Bobby Shad had only one original composition for his Bad Men to perform. The rest were arrangements of some of the more eclectic hits of the sixties. "I Want You Back" was the highlight of Bobby Shad's 65-piece rock orchestra album just as it was the highlight four years earlier on Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5, the 1969 debut album by The Jackson 5 released on Motown Records.
Berry Gordy knew he had a sure hit if he could get The Jackson 5 off on the right foot. A dynamite 11 year old lead singer amidst a family of talented young boys might not have the longest shelf life in the music business, and their 1969 sessions consisting of backwards-facing soul covers wouldn't cut the lacquer for popular audiences—no matter how many string arrangements adorned their harmonies. Motown's West Coast studio crew The Corporation took over the recording of the boy band's debut and gave the 5 what would become their first single and a No. 1, at that.
"I Want You Back" lays down a great funk arrangement, groundwork for a star-making performance from a young Michael Jackson pushed to the edge of his vocal powers to spectacular results . But it proves hard to match as Michael does his best to elevate the rest of the album's cover songs. His maximal effort occasionally turns to strain in handling dubious material choices and dealing with inconsistent production quality. When other Jacksons get their shot at leading, the songs pale even more. But the talent is evident and exciting even if it is inexperienced and tilted too far onto the youngest Jackson's shoulders.
Here is the discography surrounding The Jackson 5's debut album:
Big Boy (1968 single)
I Want You Back (1969 single)
Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5
We Don't Have to Be Over 21 (To Fall in Love) (1970 single)
"Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed" by David Bowie
Queen first turned to David Bowie to produce their second album. Bowie was busy and turned them down leaving Queen to team up again with producer Roy Thomas Baker. David Bowie released his own second album (once again called) David Bowie in 1969on Philips Records.
Here is the discography surrounding David Bowie's second album:
Steve Howe had several offers to play lead guitar in a couple established bands after the breakdown of Tomorrow. Instead, he stuck with an upstart group of veteran musicians in a band they named after themselves (Bobby Clarke, Dave Curtiss, Steve Howe.... Clive Skinner). Bodast had a record deal with Tetragrammaton Records but the company (and they) folded before their debut album's scheduled release. They only held a handful of recording sessions and the products from those sessions finally saw the light of day in 1981 thanks to the guitar hero cult that surrounds Steve Howe.
The "1969 album Bodast" is a hypothetical album reconstructed from the extant recordings. More than a what-might-have-been alternate history, this tour stop is a record of how a group of musicians were transitioning as they and the larger musical landscape moved from psychedelic rock to progressive and hard rock.
Here is Bodast's complete discography:
Bodast
The Bodast Tapes (1981 compilation album)
The Early Years (1990 compilation album)
Spectral Nether Street (2000 compilation album)
Towards Utopia (2017 compilation album)
After Yes formed, they very quickly lost their drummer Bill Bruford who wished to attend university. They found a replacement in Tony O'Riley who had previously played with the recently broken up Merseybeat group The Koobas. Either O'Riley's style didn't mesh with Yes or his drumming skills didn't meet Yes standards, nonetheless, Chris Squire was forced to beg Bruford to rejoin the group as Yes became more successful. Bruford soon came back to Yes, and this left O'Riley to look for a new band.
The Koobas were a band that never found their own sound. The band's roots are in Liverpool and, formed in 1962, they naturally started with a Merseybeat-like sound (think early Beatles). Stu Leatherwood and Roy Morris shared guitar and vocal duties, Keith Ellis played bass, and O'Riley played drums. Much like The Beatles, they played a stint in Germany. And, much like The Beatles, they were managed by Brian Epstein. By 1964, they signed to Pye Records and released their first single a year later. Unlike The Beatles, they were not a success. The lack of hits followed them as they resigned with Columbia. By 1968 after six singles that failed to chart in the Top 20 (though "Sally" did decently on pirate radio), The Koobas called it quits. The next year, Columbia finally got around to unceremoniously releasing The Koobas's only LP, Koobas. Throughout their career, they tried out different styles like beat, blue-eyed soul, and psychedelia. Unfortunately, they never found a sound that suited them or helped them stand out of the fodder.
Here is the complete discography for The Koobas:
I Love Her (1965 single)
Take Me for a Little While (1965 single)
You'd Better Make Up Your Mind (1966 single)
Sweet Music (1966 single)
Sally (1967 single)
Gypsy Fred (1967 single)
The First Cut Is the Deepest (1968 single) Koobas
"Shake" and "Take Me for a Little While" by The Koobas circa 1966 on the German TV Show Beat Beat Beat
"You'd Better Make Up Your Mind" and "You Don't Love Me" by The Koobas circa 1966 on the German TV Show Beat Beat Beat
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.
In their early days before they discovered punk, The Replacements's reserve of cover songs included Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, and Yes. In fact when Paul Westerberg overheard Dogbreath (the original name for The Mats) playing in the Stinson garage, he overheard them playing a Yes composition.
It took several tries for the original lineup of Yes to play in a successful rock band. Singer and primary lyricist Jon Anderson started in a Merseybeat band called The Warriors, sang temporarily for bands The Gun, The Open Mind, and Savoy Brown, and enjoyed a few singles as a solo artist (as Hans Christian). Drummer Bill Bruford played in groups The Breed, The Noise, and shortly for Savoy Brown. Keyboardist Tony Kaye enjoyed the most success in The Federals and a few Jimmy Winston groups. Bassist Chris Squire's first band were called The Selfs until it merged with another local band, The Syn. With The Syn, Squire met guitarist Peter Banks. Banks was briefly recruited by The Neat Change while Squire went on to form the proto-Yes band Mabel Greer's Toyshop with friends Clive Bailey and Bob Haggar. The Toyshop never recorded any singles but did perform a live set for BBC Radio. Peter Banks would eventually rejoin Squire while Bailey and Haggar were dropped from the group. The band contiued, however, thanks to the recruitment of Kaye, Bruford and Anderson into the band as replacements. But Mabel Greer's Toyshop needed a new name, and Yes it was. Squire would later reveal that by forming a band together, it was the only way that the bunch of misfits could ever play (they had difficulty finding session work) and build their individual, untraditional styles.
They began practicing together the summer of 1968. Their live sets began with covers of various vocal groups but given the "Yes" treatment meaning they included many ethereal solos and vocal harmonies punctuated by Jon Anderson's poetic delivery. Their progressive rock would meet its first success and audience approval when they filled in for a no-show Sly and the Family Stone at London's Blaise's club. This performance earned them a manager and ultimately a residency at the Marquee Club. They signed a record deal early in 1969 with Atlantic and released two singles and their eponymous debut album a few months later.
Yes didn't bomb but it wasn't a hit. The singles were not commercial enough for the radio and naturally didn't chart. The album featured a jazz fusion inspired cover of The Byrds's "I See You" and a psychedelic take on The Beatles's "Every Little Thing". They also had six original songs that included more conventional ballads ("Sweetness", "Yesterday and Today"). Of particular note is a spacey and experimental take on Leonard Bernstein's "Something's Coming". For early Yes, any style of music was subject to their adaption and absorption into their overall sound.
Here is the discography surrounding Yes's debut album:
Don't Make Me Blue (1964 single by The Warriors)
Bolton Club 65 (1965 live album by The Warriors)
Never My Love (1968 single by Hans Christian)
Autobiography of a Hobo (1968 single by Hans Christian)
Out of My Mind (1968 single by Hans Christian)
I Lied to Auntie May (1968 single by The Neat Change)
Live BBC 1968 (1968 live performance by Mabel Greer's Toyshop)
In the Beginning (1969 live bootleg)
Sweetness (1969 single) Yes
Looking Around (1969 single)
Live at Sunderland (1969 live album)
Live at the Big Apple Club (1969 live album)
"Looking Around" by Yes
"Yesterday and Today" by Yes
"Something's Coming" by Yes
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.
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 (rememberhim?). 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.
Black Sabbath's debut album was most notable for its original songs but did feature two well-executed covers. An extended version of The Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation's "Warning" ends the album, and "Evil Woman", a 1969 hit by Minnesota band Crow, was the album's only UK single.
Many musicians of the mid-1960s Minneapolis music scene went in and out of band line-ups trying out different sounds and looking for that next top 20 hit that would propel the scene to a national audience. At the behest of local manager David Anthony, South 40 formed in 1967 as an amalgam of members from local favorites The Rave-Ons and The Jokers Wild. The group got their biggest break after winning an audience with Columbia Records in a "contest for rock bands" in Des Moines.
The band changed their name to Crow (after all, who doesn't love bands named for birds), but Columbia didn't pick up their option because they were "a little bit too funky for them" according to bassist Larry Wiegand. The band also featured David Wagner on vocals, Dave "Kink" Middlemist on organ, and Larry Wiegand on guitar. Harry Nehls originally contributed his skills on the drums, but he left to join another Minneapolis group T.C. Atlantic. The band replaced him briefly with Mike Malasgar and finally filled the vacancy with Denny Craswell previously of Minneapolis one-hit wonder (one of the many) The Castaways.
Their growing stock was noticed by Dunwich Productions A&R man Bob Monaco who began shopping the band around to potential record labels. Although they had a potential audience with Atlantic Records, Crow was signed with the much smaller Amaret records though they eventually proved unable to "cover" them. On top of that, Amaret overlayed a horn section to some of Crow's tracks in post-production against their will. Still, the group decided to play along just to get their first album on the shelves. The band's first single "Time to Make a Turn" was unsuccessful on the charts. Finally listening to the band's input, Amaret put out "Evil Woman" as the album's second single which went on to hit the top 20 of the Billboard 200 in 1969. Later that year, Crow would change its base of operations to Chicago, play every possible gig, and eventually tour on a national stage.
Their debut album Crow Music sold well in due part to the success of "Evil Woman". Although the band complained about the alteration to their music, the horn section can only be heard on their two singles and b-side "Gonna Leave a Mark". The rest of the album ranges in style from heavy blues to R&B, but the sonic foundation comes from Crow's garage rock, Minneapolis roots.
Here is the discography surrounding Crow's debut album:
Baby Don't Love Me (1965 single as The Rave-Ons)
I Want You to Love Me (1965 single as The Rave-Ons)
Love Pill (1966 single as The Rave-Ons)
All I See Is You (1967 single by Jokers Wild)
Good Lovin' (1967 single as South 40)
Because I'm Free (1968 single by Jokers Wild)
I Want Sunshine (1968 single as South 40)
Live at Someplace Else! (1968 live album as South 40)
Peace Man (1969 single by Jokers Wild) Crow
Time to Make a Turn (1969 single)
Evil Woman (1969 single)
Liquid Giraffe (2013 compilation album by Jokers Wild)
If you have any ideas for where the tour should go next, give a shout.
The uncanny ability that the young Reg Dwight showed for reproducing any melody on the piano made him a social gathering stopper and eventually won him enrollment into the Royal Academy of Music. (This is where Dwight met future collaborator Paul Buckmaster who also arranged the orchestration on Rupert Hine's debut.) Although Reg Dwight learned and showed an appreciation for classical music, his love of Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, and Ray Charles started him down a different musical road. He continued cutting his chops by working as a pub pianist and eventually starting Bluesology, an R&B band, with some friends. Bluesology was successful to the effect that it released three non-charting singles and mainly worked as a backing band on tour for minor recording artists.
While moving toward a lesser role in the doomed Bluesology, Reg Dwight teamed up with Bernie Taupin, and the duo earned work as songwriters for music publisher Dick James. At the same time, Dwight adopted the stage name "Elton John" and began cutting demos at the Dick James Studio. This led to the release of his first single "I've Been Loving You" in late 1968. In the dawn of '69, it was his next single "Lady Samantha" that made the industry take a second look and was quickly followed up with his debut album Empty Sky in June of that year.
Releasing his debut at the young age of 22, his demos, singles, and album paint a good picture of the natural talent that Elton John had for melody and the potential waiting to be fulfilled. It also reflects the uncertainty of his voice; unsure of his own sound. Affected by the the triumph of Sgt. Pepper and the emerging dominance of psychedelia, Elton furnished a unique but bland form of psychedelic pop. This and his own unpolished piano pop make up his debut album, a testament of the classic music to come.
Here is the discography surrounding Elton John's debut album:
Come Back Baby (1965 single with Bluesology)
Mr Frantic (1966 single with Bluesology)
Since I Found You Baby (1967 single with Bluesology)
Elton 1968 (1968 demos)
The Unsurpassed Dick James Demos, Vol. 1 (1968 demos)
The Unsurpassed Dick James Demos, Vol. 2 (1968 demos)
The Unsurpassed Dick James Demos, Vol. 3 (1968-70 demos)
I've Been Loving You (1968 single)
Lady Samantha (1969 single)
It's Me That You Need (1969 single) Empty Sky
If you have any ideas for where the tour should go next, feel free to speak up. Just remember that it has to be related to this time in Elton John's career, and the idea is to do an artist's discography in chronological order.
