LISTEN: TO THE MUSIC/DOOBIE BROTHERS

This has to be one of the most magical bits of riffing in music, I sooooo love this simple sounding casual wrist action, as patented by the Doobie's Tom Johnston, singer and guitarist, of many, in the early incarnation of the band, as well as the writer of this song. It was clearly a sound he enjoyed, as it reprises often in other songs, notably the big early other song they are famous for. And, does it remind you of anything? Let me give you a clue, here's Nile Rogers explaining his style. But that doesn't matter, so glorious a sound it is, in any hands.

But it isn't just the guitar, it is the subtle appearances of what sounds like some mandolin after the first chorus, the banjo slowly leaking through during and after the second, and all the flanging/phasing effects so beloved of the time. (God, I miss flanging. Or is it phasing......) Did I say it had two drummers? Surely the first two drummers on a big hit single in history. Or my memory It is the sound of joy on a plate.

Over to Johnston, who later explained his inspiration, in a never more 70s way:

"The chord structure of it made me think of something positive, so the lyrics that came out of that were based on this utopian idea that if the leaders of the world got together on some grassy hill somewhere and either smoked enough dope or just sat down and just listened to the music and forgot about all this other bullshit, the world would be a much better place. It was very utopian and very unrealistic (laughs). It seemed like a good idea at the time." 

Who could argue with that?

I always felt a bit sad about the Doobie Brothers, this earlier raw and less polished aspect of their sound sometimes a little airbrushed out by the smoother Michael McDonald years. Sure, a terrific and gifted singer and interpreter, but why were my beloved hippy band singing philly soul, something I couldn't embrace until a new century beckoned. Did Johnston feel the same? Having started the band and been the main focus, from their tentative start in 1970, breakthrough album, 'Toulouse Street', in 1972, from which this song comes, he left in 1975, nominally from a hospital bed, suffering from what was called road stress. Actually a duodenal ulcer. But the die had been cast, the band slowly seeping in soul and smooth jazz music sounds ahead of that, as ex-Steely Dan-ner Jeff Baxter joined the band. With Johnston in hospital, his Dan alumnus, McDonald, was invited in. (I accept this may be a slightly unfair stance to take, one part of the Doobie style always being the contributions of all, but the Johnston bits were my favourite. )

Since then Johnston has been in and out of the band a couple of times, initially rejoining a near-original line-up in 1989, stimulated by an almost accidental reunion of the by then legion of ex-members available two years earlier. Officially he remains, with Patrick Simmons, singer and guitarist, alongside him at the beginning, and the only permanently present member during the band's on-off history. I guess, for me, they are the two true siblings of this fraternal band. (Is here the place to state I once thought all these contemporaneous bands of brothers just had funny american names, imagining, as well as Mr and Mrs Doobie and their sons, so also Mr and Mrs Burrito, let alone Mr and Mrs Freak, that most hirsute of families? Thought not.)

Back to the song, such is the catchiness of the beat that it is no surprise it captured a few covers. However, fascinatingly, both the two I enjoy most come, arguably, from artists who probably picked up and on the band in their blue-eyed soul phase. So, the Isley Brothers (who were):

and Candi Staton:

I still prefer the original. Here!

Listen: Listen Mr Bilbo

Pete Seeger: Listen Mr Bilbo

[purchase]

In the early part of the twentieth century, the Democratic Party was the one that welcomed racists. One such was Theodore Bilbo, Senator from Mississippi from 1935 to his death in 1947. Bilbo was one of the most important Southern racist senators that Roosevelt courted to win passage of his New Deal programs. Bilbo boasted of his membership in the Ku Klux Klan, and he promoted segregation and Jim Crow laws throughout his career. Listen Mr Bilbo was written by Robert and Adrienne Claiborne in 1946, the year of Bilbo’s last Senate campaign. Robert Claiborne performed with Pete Seeger, so that would be where Seeger learned the song. I have not been able to find a recording of the song by Robert Claiborne, if there even was one. Bilbo had by this time made himself the face of Southern racism, and of bigotry more broadly. Claiborne’s song is a reminder of how important all the people Bilbo hated were in American history.

Peter Paul and Mary: Listen Mr Bilbo

[purchase]

By 1990, when Peter Paul and Mary recorded Listen Mr Bilbo, Theodore Bilbo himself was largely a forgotten figure, but the attitudes he embodied were still very much with us. So they sang the song as Listen Mr Bigot, but they kept the original title. Where Pete Seeger kept the arrangement simple, just him and his banjo, Peter Paul and Mary created a musical setting that reminds us of the cultural contributions made by minorities, especially black musicians. The song has eerie echoes in our situation today, so it may be time for someone to make a new recording of it.

LISTEN: Listen to Her Heart

Purchase Listen to Her Heart

I'm still grieving over the death of Tom Petty, so, though I've written about him many times, there's got to be a place in our blog for a mention of the Heartbreaker's "Listen to Her Heart."

From 1978's You're Gonna Get It!, "Listen to Her Heart", more so than any other early Heartbreaker's track, helped contribute to the new wave label that clung to the band for so long. And for good reason: the chiming, chorus-drenched guitar, working in a groove over tub drums and the tranced out vocal lines all do sound...modern.  It's a great tune, driving and unique, an FM radio rocker from the AM era, a stadium-style anthem that bounced as hard as it grooved. I've always loved the fade out on the song, where Campbell's guitar lead and the Tench's piano line compete in a crescendoing melody, winding up, then fading out entirely, in that sad way that a great song is one that you wish wasn't so short, though it's compact brevity is part of what makes it so great to begin with. A staple gun shot of a track.

Apparently, Petty wrote the song in response to Ike Turner hitting on Petty's wife. I'd never heard that, but between Wikipedia and re-runs of VH1's Behind the Music, you can learn a hell of a lot...

LISTEN: TO THE RADIO/NANCI GRIFFITH

Spoilt for choice, really, songs about the radio abound all over, and it is the immediate word association I link to listen, watching or touching the radio seeming always a bit pointless. Let alone smelling. But there are only a few that go as far as to spell it out, and Nanci came up top of my pile this morning.

And I've been wondering what's been happening to Nanci Griffith of late. For a time, in the 80s, she was huge over here, well, as huge as what-was-then-country-and-is-now-americana got in the UK at that time. She seemed to be forever touring her neat little ankle socks off, perhaps taking advantage of the local enthusiasms, playing venues such as the Birmingham Irish Centre on more than one occasion. (Come to think, there has always been a hibernian appetite for twangy guitars and half her band were from Ireland, so maybe the clue is in the name of the hall.) I snapped up all her early records up until suddenly I reached peak Nanci, round about the brace of covers albums she put out, somehow feeling she had lost her muse. The truth, it seems, is more prosaic, she was losing her health, with breast cancer, treated successfully, and a prolonged spell of what was (euphemistically?) called writers block. There have been sporadic records this century, but her innocent sparkle seems anachronistic now. But then, hell, it was a delight, her quirky introductions, all in look at li'l ol' Texas me high school prom voice, giving me as much delight as the songs. I strongly commend her 'One Fair Summer Evening' live opus from 1988 to catch that flavour at its sweetest, just one stir ahead of saccharine.

So this song, 'Listen to the Radio', what about it? Well, it's from her 8th record, 'Storms', the one where she was being groomed slightly away from her folk-country hybrid into a hoped for wider appeal, with a more easily consumed and slightlier (slighter?) AOR sensibility. Produced by Glyn Johns, the alchemist of the early Eagles output, and without a fiddle or a steel guitar in sight, it was initially dissed by the purists, but I have to say its legacy has lasted longer than its forbears. It sounds good to these ears, my delight heightened as I read the names of Bernie Leadon, Albert Lee and Jerry Donoghue amongst the contributing musicians. The lyrics are typical Griffith, harking back to west texas backroads, nostalgia tinged with regret, loneliness never far away, but :
                                           
                                           When you can't find a friend  
                                           You've still got the radio  
                                           When you can't find a friend  
                                           You've still got the radio …,

words with which I can relate with ease. So my days by the radio were an oceanwide away, a room in a shared house in London, south of the thames, but, 10 years later, settled in Birmingham, I could remember well the feeling. Do people still listen to the radio in this way, I wonder? I know I don't, beyond an occasional catch of the morning news in the car. Are there now songs about Spotify playlists, or YouTube channels? Perhaps there are.

Go on, then, listen to the radio.......

Listen: Do You Want to Know a Secret?

Sharon Clark: Do You Want to Know a Secret

[purchase]

The first word of this song is also our new theme: Listen. I can think of a number of great songs for this theme. Perhaps that is because songwriters feel a certain degree of insecurity. They come to a point where they feel they must ask us to listen to their work, regardless of how popular they may be at the time.

Certainly, The Beatles should not have had that problem. The whole world was listening, even in the early part of their career that this song comes from. On the other hand, ask any random group of people to make a list of Beatles songs, and Do You Want to Know a Secret will come pretty far down the list. The song is a fairly simple pop love song of the sort The Beatles once excelled at. Heard today, those “doo da doo” backing vocals sound pretty hokey. In part, however, that is because the later musical innovations of The Beatles made such devices all but obsolete. Indeed, I listened to many versions of this song to prepare for this post, and no one keeps the doo da doo’s.

Do You Know a Secret is not covered that often, and it seems to present a challenge to many who have tried. True, Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas had a hit with it the same year the Beatles version debuted, but that early cover does not add much to the musical conversation. I listened to very unfortunate club, pop, jazz, and new wave versions that just completely lose track of the song. When I did find hints of where to take the song, it was in the world of jazz. Still, Sharon Clark, who is far more of a secret than she should be, is the only one who I heard who finds the way to make the song her own. Her small band Brazilian tinged version gives the song a sensual intimacy that is suggested by the lyrics. The doo da doo’s become a piano line that works perfectly with the song’s tropical groove. The vocal, if you are going to do the song this way, needs to be quiet but passionate, and Clark delivers beautifully.