For the past month or so, I have been re-discovering her early albums, hearing what came after 1978’s Nested, pouring over Michele Kort’s biography of her, building a massive playlist on Spotify of her music and everything that circled around her universe, all to ponder why her music moves me so much as well as so many others and to try to write an essay that pulls it all together. It’s the kind of project that seems tailor-made for Substack, breaking all the rules of online writing and letting the muse run wild. It is the most invigorating thing I have done here on Substack.

The below is the first part of what will be a three-party essay on Laura Nyro, and it is the longest piece of writing I have ever done. Part one is about 6,400 words. Because of the length, I’ve only included a few music clips. I hope you enjoy it and I also hope you’ll tell me your thoughts about Laura Nyro too.

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Collaboration April: Since I was last in touch, collaborations with two of my favourite MusicStackers have dropped. I took part in ’s Five for Friday sharing my pick for a diabolical earworm. I also took part in ’s Vital Records series and filmed myself last fall walking and talking in New York about three albums that radiate my love for NYC. Both pair very nicely with the start of my Laura Nyro essay.

The Laura Nyro Experience (Part One)
By: Robert C. Gilbert

“I don’t want to sock it to the people. I just want to put my music out there and if they like it they’ll come to me.” - Laura Nyro to producer Bones Howe, June 1968

Once, and only once, did Laura Nyro go along with the emerging formula that was turning her songs into hit records. It was the middle of June in 1968 and the song was one she had written in the aftermath of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

‘Save the Country’ is a call for and a belief in deliverance, of the hope of being baptized in “the glory river” where Dr. Martin Luther King presides, of collectively pledging “to keep the dream of the two young brothers”—Robert F. and President John F. Kennedy—and channeling anger to “take me to the glory goal.”

Its imagery is far beyond the simple platitudes of peace and understanding but it is also free of cynicism. It foreshadows how Nyro would increasingly focus on social and political issues like women’s and animal rights as well as the environment and also how her writing during her first glorious era, a time period stretching from 1966 to 1972, cut as deep into the marrow of life as anyone ever had before or since.

For reasons not entirely clear, Nyro agreed to go to California to record ‘Save the Country’ with producer Bones Howe and the musicians known today as the Wrecking Crew, including bassist Joe Osborn and drummer Hal Blaine.

It was Howe who was at the helm when the 5th Dimension, a male-female harmony group whose music defied easy categorization (was it soul or was it pop or was it even jazz) and who were the first to popularize the songs of Jimmy Webb, a songwriter whose songs also resisted easy labelling, recorded Nyro’s ‘Stoned Soul Picnic’ and ‘Sweet Blindness.’ Days before she entered the studio with Howe, the group’s version of ‘Stoned Soul Picnic’ peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100. It was the first of many times that a Laura Nyro song would ride high on the charts, her songbook becoming a fount of good luck for artists looking for a hit single save for Nyro herself.

The 5th Dimension’s recording of ‘Stoned Soul Picnic’ is faithful to the version Nyro recorded for her second album, Eli and the Thirteenth Confession. It retains the primary motif, although it is played on organ as opposed to piano, as well as her knotty harmonic shifts. The sound is broader with more prominent parts for strings and brass as are the group's harmonies. Even with these differences, the feel of the two recordings is similar. Both are sublime. This general faithfulness to Nyro’s original vision proved to be the exception and indeed, Howe’s reimagining of ‘Sweet Blindness’ takes her ecstatic celebration of being buzzed and twisted it into a fairly conventional pop song with peppy brass and exaggerations of her tempo and meter shifts, ultimately turning her song into a kind of burlesque. It’s a decent recording, to be sure, but one that is a cheap imitation of the rich material Howe was adapting.

‘Save the Country’ was even richer and it is fascinating to hear Nyro sing against Blaine’s cheery drums and bright brass declarations. The beat positively skips, especially on the refrain and Nyro’s vocal echoes that almost innocent cadence.

Amidst the gloss there are some startling qualities: the two measures after the first and second verses where Blaine plays a fill on brushes and the rush of the tempo as she sings, “keep the dream of the two young brothers” with ”dream” sustained for an extra bar or two. Here are two more: the horn lines underline rather than comment on what Nyro is singing and the piano part, played by either her or another musician, is indistinct (it’s barely audible). Howe’s ‘Save the Country’ is then a recording by Laura Nyro that didn’t sound like how a recording by Laura Nyro was expected to sound.

She characterized Howe’s approach as trying to “sock it to the people.” What she wanted to do was something far different: “I just want to put my music out there and if they like it they will come to me.” ‘Save the Country’ was released just over two weeks after it was recorded. It did not chart. Years later, Howe admitted he had approached working with her all wrong: he tried to shape Laura Nyro’s music as opposed to her music shaping how he could realize it on record.

Her sole appearance on network television, an episode of Kraft Music Hall from mid-January 1969, further illustrated this tension between trying to place Nyro within the mold of the female singer and realizing that the mold had nothing to do with Laura Nyro. She sings two songs. The first is ‘He’s a Runner,’ which she sings to the backing track recorded for her remarkably assured debut album, More Than a New Discovery, released on Verve Folkways in early 1967. She is seated at a white grand piano at a ninety-degree angle.

As she offers ‘He’s a Runner,’ she frequently closes her eyes, never looking directly at the camera, fully enveloped in the song. At the end of the bridge, which climaxes on a final, held note, she raises her left hand. As the song ends, the audience applauds and she stands up, bows almost imperceptibly and then moves slowly, lifting her long, flowing dress off the ground, to the middle of the piano bench. Her hands touch the keyboard. She pauses for four seconds. As she tosses her hair away from her eyes, she starts to play a syncopated pattern.

She repeats it and then she sings. “Come on people, come on children…” The start of ‘Save the Country.’ The camera catches her attack of the chords on the piano that conclude the first verse. It moves to tightly focus on her. Again, Nyro never breaks, so to speak, the fourth wall. She occasionally shakes her head in time. As she begins the fourth verse, she sways in time. She gives a furtive smile as she ends and then turns away.

There is a sense of complete interiority here. Nyro is engaging with her music and only her music, and in so doing, poses an urgent question to the viewer: are you in or are you out?

About three weeks after Nyro was on television, she played the first of a series of solo concerts. Just her and a piano. These shows helped build a growing fervor around her. Becoming and then being of fan of Laura Nyro meant something that the word fan only hinted at. That’s why the footage from Kraft Music Hall is so important. It’s the one opportunity to not only hear but to see what it would have been like to have been among the throng at one of her solo shows.

Introducing Nyro to television viewers was Bobby Darin. His brief preamble focused as much on her as a songwriter as on her as a performer. It’s offered with a solemnity that I’d like to think was motivated by a recognition of the privilege the viewing audience was soon to be accorded. If Darin’s words are taken at face value, they represented a 180-degree turn from his first meeting with her in the mid sixties.

Laura Nyro then was still Laura Nigra—she changed her last name, in part, because her given last name could be easily mispronounced as negro. There was no doubt by then that the Bronx-born-and-raised Laura had a gifted way with both words and music whether it was through the poems she wrote for school, the nights she spent harmonizing with a group of young Puerto Rican guys in the 170 St. subway station along the Grand Concourse or during one of the summers she and her family spent in the Catskills when she wrote the music for her team for Song Night, part of Color War to mark the end of the season.

In Michele Kort’s indispensable biography on Nyro, Soul Picnic, her brother Jan Nigro remembered what she composed for the night: “The inspirational songs were so powerful, so exquisite. She had worked these soaring harmonies that left the audience stunned. Her songs had such passion [emphasis Kort’s] extolling the virtues of the green team.”

When she met with Darin, who owned the publishing company Trinity Music, she had graduated from the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan and had a portfolio of songs she had written. Of them, only ‘He’s a Runner’ and ‘I Never Meant to Hurt You’ would be recorded by her. All Darin would offer on hearing her sing some of her songs was to encourage her to write something like ‘What Kind of Fool Am I?,’ a pop song from the last gasp of tunes that got passed around the stylists of the day and that was more melodramatic then melodic. That Nyro returned to serenade Darin with a song she called ‘What Kind of Fool Are You?’ was a sign that she was an artist not for turning.

Her audition with folk-music impresario Milt Okun in mid-1966 was more auspicious. It was arranged by publisher Artie Mogull—he was the first to sign Bob Dylan—after he hired her father, a jazz trumpeter and highly regarded piano tuner, to tune his piano and listened to Louis Nigro telling him all about his songwriting daughter. The tape of her tryout was recorded and was officially released by Omnivore Recordings in 2021 as Go Find the Moon: The Audition Tape.

The most revealing moment of the tape is when Mogull speaks to Nyro and says, “Laura, I never asked you this, do you do any songs other than those you have written?” She softly answers “no” and after ‘Stardust’ and ‘Moon River’ are offered as suggestions for her to perform, she continues: “yeah, I know some of them. Of course I know there are other songs and I know a few lines from each one, I mean, I know a few, maybe.” Mogull jokes, “there is Irving Berlin,” to which she zings him with “and there’s Bob Dylan” to which he can only say, “yeah, I heard of him.”

For the next minute and a half, a flummoxed Nyro tries to give Mogull and Okun what they seek to hear. She plays and sings the first two lines of ‘When Sunny Gets Blue,’ then tries a starkly reharmonized ‘Kansas City’ and after singing the opening of ‘I Only Want to Be With You,’ Dusty Springfield’s first big hit, she stops and says, almost despairingly, “I can’t do that, I don’t know the other words.”

Reflecting thirty years later, Mogull winced at this whole exchange. “Can you imagine being stupid enough to ask her if she could do Irving Berlin? I was dumbstruck by her talent,” he said. He then added, “but we didn’t get along so well.”

Mogull soon got Nyro signed to Verve Forecast Records and into the studio with producer-arranger Herb Bernstein to record More Than a New Discovery. A big point of contention was the decision to not have Nyro play piano during the album sessions. There was also the decision to market her as a jilted-bride-not-to-be for the single release of ‘Wedding Bell Blues’ which looks comical in hindsight.

Laura Nyro represented something very new in music. She arrived out of nowhere—she didn’t do the obligatory rounds of the New York clubs, for one example—and fully formed. She stood apart from the emerging counterculture but was most definitely part of popular music’s rapid maturation in the mid sixties.

She was all of 17 when she wrote ‘And When I Die’ and only two years older when her first album hit stores. Nyro’s music slipped right past the Beatles and Dylan, honing in on, in part, the girl groups of the early sixties. Norma Tanega, whose Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog was also produced and arranged by Bernstein, and Janis Ian, whose debut was produced by Shadow Morton who had guided the Shangri-Las, another important Nyro harbinger, were two singer-songwriters who were also creating a female-centric, tough kind of music that defied categorization. Neither LP, though, stood out quite like More Than a New Discovery even as it had nowhere the initial success that both Tanega and Ian enjoyed. And even as Bernstein pigeon-holed Nyro into fairly conventional arrangements, there is no denying her songs as well as her herself easily outwitted any attempt at conformity.

It is an addictive album, begging to be played over and over again to experience once again the 12 songs and, more pointedly, to hear Nyro sing them again. And that remained so for each album that followed. The question here then is why.

I think the best answer can be found in two places. The first is offered by producer and arranger Charlie Calello. The second must come from the listener—in this case, I.

Of all the stories of how encountering Laura Nyro could have a transfiguring effect, Calello’s is the most cinematic and, to me, the most heartfelt and resonant.

He first met Laura Nyro in late 1967. By then, David Geffen, still at the William Morris Agency, became her first dedicated champion, managing to get her out of her contract with Okun and Mogull and getting Clive Davis, then just starting his presidency of Columbia Records, to sign her to his label. All it took for Davis—notice the trend emerging here—was to meet her at Columbia’s offices on 52nd Street and to hear her play and sing her songs.

Calello was then a creatively stifled staff producer and arranger at Columbia, and known for making hit records with the Four Seasons, Lou Christie, Shirley Ellis and the Toys that were sonically rich and grounded in a pop sensibility often accented by brass and powered by a rhythm that had and compelled movement.

Davis arranged for Calello to go to Nyro’s small apartment at 888 Eighth Avenue as part of Nyro and Geffen’s search for a producer and arranger for her planned second album. Calello knew of her. If it weren’t for a scheduling conflict, he would have overseen her first album. He was eager to meet her.

Of all the times Calello has recounted his first meeting with Nyro, the one he wrote for Madfish’s box set of almost everything she recorded, Hear My Song: The Collection 1966-1995, is the most evocative.

Calello arrived at 52nd and 8th between seven and eight o’clock in the evening. After Nyro buzzed him in, he entered a room lit by candles and scented by incense. He described Nyro as wearing a short-sleeve blouse with a sunflower pin in the middle of it and a sarong. She asked him to tell her and Geffen, who was there too, about himself. He told them about the records he had made. Nyro interrupted him, “That’s not what I mean. I already know what you’ve done with your music. We want to know who you are. Just tell us about yourself, the stuff we don’t know.”

Calello started by telling her his dad played trumpet. She quickly replied that her dad played trumpet too. It was the beginning of a common ground between the two. They kept talking. They discovered they both loved jazz as well as Motown, and that they both had chosen music as their profession very early on. Geffen then sternly told Nyro to cut the conversation and play the music Calello had come to hear.

She dutifully moved to the upright piano in her apartment, sat down, paused and then began: “Yes I’m ready, so come on Luckie.” From that, the opening of ‘Luckie,’ came 12 more songs, ending with ‘The Confession.’ Calello recalled that as she finished, Nyro looked visibly exhausted.

As she played, Calello was astonished by what he heard. “I felt a powerful flow of emotion coursing through my body,” he wrote. Other times he has told this story, he has mentioned he was moved to tears.

Continuing with his account for Madfish in 2024, after Nyro had finished playing, Calello wrote “I was afraid to move. How to respond after experiencing such a moment? I was paralyzed.” He got up and went over to the piano. Nyro stood up, smiled and took Calello’s hands in hers.

He composed himself and told her, “Laura, you’re brilliant. What you just played is the finest piece of music I have listened to in many, many years. I feel speechless. I just want to thank you for sharing it with me. I promise I will never forget this evening.”

What Calello heard was Eli and the Thirteenth Confession in its entirety and in the order it would be released in March 1968. After getting the job he desperately wanted to oversee the album, he would spend January and February working with Nyro, whom he ensured received a co-producer credit, capturing on record that unforgettable evening in her mid-town apartment.

Even as Nyro would eventually believe that she was rushed during its recording, Eli and the Thirteenth Confession remains her breathtaking breakthrough. Guitarist Hugh McCracken, among the New York musicians Calello enlisted to back Nyro, called it the equal of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Todd Rundgren, part of the Nazz when it came out, once said, “Anyone who was paying attention, and who was around at the time, was just stunned by the depth of this record.”

Trying to find the words to most vividly capture what it is like to hear the album even today, fifty-eight years after its introduction into the world, is necessary, especially here; after all, it is an essay I am writing.

And yet, superlatives, even those that are sincerely offered and richly deserved, can flatten and make commonplace what is tactile and the exception to the norm. I recall here that Calello once said that what Laura Nyro wrote was not songs but experiences. The tagline for one of the ads Columbia put out to promote Eli and the Thirteenth Confession put it this way: “She doesn’t explain anything. She fills you with experience.”

I could choose to go on here about the album and tell of the whirlwind of key changes, harmonic transitions, the climaxes upon climaxes of ‘Eli’s Comin’,’ ‘Timer’ and ‘The Confession,’ the suite-like structures of ‘Once It Was Alright (Farmer Joe)’ and ‘December’s Boudoir,’ the inscrutability of asking “can you surry?” or about “living as long as an elephant,” the glorious shuffle beat that recurs throughout, the dark, joyous romanticism abutting against the realities of loneliness, poverty and sweet cocaine and the exhilaration of one great song after another after another after another after another Ad infinitum.

You got an afternoon to kill? I’ll kill it with you talking your ear off about why everything that has ever been said about Eli and the Thirteenth Confession is absolutely true and more than you can possibly imagine and that it just may be the thing you need to change your life. I will proselytize any day, anytime, anywhere for this music and for Laura Nyro like Leonard Bernstein taking up the cause of Gustav Mahler.

But, what I really want to tell you about this album is that while digging as deep as I could to write the best essay on Laura Nyro I could possibly write, I listened to Eli and the Thirteenth Confession eight times and never once did listening to it feel like a formality or a rote exercise in due diligence. Each time, I was reminded of discovering it and hearing music that was good beyond all comprehension, a glimpse at what I hope the promised land may sound like.

Like almost everyone, I had heard of Laura Nyro before I heard her music. It was her reticence to do any publicity once Eli and the Thirteenth Confession was released, partly the result of her complete lack of interest in the game of being a pop star and partly that the few times she did accede to the game seemed to not go well; in particular, her performance at the Monterey International Pop Festival where the story went that she was out of place (not so—check the full festival bill) and was booed off the stage (the footage tells otherwise), that helped lead to the covers that became commonplace until Nyro’s temporary retreat from recording and performing at the end of 1972. It also, of course, had to do with the quality of the songs.

As it has always been with me when it comes to music, my curiousity naturally led me to want to hear these wonderful songs I knew by others: ‘Wedding Bell Blues,’ ‘And When I Die’ and ‘Stoned Soul Picnic,’ by the woman who wrote and first recorded them. The first Laura Nyro recording I heard was the latter. I liked it but it wasn’t the best introduction given, again, how closely the 5th Dimension’s hit version mirrors Nyro’s recording. The second time came at the best possible time.

It was the morning after I returned home to Toronto in late October 2003 after my second trip to New York. I was there with a friend for a week and a half full of days of walking the city, reading the Village Voice and the New York Times on various park benches, making the occasional visit to Smalls or the Blue Note, feeling the same abandon I had felt six months earlier when I first visited and fell in love with New York’s relentless urban rhythm.

For whatever reason—it may have been that I had seen a Nyro greatest-hits collection as part of a CD listening station at a Barnes & Noble—I decided to seek out ‘Eli’s Comin’’ on my computer the way music lovers typically sought out such things in 2003. After a few minutes, I pressed play and four minutes later, pressed play again and four minutes later, pressed play again and…well, you get the picture.

I knew ‘Eli’s Comin’.’ Three Dog Night recorded it in 1969 and put it into the Billboard Top 10. They turned it into a foot-stompin’ number while maintaining its intriguing rubato opening but removing any nuance, leaving no place for the music to breathe and soar. No worries. Now I would have no need for it. I had finally heard the real thing.

Of all the things that flabbergasted me about Laura Nyro’s recording of ‘Eli’s Comin’,’ two stuck out. The first was its jazz touches, particularly the muted trumpets that punctuated the slow, slinky, sensual ending in which the song’s urgent warning that “Eli’s comin’, better hide your heart girl” is laced with ambiguity.

The second was the 20-second sequence that began at the two-minute, three-second mark: ‘Eli’s Comin’’s second pre-chorus. The music climaxes five times, each one more hair-raising than the last one and save for the final one which crests on a beefy Chuck Rainey bass line, all are fueled by the back-and-forth between Nyro’s lead and the chorus of layered Nyros.

The recording is manically propulsive and yet it is not burdened by its momentum or its largess. When it touches the ground, it is only to use that temporary contact with terra firma to once again head towards the skies.

The next song I heard was ‘Luckie,’ the ecstatic opening of Eli and the Thirteenth Confession and my most welcome introduction to the Laura Nyro shuffle. Here again was music that overpowered me, so many things of which to take notice but what totally caught me unprepared was that ‘Luckie’’s gait and the way Nyro sang lyrics like “Luckie’s taking over and his clover shows” and “dig them potatoes if you never dug your girl before” with emphasis on that last word felt like how I felt just a few days earlier walking in the Battery and ending up in Tribeca on the kind of crisp yet sunny autumn New York day where it feels like the movies and you point a camera anywhere and get a great picture and you feel like a million bucks, without a care and open to any and all possibilities that a day in New York can hold.

And then came ‘Lu’ with its street dance and effervescent chorus and then more and more—each recording as interesting and addictive as the last one—until I could fill an 80-minute CD and for the next few weeks, it became my soundtrack going to and coming home from work. I was wholly disarmed, and completely and utterly enchanted.

This is the way Laura Nyro fandom goes. There is, at least it’s what I have found, no such thing as being a casual fan of hers. To answer that question: are you in or are you out?, the answer can only be one of two things: I am in as deep as can be or I am stuck on the outside, peering in, wondering what it is that I am not getting if Laura Nyro ever even crosses one’s mind.

The intensity of attraction that her music can inspire is a constant in the litany of testimonials by those who have become Nyro devotees. Fans would travel to New York in the late sixties and early seventies in search of her. That’s how Nyro’s brother Jan would meet his wife and how percussionist Nydia Mata became a life-long friend and musical colleague of Nyro’s, and then there’s the sketch that superfan Beth O’Brien drew of Nyro that became the cover of 1970’s Christmas and the Beads of Sweat.

There were also her peers who were trying to capture her sound: those intoxicating chordal patterns that mashed up gospel, Broadway, jazz, soul and pop, and her adventures playing with song form, whether it was Carole King (‘I Don’t Believe You’) or Lesley Gore (‘Ride a Tall White Horse’) or Peggy Lipton (‘Lady of the Lake’ care of King and Toni Stern).

It’s all part of a parlour game I’ve been playing for years, trying to weave the essence of Laura Nyro within the music that was happening around her, feeling a charge of electricity whenever I have found an album or even a song that has a trace of her fearlessness. It’s been a rewarding and, let’s face it, necessary search—another sign that to fall under Nyro’s sway and remain so is an ongoing devotional—and one that requires digging deep for that is the only way to discover Chi Coltrane, Lily & Maria, Air with the force of nature that was Googie Coppola, the early Melissa Manchester records, Wendy Waldman and Essra Mohawk when she was still known as Sandy Hurvitz.

There’s also Nyro’s place among idiosyncratic male songwriters like Van Dyke Parks, Randy Newman, Kenny Rankin, Tim Hardin, Jimmy Webb, Harry Nilsson, Michael Brown of the Left Banke, Ron Elliott of the Beau Brummels, Arthur Lee of Love and David Ackles, perhaps him most of all, who shucked whatever may have been expected of them to create their own collages of whatever influences grabbed them.

Think of Laura Nyro and place something like the second Blood, Sweat & Tears album on the turntable and hear it anew not only in light of that brief moment when she flirted with joining the band after Al Kooper left—they rehearsed briefly once at the Cafe Au Go Go on ‘Eli’s Comin’’ (if only a tape had been running)—or that she dated Jim Fielder, the group’s bassist, for about a year but focus instead on hearing a common purpose, adding new colours and expressions to so-called popular music, making the most of the moment when the major labels had moxie and the dough to cough up to match it.

Of course, there’s also their famous cover of ‘And When I Die,’ arranged by Dick Halligan. Its’ ubiquity—beyond the 5th Dimension's chart-topping version of ‘Wedding Bell Blues,’ it’s the most famous of the hit interpretations of the Nyro songbook—obscures how Halligan ingeniously transforms it. Nyro’s recording of it for her debut is an urban hoedown as she sings lyrics which still startle in their profundity, “I swear there ain’t no heaven / but I pray there ain’t no hell / but I’ll never know by living / only my dying will tell,” for one example. Halligan writes a chart that imagines, if in a conventional way, how the song may have sounded had it been part of Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, full of twists and turns.

And there’s Elton John’s piano breakdown on ‘Burn Down the Mission’ from Tumbleweed Connection, his most explicit homage to Nyro among the many that were recorded in the late sixties and early seventies. The most moving of them for me is from the Argentinian singer-songwriter Litto Nebbia. ‘José, Laura & Los Chicos’ begins as a piano ballad and then swerves into a two-handed, barrel-house exclamation that ends with a chordal amen. Nebbia repeats the sequence two more times.

When the tempo shifts and that piano begins to rumble away, I hear an impassioned love letter to Laura Nyro, a declaration of the excitement and revelation of the possibilities her music gave to others. To me, it is a hymn of celebration of her New York years and of the five albums that marked them.

It is a run of long players every bit as magical as, say, the Beatles from Rubber Soul to Abbey Road or Stevie Wonder from Where I’m Coming From to Songs in the Key of Life or Miles Davis at various points in the fifties and sixties.

The apex of Nyro’s run is New York Tendaberry which came out in September 1969 and took ten months to record. Davis himself came by the Columbia studios on 52nd Street in July 1969 as Nyro wanted him to play on one of the album’s tracks. He declined, feeling there was nothing he could add to what was already a complete recording.

It is during the New York Tendaberry sessions when Nyro’s uniqueness and eccentricities weren’t tempered. She used analogies, colours especially, to express what sound or feel or mood she was looking for and she would not be rushed to put on tape her song cycle about New York.

Photos taken during the sessions show her as both confident, almost smirking as she poses with her arms resting on top of a mixing console, and deeply serious as she kneels beside a string section, her right arm raised, prodding the musicians to play what was in her head or in the control room with Roy Halee, who co-produced and engineered the album, with her head in her hands as two candles burn between her and Halee.

My favourite of these photos is her in a customary long, black dress, simple at the top but flowing at the bottom like a flower blooming upside down, her feet nowhere to be seen. Her head is tilted, her hands held away from her and her eyes are closed. She appears to be both singing and dancing. Maybe she is lost in a favourite by the Shirelles or Martha and the Vandellas or any of the other girl groups that were a bedrock of her sound. It’s the kind of pose not associated with her, especially in 1969, but to me captures the deep yearning and sensuality of New York Tendaberry.

Back when I first heard the songs that make up the album, I imagined being in Halee’s shoes, working with Laura Nyro to create her hymnal to the city. Of all the things I thought I would do if fantasy had been reality, the one thing that would have felt most necessary—beyond question really—was that, before arriving to the studio each day, I would go for a long walk. The route would always begin in Central Park, be meandering and I would exit the Park wherever my wandering led me and then I would hustle to 52nd Street with New York newly in my heart and in my soul.

I was then properly stunned when I learned that Nyro’s ritual during the album sessions was to take a hansom cab through the Park—by then, she had moved from 888 Eighth Avenue to a penthouse apartment at 145 W. 79th Street—to get to the studio. Each night, she would also make sure there was a catered dinner to enjoy.

The idea of ceremony feels right. To make the decision to listen to New York Tendaberry is to set aside the next 45 minutes to enter into Nyro’s vision of New York as a panorama of individual stories against a soundtrack that deepens the quietude of longing. It begins and ends with a chime, making what is in between not so much music and lyrics but instead a liturgy; Nyro does, in the concluding title track, sing of New York that “you look like a city / but feel like a religion / to me.”

Her phrasing of these lines—one of her most beloved couplets—is dynamically riveting. It starts off soft, rises to elongate the word “feel” and pulls back as Nyro climbs up the register and ends on a prolonged “me,” her voice breaking into a cry. At other points on ‘New York Tendaberry,’ she is whispering.

Contrast, more than any other quality, is New York Tendaberry’s signature. Nyro and her piano are the album’s centre. Arranger Jimmie Haskell, he of the evocative string parts for such recordings as Bobbie Gentry’s ‘Ode to Billie Joe’ and Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘Old Friends’ and hired by Nyro after her initial choice of Gil Evans never responded to the letter she sent him—spent a feverish few weeks writing charts that, like Charlie Calello’s for Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, support rather than contort Nyro’s compositions. The big difference here was that Haskell’s were for specific moments rather than throughout the entirety of Nyro’s songs with the exception of Calello’s writing for ‘December’s Boudoir.’

The effect is often volcanic as on the short bursts of brass, organ, bass and drums on ‘Captain for Dark Mornings’ or atmospheric with brief parts for acoustic guitar and woodwinds on the album opener, ‘You Don’t Love Me When I Cry.’ They heighten the emotional intensity of Nyro’s stories of romantic struggle and gallant proclamations of devotion.

As she full-throatily declares “I would lay me down and die” and then softly adds “for my captain, yeah,” it’s virtually impossible to hear her and not feel…seduced. At least that’s how I feel but I suppose it’s how Nyro approaches this line as she does many others on the album as a singer that the label “shrill” became attached to her. It’s utter nonsense of course. Nyro used volume in service of the lyric always. It’s best to just surrender and get taken away in the thrill ride of her performances as she, for example, volleys through the epic put-down of ‘Tom Cat Goodby.’

It starts sweetly and nautically, becomes a romp as she questions her rapscallion of a lover. After the crash of a piano chord and the fleeting use of strings, Nyro sings slowly, “you know you’re never going to make a movie maker, Tom,” repeats it and this time yells out “Tom” and in a second repeat, a waltz begins to materialize punctuated by dissonant strings. She then transitions to an extravagant revenge fantasy where she dreams of “killing her lover man,” moves back to the romp section and ups the intensity and tempo as she catalogues her man’s essential flaws before stopping and asking “can I find him?” and, more pointedly, “can I kill him?” and pauses before an exuberant “my man,” repeating it and ending in a final flourish of chords.

Just as extraordinary is ‘Captain Saint Lucifer’ in which the protagonist leaves home to join her lover. As on ‘Tom Cat Goodbye,’ there are multiple sections, different moods and an acceleration of musical velocity as, here, she announces, “meet me, Captain Saint Lucifer / darling, I’ll be there / don’t you know,” as pure an expression of youthful love as I have ever heard. There’s also the aching move into tempo as she sings of her “sweet lovin’ baby” on the song of the same name or how she packs so much into just the 138 seconds of ‘Mercy on Broadway’ or the jaw-dropping bridge on ‘Gibsom Street.’

Her songs here are so profound and luminous. It’s not a surprise that only the two songs on New York Tendaberry that speak of Nyro’s vision of sisterhood and brotherhood: ‘Time and Love’ and ‘Save the Country’ were covered extensively after the album was released. None of the covers, with the exception of George Duke’s groovy version of the latter, capture much of how Nyro linked the ideals of both with music that matched them. The inescapable urge to turn ‘Time and Love’ into a hokey, Up-With-People, gospel hand-clapper was so pervasive that not even the 5th Dimension avoided it.

The version of ‘Save the Country’ that Nyro recorded for New York Tendaberry was light years removed from the earlier one she cut with Bones Howe. The first section is just her like the performance of it she gave for Kraft Music Hall. It ends with her singing “save the country” and then “NOOOOWWWWW!!!!!”

What follows is an extended coda with a chorus of Nyros repeating “save the country, save the children / come on down to the glory river.” A turnaround bass line adds a soulful amen. A chorus of trumpets begins to play a riff. After a multi-tracked Nyro makes one last proclamation, they take over for a fanfare. True to her meticulousness, it was a taxing one and the players on the session played it over and over to the point where their chops were too busted to play a final, sustained note.

Lew Soloff of Blood, Sweat & Tears happened to be in the studio, trumpet with him and stepped in to nail the final clarion call so that this time, Laura Nyro did ‘Save the Country’ exactly her way.

Part two of The Laura Nyro Experience arrives on May 1.

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April this year for me is going to be about collaborations and two passion projects. For the former, stay tuned for three things in the hopper with members of our great MusicStack community. For the latter, one is outside of Substack (Kevin Alexander of On Repeat Records alludes here to what I will be up to) and the other will be right here: writing a long essay on an artist Rolling Stone recently called “unsung,” asking if anyone remembers Laura Nyro.

Long-time readers know that Laura Nyro is my favourite singer-songwriter and I have written about her music twice before (read my essays here and here). I recently purchased Madfish’s 19-CD box set collecting almost all of her recordings as well as Michelle Kort’s biography on her and feel compelled to try to put together my attempt to explain why she continues to matter and why her music moves me as much as it does. I’m not sure how long the essay will be or how many parts it will be. There will be at least two and they will be arriving on April 17 and May 1. I want to take a little more time here because I want to push myself to write as well as I possibly can. No shortcuts here!

Until next time, may good listening be with you all!

Eight New Albums to Dig Into
By: Robert C. Gilbert

How can one cope in these frenzied days? So much seems to happen but how much of it is of consequence, how much of it is really worthy of attention? At what point is simply tuning out the noise a survival mechanism as opposed to sticking one’s head in the sand?

All pretty heady thoughts for the latest edition of my round-ups of new and upcoming albums but they are close to mind as I have been exploring Bill Callahan’s latest My Days of 58 (Drag City), released at the end of February. As with a lot of my listening of current music, Callahan is an artist that I hadn’t heard of until preview tracks from his new album began to trickle out, including the epic ‘Stepping Out for Air,’ in which at one point he sings, “now hand me down my riding crop / hand me down my gliding cape / hand me down my black boots that bebop.” What imagery, ominous yet strangely commonplace when sung through Callahan’s deep yet conversational voice, imparting a style that is impossible to shake.

Loneliness, aging and death are woven throughout My Days of 58. The hollowness of our digital age is also a preoccupation. ‘Computer’ likens the machine to “the village guillotine,” pillories autotune and proclaims, “I am not a robot and never will be.” I’ll say that’s as suitable a rallying cry as can be for these days that also acts as a balm.

On occasion, the music of harpist Mary Lattimore has been as soothing. It resists categorization. New age, ambient, neo-classical, etc. don’t really capture the experience of hearing it. Labelling it as healing music may be more to the point. It would also serve as a sufficient descriptor for the work of singer and keyboardist Julliana Barwick and it seemed inevitable that they would team up to record a full album together. The result, Tragic Magic (InFine), out since mid-January, is a succession of motifs and melodic fragments within each composition. The repetition of them creates a calming sensation such as on ‘The Four Sleeping Princesses’ with a graceful part played by Lattimore or on the opening, ‘Perpetual Adoration,’ with Barwick offering a soaring lead vocal.

‘Stardust’ is the most expansive composition. Barwick’s technicolour synthesiser chords dominate a soundscape that also soon includes a shimmering contribution from Lattimore, a drum machine and Barwick wordlessly floating on top. Again, categorization fails here. What is it? Ambient dance music? Beats me. It is music that follows its own mysterious logic.

Equally challenging to label is singer-songwriter Pearl Charles’ newest, Desert Queen (Taurus Rising). It has a gloss that is burnished by Charles’ double-tracked vocals creating a sound that instantly differentiates it from the cacophony that sometimes can be felt when trying to keep a reasonably firm pulse on what is new and exciting in music.

How reassuring it is then to hear something familiar, something that provides an easy entryway. That is not to say that Desert Queen is an insubstantial listen. It’s more to say that Desert Queen is an impressive harkening back to the good-sounding singer-songwriter albums of the seventies with the occasional psychedelic flourish as on ‘Smoke in the Limousine.’

‘Jackie Paints,’ one of the tracks released to preview Spencer Cullum’s just-released Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection 3 (Full Time Hobby) is another instance where its connections make it stand out. There’s a loose rhythm played using brushes, two flutes, steel guitar, an echoing keyboard line among other atmospheric touches that bring to mind Pentangle and other groups that took a leisurely, rustic approach to folk.

The whole album has this feel. It’s the kind of approach that seems to often interest me, old soul that I am. It strikes the important balance between commenting on the past while also saying something about the present day. What an intriguing album to have stumbled upon.

I wouldn’t say that it was also serendipity that brought Zimbabewan guitarist Mark Greenwood’s second album, Daybreak (self-released) to my attention. It was instead Greenwood getting in touch with me and kindly offering to send me a CD copy of the album my way.

I’m grateful he did for it’s an often soaring album of guitar-driven jazz with a light fusion touch. If you have dug Pat Metheny’s newest, Side-Eye III+, you’ll also dig Greenwood’s music. On Daybreak, he’s joined by Mike Downes on bass, Mark Kelso on drums and on two tracks, Othnell ‘Mangoma’ Moyo on percussion. What I especially like about the album is the more introspective moments such as on ‘Paper Planes’ and ‘La Damoiselle élue.’

Another musician who recently got in touch with me was saxophonist and composer Joel Miller. He’s based in New Brunswick and he wanted to share with me news on What If? (self-released). It’s been out digitally since last September and received a physical release early this year. The album features Miller on multiple saxophones with Silvio Pupo on piano and the ensemble Resonance New Music with his brother Andrew Reed Miller on bass, Dani Sametz on violin and Joel Cormier on percussion. The aim here is to capture a kind of chamber jazz and Miller succeeds mightily.

Compositions by Debussy, Chopin and Pachelbel as well as Bob Thiele’s ‘What a Wonderful World’ rest along furtive originals by Miller, the most intriguing of which is the subtle blues of ‘Wait For It.’ Andrew Reed Miller’s arrangement of Debussy’s ‘Clair de Lune’ is a good example of why I like What If? so much. It doesn’t go all in to wring every ounce of majesty out of the sweep of one of Debussy’s most famous pieces but instead treats it as material to investigate and improvise upon. In here, I find a happy resistance of the obvious. What If? offers a contemplative breather for our modern age.

Offering up some action is a new album coming from New York pianist and singer Champian Fulton that’s arriving on April 10. She’s an artist keeping the flavour of the Great American Songbook alive. Fulton may not be breaking new ground but she’s not offering anything glib either and that’s what counts.

Her new album, House Party (Turtle Bay Records), was recorded live at the home of producer Scott Asen and is meant to evoke the live-in-the-studio albums that Dinah Washington recorded in the fifties. Fuller is heard with her triomates: Hide Tanuka on bass and Fukushi Tainaka on drums with Klaus Lindquist on alto saxophone and Cory Weeds on tenor saxophone also joining in.

There is a relaxed atmosphere here and plenty of room for improvisation. The program has a mix of the familiar: Hoagy Carmichael’s ‘Stardust’ and Charlie Parker’s ‘Billie’s Bounce’ with other gems from the repertoire, including (yes!) Wayne Shorter’s ‘One by One.’ House Party is one enjoyable session.

As if answering a need, there’s also a new addition to the parade of top-notch albums recorded at the Village Vanguard. It’s actually the first of three volumes from the club by alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins. Volume 1 (Blue Note) came out in March and the subsequent volumes are following in April and May. This first hit of music is explosive and exploratory—no track is under 10 minutes.

In Wilkins’ quartet is Micah Thomas on piano, Ryoma Takenaga on bass and Kweku Sumbry on drums. My favourite of the first volume is the closing ‘Eternal’ which begins as a knotty original and then settles into an ambient, hypnotic repeat of a spectral line for over 10 minutes. What a bold, exhilarating thing to do. That’s one way to make it through these modern times.

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Until next time, may good listening be with you all!

Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway: Soul Simpatico & Beyond
By: Robert C. Gilbert

It strikes me as inevitable that Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway would eventually have recorded together. This hunch is unrelated to Hathaway contributing as a songwriter to Flack’s debut, First Take, or as both a songwriter and musician on her follow-up, Chapter Two. It’s more that both even as they were categorized as soul artists created music that resisted any requirement to be categorized at all.

Yes, Flack would record music that rested easy within the soul label whether it be her low-key version of ‘Compared to What,’ written by Eugene McDaniels, or the slinky groove of ‘Go Down Moses,’ co-written by the just-passed Rev. Jesse Jackson but these were part of her broader aesthetic that also included, for example, Leonard Cohen (‘Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye’) and Man of La Macha (‘The Impossible Dream’).

Hathaway was similarly broad in the repertoire he selected to record: ‘Misty’ (Erroll Garner), ‘I Believe in Music’ (Mac Davis) and ‘He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother’ (Bobby Scott) immediately come to mind.

There’s also the feeling that their voices could complement each other. Flack’s understated, conversational delivery would be a foil to Hathaway’s broader yet equally personal approach. Both, and I think this is the most critical consideration, could play with timing and melody. In other words, both had jazz chops.

Flack and Hathaway’s interest in music both started in the church and both took to the piano at a very young age. Both also studied music at Howard University. In an interview for the 2013 Hathaway collection, Never My Love: The Anthology, Flack recalled that it was at Howard in the late sixties when they first met.

Hathaway’s career began quickly after university with him signing a deal with Atco in 1969. Flack’s began after years of paying dues, including teaching, being an piano accompanist for opera singers and playing in clubs. It was in one of them that Les McCann heard her and used his pull to get signed to Atlantic in 1968. With Atco a subsidiary of Atlantic, Flack and Hathaway were labelmates.

It was Jerry Wexler, according to Flack, who first brought the two together to record. They duetted on a cover of Carole King’s ‘You’ve Got a Friend,’ a chart-topper for James Taylor, and it was released as a single with Flack’s recording of Hathaway’s ‘Gone Away’ from Chapter Two as the flipside. It was a top 30 hit in the summer of 1971: the first for both Flack, who eight months later had her first number one with ‘The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face’ fueled by its use in Play Misty For Me, and Hathaway, whose only visits to the top 40 were when he was paired with Flack.

As per the custom, they were joined on ‘You’ve Got a Friend’ with a crack team of musicians who, like Flack and Hathaway, were wide-ranging: guitarist David Spinnoza, bassist Chuck Rainey, drummer Billy Cobham, percussionist Ralph Macdonald and flutist Joe Gentle with strings arranged by Arif Mardin.

It’s a transformative interpretation that with Spinnoza’s acoustic guitar still nods to Taylor’s version as well as King’s recording for Tapestry. The bridge is reharmonized, the move from the verses to the choruses is accentuated and then there’s the climax that comes with the assurance that “I’ll be there / yes I will.” These elements would also appear on Hathaway’s solo recording of ‘You’ve Got a Friend’ at the Troubadour on his live album from 1972 with he and audience making an impromptu choir and his off-the-cuff comment that “this might be a record here.”

His version with Flack is understated but clearly delivers on Wexler’s hunch that they should record together. Their voices blend as well as suspected: Flack is the anchor, Hathaway is the adventurer, recomposing King’s melody on the fly. For the final chorus, their voices layer over each other, tracked multiple times. The promise of that sound would be further explored on a full-length duet album recorded later in 1971 and released in the spring of 1972.

Titled simply Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway and with a stunning photo in the inner gatefold of the two, Hathaway seated and Flack on a window ledge with her hands around him—a warm, beautiful, inviting moment, the album is as bold as is most famous cut, ‘Where is the Love,’ is as yearnful as Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell on ‘Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing.’

That’s a tempting comparison to make, especially as it is not hard to imagine Gaye and Terrell recording something like ‘Where is the Love’ had their musical partnership not been so tragically fleeting. The William Salter-Ralph Macdonald ballad was the third Flack and Hathaway duet issued as a single. Prior to it was a moody, late-night take on Phil Spector, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil’s ‘You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’,’ which charted modestly. That recording, as opposed to ‘Where is the Love,’ a smash hit and, to be sure, an exquisite record where Flack and Hathaway’s harmony is so close they become one and with a sensual interlude, is a better representation of the album’s dynamic.

The operatic fervour of the Righteous Brothers’ famous version is dialed back to a kind of midnight confessional between two lovers, both of whom are reckoning with the malaise that has calcified in their relationship. The movement is slow and methodical, the resolution is far more uncertain than Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield left listeners. Like ‘You’ve Got a Friend,’ Flack and Hathaway treat the melody not like a text but as a reference point as they narrow the intervallic leaps over the course of the song. On the recording was the album’s core group: Rainey and Macdonald returning with Eric Gale on guitar and Bernard Purdie on drums with Joe Farrell guesting on soprano saxophone.

It closes out the album’s first side, an evocative bookend to the equally evocative opening of ‘I (Who Have Nothing),’ well-known through recordings by Ben E. King and Terry Knight and the Pack. They make one aesthetic direction of Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway. ‘Where is the Love’ is another and is followed on the second side by ‘When Love Has Grown,’ a sentimental, soft ballad written by Hathaway and Eugene McDaniels.

It’s a song that contrasts the end of a love affair with the promise of one that may grow. Flack and Hathaway trade lines and unite for the end of the verses. The interlude is majestic with strings arranged by Hathaway plus a paraphrase of the melody by him on piano and Hubert Laws on flute adding to the feeling of elation. For me, it’s the high point on an album with many of them (it was one of the recordings included on the playlist my wife and I put together for our wedding reception). Just as romantic, in a socio-political way, is ‘Be Real Black With Me,’ co-written by Flack and Hathaway with Charles Mann. It’s a celebration of Black love, of “your hair, soft and crinkly” and “your body, strong and stately” but has a universality in its assurance that “you don’t have to change a thing.”

More rollicking is a cover of “Baby, I Love You,’ Aretha Franklin’s third big hit on Atlantic, that is as country as it is soulful. It appears mid-way through the first side and is the initial hint of Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway’s astonishing variety. Side two, though, is where this versality goes into overdrive.

It begins with Hathaway solo on a standard, ‘For All We Know,’ written by Sam Lewis and J. Fred Coots. Backed by just Flack on piano and after two choruses of the verse, strings and woodwinds, he sings behind the beat, stretching out certain notes (check out his second “so love me tonight”) and always personalizing the melody. It’s an extraordinary example of these prodigious gifts he had as a singer. An almost-classical coda functions as a suitable benediction, a feel that returns on side two after ‘Where is the Love’ and ‘When Love Has Grown.’

Flack recalled how she had to call her mom to thumb through her hymnal to remind her and Hathaway of the lyrics of the second verse of ‘Come Ye Disconsolate.’ Their performance of it is stately, the cadence of their vocal is how it would sound if it were sung at Mass although I doubt congregants would elongate phrases like they do here. It’s another stylistic twist and the album closer, ‘Mood,’ credited to Flack, is a final one to savour.

It’s a seven-minute improvisation with Flack on piano and Hathaway on electric piano, both playing impressionistically. On a lesser album, ‘Mood’ could seem like filler but here, it’s another expression of the dimensions of Flack and especially, in this instance, Hathaway, who loved classical music.

They would continue to record together. ‘The Closer I Get to You,’ from 1977, marked Hathaway’s return to recording after years spent dealing with growing mental-health issues. They began a second duet album at the end of 1978 but only two performances: ‘You Are My Heaven’ and ‘Back Together Again’ were completed before Hathaway’s untimely death. That makes Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway even more of a treasure than it already is.

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Until next time, may good listening be with you all!

A Love Letter to the Humble Cassette
By: Robert C. Gilbert

The tape has never had the cachet of the vinyl record or the ability of that medium to rise from the dead. It also doesn’t have the compact disc’s durability as the vehicle for super-deluxe editions or, even more impressively, the classical-music mega box set.

Should we pity the poor cassette? Its case is puny. The majestic twelve-inch by twelve-inch album cover is reduced to virtually nothing.

And how about care? Treat a CD like a coaster and you won’t hear a thing the next time you load it up into the player and press play save for the machine whirring endlessly trying to gloam onto the music reduced to digital data. Toss an LP like a frisbee and all you’ll get is the sound of a bonfire once you place it on your platter and lower the stylus. With a tape, you takes your chances, hoping the day won’t come when your deck begins to eat it without remorse as you helplessly witness the carnage.

It’s not really the lowly cassette’s fault. Well, actually, lowly isn’t the right word here. Humble is more like it for after my father’s records, tapes were my immersion into the worlds of owning music and enjoying albums.

It was through them that I discovered the music of the Beatles. I started with 20 Greatest Hits, a collection released in 1982 and given to me by my parents in 1987. It included all of their Billboard Hot 100 number-one hits. I played it over and over again on my Lloyds V444 dual tape deck with four speakers in the front and a graphic equalizer to customize the sound so that it become my sound, part of my never-ending search for what I call “pure sound.”

It was on this noble machine that I first heard the pierce of the sitar on ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown).’ The wild orchestral escalation into oblivion on ‘A Day in the Life.’ The big medley on the second side of Abbey Road. It also meant first hearing With the Beatles with ‘All My Loving’ as the lead-off track and Please Please Me starting off with ‘Misery’ of all things, a function of album running orders sometimes being re-jigged for tapes so that there was close to an equal amount of music on both sides (similar to the truly lowly eight-track tape where running orders were often brutally changed to meet the need to have four sequences of music roughly the same length).

Having two decks also started me on building compilations from my tapes—in addition to the Beatles, I quickly built up a big Elvis Presley tape collection. It was all very exciting, the idea being planted that music was an active pursuit, even if one was just a listener of it.

The ease—setting aside the question of legality—of taping off the radio also meant that I could add songs to my collection faster than I could stretch my modest allowance. There was the feeling of being an archivist here.

But, even as tape fueled my love of and curiosity about music, there was something lacking in them. They seemed adolescent. It’s what one bought when you were in the minor leagues of record collecting. Vinyl was for the adults. Kids would just ruin them and indeed, there is a stack of my grandparents’ records that bear the brutality of my attack on them as they gave me free reign of them and of their hi-fi when I was all of six years old.

I think it was some sort of latent guilt over that, though my grandparents never seemed to care let alone mind what I did, so that when I received a Magnavox combination system of a record player on top, dual tape deck at the bottom, a graphic equalizer in the middle and two speakers to connect in the back, I would take care of my records. And I did.

Buying records in the late eighties, just as the death knell was sounded for vinyl (prematurely, of course), meant replacing my cassette collection of Presley and the Beatles with the same albums on vinyl. That seemed right and exciting, and once I received a Panasonic discman a few years later, I did the same thing with CDs.

Tapes were still important. Creating mixtapes. Building compilations out of what I taped off the radio. All of it an effort to try to organize and make coherent my broadening musical tastes, branching out into classic rock, soul, seventies singer-songwriters and jazz—especially jazz. That was the biggest sign that when it came to music, I was determined to be anything but conventional. That also applied to following the NBA instead of the NHL—a Canadian cliché that held no appeal to me—reading Shakespeare before my teens and generally ignoring any and all contemporary music. To paraphrase the Rolling Stones, “baby, baby, I was out of time.”

By the late nineties, the death knell that had rung for vinyl rung as well for cassettes. Building a jazz collection meant buying CDs with the occasional LP. Tapes? Are you kidding me?

And so they sat unloved as my Magnavox system was succeeded by an increasingly sophisticated adult stereo system with an amplifier, turntable, CD changer and four speakers. Along the way, I added a tape deck, a Sansui, which came in super handy for continuing to make mixtapes but, by the turn of the millennium, that began to feel too time consuming. I also recall the dismay when one of my carefully assembled tapes was chewed up by my Walkman.

CDs were the focus for about a decade and then by 2009, as the vinyl revival began to rumble, I began to build an LP collection full of rock, soul, country, Sinatra and other pop stylists, and eventually classical too. Tapes? What are those?

As a lark, I bought the cassette version of the 2022 release of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s concert at Royal Albert Hall from April 1970. A few months later, my wife got me a tape copy of Leonard Bernstein’s Greatest Hits from recordings on RCA Red Seal. That was another fun novelty.

And then there’s a few weeks ago. I went to my thrift shop on a Friday afternoon in need of some retail therapy on a budget. The shop is hit and miss when it comes to albums. Sometimes, there are wonderful stacks of country and classical records. Other times, there’s nothing. This visit was an example of the former. A sealed Joe South album, So the Seeds Are Growing and one sealed by the Hollyridge Strings, Hits of the 70’s (something I need some easy listening). Artur Rubenstein playing Beethoven, Murray McLauchlan's Sweepin’ the Spotlight Away and Billy Graham stalwart George Beverly Shea (it’s Lent, after all).

Next to the records were a small collection of tapes. The Byrds’ Greatest Hits, first released in 1967, caught my eye. Now, I’ve had all five of their albums from the David Crosby era for years so this collection is completely redundant. But after much hemming and hawing, I left the store with it, got home and fired up the old Sansui to give it a listen. Ahhh, that warm, punchy analog sound that only a tape can deliver as Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark and Crosby wordlessly soared at the end of ‘The Bells of Rhymney’ and McGuinn weaved Coltrane-like on his twelve string on ‘Eight Miles High.’

These are recordings I already knew well but as I usually find, hearing overly familiar music in a new context is the closest one can get to hearing it again for the first time. The experience created an itch so off I trundled to the thrift store the next day to see if I could get more tapes. There weren’t many but I did snag copies of Roy Orbison’s Mystery Girl, the too-soon conclusion to his late-eighties resurgence and Barbra Streisand’s The Third Album, an artefact of her rise pre-Funny Girl.

I then perused Amazon to see if there were any tapes there for sale. Cassette sales are growing although they are only a fraction of vinyl sales. Still, I found a few options and the next day, McCartney III arrived as well as a long-unopened copy of an RCA compilation of recordings on the label from the sixties called Nipper’s Greatest Hits - The 60s, Volume 1. Next up was to head to our laundry room and clear the debris to dig out the box of most of my old cassettes (the remainder are somewhere at my parents).

I picked out a few albums I never replaced on CD or LP like Cream’s Fresh Cream and Eric Clapton’s Timepieces: The Best of Eric Clapton. I listened to both a lot in the early nineties when my obsession with Slowhand was at its height and I spent the hours needed to master his guitar parts on ‘Cocaine,’ ‘Badge,’ ‘White Room,’ ‘Lay Down Sally’ and other classics. Disagree with Clapton’s politics or his swerving into soft rock but “Clapton is God” was spray painted on London walls for a reason. Hear the stinging of his solo lines on ‘I’m So Glad,’ ‘N.S.U.’ or ‘Cat’s Squirrel’—three of the high points from Fresh Cream. They still cut with the unmistakable blade of burgeoning genius. I revisited both albums with pleasure.

I also digged out Collectors Gold, a three-volume collection of Presley’s from the RCA archives that was released in 1991. Now, every last outtake he recorded that wasn’t destroyed or recorded over has been released (most of it more than once) but back then, very few had. In fact, Collectors Gold was the first significant tranche of outtakes from the sixties with one volume dedicated to his recordings in Nashville and another to his soundtrack sessions. The other volume included selections from his return to live performances in the summer of 1969 in Las Vegas.

As someone who has always felt that Presley was at his peak in the sixties, Collectors Gold was an exciting release and as I went through each volume once again, I recalled all the moments of studio back-and-forth, including a wild sequence from the recording of ‘Goin’ Home,’ consigned to a bonus track on the Speedway soundtrack, in which Presley ruins a take by launching into ‘Heartbreak Hotel.’

As I get older, my ability to remember things ain’t what it used to be, including music. Back when I was buying tapes, everything seemed to stick, both in the head and in the heart. It’s been good to be reminded of these halcyon days. Here’s to the humble cassette.

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I re-listened to the album for the below essay and loved every minute of it. As the needle reached the end of side four, I felt revived and transformed. It’s that good an album and I hope that what I have written makes the music as exciting as it is to hear.

Please let me know your thoughts and until the next time I am in touch, may good listening be with you all!

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Let Chicago Work on You
By: Robert C. Gilbert

Some of my favourite music is based on the short moment. A few seconds—maybe more—of concentrated, sudden inspiration.

There’s the interlude on Rita Coolidge’s recording of Steve Cropper and Otis Redding’s ‘The Happy Song,’ where Booker T. Jones takes a riff from Redding’s original recording and pours all of his heart out to play it. Jim Keltner layers on a backbeat, thick on the bass and heavy on the snare. They repeat it. Jones pumps the organ harder and Keltner matches him. Twenty seconds of ecstasy.

How about Bill Withers’ ‘Harlem’ where Jones and Al Jackson, Jr. lock in on a thundering triplet while Withers warns of a “crooked delegation, wants a donation to send the preacher to the Holy Land” and to not “give your money to that lyin’, cheatin’ man.” It’s power is in the sudden breaking of the groove and the shudder of Jones and Jackson, Jr. meeting on the downbeat. Sixteen seconds of righteous fury.

That’s two Booker T. Jones references in a row? You may think that’s the lead in to an essay about him and the MGs. It’s not—that will come someday. But, here’s another moment.

It comes after two verses and choruses of what would one day be labelled a power ballad. A horn section of trumpet, trombone and tenor saxophone play a declarative set of figures and the music shifts. The tempo goes up, the beat breaks into a dance and the horns comment on this most sunny of turns. And then the exaltation really starts.

Maracas are added as the horns play a three-note motif and repeat it. It’s admittedly a throwaway thing, less interesting musically that what both precedes and proceeds it but not emotionally. This moment—all of 11 seconds—sounds like being on a date with your first crush or in New York for the first time or just a time where no care, no worry, no deadline dare intrude on one’s joy.

It occurs at the three minute, eight second mark of ‘Questions 67 and 68,’ the numbers relating to the years in the 20th century of the relationship that is the subject of the song, written by Robert Lamm and one of three hits, none of them right away, from the debut album by Chicago, then still called Chicago Transit Authority although not for much longer.

‘Questions 67 and 68,’ with its big, ballad sound and a lead vocal by the group’s bassist Peter Cetera, doesn’t sound too far removed from ‘Hard Habit to Break,’ ‘You’re the Inspiration’ or ‘Baby, What a Big Surprise,’ recordings that can inspire a wince or a shrug as if it’s the only way to excuse oneself for having a penchant for such emotive, power balladry.

That’s what Chicago became. That’s not what Chicago initially was. Chicago was loud. Chicago was brash. Chicago was outspoken, political and the leading practitioner of horn-rock, one of the ways in which the sound palette of rock broadened in the late sixties. Horn sections were, of course, nothing new. They were commonplace in blues, soul and jazz but not so much in rock except, perhaps, as a novelty such as on the Outsiders’ ‘Time Won’t Let Me’ or the Beatles’ ‘Got to Get You Into My Life.’ But then came the Electric Flag, the Buckinghams, Blood, Sweat & Tears and arguably even Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, and rock with horns became a stylistic device, part of what signified rock and pop’s maturation.

Chicago, first known as the Big Thing and then Chicago Transit Authority, came to prominence after these groups did and endured long after all of them. Their ubiquity was important. Hearing those horns: Lee Loughnane on trumpet, James Pankow on trombone and Walter Parazaider on reeds, offered confirmation that rock, or really, music in general, need not be limited to guitar and drums and three-minute songs. I know that, for me, discovering Chicago was a big part of the broadening of my musical outlook and they became, for a time, an obsession with me as I stayed glued to the radio to hear them, whether well-known numbers like ‘Make Me Smile,’ ‘Saturday in the Park’ or ‘25 or 6 to 4’ or something deeper in the catalogue like ‘In the Country’ or ‘Fancy Colours’ or to be truly shaken when hearing ‘Make Me Smile’ shift to ‘So Much to Say, So Much to Give’ as part of Ballet for a Girl in Buchanan which also included ‘Colour My World,’ sung by guitarist Terry Kath. The suite was also a showcase for drummer Danny Seraphine. It was they, even more than the horns, that gave Chicago in its early days an edge.

And yet, even by their second album, on which Ballet for a Girl in Buchanan is the centrepiece, first titled Chicago and then re-named Chicago II and thus initiating a tradition, broken only once, of numbering each album, there was a nagging tension over whether the band was a crafter of songs or a crafter of albums. It didn’t help that the two other suites on Chicago II were alternatively earnest and syrupy (Memories of Love) or abrasive if still thrilling as an experience of pure, wide sound (It Better End Soon).

And while I am generally leery of anyone ever saying that an artist’s early work is the only worthy portion of their career with the rest being a steady decline, from Elvis Presley on down, as if it’s not even worth checking out what came afterwards, I might cut anyone some slack if he or she is making this argument about Chicago. Just listen to their first album, Chicago Transit Authority, and not be grabbed by the feeling of paradise soon to be progressively lost.

It may seem ominous that they start the album with the quite literal ‘Introduction.’ It’s not as on the nose as ‘(Theme from) the Monkees’ but more like a preview of the 70 minutes to follow and a statement of artistic purpose as Kath sings, “so forget all about your troubles / as we search for something new / and we play for you.”

That “something new” is illustrated in the song’s lengthy interlude: Loughnane, Pankow and Parazaider are featured in a staccato dance with Seraphine, a smoky, romantic sequence with Pankow on top, a ballad feature for Loughnane and, after a blistering solo by Kath—the first of many on the album—a triumphant volley of brass and reed. It is all played with assuredness, making for a collective, audacious hello.

What follows are those three hits from the album I mentioned earlier. The last is ‘Questions 67 & 68.’ The first is ‘Does Anybody Really Know What Time Is?’ After an improvised introduction by Lamm on piano, the horn section enters. Like the thrill of moving from a straightforward opening credit sequence of a movie—white type against a black background, say—to an establishing first shot (I see, incongruously, Manhattan from Brooklyn Bridge Park), their emphatic lines announce something momentous and indeed, what follows is that and more.

It resolves into an addictive shuffle. I would call it the classic Laura Nyro shuffle; hence, my association of the song with New York. Lamm wrote and sung ‘Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?’ It’s a good feature for his classic, versatile pop voice. Not as keening as Cetera’s or as soulful as Kath’s but direct, conservational and observational. He captures the rush of modern life, of “being pushed and shoved by people / trying to beat the clock.” Sound familiar?

‘Beginnings’ follows, also written and sung by Lamm. It’s also about the anxiety of life but here focusing on the timidity of taking the leap to start a new relationship but then considering the ecstasy once it has begun and pondering if it could be, as Steve Allen once put it, “the start of something big.” That emotion is the beating heart of ‘Beginnings.’ It’s in the sudden rush of the horn section as Lamm sings the start of the second verse, “when I kiss you / I feel a thousand different feelings,” the wordless refrain that appears throughout and the extended coda that keeps building and building and then decays into a percussive jam, everything picking up whatever is at hand to join in.

After ‘Questions 67 and 68’ comes the compact ‘Listen,’ another Lamm song and another that is a statement of purpose for the group. “Listen,” it starts, “if you think that we’re here for the money / you couldn’t be right” and eventually, implores to the listener that “it could be so nice, you know / if only you would listen.” It’s all a little too earnest, especially as it is tough to envision anyone who has made it up to this point—a side and a half of music—and not be at rapt attention, so compelling has been the 27-and-a-half minutes of music that have transpired.

To my ears, ‘Listen’ can be seen as the conclusion of a kind of unintended suite where Chicago both explain themselves and explore their expansive take on the pop song. The rest of side two and all of side three form an unintended counter-suite to all this sweet accessibility.

It begins with ‘Poem 58,’ again written by Lamm and with a lengthy solo by Kath that shifts from working out a riff to improvising on a groove anchored by Cetera and Seraphine to him building to a climax that stops on a dime. Out of the silence, Cetera plays a bass line that is echoed by the horn section, first Pankow then Loughnane and finally Parazaider, ushering in a teasing vocal by Lamm and another Kath solo. The table is being turned here.

It is then flipped over completely in a shroud of feedback and noise. It is, as its title states, ‘Free Form Guitar,’ six-and-a-half minutes of Kath creating a maelstrom of sound. With the hindsight of 57 years now, it is the most un-Chicago-like Chicago recording. Ditching the present and situating one’s mind and ears in the spring of 1969, when Chicago Transit Authority was released, the provocation of a group issuing a double album out of the gate with a guitarist, of whom Jimi Hendrix was an ardent admirer and who was among the most prodigious and fluent of his generation—save for Hendrix, Duane Allman and Michael Bloomfield, no one could play at length and maintain interest as Terry Kath—‘Free Form Guitar’ feels inevitable.

A gutsy blues then emerges, ‘South Californian Purples,’ with meaty horn lines and more of that Kath prowess. The energy that has been steadily built crests on a lengthy cover of ‘I’m a Man,’ a maniacally propulsive hit by the Spencer Davis Group from 1967. Whereas that version rests on unrelenting rhythm, Chicago’s rests on power and its explosion halfway through in an extended solo by Seraphine, an indulgence that works majestically.

Yes, Kath, Cetera and Lamm often sing lyrics that are nowhere near what Steve Winwood sang—admittedly, his blues- and jazz-inflected phrasing makes it hard to know what the lyrics are at all—and it’s hard for me to get past their innanity (take for example when Lamm sings “I’ve got to keep my image, while I’m standing on the floor / if I drop upon my knees, it’s just to keep them on a my nose”). When hearing it, however, as part of listening to the album in full, ‘I’m a Man’ comes off as another brazen announcement of something very special happening in music.

The final side of Chicago Transit Authority is, in a sense, a recapitulation of the first five cuts. ‘Someday (August 29, 1968),’ which includes a prelude taped during the imbroglio of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in the Windy City where, to paraphrase the chant included, the whole world was watching, heralds the political turn Chicago’s music would take, only occasionally interesting, over the next three studio albums.

The grand conclusion of ‘Liberation,’ begins with a Herculean Kath solo and a brief collective improvised freak out before a slow, burning horn line written by Pankow and then one last explosion by Kath and then Seraphine. The only words sung on ‘Liberation’ are very apt: “ohhh, thank you people.”

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There’s a bit of a gimmick at play here with these releases, forcing fans as they do to buy the same music again in order to get some previously unreleased goodies. But it’s also a chance to revisit music long canonized in a new context, and that’s the focus on the below essay which I hope you will enjoy.

Until next time, may good listening be with you all!

Wes Montgomery and Bill Evans Revisited
By: Robert C. Gilbert

To be a record collector these days can be at times pretty grand. I’m thinking here about the continued growth and girth of releases that exhume and exhaust the archives, if not occasionally the listener, and give the most comprehensive overview of an album or albums.

What this can result in is the collector purchasing a record over and over again in order to hear whatever previously unreleased material has been added to a collection that may have already been claimed to be complete. Some may call it a racket, others may call it a joy. Whatever appellation is chosen likely depends on whatever boxsets or expanded reissues are calling out for one’s wallet.

By my count, the two studio recordings of Bill Evans’ trio with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motion: Portrait in Jazz and Explorations, have been reissued at least twice in progressively expanded editions prior to Haunted Heart: The Legendary Riverside Recordings that arrived last fall. Here is the true motherlode: 17 newly issued alternate takes and outtakes in addition to nine already issued during the rise and the fall of the CD era plus, and let’s not forget this, the original albums newly remastered.

They are bedrock recordings of fifties and sixties jazz, quietly revolutionary, with Portrait in Jazz easier to be enraptured with and Explorations taking a bit longer to get under one’s skin but worth the wait (I chalk this up primarily to repertoire with Portrait in Jazz’s more immediately recognizable than Explorations’).

No surprise then that I splurged for the LP version of the set, eager to re-immerse myself in music that was a big part of my early jazz education and to hear variations on performances I know so well. And certainly, placing the needle on the first side of Portrait in Jazz to hear that abrupt beginning of ‘Come Rain or Come Shine’ as if play was pressed on the session tape mid-performance, was to fondly recall how it felt to hear it for the first time.

It’s of course the chance to finally delve into all of the session material that makes Haunted Heart essential. To hear Evans attempt different staccato attacks on the theme of ‘Witchcraft’ and to savour a second trio version of ‘Nardis,’ a little more formal than the telepathic flow of the master from Explorations (my favourite recording by the group).

The greatest revelation for me from Haunted Heart had been to dig into multiple takes of Harry Warren and Mack Gordon’s ‘I Wish I Knew’ and to fixate on a recurring figure that appears in each take. It’s a chordal pattern played by Evans with a romantic ascent that sounds very familiar in retrospect. I never noticed it from the times I’ve played Explorations prior to getting Haunted Heart. I say it’s familiar in retrospect for it sounds like a key melodic phrase in Thom Bell and Linda Creed’s ‘Betcha By Golly Wow’ that was written and first recorded in 1970. It’s a startling thing, regardless if there is any connection or not, the kind of discovery that occurs when one re-engages with a musical artefact that one has engaged with before in a different configuration.

While there has been some hype that has accompanied the release of Haunted Heart, it’s been muted compared to the ongoing series of John Coltrane archival releases, for example (speaking of Coltrane, something big is coming our way come September). Slipping fairly unnoticed in 2023 was the full release of the recordings Wes Montgomery made at Tsubo, a coffee house/club in Berkeley. Six recordings were released as Full House. An additional six had previously been made available although save for a 12-CD boxset of Montgomery’s recordings for Riverside, they hadn’t been collected together (the [Orrin] Keepnews Collection version of Full House released in 2007 had them all excluding an alternate version of ‘Blue ‘n’ Boogie’).

So, that Craft Recordings, which now houses the Riverside catalogue, issued the remaining two recordings in a three-LP or two-CD set in 2023 is, of course, not the revelation that Haunted Heart is. That being said, The Complete Full House Recordings is still indisputably interesting.

Orrin Keepnews of Riverside had a knack for capturing jazz live and for doing so in a way that added dimension to a musician of which the studio could only capture so much. Think of Cannonball Adderley with whom Keepnews made six albums from the stage and how his preacher-like pronouncements abutted increasingly lengthy, adventurous pieces, abetted undoubtedly by the presence of Yusef Lateef in Adderley’s band in 1962 and 1963. Think also of the Evans trio’s Village Vanguard recordings from June 25, 1961, an unbeknownst epitaph to his partnership with LaFaro, who would die tragically twelve days later, and how the longer, more involved performances heightened the group’s impressionistic lyricism so that it cascades like ripples after skipping a rope on the water.

What of Wes Montgomery then? If Keepnews’ original notes for Full House are to be trusted, it was his idea to record the guitarist live and it was up to Montgomery to come up with the band he wanted to record with. In 1962, he was a thoroughly small-group player whether with his brothers or fronting astutely-picked, studio-only groups.

For the latter, the results were always masterful. Occasionally, they were transcendent, such as The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery with its perfectly sequenced program and the simpatico of Tommy Flanagan with Percy and Albert “Tootie” Heath as well as Bags Meets Wes!, a summit meeting with Milt Jackson and the spritely groove of Wynton Kelly, Sam Jones and Philly Joe Jones, especially on the motoring, modal ‘Jingles.’

Kelly was the anchor of the group Montgomery picked for Full House. According to Keepnews, it was the result of serendipity. The pianist was in San Francisco playing with Miles Davis and with Kelly came long-standing musical partners Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb. Also in town was Johnny Griffin. All four were off on a Monday (June 25, 1962) and so on that day, Keepnews with engineer Wally Heider set up shop to catch the one-time-only quintet on tape. The repertoire was kept to seven pieces. Consider the night at Tsubo a live session with the coffee house acting as the recording studio.

Montgomery pairing with Griffin on the front line was inspired. Both were extremely fluid players but contrasted in their attack. The guitarist famously used his thumb instead of a pick to play and that gave a grounded feel to his sound even as he fired off a flurry of notes or octaves or chords. The beat was always felt.

Griffin, whose tenor tone was slightly thinner than his peers, played lines that floated, skirting quickly up the musical staff and resolving with a choked cry. His second chorus on the master of the title track with a Montgomery solo spliced in is a good example of Griffin’s in-the-pocket pyrotechnics.

‘Full House’ was a waltz composed by Montgomery. The rhythm section lock in on it not unlike how they do on Davis’ ‘Teo’ from his Someday My Prince Will Come album. The harmonic progression is the kind, with its shift to the B and the momentum into the final A, that is made for a soloist to explore at length and to enjoy the pleasure of improvising on such a fertile form.

That’s what it sounds like, for sure, as Montgomery, Griffin and Kelly take turns soloing. At just over nine minutes, the spliced master of ‘Full House’ still feels relatively brief with the constraint of building a twelve-inch album the only barrier preventing them from spinning out more choruses, finding more to play on and to extol even more on the riches of the guitarist’s composition.

The album Keepnews built from the group’s one night at Tsubo balances this stretching out, within reason, with more compact performances. Full House is powered by the former; in addition to the title track, there’s ‘Cariba,’ another Montgomery original plus the aforementioned ‘Blue ‘n’ Boogie.’

The latter is the night’s most fiery performance. Montgomery and Kelly’s solos build in intensity while Griffin’s starts red hot and remains at peak ignition. As he piles on blues chorus upon blues chorus, hear how the crowd begins to respond in kind. ‘Cariba’ has little harmonic motion and is fueled by Cobb’s cross-stick beat which sits somewhere between a bossa nova and Afro-Cuban. Griffin is particularly energized here, alternatively teasing off riffs and playing rapid, darting lines. Montgomery cuts deep into the beat, especially when he switches to octaves and Cobb increases the intensity of his attack on the drum kit.

The three shorter performances hit the mark too. An up-tempo ‘Come Rain or Come Shine’ has Griffin, Montgomery and Kelly gliding through the changes. The guitarist’s theme statement is interesting in that its thrust and in the choice to paraphrase, both melodically and rhythmically, Harold Arlen’s music both mirror Bill Evans’ approach on Portrait in Jazz.

The closing ‘S.O.S.,’ the third and final Montgomery original for Full House, is a sprint with a motif that recurs throughout the solos. The one ballad, ‘I’m Getting Accustomed to Her Face,’ is a feature for the guitarist with Chambers and Cobb, and has Montgomery playing dense chords throughout; in its way, it’s a foreshadowing of the commercial turn his music would take in just over two-years time.

The bonus material totals an extra hour of music. As mentioned, almost all of it has been previously released. There are more leisurely takes of ‘Blue ‘n’ Boogie’ and ‘Come Rain or Come Shine.’ Montgomery really digs into the octaves on the alternate ‘Cariba’ which starts out loosely and then gets real tight.

One of the two previously unissued performances is the take of ‘Full House’ where most of the master comes from and with Montgomery’s original solo. It’s a brief statement and far less assured than the solo that was patched in. Whether that came from a separate complete take or an insert take is a question that isn’t answered or even addressed in the supplemental liner notes. A curious thing to leave hanging. The other new track is the first take of ‘S.O.S.,’ which is a tad faster than the master.

Two takes of Mel Tormé and Robert Wells’ ‘Born to Be Blue’—a rapturous composition with a breathtaking modulation on the B—rounds out the extras and is a nice chance to hear Montgomery’s ballad playing at length.

While there isn’t a whole lot new in the re-packaging of Montgomery’s one night at Tsubo, it does provide an opportunity to re-immerse in one of the guitarist’s high points on record. That’s a good enough reason for me to buy Full House for the third time.

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This year, my approach is a bit different. I’m listening to more new albums than ever before and being as selective as possible so that what’s below are albums that I truly believe are worth your time, attention and ultimately, hard-earned cash. So far, I’ve found seven gems that I am excited to share with you. All but one are already out and all are fine examples of music-making today. I hope you check them out and enjoy them as much as I have.

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Until next time, may good listening be with you all!

Seven New and Upcoming Records to Dig
By: Robert C. Gilbert

Another year, another round of trying to keep tabs on new and exciting music. I say trying because there’s no way to approach this work other than as an attempt to try to sample as many releases as possible without getting lost in an impossible-to-distinguish stream of music where discernment of what is good has flown out the window.

I don’t think I’ve fallen into that trap just yet. Yes, I’ve listened to lot of new albums in 2026 already—over 85—but I’m also trying to be more selective in what I recommend in these round-ups. Consider then that anything I write about as being the best of the best. Here goes.

I had the chance to see pianist Craig Taborn at a recital at Columbia University the last time I was in New York. Opportunity knocked but I didn’t open the door. I don’t regret it even as he and his music fascinate me. Just a few weeks ago, Taborn released a new album, Dream Archives (ECM), teaming up with cellist Tomeka Reid and percussionist Ches Smith.

The recording starts off as a compelling, unsettled avant-garde album and then ends as an often-spooky, hallucinatory and mesmerizing voyage into deep space on ‘Dream Archive’ and the concluding ‘Enchant.’

I always find albums that traverse to the outer edge while maintaining a feeling of serenity fascinating. Dream Archives certainly does this while also continuing Taborn’s mastery of circling the jazz cosmos.

If that sounds up your alley too, you’ll also likely want to buckle up for drummer Willy Rodriguez’s In the Unknown (I Will Find You) (Sunnyside), coming out on March 13.

The range of expression here is astonishingly wide. The album is primarily centred on free-form dialogue between Rodriguez, and keyboardist Leo Genovese and tenor saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock. The album, Rodriguez’s meditation on the loss of his mother to cancer, really gets interesting with the addition of vocalist Allan Harris on the opening composition and ‘The Perplexity of Eternity.’ His spoken-word contributions—his great The Poetry of Jazz: Live from the Blue LLama from last year showed he has a knack of this—add a veneer of urbane polish as if Johnny Hartman partnered up with Albert Ayler.

The album also periodically switches to dense layers of electronic sound courtesy of Genovese on ‘A Room Full of Confusion’ and ‘Follow the Light.’ Come mid-March, you’ll want to check it all out.

What struck me most about bassist Kelsey Mines’ Everything Sacred, Nothing Serious (OA2 Records), out since mid-October, was the cover. She is holding her double bass with her left hand and appears to be holding a bouquet of flowers in her right. Behind her is a wall painted a pastel orange that then switches to a light purple.

Everything Sacred, Nothing Serious is the Seattle-based musician’s first jazz recording and it is soothing and bucolic. The front line is comprised of Beserat Tafesse on trombone and Elsa Nilsson on flute. Mines is joined in the rhythm section by John Hansen on piano and Machado Mijiga on drums—guitarist Danilo Silva and percussionist Jeff Busch also take part.

I stumbled upon the album on Spotify, started to play it and was immediately drawn to it in how the music slowly insinuates itself. It’s different, neither out there nor derivative. One of a kind.

The cover of pianist Anthony D’Alessandro’s sophomore release, City Lights (self-released), out for about four months now, is pure Francis Wolff, Blue Note vintage. The album title and leader name encircle the rest of the recording’s personnel: trumpeter Summer Camargo, tenor saxophonist Jacob Chung, bassist Jonathan Chapman, drummer Ernesto Cervino and, on one track, vocalist Jennarie.

The retro feel extends to how the album was recorded. It was put to tape straight off the floor and without the musicians using headphones. It also extends to D’Alessandro’s writing. Six of City Lights’ tracks were written by him. A seventh, the smoky ballad ‘Oversight,’ was co-written with Jennarie. The remaining two are interpretations of stride standards by James P. Johnson.

It’s the originals that stand out here. D’Allesandro can write an appealing line. He has a mastery of the lingua franca of Horace Silver and his ilk. The band he has assembled has an easy yet tight camaraderie. The end result is another jazz album that harkens to the past yet isn’t stuck in it. It captures the spirit of a by-gone era in the here and now.

That’s the new jazz that’s really fired up my interest. What’s been doing elsewhere? A lot, as usual. But again, if the aim here is to focus on the really good stuff, what’s really been doing is three singer-songwriters who have put out truly excellent albums in the past few months.

Ny Oh (the stage name of Naomi Ludlow) is UK-born, New Zealand-raised and now domiciled in Topanga Canyon. She’s worked with Harry Styles, Madison Cunningham and Margo Price. Her debut album, Wildwood (self-released), was released in mid-November and is often as radiant as California can be. I guess I would call her music dream pop that remains earthy and focused on the beat. ‘Shine’ and ‘Bloom Baby Bloom’ are potent examples of how these opposing impulses can co-exist in a pop music that latches onto both the listener’s heart and head. Oh’s music can also move such as through the driving beat and the intriguing harmonic motion of ‘Don’t Forget.’ There are a lot of treasures here that are only revealed through many listens.

The latest from Courtney Marie Andrews calls out for similar care. She and her music call to mind an adjective like Americana but I’ve always felt that Andrews is someone who writes and delivers songs that are based on what no longer has primacy but are by no means passé: music and lyrics.

Valentine (Thirty Tigers), released in mid-January, continues her gift for songs that yearn and illuminate that just getting through the day is triumph enough sometimes. Here, I think of ‘Outsider’ and ‘Best Friends,’ both songs that have Andrews’ faint cry.

The album also includes two songs that command attention for their structure. The opening number, ‘Pendulum Swing,’ has two moments where there’s a rhythmic break that brings an edge, a sign that Andrews is a true craftswoman. ‘Little Picture of a Butterfly’ dissolves into an ambient fog after its strong harkening to Kris Kristofferson’s ‘Help Me Make It Through the Night,’ both melodically as well as in the sound of his recording of it on his first LP.

Emily Scott Robinson has been making recordings for a decade now and, as what seems to be always the case, someone whom I’ve only recently discovered. Her new album, Appalachia (Oh Boy Records), which came out at the end of January, is the most gentle and genuine album I have heard this year. Calls for piety and grace, as on the astonishingly beautiful ‘Bless It All,’ can seem like cheap posing these days but in the hands of a gifted singer and songwriter, as Robinson surely is, against a background of all-acoustic, almost-all-stringed instruments, the sentiments it calls up remind that turning away from them is often a reflex of reflection and defence. They cut just a bit too close for comfort.

Other highlights include the heartfelt, empathetic ‘Time Traveller,’ a lovely interpretation of ‘The Water is Wide’ (also known as ‘Waly, Waly’) on which Robinson is joined by Duncan Wickel and the opening ‘Hymn for the Unholy.’ So far, for 2026, Appalachia is the album that has most moved me.

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Recently, I picked up a copy of Patti Smith’s Horses, an album firmly canonized as a classic and one I had barely heard prior to buying it. Since then, I have listened to it five times and wrote an essay about the experience.

I hope you like it and will let me know what you think too.

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Until next time, may good listening be with you all!

“Horses, Horses, Horses, Horses”
By: Robert C. Gilbert

What are your music blind spots? Those places where you dare not or chose not to go. We all have them, even those whose tastes run wide or whose collections run deep or even in the areas of music with which one has been long well-acquainted. Here are a few of mine: Louis Armstrong beyond his album-length collaborations with Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker outside of his recordings with strings or the famous Massey Hall concert in 1953 with Dizzy Gillespie or anything by Joni Mitchell after 1980’s Shadows and Light. Here are a few more: I own no recordings by Chuck Berry or the Kinks or Nina Simone or B.B. King or Nick Drake.

The reasons for these holes in my musical soul, so to speak, are varied. Partly, it’s a practical matter like waiting for Mitchell’s Archives series to tackle the eighties and beyond or that a box set of Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings is not easily available. Sometimes, it’s a matter of my taste. I’ve never felt too compelled to dig beyond the hits of the Kinks or have warmed to the sound of Simone’s voice. Another reason is that there’s only so much time to listen to music and only so much room someone has to store it and there’s only so much money to lay out on this wonderful obsession called music.

There’s also that the whim simply hasn’t been there to pick up a classic Berry session, for one example, even as there is no denying that there is a certain shame to have spent almost 40 years building a record library that still doesn’t have even one cut by Chuck Berry in it.

I suppose that glaring omission is at least partly understandable if one considers that it’s not as if I don’t know his music or that it wasn’t a foundational part of my musical education. Anyone raised on fifties and sixties rock and roll as I was knows about the deeply American travails of ‘Johnny B. Goode,’ the futile longing for ‘Nadine (Is That You?)’ or that the time had come to ‘Roll Over Beethoven.’ So some blind spots in my collection are not filled as they wouldn’t necessarily satisfy the continued longing to stretch further, go deeper and gain the widest knowledge and appreciation of music. That’s not an excuse, it’s just a rationalization of where the collecting path has taken me.

And so then there are albums that I am long acquainted with that many others have never heard just as there are albums that others know front to back, back to front and every other way about which I know little. In both instances there lies the possibility of that first listen. To hear a recording with fresh ears. To measure if one’s notions about the music are equal to the reality, way different or ideally, far better than could have possibly been imagined.

That was the position I was in when a few weeks ago I decided to order the 50th anniversary of Patti Smith’s Horses. It seemed like the perfect way to finally hear the album, long known as a major statement, if not the major statement, of gritty, seventies New York. I had once heard the opening cover of ‘Gloria’ on the radio, recalling that I was impressed by its in-your-face quality but that was it. It was time to hear Horses for myself.

As I loaded the compact disc of the original album, newly remastered, into my player and got ready to press play, I posted a note here.

Among the responses I received were: “Welcome to the cult…,” “You’re in for a real treat!!!,” “Well, this should come as a shock to the system, in a good way,” “Oh to hear this with fresh ears again” and “Won’t be your last.”

The opening line of the album is “Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine.” It’s provocative and confrontational. It’s also like the revving of an engine, which then roars for the next minute and 40 seconds while still stationary. Smith then shifts into drive as she proclaims, “here she comes” and ‘Gloria’ begins in earnest.

What’s interesting here is the antic energy, an anticipation of the song’s rush of a refrain, colliding against the polish in which Jay Dee Daugherty’s drums, especially the bass drum, in synch with Ivan Král’s bass sounds not far removed from the lockstep of Mick Fleetwood and John McVie that was one of the many defining elements of the Buckingham-Nicks era of Fleetwood Mac.

That crispness is unexpected. Nineteen seventy-five bohemian New York—the crucible in which Horses was created—does not, on the surface, seem to lend itself to such well-manner sonics but I think they’re central to the album’s potent power. That comes mostly from Smith, creating an art rock that’s not too dissimilar from Yoko Ono’s double LP Approximately Infinite Universe from 1972, but is something earthier, something one can dance to. In other words, unlike Ono’s albums, I can play Horses on my stereo without having to put on headphones.

As an outsider to this type of music—one label given to it is art-punk—but genuinely fascinated by the do-it-yourself, flipping-off-convention ethos of the movement that Horses was heralding, the glean of accessibility or maybe more accurately, an easy entry point to gradually understand and appreciate the album, was not something I had counted on. If John Cale, Horses’ producer and one of the antecedents of the way the album was pointing, had his way, there would have also been strings on it.

The album’s clean sound isn’t my only way in here. These are others more substantial, including a fascination with rock music that balances a view quite askew with a deep foundation in the mechanics and craft of pop songwriting. Here, I think of Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band’s Safe as Milk, the Mothers of Invention’s Freak Out! and parts of The Velvet Underground and Nico. I am also predisposed to strong female singer-songwriters like Laura Nyro, Judee Sill and Joni Mitchell. Of the three, Nyro is the best comparison to Smith and her go-for-broke dynamism. Another is that Wilson Pickett’s recording of ‘Land of 1000 Dances’ is one of my favourite recordings.

That song, written and originally recorded by Chris Kenner, is part of Horses’ centrepiece, an almost 10-minute thrill ride that sandwiches it between two pieces by Smith, the title composition and ‘La Mer(de).’ Like ‘Gloria,’ there is anticipation. How will ‘Land of 1000 Dances’ fit into all this? What is it even doing here? Its presence is not so unexpected considering Smith’s interest in getting back to the beating heart of rock and roll not to mention bandmate Lenny Kaye’s bona fides as a music preservationist through his creating the Nuggets compilation in 1972.

The shift to ‘Land of 1000 Dances,’ after Smith repeats the word horses four times, is perfect. It becomes a familiar sight, a chance to get one’s bearings recalibrated. Again, it’s contrast at play. The callbacks to the days when dances like the twist or the watusi were all the rage act as an leavening to Smith’s poetic flights of fancy. All of it is delivered by her coolly, announcing a difference from Bruce Springsteen—his Born to Run vying with Horses as the album of the moment in 1975—who was just as exuberant but in a far hotter manner. ‘Free Money’ is the one time Smith and Horses reaches the ecstatic heights of the Boss’ breakthrough even while it keeps its hipster framework intact.

He’s an artist I appreciate but I’m sure I would consider myself a fan of his. I have his first four albums. The music is often overwhelming, so plugged in it is to the day-to-day struggle and the longing to transcend it that I need to be in a special mood in order to be able to be planted in my seat to receive it for about 45 minutes straight. No surprise then that my favourite Springsteen recording is ‘It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City’ from Greetings for Asbury Park, N.J. where he’s more detached.

That would not exactly be the word I would use to describe Smith on the reggae-like ‘Rendono Beach’ or on the street-wise beat of ‘Kimberly.’ Disaffected may work better here. Her voice is deep and full. It’s neither coarse nor pretty. But it is the sound of someone who knows all the angles and while she’s not going to spill them, one can possibly guess at some of them simply by listening hard to her.

‘Break It Up,’ on which Allen Lanier of Blue Öyster Cult and Tom Verlaine of Television guest with Smith, Kaye, Král, Daugherty and Richard Sohl on piano, is the most expressive moment on Horses. A song about Jim Morrison, ‘Break It Up’’s refrain is unforgettable, the moment in which the precision of the album’s sound seems most unsettling, even dangerous.

I see albums like Horses as ultimately being provocations, weeding out those unwilling or unable to give it the attention it needs. The path from attention to rapt interest is fairly swift for the six tracks I’ve already written about. The remaining two: ‘Birdland’ and ‘Elegie’ don’t permit such instant gratification. Horses’ isn’t just an album of balls-to-the-wall rock. It’s also one of poetry. The former, with Kaye’s screeching guitar and Smith’s almost spoken-word vocal underlines the lineage, if Cale’s participation wasn’t enough to do so, back to the Velvet Underground, especially to something like ‘Heroin.’

The closing ‘Elegie’ had a floating quality. It is mournful yet also suggests a steely determination—particularly the lines “trumpets, violins, I heard them in the distance / and my skin emits a ray.”

I feel that may be Horses’ primary emotive quality. A cry of the rebel announcing something new and different. It’s about time I got hip to Horses’ call.

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I hope you enjoy what I have written and will share your thoughts as well!

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Until next time, may good listening be with you all!

McCoy Tyner and the Thrill of Discovery
By: Robert C. Gilbert

Using the word holy to describe the music of the John Coltrane Quartet is hardly an original thing to do. And yet, when it is played at the right time and in the right place, it can slowly, almost without knowing it, induce a state of bliss so transcendent that it’s hard not to call it anything else but that. Perhaps some additional leeway is afforded here as when I think of Coltrane’s music as being holy, I’m not necessarily thinking of A Love Supreme or ‘Dear Lord’ or ‘Alabama’—deeply spiritual works though they all are. Instead, I’m primarily thinking of the early months of the Quartet just after McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones joined, and Steve Davis and then Reggie Workman held down the bass chair.

The group’s first two concentrated periods of recording—three sessions in October 1960 and three sessions in May 1961—yielded five albums and also marked Coltrane’s transition from Atlantic to his final recording home, Impulse!. It was during this time that he put on tape his most well-known recording, his transformation of ‘My Favourite Things,’ Olé Coltrane, his final straight-ahead recording with an expanded front line and Africa/Brass, his exhilarating expansion of the Quartet’s sound to a small big band.

These records operate on two different, seemingly contradictory, planes. One is exploratory, focused on trying to reach a sonic nirvana. The other is accessibility, employing motifs, harmonic suspensions and tightly coiled energy to make the music quickly understandable to the novice jazz listener as well as satisfying to the long-time jazz buff. In effect, this collection of music is both governed by a musical language that seems to transcend the theme-solo-theme structure while also making it highly logical. Take, for example, how Tyner’s solo on ‘Olé’ seemingly dissolves into the lengthy dialogue between Workman and Art Davis.

That not only suggests a way to implicitly hand the soloist baton from musician to musician but also implies that an ensemble becomes a collective instrument, everyone’s energies profoundly aligned. Now, that’s a romantic way to describe what happens. Another would be to suggest that it’s tentativeness instead at work here with everyone staying within a clearly defined boundary, particularly in how Jones keeps the breadth of his sound fairly constrained or how Coltrane never breaks into full cry. But, whatever constrictions there are only furthers the exhilaration here as well as on, foe example, the very cool ‘Equinox,’ recorded in October 1960 and only released in 1966. In a sense, to hear it is to discover the fundamentals of jazz. At least, that’s what it feels to me.

That thought is no doubt one I have because these early recordings of the Coltrane Quartet formed my first substantial exposure to him and his group’s music. It was all so gloriously new to me as undoubtedly what the Quartet was playing was new to the members of the group. Regardless of what personal connection I have to this music, it’s often the earliest documents of a new way of making music that most strongly endure. In other words, when the new rules are being created rather than being adhered to, if you like.

But what turned me on the most with this music was hearing McCoy Tyner. The steadiness of his comping behind Coltrane. The way his solos progressed from crystalline single lines to those hypnotic chordal patterns to the reassurance of a motif that signaled the shift from one mode to a new one or the conclusion of his statement. It was an approach markedly different from other sideman appearances he made at the time—he was all of 21 when he joined Coltrane’s band—such as on Freddie Hubbard’s dynamic debut as a leader, Open Sesame, where he plays like a spritelier and slightly more adventurous Wynton Kelly.

Of course, how Tyner played on something like ‘Song for the Underground Railroad,’ an outtake from the Africa/Brass sessions and my favourite Coltrane recording, would evolve as would the sound of the Quartet, from the legendary recordings from the Village Vanguard in early November 1961—by that time, Jimmy Garrison was in the process of supplanting Workman—to the dissolution of the group as 1965 wound down.

During those years, Tyner was also recording as a leader on Impulse!. What is most interesting about the six albums he made for the label is their varied nature—each has its own character. Nights of Ballad and Blues is a trio recording with old bandmate Steve Davis and Lex Humphries on drums and is pitched towards mass appeal. A live set from the 1963 Newport Jazz Festival is informal. Today and Tomorrow switches from a trio with Garrison and Albert “Tootie” Heath on drums—dig an almost-modal take on ‘A Night in Tunisia’—and a sextet with a jaw-dropping frontline of Thad Jones on trumpet, Frank Strozier on alto saxophone and John Gilmore on tenor saxophone that only hints at the possibilities of such a combination. The opening ‘Contemporary Focus,’ for example, points toward the expanded sound palette of Tyner’s 1967 album Tender Moments, his second album after moving from Impulse! to Blue Note.

The three remaining three LPs are essentially trio sessions. Reaching Fourth, recorded in the fall of 1962, has Tyner playing with bassist Henry Grimes and drummer Roy Haynes, who was on call for the Coltrane Quartet whenever Jones was unavailable. No surprise then with Haynes at the kit that the brisk tracks are wound deliriously tight. Haynes’ clipped hi-hat-and-snare work on the title track in particular makes it a high point of Tyner’s sixties stint on Impulse!. Inception and McCoy Tyner Plays Ellington bookend it.

They are also notable as they document the pianist with his mates in the Coltrane rhythm section. The latter, recorded the same week as A Love Supreme, is with Garrison and Jones (Willie Rodriguez and Johnny Pacheco provide not-exactly-necessary percussion on four of the album’s seven tracks). It’s one of the strictly-trio cuts, ‘Mr. Gentle and Mr. Cool,’ an Ellington feature for Ray Nance and Shorty Baker, that stands out. The theme is very hummable. The harmonic shift in the B section is full of possibilities for the solo.

After playing the theme, Tyner, Garrison and Jones cast a Coltrane shade on Ellingtonia. The beat gets heavier. Jones thickens it on the toms on the middle eight. Tyner’s three solo choruses have him lightly climbing up and down the keyboard and also playing dense clusters of chords. Garrison favours strumming the strings for his one solo chorus.

A brisk run-through on ‘It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)’—not released until 1978—has Jones playing those instantly recognizable polyrhythms as well as a relentless swing on the ride cymbal. These recordings not only call back to the first days of the Coltrane Quartet but also reveal the effect of subsequent years. The music is a little less polite. Everyone has emerged as a mater of their instrument.

Inception was recorded at the start of 1962. It’s not only my favourite of his Impulse! albums but also, in my opinion, the best artistically with Reaching Fourth a close second. With the pianist are Jones and Art Davis, while never officially a member of the Coltrane Quartet, he was called on often enough as a second bassist to be considered part of the fold.

There’s a symmetry to the program. Three up-tempo pieces, each based on a different form, all written by Tyner. Three ballad- to mid-tempo pieces, two being well-known standards and the other the fourth original written by the pianist for the album.

The title track, which starts the album, is full of quirks even as it is mostly a tune that provides an engaging structure for the soloist. A lickety-split run up the keyboard and a brief response by Jones is played before the theme. A four-bar riff is added so that the exchanges between Tyner and Jones become a cycle between one instance of four bars and then two instances of eight bards after Tyner’s improvisation. During it, he is bursting with ideas, filling in all the spaces but never in a gratuitous manner. When he switches to chords, he also switches from laying into the beat to laying away from it.

On ‘Blues for Gwen,’ named after Tyner’s sister, he is even more precocious, improvising straight through. What is even more notable is that as Tyner is playing aggressively, there is still room for space and more than once, he ruminates on a shimmering trill.

‘Effendi,’ probably the best-known of the numbers Tyner wrote for Inception, is a modal piece with a twist. There’s only one A section before the switch to a new mode on the B and then a return to the A. Here is Art Davis’ finest moment on the album, a two-chorus solo in which he goes outside of the harmony, plays the bass like a guitar on the B and throughout, sounds like he is playing free even as he adheres to ‘Effendi’’s 24-bar form.

The other Tyner original is ‘Sunset,’ dedicated to his then-wife Aisha, and the lyrical highlight of Inception. It starts off rubato and then resolves into a romantic chordal climb echoed by Davis and given extra momentum by Jones’ brushwork.

Inception’s two standards are another study in contrasts. The melody of ‘There Is No Greater Love’ unfolds in a light, decorative way in which each member of the trio weaves around each other similar to the approach of the classic Oscar Peterson Trio with Ray Brown and Ed Thigpen. ‘Speak Love’ has Jones back in Coltrane mode, playing a rhythmic dialogue between the ride and using cross-sticks with Tyner employing a pedal point to unspool the famous Kurt Weill melody. It’s a propulsive way to end the album, one that is pretty special to me.

It was natural for me to start collecting Tyner’s albums after immersing myself in the music of Coltrane. Inception was the first one I bought. It’s the kind of discovery path that jazz best inculcates, especially back in the late nineties when I first got seriously into jazz and one still had to actively seek out the music one wanted to hear.

It’s a process I am also remined of as I dig into Haunted Heart, the recent release of everything—both masters and alternate takes—that Bill Evans, Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian recorded in the studio between 1959 and 1961 for Riverside Records. In this case, Miles Davis brought me to Evans. My first purchase of his music was Portrait in Jazz. That’s real music discovery. Here, I’d also use the word holy to describe it.

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Just prior to 2025 saying goodbye, I had a review published in The Metropolitan Review, a fast-growing literary publication here, on the debut book by Chris Dalla Riva (who runs his own fast-growing publication here too!), Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us About the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves. The review is mixed but I hope I was as upfront as possible on what I liked about Chris’ book and to highlight his success both on Substack and in getting a book published (that’s no mean feat!). Here is the review in case you haven’t checked it out.

The Metropolitan Review

This Is Top Forty

There’s a channel on Stingray Music, an online streaming service based in Canada, called All-Time Greatest Hits. A typical five-song set goes like this: Billie Eilish followed by Foreigner followed by Gladys Knight & the Pips followed by Rihanna and ending with the Lovin’ Spoonful. Contrary to the…

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4 months ago · 35 likes · 10 comments · Robert C. Gilbert and The Metropolitan Review

For my first essay for 2026, I thought I would take a look at two interesting yet confounding albums by Del Shannon, both recorded and released in 1966: This Is My Bag and Total Commitment. Neither could be called a classic but both document the artistic struggle to remain relevant and to try to find one’s place in an environment that was quickly changing. They are worth checking out and I hope you will share your thoughts on them as well.

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Until next time, may good listening be with you all!

Del Shannon in 1966
By: Robert C Gilbert

There are many reasons to curse streaming. The lousy metadata, the lousier fake artists and the lousiest thing of all, the miniscule royalties paid for streams. These are just for starters.

Yet, there are upsides to streaming in the midst of all the downsides. For example, there is no way I could have listened to so much new music last year if not for Spotify. But to get a whole lot out of it, you need to put a whole lot into it. In other words, the exact opposite to how platforms should work.

A far more esoteric compliant about streaming is that when catalogue albums are finally made available, the only way to usually find out about them is to stumble upon them or on, let’s say, the 50th time or so searching for an elusive album, there it finally is. Obsessive music fan I am, such a discovery when it does happen is always accompanied by a gasp and true to form, I do so last summer when I found This Is My Bag on Spotify and then again just a few weeks ago, when I found Total Commitment there too. They are the two albums that Del Shannon recorded and released in 1966.

Shannon remains one of the most intriguing of the artists that came to prominence in the time between Elvis Presley—then Private Presley—embarking for 16 months of military service in Germany and the Beatles touching down at JFK Airport. He was one of the singers who brought a new range, both emotively and octavely, to the rock singer as well as a frenzied vulnerability beneath the bravado.

Perhaps the most intriguing thing about Shannon’s music in the early sixties can be found on ‘Little Town Flirt,’ which he co-wrote with Maron McKenzie and which came out in late 1962. It was his third big hit, a year after the one-two procession of ‘Runaway’ and ‘Hats Off to Larry,’ and more sedate than either of them as groove supplanted pure emotionalism. And what a groove it is, powered by a snare backbeat and the steady comping of a guitar, very similar to the Orlons’ ‘The Wah-Watusi’ but, even more importantly, expressing a telepathic synergy with a certain rhythm that would distinguish many of the early Beatles’ sides (think here of ‘All My Loving,’ ‘Ask Me Why’ and ‘There’s a Place’).

Shortly after ‘Little Town Flirt’ made its climb up the charts, Shannon would tour with the Fab Four in England and soon after that, he would be the first artist to put a Lennon and McCartney song—‘From Me to You’—onto the Billboard Hot 100. That he not only recognized the genuine invention of what was coming out of Britain (fueled, to an extent, by Shannon’s own genuine invention) but was also able to express his own brand of artistry within it through something like the devastating ‘I Got to Pieces’ which Peter and Gordon memorably recorded speaks to a dynacism in Shannon’s music that easily gets lost by fixating a little too much on ‘Runaway.’

He was not milquetoast as it could be said of some of his peers whose fortunes seemed to change almost overnight in the winter of 1964. Not even Roy Orbison, who had a tremendous influence on Shannon, could hold off the inevitable. It would happen to him as well.

In the fall of that year, Shannon had a big hit with the urgent ‘Keep Searchin’ (We’ll Follow the Sun).’ The break-heavy recording underlined with handclaps plus lyrics like “I’ve gotta find a place to hide with my baby by my side / she’s been hurt so much, they treat her mean and cruel” illustrates a danger that is never fully explained yet is fully understood. His follow-up single, ‘Stranger in Town,’ from which Shannon and his girlfriend “run / yeah we run / yeah we run” was even more existential in its portrayal of danger with its stops and starts that culminate in the refrain proclaiming the need to get away right away.

The two singles that came after, ‘Break Up’ and ‘Move It on Over,’ are just as interesting in how they showed Shannon's openness to garage rock, the snarl of the Rolling Stones and in the case of the latter, the Cajun soul of the Sir Douglas Quintet. Neither went anywhere but after them came a new record contract, Shannon’s first with a major label; in this case, Liberty, then home to the Ventures, Gary Lewis & the Playboys, Cher and Jan & Dean. And it was on the label that quickly came two albums by Shannon: This Is My Bag and Total Commitment. They stand as two of the fascinating curiosities of sixties rock which is why I gasped when both finally became available for streaming. They portray Del Shannon trying (often desperately) to find a new sound.

This kind of search often yielded uneasy results in how they conflicted with an artist’s public image and how the listening public was accustomed to hearing him or her. There was also the nagging feeling that embracing change was done more for expediency than any artistic reason. Some of the results from there efforts succeeded despite whatever dubious motivations may have been behind them. I think here of ‘Twinkle Toes,’ Roy Orbison’s fuzz-drenched final top 40 before his 1988 renaissance, ‘Devil’s Child,’ a driving album cut from 1967’s The Hit Sounds of the Everly Brothers and Another Side of Rick Nelson on which the attempt to branch out Nelson’s sound to folk, contemporary rock and even psychedelia worked far better than it had any right to.

Shannon’s initial efforts to do so on Liberty were far more tentative, favouring covers over originals written or co-written by him. This Is My Bag came out in the summer of 1966 and was produced by Snuff Garrett and had arrangements by Nick De Caro and Leon Russell. Leading it off was the only Shannon recording that dented the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966 (and just barely at that). ‘The Big Hurt,’ best-known through Toni Fisher’s phase-heavy recording from 1959, is the kind of song that was tailor-fit for Shannon. It's broadly emotional and features a sweeping melody that builds to a majestic release as well as the feeling that its ending does not auger anything even remotely like a happy resolution.

Shannon sings the song well, if not entirely convincingly. The layering of phasing effects, particularly as the recording reaches the conclusion, build a sound that is futuristic and would soon become commonplace once the brewing musical counterculture began to boil over.

This Is My Bag is a strange album. The three originals are easily dwarfed by the covers. There are two reasons why. The first is that their obscurity rests anxiously against the songs Shannon is given to interpret and the second is that none of the interpretations deviate markedly from the versions that remain well-known. Sometimes the approach works.

It’s no surprise that Shannon digs into ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’—his “yeah” at the end of the first verse is a nice touch—or that songs like ‘When You Walk In the Room,’ written by Jackie DeShannon, another American artist who immediately got the British beat and ‘Everybody Loves a Clown,’ one of seven straight top 10 hits by Lewis & the Playboys, which are both rooted in the ache of young love, have Shannon fitting into them nicely.

He also makes personal contact with Bobby Goldsboro’s hooky ‘It’s Too Late.’ One wishes he could have done the same with the Northern-soul like ‘The Cheater,’ the only hit by Bob Kuban and the In-Men. More glaringly, having Shannon tackle ‘Lightnin’ Strikes,’ a Lou Christie number-one hit that is indebted, in part, to his ‘Runaway,’ can only be attributed to the crassness of the record business.

Of the originals, only ‘Never Thought I Could’ stands out. ‘Hey! Little Star’ sounds five years too late and ‘For a Little While’ is marred by Shannon trying to sound overly tough.

It’s that same mannerism: yelling instead of singing, that he uses on his cover of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Under My Thumb,’ a song graced by a fiendishly catchy melody and chord structure that is marred by lyrics that are just plain ugly. Shannon sounds entirely out of place as a guy who throws away his customary gallantry to offer put-downs that are too cruel to quote here. This most unfortunate of covers leads off Total Commitment, which was released just three months after This Is My Bag. It is another confounding recording.

Primarily produced by Dallas Smith, who would soon work with Canned Heat and Hour Glass, Gregg and Duane Allman’s group before the Allman Brothers, Total Commitment is an unflinching portrait of an artist wondering where to go. Nothing more clearly illustrates this then on several of the album’s cover songs which replicate their hit-recording counterparts so closely that it seems to me that the backing tracks for them are used for Shannon to sing a vocal over them. There is a pronounced separation between Shannon and the musicians that doesn’t appear elsewhere on the album, and no discernable deviation between, for example, how Crispin St. Peters’ ‘The Pied Piper’ sounds and Shannon’s take on it. The gambit doesn’t work here, to say the least, and comes off only slightly better for Bobby Hebb’s ‘Sunny’ or ‘Time Won’t Let Me’ by the Outsiders (horn rock before there was such a thing).

The four originals on the album—three by Shannon and the other by Roy Nievelt—point to a greater ease with rock heavy on the backbeat and Shannon fits well into it even if none of the songs have a lasting impact after hearing them.

There is a kind of grace, however, reached on a fourth of Total Commitment. He finds a toughness in the bubble-gum sound of Paul Simon and Bruce Woodley’s ‘Red Rubber Ball,’ the Crykle’s biggest hit, singing the resolution to the refrain how Simon and Garfunkel would on a recording of them performing it live at the Philharmonic Hall in the winter of 1967 that would be released thirty-years later. He also sounds at ease covering ‘The Joker Went Wild,’ written by Bobby Russell and recorded by Bryan Hyland, someone whom Shannon would work with later in the sixties and into the seventies.

But, to me, that most revelatory track on Total Commitment is his take on P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri’s ‘Where Were You When I Needed You,’ drenched in folk-rock jangle and Dylan-esque lyrics. Here, Shannon sounds powerful and strikes the balance between delivering a brutal kiss off and the admission that doing so comes out of a personal hurt. It’s true that to laud a recording like this that is, in a sense, karaoke—the backing track is original but again, replicates the sound of the hit record Shannon was covering—is trying to redeem music by an artist who is trying to find a place in a rapidly changing environment where there may well not be a place for him or her. But, striving, even if done in a misguided way, has virtue and, in Shannon’s case, poignancy.

Even as he realized an original vision of his music through a psychedelic lens on 1968’s The Further Adventures of Charles Westover and steered Hyland to a mini-resurgence in 1970, Del Shannon would sadly remain on the periphery for the rest of his career. This Is My Bag and Total Commitment are documents of the artistic struggle, both of Del Shannon’s as well as of all who strive to create. They are worth hearing.

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I may be late to the game but I wanted to close out the year with my thoughts on the albums that most moved me in 2025 as well as some reflections on my writing here and the state of my newsletter.

My deepest thanks to everyone here for your support of my work and I hope to have some new surprises and delights for you in 2026 starting on January 13 when I will next be in touch.

Happy New Year everyone!

2025 in Music and Words
By: Robert C. Gilbert

Twenty twenty-five was the first year in my life I really tried to pay attention to new music. I’m 47. Growing up, and long after that, what I was listening to and discovering, and what was being released, were out of synch. I never felt that I was missing out of anything. There is enough old music to find—if one hasn’t heard it, it’s technically new music no matter when it was recorded—to last several lifetimes. And that was fine when I was a somewhat crazed music fan and record collector but tougher to justify when I am also trying to make it as a music writer and critic.

In 2024, I began to wrestle with contemporary music and started writing an ongoing series of round-ups of new and upcoming albums that caught my ear, starting with jazz and branching out from there. This year, I got more serious, keeping a log of everything I heard and writing six essays chronicling the good new stuff (read them here, here, here, here, here and here). Overall, I heard 507 new albums in 2025; the pace steady from the beginning of the year until around mid-November when thoughts increasingly turned to the sounds of the season.

It’s said that Downbeat received about that number of records in 1959. These days, that amount of LPs is but a sliver of the new music being made and released so my thoughts about what stuck most with me over the year is but a small impression of the sounds of the past 365 days.

Looking back at the albums I wrote about this year, here are the ones that stood out the most.

Tenor saxophonist Jon Irabagon’s Server Farm (Irabbagast Records) was one of the most sprawling and ambitious albums that came across my desk in 2025. It confronted the spectre of artificial intelligence and in five compositions, built a narrative that shifted from authenticity to artificiality. The band was first-rate: in addition to Irabagon’s regular band-mates: keyboardist Matt Mitchell, bassist Chris Lightcap and drummer Dan Weiss, there were the dueling guitars of Miles Okazaki and Wendy Eisenberg. The result was enthralling with the performances constantly shifting in texture and tempo.

One of the big surprises of 2025 was that it brought two excellent, yet very different, salutes to Thelonious Monk. Tenor saxophonist Xhosa Cole’s On a Modern Genius (Vol. 1) (Stoney Lane Recordings) interpreted the master’s music with restlessness. Recorded live in 2023 in Birmingham, England, the presence of tap dancer Liberty Styles on four of the album’s seven tracks added to its boldness.

Danya Stephens’s Monk’d (Contagious Music) had two twists: the first was that instead of tenor, Stephens played bass and the second was that the program focused, though not exclusively, on the nooks and crannies of the Monk songbook—think ‘Humph,’ ‘Coming on the Hudson’ and ‘Stuffy Turkey.’ But what was even more interesting was how Stephens and crew: tenor saxophonist Stephen Riley, pianist Ethan Iverson and drummer Eric McPherson echoed the bumptious bounce of Monk’s early-sixties quartet of Charlie Rouse, John Ore and Frankie Dunlop without ever being captive to it.

Throughout the year, I got the occasional email from a musician pitching his or her music to me. I appreciated this gesture and always gave a fair hearing to what was sent me. None of the albums that came my way through this method knocked me out as much as New York singer-songwriter Lili Añel’s You Have a Visitor (self-released), a call back to the days of Janis Ian, Norma Tanega and (especially) Phoebe Snow. But what really made me take notice was ‘Saw the Light,’ propelled by a looping bass line by Samuel Nobles and an evocation of the gritty side of New York with Añel dispensing truths like Gil Scott-Heron.

Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and keyboardist Vijay Iyer teamed up for Defiant Life (ECM), a stark and often alluring work on being angry about the state of the world. That might suggest Defiant Life was aggressive. It wasn’t. Instead, it was ambient, atmospheric and full of space, the kind of album to play over and over again.

Distinctive singers were a consistent source of pleasure. Tyreek McDole’s velvety sound brought to mind Kevin Mahogany and McDole’s debut recording, Open Up Your Senses (Artwork), was wide-ranging, offering deep interpretations of not-overdone standards like ‘Under a Blanket of Blue,’ bringing new energy to the totemic ‘The Creator Has a Master Plan’ and, speaking of Monk, caressing Mike Ferro’s lyrics to ‘Ugly Beauty.’

I loved Allan Harris’ The Poetry of Jazz: Live at the Blue LLama (Blue LLama Recordings) which mixed poetry with song, both well-suited to Harris’ voice: full of warmth, gentle yet rich. I was also touched by Raquel Marina’s Kind Words (self-released). Her sound on the album was unconventional, often hovering around a note rather than landing on it, but I found her album one of the most uplifting and pure things I heard all year.

Taylor Rae’s The Void (Missing Piece Records) was an addictive synthesis of pop, rock, soul and country. Jack Splithoff’s Far From Here (Virgin) evoked the Yacht rock sound of old without feeling dated in any way. Reed Turchi’s World on Fire (Xenon) went all the way back to the low-fi days of blues and folk. Cory Hanson’s I Love People (Drag City) persuasively argued that the age of tuneful singer-songwriter whose view is askew remains alive and well.

The New Eves, a female quartet out of the United Kingdom, personified an edge that was foremost in 2025. Their debut, The New Eves Is Rising (Transgressive Records), had a palpable menace that always seemed around the corner.

I also deeply admired producer Michael Simard’s project, Motivation, which paid tribute to the music of the seventies that existed in the liminal space between jazz, soul and funk. The 21-person aggregation’s debut recording, Take It to the Sky (self-released), was a bold statement, resisting the easy tribute—there are only deep cuts here—and was the kind of recording that barely made a dent but one I loved sharing and spreading the word about.

Two jazz releases from 2025 illustrated the music’s wide range of expression. Drummer Joe Farnsworth offered The Big Room (Smoke Sessions Records) which seemed as if it escaped from the Blue Note vault circa 1964, so strong did the spirit of the label pleasantly haunt the recording. It also didn’t hurt that the band Farnsworth assembled resembled the kind of heavy-hitter units that Blue Note was beloved for. Joining the drummer were trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, alto saxophonist Sarah Hanahan, vibraphonist Joel Ross (the X-factor here), pianist Emmet Cohen, bassist Yasushi Nakamara. It all added up to a modern classic.

Vibraphonist Patricia Brennan circled the outer edges of the music. Her presence on a recording is always a sign to take notice (and, to that end, how I wish I had been able to get deeper into guitarist Mary Halvorson’s latest, About Ghosts, on which Brennan appeared). Brennan’s Of the Near and Far (Pyroclastic Records) was one of the most fantastical listens 2025 offered. Fueled by her interest in astrology, the compositions she wrote for the recording had a spaciousness and etherealness that often inspired awe, especially the closer, ‘When You Stare Into the Abyss.’

The decision to write about an album comes down to first, whether I like it and second, whether I can write about it in a way that has something interesting to offer about its contents. Glancing back at my list of all the albums I heard this year, there are some that I didn’t write about for whatever reason but still liked a whole lot.

• The Weather Station, Humanhood (Fat Possum)

• Anna B Savage, You & i are Earth (City Slang)

• Gary Louris, Dark Country (Thirty Tigers)

• ARTEMIS, ARBORESQUE (Blue Note)

• Rumer, In Session (self-released)

• Foxwarren, 2 (Arts & Crafts)

• Beatie Wolfe & Brian Eno, Luminal (Verve)

• Pasquale Grasso, Fervency (Sony Masterworks)

• Colin Hancock’s Jazz Hounds with Catherine Russell, Cat & the Hounds (Turtle Bay Records)

• Wet Leg, moisturizer (Domino Recording)

• Alexa Tarantino, The Roar and the Whisper (Blue Engine Records)

• The Beaches, No Hard Feelings (AWAL Recordings)

• Trio of Bloom, Trio of Bloom (Pyroclastic Records)

Two albums I heard late in the year that I would have written about if I had done a seventh round-up of new music would have been bassist Rich Brown’s NYAEBA (Whirlwind Records), out since the end of September and a rhythmic, ambient and complex album that took me to far-off places. Vocalist Whitney Ross-Barris’ Curtains of Light (self-released), released at the end of October, was the kind of cross-genre music that never fails to surprise and delight. The opening cut, ‘Bourgeois Reverie,’ was full of brass and had a shuffle too, and powers what follows on the album.

The one composition I dug most this year was ‘The Files’ by the current iteration of the SFJazz Collective. It was a composition by the vibraphonist Warren Wolf and appeared on the Collective’s latest album, Collective Imagery (SF Jazz), a collaboration with San Francisco’s deYoung Museum and was inspired by artist Sadie Barnette’s FBI Drawing: Legal Ritual. The artwork consists of five collages which include excerpts from her father’s FBI files—he was both a Vietnam War veteran and a member of the Black Panthers—situated around by graphite-pencil drawings. Wolf used a spoken-word narrative to weave around a multi-part composition that included a deeply evocative homage to the sounds of Shaft and Superfly that spotlighted Wolf on marimba as well as David Sánchez on flute and Chris Potter on tenor saxophone.

No lyric seem to capture the increased surrealness of reality in 2025 than what singer-songwriter Emily Hines wrote for ‘UFO,’ part of her excellent debut album, These Days (Keeled Scales), in which she envisioned, “Jesus will come ridin’ in on a UFO / Jesus will come crashin’ with his alien buddies / Jesus will come in the nick of time and take us up.”

This year, I published 36 editions of Listening Sessions. My most popular essay was The Rambunctious CTI of 1970: Freddie Hubbard, Joe Farrell & Stanley Turrentine which looked at three adventurous albums released on Creed Taylor’s label.

Other essays this year I am particularly proud of included my attempt to memorialize Gene Hackman by focusing on The French Connection—his breakout role—and Don Ellis, who composed the picture’s haunting soundtrack. A few continued my interest in going deep on artists that usually don’t receive such treatment. I wrote at length this year on both Johnny Rivers and Porter Wagoner in the late sixties, the sole album by jazz-rock powerhouse Air—I loved having wordsworthesq aboard for it—as well as Mac Davis’ debut, Song Painter.

I also tried to say something new about music that’s already been written about ad nauseum. I think my essays honouring Brian Wilson and connecting Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band with The Notorious Byrd Brothers came off well. The essay I had most fun writing this year was, no surprise, my travelogue of a week-and-a-half spent in New York.

While my attempt to go paid has seen me not paywall anything since May, I’ll try to focus next year on creating and acting on a paid-subscriber strategy that offers real, added value to the work I do here. Still, I began this year with 15 paid subscribers and will end the year with 18. I am forever appreciative of the support! Overall, my subscriber base continues to grow and in 2025, it went from 2,012 to 2,635 (as of December 28)—a 31% increase.

That I am able to do what I am doing is thanks to all of you who find what I do worth supporting and, most importantly, worth reading. That’s not something I will ever take for granted. I feel immense gratitude to be able to keep on going here. Thank you to you all! Here’s to 2026: may the New Year be good to us all!

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The year here is almost done. There will be one more essay—it’s coming December 30 and will be a look back at 2025 in terms of the music I’ve enjoyed most as well as my work here.

Until then, I wish you all a wonderful holiday season where peace, love and joy will be found all around you.

Another Trip Around the World of the Music of Christmas
By: Robert C. Gilbert

From 1963 to 1969, members of the Beatles’ Fan Club would receive a seven-inch flexi disc—that’s really thin vinyl—containing a holiday message from the group. The first three messages were increasingly anarchic recordings taped at Abbey Road Studios. The following two were extended comedy skits and the final two were stitched together from separate contributions by the Fab Four.

They have only been available commercially as a collection once when, in 2017, they were released in a boxed set of seven-inches—fairly thick vinyl, this time—with replicas of the covers for each message. The cost wasn’t too hefty at just over $125 Canadian but still, shelling out that amount for about 45 minutes of talk, mostly zany, with some music, often even zanier, can only be chalked up to dedicated fandom.

Amidst the mayhem, a song occasionally emerges. Parodies of ‘Good King Wenceslas’ and ‘Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer.’ Paul McCartney offers ideas that could have turned into songs for both the ’68 and ’69 messages. What could plausibly be conceived as a fleshed-out ditty starts the ’66 message and for the following year’s missive, a song is weaved through the Goon-like and Monty-Python-to-be sketches. It’s called ‘Christmas Time (Is Here Again).’ The lyrics—if you can even call them that—are rudimentary. A full-length version was released as the flip side of the single for ‘Free As a Bird’ in 1995.

Of the seven Beatles’ Fan Club records, the ’67 edition is my favourite. It’s not only because it is the funniest of them or because there are cameos by George Martin as well as Victor Spinetti, so memorable as the aggrieved TV director in A Hard Day’s Night. It’s mostly because there is an actual Beatles Christmas song on it.

That brings a lot of comfort and joy to me. It may seem a little silly to admit such a thing, to take happiness from the fact that one has the option to listen to a favourite artist at this time of the year and hear a selection or an album or albums of music of the season, but it’s a feeling I have often felt, especially because of how I approach listening to and enjoying the music of Christmas each year.

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There’s a point—usually around mid-November—where my indulgence become exclusive to any other type of music. The reason is not simply because I love the many ways that musicians seek to express the feelings, experiences and other assorted thoughts of Yuletide in melody and (mostly) lyrics. It’s that the opportunity to hear it all is brief. Everything else can wait.

In the harangue that always attends what can feel like an onslaught of recordings that can be aggressively cheerful, painfully banal or sugary enough to give one cavities, there is much pleasure the music lover can take in how the sounds of the season are presented and heard.

Peoples’ ears grow wider. The strictness of narrowcasting gives way to something more elastic. Each season, the durability and adaptability of the canon of the seasonal repertoire is demonstrated once more. And, perhaps most interestingly, Christmas music—not a genre of course but a collection of music marked by a depth and breadth of expression on one subject only unmatched by romantic love—shines anew as a folk music of awesome strength.

All this then suggests to me evidence of music as one of this world’s most ennobling and enriching forces. Taking this perspective then makes the inevitability of Brenda Lee’s recording of ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’ wracking up millions upon millions of plays proof that a piece of music can be an always flowing current of riches. The record also gives a chance to hear the cream of the Nashville A-Team, including Hank Garland, Buddy Harman, Boots Randolph and Millie Kirkham. It’s a great bonus.

There’s a way to attack this music to mine greater meaning from it. Take ‘It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,’ one of two immortal seasonal recordings by Andy Williams. It is a prime example of holiday music with pep: a big band, a choir, a celeste, all an affirmation of the pedestal upon which Christmas is perched. The song was written by Kay Thompson and the arrangement here is by Johnny Mandel. The cheer is overwhelming but not, I would argue, in the force in which it is expressed but how, in hearing it and buying wholeheartedly into its sentiment, it can cause the spirit to soar. And yet, there’s something else working here. It is felt when Williams, a singer whose ability to communicate directly is underappreciated, sings, “there’ll be scary ghost stories / and tales of the glory / of Christmases long ago.” Those lines deepen the meaning, layering in both nostalgia as well as the fact that those happy moments of bygone days include loved ones who are no longer here.

That bittersweet feeling anchors Paul Anka’s recording of the number in 2011. It’s also sentimental but from another angle. He turns it into a ballad, taking his time over each word, each syllable, touching on another feeling that can be felt—at least by me—at this time of the year: how wonderful it is to experience another Christmastime. A gooey feeling perhaps but one that feels honest and when that thought takes over, a song is never far behind. One like ‘Step Into Christmas.’

Written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, and recorded by John in 1973, the year of ‘Candle in the Wind,’ ‘Bennie and the Jets’ and ‘Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,’ its primary virtue is its relentless pulse that digs deeper and pushes harder over its four-and-a-half minutes, plateauing during the ecstatic coda. I must have heard it hundreds and hundreds of times, even a thousand, by now—it’s another seasonal record that’s everywhere. I don’t get tired of it though, especially as it illustrates the rarefied orbit that John and Taupin were circling at the time.

Something else stands out about ‘Step Into Christmas’ and I have to thank a cover of the song that was part of the soundtrack for the picture, Oh. What. Fun. It’s by Uwade, a singer I hadn’t heard of before. She strips down the arrangement but leaves in all the hooks and breaks and by doing so, reveals what ‘Step Into Christmas’ is—a homage to Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. Give a listen to their ‘Child of Winter’ from a year later and the connection is clear.

Discovering something new in a piece of music is always exciting. Here’s another Yuletide example and it’s Beach Boys related too.

Carnie and Wendy Wilson’s ‘Hey Santa!’ is admittedly an example of the excesses that music about Christmas can sometimes have but there is a delight to savour here. It happens during the coda. As the Wilson sisters repeat “with my baby tonight / sleigh ride / sleigh ride / sleigh ride,” a male voice answers with “it’s Christmas time.” It’s a familiar one though it took a long time for me to realize who it was. But then it came to me and the memories of ‘Darlin’,’ ‘Wild Honey’ and ‘It’s About Time’ flooded back. It’s Carl Wilson and that it’s he who is answering his nieces gives ‘Hey Santa!’ a far different meaning than the one at its surface level. It’s really about family.

Music and family at Christmas can mean many things. The albums a brood traditionally play while trimming the tree. The songs that comment on the family dynamic during the holidays, whether rosy (Jamie Cullen’s ‘Beautiful, Altogether’), hardscrabble (Merle Haggard’s ‘If We Make It Through December’) or of deep longing for it (‘I’ll Be Home for Christmas’) or anticipation of soon being enveloped in it (Chris Rea’s ‘Driving Home for Christmas’).

There’s also musical families with the Mills Brothers’ smooth, easy harmonies gliding through ‘Jingle Bells,’ the Everly Brothers’ earnestly, if a little uneasily, taking on ‘Bring a Torch, Jeannette, Isabella’ and everyone in the Jackson 5 joining in on ‘Up on the Housetop.’

“Grandmas, grandpas, fathers, mothers / friends I’ve loved dear,” Neil Diamond once sang, “sisters, brothers, sons and daughters / I once played with / aunts and uncles I once stayed with.” These words are the centrepiece of ‘Christmas Prayers,’ which he wrote for his fourth Yuletide-themed album, Acoustic Christmas, released in 2016 and most certainly his last LP. The album is pure—no amplification. The sound of friends gathered around a family room to play the well-worn hymns as well as a few other of the sacred songs of December. Acoustic Christmas employs a lot of space. Hear the pause after Diamond asks, “do you hear what I hear?” on the namesake song or how a guitar drops in, strummed with the drive as only Diamond can, before the second verse of ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.’

If we’re lucky, life gets narrower as December 25 nears. If we’re even luckier, it gets slower. Each day becomes one to savour. Anticipation is in the air. A time to, as the Irving Berlin standards goes, to “count your blessings instead of sheep” in the build-up to, as a different kind of standard goes, “almost day.”

Bruce Cockburn’s Christmas, which came out in 1993, captures these feelings well. A thorough excavation of the many ways the story of the Nativity has been captured in song, Christmas is uncompromising. Cockburn takes his time. ‘It Came Upon the Midnight Clear,’ maybe the most lovely of the well-known hymns of the season, clocks in just shy of seven minutes. He offers ‘The Huron Carol’ and ‘Riu, Riu, Chiu’ and interprets ‘Oh Little Town of Bethlehem’ as Bob Dylan might have if he had recorded it in 1963 (when Dylan tackled it himself, 46 years later, he did it like Frank Sinatra did in the forties).

To me, the album’s most stirring highlight is ‘I Saw Three Ships.’ It opens with what sounds like a pipe organ. An acoustic guitar then plays a rolling figure that sounds like the rushing in and out of the tide. An electric guitar offers an occasional accent, heightening the recording’s winter feel while also sounding like the pell of a bell proclaiming the Good News that has occasioned the arrival of the ships. It may well be the finest recording of the carol which dates back to the 17th century. I first heard Cockburn’s version on the radio the year it was released.

Indeed, each year brings new such favourites whether just out or lingering around for years waiting to be discovered. For the former, there’s the indie feel of the Oh. What. Fun. soundtrack which I mentioned earlier. In addition to Uwade’s cover of ‘Step Into Christmas,’ Andy Shauf and Madi Diaz resurrect Dennis Linde’s ‘Christmas Eve Will Kill You,’ best-known in the version recorded by the Everlys in 1971 and Sharon Von Etten has a gauzy take on the Pretenders’ ‘2000 Miles.’ This season also offers two stripped-down versions of Kenny Loggins’ beautiful ‘Celebrate Me Home’ by Lizzy McAlpine and Valerie Broussard.

Vocal group Pentatonix can always be depended upon to release something that is uplifting and fully in synch with the idea that the music of Christmas should be fun. To that end, ‘Christmas in the City, a celebration of how the holidays feel particularly vibrant in the urban jungle and ‘Bah Humbug,’ a retelling in song of Charles Dickins’ A Christmas Carol, have both been sources of delight.

Beyond what has come out this year, I’ve been enjoying the uplift of violinist Lindsey Stirling’s seasonal efforts. Livingston Taylor’s ‘My Perfect Christmas Day,’ from 2003, has a soulful message about how the best gifts are the ones that aren’t tangible and Joe Tex’s choral ‘I’ll Make Everyday Christmas (For My Woman),’ from 1967, has never been too far from my ears.

For the one recording new to me that has reached me most this year, I need to reach back to when I was young. That was, among other things, when I discovered the Beatles and first heard, through a radio documentary, their fan-club Christmas discs. It was also when, though I didn’t realize it at the time, that it would be inevitable I would become a jazz fan. That seed was planted through my grandparent’s small collection of Glenn Miller albums; the rigid swing of ‘American Patrol,’ ‘In the Mood’ and ‘Tuxedo Junction’ similar enough to the rhythm of early rock ‘n’ roll to spark a curiosity I would begin to fully investigate in my teens.

There was also ‘(I Got a Gal in) Kalamazoo’ with tenor saxophonist Tex Beneke taking the lead vocal and joined by Marion Hutton and the Modernaires. The Miller big band continued for a long time after the bandleader’s death in 1944. Beneke was one of the Miller alumni who kept the sound alive partnering with band singers Ray Eberle, Paula Kelly and the Modernaires, and releasing a series of albums. In 1965, they brought out Christmas Serenade in the Glenn Miller Style for Columbia.

Included on it was ‘We Wish You the Merriest,’ written and first recorded by Les Brown in 1961. In 1964, Sinatra and Bing Crosby recorded it in grand style with Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians, and Nelson Riddle wrangling all the forces into a rendition that is mammoth in scope. Things are narrower in the version Beneke and crew got on tape a year later but the bonhomie is ever greater.

About 80 seconds in, there’s an interlude with Kelly and the Modernaires doing a tongue-twister variation on the refrain that, this year at the very least, encapsulates the season at its best. Excitement tinged with knowing that it will be fleeting. But during that moment in the recording, nothing but joy matters. As the song goes, “may your tree be full of happiness / happiness and friendliness for all.” That is my hope for us all this holiday season and in the New Year to come.

My very best of the season to you all.

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Until next time, may good listening be with you all!

I Dream of a Carpenters’ Christmas
By: Robert C. Gilbert

I enjoy looking at photographs of Karen and Richard Carpenter listening to music. There is one with Karen seated looking at the gatefold cover of Todd Rundgren’s second solo album, Runt. The Ballad of Todd Rundgren., with Richard standing over her. In the background is Paul and Linda McCartney’s Ram.

There’s another photograph that is even more interesting. Karen and Richard are sitting cross-legged on a carpeted floor. In front and behind them are stacks of albums. At the moment caught on camera, it’s a reel-to-reel they appear to be listening to. Of the albums on the floor, only two are visible. One is Neil Sedaka’s Emergence. The other is Steely Dan’s Katy Lied. They make for an interesting juxtaposition. Middle of the road meets disaffected hipsterism. Both dedicated to the craft of making sophisticated music. Knowing that Karen and Richard were hip to Rundgren as well as Donald Fagen and Walter Becker is perhaps surprising but probably shouldn’t be.

For what is the music of Karen and Richard Carpenter but another result of making records in the seventies that were centred on songs that were deeply acquainted with the fundamentals of pop songwriting and also sounded pristine. That also applied to Sedaka but without the street cred even if perhaps some should stick to him. After all, few have written and recorded something as gorgeous as ‘Laughter in the Rain.’

Squeaky-clean is, I suppose, a moniker that can stick easily to the Carpenters. When they covered Leon Russell and Bonnie Bramlett’s ‘Superstar,’ the lyric “…and I can hardly wait to sleep with you again” was changed to “…and I can hardly wait to see you again.” A gloss was applied to covers of urgent rockers like ‘Help!’ and ‘Ticket to Ride.’ The recordings that made them very popular very quickly: ‘(They Long To Be) Close to You’ and ‘We’ve Only Just Begun,’ had a meticulousness to them that made them seem as if they were exactly designed to hit every pleasure centre except for the one that counted most: the heart. That is, of course, not even remotely the case.

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Consider the latter, initially a jingle for Crocker-Citizens National Bank that Paul Williams and Roger Nichols quickly fleshed out once it hit the ear of the Carpenters. There’s that opening clarinet line by Doug Strawn. There are tom fills, like heartbeats, that could only be played by Hal Blaine. Layers of harmony powered by Karen and Richard and, what gelled it all together, Karen’s lead vocal. She was barely 20 when she recorded it, singing with a maturity and knowingness not dissimilar to Johnny Mathis’ early sides when he too was just barely out of his teens. Richard was 23. In addition to playing a whole host of keyboards on ‘We’ve Only Just Begun,’ he orchestrated it. The verses luxuriate in the romanticism of lines like, “and when the evening comes, we smile / so much of life ahead.” The bridge pushes ahead with the promise of the road ahead, punctuated by punchy brass. There’s depth even as the recording could plausibly be labeled soft rock. The emotion it can bring up is anything but mushy. And a descriptor like that only captures part of what the Carpenters were all about.

‘All I Can Do,’ from their debut album, initially titled Offering and then changed to Ticket to Ride, is jazz at a frenetic clip. ‘Another Song,’ which closes their second album, Close to You, verges into progressive rock by the end. It was one of many songs that Richard wrote with John Bettis, who had been part of the second band Richard and Karen formed, Spectrum, and who also, with Richard, got fired from Disneyland in 1967 when they slipped one too many Beatles songs serenading visitors on Coke Corner. They all also went to California State University, Long Beach. Frank Pooler ran the choir at the school—Karen sang in it, Richard provided the piano. It’s Pooler’s words that Richard set to music on ‘Merry Christmas Darling,’ the Carpenters’ follow-up to ‘We’ve Only Just Begun.’

It’s one of those special seasonal recordings that can be heard just about everywhere at this time of the year and, at least for me, is always good to catch even if it’s just a brief snippet in the rush of holiday preparations or when festivities are underway. The version most commonly heard has a vocal that Karen recorded in 1978 to replace what was put on tape eight years earlier. While the re-recording is just about perfect, it loses some of the vulnerability of Karen’s original vocal take—for example, the way she stretches the “too” in “Happy New Year, too”—that makes the song’s yearning more real, better in allowing the listener to layer in his or her own pining for someone special at this time of the year whomever that person or persons may be.

It would be four years before the Carpenters released another Christmas song, a transformation of ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’ into their musical language. The slow tempo. The brilliant brass fanfare that opens it. The exact enunciation that Karen gives the words, placing the seasonal standard at some mid-point between being a lullaby and being a love song, turning into a celebration of the wonder of Christmas through the eyes of a child. The amazement that attends going to bed on Christmas Eve with the family tree barren of presents only to wake up the next morning with it laden with gifts. Again, softness does not connote syrupiness.

But, it was that lightness—a feeling that I would characterize as comfort or a genuineness free of cynicism or agenda—that made it inevitable that the Carpenters would have much more to say about the music of the season. So much so, in fact, that it resulted in two albums: 1978’s Christmas Portrait and 1984’s An Old-Fashioned Christmas which Richard built around a half-album’s worth of material recorded with Karen, but not released on the former album, as a tribute to her after her passing. She had a particular affection for Christmas music and indeed, both albums have a go-for-broke mentality, an attempt to create a compendium of the seasonal repertoire, reaching all the way back to ‘Il Ducli Jublio’ and covering just about every nook and cranny save for Handel’s Messiah.

It’s the classic approach. Reverent with largess: brass, strings, a choir. Each album opens with a brief prologue, like the Introit to begin a Christmas mass, which leads to a lavish overture constructed by Richard. They are not traditional opening suites in that, save for ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’ on Christmas Portrait, none of the compositions, carols, hymns or songs are referred to subsequently in full. As theme after theme goes by—sometimes sprightly, other times lushly and occasionally a beloved melody just unfurls—it is like two streams converging, one made of memories, almost all good ones of Yuletides past, and the other of anticipation of all the rituals to partake of once again. If there is good to be found in Christmas, it may ultimately be that as it reminds of how one has been worn down by the year, it presents a chance to repair the frayed threads and to recommit once again to the ideals of the season.

That consolation seems very near when Karen is first heard on Christmas Portrait, telling of “frosted windowpanes” and “candles gleaming outside” on ‘The Christmas Waltz.’ The same feeling, magnified even more, comes as she begins ‘Sleigh Ride unaccompanied. Has anyone caressed the words, “just hear those sleigh bells ringing, jing-ting-tingling too…” like she did, stretching out syllables and words to express a joy beyond words? It meets Richard’s arrangement head on: clip-clopping drum brushes, bells of all kinds, a choir. The chance to hear him sing on the bridge. It’s a recording that moves not because it is easily recognized—it’s another of their Christmas recordings that is heard everywhere—but because it is all about atmosphere. It’s a milieu that is radiant, full of the glow of a living room bright and cozy with reds and greens. It’s sentimentality done right and a reminder that sentimentality does not always result in treacle.

What makes Christmas Portrait fairly remarkable is how it sustains this snow-globe aura for 50 minutes. Even in its cutesiest moments—a glockenspiel-heavy ‘Winter Wonderland’ for starters—wonder is never far away. Its height, at least to these ears, is thirty seconds from the medley pairing ‘The First Snowfall,’ just one of the many seasonal songs introduced by Bing Crosby, with ‘Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!’

After a stately introduction, ‘The First Snowfall’ shifts into tempo. At first, it’s the choir—shades of the Ray Conniff Singers here—that sets the scene. There’s then a deepening of the harmony with Richard heard at its tip. The excitement builds as “folks puts runners on their surreys / and forget about their worries.” It’s then Karen to deliver the kicker, the harmony shifting again, as she sings, “when a man becomes a boy once again.”

That’s the whole thing right there: why the Carpenters had a natural affinity for Christmas music. Everything fits just so. The collective sound asks, of the listener, to remember, if just for a moment, what it was like to be a child in December.

It’s a bit jarring then to consider what was happening to the Carpenters while Christmas Portrait was recorded. Richard was addicted to painkillers, a habit he would kick in 1979. Karen’s struggles with anorexia would lead to her untimely passing four years later.

It’s inevitable then that her loss hangs over An Old-Fashioned Christmas. After starting off, as Christmas Portrait does, with a kind of Introit (here, it’s ‘It Came Upon a Midnight Clear’) and an overture, there is the melancholia of the title track, sung by Richard and a choir, and written by him and Bettis. The ache of the line, “it used to be that all the family would gather together for this one night,” is acutely poignant. Following it is an instrumental and ornate version of ‘O Holy Night’ leading directly into a rich interlude for strings that clear for Karen to sing, “oh, there is no place like home for the holidays”—the dream of that old-fashioned Christmas being realized. This entire opening sequence, spanning about 17 minutes, is the linchpin of the album. It’s the one segment that re-captures Christmas Portrait’s primacy of feel.

There is much good to be heard on the episodic remainder of the album, including an effecting version of the spiritual ‘Little Altar Boy,’ Richard’s creative suite of the most memorable moments of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker and the pleasure of the Carpenters’ ‘Santa Claus is Back in Town’ from 1974.

The initial CD release of their music for Christmas strung together most of both albums while using the artwork of Christmas Portrait, creating a super-sized aural fantasia of the season while leaving off, inexplicably, ‘The First Snowfall’ medley. In 1996, both albums were issued on a two-CD collection. That’s the version to own. Karen and Richard’s Christmas music is one part of the puzzle explaining why they reached and continue to reach so many. They weren’t soft. They were real.

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Regular programming here resumes on December 6 with an essay on the Christmas music of the Carpenters and then there will be more two pieces before the end of the year: one more look at the sounds of season on December 20 and then a round-up of 2025 on December 30.

Until next time, may good listening be with you all!

Letting the Sunshine In
By: Robert C. Gilbert

I’ve written quite a few times before that the best music writing is here on Substack. No matter what kind of music you dig, someone is writing about it here and writing about it with passion, knowledge and love. What makes being here so rewarding is not necessarily the convergence of talent on Substack, but that the MusicStack community is a collegial one full of the best kind of people. We cheer each other on and we celebrate each and every success. I guess that’s why it’s been gratifying reading over the past week many pieces related to the Sunshine Blogger Award, in which writers nominate others to recognize their work.

It was with deep pleasure then that of the Vinyl Room, a publication about the passion of recording collecting and listening, , a writer of deeply perceptive and eclectic essays that you can check out here and of Analog Encounters, a writer and publication I’ve just discovered, all nominated me for the Award and posed a series of 11 questions.

As I’m a naturally shy person who sometimes is uneasy with getting too personal here, the prospect of answering these questions is daunting but I thought, in order to honour kindness, that I would get out of my comfort zone. So here goes…

Andres’ Questions

What’s your earliest musical memory?
It must have been when I was very, very young—I guess no more than three. I am eating ice cream in a Scarborough apartment and out of the corner of my eye is the cover of Elvis Presley’s soundtrack to G.I. Blues which my father was either in the middle of playing or had just played.

Was there a specific artist, band, record or event that inspired you to start writing about music?
Reading liner notes, especially those by Nat Hentoff, Ira Gitler and Ralph J. Gleason, as I began to collect jazz recordinsg in my late teens as well as listening to Gary Giddins throughout Ken Burns’ PBS documentary on jazz were both inspiring. I did a little bit of music writing back in 2002 and 2003 but didn’t really do it with any seriousness until 2021 when I launched my newsletter here.

What’s an album you could write treatises on?
Part of the fun of writing here is to go deep on albums that haven’t received that level of attention. One album I hope to write a long-form essay about is the Blues Project’s Projections, released in 1966, a deeply eclectic album that symbolizes, to me, why that year was the beginning of a golden age in music- and record-making. It’s not a perfect album but its range is daunting.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?
The best advice I’ve ever received was indirectly through watching an interview of writer and critic Nelson George. He discussed his writing process and that he writes by hand, the reason being that writing by hand forces him to take his time and really think through what he wishes to write, and then doing an edit when tranferring it to the computer. My writing process comes directly from that.

What’s the most unusual place you have ever written from?
As I was walking from a bus stop to my parent’s place earlier this year, I grabbed a seat in the shelter to jot down the beginning of a paragraph that I needed to get down before I did anything else.

If you could go on tour with one artist or band, current or past, dead or alive, who would you choose and why?
The Beatles, either the shows they gave in New York and Washington, D.C. in February 1964 or their first full tour of the United States and Canada later that year. It would be been exhausting but unforgettable. A chance to see history up close and the glory of Beatlemania before it got tiresome and wearying.

Name a concert you were lucky to witness and one you regret having missed.
I was lucky to be able to be at one of the performances by the New York Philharmonic of Leonard Bernstein’s 3rd symphony, Kaddish, with Leonard Slatkin conducting and with Jeremy Irons as the speaker in 2017 as part of the Philharmonic’s tribute to the centenary of Bernstein's birth. It was a deeply moving experience, especially as it took place in the hall where Bernstein conducted the orchestra during most of his time as the Philharmonic’s music director.

In terms of a concert I regret missing, I wished I had gone to see Simon and Garfunkel when they played Toronto in 2003. The concert would have been on the last Sunday in November of that year and I decided not to get a ticket because it was the night before the start of another work week. What made the decision sting was just five days before the show, I was canned from my job.

How would you define success?
I would paraphrase Joel McCrea from Sam Peckinpah’s Ride the High Country here. Success means being able to walk into one’s own house justified.

What’s your main guilty pleasure?
I don’t necessarily believe in guilty pleasures but I suppose some would feel my affinity for singers like Jerry Vale, Dick Haymes, Robert Goulet, Vic Damone and others of that ilk is something to be feel bashful about.

A hill you’ll die on?
That Elvis made his best recordings in Nashville from 1960 and 1968. They are the ones that most clearly and persuasively express his ambition to be an artist for everyone. He was at peak voice and accompanying him were the most accomplished musicians he worked with during his whole career. I wish Sony would reissue them so they could be re-discovered.

When all is said and done, how would you like to be remembered?
A flippant answer here would be to say that I hope to be remembered as a Renaissance man. An honest answer would be how I think most would answer: a good husband, brother, uncle, son and friend that tried his best and succeeded more often than he failed.

wordsworthesq’s Questions

What one thing do you think largely influenced who you are?
My father, who inspired me to be curious and to love music, movies, books and sports, and continues to do so.

What is the one thing you are passionate about that you feel loneliest in loving (like a song or movie no one else seems to love)?
Cannonball Adderley’s recording of ‘74 Miles Away’ from 1967. It was written by Joe Zawinul, who held the piano chair in Adderley’s band for most of the sixties, and is one of the most important and prescient jazz performances I have ever heard. The first, big bold step forward in jazz fusion, jazz-rock or however else you wish to term it.

What one question do you always want to answer but are rarely asked?
I’m a fairly reticent guy so I often appreciate when I’m not asked a lot of questions. I suppose I wish I was asked more about what I have been listening to that’s good.

You find a $5/10/20 bill on the ground and can do whatever without feeling guilt about whose money it is. What do you do with it?
I’m heading to the local thrift store with the bill in my pocket to see if there are any used records I can buy with it.

You are your own nation. What is your national anthem?
Ray Charles’ 1960 recording of ‘New York is My Home.’

You can build any house you like. What piece of art (album, painting, poem, movie) do you give to the architect and say ‘“draw on this for inspiration?”
I would suppose Carole King’s Tapestry not only because of it appears to be a loft where King and cat are photographed on the cover but there’s also a comfort to the music on the album that I think should be present in a home. It should be a place to relax, unwind, and to pursue one’s hobbies and passions.

If you ate Oreo cookies as a kid, did you eat them as is, licking the middle or, like me, starting with the wafters and combining the centers up into one ginormous ball and eating them that way?
My method was twisting the top and bottom wafer free and then gnawing off the center before eating the wafers.

What one childhood show, song, movie, PSA, etc. can still give you goosebumps if you think of it, either good or bad?
The Sesame Street of my youth in the eighties: a beautiful, wonderous place with people and monsters who all felt very real to me. If I’m being honest, they still do.

When you are listening to music, how do you typically do that?
I am either in my record room listening to my vinyl and CD collection or streaming Spotify on my phone while working, walking, commuting, reading, etc. My day is a constant soundtrack.

What’s your favorite word, or words, and why?
As the son of a teacher, appreciating language was instilled in me daily. I like words that are expressive, unique and direct.

Why did you accept this nomination and these questions anyway?
Because it’s important to recognize kindness and to try to return it in kind.

Howard Salmon’s Questions

What album changed how you understood yourself?
A big turning point for me was hearing Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue after being obsessed with it for months wondering what it sounded like (this was way before streaming) and discovering it was every bit as good as I imagined. It made me realize I was bound to go my own way and follow the beat of my own drum, in my musical taste as well as life in general.

What is one piece of art you return to when you feel lost?
Listening to Elvis’ sixties recordings in Nashville never fail to cheer me up and made me feel better when I feel lost or blue. They are that foundational to me.

What is a musical opinion you hold that almost nobody agrees with?
Perhaps that Frank Sinatra was at his peak in about 1965.

Which childhood memory still shapes your creative life today?
Listening to my father’s records. That set me off well for a life-long cultural education.

What artist do you wish more people would give a fair chance?
Johnny Mathis, whom I consider one of the finest interpreters of popular song since the beginning of the LP era. He has yet to be honoured at the Kennedy Center which strikes me as a glaring omission. He only retired from performing earlier this year and is one of our last living links to a golden age in music. We should celebrate him while he is still here among us.

If you could preserve one cultural space forever, what would it be?
Smalls in New York. It’s an intimate, kind of dive-y jazz club in the Village. It’s one of the places I must visit every time I go to New York.

What song feels closest to “home”?
Any song that reminds me of my father’s records such as the Mills Brothers’ recording of ‘Basin Street Blues’ from 1958 or Tennessee Ernie Ford singing a spiritual with the Jordanaires backing him.

What’s one belief you outgrew — and what replaced it?
That appreciating jazz imparted a sense of superiority over the rabble. Replacing it was that jazz is a music for everyone.

When do you feel most like yourself?
When I’m out and about, whether that be on a date with my wife, at a coffee shop reading or on one of my solo trips to New York. I am a city guy who enjoys being on the move.

Which book or album would you place in a time capsule for the future?
Leonard Bernstein’s sixties cycle of the symphonies of Gustav Mahler. If I had to pick only one of them, I’m picking his 1966 recording of Symphony No. 7.

What made you decide to participate in this community in the first place?
I started my Substack in May 2021 after Ted Gioia shared that he was starting a publication here. It seemed like a good platform to use to see if I could fulfil my dream of writing about music.

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I hope you enjoy it and will let me know your thoughts.

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With December around the corner, it’s tradition here to turn to the sounds of the season (for those less inclined to Christmas music, not too worry, regular programming will resume here by the end of the year). First up will be some thoughts on the Carpenters’ two seasonal albums and then one other essay (subject matter still up in the air). Prior to that will be a response to the very kind writers here who have nominated me for the Sunshine Blogger Award—expect that by the end of this month.

Until next time, may good listening be with you all!

The Mamas and the Papas’ Peak on Record
By: Robert C. Gilbert

Crashon Screamon All Fall Down. For a time, that was to be the title of the Mamas and the Papas’ second album, just as memorable as If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears, the introduction to California’s second-most important—the Beach Boys’ being first—musical deliver of the promise of the Golden State in the late sixties.

Their debut had a cover for the ages. John Phillips, Cass Elliot and Denny Doherty squeezed width-wide in a bathtub with Michelle Phillips lounging length-wise, feet stretched across the laps of her bandmates. To their left was a toilet, a site so controversial in 1966 that a sell sticker was slapped in front of it on later pressings.

If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears is three-fourths a great album. Beyond its two hit singles, ‘California Dreamin’’ and ‘Monday, Monday,’ there were ace covers that featured the group’s two supreme voices, Doherty on ‘Do You Wanna Dance’ and ‘Spanish Harlem’ and Elliot on ‘I Call Your Name’ and the closing ‘The In Crowd.’ ‘Straight Shooter,’ with its full-throated declaration of “no more” following “or I won’t come around your door” hit the listener with the defiance underlining their collective harmony and ‘Got a Feelin’’ suggested that John Phillips, the group’s primary songwriter and arranger, had an early pulse on the milieu of the sixties counterculture along with a darkness underneath the meticulousness of the Mamas and the Papas’ merging of backing tracks powered by the cream of California’s crew of session musicians: Larry Knechtel, Joe Osborn and Hal Blaine, with Phillips’ intricate vocal charts.

The photo that was to grace the cover of Crashon Screamon All Fall Down oozed cool. In the foreground were John Phillips on the left chewing a piece of tumbleweed and Doherty on his right nattily attired in a suit and tie with a pocket square. Behind a fence in the centre was Elliot with a feather fan framing her face. To her left wasn’t Michelle Phillips but Jill Gibson.

As the Mamas and the Papas were quickly recording their sophomore album, Michelle Phillips was in the middle of an affair with Gene Clark, by then having left the Byrds. When John Phillips found out, it wasn’t long before his wife was fired. In her place was Gibson, a singer, songwriter, photographer and artist, best-known for her work with long-time boyfriend Jan Berry of Jan & Dean which connected her to Lou Adler and ultimately to the Mamas and the Papas whom Adler produced for his record label, Dunhill.

The recording sessions resumed and Gibson also appeared with the group live. It soon became clear that, for whatever reason, the fit just wasn’t right and Michelle Phillips was back in the group although interestingly enough, Gibson would serve as one of the primary photographers at the Monterey International Pop Festival of June 1967 in which Adler as well as John and Michelle Phillips were driving forces.

With Michelle Phillips back in the group, she recorded over some of Gibson’s contributions for the Mamas and the Papas’ upcoming album but not all of them. When it was released at the end of August, the evocative Crashon Screamon All Fall Down was titled just the Mamas & the Papas. In place of the flapper and dandy-esque outdoor shot was one of the group behind a window, everyone except for Michelle Phillips looking tired, even haggard.

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That vivid weariness is not exactly reflected in the album’s music. If John Phillips was initially reluctant to embrace the pop sounds of the sixties, holding tight to the purity of folk, he was all in by the time of the Mamas & the Papas, the peak of the group on record. Consider ‘I Saw Her Again.’

It’s one of six album tracks that Michelle Phillips is likely on. The others are ‘No Salt on Her Tail,’ ‘Words of Love,’ ‘My Heart Stood Still,’ ‘Dancing in the Street’ and ‘Once Was a Time I Thought’ leaving Gibson likely on ‘Trip, Stumble and Fall,’ ‘Dancing Bear,’ ‘Strange Young Girls,’ ‘I Can’t Wait,’ ‘Even If I Could’ and ‘That Kind of Girl.’

The brief introduction is breathtaking with the Mamas and the Papas layering a bright chord over a bed of strings and Blaine’s shimmering cymbals. What follows builds on that flash of ecstasy. John Phillips’ vocal arrangement is full of counterpoint and double-time runs. Elliot’s voice punches through at the start of the third verse. Doherty has the line, “she’ll never leave me,” all to himself and is answered by a flourish of the strings on the low end. There’s also a beautiful, bright interlude.

‘I Saw Her Again’ sounds like the sunniest day of the year, almost certainly a Saturday. California like in the movies. The lyrics tell of something different. Amidst the sunshine, it’s about Doherty’s affair with Michelle Phillips. He co-wrote it with John Phillips. It’s full of anguish. Guilt too. But also, and most critically, it suggests that some unmeet need is being fulfilled, against the protagonist’s better judgement, in the admission that, “I saw her again last night and you know that I shouldn’t.”

It’s a song like that which gives dimension to the music of the Mamas and the Papas. What they created may be called sunshine pop but it’s more complex than that. Listen to it and hear the slow realization of the dark underbelly of the sixties. That also underlines the group’s history. Beyond the numerous affairs, there was Elliot’s unrequited love for Doherty and John Phillips’ initial refusal to make her a permanent member of the group.

No album in the group’s discography captures these tensions like the Mamas & the Papas. ‘Trip, Stumble & Fall’ reads as a warning of Manson and Altamont. A more literal interpretation, particularly the lyrics in the middle section of the first verse, suggest, as what was often the case in the songs that John Phillips wrote, that the trouble could just be getting tangled up with the wrong type of woman. ‘Strange Young Girls’ is far more specific about the sixties ending up being a bummer.

When thinking about John Phillips, I often think of Brian Wilson too. No one came as close as Wilson to treating the studio like a laboratory where wondrous sounds would emerge from the hours upon hours of toil as Phillips did. Both had demons. Wilson conquered this. Phillips’ were far darker.

As a result, it’s hard to encounter a song like ‘No Salt on Her Tail,’ which opens the Mamas & the Papas and has an uncredited Ray Manzarek on organ, and not cringe a bit. Best to just approach it in the moment and marvel at its lament for a partner destined to fly away as well as the counterpoint between John Phillips and Doherty, and Michelle Philipps and Elliot. ‘That Kind of Girl,’ on the other hand, doesn’t warrant such generosity. It’s a tuneful song that gender-wise is simply off-key.

‘Even If I Could’ is magnificent with an especially memorable coda that includes the opening line of ‘Deck the Hall’ and a structure in which the bar length of the verses vary. It’s a poignant song on the inevitability of karma in a relationship when one partner has hurt the other, and is experiencing the same emotion in turn. ‘I Can’t Wait’ has John Phillips and Elliot gleefully trading barbs anticipating the moment when they both will lower the boom on their unsuspecting partner.

It’s part of the sass and the brass that Elliot brought to the group. It’s there as well on her hip lead on an in-your-face cover of ‘Dancing in the Street.’ Her finest moment on the Mamas & the Papas is ‘Words of Love,’ one of two hits off the album (the other being ‘I Saw Her Again’) with her exaggerated phrasing apropos of the song’s kitschy, Roaring-Twenties feel that also features Knechtel’s roadhouse piano and Michelle Phillips’ unforgettable “no!!!!” in the middle of the first verse.

That’s part of the range that the Mamas and the Papas had. On their second album, it’s also found in the attempt to treat Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s ‘My Heart Stood Still’ like ‘Go Where You Wanna Go.’ It doesn’t exactly work, it’s just a little too glib (for comparison, give a listen to Frank Sinatra’s magisterial recording of it from 1963 with Nelson Riddle). Far better is the baroque poetry of ‘Dancing Bear,’ with a woodwind trio of flute, oboe and bassoon and some of John Phillips’ most ambitious lyrics, full of imagery of chimney sweeps and cabin boys, kings and queens, magic ships and a spread of “fruits and candy” and “nuts and cheese.” It’s also a rich solo for Doherty’s warm Maritime voice, pure and knowing. It ends with a spine-tinging round—first Elliot and (likely) Gibson, then Doherty and finally a chorus of John Phillipses that fades out to return to the opening figure by the woodwind trio. I’m not sure the Mamas and the Papas had a finer moment than this.

The closing of the Mamas & the Papas is equally ambitious. ‘Once Was a Time I Thought’ takes all that has been sung in the preceding thirty minutes and offers a benediction. It’s all of a minute and is a jazzy tongue-twister in the style of (Dave) Lambert, (Jon) Hendricks & (Annie) Ross. It begins in cynicism, mentioning that love has been elusive because “the potion of passion / had never been passed to me.” It ends with the cynicism, at least for the moment, dissipated: “but now with you by my side / I find I feel so satisfied / somebody must have lied to me.”

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Last year, I wrote up about my music adventures in New York and really enjoyed doing so. So, below, is my travelogue of this year’s escapades. I hope you enjoy it and that you’ll also share some of your memorable music moments in New York.

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Until next time, may good listening be with you all!

What should the sleep-deprived music lover do the first night he is back in New York? Retreat to his very modest accommodations to make up for two rather poor slumbers in a row or go out to hear some music? Shall I add the night in question was a Saturday?

No explanation needed then that there I was lined up at Smalls at around 8 p.m. to hear alto saxophonist Sarah Hanahan. I had seen her once before: in November 2023 at Smoke Jazz Club. At one point, she had us all singing part of Gary Bartz’s ‘The Song of Loving / Kindness.’ Her debut album, Among Giants, out last year, gave a taste of her lineage to both Jackie McLean and spiritual jazz, and she was part of the monster ensemble powering Joe Farnsworth’s The Big Room, one of the best albums I’ve heard this year.

She is a truly gifted player. I suspect many of the 60 or so in the club weren’t exactly sure what they were in for other than a Saturday night of jazz in New York but after the out-of-tempo eruption that began the set with Hanahan pushing her horn to the absolute breaking point, I suspect everyone then knew they were in the right place. The resolution into tempo was an urgent modal line, ‘Crash Out,’ newly composed by Hanahan that led to extended solos by each member of her quartet.

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Pianist Caelan Cardello’s Tyner-like runs perched him as well as bassist Charlie Lincoln and drummer Sam “Boom-Boom” Bolduc on the tightrope. As Cardello’s improvisation continued, I wondered if how I felt: exalted, transformed, unable to keep my right foot, right hand and head from moving in time with the playing, is how it would have felt to be at Slugs’ Saloon in 1966 during the music played by Joe Henderson and group that was released last year as Forces of Nature.

Hanahan is a player who mines the past to both honour it and to find something new and personal in it. As Lincoln played an unaccompanied solo, her eyes closed with a blissful glow illuminating her face, Hanahan offered a running commentary to what he was playing. At one point, she encouraged him to keep “walking that dog.” Her ecstasy and the audience’s ecstasy slowly merged to become one and the same. It continued to mesh through Bolduc’s rumbling solo and once joined together, remained so through the rest of the set which included ‘On the Trail,’ adapted from Ferde Grofe’s Grand Canyon Suite and which Hanahan recorded on her debut, and ‘Misty.’

Both cycled through moments of calm, humour—Hanahan has a habit of beginning solos with a tossed-off note or two—rising intensity and climax after climax after climax. At the end of the set, the audience gave her a well-deserved standing ovation.

That kind of reaction is not so much earned as required if one finds oneself in the audience of one of the city’s many talk shows. That’s not to say audience members are being coerced to offer laurels against their will. They are planted in their seats because they want to be there. Two years ago, when I took in a taping of Late Night With Seth Meyers, I almost lost my mind when Meyers appeared just before taping began to talk to us for a moment. I did just about the same at the Ed Sullivan Theatre when out came Stephen Colbert. All the whooping and hollering and chanting of “Stephen” made it seem like it was he who was the front-runner for the next Mayor of New York.

Cameron Crowe was among the guests, there to promote his memoir, The Uncool, and during Colbert’s brief chat with him, bands and artists were name-dropped. Led Zeppelin. The Allman Brothers Band. Bob Dylan. Pete Townsend. At each, the crowd clapped. When Colbert shared a picture of 15-year-old Crowe interviewing Kris Kristofferson, his first as an aspiring music journalist, I began to applaud and then caught myself when no one else joined in. Fandom, I guess, is a funny thing.

The chat ended with Crowe talking about his ongoing work to get a script together for a biopic of Joni Mitchell, a project that has him in deep collaboration with her. Parts of his continuing conversation with Mitchell have guided listeners through the first four volumes of her absorbing Archives series—here’s hoping a fifth volume comes next year.

Crowe then got to the reason why he brought up Mitchell. He produced a small piece of paper and gave it to Colbert. He shared what the message said: “As a proud Stephen Colbert fan, I appreciate how you always stand your ground.” Colbert wasn’t quite sure what to do. Once the segment was in the bag and Crowe exited stage right, Colbert got up and threw his body back, taking a deep breath, processing the meaning of what just transpired and then getting back to the business at hand. There was the rest of the show to get in the can.

That sudden shift from one’s private to public persona is part of what makes live jazz in a small club so fascinating. It was present as I caught the first set of the last night at Smoke Jazz Club featuring the long-standing partnership of guitarist Peter Bernstein, organist Larry Goldings and drummer Bill Stewart. The quiet deliberation between the three as they decided what next to play out of their book. Laughter as Goldings, who acted as emcee and spokesmen for the three, riffed on the composer of the set opener, ‘Sweet and Lovely,’ Gus Arnheim (credited with Charles N. Daniels, and Harry Tobias), wondering if he wrote anything else of note (he did, ‘I Cried for You’), and also let it slip that the three had just been in the studio to record a new album coming at some point in the future and to be available definitely on LP, uncertainly on CD and specially in Corinthian leather. If only Ricardo Montalban was still alive to savour such news.

They previewed the new album with a soulful, motive-laden cover of Abdullah Ibrahim’s ‘Mamma’ and throughout the rest of the seven-song set, engaged in the easy simpatico that marks any group of jazz players who dedicate themselves to making music together.

My focus throughout was on Stewart, partly because I was seated with Goldings’ back to me which meant that Bernstein, at the front of the stage, was heard but only seen fleetingly, mostly as he used a handkerchief to mop sweat off his brow. Stewart is the kind of drummer whose entire body is channeling rhythm when he is playing. He frequently pitched forward to play a fill or bash the crash cymbal. He would also slightly lift off his stool as his feet dialogued on the hi-hat and bass drum. That kind of physical engagement in the music meant that the hi-hat stand kept moving an inch or two away from him and so Stewart continually used his left foot to move it back. That furtive adjustment—at another moment, he searched to find one of his brushes—never slowed the music’s momentum but was indicative of the added dimension when music is experienced both aurally and visually.

It did as well at Miller Theatre at Columbia University for the third and final recital toasting 20 years of Yarn/Wire, a two-pianist, two-percussionist ensemble currently comprised of founding members Laura Barger and Russell Greenberg as well as newer members Julia Den Boer and Sae Hashimoto. The program that night was centred around Tyshawn Sorey’s For Rose Gay, composed by the percussionist and Pulitzer-honoured composer with the ensemble. The work was performed in almost complete darkness. Its style could be described as modern or avant-garde with tones and then phrases traded between Sorey on celeste and the four members of Yarn/Wire.

Trying to detect an arc in a work such as this can be challenging if heard on record. In the dimmest of light, Barger and Den Boer could be seen striking a piano string with a mallet, for one instance, making it easier to appreciate how For Rose Gay slowly evolved to two furious climaxes, the first with Greenberg playing the chimes as if a church’s change ringers had suddenly gone berserk and the concluding one with both Greenberg and Hashimoto sweeping the theatre up in the din of the whoosh of cymbals that took at least a minute to decay before the audience erupted in applause. Attending a concert like that when one just happens to be in New York is glorious happenstance. Being able to catch John Cale at Lincoln Center on my second Sunday in town was another example. He, of course, is a vital link to the odd, weird New York and indeed, during the concert, there was a montage of images of those halcyon days of Andy Warhol and Lou Reed and Nico and Edie Sedgwick and Sterling Morrison that still linger in the city.

Even so, tension was never far away at David Geffen Hall that night. Cale’s appearance was part of Unsound New York, a festival of music well outside the mainstream. Prior to him taking the stage, there was an hour-long set by electronic musician Heinali and vocalist Andriana-Yaroslava Saienko. Over drones and modular sounds that often struck me similar to Terry Riley, whom Cale collaborated with for Church of Anthrax, Heinali and Saienko explored the compositions of composer Hildegard von Bingen. Through modern electronics meant to evoke the conflict in the Ukraine and singing in that country’s traditional style, their recital was stark and confrontational, especially the sustained swell of mechanized sound that drenched the hall during the first two works performed. I found it hypnotic and very, very interesting. It was at point that attendees began to leave. Not many but enough to take notice. I suspect some returned once Cale’s set began but even then, the walk-outs were a silent component to his performance.

For the opener, ‘Shark Shark,’ the only time Cale played guitar during the show, it took a minute or so for his mic to be turned up enough to actually hear him sing. ‘Captain Hook’ followed with Cale more or less planted at a keyboard for the rest of the night. It was the first of many features for a gospel choir. Again, it took a while to actually hear them. A tech issue put a quick stop to ‘Broken Bird.’ At another moment, Cale ambled over to the New York Philharmonic’s organ, tinkled with it for a moment before swerving off the bench to go back to the keyboard. After ‘Big White Cloud,’ from his 1970 debut Vintage Violence, a lanky, Burt Bacharach-looking fellow stood up to applaud. At another moment, someone shouted, “we love you John” as another small group of concert-users headed for the exits. It was that kind of night.

After 75 minutes, the unease of seeing a countercultural icon struggling to connect turned into something more magical. ‘Company Commander’ marched with the precision of a repeated refrain by the choir and ‘My Maria’ had they and Cale in lockstep to capture a radical kind of glory. For those still around, I hope they felt as I did: defiant, not done just yet with being out of step. Artists like John Cale remain indomitable because they refuse to conform, walk-outs be damned.

That explained why Mezzrow in the Village was quieter than usual for a Friday. It was Halloween. The bar attendant was dressed in a skeleton suit. A guy opposite me came as Ace Ventura. Pianist Luke Carlos O’Reilly was all in black save for a red tie. He donned sunglasses, his attempt, as he explained to us, to dress as Morpheus from The Matrix. Just outside of the club was the Annual Village Halloween Parade. That’s why Sam “Boom-Boom” Bolduc was missing in action for the start of O’Reilly’s first set at 9 p.m. No matter, Ari Hoening, in a Chinese mandarin-collar outfit, stepped in. With Adi Meyerson on bass, the make-shift trio vibrantly tackled Charles Fambrough’s ‘Little Man’ and then the Beatles’ ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown).’

O’Reilly played economically. With teeth gritted and eyes closed, he often scatted along with his solos. Hoening was even more demonstrative, swaying in all directions as if spellbound, keeping the rhythm and time loose. Bolduc, who arrived during the fantasia of ‘Norwegian Wood,’ played more deliberatively than he did at Smalls six nights earlier with Hanahan.

With him also came vocalist Emily Braden. She sang soulfully, her voice curving and gliding along a song’s melody. She belted out a blues like ‘Evil Gal Blues,’ caressed a soul number like Aretha Franklin’s ‘Land of Dreams’ and inspired a shiver of delight when she sang the opening line of ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World.’ As the set wrapped, O’Reilly invited all to stick around for the next set. I was the only to take him up on the offer.

The second set began with O’Reilly, Meyerson and Bolduc playing a sparkling version of Vince Guaraldi’s ‘The Great Pumpkin Waltz’ and following with the gospel flavour of a Jody DeFrancesco piece that reminded of Oscar Peterson’s ‘Hymn to Freedom.’ Braden returned for four enchanting numbers of loose, flowing singing. A tribute to D’Angelo, ‘Spanish Joint,’ morphed into Michael Jackson’s ‘Want to Be Startin’ Somethin’’ and in another ode to October 31, ‘I Put a Spell on You’ turned into ‘Come Rain or Come Shine.’ It was a Halloween spent well.

The night before, the scene was Birdland for the opening set by Ron Carter and his Big Band, part of the great bassist’s month-long residency at the club—at Birdland, it wasn’t October but Ron-tober. Seated at the bar, I edged my way into a conversation with a couple from Wilmington, Delaware, in New York for the first time in three years, after the husband mentioned to the bartender—an affable fellow too—that he had seen Count Basie live just before he passed with Freddie Green still strumming the Basie beat in the guitar chair. We reveled in how wonderful it was that Carter was still playing and as evidenced by a solo version of ‘You Are My Sunshine,’ continuing to play the bass as well as just about anyone who has taken up the instrument. At another point, Carter slipped in a quote of ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town.’ I squealed in delight.

The band was tight. An arrangement of Sonny Stitt’s ‘The Eternal Triangle’ broke down the harmonic structure as Miles Davis may have if he had recorded it while Carter was holding down the bottom in his band. As the bassist walked from the bandstand to pass by the bar, I clapped. He briefly waved in my direction.

You can find music everywhere in New York. At Washington Square, I stumbled upon a guy playing an upright piano that in a style that was half-cabaret, half-Ray Charles. He sang with warmth like James Taylor. I came upon him just as he started the Beatles’ ‘Martha My Dear.’ He followed with a long blues. After chorus upon chorus of improvisation, he slowed down and then launched into the middle movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do. There was a quintet playing Benny Golson’s ‘Are You Real?’ at Grand Central. On a 1 train from 79th Street to Times Square, two hustlers scrounged for scraps of dough by serenading the strap-hangers to the Commodore’s ‘Easy.’

There aren’t necessarily moments that are particularly special except that they took place amid the hubbub of New York. To put it another way, a park may be just a park but a park like Domino Park in Williamsburg where Manhattan from its southern tip to 59th Street is offered in one giant panorama is something else entirely. I offer these observations if only to explain why, for me, departing New York doesn’t mean wondering if I will return, only when. To that, the response remains, as always, as soon as humanly possible.

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For this round-up, there’s a pretty diverse group of music featured, and I think everyone will dig at least some of it. Let me know which are your favourites.

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Right now, I’m in the middle of anothet solo trip in New York so I will next be in touch in two weeks time (November 12) with an essay on my musical adventures in the city.

Until next time, may good listening be with you all!

Sometimes a lyric can take hold of you and never let go. For me, that would include the opening to Warren Zevon’s ‘Poor Poor Pitiful Me.’ It starts, “well, I lay my head on the railroad track, waiting on the double E / but the train don’t run right here no more / poor poor pitiful me.”

Recently, in my listening for new albums I think you will dig, I heard these lines. They go, “Jesus will come ridin’ in on a UFO / Jesus will come crashin’ with his alien buddies / Jesus will come in the nick of time and take us up.” This was before the hubbub about the Rapture. They are sung over a sparse guitar and the singer-songwriter who sings them, Emily Hines, sounds as if she is aboard the craft herself. It’s the high point of her debut album, These Days (Keeled Scales), out since the start of August.

The recording has an arc, beginning with small-group, low-fi indie rock with whatever gloss there is gradually peeled away for the gauzy, acid-folk of ‘UFO’ and the album closer, ‘Cedar on the River.’ Hines is a direct, intimate singer and in the crush that has greeted Taylor Swift’s new album, I hope that some may also take a break and give a listen to Hines too.

There is a retro feel to These Days, a cosmic aura that brings to mind Judee Sill. Amanda Pascali’s latest, Roses and Basil (Missing Piece Records), released in the middle of September, is old school too but here, the references are Roy Orbison, Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass and the days when Italian songs were the rage.

On her website, her music is described as “Immigrant American folk” and elaborated upon as, “too foreign for here, too foreign for home and never enough for both.” And indeed, there is a feeling listening to Roses and Basil similar to hearing the classic recordings of Harry Belafonte. One’s horizons are broadened and in that widening, one learns about those who are different from he or she, and is all the better for it. The album is a mix of originals as well as Pascali’s translations of traditional Sicilian songs—in addition to being a singer-songwriter, Pascali is, among other things, studying ethnomusicology and Italian studies at the University of Texas at Austin as a Harrington Fellow.

I especially enjoyed the lullaby title track and the early sixties-like nirvana of ‘Wake Up Baby! (E Vui Durmiti Ancora).’ Pascali is an artist making really interesting music and I’m glad to dig into it. I think you’ll feel the same way after giving it a listen.

Guitar Gwenifer Raymond released her third album, Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark (We Are Busy Bodies) on the first Friday of September. She’s Welsh, now residing in Bristol, England but her soul seems to have a permanent home in Appalachia if her knotty compositions and playing are any indication.

It’s always startling to hear music that is this pared down. There are no compromises or concessions but picking up a guitar or any other stringed instrument and making it sound like an orchestra is getting to the source of what music ultimately is. Give a listen to the title track and see if you don’t feel the same sense of awe.

Music that is in your face is something I’ve been drawn to more recently, including recent releases by Haim and the Beaches, and the confrontational debut recording by the New Eves. The latest from Automatic, a Los Angeles-based trio who take their name from a song by the Go-Go’s, approaches this attitude from a different angle. Their sound is synth-based which casts the music on Is It Now? (Stones Throw Records), out for about a month now, with a hipster vibe that is hypnotic.

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The group’s vocals, all three member of the group: Izzy Glaudini, Lola Dompé and Halle Saxon, are similarily disaffected. Hear the back and forth on ‘Country Song’ in which “bye bye city” is answered with “let’s pack it up for an adventure” and then “no more concrete” is followed by “who would have thought I’m a country wife.” The lyrics are simple, the sentiment implied is anything but.

Groups as compact as Automatic seem to be the norm these days. Aggregations whose membership sprawled into the double digits used to be not all that uncommon. The Canadian group Dr. Music in its initial lineup had 18 members: 13 musicians and five singers. Leading the group was Doug Riley and they were best known for the soaring ‘Sun Goes By.’ Motivation’s collaborative force numbers 21 musicians and is spearheaded by producer Michael Simard. Their first album, Take It to the Sky (self-released) came out at the end of September and is a tribute to the music of the seventies that fitted into the liminal space between jazz, soul and funk. Think Earth, Wind & Fire, the Crusaders and Deodato, all of whom are given a nod here.

What makes this album particularly exciting is its reach. Motivation boasts both a horn section and a string section and they steer clear from obvious selections to which homage would be given. ‘That’s the Way the World Is,’ ‘Street Life’ and Also sprach Zarathustra are nowhere to be heard. In their place are the title track, ‘Free As the Wind’ and ‘Skyscrapers.’ There is also a prelude to ‘Take Me to the Sky,’ written by alto saxophonist Bill Runge that recalls both the spaciousness of early ECM and the commercialism of CTI. What also enables the album to reach the loftiness of its goal is its mix of instrumental numbers with those with vocals. It constantly switches the mood.

A similar mix is found on Still Cookin’ at 90: The Canada Sessions Vol. II (Chronograph Records). Who’s still cookin’ at 90? That would be trumpeter Al Muirhead, who’s been playing music for 80 years now. Here, the feel is back to the heyday of the Great American Songbook—I’d like to feel it’s still in its heyday—with Muirhead joined by a rotating cast of players for eight intimate performances.

Music like this could be called cozy, a lyrical security blanket and indeed, hearing Muirhead caress the melody of ‘Moonlight in Vermont,’ a song that never gets old, with pianist Robi Botos and bassist Mike Downes, is comfort defined. Vocalist Caity Gyorgy joins for a fun version of ‘Dancing on the Ceiling’ and a romantic take on ‘More Than You Know,’ and Jocelyn Gould sings on ‘I Thought About You’ and plays guitar on a jaunty ‘My Shining Hour.’ Still Cookin’ at 90 may be the album this year that I liked the most that I didn’t expect to be anything but sonic wallpaper.

Just looking at the cover of Introducing: the Russ Macklem Detroit Quintet (TQM Recording) was enough to know that I’d probably like it. Macklem is photographed in profile, trumpet in his left hand, a cigarillo in his mouth, smoke rising in the air. Another good sign is that the album focuses on Detroit. The Motor City is a jazz town.

Macklem is joined by Kasan Belgrave (Marcus’ son) on alto saxophone, Jordon Anderson on piano, Noah Jackson on bass and Louis Jones III on drums. They play up-front, declarative jazz, brimming with energy. Nothing fancy here and that’s not meant as a put-down. The themes have an emotive call, the solos are urgent and searching. In other words, the good stuff.

And here’s some more of that good stuff. Montreal pianist Kate Wyatt’s new album, Murmurations (self-released), with bassist Adrian Vedady and drummer Louis-Vincent Hamel, came out just before Canadian Thanskgiving and is an introverted piece of trio interplay. Leading off with Vedady’s arrangement of ‘Mack the Knife,’ sounding nothing like it’s usually sung or played—brooding here as opposed to spritely—tips the listener off to the wonderous sounds to follow.

There are compositions inspired by birds in flight (the title track), Montana (‘Going to the Sun’), Buddhism (‘Bardo’) and Bill Frissell (‘Music is Beautiful’). Wyatt’s solos are dense, full of chords and left-right dialogue. Vedady and Hamel are attentive accompaniments. All three write too. Murmurations is an album fit for autumn—rich and lustrous.

An album that slipped under the radar is the newest from trumpeter (although now it may be more accurate to call him a multi-instrumentalist) Nicholas Payton. TRIUNE (Smoke Sessions Records) features Payton on trumpet but he is heard primarily playing the keys: piano, the Fender Rhodes and the clavinet. With him is esperanza spalding on bass and vocals, and Karriem Riggins on drums. Guesting are Nicki Glaspie, Erica Falls and Otis McDonald on vocals as well as Ivan Neville on organ, clavinet and vocals too.

There’s a wide terrain on the album: a lot of groove, traces of neo-soul, fusion and funk, and a loose, improvisatory feel. Most of it floats like a dream, especially ‘Ultraviolet’ with a wordless vocal by spalding and a dreamy solo by Payton on piano once the trio moves into a standard jazz swing. Payton may not pierce too deep as a piano player but I feel TRIUNE is a refreshing, relaxing recording in the best way.

The lens is way wider for vibraphonist Patricia Brennan’s Of the Near and Far (Pyroclastic Records), released last Friday (October 24). Getting the press announcement of it at the beginning of the month was exciting. Brennan is one of the elite players on her instrument—Warren Wolf may be her only equal. Her new album is fueled by her interest in astrology and the compositions she wrote for it have a spaciousness that inspire awe such as ‘Aquarius.’

Their ethereal quality is brilliantly realized by a quintet of Brennan with Sylvie Courvoisier on piano, Miles Okazaki on guitar, Kim Cass on bass and John Hollenbeck on drums with a string quartet—Modney and Pala Garcia on violin, Kyle Armburst on viola and Michael Nicolas on bass—plus Arktureye on electronic with conductor Eli Greenhoe keeping everything together. Of the Near and Far is the kind of album that one can play five, ten times and still barely scratch the surface.

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Ensuring I have the right soundtrack for the season has been a preoccupation of mine for at least 25 years now and I have accumulated a long list of recordings that I feel enhance this time of year. Twice before I have written about my kind of autumn music and below is a supplement to those essays. I hope you enjoy it and that you’ll also share what some of your favourites are for fall.

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Until next time, may good listening be with you all!

Autumn Nocturnes
By: Robert C. Gilbert

October is my favourite month. It signals that summer—enjoyable for about a moment and then just a slog—is in the rearview mirror and that the holiday season—full of endlessly enjoyable rituals—is coming up ahead.

What’s directly in front is crisper weather, chunkier clothing and the fantasia of crimson and golden autumn leaves. As I’ve written here twice before (read here and here), I feel drawn to particular types of music during this season to help heighten its delightful wonder. Music that employs space or a sweeping string line or resonant harmonies or a pensive, interior quality. In my previous essays on my type of autumn music, I’ve shared many of my favourites and inspired by recent pieces by wordsworthesq and Abby Schleifer on this topic, I thought I would share just a few more.

It was the fall of 1996 that I first heard John Coltrane’s meeting on record with Johnny Hartman. I was just beginning my immersion into jazz, starting off by exploring, often over and over again, albums by Miles Davis and Coltrane. Many of them thrilled me by expanding my definition of music, taking me well beyond the confines of the three-minute pop song.

Coltrane’s summit session with Hartman was comparatively compact—six performances totaling 31 minutes. But while the music was fairly accessible, it was Hartman’s singing of six adult ballads, all deeply romantic and the lyrics precisely enunciated by the singer, that shook me. It was an invitation to envision the grown-up world of love, opening up to the possibility where even I could one day sing to a lady, “if I’m faithful to you / it’s not through a sense of duty” as on ‘You Are Too Beautiful.’

The crown jewel of the recording is Billy Strayhorn’s ‘Lush Life.’ Hartman smoothly navigates the tricky verse, drawing out the ending, taking several pauses to underline the pain behind the bravado as he proclaims, “ah yes / I was wrong / again / I was wrong,” stretching the last “was” and dipping deep for the final “wrong.” He is equally vitrousic on the primary section of the composition—hear, for one example, how Hartman glides along as he sings, “a week in Paris will ease the bite of it / all I care is to smile in spite of it.” Coltrane’s solo gets deep into the torment of being lonely, and he is pushed and pulled by Elvin Jones on brushes. It’s the kind of recording that is so divinely inspired that no other interpretation of ‘Lush Life’ can measure up or is truly needed.

The connection to fall is explicitly made with the concluding ‘Autumn Serenade,’ a lesser-known pop song written by Sonny Gallop and Peter DeRose, played as a rhumba. One can almost see leaves falling from a tree in time.

Music that is rich in sound and full of colour pairs well with this time of year. One album that comes to mind has one of the most lengthily mundane titles for a record. The cover states “Recorded December 1961” and underneath it, notes “Johnny Hodges, Soloist” and underneath that adds “Billy Strayhorn and the Orchestra.” The music is anything but. Essentially a Duke Ellington recording without Ellington—it’s the sublime Jimmy Jones in the piano chair—but with close to the full Ellington band present, the album is a collection of well-worn Hodges features like ‘I Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good),’ ‘Jeep’s Blues’ and ‘Day Dream’ plus two unfussy lines by the alto saxophonist and a closing feature for trombonist Lawrence Brown on Hoagy Carmichael’s ‘Stardust.’

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Even though Hodges and band had played some of these compositions a thousand times and likely a whole lot more, that intimate familiarity doesn’t come at the cost of what was put down on tape. The album is warm and radiant. Strayhorn’s arrangements are harmonically sumptuous. Hodges plays with the full sweep of his gifts. The glissandos land with true majesty. The band of mostly Ellingtonians plays with precision as on the crescendo of ‘Gal from Joe’s.’ By the time ‘I’m Just a Lucky So-and-So’ rolls around, it’s hard not to swoon once Hodges gets to the bridge, lushly cushioned by the trumpet section of Cat Anderson, Bill Berry, a moonlighting Howard McGhee and Eddie Mullens.

If Hodges and Strayhorn’s collaboration paints the fall of daytime—golden and picturesque—Joe Zawinul’s solo release from 1971, titled simply Zawinul, is the fall of nighttime—cold, mysterious and calling out be explored.

It’s an album that was quickly eclipsed by Weather Report, the group that Zawinul formed with Wayne Shorter and Miroslav Vitous—both appear on Zawinul—in 1970. The album is an exploration of the extended and dense works that the pianist had written and recorded with Cannonball Adderley as well as during his time as part of the ensemble of musicians recording with Miles Davis. Here, thirteen players are employed in various combinations, an all-star assemblage of the cutting edge of jazz-rock.

The pastoral ‘His Last Journey,’ written by Zawinul to commemorate the funeral of his grandfather in Austria on a winter’s day, is the highlight of the album. It begins almost imperceptibly and then becomes a feature for Jimmy Owens on flugelhorn over a melodica part played by Jack DeJohnette and a delicate piano phrase played at key points by Zawinul. It reminds me of how a brightly lit building at night on a fall evening, the leaves on any tree around it illuminated, can be a powerful tabelux, an expression of desolate beauty.

‘His Last Journey’ morphs into ‘Double Image,’ explosive and murky and built around an arco-bass solo by Vitous followed by Zawinul and Herbie Hancock duelling on electric pianos with multiple drummers: Joe Chambers, Billy Hart and DeJohnette, keeping the pulse unsettled. I equate it with the winds of autumn. They can be cool, refreshing and restorative yet also a reminder that the winds of winter won’t often offer such a balm to the soul.

Two more notable things about Zawinul is that it includes the complete melody of his immortal ‘In a Silent Way’ and in so doing, perhaps justifies Davis’ pairing it down when he recorded it in 1969, and Woody Shaw’s brash solo on the opening ‘Doctor Honoris Causa,’ in tribute to Hancock.

Autumn is also the time to dig into the canon of singer-songwriters from the late sixties and seventies. Acoustic sounds, full of woody resonance that mimic the closeness of the season and how it implores taking notice of how the leaves are changing, and bending an ear to hear the crunch of those that have fallen as one walks over them. Joni Mitchell is the artist from this era that I most closely associate with fall, especially her debut, Song to a Seagull, almost entirely consisting of just her voice and her guitar. It’s a masterwork of acid-folk.

Another album that has a similar close quality is Parallelograms, recorded by Linda Perhacs in 1970. Her day job was as a dental hygienist and one of the patients at the clinic she worked at was composer Leonard Rosenman who discovered she wrote and sang songs on the side. He got her a record deal at Kapp and provided the atmospheric, sparse arrangements for the album, which vanished without a trace but was since been discovered and championed as a classic.

Although Perhacs had range as a singer—check out the soprano-like runs on ‘Moon and Cattails’ and the quavering high vibrato on the closing ‘Delicious’—it’s the intimacy of her singing on Parallelograms that is most hypnotic paired with Rosenman’s motifs that burrow into the brain as on the three-song cycle of ‘Dolphin’ to ‘Call of the River’ to ‘Sandy Toes.’ Her music has a pristine quality inducing what can be best described as a breathtaking euphoria, the same reaction as when walking in a park with the ground covered in fallen leaves.

Another singer-songwriter I closely associate with fall is Laura Nyro. Long-time readers here know how much I love her music as well as that of the finest popularizers of it, the 5th Dimension. They began to interpret her songs in 1968 with two from her second album, Eli and the Thirteenth Confession: ‘Sweet Blindness’ and ‘Stoned Soul Picnic.’ The latter was the title of their third album, quite possibly their best and another recording fit for this season.

It’s not so much, to be honest, because of the Nyro covers but what surrounds them. The jazzy harmonies of the uplifting ‘It’s a Good Life’ and ‘The Eleventh Song (What a Groovy Day!)’ Powerful features for Billy Davis, Jr. on ‘I’ll Never Be the Same Again’ and ‘Broken Wing Bird’ as well as the lilting voice of Ron Townson on the introspective ‘The Sailboat Song.’

Fall also compels one to move with the expectation no longer that it will lead to perspiration so a choice cut like ‘California Soul,’ a textbook example of the 5th Dimenson’s brand of symphonic soul, can be part of the soundtrack to do just that.

There’s so much more music for fall that I can go on about—this year’s version of my annual autumn playlist is over 60 hours now. I’ll try to savour it all as I will also try to savour autumn coming around once again.

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I was intrigued by the idea that the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the Byrds’ The Notorious Byrd Brothers reflect 1967 in very different ways. Sgt. Pepper’s is the touchstone musical moment of the year while The Notorious Byrd Brothers wrestles with the fact that a new age would not be dawning. Both are among the finest recordings from the amazing deluge of creativity in pop and rock music in the late sixties. I hope you enjoy what I have put together. Please share your thoughts as well!

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Until next time, may good listening be with you all!

Sgt. Pepper’s Notorious Byrd Brothers
By: Robert C. Gilbert

“All summer long, we were grooving in the sand,
and the jukebox kept on playing Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
- from ‘Summer Rain,’ written by James Hendricks

In the United States, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was the number-one album for all but 10 days during the summer of 1967. In the United Kingdom, it has been at the top of the charts for 17 days before summer began and would remain there for 49 days after summer ended (it would return to the number one spot three more times by February 1968). In Canada, it would take almost a month after the summer solstice for it to reach the top, but on June 1, widely seen as the album’s release date in the UK although it likely came out six days earlier, visitors to the Youth Pavilion at Expo ’67—the event that best marked the country’s centennial—in Montreal got to hear Sgt. Pepper’s before just about anyone else in North America.

Roger La Roche, then of the Sinners who played at the Pavilion during Expo ’67, recounted the occasion 50 years later for Le Journal de Montréal. “At the Youth Pavilion, there was one of the producers who knew a flight attendant who flew from Montreal to London,” said La Roche. In London on June 1, she bought several copies and then flew to Montreal with them in tow, where it would only be released in stores the following week. “Upon arriving [in Montreal], she put everything in a taxi that took them to the Youth Pavilion. People knew about it, since it had been announced the day before. Around 2 p.m. [on June 1], they started playing Sgt. Pepper’s on repeat, and they kept doing it until 2 a.m.”

Just two-and-a-half-days after the thundering final chord of ‘A Day in the Life’ decayed and a snippet of gibberish repeated over and over again for the last time in Montreal, the Jimi Hendrix Experience appeared on a bill with Procol Harum, the Chiffons, the Stormsville Shakers and Denny Laine & the Electric String Band at London’s Saville Theatre. The Experience’s set started with Mitch Mitchell playing a complex rhythm heavy on the bass drum. Hendrix pointed to his ears and warned everyone, “your ears, watch out for your ears, watch out for your ears, okay.” He then put a cigarette in his mouth and slid into a rolling, funky chord progression. With Noel Redding, he began to sing, “It was twenty years ago today…”

In the audience were Paul McCartney and girlfriend Jane Asher as well as George and Patti Harrison. Peter Asher was there too. “Jimi had just gotten the Beatles’ new album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which had come out only three days earlier, and apparently he had learned the title song just by listening to it on the radio; he taught it that afternoon [June 4] to the other members of the band and they played it onstage that night,” said Asher. Of the moment, McCartney once remarked: “I put that down as one of the great honours of my career.”

No surprise or shock that the Experience’s homage is ragged but the message it imparted was sharp: Sgt. Pepper’s would take on an importance that no other album released during the rapid maturation of rock and pop music in the mid sixties had or would assume. The Beatles were the ultimate exemplars of what by June 1967 had become a significant movement within the decade’s counterculture.

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Two Sundays after Hendrix blew McCartney’s mind, Hendrix and the Experience held an audience of thousands in a similar state of awe at the Monterey International Pop Festival. They closed with the Troggs’ ‘Wild Thing.’ Hendrix set his guitar on fire and destroyed it in a sonic cloud of feedback and Mitchell’s polyrhythmic fills. While the Beatles did not appear at the Festival, having hung up their touring shoes for good at the end of August 1966, they were on the mind of several who did.

Mike Bloomfield, then of the Electric Flag, offered this observation in an outtake from the footage D.A. Pennebaker and his team shot at Monterey. “In little towns in Iowa, man, growing up now, are kids who are being freaked out of their minds by the Beatles man, freaked out, they’re raised on Beatles man, raised on genius music,” he said.

During the second evening at the Festival, there was a far more prominent pronouncement on the Fab Four: “if we gave LSD to all the statemen and politicians in the world, we might have a chance at stopping war.” It was a paraphrase of a quote from the then-current issue of Life magazine: “if the politicians would take LSD, there wouldn’t be any more war or poverty or famine.” It was said by McCartney in an interview in which he admitted to dropping acid. From the Festival stage, David Crosby triumphantly shared that it was McCartney whom he was loosely quoting and then, with a giggle added, “I concur … heartily!”

It was one of several moments during the Byrds’ set at Monterey when Crosby pushed the envelope as well as the tolerance level of his bandmates, especially Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman. The Byrds weren’t the first American group to gain notice that took overt inspiration from the Beatles—that would be the Beau Brummels—but they were the most lasting. Twelve-string jangle, mop tops and the Merseybeat gave way to songs with a profound jazz influence with McGuinn and Crosby both inspired by John Coltrane, and explorations about extraterrestrial life care of McGuinn and of consciousness expansion care of Crosby.

Looking from the vantage point of 60 years later, popular music seemed to be changing almost daily back then. Nowadays, change in contemporary popular music seems glacial with the only evolution being the infiltration of AI slop as it is infiltrating every other aspect of cultural life. That’s not to say that there isn’t a lot of good new music being made today. Those who read my ongoing series of new-and-upcoming music round-ups know how entranced by I am by today’s legion of music-makers. It’s just that the vitality of a lot of what was recorded from, let’s say, 1965 to 1967 abides.

Sgt. Pepper’s continues as a substantive statement of the drive to go further, reach deeper and create works just as important and just as weighty as, for one example, Leonard Bernstein’s recordings of the symphonies of Gustav Mahler (Bernstein quickly caught on to the importance of what the Beatles and their peers were doing). Its’ whole-hearted embrace of being anointed as a significant album went from its cover like no other, from cut-outs of Sri Paramahansa Yogananda to Dion, situated behind the Beatles in regimental floral glory to the insert cutouts of the group and the supposed Sgt. Pepper to the lyrics printed out on the back cover.

It also extended to the music. Only the reprise of the title track harkened back to the stripped-down energy of the glory of Beatlemania and even then, there was supposed crowd noises and applause laced throughout.

The textures of the album: orchestral, classical—Western, Indian and avant-garde, echoes of music halls and circuses not to mention barnyards and concert arenas, are the sonic equivalent of the explosion of colours that the phrases “flower power” and “Summer of Love” can still evoke. Whereas Monterey Pop, Pennebaker’s documentary of the Festival, still rivets attention with its vérité presentation of part of the cross-section of music that was always in the air, that so many heeded the call to go to San Francisco, often running away from home or arriving solely to sample a buffet of sex and drugs, made the summer of 1967 grimmer than the Beatles’ portrait of the times.

Joan Didion’s ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem,’ first published in the September 23, 1967 edition of the Saturday Evening Post, famously held the legend at bay for the facts as she experienced them, including the piece’s most indelible scene in which a young child, Susan, trips on the LSD given to her by her parents.

The Diggers, a group formed in 1966 which operated in the epicentre of the San Francisco counter-culture: the Haight-Ashbury district, was dedicated to freedom from the societal grind. Among other things, they operated free stores and in Golden Gate Park each day, gave out free food, including soup made of whatever the group’s members could get their hands on.

Writer Joel Selvin, 17 in 1967, once recalled the shift from the tentative first steps to creating a new world to a struggle for survival in the city. “I had Diggers’ soup. It was fun. It was neat. You go out and get a bowl of soup, you know, eat with some people you don’t know and be amongst all this new community,” he said in 2007 for PBS. “The next time I went back, man, those people waiting in line needed it. I didn’t stay ’cause now it was squalid.”

Harrison was similarly disillusioned when he visited the Haight in August 1967. “We walked down the street and I was being treated like the Messiah or something,” he remembered for the Beatles’ Anthology. “I was really afraid because I could see all these spotty youths as they were still in the undercurrent of Beatlemania but from a kind of a twisted angle.” Harrison, who was with his then-wife Patti as well as frequent Beatles and Byrds associate Derek Taylor and the soon-to-be-infamous “Magic Alex” Mardas, was offered drugs, gifts of all kinds and a guitar to play. As he continually refused to play the role that was expected of him, the crowd, which was not what Harrison expected, turned angry.

I suppose these recollections offer a reason why Sgt. Pepper’s has slipped in esteem, no longer universally crowned the greatest album ever made. The album is rooted in a place and a time that if it existed at all, only did so for a sliver of a moment.

That, of course, neglects that there are genuine moments of darkness that lurk just beyond the album’s kaleidoscopic visions. The pain of the parents who wake up one morning to discover their daughter has left home. The upbeat protagonist of ‘Getting Better’ who admits, against the smear of a tamboura, “I used to be cruel to my woman / I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved.” The apocalyptic ratcheting up of the orchestra from the lowest note of each instrument’s register to the highest that occurs twice in ‘A Day in the Life’—an effect that Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead once compared to the eruption of American folk songs that are blasted in all directions during the Allegretto movement of Charles Ives’ Fourth Symphony, referring to Leopold Stokowski’s premiere recording of the work in the mid sixties for Columbia Masterworks.

As dark as Sgt. Pepper’s may occasionally be, the moments that are luminous—too many to mention but the shuffles of ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’ and ‘Getting Better’ first come to mind—have that feeling of complete correctness that to me is the single most compelling reason to explain why the Beatles became as big as they did. These snippet of sounds serve as a kind of vaporizer against those who try to argue that the Beatles just weren’t as great as so many continue to believe. Nowhere are they as persuasive as they are on Sgt. Pepper’s, those both planned (Ringo Starr’s tumbling tom fills on ‘A Day in the Life,’ for just one example) and serendipitous (the deeply psychedelic interlude in John Lennon's ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!’ created by engineer Geoff Emerick splicing together snippets of circus music at random after tossing them in the air).

The result is anything but antiseptic, but its precision is deep and I suspect that’s why some argue that the album is not as good as its acolytes say it is—a fashionable statement of the crowd who wishes to be provocatively contrarian. Such a pose has its uses; today more than ever; but it is a wasted one when applied to Sgt. Pepper’s. It is the big-bang album, one which others tried to emulate and got there (Love’s Forever Changes), took a swing at and missed (the Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request) or hoisted a middle finger to it all (the Mothers of Invention’s We’re Only In It for the Money).

There is still something about hearing Sgt. Pepper’s for the first time. I was probably all of nine when I pressed play on a cassette copy, feeling deeply terrified at the clamour of ‘A Day in the Day’ but also enthralled that music could be this engrossing.

David Crosby visited Abbey Road Studios during the album sessions. On hearing the just-finished ‘A Day in the Life’—two days prior, the final piano chord had been recorded—he remembered, “at the end of the last chord, my brain just ran out my nose onto the floor in a puddle. I didn’t know what to do, I was just stupefied.”

By then, February 24, 1967, Crosby had begun growing the mustache that became his signature look and settling into the role as the enfant terrible of the Byrds. Earlier that month, the group’s fourth album, Younger Than Yesterday, was released in the States (it was to come out in the UK two months later) and was a big leap forward from their previous release, Fifth Dimension, about three-fourths a great LP. Crosby insisted on including the stream-of-consciousness ‘Mind Gardens,’ full of backwards effects and no discernable harmony or melody, and lacked enthusiasm for covering Bob Dylan’s ‘My Back Pages’ (Younger Than Yesterday’s most well-known selection).

Crosby’s introductions and interruptions during the group’s turn at Monterey—an edgy, rushed and precarious performance—as well as appearing with Buffalo Springfield during their set didn’t help as well as his taking the reins for the sublime ‘Lady Friend’ and it barely making a dent on the charts.

The next time the Byrds were in the studio, the group as it had been known for the past three years didn’t make it out intact. The album that resulted, The Notorious Byrd Brothers, is as close to equaling Sgt. Pepper’s as an experience as any other album of the time but with little of its feeling that a new world was about to be born.

On the late nineties CD reissue of the album, there is an extraordinary sequence included as a hidden track. The Byrds are trying to record Crosby’s jazzy and trippy ‘Dolphin’s Smile.’ After a swirling introduction by McGuinn on the twelve string and Crosby on a six string, Michael Clarke begins to play a heavy-handed rhythm on the drums. Crosby calls off the take and tries to encourage Clarke. “Instead of that fast, choppy stuff—see, it’s supposed to be a long, smooth kind of slow, floating thing, feel like a boat, not feel like horses clopping or something,” he explains to Clarke. Producer Gary Usher interjects to clarify that Clarke should be playing a jazzy shuffle.

Crosby and Clarke begin to argue with each other. F bombs begin to fly. Each time McGuinn counts off for another take, Clarke plays a pattern that feels off. He wasn’t a drummer when he joined the Byrds but was a quick learner, playing complex rhythms on recordings like ‘Eight Miles High,’ ‘Everybody’s Been Burned’ and ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’

For whatever reason, Clarke never delivered what Crosby was looking for on ‘Dolphin’s Smile.’ He soon quit and then McGuinn and Hillman gave Crosby the heave-ho. Clarke returned for the end of the album sessions and then got the heave-ho too. In total, the drummer is on five of the 11 cuts on The Notorious Byrd Brothers with Crosby on four. In their places were a roster of session musicians. It was Jim Gordon would nailed the “long, smooth kind of slow, floating thing” Crosby was looking for on ‘Dolphin’s Smile.’

Gordon was among the more than 20 musicians employed by McGuinn, Hillman and Usher to build The Notorious Byrd Brothers out of the wreckage. There are strings, horns, a pedal-steel guitar, the Moog synthesizer and a sound collage. Phasing effects were liberally applied. Moments of tranquility were shattered by explosive explosions of electric guitar. The album is a strange, wondrous listen.

The wistful ‘Goin’ Back,’ written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin, in which “now there are no games / to only pass the time / no more electric trains / no more trees to climb” is all the more poignant by being preceded by the anti-drug ‘Artificial Energy.’ Similarly, Hillman’s ‘Natural Harmony,’ so trippy it could be mistaken for a Crosby song, merges directly into the cold reality of Crosby’s ‘Draft Morning.’

Ideas about peace, love and understanding are constantly challenged. ‘Change Is Now,’ another song that dares to speak of the dawning of a new age that switches to a country two-step on the chorus, seems to question its message during an extended interlude powered by Hillman’s throbbing bass and McGuinn’s stinging solo lines. ‘Get to You’ talks of a traveler trying to return to London and seems fueled by dream logic, especially when considering “it’s a bright sunny day when I see you come my way / but it look me twenty years to get to you.”

The Notorious Byrd Brothers ends with a voyage to the Moon on ‘Space Odyssey,’ inspired by Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and drenched in the sound of the Moog and a metallic McGuinn vocal. It ends, unlike Sgt. Pepper’s, with a whimper, not a bang. A synthesizer chord rings out of silence. A transmission from a faraway place. Of a summer where a Beatles’ album set the scene.

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I hope you enjoy the essay and will share your thoughts as well.

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Until next time, may good listening be with you all!

Mac Davis, the Song Painter
By: Robert C. Gilbert

What does it mean to be called a “song painter”? Perhaps it is related to the ability of a songwriter to not only make one feel but to also see, to be in the setting in which a song is situated. It’s a quality that I think links a group of singer-songwriters who rose to prominence in the late sixties and whose songs were seemingly recorded by everyone.

Mickey Newbury and Kris Kristofferson wrote often of desolate landscapes. Jerry Reed and Tony Joe White conjured riotous explosions of Southern colour. Jim Webb built song canvases of wide introspection. Mac Davis could be harder to pin down but it was he who was marked as the “song painter,” a sobriquet bestowed upon him by Glen Campbell.

In 1970, he recorded Davis’ ‘I’ll P:aint You a Song.’ There’s a lilt in the melody as Campbell sings, “But if you’ll close your eyes / and step inside my world / I’ll take you by the hand / we’ll find a brand new day.” It’s a song of promise, a pledge of release from troubles through the craft of songwriting but does not exactly speak of how Davis used his pen like a brush.

He did though when he wrote “of holding hands and wrapped bouquets / of twilights trimmed in purple haze / of laughing eyes and simple ways / and quiet nights and gentle days with you.” It’s the emotional centrepiece of the first verse of ‘Memories,’ written by Davis and Billy Strange for Elvis Presley, one of the first artists to connect with his songs (Presley recorded seven of them within 11 months, four of them were top 40 hits).

‘Memories’ is the linchpin of Presley’s 1968 NBC-TV special. He sings it to a pre-recorded backing track at the conclusion of the extended sequence where he appears in a boxing ring without the ropes with long-time bandmates Scotty Moore and D.J. Fontana plus “Memphis Mafia” pals Charlie Hodge and Alan Fortas. Presley sits at the edge of the ring, fully clad in leather, sweaty and hair disheveled after playing old favourites and reminiscing about the halcyon days of the fifties, and begins to sing.

As the words pour out of him, using a sensitivity that was largely absent from the rest of the special as he sang as if his very life was on the line (it kind of was), the camera often situates him among those seated around him. They are all intently listening to Presley. The connection between the singer and his audience is palpable, a collective reflection of how Presley has marked the lives of all those moved by him and his music.

An even more interesting thing here is that he only sings the first verse of the song, lending enough ambiguity so that ‘Memories’ can be interpreted as either being sentimental or bittersweet or a combination of both. When Davis performed the song as part of a two-hour special broadcast in February 2019 to mark the 50th anniversary of what is now known as the ’68 Comeback Special, he sang not only the first verse but the two that follow. It’s about the only worthwhile moment in what was otherwise an incoherent spectacle. In its complete form—the first verse in the past tense, the two that follow in the present tense—it becomes an expression of profound loss. Davis first recorded his version of ‘Memories’ for Song Painter, his debut album, released on Columbia in 1970.

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By then, Davis, a native of Lubbock, Texas, had been in the music business for almost a decade. He was a member of a group called the Zebs, which released two sings at the start of the sixties. He worked for Vee-Jay Records as well as at Liberty in the promotions department, also putting out a few stray singles that went nowhere. He then became a writer for Nancy Sinatra’s record label, Boots Enterprises. It was then that the songs began to pour out of Davis’ pen, sometimes written with Strange (in addition to ‘Memories,’ ‘A Little Less Conversation’) or Delaney Bramlett (‘Hello L.A., Goodbye Birmingham’) or under the pseudonym Scott Davis (‘Don’t Cry Daddy’) so that he wouldn’t be confused with Mack David of Disney fame and brother of Hal, or under his own name (‘Something’s Burning’).

In addition to writing songs for Sinatra, Davis also appeared as part of her stage show. He left her employ in 1970 and signed with Columbia. His first single for the label was ‘Whoever Finds This, I Love You,’ a portrait of a friendship struck between an old man and young orphan. The lyrics are sometimes too clever for their own good—for example, “as he read the childish writing / the old man began to cry / ’cause the words burned inside of him / like a brand”—but Davis sells them. There’s a comfort in hearing him sing them. His tone is full, direct and well-rounded. As he rises in the register, there’s a slight twang. During a recitation that deliver the song’s gut-punch resolution, his voice becomes rich and deep.

Surrounding him is a lush arrangement, heavy on the strings, by Artie Butler—among his many credits, he arranged both Louis Armstrong’s recording of ‘What a Wonderful World’ and Janis Ian’s ‘Society’s Child.’ It gives ‘Whoever Finds This, I Love You’ a suitably autumnal sound that’s neither sugary nor saccharine.

The single was moderately successful commercially, reaching #53 on the Billboard Hot 100 on June 13, 1970. A month earlier, Kenny Rogers and the First Edition just missed the top 10 with the mesmerizing ‘Something’s Burning’ with its alternating soft and hard sections—both fairly erotic—another example of Davis’ heighted expressionism. A corollary of it from a woman’s point of view was ‘I’m Just in Love,’ recorded by Sinatra in 1969. It tetters into melodrama but the melody Davis wrote is poignant, reaching upward on the resolution.

When Davis hit upon an idea—blissful love on ‘Something’s Burning’ or the plea of a child to his disconsolate father to “don’t cry daddy / daddy, please don’t cry” or a divorced dad admiringly calling his young son “daddy’s little man”—and built a song around it that said something about the ecstasy or pain of everyday life, it took and could shake the listener.

The latter, ‘Daddy’s Little Man,’ was one of several Davis songs that O.C. Smith, he of ‘Little Green Apples’ fame, recorded in the late sixties. It was his last 40 hit and was produced by Jerry Fuller, who also gained renown by steering the recordings of Gary Puckett & the Union Gap. Both Smith and Puckett sung orchestral pop and it was this sound that Fuller brought to Davis’ Song Painter as its producer.

‘Daddy’s Little Man’ leads off the album’s second side. The arrangement by Butler is sweet, tracing the ache of the main melodic line but staying out of the way for Davis’ voice to float along. His singing here is not light but it’s not solemn either. It lands resolutely on lines like, “my, you must have grown about a foot or two since last weekend,” to both emphasize the pleasant sound of Davis’ singing and the sadness of the song, a meditation on being a weekend parent.

From ‘Daddy’s Little Man,’ the album moves to ‘Once You Get Used To It’ which takes an alternate view of the same scenario. The melody Davis wrote is strong, naturally fitting his tendency to let a note linger. He starts it with this: “living all by yourself ain’t bad at all” and then pauses before drawing out “oh no” and then softly adding, deep in his register, “once you get used to it.” It’s a punch to the gut equaled by the song’s bridges; in particular, the second in which the protagonist, newly divorced, remarks on the perceptiveness of children. “’Cause sometimes other people’s kids / have a way of looking at you / they can tell with you it ain’t no game / they can see the pain.” When it is sung by Davis in full voice against Fuller and Butler’s lush production and arrangement, these words become a statement of radical empathy.

There’s no better example of that strain to Davis’ artistry than ‘In the Ghetto.’ What remains undiminished about the song 56 years after Presley recorded it and had his first top 10 hit in four years is the compactness of the words that Davis used to tell the song’s story. That wasn’t always the case.

In Presley’s hands, ‘In the Ghetto’ has an inevitability to what will happen to the young man who dies far too young and needlessly against a mostly martial beat. Davis took a different approach when he recorded it for Song Painter. The beat is consistent and straight. He sings more forcefully and in doing so, turns it into a requiem for the young man. Phrases like “and his mama cried,” “and his hunger burns” and “as her young man died” are stretched out and sear. Davis’ recording is, to be sure, more conventional than Presley’s but, even as I have been fervent in Elvis Presley fandom for 45 years and counting, I find Davis’ version more moving. The sincerity is overpowering.

It is too on ‘Home,’ Davis’ comment on the Vietnam War. Again, he focuses on an individual—a soldier—to comment on the waste of life. The arrangement is ornate with female background singers (the Shirley Matthews Singers), pizzicato strings and the rat-a-tat-tat of Gene Chrisman’s figure on Presley’s ‘In the Ghetto.’ Davis avoids any explicit political message but makes one anyway by showing, not telling, the larger point he wishes to make.

That is ultimately why Davis should be placed among the songwriters who rose to prominence in the late sixties—not simply because of the timing of his rise—like Kris Kristofferson, Mickey Newbury and Tony Joe White.

I would concede Davis’ poetry through song wasn’t as subtle or as literary-based as Kristofferson’s, but in his way, Davis could equally evoke loss that could knock down the manliest of men. He could tell of love that narrowly slipped out of one’s grasp, as Newbury could, on ‘Closest I Ever Got.’ He could also tell a Southern tale such as ‘Uncle Boogar and Byrdle Neale’ and ‘Hello L.A., Goodbye Birmingham’ like White could. All there were also on Song Painter and the last two showed how Davis could rock.

The album ends with ‘Half and Half (Song for Sarah)’—Sarah being Davis’s second wife who, in the dissolution of the marriage, took up with Glen Campbell—with its infectious “la la la” refrain. It’s a hopeful, harmonious song. The second verse is particularly noteworthy. It starts with, “Half the world is melody and half a song is words” and ends with “I can sing the words if you can hum the melody / together we can sing the song and that’s how it should be.” Sung by someone else, the message may be considered trite but when sung by Davis, it’s a message that one can easily get behind.

Song Painter is all but forgotten. At least in Canada, it’s unavailable for streaming. Someday, I hope that someone savvy will scoop up the rights to reissue it. It’s that good. On the album’s back cover, there are five quotes on the bottom right-hand corner to emphasize the mark Davis quickly made. Amid endorsements by O.C. Smith, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Frank Sinatra (“Not only does Mac Davis write great songs, but more than that, he sings them as well as anyone I’ve heard”), Nancy Sinatra writes of his songs, “there is a piece of [Davis] in every one of them”). Glen Campbell gets most to the point: “Mac Davis don’t write songs, he paints them.”

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