How Did I Miss These Guys?

While I collect and listen to just about every kind of music, more than half of the 4,500 albums in my collection are classic rock from the 60s and 70s. It's the music I grew up with, and the music that still resonates must strongly with me. I have at least one copy (and sometimes four or five) of every album made by the Beatles, Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, The Allman Brothers, CSNY, Steely Dan, The Band, The Who, and so on. I also have an extensive collection of albums by great niche artists from the same era, like Tim Buckley, Ry Cooder, Bert Jansch, Judee Sill, Delaney and Bonnie, Roy Buchanan, Captain Beefheart, Nick Drake, Fotheringay, Arlo Guthrie, Tim Harden, Leo Kottke, Love, Tim Moore, Fred Neil, Laura Nyro, Shawn Phillips, Stan Rogers, Valdy, Paul Siebel, Bobby Whitlock, and Claudia Schmidt, just to name a few.

I mention all this because it's not all that often that I run across a terrific singer from the 60s or 70s that I've never heard of. And when I do, I always think, "How the heck did I miss this guy?" In the last few weeks I picked up about 50 $1 albums from a couple of different stores. When I'm looking through $1 albums, I'll grab just about anything that isn't beat to crap and looks halfway interesting. Included in this latest haul were a couple of jewels by two singers I don't think I've ever heard of. The first was the 1975 release The Eyes Of An Only Child by Tom Jans.

The copy I found is a promo copy with a DJ strip on the front that lists the tracks. The vinyl is NM, while the jacket is only VG. The cover photo was interesting enough that I would have bought it anyway, but what sold me was seeing in the credits on the back that the great Lowell George wrote one song and produced and played guitar on a couple of others. Among the session musicians on the album are Jeff Porcaro and Jim Keltner on drums, David Lindley and Jesse Ed Davis on guitar, and Bill Paine (of Little Feat) on piano, and Valerie Carter on backing vocals. Good grief, talk about an all-star band! These folks couldn't make a bad album if they tried. 

And clearly they didn't. This is a terrific album, Jans' second, recorded at L.A.'s Sunset Sound Studios. I'd classify it as folk/rock or California rock. It has amazing lyrics, great tunes, and incredible playing. Back to the cover photo: It was taken by noted photographer Ethan Russell who also shot the covers for the Beatles' Let It Be and The Who's Quadrophenia, among many others.

According to Discogs, Eyes Of An Only Child has not been reissued on vinyl, and was only issued on CD in Japan. My copy is on a white Columbia promo label with the CBS "eyes" around the rim in black. It was mastered by Artisan Sounds in Hollywood and pressed at Columbia's Santa Maria, CA plant. I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for other albums by Jans.

Behind Door Number 2

The other great find in my $1 album haul is the 1969 release California Bloodlines by singer/songwriter John Stewart. Once again, the style is folk/rock, shading toward country/rock. 

If the name John Stewart rings a bell (it didn't with me), it may be because from 1961-67 he was a member of the second iteration of the Kingston Trio. When the Trio disbanded in 1967, Stewart pursued a career as a singer/songwriter. He hit pay dirt almost immediately with his song "Daydream Believer," which The Monkees took to number one on the charts in December of 1967. (No, I did not remember that.) In 1968, while working on Bobby Kennedy's presidential campaign, Stewart met and married folk singer Buffy Ford. They put out one album as a duet before Stewart turned to recording as a solo artist. California Bloodlines was his first solo album. 

The album was produced by the legendary Nick Venet, a credit that once again was enough to convince to invest a dollar. Venet was the 21-year-old A&R wunderkind at Capital Records who signed and later produced The Beach Boys, among many other great artists. For California Bloodlines, Venet took Stewart to Nashville to record with some of the city's hottest pickers. In fact, many of the Nashville cats who play on California Bloodlines also show up on Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline album. In his review of California Bloodlines, music critic Thom Jurek writes that "The songs are romantic visions of people and places that come out of a present which is already in the past and a past inhabited by ghosts. His portraits of spirits are made nearly flesh in his songs, which are ambitious lyrically if not musically." 

Yeah, whatever. This is a great, great album. My copy is a genuine NM/NM. It looks like it was never played. It's on the Capitol rainbow label (like the early Beatles albums) and was pressed at Capitol's Los Angeles plant. Once again, I'll be looking for more John Stewart albums in the future.

My advice is to keep your eyes peeled when you're looking through the $1 bins -- and enjoy the music!

Leo Meiersdorff - Jazz Painter

A few years ago I picked up a collaboration by Thad Jones and Mel Lewis called Consummation. The album was recorded in January and May of 1970 at A&R Studios in New York. Scott Yanow in his AllMusic review calls it the best of the Jones/Lewis collaborations: "The all-star cast (which includes flugelhornist Jones, drummer Lewis, trumpeter Marvin Stamm, trombonist Jimmy Knepper, tenor great Billy Harper, the reeds of Jerome Richardson, Jerry Dodgion and Eddie Daniels, keyboardist Roland Hanna, and bassist Richard Davis, among others) is well served by Thad Jones' inventive and swinging arrangements. A classic." The album was released on Blue Note, catalog number BST 84346. My copy is a clean VG+.

And while the music is fine -- straight ahead, ensemble jazz with nice orchestrations -- what really attracted me to the album was the cover. I love the wonderful watercolor painting of Thad and Mel. It seems to capture the essence of jazz in its bright colors and angular lines. The art on the gatefold jacket actually wraps around, and the back side (at left) includes more of the band. The credits on the inside of the jacket indicate that the illustrations are by "Meiersdorff." I was curious about the artist and jumped on the Interwebs to find out more.  

Leo Meiersdorff was born in Germany in 1934. After the war, his family moved to Berlin, where he finished high school. Although his family objected, Leo decided to pursue a career in art. He financed his studies by working on fishing trawlers in the North Sea and as a merchant seaman. In the 1950s, back in Berlin, Meiersdorff began to follow the many American jazz bands that were playing in Europe. At some point, he entered a contest to design the cover for a jazz album being recorded in Berlin by the famed American record producer Norman Granz. Meiersdorff won the contest, and the rest is history. 

Well, not quite. In the late 50s and early 60s, Meiersdorff traveled to the U.S. where he met fellow artists and became more immersed in the jazz scene in New York and L.A. In 1966, Meiersdorff moved permanently to New York to seek his fortune as an artist. While experimenting with expressionistic canvases and large mixed-media works, Meiersdorff hung out at jazz clubs and began to make friends with some of the musicians. He began sketching the artists and painting pictures of jazz groups. The musicians liked his work, and his reputation spread. Soon, Meiersdorff was making a name for himself as a "jazz" painter, designing backdrops for TV programs and album covers for various labels.

Over the last couple of years, I have found two more albums with covers by Meiersdorff, both on the Chiaroscuro label.

Chiaroscuro Records was founded by producer Hank O'Neal and former jazz musician Edwin Ashcraft III. In a fascinating bit of musical history, O'Neal and Ashcraft met in the 1950s when they both worked at the CIA. Ashcraft, who had been a fairly well-known jazz musician in the 20s and 30s, was by now the Director of the Office of Operations and was heavily involved in the CIA's investigations of UFOs! At the time they first met, O'Neal was apparently a junior recruit. Years later, in 1964, the two would team up to begin the Chiarosucro record company, a budget outfit with the aim of recording older jazz musicians who had fallen off the radar in the era of hard bop.

The top cover is a 1972 release by an all-star lineup including Eddie Condon on guitar, Wild Bill Davison on cornet, and Gene Krupa on drums. It's a one-off jam session put on for students at the New School in New York City. Hank O'Neal is the producer.

The second album is a 1970 release by cornetist Bobby Hackett. It was recorded during a two-month residence at the Roosevelt Grill in New York in April and May of 1970. Once again, the producer is Hank O'Neal.

Anyway, back to Meiersdorff. In 1970, he moved to New Orleans and opened his own gallery. Once there, his style became brighter and much more commercial (see the example below). After all, he was trying to catch the eye of the tourists who wanted to take home a nice souvenir of the Big Easy. As a chronicler of the food and music scene in New Orleans, he was a huge success. Before he died in 1994, Meiersdorff had become enormously popular and had sold thousands and thousands of prints of his work.

About a year ago I got the idea that it would be nice to own an original Meiersdorff painting. While his New Orleans work is colorful and fun, I prefer his paintings from the 60s in New York, when he was immersed in the jazz scene there, sketching musicians. I did some research online, and soon found a number of his paintings for sale at galleries, Ebay, and on an official website that markets some of his work. Meiersdorff originals are not cheap, and much of what is available is from his New Orleans period. However, after some months of searching, I found a New York painting available at an online auction site. I made a successful offer, and am now the proud owner of this 1967 original watercolor by Leo Meiersdorff (below). It would be fun to know if the musicians are based on any particular artists. But a trademark of his New York style is that the musicians' faces are never clearly visible. I like to think that he sketched my painting while sitting in a smoky club listening to a hot jam session. 

Enjoy the music (and the art)!