Isabelle Adjani

Artist: Isabelle Adjani

LP: Isabelle Adjani
Song: "Ohio"

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Song: "Le Bonheur C'est Malheureux"
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I was thrilled recently to discover that there existed this 1983 recording by French actress Isabelle Adjani. She's been one of my favorites since I first watched her captivating performance in THE STORY OF ADELE H when I was in college. With songs written and produced by Serge Gainsbourg, I was only slightly disappointed to find that the record is more ISHTAR and SUBWAY and NEXT YEAR IF ALL GOES WELL than it is POSSESSION or THE TENANT or NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE. Still...at least it's not, you know, BEACHES.

[ Isabelle Adjani ]

Jameson

Artist: Jameson

LP: Color Him In
Song: "Jamie"

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Song: "Places Times and The People"

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Song: "The New Age"
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This 1967 release by Bobby Jameson is a thing of beauty. I first discovered it at Daybreak Records a little over a week ago, but their copy was pretty scratched up and was selling for $20. I loved what I could hear through the snaps, crackles and pops, and knew if I bought that LP, I'd only wish I had a better copy...so instead I got a better copy. I paid just a little more than what it was going for at Daybreak. 

Bobby Jameson evidently has quite a following, stemming primarily from his psych-rock "Songs of Protest and Anti-Protest" LP, released under the name Chris Lucey in 1965. Good copies of that one are going for hundred$ on Discogs. Also, Ariel Pink released an album a couple of years ago that was dedicated to Jameson. This incredibly talented fellow had mostly a strange and unfortunate time in the business of music. He was first promoted as "the next big pop sensation" in the early 1960s, but when that failed to pan out, he became a fixture in the LA underground music scene, working with Frank Zappa and others. It was during this period that he released "Color Him In" on the Verve label. Verve wouldn't release any more of Jameson's recordings for some reason, so he left the label and ultimately made only one other album, on a smaller label, in 1969. 

The '70s were reportedly spent by Jameson mostly in a haze of drugs and alcohol, in and out of institutions and homelessness, with multiple overdoses, arrests, and suicide attempts. By the end of the decade many people believed Jameson was dead. He suddenly resurfaced in 2007 though, via YouTube, in an effort to tell his story and reclaim some credit as the man behind the music so many had since discovered and had come to love. Bobby Jameson died four years ago, in May of 2015. You can read more details on Wikipedia here.

I was delighted that my not-scratchy copy of "Color Him In" was coming to me from Bay Sound in Daphne, Alabama! It's one of the shops I stopped at on my Southern Road Trip of 2014 through Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. I found lots of great records at Bay Sound, so was thrilled to now find yet another!

[ Bobby Jameson: April 20, 1945 — May 12, 2015 ]

Wilf Carter

Artist: Wilf Carter

LP: Wilf Carter "Montana Slim"
Song: "Two Little Girls In Blue"

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Song: "Grandad's Yodelling Song"

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Anyone with two ears and a brain should know that mixing yodeling, the Hammond organ, and a dash of Western twang would be a recipe for country music bliss. Still, this delectable dessert wasn't served up nearly often enough on vinyl 12" platters. But this Canadian fella, Wilf Carter, aka. "The Yodeling Cowboy," aka. "Montana Slim," aka. "The Father of Canadian Country Music," makes an entire meal of it. 

Originally from Nova Scotia, Wilf was a genuine cowboy on the plains of Alberta in the early 1930s before a couple of his records hit the jackpot and he began working the rodeo circuit with his guitar over the next 30-odd years. You can read more about Mr. Carter's life and career here, and in the LP liner notes included below. Right now there's nowhere on earth I'd rather eat breakfast than at the Wilf Carter Motor Lodge in Orlando, Florida. I bet it was like this. 

[ Two Little Girls In Blue ]

[ Wilf Carter, aka. "Montana Slim": December 18, 1904 — December 5, 1996 ]

Shirley and Company

Artist: Shirley and Company

LP: 7" single
Song: "Mr. Frenchman"

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Here's a lively little musical bonbon I was delighted to find in my collection the other day; I don't remember buying it! The pricetag indicates it was probably one of the singles I found on my trip to Norway back in the spring of 2017. According to Wikipedia, Shirley Goodman was persuaded out of retirement to contribute vocals to "Shame, Shame, Shame," which became a dance-floor favorite around the globe. This 1975 follow-up single, however, did not, and Shirley retired from the music business again in the late 1970s. Appropriately, my copy of the single was produced in France. I love the street accordion featured here! 

[ Shirley and Company ]

 

[ Shirley Goodman: June 19, 1936 — July 5, 2005 ]

Keith

Artist: Keith

LP: Out of Crank
Song: "Sugar Man"

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Song: "Happy Walking Around"

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Let this be a lesson to us all. If you want to become a household name as a musical superstar who goes by a single-name moniker, select something zippy—like Prince, Madonna, or Cher—and not like "Keith." He didn't stand a chance. He might as well have called himself "Larry" or "Steve." 

Keith did manage to eek out one top ten hit though, when "98.6" went to #7 back in 1966. (As we learn from Wikipedia, "(the) title relates to the normal human body temperature in degrees Fahrenheit.") Keith's 1967 "Out of Crank" LP didn't chart at all, and he left the music industry for nearly 20 years after his third effort, released in 1969, also failed to make any impact. You can read more about Keith here. The good news is that he's still going strong and performs live dates locally! (I've included a more recent Keith photo below. He's looking good! Kinda' like Robert DeNiro meets Daryl Hannah in SPLASH.)

The other good news is that I found this terrific (and terrificly underappreciated) LP at Daybreak Records earlier this week. I'm not well today. The daily temperature in Seattle seems to have dropped by about 30° and my own body temperature feels like it's way below 98.6 (the normal human body temperature in degrees Fahrenheit). I made some hot soup, but all I wanted to do once I put it in a bowl is hold it in my cold, tired hands! Anyway, Keith certainly makes a lovely soundtrack for trying-to-stay-warm misery on a chilly-but-lovely early autumn afternoon.

 

[ Keith ]

Colonel Abrams

Artist: Colonel Abrams

LP: 7" single
Song: "Trapped"

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I think this is the first time I've been jealous of pink neon tubing. But it's not just the tubing that's got Colonel Abrams trapped. As he sings here in this song (a top-ten hit in England, thought it fell mostly on dead ears in the USA), he's also trapped by the love he feels for a young woman (the tears roll from his eyes), and by the steely glares from her horribly judgmental parents (they don't think he's good enough; they want him sent to prison!). 

But it goes even deeper than that. Colonel was trapped by the expectations of others, both musical and personal (the rolling tears again). His label likely required him to endlessly repeat the exact same hit-making formula that brought him international fame...but when the formula ran dry and the money stopped pouring in, he was tossed aside like a sun-faded copy of last year's Yakima Herald Republic.

How is one supposed to earn a living after becoming an international pop star that has fizzled out and come crashing down to earth? Trapped again! Trapped even more by the high cost of rent in New York City, by the high cost of diabetes medicine, and by the difficulty of receiving adequate treatment without having a secure place to live, Colonel Abrams died—homeless, sick, and broke—on Thanksgiving Day in 2016. I just learned this today when I looked him up online. What a sad, sad end for such a handsome and talented fellow. Tears roll from my eyes. You can read the BBC's obituary for Colonel Abrams here.

[ Colonel Abrams: May 25, 1949 — November 24, 2016 ]

The Cars

Artist: The Cars

LP: 7" single
Song: "Since You're Gone"

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While listening to fits and starts of NPR's "Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me" this past Sunday as I zoomed around Wallingford delivering Amazon parcels, I caught a brief snippet of the news that The Cars' frontman Ric Ocasek had died. I wasn't as much a fan of his solo work after the group split up, but The Cars' "Shake It Up" and "Since You're Gone" (which peaked at #41 on the Billboard singles charts in May of 1982) were favorites on the radio when I first began listening to popular music as a young teen. The Week magazine put together an obituary for Ric that I'd like to reproduce here, for two reasons: 1.) It's nice. 2.) Since I haven't worked a desk job since the end of May, I'm wondering if I can still type as fast as I used to. (Nope.)

Ric Ocasek Obituary from The Week of September 27, 2019; volume 19 issue 943: 

The Cars frontman who drove rock's new wave

With his lanky 6-foot-4 frame, drawn-out features, and wobbly deadpan voice, Ric Ocasek was an unlikely rock star. But for a decade, the Cars frontman was one of the most successful musicians on the planet. Ocasek and his band-mates hit on a winning formula that married the arty angularity and jaded lyrics of punk and new wave with pure pop hooks. The Boston band's eponymous 1978 debut album sold 6 million copies in the U.S. and contained three hit singles—"Just What I Needed," "My Best Friend's Girl" and "Good Times Roll"—that became FM radio staples. In the 1980s, the Cars embraced the music video, making Ocasek and his ever-present sunglasses a familiar sight on MTV. He delighted in being a musical omnivore who straddled the alt-rock and pop worlds. "I was a huge fan of Dylan," he said, "but I always went for the left side of the music brain too. I loved the Velvet Underground and the Carpenters."

Born in Baltimore, Ocasek moved with his family to Cleveland—where his father worked as a NASA systems analyst—at age 16, and became something "of a teen misfit," said RollingStone.com. He spent hours in the family's basement, tinkering with guitar amplifiers and learning piano chords. He dropped out of college, and in 1965 met bassist Banjamin Orr. The pair performed together in various bands before forming the Cars in the Boston area in 1976. Local radio played the band's demo tape "so often that Elektra Records signed the group in 1978," said The Washington Post. Working with Queen producer Roy Thgomas Baker, the group cranked out their debut in 21 days. It remained on the album chart for 139 weeks.

"Ocasek's pop abilities reached a kind of pinnacle on 1984's Heartbeat City," said The Guardian (U.K.). He wrote the LP's smash single "Drive," which combines a gorgeously smooth melody with despairing lyrics. "Who's gonna pay attention to your dreams?" Orr sings, "And who's gonna plug their ears when you scream?" After the band split in 1988, Ocasek went on to release seven solo albums and produce albums by alt-rock acts such as Weezer, Bad Religion, and No Doubt. Music is "a way to get beyond loneliness," he said in 1980. "Just turn on a radio and there it is: a sense of belonging."

[ The Cars ]

Ric Ocasek

[ March 23, 1944 — September 15, 2019 ]

We will miss you, Ric.

Paul Robeson

Artist: Paul Robeson

LP: Robeson
Song: "Deep River"

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Song: "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child"

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I've been buying records like crazy again lately...crazy, because I still don't have anywhere to put them. I've even been buying some new music on vinyl, which isn't really like me, since, as you have probably noticed, I'm generally stuck in the 1930s and '40s and '50s and '60s and '70s and '80s. Just to prove that point, here's a lovely 1958 Paul Robeson LP I found in the dollar bins at Beats and Bohos about a week ago. 

By the time he was 27, Paul Robeson already had a law degree and was popular as an actor on the stage, but then he sang some "Negro spirituals" in public somewhere, and a whole new career in music was begun. He seems to have been a very well-known artist in the first half of the twentieth century (his "Othello" was legendary) so it's a shame he mostly goes unrecognized by the people of the world today. LP liner notes are included below.

[ Paul Robeson: April 9, 1898 — January 23, 1976 ]

Eurythmics

Artist: Eurythmics

LP: 7" single
Song: "Who's That Girl?"

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When I'm delivering mail, I always feel bad when someone gets only one little item—like a Bed, Bath & Beyond coupon, or an ad from Jiffy Lube. I think I feel even worse for them than for the people who didn't get any mail at all. I imagine someone in the household asking, "Hey, did we get any mail?" And the reply, "There's just one thing!" and then the electronic percussion starts up {poom / kcch / poom-poom / kcch} and everyone begins singing: ♫ "Well there's just one thing. {poom / kcch / poom-poom / kcch} Just one thi-ing! (aieeeeye-yeeaaahh) But there's just one thing..." ♫ ...and then this Eurythmics song is stuck in my head for the rest of the day. Just in case you're wondering, it peaked at #21 on the singles charts back in summer of 1984. 

[ Eurythmics ]