That Lucky Old Sun

That Lucky Old Sun is a song written by Beasley Smith (music) and Haven Gillespie (lyrics) that first appeared in 1949. Gillespie also wrote the lyrics for Santa Claus Is Coming To Town and Right Or Wrong. That Lucky Old Sun enjoyed a shelf-life of about 30 years, but continues to be recorded today with more recent recordings by Chris Isaak, Kenny Chesney, Johnny Cash, Brian Wilson, Bonnie Bramlett and K.D. Lang. A search of my music hard drive turned up over 30 versions.

The song is something of a lament about the physical hardships of life similar to Ol' Man River. A number of singers (such as Bing Crosby and Dean Martin) recorded the song in almost a joyful manner lacking any sentiment, which is kind of strange.

I believe the earliest recording was done by Sarah Vaughan. She recorded it twice in 1949, on January 25 and again on May 6. I'm assuming the first session was rejected which led to the second.

 

Later in 1949 the song was recorded by at least 6 singers with four of them achieving hit success. Frankie Laine recorded his version on June 14 and he had the biggest hit with it.

 

Frankie sang it kind of upbeat, but the next two versions are among my personal favorites. I'm not sure when Vaughn Monroe recorded it with his orchestra, but it hit the charts in September 1949. Vaughn's baritone voice seems well suited to the nature of the song and he used the "oh Lord" opening like Sarah and it has seldom been heard since.

 

Next up is the recording done by Louis Armstrong on September 6. Louis most certainly had a singing voice very well suited for songs about hardship and toil. His opening was also unique to the long history of the song.

 

 Nine days after Louis cut the song, Frank Sinatra recorded his for Columbia Records.

 

Also making a splash with That Lucky Old Sun in 1949 were recordings by Bob Houston and the name of the other guy isn't coming to me at the moment. 

                  LaVern Baker recorded it in July 1955.

 

Sam Cooke updated it to a late 1950's pop sound in 1957, a year after Jerry Lee Lewis rocked it for Sun Records.

 

The Four Esquires gave it a vocal group - light rock 'n' roll workout in 1959.

 

 and in 1960, down under in Australia, Billy Owens & The Thunderbirds rocked it up a bit

 

 also in 1960, The Velvets gave it the pop vocal group sound

 

 In 1961 Chuck Reed recorded it in a strictly pop style

 

In 1962 both The Delights and The Ecstasies did doo-wop versions in much different tempos

 

 

and a young Aretha Franklin recorded it for Columbia also in 1962

 

Ray Charles recorded his popular version in 1963 during his successful ABC-Paramount tenure

 

and in 1968 Soul legends Sam & Dave took it in a new direction (as did Solomon Burke the following year)

 

These are just a few examples of the various takes on the song in its early years and represents only a handful of the many recordings made. Willie Nelson had a country hit with it in 1976 and it was also recorded by country acts like Asleep at the Wheel, Tommy Cash, Tom T. Hall, Mickey Newbury and many years ago the Sons of the Pioneers.

Time Is On My Side

Although it's never been a hugely popular song, Time Is On My Side is a fairly well-known song that continues to be recorded by several people every decade. One of the more recent recordings I can recall was done by British singer Beverley Knight about five years ago. The best known recording is likely the one done by the Rolling Stones in November 1964, but it had a brief and interesting history up to that point.

Kai Winding was a jazz trombonist that played in the famed orchestra's of Benny Goodman and Stan Kenton in the late 1940's and as jazz began to split into different genres in the 50's he found success in the jazz-pop field as well as more experimental undertakings. Born in Denmark, he emigrated to New York City around the age of 12. In addition to playing the trombone, he also performed on the trombonium (similar to a valve trombone) and had a big hit in the summer of 1963 with the main theme from the movie Mondo Cane called More. That song featured the sound of the Ondioline, a new experimental electronic instrument played by Jean-Jacques Perrey. 

 That type of sound isn't even noticed these days, but 50 years ago anything like that jumped out of the radio and put the listener into a headlock. Songs like 1962's Telstar by Britain's The Tornados (brilliantly produced by Joe Meek) and Del Shannon's 1961 big hit Runaway, with the sound of the Musitron, had been massive international hits. With Winding's success with More, he and the people he worked with at Verve Records, were in search of more pop instrumental material to work with.

This led a Verve arranger, Gary Sherman, to contact a friend and fellow arranger, producer, songwriter Jerry Ragovoy. Ragovoy had composed a song called Time Is On My Side, but the only lyrics for it at that point was the title of the song and the repeated line "you'll come running back". That must have been good enough for Winding and the people at Verve as it was recorded "as is" and released in October 1963. Get this: the three singers doing the limited lyrics were sisters Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick and their aunt Cissy Houston.

 Jerry Ragovoy was a guy out of Philadelphia that worked as a songwriter, an arranger and producer and is credited with some amazing songs. Garnet Mimms & The Enchanters "Cry Baby" and "My Baby"in 1963, The Majors "A Wonderful Dream" in 1962, Howard Tate "Get It While You Can" in 1967, the awesome Stay With Me by Lorraine Ellison in 1966 as well as Lorraine's "Try (Just A Little Harder), Erma Franklin's (Aretha's sister) "Piece Of My Heart" in 1967, Miriam Makeba "Pata Pata" in 1967, Pat Thomas and later Baby Washington "I Can't Wait To See My Baby's Face" in 1964, and he also did some work with Irma Thomas. You'll notice a lot of these songs were later recorded by Janis Joplin. She knew a good thing when she heard it.   

New Orleans native Irma Thomas has been making records for some 53 years now and still has an international "cult" following and enjoys as much success today as she ever has. As a teen she sometimes sang with NOLA legend Tommy Ridgely's band and during the period 1964-1965, when she was with Imperial Records, she made some incredible records....not to put a damper on her other work by any means. Prior to Imperial she made some great records including such soul and pop classics as Ruler of My Heart, Breakaway (that was a hit for several other people), It's Raining, Look Up, Somebody Told You, Two Winters Long.
Shortly after Winding's recording of Time Is On My Side was released, Thomas was in the studio and her arranger, the writer-recording artist-producer H.B. Barnum, wanted her to record it, but felt it needed some lyrics and he recruited writer/recording artist Jimmy Norman to "complete" the song. The end result just may be the finest example of the link between Gospel music and Soul.

That's H.B. Barnum playing the sax on the left. Interesting to note the lady on the far left with the guitar. That's Carol Kaye, a jazz guitarist but more famous for the thousands of LA recordings she played electric bass on, as did the drummer in the photo, Holyoke, Massachusetts native Hal Blaine. On the right is Jimmy Norman in his later days, the singer/writer who wrote the lyrics to the song except for the title and "you'll come running back."                               

 

Well, as outstanding as the recording is, it sank without a trace in the mainstream market, but it did receive airplay on black radio stations in some of the major urban markets.

A few months later, June 1964, a group of 6 British musicians pay their first visit to the United States. They are basically unknown at that time in the USA, their first almost-a-hit record not coming until later that summer when "Tell Me" barely cracked the Top 30 for a couple weeks. The Rolling Stones, with keyboardist Ian Stewart, had been in both New York City and Los Angeles before reaching Chicago where they visited the Chess Studio to do some recording. Obviously, at one of those places before entering Chess, they had listened to some "black" radio and heard Irma's recording of Time Is On My Side. That day, June 10, they not only recorded "Time" but also Muddy Waters "I Can't Be Satisfied", Bobby Womack's "It's All Over Now" and an instrumental they called Stewed And Keefed. This version of "Time" was released as a single in the USA and is commonly called the "organ" version, referring to the opening of the song.

 

The next day they returned to Chess and recorded quite a few songs. Chuck Berry's "Around And Around" and "Reelin' And Rockin'", Wilson Pickett's "If You Need Me", Muddy Water's "Look What You've Done", the boogie-woogie standard "Down The Road Apiece" that had been done by so many in the 24 years prior to that, the Jay McShann-Walter Brown 40's classic "Confessin' The Blues", Howlin' Wolf's "Down In The Bottom", Tommy Tucker's "Hi-Heel Sneakers", Big Bill Broonzy's "Tell Me Baby" and a Stones original "Empty Heart". 

Later in that year of 1964, the Stones return to the USA a second time, now well-known. On November 8, en route from Providence, Rhode Island to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the Stones again stopped in Chicago to make another trip to Chess Studio and recorded Buster Brown's "Fanny Mae", Don Covay's "Mercy, Mercy", Howlin' Wolf's "The Red Rooster", and Big Bill Broonzy's "Key To The Highway" (on which it is claimed Howlin' Wolf played guitar). They also recorded a song written by Bill Wyman called "Goodbye Girl", a Stones original "What A Shame" and also another version of Time Is On My Side. This recording would be their UK single and is often called the "guitar" version (referring to the opening) and for the next nearly 50 years has become the version you're going to hear on disc and the radio.

 

After that, quite a few people recorded the song, but it was usually a cover of the Rolling Stones "song" and the original Kai Winding and wonderful recording done by Irma Thomas are largely forgotten. To illustrate how the obscure first Stones recording of June 10 became the US single, when Paul Revere & The Raiders recorded it on May 6, 1965, their recording opened with an organ and not the now well-known guitar lick.

 

In the summer of 1965, the Moody Blues (two years before their change into a progressive art rock act) recorded the song that was definitely inspired by Irma Thomas's recording, as the 'big build up' intro clearly shows.

 

In 1967 Wilson Pickett brought the song back to it's soul roots.

The Train Kept A-Rollin'

The Train Kept A-Rollin'.....most likely this song has one of several identities to you depending on your age and where you are located, or it means nothing at all. What makes the song interesting is its beginnings as a rhythm song (as in rhythm & blues....they were two different things, not one) followed by a 50's rockabilly screamer to a 60's British beat song then into a hard rock song. Many people have recorded the song in the past 45 years, but featured below are the cornerstone recordings on which all the many other versions are built upon.

The Train Kept A-Rollin' was co-written and first recorded by Myron "Tiny" Bradshaw and his orchestra on July 25, 1951. Tiny had been a band leader and vocalist and appearing on records since around 1944, but his recording susccess took a giant step when he signed with Cincinnati's King Records in 1949. Knock on wood, I've always had a very healthy blood pressure level, but one thing that makes it rise is to hear or read something about rock 'n' roll being 'invented' in 1955. Nothing could be further from the truth and Tiny Bradshaw is one of many people rockin' long before 1955.
This original recording, done in Cincinnati at King's studio, also features Wilbur "Red" Prysock on tenor sax. In the later 50's when sax played a major roll in rock 'n' roll, Red Prysock was one of the top honkers.

 

The Rock and Roll Trio, sometimes called the Johnny Burnette Trio, consisted of brothers Dorsey and Johnny Burnette and Paul Burlison. Dorsey and Paul worked for Crown Electric in Memphis (as did Elvis Presley) by day and played hillbilly bop on the weekends. In the winter of 1956, Paul and Dorsey were laid off from their jobs and they decided to relocate to New York City in hope of finding work through the electrician's union. Johnny went along as well and found work in the Garment District and they lived at a YMCA. They auditioned for ABC's Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour TV show, were successful getting on the show and won three straight weeks that Spring which gave them a slot in the finals in September and also provided them with huge national exposure. The big record companies were soon vying to sign them to a contract. They ended up signing with Coral, a subsidiary of Decca, and first entered the Decca studio in New York to record on May 7, 1956. With their first Coral single out, which hit in a few markets but not nationally, they made appearances on a lot of the big TV variety shows including American Bandstand and the Tonight Show. With more recorded material needed, they did their second session at Owen Bradley's Studio in Nashville over 4 days in the first week of July. The Train Kept A-Rollin' was one of the songs recorded and it was released as their third single Oct. 13 backed with a cover of Big Joe Turner's 1953 song Honey Hush. Like the two records previous to that, it failed to make the national charts and the trio made a living from their live performances of grueling one-night stands. Tensions built and one night in Niagara Falls that Autumn a fight broke out and Dorsey left the band. Both Johnny and Dorsey went on to solo singing careers and in short time Paul Burlison was back in Memphis running his own electrical subcontracting business. Johnny had a big pop hit in 1960 with You're Sixteen and Dorsey had a hit with Tall Oak Tree that same year. In the meantime, the Coral recordings were pretty much buried and forgotten as rock & roll marched on. But what about their recording of this song? What inspired them to take Tiny's bouncy ode to a "hipster, gone dame" and turn it into a driving rockabilly screamer seems to be lost to time. With Johnny's frantic vocals and Paul Burlison's screaching over-amplified Fender guitar with the treble set at 10, helped along by Buddy Harmon's steady drum, that song (as well as a number of their other 1956 recordings) were not hits and perhaps too far ahead of their time. 

 

Time passes. It's the late 50's / early 60's and Corporate America has decided "rock and roll has got to go!" A lot of great music was still getting recorded, but on the radio what people heard was only "nice" music. Over in the UK, rock and roll was not dead. A lot of American rockers could still make a living there. What was dead in the UK was radio, but the British young people sought out all the American rock and roll singles they could get their hands on. They formed clubs and appreciation groups and featured much cherished records at community dances and so on. Rocking songs that were totally obscure and unheard of in the US became popular items in the UK and inspired many of them to take up instruments and perform the songs themselves while in America people were listening to Rubber Ball (bouncy bouncy), Venus, Oh Carol, Volare, Itsy Bitsy Bikini......."nice" music. Black American musicians, such as those found on Chicago's Chess, Chief and Vee Jay Records, made a living playing the so-called chitlin' circuit, playing in small clubs in the eastern states, many in the still segregated South. A lot of these acts were brought to England, and other European countries, in the late 50's and suddenly found themselves playing in front of well-dressed white audiences who politely listened and enthusiastically applauded their every song. These performances made a huge impact on aspiring British musicians. I believe I once read how a young Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had an epiphany moment watching Rosetta Tharpe perform.
When the Beatles first went to the US their first stop was in Washington DC where they gave interviews and politely answered slews of really stupid questions. At one point Paul McCartney asked an interviewer what he thought of the music of Muddy Waters and the reply was "who is Muddy Waters?" McCartney replied with something about Americans don't even know who their own famous people are. That pretty much sums up the situation at that time.
Anyway, one group of young musicians were very taken with the electric blues as issued by Chess Records, etc. and formed a band called The Yardbirds in May 1963. Their original guitarist, Top Topham, was replaced by a guy named Eric Clapton that October. The Yardbirds became a successful band playing clubs in the greater London area and with some records under their belt began to branch out in England, but with success and contracts comes demands and to maintain viability they had to alter their sound more in a beat group pop direction. Clapton, a blues purist, left in early March 1965 rather than compromise his talents. He was replaced by Jeff Beck. Just before Clapton departed, and perhaps what led him to depart, the band recorded Graham Gouldman's For Your Love which became a hit and also exposed them to the huge American market. That September they finally made it to the USA, but something with their work permits was amiss and that prevented them from performing most of their schedule shows. They did take advantage of being there though and visited some of the legendary (to them) recording studios such as Sam Phillips in Memphis and Chess in Chicago. While in Memphis (the home of the Rock and Roll Trio), Sept. 12, 1965, they recorded (perhaps in tribute?) The Train Kept A-Rollin' and Mr. You're A Better Man Than I (which became a hit for them). The same week they visited Chess in Chicago and paid tribute to Bo Diddley by recording I'm A Man and also another song that became a hit for them, Shapes Of Things. The Yardbirds recording of Train was purely inspired by the 1956 Rock and Roll Trio recording yet also took it in another direction.
Beck opened it making a train whistle sound on his guitar and at one point during a break Jim McCarty drums a few clickety-clack bars. In the end, their recording introduced the song to a new genre and a new generation.

 

Beck was dismissed from The Yardbirds in later 1966 and was replaced by session wizard Jimmy Page. In late March 1968, not very long before the band called it quits, they performed at the Anderson Theater in New York City and opened with Train. Here you can listen to Page's take on the song. This is noteworthy because as soon as The Yardbirds packed it in, Page started a new band called The New Yardbirds which was shortly changed to Led Zeppelin and the first song they ever played was The Train Kept A-Rollin'.

 

By this point, Train Kept A-Rollin' was being recorded by a lot of acts and was being played by even more. It became a rock staple right up there with Gloria. In 1974 Aerosmith recorded the song, Joe Perry being a big fan of Jeff Beck, and the song was introduced to another generation of music and taking it, in 23 short years, from Tiny Bradshaw's jump & shout to a hard rocking classic that remains popular all these years later.

Tainted Love: Ed Cobb - Gloria Jones - Soft Cell

I was in the supermarket the other day and heard Soft Cell's "Tainted Love / Where Did Our Love Go" playing on the PA. The song was one of the major hits of the 1980's and 31 years later, well, they still play it in supermarkets. By the time it was over I got to thinking about the longshot tale of the first half of the song and some of the people involved along the way and will attempt to make some sense of it.

First, let's look at the end result. Soft Cell was a synth-pop duo out of the Lancashire area (I think) in northern England. Marc Almond was the vocalist and David Ball the synth musician. The two first got together at Leeds Polytechnic and self-produced some recordings that got them signed to the Some Bizarre label, a subsidiary of Phonogram. Their first recordings gained some club popularity but didn't find enough success to keep the record company interested. They gave them one last chance and they cut two songs from 1964 originally done in America. One was the big Motown hit by The Supremes "Where Did Our Love Go" and the other an obscure Motown-sounding song done by Gloria Jones called "Tainted Love".  

 

Tainted Love became a hit and somewhere along the way club DJ's began to segue it into Where Did Our Love Go. The record company then did a 9-minute remix of the two songs and put it out on a 12-inch single for the disco's and that's when the song took off around the world.

  

1964 was a big year in music. Motown Records and their acts really hit it big that year, the surf craze and bands like the Beach Boys emerged, the "girl group" sound was in full motion, and the so-called British Invasion struck with some British bands getting a lot of airplay in the US. That's a long story in itself that involves control of product and money and visa availability more than great records. There are only so many slices in a pie and a lot of people weren't very willing to hand their share off to someone else. Where Did Our Love Go was the first monster hit for The Supremes and for the next 4 years they were always on the charts.

To unravel how Tainted Love came about, let's go back to the mid-1950's, to Hollywood, USA....to Hollywood High School to be exact, where 4 students performed in a talent contest that was witnessed by someone from Capitol Records which is about ¾ of a mile to the northeast of the school. Capitol signed the young men and named them the Four Preps. 

 The Four Preps had some hits, like 26 Miles (Santa Catalina)

 

and Big Man

 

they backed up Ricky Nelson and appeared in the film Gidget too.

Now the guy on the right in those photo's was the bass singer and his name was Ed Cobb. Ed knew there was more to life than singing and he began to branch out as a song writer, recording engineer, record producer and manager of performers. In 1962 he wrote and produced a song that became a hit for Ketty Lester called Love Letters.

 

The following year he came up with another song he wanted Ketty to record, but she turned it down. The song was called Every Little Bit Hurts. Ed produced a demo of the song in order to shop it around to record companies, something that cost him a sizable sum of money. On the demo he had a lady by the name of Barbara Wilson sing. In Detroit, Berry Gordy at Motown liked it and told Cobb to go back to Los Angeles where Motown had just started a new west coast operation. They had a singer there named Brenda Holloway that they wanted to record it. Brenda, still a teen, didn't want to record it because she thought Barbara Wilson's demo was something she couldn't match. Eventually, she did record her vocals over the original demo Cobb had made (Motown proceeded to screw Cobb out of production credit) but it became a big hit for Holloway and was also recorded by many people such as Aretha Franklin (pre-Atlantic), Petula Clark, Gladys Knight...over in England it was covered by the Small Faces, The Tremeloes, Spencer Davis Group when Stevie Winwood was still fronting them. Actually, I should have done a blog posting on just that song. Before Holloway's recording was issued by Motown, it seems to have been licensed to local LA label Del Fi and although that record has always been credited to Brenda Holloway, experts in the field claim this is actually the original Barbara Wilson demo.

 

Barbara Wilson was the wife of Frank Wilson and sadly died not very long after the recording was made. Frank was hired as a writer and producer by Motown around this same time and went on to have a very successful career. In 1965 he thought he'd also do a little singing and cut a record called Do I Love You. Only 400 promos were pressed and reportedly Wilson had a change of heart and the records were destroyed. Supposedly only 2 copies survived (one once sold for over $50,000) and the song went on in later years to be rediscovered and became a Northern Soul classic in England.

 

With Frank declining to launch a singing career, the song was given to Motown artist Chris Clark to record.

 

So let's get back to Ed Cobb. Around 1964 he had another song in hand, very Motown sounding, and that was called Tainted Love. He offered it to a Los Angeles group he was managing and producing called The Standells, but they turned it down. Ed was then producing a young LA singer named Gloria Jones who had been performing with Billy Preston in a gospel group called the Cogic Singers.

Gloria recorded the song, it was placed on the b-side of a record that failed to go anywhere, and that was the end of that. 

 

Ed also wrote and produced Heartbeat for Gloria in 1964. Reportedly, in the UK it was covered by the Remo Four, Petula Clark and the Spencer Davis Group.

 

Another song Ed wrote and produced for Gloria was Run One Flight Of Stairs in 1966.

 

Gloria was a pianist and went on to earn an advanced degree is classical music and then was hired by Motown as a composer. One of the songs she wrote, If I Were Your Woman, was a hit for Gladys Knight in 1971. In the early 70's she became romantically and musically involved with British glam-rocker Marc Bolan and his band T. Rex. They had a child together and she was the driver of the car that crashed killing Bolan in 1977.

So where does that leave Tainted Love? In the early 70's a British club DJ was on a record-buying mission in the US and came across a copy of the obscure recording. Back in England it became a favorite on the Northern Soul club scene in the mid and late 70's and that's how it was exposed to Soft Cell.

As for Ed Cobb, The Standells recorded a number of his songs. They appeared in the March 1965 Munsters episode Far Out Munsters (photo below) and also in the film Riot On Sunset Strip.

In 1966 they recorded what is perhaps the song Ed is most known for writing/producing, Dirty Water, which has become a garage punk classic.

 

Ed was also the producer, and sometime writer of songs for the Chocolate Watchband around 1966-1967. Ed later became a successful horse breeder and had other involvements in horse racing. He died in Hawaii in 1999.