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.

Morning Dew

Morning Dew certainly isn't a song that remained popular for decades. It was a child of the 60's and for the most part has remained there, but it did go through an interesting transformation in a brief 6 years.

Written and performed by Toronto folk singer Bonnie Dobson in 1962, it was inspired by the film On The Beach and the "morning dew" said to be a reference to nuclear fallout. Of course, those were the days of the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis happened in October 1962....50 years ago next month. If you didn't experience it, you could never appreciate the seriousness of it. At the time I was residing in what would have certainly been a prime target for Soviet nuclear missiles, at the time the leading technology corridor in the US, and we also had a few Nike sites in the area as well as a SAC base.

 

A couple years later folk-circuit veterans Vince Martin and Fred Neil took to the song, making some changes to lyrics and offered up some duo harmony and what sounds like a zither.

 

As noted in the previous posting about the song Hey Joe, Tim Rose, another veteran of the northeast folk circuit, headed west in the mid-60's and got signed by Columbia and started recording for them in 1966. One of the songs he recorded was Morning Dew and both the song and his LP made a big impact in both the US and UK. Tim gave the song a nice driving rhythm and the melody played by the left hand of the pianist and bassist gave the song its new signature sound. Tim also copyrighted the song crediting himself as co-writer and got away with it. In fairness, if he didn't make his recording of the song, I wouldn't be writing about it now.

 

In late 1966 Tim played at the Fillmore West a couple of nights, sharing the bill with the Grateful Dead.

When the Dead entered the studio in January 1967 to record their first LP, they recorded their well-known version of the song. A few months later, across the Atlantic in England, the Episode 6 recorded it. This is from a live performance.

 

Before 1967 was over, Lulu recorded Morning Dew and it made the singles charts in early '68.

 

In 1966, after being dismissed from The Yardbirds, Jeff Beck began making solo recordings. Sessions to complete a LP took place in May 1967 and on the 14th Morning Dew was recorded with Rod Stewart doing the vocals, Ronnie Wood on bass, Nicky Hopkins on piano and Mick Waller on drums....and Beck on guitar. It would be over a year before the LP, Truth, hit the stores, but when it did it was perfect timing to become a favorite on the many 'underground' FM AOR stations that hit the airwaves in the USA in 1968.

 

Beck's LP became very popular in the US and a few guys were listening in Jacksonville, Florida that were playing in a band called the 31st of February. They immediately recorded the song but nothing came of it, the band fell out, and a few months later those guys, Duane Allman, Gregg Allman and Butch Trucks, were on the road as the Allman Brothers Band and went on to perhaps make the greatest impact on rock music in the USA in the early 1970's.

 

People continued to record the song in later years, but it would be a stretch to say it remained a popular item. Former Led Zep vocalist Robert Plant did a nice version in 2002.

Let's Face The Music And Dance

February 20, 1936 - a new movie hits the silver screen called Follow the Fleet starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers with Randolph Scott and Harriet Hilliard (who would later become a famous TV mom of the 1950's and 1960's known as Harriet Nelson on the Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet). Also appearing in the film in a minor role is Lucille Ball. Music for the film was by Irving Berlin and one of the songs featured is Let's Face The Music And Dance from a now famous Fred & Ginger dance scene. It's been over 76 years since and the song remains somewhat well known and popular with singers that have both a first and last name and can actually sing more than 4 notes.

It could be that the most well-known version of the song is one recorded by Nat King Cole in 1963 so let's take a look at the song leading up to that point. Fred Astaire sang it in the movie (which leads up to the famous dance scene).

 The dance scene was filmed in the first take. I don't know dance from France, but am very impressed, especially with Ginger Rogers who is wearing heals and a long dress. Early into the scene one of Ginger's flowing, and heavy with beads, sleeves caught Fred in the face but they continued. Because of that slight imperfection they tried doing the scene another 23 times but were never able to duplicate the 99.9% perfection of that first take. You can watch the song and dance on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMuKRbJa3O8

A popular movie with a popular song usually means a bunch of records and so it was in 1936 for Let's Face The Music And Dance. One of the first to record the song was Bob Crosby who had his own orchestra -  the Bear Cats. Bob had an older brother named Henry who was known as Bing.

 

It quickly crossed over the Atlantic to England where it was recorded by the Ray Noble Orchestra with Al Bowlly singing.

 

Al, a native of South Africa, had also achieved great popularity in the USA. He was killed in 1941 during the Blitz when a German parachute mine exploded outside his bedroom as he slept.

Another early British recording was by Harry Roy & His Orchestra. I don't know when this was done, but it sounds like a pre-war recording.

 

After 1936 when record companies and orchestras cashed in on the popularity of the movie, the song seems to have been largely forgotten. I can't find any information on any recordings of it in the 1940's. In 1956 Mel Tormé recorded a very slow and somewhat limp version and then in 1957 Anita O'Day did it and changed everything. She turned it into an up-tempo showpiece for singers with great range and dynamics. Anita seems to pop up a lot in the short life of this blog. That's not intentional, it's just the way it is.    

 

After that it didn't take long for others to realize the potential in the song. Tony Bennett and Doris Day both recorded it within a year of Anita's recording, but I find their versions a little uninspiring and will pass it to Ella.

Ella Fitzgerald 1958

 

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Jennie Smith 1958

 

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Ruth Brown 1959

 

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Frank Sinatra 1960

 

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Damita Jo 1961

 

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Matt Monro 1961

 

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Shirley Bassey 1962

 

Which brings us up to 1963 and Nat King Cole. This recording was recently used as the theme for the excellent UK comedy mockumentary Twenty Twelve (about the preparation for the Olympics).

 

How High The Moon

In 1939, the first of a series of three musical revue shows opened on Broadway. It was called One For The Money and on Feb. 8, 1940 the second, Two For The Show, opened at the Booth Theatre and after 124 performances it closed on May 25. The fifth sketch of Two For The Show, reportedly the only non-comic one, was the song How High The Moon sung by 8 actors including Alfred Drake, who went on to a long and successful career. Both Eve Arden and Betty Hutton appeared in Two For The Show but were not in the High How The Moon sketch. Music by Morgan Lewis and lyrics by Nancy Hamilton, the song was recorded the day before the show opened by the Benny Goodman Orchestra with Helen Forrest on vocals.

 

A second recording was made the next day, this one by Mitchell Ayres & His Fashions In Music with the vocal by Mary Ann Mercer.

 

The song didn't see much action on records for the next five years (largely due to the long AFM recording strike) and neither recording gave any indication of the jazz and pop standard it was about to become. That began to change in 1945 when these two permitted live recordings were made. They make me suspect that during the war the song remained a popular performance piece and was evolving away from its original Broadway show tune. The first is by the Delta Rhythm Boys.

 

Around this time the song became as popular as an instrumental as it was a vocal. In November 1945, the Les Paul Trio made this live V-Disc recording for the troops.

 

1947 changed everything for How High The Moon. With a second AFM strike looming, one that would last nearly all of 1948, there was a lot of recording being done in 1947. That summer a popular instrumental recording of the song was done by the Nat King Cole Trio.

 

Three vocals were also recorded that included scat singing and completed the transition of the song to a jazz standard. The first was by Anita O'Day.

 

 On October 22, 1947 the Stan Kenton Orchestra recorded it with June Christy.

 

and on December 20, Ella Fitzgerald cut it. It would become one of her signature songs.

 

With the strike over in late 1948, Charles Brown showed what could be done with the song in a more intimate setting and slowed down considerably.

 

In 1950, the song remaining a popular instrumental number, Pupi Campo gave it a rhumba workout.

 

In 1951 Les Paul and Mary Ford recorded what may be the most well known version of the song ever.

 

The mid-1950's saw two very different releases of How High The Moon. One extremely slowed down by Pat Suzuki

 

and one done in 4th gear by Sarah Vaughn.

 

In 1964 it received the pop vocal group treatment from the Royal Robins.

 

Gloria Gaynor gave us a disco Moon in 1975. You can hear it on youtube. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsT5AbxFZ3k

Emmylou Harris did it countryfied on her 1981 Evangeline LP.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2cgpNr-dpo 
and here's a 1989 live performance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtibPrLOzQY
I believe the guitarist/singer in the pink shirt is Barry Tashian who back in 1965-1966 had a smoking band in Boston called The Remains.

On what would have been Les Paul's 95th birthday, Jeff Beck and Imelda May honored him with this performance in New York City.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAUAAn46ji0

and, of course, it's been recorded and performed by hundreds of jazz artists and singers for over 70 years.