Music In The Time Of Cholera

Well, not really cholera (or the plague for that matter), but a pandemic all the same.  For the past several months while we've been staying home to avoid the virus, I've spent most of my time listening to albums.  It is relaxing and helps distract from the never-ending stream of bad news.  Although to be honest, before the virus hit I already spent most of my time sitting at home listening to music.  So not much has changed, except that now I get to feel slightly virtuous for doing my part to flatten the curve.

But I haven't just been sitting and listening to music.  I've also been working to clean and catalog albums from my intake pile.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, when I stumble on a bunch of interesting looking albums in the $1 box at a record store or buy a box of miscellaneous LPs at an estate sale, I often end up bringing home 30 or 40 albums at a pop.  So there are usually 100 or so albums waiting to be cataloged at any given time.  I have albums that I bought months (years?) ago that are still languishing in the pile, and I've been able to add dozens of them to the permanent collection over the last few months.

The only problem is that since I have so much free time on my hands, I've been ordering records faster than I can catalog them.  With so many record stores closed and their owners struggling to stay afloat through online sales, it feels like my civic duty to buy as many albums as possible.  I know, I know, but that's just the kind of guy I am.  The good news is that I've discovered lots of interesting new bands and music that I (mostly) had never heard of before.  Let's have a look.

First up is an intriguing release that has been in the pile so long I forgot where I found it.  It's called Wackering Heights, released in 1971 by a group called - you guessed it - The Wackers.  This album would have fit right in with a blog I wrote a few years ago entitled "How Did I Miss These Guys?," about performers from the 60s and 70s who I somehow was never aware of back in the day.

Cribbing from Wikipedia: "The Wackers were formed in 1970 out of another band called Roxy, by singer and songwriter Bob Segarini and multi-instrumentalist Randy Bishop. They joined with singer-guitarist-keyboardist Michael Stull to form the new group. Bassist Bill 'Kootch' Trochim and drummer Spencer Earnshaw completed The Wackers lineup to record their debut album Wackering Heights.

Allmusic reviewer Steven McDonald calls Wackering Heights "A charming, sunny debut disc from a group that somehow managed to blend the Byrds and the Monkees into a pop sound that was as intelligent as it was catchy."  Alas, The Whackers never really caught on, and after a couple of years and two more albums (including their wonderfully titled third and final LP, Hot Wacks), the Wackers ceased to be.  Leader Sagarini tried his luck with a couple of other bands and had a brief solo career before becoming a successful disc jockey/radio personality in Toronto.

My 49 year old copy of Wackering Heights is in NM condition and looks like it was never played (which may tell you all you need to know about why the band didn't do so well commercially).  The gatefold jacket has only very light wear and rates a solid VG+.  The album was released on Elektra Records, which must have had high hopes for The Wackers since they went to the trouble of creating a special logo showing The Wackers' name spanning the globe.  It is printed on the label and also embossed in gold on the front of the jacket cover (above).

The next goodie I dug out of the pile was Bossa Nova Plus, a 1963 release by tenor sax man Willis Jackson.  Jackson was a prolific recording artist, releasing dozens of albums - almost all on the Prestige label - beginning in 1959.  Though his early influences were Lester Young and Illinois Jacquet, Jackson later became a part of the soul jazz movement.  Along with tenor players Gene Ammons, Stanley Turrentine, Eddie Harris, and others, Jackson helped create a more gritty, funkier (and more commercial) sound.  Reflecting this shift, Jackson's later albums had titles such as Grease 'N Gravy and Soul Grabber.

However, Bossa Nova Plus captures Jackson in a mellow mood, playing a lineup of current hits and Latin melodies in a lightly swinging bossa nova style.  The interesting thing about the album is that it was originally issued with the title Shuckin', featuring a photo of Willis on the cover (left).  But it was reissued almost immediately with a new title and a more colorful cover (above) in order to cash in on the bossa nova craze which was sweeping the U.S. after the release of Stan Getz' 1962 albums Big Band Bossa Nova and Jazz Samba.  I'm a big fan of bossa nova and would have bought the album anyway, but what really sold me was reading the liner notes and seeing that the sidemen include Kenny Burrell on guitar, Roy Haynes on drums, and Tommy Flanagan on piano.  A super lineup.  Unfortunately, none of the musicians really stretches out, but it's a balm in these troubled times.  And the samba version of "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" is a gas.

The next album I pulled out was a copy of Lee Morgan's 1971 release, Live at the Lighthouse.  It's a fairly obscure Blue Note/United Artists release, a double live album recorded at the famous West Coast jazz club in Hermosa Beach, CA in July of 1970.  The Lighthouse, owned by bass player Howard Rumsey, was the launching pad for a host of West Coast jazz artists, including Bud Shank, Max Roach, Sonny Criss, Hampton Hawes, Shelly Manne, Russ Freeman, and Chet Baker.

As reviewer Scott Yanow notes: "By the time of this LP, Morgan's music had become much more modal, heavily influenced by John Coltrane."  A kind of sheets of sound on trumpet if you will.  I'm not crazy about Coltrane's later albums, and not surprisingly, "sheets of sound" on trumpet doesn't do much for me either. 

Apparently the general public felt the same way since the album sold poorly and as a result it is pretty hard to find today.

Blue Note released a three-CD box set in 1996 that expanded the original album to include all of the music from Morgan's three-night stand at The Lighthouse. 

If you look online for the album, you are likely to get a lot of hits for a CD called Live At The Lighthouse '70.  Be aware that this is a different album entirely from the Blue Note release.  Lighthouse '70 was issued as a two-CD set in 1991 by a Spanish label called Fresh Sounds Records (the same group responsible for a lot of the public domain jazz LP pressings coming out of Europe).  The notes on the Fresh Sounds CD, which (just to confuse things even more) has an expanded image of the head shot of Morgan from the original Blue Note cover (right and above), says it was recorded in July, 1970 at The Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach.  It was not.  According to several online sleuths, the Fresh Sounds release was recorded live at a place called "The Both/And Club" in San Francisco, probably in June of 1970.  Apparently Morgan and the band played some gigs in San Francisco to tune up before heading down to Hermosa Beach (near L.A.) for their appearance at the Lighthouse.  The San Francisco shows were taped to air on a local radio station, (though it's not clear if they ever did) and those tapes are what is on the Fresh Sounds CD.  I've heard the CD, and while you could argue that the music is actually better -- the band is loose and the music is more straight-ahead bop -- the recording quality is poor and the sound is marred by a drunk/stoned guy sitting (seemingly) right beside the microphone screaming "Yeah, man!" about every 10 seconds for long periods of the recording.  That said, there is a version of Ceora, a song originally released on Morgan's album "Cornbread," that is fabulous.

Last up is the 1969 release, Truly Fine Citizen, by San Francisco's own Moby Grape.  I didn't actually miss Moby Grape, I just wasn't a fan and didn't buy their albums.  On the other hand, I was a big fan of Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Grateful Dead, and a lot of the other groups that exploded out of San Francisco's psychedelic scene in the 1960s.  [Fun fact: Skip Spence, founding member of the Grape, played drums on the Airplane's first LP.]

Truly Fine Citizen was Moby Grape's fifth album in three years (the third release in 1969 alone!).  Since their 1967 debut, the band had become locked in a contentious legal battle with their manager and was beset with drug abuse and mental health issues, which led to the departure of founding members Skip Spence and Bob Mosley.  By 1969, the three remaining members of the band decided to get away from it all and decamped to Nashville to record their next album with Bob Johnson, the white-hot producer who had already made Blonde On Blonde and Highway 61 Revisited with Bob Dylan, the Sound Of Silence with Simon and Garfunkel, Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison, as well as a slew of other seminal rock albums.

Since they no longer had a bass player (Bob Mosley left the group and joined the Marines -- no, really), producer Johnson brought in ace session player Bob Moore, who played on many of Elvis's albums and was one of the crack musicians who made up the famous Nashville "A Team."  [Fun fact: Moore's official web site says that "With more than 17,000 recording sessions to his credit, he may well have played on more recordings than any other musician in the world."  Almost inconceivably, that works out to at least one session every day for 46 years, including Sundays and holidays.  Wow.]  But despite the presence of ringers Bob Johnson and Bob Moore, Truly Fine Citizen is generally considered to be a middlin' effort.  Music critic Mark Deming gives it three stars and notes that (given all their legal and personal issues) "It's a pleasant surprise that Truly Fine Citizen isn't a disaster -- it's a loose but amiable set of sunny psychedelic pop-rock with a decided country influence."  I find it well played but unmemorable, except for the fabulous, jazzy cut called "Love Song, Part Two" that closes the album.  The copy of the album that I found is a minty original Columbia two-eye that sounds very fine.  

Moby Grape's 1967 self-titled debut album

For whatever reason, Moby Grape albums have become quite collectible in recent years, and copies in good condition sell for more than you'd expect.  Near mint copies of Truly Fine Citizen are going for $25-30 on Discogs.  The most collectible of their LPs is the first pressing of their debut album, 1967's self-titled Moby Grape.  [Fun fact: The band's name is the answer to a bad riddle: What's big and purple and lives in the ocean?  Answer: Moby Grape.  Drugs may or may not have been involved in the decision.]  The cover of the album is a photo of the band members in front of a second-hand store holding various props from the store.  Drummer Don Stevenson, who is smack dab in the middle, is giving the finger on top of an old washboard he's holding.  Apparently the suits at Columbia Records were not amused, and the press run was stopped while the cover (and included poster) were swapped out with an airbrushed image without the middle finger (below).  As always seems to be the case, a number of the original covers made it into stores anyway.  I have a VG+ copy of the original which shows the middle finger, and even if it's not my favorite album, it's still a nice bit of rock memorabilia.  NM copies of the unexpurgated Moby Grape will set you back in the neighborhood of $75-100.  So keep your eyes pealed.

Last fun fact: The flag at the back right of the photo in the original cover is an American flag that was air-brushed to make it red/orange so as not to offend the anti-war fervor of the youth of 1969.  But wait!  When they airbrushed out the middle finger, they changed the flag from red to black, presumably to avoid any possible association with communism.  It all seems kind of quaint now.

Enjoy the music!