1971: Fillmores

Allman Brothers: Whipping Post
[purchase Don't Fight the Feeling - the Complete Aretha Franklin & King Curtis Live at Fillmore West ]
[purchase Allman Brothers Live at Fillmore East Deluxe Edition]
[purchase Mothers Fillmore East-June 1971]
[purchase Humble Pike Performance Rockin’ The Fillmore] 

1971 saw the closing of both the Fillmore West and the Fillmore East, the legendary venues operated by the equally legendary rock impresario Bill Graham. The original Fillmore Auditorium was located in a San Francisco building originally built in 1912, and Graham began booking shows there in 1965. It eventually became the center of the San Francisco music scene, with incredible musical performances and famous light shows. But in 1968, because of the increasing deterioration of the neighborhood and the insufficient size of the space, Graham moved his focus to the newly christened “Fillmore West.” That venue, formerly the Carousel Ballroom, was briefly run in 1968 as a cooperative venture by the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Big Brother and the Holding Company, before Graham took ownership and began booking shows there. (The original Fillmore was, for a while, operated by a different company as the “New Old Fillmore.”) 

The name “Fillmore West” was chosen because earlier in 1968, Graham had taken over a derelict space in New York City originally built for the Yiddish theater in the mid-1920s, and opened it as the Fillmore East. That venue, like its West Coast sibling(s) became hugely popular and influential, with shows on multiple nights a week, typically triple bills at 8 and 11 pm. The Fillmore East also featured elaborate light shows. 

However, by1971, the economics of the music business was changing in favor of stadium and arena shows (boo!), and Graham decided to shutter both venues. The last concert at the Fillmore East was an invitation-only affair on June 27, 1971, featuring The Allman Brothers Band, The J. Geils Band, Albert King and special surprise guests (Edgar Winter's White Trash, Mountain, The Beach Boys, Country Joe McDonald). The Fillmore West closed on July 4, 1971, after five nights of concerts by 14 bands, mostly from the San Francisco area, including Santana, the Grateful Dead, Hot Tuna, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and the New Riders of the Purple Sage. 

The Fillmore West eventually became a Honda dealership, before becoming a music and event venue called SVN West. The Fillmore East went through a few other iterations as a music venue before becoming The Saint, a gay nightclub in the 1980s. The former lobby of the venue is now a bank, and the auditorium was demolished to build an apartment building. 

The original Fillmore became a punk venue, The Elite Club, before reopening under Graham’s management. It was damaged in an earthquake, and after Graham died in 1991, it was repaired and reopened as The Fillmore. Live Nation operates the venue and has rebranded a number of theaters around the country with the Fillmore name, although in some cases, most notably at New York’s Irving Plaza, it didn’t take. 

Although 1971 was a bad year for the Fillmores West and East, it was a good year for albums recorded at the venues. On May19, 1971, Aretha Live at Fillmore West was released. It had been recorded there in March, and included a number of covers of current popular music. It’s pretty great, featuring, in addition to the amazing Franklin, King Curtis on sax, leading a band that included, among others, Billy Preston, Cornell Dupree, Bernard Purdie, and the Memphis Horns. And there’s a duet with Ray Charles. During the same shows, King Curtis’s band, which was also the opening act, recorded its performances (mostly covers), and they were released as Live at Fillmore West in August. Tragically, a week after its release, Curtis was stabbed to death in New York. 

If there’s one album that rock fans associate with the Fillmore East, it is the Allman Brothers’ At Fillmore East, recorded there in March, 1971 and released on July 6, 1971. I’m not really sure what else to say about this album that hasn’t been said better by others. Suffice to say that it is one of the greatest live rock albums of all time, and probably just one of the best rock albums of all time (which is why when I picked one song to feature above, it was from that album). In 2004, the album was selected for preservation in the Library of Congress, deemed to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important" by the National Recording Registry. 

In June, 1971, The Mothers (formerly known as The Mothers of Invention, led by Frank Zappa) recorded performances at the Fillmore East (and some additional performances in May in Michigan), for Fillmore East-June 1971, released in August. It is raunchy and juvenile, and while it has some good music, really hasn’t aged well. 

Humble Pie, which featured Steve Marriott and Peter Frampton, recorded performances at the Fillmore East in May, 1971, and released Performance Rockin’ The Fillmore in November, 1971. I can’t say that I’m at all familiar with it, although I have a vague sense that I’ve heard the single from it, “I Don’t Need No Doctor.” Before the album was released, Frampton left the band for a few years of minimal success before he came alive, briefly.

TITLES & HONORIFICS: WE THREE KINGS.........

So many titles, so little time, so I thought I would cheat and sling in a threefer, three for the price of one, choosing three heads of royalty of differing style and background. Of course, there are many Kings in music, even if we discount those with the surname King. So no Albert, Ben E. or B.B. And I thought I would stick to titles rather than honourifics, so no Kings of Pop, Delta Blues or even the.

King Curtis may be an unfamiliar name to many, albeit probably not here, but the diversity of his career and the broadness of his legacy surpasses many better known names. His given name, Curtis Ousley is even less well known. As a child in the sixties, and teen in the seventies, my first awareness of him was his raw honking on John Lennon's Imagine album, especially on 'It's So Hard'. Subtle it ain't, and though he became best known for his aggressive and rasping sound, it wasn't always so. His early influences were in jazz, with his joining Lionel Hampton's band instead of taking up a music scholarship, before branching into sessions. One early piece of work was with Buddy Holly, 'Reminiscin'', for which Holly gave him the songwriting credit. Mixing his own work, with several successful singles of his own, alongside working as a bandleader for, amongst others, Aretha Franklin, he continued still to find plenty of session work. Tragically he was killed in 1971, being stabbed in a fracas with a couple of dealers he heard arguing outside his front door. The song below, made before his death, gave him a grammy for best R&B instrumental, featuring also the late Duane Allman on guitar.

King Tubby is a name associated more as a producer and re-mixer, that being his metier. Unarguably one of the fathers of dub, that studio process of vast and sudden echoes and repeats clattering around a soundscape, entire instruments dropping randomly in and out, all underpinned by subterranean basslines. I bloody love it and, the older I get, so I can't get enough. (Plus it is the golden guarantee of getting a crying baby off to sleep, rocking in your arms to some of Kingston's finest.) Tubby or Neil Fraser as he was known to his mother, is seen largely the instigator of this style, working out of his studio from the late 50s, evolving the format over the next decade or so. Principally derived within and from reggae, in more recent times it has become a much loved tool of re-mixers, some of Tubby's disciples, notably the Mad Professor applying the same techniques to dance and electronica. Here, another of his acolytes, Scientist, explains the roots of dub. Sadly, and worryingly for my 3rd King, Tubby was also murdered, this time shot, and also on his front porch.

So we have had some gold and some frankincense. So it must be creosote time. Or King Creosote, aka Kenny Anderson, from the Kingdom of Fife, in Scotland. An astonishingly busy career has seen him start and run his own record label, produce and collaborate with any number of other artists and release over 40 recordings of his own, all by his half-century. Most has, however, been under any mainstream radar, however world famous in his own backyard.  Through his Fence Collective he was able to nurture local talent and one famous graduate of that scene is K.T. Tunstall. Other names such as James Yorkston and onetime business partner, Johnny Lynch, aka Pictish Trail, have also had some wider exposure. Creosote himself gradually has become more widely known, in part through his soundtrack work, notably 'From Scotland With Love', and through his work with electronica artist Jon Hopkins. More recently still, his last record, 'Astronaut Meets Appleman', in 2016, featured in many best of year lists, including my own, his mix of a whimsical and emphatically scottish folk sensibility with a motorik rhythm, effortlessly crossing many a barrier of genre. Here's my review of him live in 2017. Give him some eartime and spread his word wider. (Plus he is still alive!)

Curtis.
Tubby.
Creosote.

Standards: A Whiter Shade Of Pale

King Curtis: A Whiter Shade Of Pale

[purchase]

I remember the wonder I experienced when I first heard “A White Shade Of Pale” as an 11-year-old, a decade after it was first released. It’s a wonder I retain to this day. Never mind the wilfully impenetrable lyrics employing nautical metaphor to describe a seduction, it is the melody that arouses in me (as it were) a peculiar feeling, one of yearning and unease and, oddly, comfort. Like other Procol Harum favourites, such as “Homburg” or “Salty Dog”, it’s gothic and just a bit creepy.

King Curtis instrumental version of the song, recorded in early March 1971 at San Francisco’s Fillmore West with his group The Kingpins (Aretha Franklin’s backing band), retains that strange beauty, but displaces Procol Harum’s gothic sensibility with a soulful vibe. It later featured in the opening credits of the British cult movie Withnail And I (set in 1969, two years before Curtis’ recording).

Live At Fillmore West was released in August 1971. A week later, King Curtis was stabbed to death in New York by junkies whom he had asked to move from his property. He was 37.

Curtis died just as jazz fusion was making headway. One wonders how things might have panned out for him. He might have set an agenda quite different to that of fellow saxophonist Grover Washington Jr (never mind the even smoother David Sanborn). He surely would have been aghast at the later popularity of the elevator sax stylings of Kenny G, who has almost single-handedly robbed the great instrument of its street-cred.