Happy Birthday Bobby Womack!

Remembering Bobby Womack on his birthday with a couple of 70s performances and a recording of a Jim Ford country gem. 

Rusty (feat. Elvis Costello) vs. Jim Ford

Elvis Costello reunited with his Rusty bandmate Alan Mayes to record some old faves by Jim Ford and others.

Watch Bobbie Gentry on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1970

Celebrating Bobbie Gentry's 80th birthday with two songs from her December 27, 1970 appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. 

Tex Perkins takes inspiration from Link Wray's 3-Track Shack sessions

Tex Perkins and his Fat Rubber Band used Link Wray's Beans and Fatback album as a template for their latest recording.  

Here's the scoop...

The latest thrilling incarnation of master rock'n'roll storyteller Tex Perkins and the Fat Rubber Band began with a Link Wray record. 

Perkins and his respected musician, songwriter, producer and bandmate Matt Walker share a mutual admiration of the American electric guitar innovator, whose iconic power chords in his signature 50s rock’n’roll instrumentals, had a profound influence on the evolution of rock guitar. The pair have enjoyed countless musical conversations over the decade while hanging out backstage and on the road with Perkins' award-winning The Man In Black - The Johnny Cash Story, with Walker playing guitar in the Tennessee Four band for the theatrical production. When Perkins enthused about his partner finding him a rare vinyl copy of Link Wray's Beans and Fatback album, recorded in 1971, Walker's response initiated a flurry of creative endeavour which would ultimately result in the formation of the Fat Rubber Band. 

"There’s a couple of albums he recorded in a chicken shack on his brother Vernon’s farm, known as the Three Track Shack recordings - one was a self-titled album and the follow-up called Beans and Fatback, which is a little more rare.  My partner Kristyna knew I was a fan of that record and she's an ebay ninja and she found a vinyl copy. After I immediately hugged and thanked her for it, I took a picture of it and sent it to Matt Walker. And the fateful words came back: 'Awesome, let's make an album like that.' And that was it. We were on!” 

Throughout his four-decade career as a captivating performer, compelling songwriter and dexterous vocalist, Perkins has sought collaborators who both shared his passion for music and challenged his creativity. From his first band Tex Deadly and the Dum Dums, through the fertile tension of Beasts of Bourbon and chart-slaying The Cruel Sea, his musical bromances with Tex, Don and Charlie and TnT side hustle with Tim Rogers, and myriad bands - Thug, Dark Horses, The Band of Gold, The Ape and yes, the Ladyboyz - Perkins extraordinary adaptability has allowed him to explore and push the boundaries of traditional music forms from hard rock and heavy noise to country folk balladry and blues grooves. All with his unmistakable baritone and sly sense of humour. 

But the Fat Rubber Band was clearly destined, with Perkins and Walker quickly trading songs for the project like a song-writing tennis match perpetually swinging back to deuce. Walker offered the debut album's opening track, the wide-screen drama of Pay The Devil's Due; Perkins responded with the plaintive blues of My Philosophy. Walker replied with the album's fuzz driven debut single Danger Has Been Kind and Perkins countered with the glacially-paced, intimate Poor Simple Minded Fool. The pair road-tested their works in progress as a duo before enlisting bassist Steve Hadley, drummer Roger Bergodaz and Evan Richards on percussion to complete the Fat Rubber Band line-up to record the album's ten tracks at Walker's Stovepipe Studios in Victoria's Dandenong Ranges. 

“At Matt's studio - you open the door to the studio and nature floods in," Perkins says. “We wanted it to sound rural, to feel the dirt and the grass and the leaves." 

Even after all these decades, when you think you know that gravelly baritone inside out, Perkins finds new emotional tones in the service of the Fat Rubber Band's songs vivid narratives, with their characters wrestling, but sometimes dancing, with the tougher, darker qualities of the human condition. This is truly existential blues. Bubbling underneath those upfront vocals and raw harmonies are intricately entwined guitar conversations and unexpected percussive flourishes. 

"Another aspect that we wanted was for the sound to be sometimes a collision and sometimes a marriage of acoustic and electric instruments. We wanted that tension between mandolins and bouzoukis meeting fuzz guitars. We also considered percussion to be a vital element of the sound we were going for; we noticed in the recordings we loved from the 50s and 60s that often the tamborine hit, or the maracas, or whatever percussion, was right up there in the mix, right next to the vocal," Perkins says. The last characteristic of the music we wanted to pursue was harmonies, vocal harmonies. Not only have Matt and I discovered we can weave instinctively around each other’s singing, really well, we also have three other great vocalists in the group, so five part harmonies is what we end up with on songs like Love Long Gone and Trouble Goodbye, it can be breath-taking…literally.” 

This is end times existential electric country funk folk rock swamp witch blues, its way out there, but it’s here right now.  

Get a copy of Tex Perkins and the Fat Rubber Band album via Bandcamp right here. Watch Tex and crew perform "Place In The Sun" followed by their version of Lee Dorsey's "Everything I Do Gohn Be Funky" below and the Jim Ford inspired "I Must Be In A Good Place Now."

Bob Stanley revisits late 60s country on Choctaw Ridge comp

Here's the scoop...

Choctaw Ridge – New Fables of The American South explores a new country sound, one that emerged at the end of the 60s in the wake of Bobbie Gentry's 'Ode To Billie Joe', a shock number one hit in 1967. When singers like Gentry, Jimmy Webb, Michael Nesmith and Lee Hazlewood moved from the south to Los Angeles to make it in the music business, they were not part of the Nashville in-crowd and they forged a new direction. 

'Ode To Billie Joe' was the tip of the iceberg, and it's success helped a bunch of singers and storytellers to emerge over the next three or four years. Some of the tracks on this collection bear that song's stamp more clearly than others: Sammi Smith's moody 'Saunders' Ferry Lane' had a similar mystery lyric, and Henson Cargill's 'Four Shades Of Love' is a portmanteau, with one (or possibly two) of the theoretically romantic situations ending in death. 

Suddenly, character sketches of southerners became a lot more rounded - women didn't have to stay home, or take abuse at the office, and darkness wasn't only found at the bottom of a bottle. Storytelling is the link between all of the songs on this collection. We have cautionary tales about what could happen to someone who heads for the bright lights and doesn't make it, ending up in the grasping hands of 'Mr Walker' (Billie Joe Spears), or on the 'Back Side Of Dallas' (Jeannie C Reilly), or on a mortuary slab in the case of the songwriter with the 'Fabulous Body And Smile' (Robert Charles Griggs). And there are stories about wanting to go home - Nat Stuckey's 'What Am I Doing In LA?' and Charlie Rich's 'Feel Like Going Home' - and others from Ed Bruce and Lee Hazlewood, who know that their home isn't home anymore. 

The tracklist and fulsome sleeve notes have been put together by Bob Stanley (Saint Etienne) and Martin Green (Smashing, The Sound Gallery), who have been collecting these records for decades. The voices are resonant and relatable, and the productions take in the best of what pop had to offer in the late 60s and early 70s. Before the factionalism between smooth pop-conscious Nashville and the hedonistic 'outlaws' made it look inward again, this was a golden era for an atmospheric, inclusive and progressive country music. It began on the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day.

Choctaw Ridge – New Fables of The American South, 1968-1973 is out July 30. Pre-order a copy directly from ACE Records right here. Watch Jeannie C. Riley perform "Back Side of Dallas" and listen to Sammi Smith's delightfully dark "Saunders' Ferry Lane" and Jim Ford's epic "Harlan County" – which is among the best of the bunch – following the track listing below.

Choctaw Ridge – New Fables of The American South, 1968-1973

01  The House Song - Lee Hazlewood

02  If Only She Had Stayed - Chris Gantry

03  Endless Miles Of Highway - Jerry Reed

04  The Back Side Of Dallas - Jeannie C Riley

05  Way Before The Time Of Towns - Hoyt Axton

06  Strawberry Farms - Tom T Hall

07  Down From Dover - Dolly Parton

08  July 12, 1939 - Charlie Rich

09  What Am I Doing In LA? - Nat Stuckey

10  Mr Stanton Don't Believe It - Rob Galbraith

11  Saunders' Ferry Lane - Sammi Smith

12  Four Shades Of Love - Henson Cargill

13  Drivin' Nails In The Wall - Waylon Jennings & The Kimberlys

14  Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town - Kenny Rogers & The First Edition

15  Why Can't I Come Home - Ed Bruce

16  Mr Walker, It's All Over - Billie Jo Spears

17  Harlan County - Jim Ford

18  Widow Wimberly - Tony Joe White

19  Belinda (Alt take) - Bobbie Gentry

20  Joanne - Michael Nesmith & The First National Band

21  Mr Jackson's Got Nothing To Do - John Hartford

22  Alone - Lee Hazlewood & Suzi Jane Hokom

23  Fabulous Body And Smile - Sir Robert Charles Griggs

24  I Feel Like Going Home - Charlie Rich

Harlan County vs. Jim Ford

UK Jim Ford tribute band Harlan County cut a sweet version of "I'm Gonna Make Her Love Me" but it can't top Jim's original. 

Happy Birthday Bobby Womack!

Remembering Bobby Womack with his stellar performance of an overlooked Jim Ford gem. 

Stevie Wonder vs. Jim Ford

Spot any similarities between Jim Ford's "I'm Gonna Make Her Love Me" and Stevie's "I Wanna Make Her Love Me" – both issued in 1969?

One For The Weekend: Bobbie Gentry

New Bobby Womack album due June 12

Some 14 years since Bobby Womack's previous studio album – and decades since his last great one – Sam Cooke's sideman and Jim Ford's runaround pal is poised for another comeback with the June 12 release of The Bravest Man In The Universe on XL Recordings via Beggars Group Canada.

Recorded with his Gorillaz mate Damon Albarn and XL's hands-on label boss Richard Russell (Gil-Scott Heron, Major Lazer, Roots Manuva) between October and December 2011 at Albarn's Studio 13 in West London and New York's Manhattan Center, the 10-track set boasting all-new material (!) promises a refreshing forward-looking approach for Womack who has wasted far too much time dwelling on past glories.

While longtime fans probably wouldn't be disappointed with Womack making yet another attempt at revisiting his creative peak period of the late 60s and 70s, it's welcome news that Bobby's moving on as can be heard from the lead off track Please Forgive My Heart (download it for free right here). The beats are contemporary but the soul is strictly old school.

The Bravest Man In The Universe (XL Recordings)

1. The Bravest Man In The Universe
2. Please Forgive My Heart
3. Deep River
4. Dayglo Reflection
5. Sweet Baby Mine
6. Stupid
7. If There Wasn't Something There
8. Love Is Gonna Lift You Up
9. Nothin' Can Save Ya
10. Jubilee

Michael Weston King revives the protest song

Between the ongoing wars, various acts of genocide and terrorism, grand-scale corruption and mismanagement within government and major financial institutions apart from the unprecedented man-made environmental disasters, it would appear there's no shortage of songwriting fodder for any  protest singers seeking to rally the masses with an truth-telling broadside or two.
Yet throughout the Katrina disaster, the global economic meltdown, the horrendous BP oil spill and the recent G8/G20 debacle, the most active finger-pointing participants in the topical song tradition of the past few decades have remained strangely silent. 
But then, who really needs a running commentary from the sorely out-of-touch old guard who've found it's much more lucrative to shill for multi-national corporations than to chill with the great unwashed.  As any historically-sussed singer/songwriter will tell you, there's already so many insightful protest tunes composed ages ago – a surprising number still have deep resonance today – that there's no need to wait around for inspiration to have the relevant songs necessary to galvanize the populace. All it takes is a little digging.

That's exactly what  UK songsmith Michael Weston King has done for his fab new album I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier (Valve Records) that presents his timely reactivation of some oddly prescient songs written some 40 years ago alongside a few new brilliant compositions inspired by the  tunes he discovered while researching the project.
Perhaps the best of King's finds is the utterly magnificent Sounds Of Our Time by the late great Jim Ford best known for penning Aretha Franklin's Niki Hoeky, Bobby Womack's I'd Be Ahead (If I Could Quit While I'm Behind) and Harry Hippie and very likely Bobbie Gentry's Ode To Billie Joe for which Ford was never properly credited.


Sounds Of Our Time by Jim Ford


The song Sounds Of Our Time (co-written with Womack who sings backing vocals on Ford's soulful original version) remained unissued and unheard at the time, hidden on a one of many tapes Ford kept in a plastic bag collecting dust in his California home until Germany's Bear Family label put it out in 2007 as part of the Sounds Of Our TIme CD compiling Ford's classic Harlan County album from 1969 along with singles tracks and previously unreleased tracks. King's poignant rendition of Ford's lost anthem, with Jeb Loy Nichols ably substituting for Womack on the backing vocals, is among the album's highlights but he also delivers  rousing takes of Is There Anybody Here? and Cops Of The World by Phil Ochs but his own tunes In Time and Hey Ma, I'm Coming Home and In Spain The Dogs Are Too Tired To Bite You stand up well against updates of better known tunes by Roosevelt Sykes and ex-protest singer turned BMO pitch man Bob Dylan.
Since the releases of Germany's Valve Records aren't well distributed outside of Europe, it may be just as difficult to find a copy of King's I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier as his previous release for the label, Crawling Through The USA but hopefully he'll have a few copies of the new disc with him at the Dakota Tavern where the engaging showman be making a rare Toronto appearance playing an early show Wednesday (September 1) at 7 pm sharp. Who knows, maybe Bruce Cockburn will drop by and take some notes.


Hey Ma, I'm Coming Home by Michael Weston King



I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier



LINKS
Michael Weston King site http://www.michaelwestonking.com/
myspace http://www.myspace.com/michaelwestonking