Vince Martin & Fred Neil - Tear Down the Walls (1964)

"Tear Down the Walls" by Vince Martin & Fred Neil


Other than the previously mentioned output, Major Wiley's voice can also be found on one compilation album and on a live recording by Fred Neil. While performing his song 'Linin' Track' at The Bitter End, Fred Neil invites Wiley from the crowd ('Major, you ready?') to join him on stage. 'Aww c'mon... I know he's out there', goads Fred for a partner in the call-and-response portion of the song. Their performance together is awkward but fun, and one of the few remaining evidence that Wiley was a part of the Village folk movement.

Fred Neil began his career in the music industry as a songwriter where he penned songs for friends like Roy Orbison and Buddy Holly. He even tried to perform some rockabilly tunes himself. He recorded six singles but had no chart success. By the early sixties, he had moved to Greenwich, became proficient on a twelve-string guitar and grew to be one of the leading figures of the folk movement there. He's especially well-regarded for often acting as a mentor to young singers and songwriters who would flock there. Although he had connections in the industry, he did not record an album until 1964. It seems that he would not have been pulled into the recording studio if it were not for his recent collaborator Vince Martin.

Vince Martin had a career path similar to Fred's. Not a songwriter, Vince was a gifted tenor whose first single, 'Cindy, Oh Cindy' with The Tarriers, became a Top Ten hit. The Tarriers, who provided background harmonies on the recording, eventually dropped as Vince's backing band despite the success. He continued to record singles with much less success. Vince also found his way to the Village in the early sixties where he was introduced to Fred. The two hit it off smoothly and, very soon after, began performing together.

Their success led them to the recording studio where they recorded Tear Down the Walls. The album comprised of several covers and a handful of original songs. They alternated taking the vocal leads while the other harmonizing. Vince accompanied Fred's twelve-string, as well, and the recording was rounded off with the harmonica of a young John Sebastian and Felix Papallardi on the guitarrón. The level of importance associated to this album varies from account to account, but it is generally regarded as an important step in the development of folk rock. David Crosby (of The Byrds) and Bob Dylan, both mentored by Fred Neil, would take this album's cue as they began to electrify folk and introduce folk chord progressions into the rock 'n' roll lexicon. The album is also highly regarded because of its status as Fred Neil's first album. Unfortunately, Vince gets slighted for his role in getting Fred to record again.

Here is the discography surrounding Vince Martin & Fred Neil's debut album:

Cindy, Oh Cindy (1956 single by Vince Martin & the Tarriers)
You Ain't Treatin' Me Right (1957 single by Fred Neil)
Katie-O (1957 single by Vince Martin)
Wait for Me (1957 single by Vince Martin)
Let the Midnight Special (1957 single by Vince Martin)
Goodbye My Love (1957 single by Vince Martin)
Heartbreak Bound (1958 single by Fred Neil)
Take Me Back Again (1958 single by Fred Neil)
Slipping Around (1958 single by Fred Neil)
Secret, Secret (1958 single by Fred Neil)
Keep A-Movin' (1958 single by Vince Martin)
Four Chaplains (1959 single by Fred Neil)
Goodnight Irene (1959 single by Vince Martin)
Strawberry Fair (1959 single by Vince Martin)
Long Black Veil (1963 single by Fred Neil & the Nashville Street Singers)
Hootenanny Live at the Bitter End (1963 live compilation featuring Fred Neil)
Tear Down the Walls
Tear Down the Walls (1964 single)

"Cindy, Oh Cindy" by Vince Martin & the Tarriers


"You Ain't Treatin' Me Right" by Fred Neil


"I Know You Rider", "Weary Blues", and "Wild Child in a World of Trouble" by Vince Martin & Fred Neil


If you have any ideas for where the tour should go next, please give a shout. I'm open to whatever as long as the artists are historically related in some way and go in an artist's chronological order.

Pass the Headphones!!

Major Wiley - Seventh Child (1972)

Karen Dalton did not write her own songs. Instead, she collected, arranged, and performed the songs of others that she felt a personal connection to. Many of her songs came from her contemporaries who performed in Greenwich Village with her. On her debut, she covered two songs by Fred Neil, one by Tim Hardin, and one by Major Wiley.

The information about Major Wiley, his recordings, and his career are sparse. He was an active singer/songwriter on the folk circuit for much of the sixties and early seventies. This led to one single recorded in 1969 ('Rockin' Chair') and one album in 1972 (Seventh Child). Major Wiley ceased touring some time in the early to mid-seventies and moved to London, England where he took up acting and was fairly active during the eighties. Since 1989, he has disappeared from the public eye, but it appears that he is still living in London as of 2008 where he performed in a BBC Radioplay about Marvin Gaye.

As soon as I can, I'm going to upload some of his music to share (as none of it can be found online) and edit in a few comments about his style. In the meantime, I don't want the tour to come to a halt, so I'm going to forge ahead with the next artist.

Here is the complete discography for Major Wiley:

Rockin' Chair (1969 single)
Seventh Child

If you have any ideas for where the tour should go next, please give a shout. I'm open to whatever as long as the artists are historically related in some way and go in an artist's chronological order.

Pass the Headphones!!

Karen Dalton - It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best (1969)

In 1962, Peter Walker sold a guitar to Karen Dalton.

Karen Dalton embodied the Greenwich Village folk movement. A single mother, divorced twice by the age of 22, she began commuting and performing between her home in Boulder and the Village in the early sixties. Her life was earthy and simple and tragic, and those qualities sounded in her beautiful, heartbreaking voice. Unlike most folkies, she was not brought into the movement. She grew into it. She earned respect from fellow musicians with the authenticity in her voice and lifestyle that she accompanied with a 12-string guitar or banjo.

The mythos surrounding Dalton emphasizes her dislike of recording which would explain why her discography and popularity are so small. Although there are stories of Karen being tricked into recording without her knowing, she secretly wished for a big recording contract that never came. Her contempt, instead, was more likely directed towards the industry that would try and polish her sound and market her for a broad audience. She would not concede her voice.

Still, with friends and connections in the Village, Karen Dalton recorded her debut album It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best in 1969, produced by Nick Venet (remember him?). The album is a collection of covers that she performed regularly in her live sets. The performances sound fuller than on her live and home recordings earlier in the sixties because she's backed with a strong bass, percussion, and a team of session guitarists to fill in the holes. Karen did not write her own songs but collected songs for her repertoire from traditional sources, her contemporaries (Fred Neil, Tim Hardin,...), and blues staples. She would only play songs whose content she connected with on an intimate level and would arrange them in a way that complemented her singing voice. She might not have written her own songs, but her arrangements and performances were so personal that she might as well have.

Here is the discography surrounding Karen Dalton's debut album:

Cotton Eyed Joe (1962 live recordings)
Green Rocky Road (1963 home recordings)
1966 (1966 home recordings)
It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best



If you have any ideas for where the tour should go next, please give a shout. I'm open to whatever as long as the artists are historically related in some way and go in an artist's chronological order.

Pass the Headphones!!

Peter Walker - Rainy Day Raga (1966)

As mentioned briefly in the last entry, one of The Velvet Underground's earliest available recordings was a flexi disc experiment in audio feedback called 'Loop'that the group released in 1966 with the third issue of Aspen Magazine. 'Loop', however, is actually the b-side to that disc. The a-side is 'White Wind', a recording by the fingerstyle guitarist Peter Walker.

[Content removed due to inaccuracy.]


By 1965, Peter Walker came into contact with Maynard Solomon, the head of Vanguard Records. Vanguard teamed him with producer Samuel Charters to record his debut Rainy Day Raga in 1966. According to Walker, the album captured 'a great moment in time'. The album is made up of ragas composed or arranged by Walker. He and his band would play these ragas regularly both before and after the sessions until they decided to finally move on. The 'band' consisted of seasoned session musicians Monte Dunn 'filling the holes' on acoustic guitar, Jeremy Steig on flute, and Bruce Langhorne on percussion. Most of the ragas are named for periods of time ('Morning Joy', 'Spring', 'April in Cambridge',...) and they try to portray for the listener exactly how these moments in time naturally feel and how beautiful they sound.

Here is the discography surrounding Peter Walker's debut album:

White Wind (1966 flexi disc)
Rainy Day Raga



If you have any ideas for where the tour should go next, please give a shout. I'm open to whatever as long as the artists are historically related in some way and go in an artist's chronological order.

Pass the Headphones!!

The Velvet Underground & Nico - The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967)

John Cale produced Patti Smith's debut album. The Patti Smith Group chose Cale based on his body of work with artists such as Nico and Iggy Pop. Although the group thought they were getting a technically savvy producer, they ended up with a more conceptual producer. From the beginning, Cale conflicted with Patti Smith as he challenged her to rewrite music, lyrics, etc. Not to be pushed around, Patti and the band pushed back and became surer of what they really wanted for the album. Cale did not care that many of his ideas were cast aside as long as what was recorded was truly believed by the artists. It is no stretch to consider that he had a similar impact on his first band.

John Cale had recently moved to New York to study classical music. Meanwhile, Lou Reed, already living there, worked as a songwriter for Pickwick Records and fell in and out of various garage bands. The two inevitably met through New York's underground music scene of the mid-sixties and found they both shared the same experimental tendencies especially towards drone music that would drive the partnership's early sonic direction. Reed acted as the group's primary songwriter, vocalist and guitarist while Cale provided his multi-instrumental skills on the viola, celesta, and piano among others. They rounded out the group with a friend of Reed's, Sterling Morrison on rhythm guitar, and a collaborator of Cale's, Angus MacLise on percussion. About this time, they had finally settled on an appropriate band name, The Velvet Underground.

The band sold out eventually and took a paying gig. The commercialism became too much for MacLise, who was "in it for art" according to Morrison, and he left the band to be replace by Maureen "Mo" Tucker, a friend's sister. Tucker brought her own unique style to the band. She dressed androgynously and utilized an abbreviated drum set (an upturned bass drum and tom toms). As she perceived her role in the band as timekeeper, she rarely used cymbals in her playing.

The Velvet Underground did not take off until Andy Warhol took over as their manager in 1965. He made them a part of his multimedia roadshow, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, and teamed them up with Nico, a model turned chanteuse. The band did not necessarily welcome the collaboration, but consented for personal, business, and musical reasons. With Warhol's connections, the band quickly signed a recording contract with Verve Records. On all recordings, Warhol would act as nominal "producer" while simply letting the band direct their own sound. The Velvet Underground & Nico entered Scepter Studios in April 1966 to record their debut album (to be supplemented with another session later in the year under the supervision of veteran producer Tom Wilson). They released two singles from those sessions: "All Tomorrow's Parties" and "Sunday Morning" later in 1966 with neither charting. The band also released "Loop", a recording of audio feedback that descended into a locked groove, through the multimedia magazine Aspen (with that particular issue (#3) designed by Warhol).

Verve Records released The Velvet Underground & Nico in March of 1967 where it barely hung on in the Top 200. The album's controversial content led it to be banned from certain record stores and deemed it unplayable by radio stations. These factors and Verve's half-interested advertisement for the album led to its lack of commercial success. Critics also took little interest in the album. The album had an obvious experimental bend to it thanks in part to John Cale's droning viola and Reed's "drone strum". Morrison's guitar-work gave several of the songs a blues-rock feel. The album only featured Nico on four songs (the four songs found on the band's early singles) that held quieter more introspective tones and lyrics. The rest of the album had more of an underground and dirty edge to it with stories about attaining and experiencing heroin ('Run Run Run', 'I'm Waiting for the Man', 'Heroin') or sexual fetishes ('Venus in Furs'). The band's wildest experiments can be heard on those sans-Nico tracks.

The Velvet Underground & Nico eventually found widespread acclaim amongst rock critics: highly touted for its experimental content, poetic lyrics, and the strong influence it held on subsequent generations of rock musicians.

Here's the discography surrounding The Velvet Underground & Nico's debut album:

All Tomorrow's Parties (1966 single)
Sunday Morning (1966 single)
Loop (1966 flexi disc)
The Velvet Underground & Nico





If you have any ideas for where the tour should go next, please give a shout. I'm open to whatever as long as the artists are historically related in some way and go in an artist's chronological order.

Pass the Headphones!!