Category: 1965-1969

“Duel at Diablo (Main Title)” (1966) – Neal Hefti * Written by Neal Hefti * LP: Duel at Diablo: Original Motion Picture Score * Label: United Artists

By 1966, the trumpeter and arranger Neal Hefti, having made a name for himself with Count Basie and Frank Sinatra, shifted his focus to film and TV scoring. Although his themes for The Odd Couple (1968) and Batman (1966) are his most enduring, other ones paired with lesser-known projects would nonetheless sport a certain trademark heft, shall we say. The Duel at Diablo theme is one of these, catchy and finger-snappy enough to work as a TV jingle. Instead, it accompanied one of the era’s more distinctly violent and emotionally complicated westerns. Based on Marvin H. Albert’s 1957 novel Apache Rising and featuring James Garner in perhaps his most sullen role, it grappled with the grim and messy reality of US/Indian relations and offered the viewer, whom it wore down with its relentless fighting and high body count, no convenient outs. When the snazzy theme kicks in for the closing credits, it feels like a tone-deaf maneuver, if not intended as outright mockery. What’s up with you? the peppy theme asks. It’s only a movie. (Duel at Diablo‘s opening sequence plays on a TV during Brian DePalma’s Carrie (1976), giving Hefti’s theme an opportunity to do double-mockery duty.)

“Hare Krishna Mantra Chant” (1966) – A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami * LP: Krishna Consciousness * Label: Happening Records

The charm of this 1966 album, one of the primary sources for the rise of Krishna consciousness beyond India (complete with an Allen Ginsberg endorsement on the back), is its simplicity. The message, as demonstrated in track one (presented here), and explained by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhubada himself on track two, is the inner peace one can find through chanting the holy names of Krishna. Prabhubada made enough of a countercultural impression that observers were liable to view him as just another contemporary religious cult figure, one of the many who paraded through lifestyle avenues of the late sixties and early seventies. In truth, Prabhubada was a Vedic scholar and guru with a communicative flair, an eye- and ear-catching branch from the Banyan tree of Hinduism that’s been flourishing for millennia.

“October Song” (1966) – The Incredible String Band * Written by Robin Williamson * Produced by Joe Boyd * LP: The Incredible String Band * Label: Elektra

With “October Song,” the hymn-like second track on the Incredible String Band’s 1966 debut album, Scotsman Robin Williamson introduces himself to the world as a bard with the ability to mystify, educate, and delight all at once. “Sometimes I want to murder time,” the 23 year-old sings of that most vexing human construct, “but mostly I just stroll along the path that he is taking.” Although the Incredible String Band album attracted positive notice in the British press, the initial trio split up after its release, with Williamson pursuing some of the Eastern musical yearnings he’d been expressing in song. He wound up in Morocco, where he amassed instruments and ran out of money; by the following year he’d be back in a duo with Mike Heron—another inventive songwriter with his own knack for expressing complexity as childlike wonder—for a series of remarkable late sixties albums. Continuing to defy/succumb to the passage of time, Williamson remains musically active.

“Home at Last” (1968) – James Brown * Written by Rudy Toombs * Produced by James Brown *  LP: Thinking About Little Willie John and Other Nice Things * Label: King

In his Godfather of Soul autobiography, James Brown writes of being in awe of Little Willie John and how his efforts to upstage the seasoned R&B hit maker at the Apollo Theater were crucial to his evolution as a performer. The rivalry forged a kinship that strengthened during their years as label mates at King. In the mid-sixties, John went to prison for manslaughter after an altercation at his own engagement party in Seattle. Brown worked to get him out on parole, only to see him put back after violating the terms (by leaving Washington state to visit Los Angeles). John’s 1968 death of illness while incarcerated hit Brown hard, prompting the release of Thinking About Little Willie John and Other Nice Things—one side of covers and one side of quickie instrumentals—the same year. A standout track is “Home at Last,” a 1956 R&B hit (#6) for John written by Rudy Toombs (who’d also penned the classics “Teardrops from My Eyes” and “One Mint Julep”). It’s a straightforward blues jumper about a “country girl” who fixes her man’s “breakfast, lunch, and dinner right on time,” but even in the act of paying tribute, James Brown works for the upstage, turning his version into the most memorable one. Listen to him scat at 4:00.

“That Lonely Feeling” (1965) – Dean Ford and the Gaylords * Written by John Carter and Ken Lewis * 45: “The Name Game” / “That Lonely Feeling” * Label: Columbia

This Scottish group became the Marmalade around 1966, right after which they recorded their “I See the Rain,” an alleged spark for Jimi Hendrix’s arrangement of “Hey Joe.” By 1968, they were a UK hit-making machine, with a cover of the Beatles’ “Ob-la-di Ob-la-da” reaching #1 in the UK and their elegiac “Reflections of My Life” (1970) reaching #10 in the US. As Dean Ford and the Gaylords, though, one of their standout tracks was a B-side called “That Lonely Feeling.” Although Scottish female duo the McKinleys had recorded it in 1963, this later version is a throwback slice of early Beatle balladry with a golden guitar solo.

“Jag Vill Ha En Hund, En Blå” (1969) – Jojje Wadenius * Written by Barbro Lindgren and Georg Wadenius * LP: Goda’ Goda’ * Produced by Anders Burman * Label: Metronome

In 1969, during the early stages of his career, the Swedish guitarist Georg Wadenius established a productive side persona for himself as “Jojje,” the children’s troubadour. The ensuing years would see him joining Blood, Sweat and Tears, touring with Steely Dan, and becoming a member of the Saturday Night Live house band (from 1979 to 1985) in addition to playing on and producing numerous records at home. The Jojje albums, though—especially the first one—have become canonical, a strong reason being that the songs didn’t just not drive parents crazy, but actually appealed to them. Listen to “Jag Vill Ha En Hund, En Blå,” a song about “wanting a blue dog if it doesn’t eat me first” to see for yourself. The children’s author Barbro Lindgren (no relation to Astrid), who was also just getting started with a celebrated career, collaborated with Wadenius on both the words and music.

“Pena” (1969) – Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band * Written by Don Van Vliet * LP: Trout Mask Replica * Produced by Frank Zappa * Label: Straight

In his 1998 memoir Lunar Notes: Zoot Horn Rollo’s Captain Beefheart Experience, Magic Band guitarist Bill Harkleroad gives a song-by-song overview of the Trout Mask Replica album that probably ought to be considered by anyone who’s about to write the next indictment of the divisive sixties-rock milestone. It will, at very least, remove a few layers of fog. His words about “Pena” have a lingering effect in that they discuss contributions by guitarist Jeff Cotton (aka Antennae Jimmy Semens). He was the adroit slide guitarist who would quit the band after getting his ribs broken in one of the band’s many Beefheart-manipulated melees (and who would later recover with Merrell Fankhauser’s sun-streaked band Mu). “Pena” is among the rare recitations not handled by the gravelly-voiced Captain himself. It’s Cotton we hear, who—after some preliminary “fast and bulbous” words by Beefheart and Victor Hayden (aka The Mascara Snake)—also does the disturbing background shrieks. “It hurt [Cotton’s] voice so bad he’d be in tears at the end of making whatever that sound was,” writes Harkleroad. “He had barely made it and was almost choking by the end” (p. 44).