, Debut Records. It didn’t last very long, yet it released and recorded some pretty nice jazz. This session features pianist Spaulding Givens, who was in his late 30s when he recorded this but who lived to be 103, dying 2020. I don’t know much about him, but he has a nice touch on this standard written by Jimmy Van Heusen. I know the tune better from the Miles Davis Birth of the Cool version – it’s not on the original album, but it was added to the CD release and is readily available. At the beginning, Givens and Mingus stick pretty closely to the melody and chord changes, and the result is quite enjoyable. The piano takes off on the second run-through of the 32-bar tune, and Givens throws in a torrent of cascading notes without ever crowding his story-telling sense. After that, he returns to the bridge, a little more florid now, then states the chorus melody one more time before ending with a romantic flourish.

Gerry & the Pacemakers – “I’m the One.” They weren’t all as good as the Beatles, of course, but the Merseybeat scene in Liverpool back in the early 60s was full of talented bands. Gerry & the Pacemakers had a couple of huge hits that stand with the best of that time – “Ferry Cross the Mersey” and “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying” especially. This is more in the vein of “I Like It,” a song I learned to love when the Rezillos covered it. “I’m the One” is almost pro forma in its insistence upon eternal love, but Gerry Marsden sings it with such a sweet declarative style, and the band cooks with all the energy it developed playing Chuck Berry songs in the clubs of Liverpool. I’m always happy to hear something from these guys.