Author: Kim Simpson

“Wrong Side of the River” (1971) – Mott the Hoople * Written by Mick Ralphs * Produced by Mott the Hoople * LP: Wildlife * Label: Island (UK); Atlantic (US)  

Mott the Hoople took their name from a little-read novel about an outsider who considers becoming a normal Joe, or “hoople.” The name seemed to fit a group who ran in British glam circles, but whose foundational rock values connected them especially with the working class audiences in Cleveland and Detroit. They called their third album Wildlife, a testament to the earth themes running through the popular consciousness back then, which the music signifies mostly through the piano and acoustic guitar sounds on side one. Mick Ralph’s “Wrong Side of the River” is a highlight in 3/4, starting pensively then swelling into the types of organ-driven crescendos we’d heard on the band’s debut album. Rod Stewart would lift the opening piano phrase note-for-note for his “Baby Jane” (1983), assuming, perhaps, that he was merely mimicking an uncopyrightable “arrangement,” the way he’d done for “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy” with Bobby Womack’s “(If You Want My Love) Put Something Down on It.”

“Chapel of Love” – Bette Midler (1972) * Written by Jeff Berry, Ellie Greenwich, and Phil Spector * 45: “Friends” / “Chapel of Love” * LP: The Divine Miss M. * Produced by Barry Manilow, Geoffrey Haslam, and Ahmet Ertegun * Label: Atlantic

Bette Midler’s Divine Miss M introduced her as a cabaret attraction tailor-made for early seventies audiences who nursed sixties rock hangovers and craved nostalgia. Her updated takes on the Andrews Sisters’ “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” Bobby Freeman’s “Do You Wanna Dance,” and the Dixie Cups’ “Chapel of Love” (as a double A-side with “Friends”) all made the Top 40, and none of those leaned too far toward campiness to detract from the originals’ joyful spirit. (Camp factors are certainly crucial to their appeal, though. When Midler sings about “going to the chapel,” you imagine the gaudy Vegas quickie variety.) The album version of “Chapel of Love,” with its sashaying, Laura Nyro-style piano, outshines the 45’s alternate arrangement, which has too many flutes and things. Both versions include the closing tag borrowed from Don and Juan’s “What’s Your Name,” but only on the album track can you hear Midler declaring it a “pits ending.”

“Hamburger’s and Popcorn” (c. 1965) – Boozoo Chavis and His Zodico Accordian * Written by Eddie Shuler * 45: “Hamburger’s and Popcorn” / “Tee Black” * Label: Goldband Records

Judging from where its serial number falls in relation to other Goldband releases, this Boozoo Chavis record appeared circa 1965, although the session for it likely happened near the mid-fifties. Based in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Goldband owner Eddie Shuler enjoyed regional success in 1954 with Chavis’s “Paper in My Shoe.” Cuts like this one, though, must have been let loose in dribs and drabs, with Chavis having gone on a studio strike until the mid-eighties. When Chavis re-emerged, he did so as an acknowledged zydeco pioneer. A key part of Chavis’s appeal throughout his entire career was his musical looseness and unpredictability. Stories about the original Goldband sessions depict scenes of mayhem. The words on the label themselves tell stories too, with the misspelling of zydeco indicating it as a barely conceptualized genre at that point. The music’s lunacy is the sort that attracts “real thing” devotion, and since Shuler is the credited songwriter, one imagines a bizarre scenario of him actually sitting down and teaching it to Chavis.

“No More Auction Block” (1964) – The Goldebriars * Traditional arrangement by the Goldebriars * LP: The Goldebriars  * Produced by Bob Morgan * Label: Epic

“No More Auction Block,” also known as “Many Years Gone,” is a slavery song that’s been traced back to the 1830s as a possible musical rephrasing of the Roman Catholic hymn “O Sanctissima.” The early sixties folk revivalists knew the song, with Bob Dylan even reshaping the melody into his own “Blowin’ in the Wind.” (You can hear him do a 1962 live version of “No More Auction Block” on the first volume of his Bootleg series.) In 1964, a version of the song appeared on the debut album by the Goldebriars, a short-lived quartet who were led by Curt Boettcher before he’d gain lasting sunshine-pop cult status through his work with The Millennium and Sagittarius. Critics of folk revivalists complain about the sparkling sheen they imposed on traditional song, but here’s an example where such polish, with voices that meshed uncannily, equaled beauty.

“Muáto Muá N’gola” (1967) – Lilly Tchiumba * Traditional * EP: Canta Angola * Produced by Emilio C. Mateus * Label: RCA Victor/A Voz Do Dono

The late Angolan singer Lilly Tchiumba sang in the Kimbundu language on her recordings, all of them from the sixties and seventies. In 1975, the year Angola became independent from Portugal, the Monitor label made most of her songs available on a collection called Angola: Songs of My People, now available via Smithsonian Folkways. Why did Tchiumba stop recording? Recent interviews with her brother, the painter Eleutério Sanches (who recorded an EP with her in the late sixties) express a general sadness about her career, specifically lamenting that her records have never been properly remastered after so many years. The song “Muáto Muá N’gola” (“women of Angola”), with its decidedly Portuguese sound, first appeared on a 1967 EP called Canta Angola, then reappeared on the Monitor album mentioned above, whose liner notes sum up its lyrical content as follows: “All women of Angola should be respected no matter what their condition or social standing and they have the right to fight for their position in society.”

“Made My Bed: Gonna Lie In It” (1966) – The Easybeats * Written by George Young * US 45: “Friday on My Mind” / “Made My Bed: Gonna Lie In It” * Produced by Shel Talmy * Label: United Artists

Although the Easybeats were chart regulars back home in Australia, their only US Top 40 hit happened in 1966 with “Friday on My Mind” (#16 in Billboard). On the flipside was a track called “Made My Bed: Gonna Lie In It,” in which dirty deeds are taken ownership of. Did the song’s “tried so hard to be a man-a man-a man” hook get into Lou Reed’s head? Because its big vocalized V7 chord will remind you of the Velvet Underground’s “Who Loves the Sun.” And did the song’s main guitar riff intend to bring “Rhapsody in Blue” to mind? Easybeats guitarist George Young wrote “Made My Bed.” He’d later produce records for his two brothers Malcolm and Angus, who had a band called AC/DC, and who would never consider quoting Gershwin or singing a harmonized 7th chord.

“Ling, Ting, Tong” (1954) – The Five Keys * Written by Mable Godwin * 45: “Ling, Ting, Tong” / “I’m Alone” * Label: Capitol

The “Hong Kong” sound settles in early with a yangqin (Chinese hammered dulcimer) that is possibly just piano strings. Although the Five Keys (from Newport News, Virginia) kill it on this single, and its arrangement pops like fifties neon-lit Chinatown on Saturday night, the cartoonish cultural stereotype approach dooms it to the artifact bin. A 2010 Playstation video game called Mafia II, even so, has used it within the context of its subject’s already politically incorrect context. Songwriter Mable Goodwin (from Suffolk, Virginia) was a beloved mainstay as a singer and pianist at Arthur’s Tavern in Greenwich Village from 1960 to 1993. Her only additional writing credit of note was another politically incorrect boo boo recorded by the Five Keys: “Me Make Um Pow Wow.”

“I Just Want to See His Face” (1972) – The Rolling Stones * Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards * LP: Exile on Main Street * Produced by Jimmy Miller * Label: Rolling Stones Records

“I Just Want to See His Face,” which fades in and fades out near the end of side 3 on the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street, is like a moment when that album’s blood gets tested and American gospel is confirmed, indeed, to run through the album’s veins. Derek and the Dominos keyboardist Bobby Whitlock has claimed to have lost out on rightful album credits, describing the session as a Wurlitzer piano riff he concocted in response to Mick Jagger’s queries about his religious upbringing. Did Jagger also have the Rufus H. Cornelius 1916 hymn “Oh I Want to See Him” running through his mind, with its prominent “just to see his face” line in the chorus? Possible recordings of it that may have reached his ears include ones by Mother McCollum’s Sanctified Singers (1930), James Cleveland and the Cleveland Singers (1964), or the Famous Davis Sisters (1967). Whatever the case, Jagger would be stirring gospel into goat’s head soup while dancing with Mr. D. in 1973.