Category: 1965-1969

“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.

“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.

“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.

“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.

“I’m Flying Home” (1968) – Merrell Fankhauser and HMS Bounty * Written by Merrell Fankhauser * 45: “Girl (I’m Waiting for You)” / “I’m Flying Home” * Produced by Glen MacArthur, Jack Hoffman, and Norman Malkin * Label: Shamley

Merrell Fankhauser’s pleasurable late sixties/early seventies recordings with Fapardokly, HMS Bounty and Mu still fly below the radar, but they take tuned-in listeners from the sparkling Southern California of the mind (late sixties) to the mythical jungles of Hawaii (early seventies) and beyond to where UFOs hover. “I’m Flying Home” is a psych rock nugget that showed up on the flipside of an HMS Bounty single, in which it sounds like they’re actually spinning farther away from home by the second. Shamley Records was a very short-lived imprint that branched off of the Universal Studios label (UNI), which had taken over Alfred Hitchcock’s Shamley Productions in the mid-sixties.

“In the Midnight Hour” (1965) – Wilson Pickett * Written by Steve Cropper and Wilson Pickett * 45: “In the Midnight Hour” / “I’m Not Tired” * LP: In the Midnight Hour * Label: Atlantic

As a song, “In the Midnight Hour” is an irresistibly coverable soul primer. As a recording, Wilson Pickett’s original version is untouchable. The stories told about it involve uncredited producer Jerry Wexler demonstrating dance steps to insure that Al Jackson (drums), Steve Cropper (guitar), and Donald “Duck” Dunn (bass) would punch the backbeat hard on the 2 and 4. They also tell of Cropper and Pickett composing it in the Lorraine Motel (later the assassination site of Martin Luther King, Jr.), and of Cropper claiming to have secularized an early Pickett gospel recording that had also included the words “in the midnight hour.” (He was likely remembering Pickett’s already secular “I Found a Love” with the Falcons.) The record’s ultimate power, though, is Pickett’s vocal, which sounds like a man manipulating hurricane winds.

“I Want to See Him” (1967) – The Famous Davis Sisters * Written by Rufus H. Cornelius * LP: In My Room * Label: Savoy

In Ruth “Baby Sis” Davis, this Philadelphia gospel group had a lead singer with the sort of command that could calm a storm but also stir one up. This version of the 1916 Rufus H. Cornelius hymn came out in 1967, and although it’s not clear if it’s a recording that had gotten into Mick Jagger’s head for the Stones’ “I Just Want to See His Face,” it would speak well of him if it was.

“My Way” (1969) – Frank Sinatra * Written by Claude Francois, Gilles Thibaut, Jacques Revaux, Paul Anka * LP: My Way (Reprise, 1969) * 45: “My Way”/”Blue Lace” (Billboard #27, easy listening #2) * Produced by Sonny Burke * Arranged by Don Costa

Paul Anka took a melody from a song he’d heard in France and wrote the lyrics of a lifetime for Frank Sinatra, who had mentioned to Anka he was thinking of retiring. The song became something of a signature ball and chain for Sinatra, who kept on performing long past 1969. (Had he known “My Way” would someday turn into a deadly machismo-measuring tool in Filipino karaoke bars, he might have scrapped it altogether.) Sinatra famously insisted on doing his vocals in one take, which adds a fascination factor to his records. On this otherwise iconic version of “My Way,” though, the spell gets broken because of an obvious splice after the first chorus at 2:26.