Author: Kim Simpson

Italian singer-songwriter Lucio Battisti (who passed away in 1998) was rarely the acoustic guitar type, which is too bad, because whenever he was, the sound suited him especially well. Battisti’s first full album appeared in 1969, when he’d already developed enough of a songwriting reputation to have placed songs with the Grass Roots (“Bella Linda”), the Amen Corner (“(If Paradise Is) Half as Nice”), and the Hollies (“Non Prego Per Me”). Throughout the rest of his professional life in the Italian music industry, he would maintain the persona of a studio hermit who rarely gave interviews or played live. His song “29 Settembre” (the 29th of September), about romantic ecstasy and confusion on a sunny autumn afternoon, is a refined folk rock number from the debut that leaves you wishing for a full album with similar instrumentation. Battisti collaborated with the one-named lyricist Mogol (born Giulio Rapetti) until 1980.

The Puerto Rican trovador (master of traditional song) Miguel Santiago Díaz assembled the first configuration of his group Ecos de Borinquen in the late seventies. The name translates to “echoes of Puerto Rico,” with the word “Borinquen” being the original name of the island before the Spaniards arrived. The title of this 2003 Smithsonian Folkways release—recorded with a new batch of younger musicians—translates to “Jibaro (mountain person) to the bone,” and the mountain music contained therein, with its ten-stringed cuatros at the forefront, is the very sound of Puerto Rican cultural heritage. Miguel composed the lyrics for most of the songs, including “Somos Los Puertoriqueños” (we are the Puerto Ricans).  A translation of some of its words, as taken from the liner notes: “Honest and generous, honorable, hardworking, tireless fighters, polite and religious, nice, caring, forgers of dreams with their most noble efforts, filled with profound love, an example for the world, we are the Puerto Ricans.”

“Getting Over You” (1973) – Andy Williams * Written by Tony Hazzard * Produced by Richard Perry * UK 45: “Getting Over You” / “Remember (Andy Williams and Noelle)” * LP: Solitaire * Label: CBS * Charts: UK #35

With his Solitaire LP, Andy Williams shook things up a bit by getting in the studio with producer Richard Perry, who had been on a hot streak with hit albums by Carly Simon, Harry Nilsson, and Ringo Starr, among others. The song selection included deeper album tracks along with the usual hit covers, while Williams’s vocal now popped or swirled with new audio effects. The soft-rock flirtation, overall, brought forth three especially effective tracks: a version of George Harrison’s “That Is All,” which rescues it from the vocal-range issues of the former Beatle’s original, a version of Harry Nilsson’s “Remember,” featuring dreamy Nicky Hopkins piano (as did Nilsson’s original), and a song called “Getting Over You” by Tony Hazzard, a British songwriter who’d written some early hits for the Hollies (“Listen to Me”) and Manfred Mann (“Ha! Ha! Said the Clown”). How satisfying it must have been for him to hear his song done by one of pop music’s classic voices, with an arrangement full of such cascading instrumental payoffs (you need to listen all the way; Tom Hensley did these arrangements and took a lifelong gig with Neil Diamond thereafter). Hazzard himself had released a version of “Getting Over You” the same year, as did Hermans Hermits’ Peter Noone, but Williams’ was The One. Not released as a single in the US, it reached #35 in the UK with a B-side that included “Remember” revamped with shared vocals and dialogue with Williams’s daughter Noelle. (This all gets in the way of the sublime arrangement, so stick with the album version of that one.)

“Brown Eyed Handsome Man (TV version)” (1970) – Waylon Jennings * Written by Chuck Berry * Produced by Al Quaglieri * CD: The Best of the Johnny Cash TV Show 1969-1971 * Label: Columbia

The Johnny Cash Show celebrated the cross-pollination of American musical genres for two seasons between 1969 and 1971. Among the Man in Black’s guests were Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Ray Charles, the Monkees, and Derek and the Dominos. In January 1971, Waylon Jennings appeared with his then-current incarnation of the Waylors, a group whose various personnel all shared a strong Phoenix, Arizona connection. Because Jennings’s contract with RCA forbade him from using anyone but studio vets on his records, his live sound distinguished itself with an alternate edginess. While his late-1969 country chart hit version (#3) of Chuck Berry’s “Brown Eyed Handsome Man” trotted along tamely to Charlie McCoy’s harmonica, the 1971 TV version (link below) jangled and snapped to the rhythm of Jimmy Byrd’s twelve-string guitar, which looks like a double-neck Mosrite. An archived website alludes to double-necks that Byrd had developed by himself.

Since the early ’90s, when she started releasing her first solo albums, the Polish singer songwriter (in a post-punk vein) Renata Przemyk has had a way of keeping audiences in her pocket. “Elastic” is a suitable way to describe her voice and lyrics, which can bend and stretch in terms of expression and meaning. Her 2012 Akustik Trio brings the unplugged approach to previous hits and the sound suits her well. On “Drzewo” (tree), a song from 2001, she uses Adam and Eve images to explore how personal choice, in itself, can seem to complicate the very boundaries between good and evil. The other trio players: Błażej Chochorowski (bass guitar/electric guitar) and Maciej Mąka (acoustic/classical guitars).

“The Mosquito” (1972) – The Doors * Written by Robby Krieger, John Densmore, and Ray Manzarek * Produced by The Doors * 45 B-side: “It Slipped My Mind” * LP: Full Circle * Label: Elektra * Charts: Billboard Hot 100 (#85)

Jim Morrison’s death in the summer of 1971 left the other three Doors with a glaring front-man vacancy, but they kept making music, including “The Mosquito,” a surprising borderline novelty hit. It wasn’t the single’s sales that registered surprise so much as the song itself, which had more in common with “La Cucaracha” than “Light My Fire.” Over a lightly engaged acoustic guitar, Robby Krieger mumbles for a mosquito to not bother him so he can eat his burrito, making way during the proceedings for two distinct instrumental interludes. One of these features Ray Manzarek’s organ, which overdoes it on the five-minute-plus LP version but bugs out mercifully on the under-three-minute 45. The single connected instantly with the international market, perhaps faster than any other Doors track. Before the year was over, cover renditions had begun sprouting up in Mexico, Spain, France, and beyond (none of which included the line about the burrito). Buyers of the Doors’ Full Circle album, incidentally, could enjoy the challenge of assembling a zoetrope included in the album packaging. Placed atop the record label, it would spin along at 33 1/3 rpm while showing a rudimentary animation of an evolving homosapien.

“Var det du?” (1964) – Anna-Lena * Trad. arr. Bruno Glenmark * Lyrics by Cornelis Vreeswijk * Produced by Anders Burman * Sweden EP: Åh, Vilken Fröjd Och Lycka * Label: Metronome

The late Swedish schlager singer Anna-Lena Löfgren had an especially fruitful decade in the 1960s both at home and in West Germany (although she did manage, off and on, to chart in Sweden all the way up to 1995). Due to a lifelong struggle with polio, Löfgren often made her television appearances sitting down, a visual image that matched the clear but gentle assurance in her voice, a refreshing sound from the standpoint of our present climate of vocal affectation. Among her most sublime recordings was “Var det du” (was it you), which appeared on the B-side of her 1964 version of “Go Tell It on the Mountain.” Although the melody for “Var det du” comes from a folk waltz called “Var det du eller var det jag” (was it you or was it me) from the southern province of Småland, her recording of it used an updated arrangement by Bruno Glenmark with alternate lyrics by Cornelis Vreeswijk (the Dutchman soon to launch a prolific career as a Swedish troubadour). Worthwhile hit versions of the song soon appeared in Finland (Anki Lindqvist) and Norway (Kirsti Sparboe), but Anna-Lena’s remains the quintessential, full-color version. Perhaps John Sebastian came across this arrangement before crafting his “Coconut Grove.”

“All His Children” (1971) – Charley Pride with Henry Mancini * Written by Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman, and Henry Mancini * Produced by Jack Clement * LP: Sometimes a Great Notion (soundtrack) * 45 B-side: “You’ll Still Be the One * Label: Decca (LP); RCA (45) * Charts: #92 (Billboard Hot 100); #2 (Billboard country)

The 1971 Paul Newman film Sometimes a Great Notion (which had the much better overseas title of Never Give an Inch) put Ken Kesey’s Oregon logging novel to the big screen. If early seventies media tended to splash its feet in post-sixties cultural bewilderment, this film submerged itself, with every development—all the way to the closing credits—feeling like a gasping lunge through political and interpersonal complexity. Charley Pride’s forgettable theme song, written by composers who otherwise excelled in memorability, seemed to be telegraphing their low estimation of the country genre. The oddly-paired billing of Pride and Mancini (who gave the arrangement scoopfuls of stock background vocals) only added to the entire project’s murkiness. What makes “All His Children” special, though, is Pride’s final note, which sputters with knowing exasperation. 

“Home at Last” (1968) – James Brown * Written by Rudy Toombs * Produced by James Brown *  LP: Thinking About Little Willie John and Other Nice Things * Label: King

In his Godfather of Soul autobiography, James Brown writes of being in awe of Little Willie John and how his efforts to upstage the seasoned R&B hit maker at the Apollo Theater were crucial to his evolution as a performer. The rivalry forged a kinship that strengthened during their years as label mates at King. In the mid-sixties, John went to prison for manslaughter after an altercation at his own engagement party in Seattle. Brown worked to get him out on parole, only to see him put back after violating the terms (by leaving Washington state to visit Los Angeles). John’s 1968 death of illness while incarcerated hit Brown hard, prompting the release of Thinking About Little Willie John and Other Nice Things—one side of covers and one side of quickie instrumentals—the same year. A standout track is “Home at Last,” a 1956 R&B hit (#6) for John written by Rudy Toombs (who’d also penned the classics “Teardrops from My Eyes” and “One Mint Julep”). It’s a straightforward blues jumper about a “country girl” who fixes her man’s “breakfast, lunch, and dinner right on time,” but even in the act of paying tribute, James Brown works for the upstage, turning his version into the most memorable one. Listen to him scat at 4:00.

“Dawn” (1970) – Lovecraft * Written by Marty Grebb and Ken Wolfson * Produced by Lovecraft * LP: Valley of the Moon * Label: Reprise

After two albums, the psychedelic San Francisco-via-Chicago band H.P. Lovecraft, who had taken more than titular inspiration from the influential horror author, reinvented itself in 1970 as Lovecraft, with a personnel reshuffle bringing in former Buckingham Marty Grebb. Although their Valley of the Moon avoided the aural creepiness of their former incarnation, you could still detect a San Francisco rock hall vibe. The first section of the song “Dawn,” for example, borrows from the spacey, dangling guitar sound of pre-1970 Grateful Dead, with whom they’d shared the bill a time or two. Maybe the Dead’s Bob Weir took some inspiration from this song’s opening section for his distinctive “Playin’ in the Band” intro (introduced in 1971). Listen to the sequence at :43. “Dawn” can also be remembered for chiming in on Vietnam: “why do we fight this war of fools?”