The core of the The Jazz Crusaders was high school bandmates Joe Sample, Nesbert “Stix” Hooper and Wilton Felder, who started a Texas R&B/bebop-jazz band in the mid-50s. By 1960 they’d recruited Wayne Henderson, Hubert Laws and Henry Wilson to form The Modern Jazz Sextet. A move to L.A., a recording contract and a name change led to nearly a decade of solid bop and traditional jazz with R&B and swing flavors, including the July 2, 1965 release Chile Con Soul. With its Latin underpinnings and danceable rhythms, Chile Con Soul is a prime example of the fluid music laid down by The Jazz Crusaders in their peak years. But while the jazz world loved them, widespread appeal was elusive until the group broke for a year and returned as The Crusaders in 1971. Thereafter, a string of terrific albums (1972’s Free As The Wind is highly recommended by your Doctor) and four charting singles made the Crusaders one of the top instrumental jazz/funk/soul/dance fusion bands of the 70s. (Chile Con Soul is available as a CD and mp3 tracks on Amazon. A Crusaders playlist is in the works for Dr. Rock’s Playlist Vault^TM.)

The Band spent the better part of the 60s backing rock ‘n’ roller Ronnie Hawkins and later Bob Dylan before venturing out on their own and releasing their debut album, Music From Big Pink, on July 1, 1968. Coming in the midst of the jingly pop, heavy psychedelia and nascent progressive rock of the late 60s, Big Pink was unlike anything anyone else was playing at that time.  It offered a counterculture of its own, with simple, informal, heartfelt songs steeped in American lore and tradition, subtle instrumentation without hyper-amplified guitars and booming percussion, unflashy harmonies and lyrics that wove stories of love, despair, country life and down-home values. Though The Band comprised four Canadians and one Arkansas farmboy, their combination of folk, gospel, country and rock ‘n’ roll music created the foundations for American roots rock in the 70s and 80s. A truly revolutionary album from the moment of its release, it became an instant and enduring classic in rock music, similar in impact and influence to Sgt. Pepper’s but completely different in style and substance. (Music From Big Pink is available as a CD and mp3 tracks on Amazon and as iPod tracks on iTunes. The Band can be found in Dr. Rock’s Playlist Vault^TM.)

Queen entered the 1980’s riding the crest of the operatic, tongue-in-cheek hard-rock wave they created through five mega-albums and numerous Top 20 singles between 1974 and 1978. But The Game (released June 30, 1980) represented a sonic departure from those immensely successful years.  Gone was the promise of “no synthesizers were used on this album,” as the previous album liner notes had proclaimed. Instead, The Game included synthesizers galore, spun in with disco beats (“Another One Bites The Dust”), rockabilly (“Crazy Little Thing Called Love”) and power balladry (the reworked “Save Me”). The olio of different sounds and beats created a less edgy, more pop sound than the previous albums, and sustained the surge of Queen hits into the 80s. The Game is arguably one of the best in the Queen catalog, and it’s available as a CD and mp3 tracks on Amazon and as iPod tracks on iTunes. You’ll find Dr. Rock’s Top 25 Queen songs in the Playlist Vault^TM.

Pink Floyd’s second outing, A Saucerful Of Secrets is one of the great psychedelic albums of the 60s. Released on June 29, 1968, it marked the group’s move away from the shorter, more concise psych-pop songs written by Syd Barrett on their debut album 10 months earlier. It also was the beginning of the end for Barrett as a member, chief songwriter, lead guitarist and de facto leader of the band. In early 1968, David Gilmour was recruited to provide stability at lead guitar while Barrett slowly dissolved into mental illness; he was out of the band by mid-1968 and his only contribution to A Saucerful… was the trippy, upbeat “Jugband Blues.” From that point on, Pink Floyd began the astral, progressive art-rock voyage that would culminate in the massive hit album, The Dark Side Of The Moon in 1973.  (A Saucerful Of Secrets is available as a CD and mp3 tracks on Amazon and as iPod tracks on iTunes. My take on Pink Floyd’s best work is in the Playlist Vault^TM.)

Happy Birthday this week to:

Producer/songwriter/arranger/session keyboardist Donny Hathaway was one of the stars of the expanding soul universe in the early 70s. He worked behind Aretha Franklin and many others, was a member of Curtis Mayfield’s band in support of Mayfield’s group, the Impressions, scored TV and film soundtracks, and, most notably, sang duets with college classmate Roberta Flack, including their album Donny Hathaway & Roberta Flack, which featured R&B chart hits “You’ve Got A Friend,” “Baby I Love You,” and the Top 10 sweet ballad “Where Is The Love.” Released on June 18, 1973 at the height of his career, Hathaway’s Extension Of A Man proved to be his grand finale as a solo artist, a broad ranging opus of varying styles: soul, gospel, light jazz-funk and classical symphony. Sadly, Hathaway never recorded again and took his life in 1978 at the age of 33. (Extension Of A Man is available as a CD and mp3 tracks on Amazon and as iPod tracks on iTunes).

Back on June 12, I said that John Lennon’s “Women Is The Nigger Of The Word’ is the most controversial lead-off track on any album ever. Now I’ll suggest that Van Halen’s June 17, 1991 release, For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge is the most controversial album title of all time (don’t get it, try the acronym). So why would any self-respecting rock band so obviously and smugly name an album so? Reasons: no one complained in 1991 (as opposed to 19 years earlier against Lennon), the multi-billionaires in the band had no self-respect, the name generated a few million bucks in added promotion and record sales, it attracted lots of groupie attention, and it resulted in many drunken high-fives among the band for having the collective chutzpah to do it (let’s not forget that Capitol Records agreed to, imprinted and distributed the beast).

At the end of the day, however, hard rock fans will remind us puritans that F.U.C.K. is still good stuff.  It’s the third ‘Halen album with Sammy Hagar pulling lead guitar strings, a start-to-finish classic guitar rock album, #1 in the U.S. (#12 in Britain), and, despite lacking a single (although “Right Now” is typically sharp ‘Halen rock), it's a stand-out in the wasteland of early 90s hard rock. (F.U.C.K. is available as a CD and mp3 tracks on Amazon and as iPod tracks on iTunes. VH is featured in Dr. Rock’s Playlist Vault).

The Smiths are frequently hailed as the definitive alternative rock band of the 80s, and their third studio album, The Queen Is Dead (June 16, 1986), is often called a masterpiece. While either is arguable, all the more interesting is the fact that the band never created more than a limited cult following in the U.S. despite having one #1 and three #2 albums in the U.K. for the four studio LP’s they released between early 1984 and late 1987. Led by frontman/lyricist/vocalist (Stephen Patrick) Morrissey and guitarist Johnny Marr, the Smiths became the counterweight to the synth-pop and over-produced New Wave pop in early 80s post-punk England when their eponymous debut came out in 1984. Just over two years later, and despite personnel issues (read: drug problems), management disputes (no manager could work with Morrissey and Marr) and haggling with their record company (independent label Rough Trade), The Queen Is Dead pushed them to the pinnacle of their brief career. Fifteen months and one more album were all that was left; Marr insisted on disbanding the group for artistic reasons, and he and Morrissey went their separate ways. (The Queen Is Dead is available as a CD and mp3 tracks on Amazon and as iPod tracks on iTunes).

Although Rolling Stone magazine called her “one of the most important songwriters of her time,” Jackie DeShannon (born Sharon Lee Myers) never achieved the huge commercial success with the more than 20 albums she recorded (fourteen between 1963 and 1970) over her 40 year career behind the microphone. Her June 15, 1971 release, Songs, is one of her best and it’s filled with pop songs with gospel and country flavors and minimal production efforts. But DeShannon is known far less for her albums than for the series of MOR pop hits she penned for others in the 60s, most notably “Needles And Pins” and “When You Walk In The Room,” her cover of Burt Bacharach’s “What The World Needs Now Is Love” (#7 in 1965), her own “Put A Little Love In Your Heart” (#4 in 1969), and “Bette Davis Eyes,” which became a huge hit for Kim Carnes in the early 80s. (Songs is available as a CD and mp3 tracks on Amazon and as iPod tracks on iTunes).

On the surface, Workingman’s Dead seems to be a radical departure from the free-flowing psychedelic improvisational pieces that characterized the early Grateful Dead. But it’s not. The album, released on June 14, 1970, is a departure only in the sense that it strips away the spaced-out, electric jam and focuses on the underlying music that is at the heart of the 60s/70s Dead: rock with a blend of country, bluegrass, blues and folk influences. The move was a return to the Dead’s roots; after all, the band’s earliest incarnations were The Thunder Mountain Tub Thumpers and Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions, in which founding members Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and Ron “Pigpen” McKernan played a folk-bluegrass mix at coffee houses around the San Francisco area. By 1965 they’d changed their name to The Warlocks and the long, strange trip had begun.

Workingman’s Dead includes two (“Uncle John’s Band” and “Casey Jones”) tracks that, along with others from the follow-up album, American Beauty, received extensive FM radio airplay in the 70s and 80s and broadened the band’s appeal beyond the hardcore Deadheads. Curiously, though both American Beauty (#258) and Workingman’s Dead (#262) are included in Rolling Stones’ 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, only Workingman’s Dead made the magazine’s Top 200 list. Most rock fans, and likely most Deadheads, would have it the other way around.  (Workingman’s Dead is available as a CD and mp3 tracks on Amazon and as iPod tracks on iTunes. The Dead playlist is included in Dr. Rock’s Playlist Vault).

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The lead-off track is “Woman is The Nigger Of The World.” That alone should qualify Some Time In New York City as the most controversial of all the dozen solo albums issued by the four ex-Beatles in the post-breakup early 70s, and arguably one of the most controversial records of all time. John Lennon’s June 12, 1972 release was miles to the left of the sappy pop-rock Paul McCartney and country-rock tinged Ringo Starr albums of the time, and far more blatant than the mystical but still pop-leaning George Harrison. Self-absorbed Lennon was also a late comer in the singer/songwriter/protestor club which Phil Ochs, Bo Dylan and countless others pioneered in the mid-60s but which had splintered broadly by the early 70s. Time In New York City was released after the single unifying great protest theme of the 60s (Vietnam) was diluted by endless flavors of the month, leaving John to rail about such topical but divergent issues as the feminist movement, the Attica prison uprising, drug incarcerations and oppression in Northern Ireland. What if John had kicked the “Love Me Do” habit a year or two earlier? What if he’d divorced Paul McCartney as a songwriting collaborator well before the Beatles breakup in 1970? What if he’d jumped from the Fab Four and into the protest genre in 1965 or 1966 rather than in 1972? We’ll never know, but at least we have the ugly Some Time In New York City to fuel our speculation. (Some Time in New York City is available as a CD and mp3 tracks on Amazon and as iPod tracks on iTunes. John Lennon is in Dr. Rock’s Playlist Vault).

Though not nearly as well-known to the casual reggae listener as his early mentor, Bob Marley, Burning Spear is a giant in reggae music and the musical spokesman for the Rastafari movement.  Born Winston Rodney, he uses the moniker of Jomo Kenyatta, the rebel leader and first president of an independent Kenya. But his true devotion is to the teachings of Jamaican-born activist Marcus Garvey, who promoted African unity and self-determination for all of African descent and led the “back to Africa” crusade. Throughout his 45+ year Grammy-winning career, Burning Spear has never strayed from his own messages of love, hope, peace and, above all, Garvey’s preaching on the black experience of slavery, dislocation and repatriation. Those messages are steeped in Social Living (released today in 1980), on which four song titles use Garvey’s name and where the roots-reggae music drifts along in a heavy but pleasurable way. (Social Living is available as a CD and mp3 tracks on Amazon and as iPod tracks on iTunes).

Unless you’re a Heads nut, when you think of the Talking Heads, you likely hear “Psycho Killer” and “Take Me To The River” from their first two LP’s. Truth is, the latter half of the band’s catalog is where the Heads developed the critical and audience acclaim that makes them one of the top post-punk new wave bands of the 80s.  Every one of their last five studio albums made it into the U.S. Top 20 (including, but just barely, Little Creatures, #20, released June 10, 1985) and each accounted for at least one Top 25 single (in this case, three: “And She Was,” “Road To Nowhere,” and “Stay Up Late”). The music here has a simpler pop-rock and sometimes country sound, far more than any of their other albums, but still retains the darker eccentricities of the earlier works which launched the group in the first place.  (Little Creatures is available as a CD and mp3 tracks on Amazon and as iPod tracks on iTunes. The Talking Heads are in Dr. Rock’s Playlist Vault).

The Bonzo Dog Band should fit nicely into the One Hit Wonder category. They had one lone single (“I’m The Urban Spaceman,” #5 in Britain in 1968), they were otherwise unknown, and their recording career was short and unremarkable (at least to the general public). That’s all true, but there’s far more to the band than that one hit. Formed in the early sixties by college art students Roger Spear and Rodney Slater as the Bonzo Dog Dada Band, the group concentrated on jazz and covers of 20s and 30s cabaret/vaudeville music, interlaced with wry comedy, spoofs and send-ups. A name change (Dada became Doo-Dah), new member Neil Innes, more gags and musical parodies and a shift toward psychedelia and pop-rock caught the attention of Paul McCartney, who produced the Innes-written “I’m The Urban Spaceman” under the pseudonym Apollo C. Vermouth. A final name change (Doo-Dah to Dog) and their June 9, 1969 release Urban Spaceman brought the band to the peak of their popularity as a unique mix of music and bizarre comedy, something akin to a mash up of The Mothers of Invention and the Firesign Theater. (Urban Spaceman is available as a CD and mp3 tracks on Amazon and as iPod tracks on iTunes).

Bobby Womack’s nearly 50 year career in rock and R&B includes a slew of hits on both the pop and R&B chart in the 60s and 70s. He’s been a member of several groups, a solo artist and a back-up guitarist to the likes of Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Sly and the Family Stone and Janis Joplin. As a songwriter, he’s written or co-written dozens of impressive soul/funk songs, scored a full movie soundtrack (Across 110^th Street) and penned two rock hits, “It’s All Over Now” for the Rolling Stones in 1965 and “Lookin’ For A Love” by the J. Geils Band in 1971. But despite the hits and the accolades, he never achieved the level of recognition of his peers like original mentor, Sam Cooke and his close friend Wilson Pickett, nor of contemporary R&B/soul stars like Isaac Hayes and Curtis Mayfield. Though not his best, The Facts Of Life (June 8, 1973) is pure Womack, alternatingly smooth and gritty, tender and rough. It also features “Natural Man,” his take on Franklin’s “You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman.” (A Bobby Womack retrospective is planned for Dr. Rock’s Playlist Vault^TM, and The Facts Of Life is available as a CD and mp3 tracks on Amazon and as iPod tracks on iTunes).

Happy Birthday this week to: 

The Kinks never achieved the fame and glory of their fellow 60s British rockers The Stones, The Who and Led Zeppelin. They did have a series of Top 10 singles and albums in England and four top U.S. singles through the early 70s, but their mostly light, nostalgic pop-rock and ballads became dated as punk-rock took over in the middle of the decade. From 1977 through the mid-80s, however, they morphed into a harder-edged rock band and enjoyed a resurgence of popularity in the U.S. on the strength of six solid LPs, including the double-live album One For The Road, which came out on June 4, 1980. The album was woven from concerts in 1979 and 1980 primarily at our near major Northeastern U.S. universities, although several tracks came from a show in Zurich in November 1979. It demonstrates the influence leader Ray Davies, his brother Ray and the rest of the Kinks had on the first British Invasion, the birth of hard rock in the late 60s, punk-rock in the 70s, and the next wave of British rockers in the 90s.  (The Kinks are in Dr. Rock’s Playlist Vault^TM, and One For The Road is available as a CD and mp3 tracks on Amazon and as iPod tracks on iTunes).

Obscured By Clouds (released June 3, 1972 in the U.K., June 15 in the U.S.) was the last of Pink Floyd’s seven LP’s before Dark Side Of The Moon made them international rock deities. To that point, the band had enjoyed widespread success in the U.K. but little beyond cult status in the U.S. All seven pre-Dark Side albums made it into the British top 10. In the U.S., Obscured fared the best yet only peaked at #46. Written as the soundtrack to the move “Le Vallee” (“The Valley”) by Barbet Schroeder, it’s a dreamy, spacey affair in which the band introduced synthesizers and electronics.  With the exception of the upbeat rocker “Free Four,” the dark, somber sounds on Obscured foreshadow Pink Floyd's next release, one which would change their fortunes dramatically. (Pink Floyd is in my Playlist Vault^TM, and Obscured is on Amazon and iTunes).