Ed Ward on the live albums that revived Jerry Lee Lewis’ career in the mid-late 1960s:

The resulting album, Live at the Hamburg Star-Club, is 37 minutes long, and, because it features a man playing as if his life depended on it in front of a rioting crowd, is widely considered one of the greatest live rock and roll albums ever. Smash decided not to release it. Instead, until it got an official U.S. release in 1980, imported copies were eagerly sought out. What Smash did instead was to record another show, this time with Jerry Lee’s regular band, in July in Birmingham, Alabama. The set list is almost identical, but with a bit more country.

Above, Jerry Lee Lewis performing on Shindig in 1965. If this doesn’t make you want to get up and dance on out of the office and into Friday night then we don’t know what will.

Ed Ward on Johnny Cash’s liberal attitude:

Cash’s liberal attitude extended to the TV series he started that year, and not only his friend Bob Dylan, but also people like Pete Seeger, Derek and the Dominos and, yes, Kris Kristofferson got television exposure they’d probably not have gotten otherwise. The show lasted two seasons, and is still fondly remembered.

Pete Seeger and Johnny Cash perform “Cripple Creek” on The Johnny Cash Show in 1970.

Ed Ward on Johnny Cash’s first self-reinvention:

In 1955, John R. Cash was a sometime auto mechanic, sometime appliance salesman who liked to play the guitar and sing, mostly gospel songs. The “R” in his name didn’t stand for anything — and, in fact, he’d been named J.R. at birth and had to come up with “John” when he joined the Air Force. He’d spend the rest of his life reinventing himself.

Image of Cash courtesy of Columbia

Aretha Franklin turns 71 today. My Aunt Judy is a die-hard Aretha fan and wonderful photographer. As a result, she has taken some pretty stunning pictures of Aretha over the years at various concerts. Above is one she took at the Opera House in Boston, October 2006. I love this photo and have a copy at my house, hanging in a place of honor; Aretha looks like angel in it — doesn’t she? — ready to take flight.

In case you missed it, here is Ed Ward’s piece from a few weeks back about Aretha’s years at Columbia Records and before she made the move to Atlantic.

The music for today’s commute home is decided.

Photo by Judy Ahern Salsich

Ed Ward on Billy Gibbons’s pre-ZZ Top band, the Moving Sidewalks:

Hanging out with Hendrix’ drummer, Mitch Mitchell, obviously had an effect on the Sidewalks’ drummer, Dan Mitchell, too. But by the time this was recorded, the Moving Sidewalks had had a couple of problems. They’d been asked to go on a national tour opening for the Doors, but in Dallas, the band, which loved to set off pyrotechnics, overdid the flash powder and set the Doors’ equipment on fire. There went that tour. And Scepter didn’t see any reason to release a new version of an old Beatles tune, so they were back on Tantara. They’d been recording an album in bits and pieces, but for some reason, it wasn’t getting released.

In fact, it didn’t get released until late 2012, and, as you might guess, it’s very much a period piece, albeit a very well-made one.

Image courtesy of RockBeat Records

Critic Ed Ward on Aretha Franklin’s recording career at Columbia:

By 1964, Columbia was desperate. They had her record “The Shoop-Shoop Song.” For once, an inspired choice, a pared-down arrangement and a spirited vocal from Aretha. But … Betty Everett had just had a hit with this song, her version was every bit as good and this wasn’t a single, but a track on an album that also had Aretha doing songs made famous by Dionne Warwick, Inez Foxx and Barbara Lynn. Something was still trying to break out, though, as the 1965 single “Hands Off” shows.

Image via Martin Majoor/Flickr

Critic Ed Ward on the Columbia Records scout who discovered Aretha Franklin:

One of the stars who visited a lot was Sam Cooke, who convinced Aretha that she could be a hit singing popular music, and so in 1960, at the age of 18, she dropped out of school and, eventually, was signed to Columbia Records by its top talent scout, John Hammond. Hammond, who had discovered Count Basie and Billie Holiday, among others, saw her as a potential jazz star, and recorded her with a jazz trio led by Ray Bryant. She recorded jazz standards like “Rock a Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody,” which was a minor pop hit in late 1961.

Image via NPR

Sometimes we humans get stuff wrong. Case in point: In 1969, Fresh Air music critic Ed Ward was less than enthusiastic about Abbey Road. Ooops. Oh well. Live and learn.

WNYC Soundcheck:

The Beatles’ Abbey Road — now ranked #14 on the Greatest Album of All-Time list by Rolling Stone — was skewered by critic Ed Ward in the magazine’s pages in 1969. “Eeeeeeeeek. It’s The Beatles,” Ward wrote. But, when we caught up with Ward, who spoke to us from his home in France, he said “I have changed my views slightly toward the positive. Time has a way of doing that.”

Critic Ed Ward on forgotten Louisiana swamp-pop pioneer Joe Barry:

By early 1961, “I’m A Fool to Care” was working its way from a regional to a national phenomenon on Mercury’s Smash subsidiary, and Joe Barry and the Vikings, his latest band, were on the road. That summer, he released a follow-up.”Teardrops in My Heart” didn’t do as well, and the two that followed didn’t even do that well. Joe didn’t care: he was busy living his legend, destroying hotel rooms, shooting televisions or throwing them in the pool.

Image of Joe Barry courtesy of Johnny Vallis and Ace Records

— via Ed Ward’s review of the 12-disc survey of electric blues, “Plug It In! Turn It Up!”

“Blues is so much a part of the fabric of American music and American culture — not only as a defined musical form, but also as a springboard for all kinds of creativity — that it seems crazy to try to encapsulate it in any way. Bear Family Records, though, has just released a 12-disc survey of electric blues called Plug It In! Turn It Up! that does a great job of illuminating one particular aspect of the blues.

That said, if you want to hear the first blues solo recorded on an electric guitar — “Floyd’s Guitar Blues,” the first track on the first disc — it’s not very good. Floyd Smith was a member of the Kansas City band Andy Kirk and His Twelve Clouds of Joy, and cut “Floyd’s Guitar Blues” on March 16, 1939, using techniques that Hawaiian guitarists had made famous, although he seems to be playing a standard guitar. The record was a sensation, and many years later, Chuck Berry cut a version of it called “Blues for Hawaiians.”

Photo: Joe Hill Louis, B.B. King and Rufus Thomas appear on a new multi-disc compilation of electric blues, Plug It In! Turn It Up!

The band was an odd group of people: free jazzers, hippie rockers, old-timey and country-blues musicians. The guitarist, Bill Barth, had been one of the re-discoverers of Skip James, while one of the saxophonists, Robert Palmer, had grown up next door to a black kid named Ferrell Sanders, who went on to call himself Pharoah. Partially, at least, the band’s members started out in Arkansas, where, calling themselves the Primitives, they made a little splash by recording a 45 that was immediately taken off the market because Thomas Pynchon sued them. They’d taken the lyrics from his novel V without asking permission.

— Ed Ward’s review of the short-lived band, The Insect Trust: An American Band Deconstructed

Roxy Music is the only band I can think of that had an oboe player in it, and that’s because the oboe player, Andy MacKay, knew the manager of another band, King Crimson. An unemployed ceramics teacher, Bryan Ferry, had auditioned for lead vocalist with them, and although he hadn’t been selected, the manager thought MacKay should meet him. As it happened, Ferry had been fired from his teaching job for singing in the classroom — songs he’d written — and MacKay liked them enough to call his friend Brian Eno, who played keyboards and loved to mess around with electronic equipment. They made a demo tape.

— More Than This: The ‘Complete’ Roxy Music, Ed Ward’s review

Vintage ad credit:Reprise Records and Tapes

Memphis has been a music town since anyone can remember, and it’s had places to record that music since there have been records. Some of its studios — Sun, Stax and Hi — are well-known, but American Studios produced its share of hits, and yet it remains obscure. But that’s all likely to change with Memphis Boys: The Story of American Studios, both a book and a CD out now.

— critic Ed Ward on The Forgotten Story Of Memphis’ American Studios

“Golden Teardrops” by The Flamingos. From rock historian Ed Ward’s review of a new history of doo-wop:

As far as black teenagers were concerned, though, this was old folks’ music, and after WWII, they wanted something of their own. For harmony singing, all you needed were some other singers, and basic harmony instruction was as close as the church your parents probably made you attend anyway. The first wave of these groups was referred to as the “bird groups,” because the Robins, the Orioles and the Ravens were the first to start investigating the new ways of presenting vocal harmony. The Ravens, for instance, had a bass lead singer, Jimmy Ricks, known as Ricky.

Autosalvage’s self-titled album came out in March 1968. Nothing happened. They got a couple of good reviews. Nothing happened. They got a gig opening for Richard Pryor at the Cafe au Go-Go on Bleecker Street. “In the year and a half we were together,” Turner told me, “we probably played only 30 gigs. … Unless you were a neo-Chicago blues band or a pop rock band, there wasn’t any work. We were just on the wrong coast.” 

— Ed Ward on Autosalvage: The Psychedelic Band That Vanished