Author: Kim Simpson

“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.

“Enduring” (2008) – Zhao Muyang * CD: The East Is Red

In the ’90s, Zhao Muyang made a name for himself among Chinese rock fans as the firecracker drummer for the thrash metal band Overload. In the late ’00s, he transitioned into an acoustic guitar-playing folksinger whose full-throated vocals drew from Northwestern Chinese folk traditions. A CD of his from 2008—hard to find outside of Muyang’s homeland—translates to The East Is Red, and it starts out with three fully-formed standard bearers of how you imagine Chinese folk rock ought to sound. Acoustic instruments dance over percussive heartbeats with an alluring pipa out front. The album’s other six tracks, though, are strummed guitar and voice offerings that make for less riveting of a listen for foreign ears. One of the first three songs, “Enduring,” now appears on a new compilation on the Riverboat label called Lost in China: Off the Beaten Track from Beijing to Xinjiang (2017), which gathers twelve tracks from the past decade-and-a-half’s Chinese folk rock revival.

“Banana Splits (The Tra La La Song)” (1978) – The Dickies * Written by Mark Barkan and Richie Adams * 45: “Banana Splits” / “Hideous” / “Got It at the Store” * Produced by John Hewlett * Label: A&M * Charts: UK singles (#7)

The Dickies, from San Fernando Valley, presented themselves as punk parodists, but when you listen to any one of their zippy tracks all the way through, they inevitably treat you to a moment of sublime realization that they’re celebrating their subjects—not mocking them. On this rip-through of the late sixties kiddie show theme (which had reached #69 in Billboard in ’69), for example, two guitars harmonize over the song’s moody VII^b chord, propelling the whole thing upward as an offering of thanks to the trash culture gods. Their hooky approach and stage presence had more in common with UK bands like the Damned and the Rezillos than with anything else going on in LA; not surprisingly, they’d hit the British Top Ten (#7) with “Banana Splits” while never charting in the US. (The Banana Splits show indeed ran on British tellies for summer programming during the early seventies.) In 2010, the record turned up in the Kick-Ass movie soundtrack.

“Coldness of the Water” (1992) – Kurtis Gross * Written by Errol Duke (The Growler) * CD: Sing De Chorus: Calypso from Trinidad and Tobago * (Executive) Produced by Amelia S. Haygood

Sing De Chorus is a Trinidadian stage show written by Rawle Gibbons and Simeon L. Sandiford, and it’s built around the songs of classic calypso composers and performers from the 1930s and 1940s, such as Lord Executor, The Roaring Lion, and The Growler. Musical director Desmond Waithe leads an ensemble whose acoustic sound is far too absent from modern day calypso. The liner notes don’t identify specific songs with singers, although a 2013 CD on the Faluma label that combines these Sing De Chorus tracks with another production called De Roaring 70s sorts it all out. (One of the featured singers is the late Brian Honore, who was a well-loved “Midnight Robber” in carnival performances.) Kurtis Gross does the vocal on “Coldness of the Water,” a version of a song written and recorded by The Growler (Errol Duke) in 1939, in which he seems to be lamenting his decision to get baptized because of the water’s low temperature. Alternate layers of meaning certainly apply. 

“Stairway to Heaven” (1972) – Led Zeppelin * Written by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant * LP: Led Zeppelin IV * Produced by Jimmy Page * Label: Atlantic

The most powerful records will get dragged ad infinitum through the cultural shredder but somehow survive with their core aesthetics, messages, and attractions intact. “Stairway to Heaven,” Led Zeppelin’s mystic epic from their fourth album, is a case in point. Too long at eight minutes to be released as a 45, the song nonetheless racked up enough uncut airplay on FM and AM hit radio stations to qualify for burned-out status by the mid-seventies. Its enchantments persist to the present day, though, where lawyers keep poking at it to see if money will come out. Its connection with Spirit’s “Taurus” is the latest courtroom controversy, but is the Chocolate Watchband, whose “And She’s Lonely” presents a stronger case, waiting in the wings? And what happens after that? Unfortunate TV or movie associations? Ill-advised cover versions? Yes, all of that and them some. But your memories of that guitar intro drifting out from your glowing radio in the dark many years ago will always remain safe.

“Walking in Jesus Name” (1952) – The Stewart Four * Writer unknown * 78: “On the Battlefield” / “Walking in Jesus Name” * Label: Church of God in Christ

Emerging from the contradictory little trail of written info about this 78 is a consensus that it appeared in 1952 when young Sylvester Stewart, later to be known as Sly Stone, was nine years old. The lone voice you hear is his, and so, too, might be the guitar, but that might also assume overdubbing. Would such studio layering be going on in a genre and era in which direct recording was the norm? Stewart’s shy but soulful delivery is a marvel, and it sounds like he’s right up close to the mic and trying not to wake anybody up. It’s an unusual sound in the exultant gospel realm, but it foretells the quirky in-your-ear vocals we’d later hear on There’s a Riot Goin’ On. The other side of the record lets us hear the other Stewart siblings (Rose, Freddie, and Vaetta—each of whom would later take part in their big brother’s Family Stone band) singing backup. Look at a photo of the four siblings with mother Alpha Stewart at the piano as you listen.

“Muirsheen Durkin” (1967) – The Dubliners * Arr. by the Dubliners * LP: More of the Hard Stuff * Produced by Tommy Scott

“Muirsheen Durkin” is sung from the point of view of an Irish potato digger hellbent on transforming himself into a Californian gold digger circa 1849. As folk songs are apt to do, it’s taken different shapes over time—the melody likely came from a dance reel called “Pretty Girls of Mayo,” while a similar song called “Molly Durkin” circulated among Irish Americans in the 1940s from a record by Murty Rabbett. A 1966 45 of “Muirsheen Durkin” by John McEvoy (credited to “The Rambler” on the label) reached #1 on the UK singles chart, but this version by the Dubliners—who were already Irish folk legends by 1967—ought to be considered definitive. Watch them perform it on the Ed Sullivan Show in March 1968 (linked below). Lead singer Luke Kelly personifies the song’s determined immigrant character and you don’t doubt that he will, in fact, make a name for himself in Amerikay. (Was he not performing right then on that nation’s highest rated TV show?) Ronnie Drew, meanwhile, plays the intimidator behind Kelly’s right shoulder, while the other three Dubliners hold forth as gnomish reinforcements.

“I’m a Little Mixed Up” (1961) – Betty James * Written by Betty James and Clarence Johnson * 45: “I’m a Little Mixed Up” / “Help Me to Find My Love” * Produced by Clarence Johnson and Joe Evans * Label: Cee Jay/Chess

The story goes that Cee Jay label owners Clarence Johnson and Joe Evans heard Betty James in a Baltimore night club and got her in the studio post haste. At the club they’d probably heard something similar to “I’m a Little Mixed Up,” with its crackling guitar hook, courtesy of a man we only know as “Betty James’s husband.” The resulting single became a regional hit and got picked up by Chess Records to become a part of its abundant legacy. The rest is murky history—James would only record one more single in 1966, also with Chess. (She released a single previous to “I’m a Little Mixed Up” with another label in 1960 under her real name, Nadine Renaye). James is apparently still alive, and if so, that should help you look past your “just leave it alone” response to Diana Krall’s 2012 cover and feel glad that money’s being made for her as the co-writer. A Louisville singer named Cosmo kicked up the guitar line to radioactive levels in his own 1961 cover version with a band called the Carnations.