Woodwinds: Jack Bruce & Wheels of Fire Again

 

purchase [Fresh Cream]

I really, honestly had not planned it so that it would so coincidental, but  .. back to Wheels of Fire because Jack Bruce was so multi-intrumental that he also played woodwinds on the album.

As a kid, my first instrument was the recorder; we had a quintet or maybe even a setext of alto, soprano and even one tenor recorders in the fanily at one point (I still have posession of my father's tenor recorder - looks like a clarinet in size - definitely not your typical school recorder)

The instrument most commonly used in the classroom setting is the soprano. Available in plastic, of course. Yamaha notes that there are 6 sizes, from sopranino down to great bass, although perhaps "down" isn't quite appropriate: the great bass is approximately the size of a human.

Although I think I can identify its presence/sound, I'll take Ginger Baker's word for it when he identifies the song where Jack Bruce plays the recorder as <Pressed Rat and Warthog>. From gingerbaker.com:

On “Pressed Rat and Wart Hog” Jack plays two basses. The second bass comes in at the end and it’s a six string. Eric’s on three times. I’m on twice with trumpet and tonette. When I played tonette, Jack played recorder.

Here's a more contemporary rendition, but there's no recorder.

Bigger Strings: Jack Bruce

 

purchase [Wheels of Fire]

I confess that I have never given much attention to the bass player. Yeah, I know that the bass and drums are critical to the ryhthm, but the paucity of notes that the bass plays belies the importance of a song's underlying structure. 

A Quora post I read recently asked "why can't you ever hear the bass?" While the question strikes me as a bit "out of it", I fear that there is some truth to the question: the bass (player) rarely gets the spotlight. And I confess it wasn't until I started digging this week, that I paid much attention to Jack Bruce. 

Musically trained as a cello player and then moving to the standing bass, Bruce moved through various groups, including time with John McLaughlin and Ginger Baker in the Graham Bond Quartet, and with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton.

Although I owned a copy of Cream's double album Wheels of Fire as well as one of Fresh Cream, neither, particularly in comparison with Disraeli Gears did much for me. Although we generally think of Cream as a trio (Clapton, Bruce, Baker), a majority of Wheels of Fire is a quartet, with Felix Pappalardi as the fourth member (later to head off and help found Mountain with Leslie West - with whom Bruce later founded West, Bruce & Laing)

Jack Bruce, of course, is the bass player of the original trio, but he also did a lot of the lead vocals as well as writing  quite a few of the songs. He was a multi-intrumentalist and you can find videos of him playing the piano and more. On Wheels of Fire, we get Bruce and Pappalardi playing cellos, violas, bass ... but I bet you wouldn't know it unless you read the credits/liner notes. Pappalardi is playing the viola in "White Room" up top. Here, in "Passing the Time", Bruce is credited with playing the viola.

At one point in his early career, we find him playing with Charlie Watts, among others at the London Blues and Barrelhouse Club.

TRIO: West, Bruce & Laing

purchase [Whatever Turns You On ]


When SMM checked into the Trio theme back in 2010, Darius wrote up Strange Brew by Cream. After the Cream trio broke up, Clapton and Baker moved on to Blind Faith, which included Steve Winwood.

Jack Bruce teamed up with two members of Mountain to form a band called West, Bruce & Laing. West, previously from Mountain, [Nantucket Sleighride]  apparently earned the <Mountain> moniker on account of his rather large size.

Ostensibly one of the famed late 60s super groups, WBL produced a trio of albums between '72 and '74 before folding;  a trio of albums in a trio of years. As a super-group, they signed the largest contract of the time - a $1 million deal with CBS for the three albums. As with much of Mountain's repertoire as well as a fair amount of Cream's, the music a pretty heavy. And it wasn't just their music that was heavy.

Their first album, Why Dontcha did reasonably well, but by all accounts their heavy use got in the way of potentially better quality work. The posted song is from the second of their studio albums but as far as I can tell it is from the much later reincarnation of the band with Jack Bruce's son.

Gold: The Golden Palominos

Golden Palominos: Boy(Go)
[purchase]

The legendary supergroups like Cream or Blind Faith or CSN&Y were attempts to join musicians famous from other projects into a, well, super group, but they often foundered due to the conflicting egos of the members. The Golden Palominos, often referred to as an “indie-rock supergroup,” was different, gathering changing groups of generally less famous artists for each album.

Originally founded in the early 1980s by Anton Fier, a drummer who had been an early member of, among other bands, The Feelies, the first incarnation of the Golden Palominos was filled with avant-garde musicians like Fred Frith, Arto Lindsay and Bill Laswell, many of whom were influenced by the “No Wave” movement and often had as much jazz influence as indie-rock. Their self-titled debut was experimental, noisy and even featured turntable scratching, a rarity outside of hip-hop in that era.

My introduction to the band was from their very different second album, 1985’s Visions of Excess, which was significantly more accessible. The original attraction was “Boy (Go),” featuring lead vocals from R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, and guitar from Richard Thompson. The album also featured vocals from John Lydon (a/k/a Johnny Rotten) and supergroup veteran Jack Bruce, as well as the debut appearance of singer Syd Straw, who is on the list of people who should be way more famous. Despite the unusual roster of musicians, the album hangs together pretty well, and is never dull. Also, there’s a great cover of Moby Grape’s “Omaha,” also sung by Stipe.

The Golden Palominos put out albums every few years throughout the 1980s and 1990s, a few of which I own, with a constantly changing group of performers, including Matthew Sweet, T-Bone Burnett, Bernie Worrell, Bob Mould and Bootsy Collins, with Stipe, Thompson and Straw dropping by occasionally, joining core members Fier, bassist Laswell and guitarist Nicky Skopelitis for, not surprisingly, varied sounds and results. In 2012 Fier, and a different group of musicians joined Kevn Kinney of Drivin’ & Cryin’ for a new album, A Good Country Mile. That album includes a cover of a Jason Isbell written Drive-By Truckers song, “Never Gonna Change.” (Self-promoting side note—Drivin’ & Cryin’ was the band that Trucker Patterson Hood was opening for when he saw the incident that inspired the song “Opening Act,” which you can read more about here.)

Give Fier and his Golden Palominos sidekicks credit for pushing the envelope, trying new things and always making interesting music. They cannot be pigeonholed, and if that hindered them from gaining an identity and becoming a true “supergroup,” it never prevented them from following their muse wherever it took them. In a world filled with artists mining the same groove until it turns into a rut (thanks, Nick Lowe), it is refreshing, if not always easy, to listen to a project like the Golden Palominos that constantly challenges.