Author: Kim Simpson

Among the stacks of albums Venezuelan cuatro master Cheo Hurtada has appeared on, only one of these was billed to “Bandolas de Venezuela.” This was a quartet that included, along with Hurtada, three bandola players: Javier Sosa on bandola central (8 doubled-up strings, triangular pear-shaped), Gerson Garcia on bandola llanera (4 strings, traditional pear shape), and Ricardo Sandoval on bandola oriental (8 doubled-up strings, pear-shaped with squared-off corners at the top). Hurtada, in addition to cuatro, plays bandola guayanese (almost identical to the bandola central). The title of this particular specimen of organic energy translates to “little bird scrambled” (scrambled egg?).

By the way, a cuatro differs from a bandola in terms of string texture and tuning, but the obvious difference is in shape: cuatros take the curvy shape of a guitar while bandolas, as you’ve gathered from the above, resemble pears.

“Tender” (1999) – Blur * Written by Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon * 45: “Tender” / “All We Want” * LP: 13 * Produced by William Orbit * Label: Food (UK)/Virgin (US) * Charts: UK singles (#2)

In their final days as a steady hit single machine, the Britpop quartet Blur rolled out a seven-minute hippie throwback hymn backed by the London Community Gospel Choir. Lyrical distinctions, though, set it apart as a Gen X affair. The words in sixties folk-chant hits like John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance” or Delaney and Bonnie’s “Never Ending Song of Love” expressed a parent’s sentiments of giving, while this one’s “demons,” “ghosts,” and “screwing up my life” expressed a dependent’s sentiments of needing.

“Back to the Bridge” (1994) – Asie Payton * Trad. arrangement by Asie Payton * CD: Just Do Me Right (2002) * Recorded by Matthew Johnson * Label: Fat Possum

In the 2002 documentary You See Me Laughin’, Fat Possum Record owner Matthew Johnson explains how he’d need to wait for rainy weather to persuade Asie Payton of Holly Springs, Mississippi, to get off of his tractor long enough to make some recordings. In 1994, three years before Payton would die of a heart attack, Johnson was able to round up enough tracks for two posthumous CDs: Worried (1999) and Just Do Me Right (2002). On certain songs, such as “Back to the Bridge,” Payton has a way of digging into a groove that tunnels through his own Delta dirt straight into the earth’s fiery core. The track drips with originality, but the album notes credit it (and all the others) as a traditional arrangement. Maybe that’s just a matter of headache relief. All songs, after all, are carried by “Big Legal Mess Publishing,” which is probably as truthful as a company title can get. The last song on the Just Do Me Right album is a worthy remix of “Back to the Bridge”—maybe Beck listened to it before doing “E-Pro.” 

“Opera Star” (1981) – Neil Young and Crazy Horse * Written by Neil Young * LP: Reactor * Produced by David Briggs, Tim Mulligan, and Neil Young with Jerry Napier * Label: Reprise

If you’ve listened to Neil Young’s 1981 “Opera Star” more than once, the odds are that the phrase “some things never change, they stay the way they are” plays through your brain at appropriate moments. Also ready for recall, in all likelihood, is this one: “you were born to rock, you’ll never be an opera star.” The song presents itself almost like a knucklehead rocker’s manifesto, but Young’s ’80s output, with its drastic stylistic changes, indicates that “Opera Star,” and possibly the entire Reactor album—which Rolling Stone had classified as “bozo rock”—was a razz on a certain type of audience, the type who would hear opera music and imitate it just like the guys in Crazy Horse: “oh-oh-oh-ohhh-oh-OHHH!”

“Balaké” (2015) – Amadou Balaké * Traditional * LP: In Conclusion * Produced by Florent Mazzoleni * Label: Sterns Africa

The online bios all recycle the story of how the late Burkina Faso legend Amadou Traore named himself after a hit song called “Balaké,” which translates to “porcupine” in the mandika language. If he did record such a thing, good luck finding it—perhaps he made it with another group shortly before 1975, when his records started billing him as “Traore Amadou dit Ballaké.” Or maybe he adopted the name simply because “Balaké” is actually a traditional song that was already familiar to West Africans. In any case, Balaké, who passed away in 2014, left a legacy of diverse sounds incorporating upbeat warba and Mandé dance music, Cuban son montuno, charanga, and salsa. Adding him to playlists in today’s bubble-world climate would be good principle. His final recordings appeared in 2015 on an album called In Conclusion assembled by the Sterns Africa label, and among them, lo and behold, is a beautiful late-life rendering of “Balaké,” featuring voice, guitar, and ngoni, with nothing else.

“Oh Candy” (1977) – Cheap Trick * Written by Rick Nielsen * LP: Cheap Trick * Produced by Jack Douglas * Label: Epic

Cheap Trick called one of their later ’80s albums Standing on the Edge, but their first album was the one that deserved such a title. In those grooves they combined savory Beatle hooks with lyrics about serial killers, pedophilia, gigolos and suicide. Most of the album’s songwriter credits went to guitarist Rick Nielsen, whose offbeat schoolboy clown persona (possibly inspired by AC/DC or Daddy Cool) turned up the weirdness volume. “Oh Candy” is one of the album’s melodic treats, sounding like a Filmation teenager’s summer drive to the soda shop. But they’re singing about a girl who stuck a needle in her vein, asking, “Why did you do it?” In his 1998 band bio Reputation Is a Fragile Thing, Mike Hayes reveals that Nielsen drew inspiration for the song from the death of a photographer friend named Marshall Mintz (“M&M”) who had hung himself, which doesn’t entirely account for the song’s high sugar content.

“Oh You Beautiful Doll” (1949) – Rosemary Clooney * Written by Nat D. Ayer and Seymour Brown * 78: “Oh You Beautiful Doll” / “Don’t Cry Joe (Let Her Go, Let Her Go, Let Her Go)” * Label: Harmony

This classic American song, recorded and performed a zillion times, made its biggest splash the first time around through a 1912 disc by Billy Murray and the American Quartet. That was the year a minor league baseball player named William Jacobson stepped to the plate as the song played and hit a home run, after which a lady in the stands yelled out for all to hear, “you must be the beautiful doll they were talking about!” He instantly became Baby Doll Jacobson, and would go on to bat over .300 through most of the 1920s for the St. Louis Browns. Rosemary Clooney recorded her version of the song in 1949, shortly after breaking loose from Tony Pastor’s Big Band. Its easy lilt and feminine perspective pair it up with the Jacobson story better than the ticktocky Billy Murray original.

“Shapes of Things” (1973) – David Bowie * Written by Paul Samwell-Smith, Jim McCarty, and Keith Relf (uncredited) * LP: Pinups *Produced by Ken Scott and David Bowie * Label: RCA

David Bowie’s Pinups—an album of covers from mid-sixties London bands—is a source document for the UK glam sound that his Ziggy Stardust record had sent to the earth’s orbit the previous year. His version of the Yardbirds’ issue-conscious “Shapes of Things,” for example, features the following ingredients: Mick Ronson’s cruch guitar, cockney yob vocals by Bowie, vortex backup voices, and space-case strings at :51 and 2:10. The strings, in fact, are what make this a special track you should listen to all the way through. The disc’s label leaves out the name of Keith Relf in the writer credits, even though the original Yardbirds record includes him.

“Welcome to Our World (Of Merry Music)” (1976) – Mass Production * Written by Tyrone Williams * 45: “Welcome to Our World (Of Merry Music)” / “Just a Song” * LP: Welcome to Our World * Produced by Ed A. Ellerbe * Label: Cotillion * Billboard: #68 (Hot 100); #32 (Soul)

This high-grade disco track presents even more semiotic genre-consciousness than anything by Chic, whose first album it barely predates. The group’s dance floor world functions as a utopia where everybody “lends a helping hand” and “lives in harmony,” but their choices of “merry” for the song title’s adjective and “Mass Production” for their own name acknowledge blissed-out excess. The single edit is an explosive four minutes showcasing Kevin “D’No” Douglass’s fluid bass and songwriter Tyrone Williams’s clavinet.

“Big Boss Man” (1967) – Elvis Presley * Written by Luther Dixon and Al Smith (credited on label to Jimmy Reed) * 45: “Big Boss Man” / “You Don’t Know Me” * LP: Clambake * Produced by Jeff Alexander and Felton Jarvis * Label: RCA * Billboard: #38 (Hot 100)

Putting aside questions of quality and substance, Elvis’s sixties movie output—the songs and the films themselves—have this animatronic, sped-up feel. Have you noticed? The effect is of everyone involved being in a hurry to get it over with. In context, “Big Boss Man” (a 1961 hit for Jimmy Reed), which Presley chose along with four other songs to round out the Clambake soundtrack’s seven prescribed film offerings, comes off as a grievance aimed toward the boss men (with tall shadows, at least), who had the king himself “workin’ round the clock.” Top-notch chicken-picker Jerry Reed (no relation to Jimmy), who also appears on the Clambake album’s version of his own “Guitar Man,” gives the message even more punch. The label credits Jimmy Reed as the writer, with no one having bothered to see that Reed’s original version credited songwriters Luther Dixon and Al Smith.