If you’re a classic cocktail fan, you no doubt are already familiar with a key ingredient in the Garibaldi and Negroni cocktails. Campari bitters, of course, that deep red infusion of herbs and fruit in water and alcohol. Rarely imbibed neat (bleh!) it can be downright delightful when blended with citrus juice, wine or soda water.
As a matter of fact, Campari soda has been marketed as a premixed drink here in Italy since 1932, the first “single dose” product ready for consumption and the “perfect pre-dinner mix” of Campari and soda. Sold in a unique cone shaped bottle designed by Futurist artist, Fortunato Depero, it exemplifies why Italian design leads the world in so many ways.
As for the drink itself, while some of us find it delightfully refreshing on a hot, sticky day, it remains an…. acquired taste. Regardless of your preference, “Cin Cin”!
It’s a splendid concept, take 34 leading folk and country musicians from both sides of the North Atlantic and gather them in a stunning Georgian-era Scottish mansion for collaborative live performances, featuring music from Scotland, Ireland, England and North America. Then record, film and broadcast the results as a season of half hour TV episodes
Originally produced in 1995 as a joint BBC Scotland/RTE Ireland television series to celebrate the close relationship between British and North American traditional music, The Transatlantic Sessions have been referred to as “the greatest backporch shows ever”.
Built by Sir Robert Glasgow in 1817 (and a fine hotel since 1982), it was all filmed and recorded at Montgreenan Mansion House in Ayrshire, Scotland; hard-by the Firth of Clyde. The venerable Sir Robert, like other Glasgow “entrepreneurs” alas, made his fortune in the shipping trade by plying the shameful triangular route between Britain, Africa and the sugar plantations of the West Indies.
Since 1995 four additional series were filmed (‘99,’07, ‘09, ’10) with the most recent ones broadcast on BBC 4, which has been a channel since 2002. Although many of the featured musicians are unknown to us (or at least us dilatants) on the North American side of the Atlantic there have been some notable names through the years, including: James Taylor, Rosanne Cash, Nanci Griffith, Martha Wainwright and Ricky Skaggs.
There were some notable names in that original gathering as well, particularly: Emmylou Harris, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Mary Black, John Martyn and Iris DeMent. Now, closing in on 20 years later, its pleasing to see the relative youthfulness of many of these performers… especially the late Kate McGarrigle. I’m definitely adding it to this year’s Christmas list and for those who are interested I have included a complete ’95 series rundown at the bottom of this post.
As we know from prior postings, Iris DeMent was born in Paragould, Arkansas in 1961 (but bred in Cypress, California) and was the youngest of 14 children in a Pentecostal household. After college she worked as a waitress in Kansas City while composing songs and honing her guitar and singing skills at open-mic nights, finally making the leap to Nashville where she would ultimately land a record deal.
Today’s selection is another track from her 1992 debut album, “Infamous Angel”. This 1995 YouTube version that includes Emmylou Harris (who bears a striking resemblance to my big sister) was featured on PROGRAMME FOUR of the original Transatlantic Sessions.
Because he had played in a band as a young man back in Saint Kitts, he forbade his children from touching a guitar. But after recognizing something special in their 14 year old daughter, his wife purchased a piano as “a piece of furniture” for their Birmingham, England apartment. Soon after, she traded in two prams for a £3 guitar at a local pawnshop.
By the age of 15 the young girl had taught herself to play both instruments. But the family was in financial straits, so she dropped out of school and went to work at a tool manufacturing factory where she was promptly given the sack for bringing her guitar to work and playing it during tea breaks.
And that’s when Joan Anita Barbara Armatradin (born in Saint Kitts in 1950, raised in Birmingham) began her singing career in earnest, performing her own songs whenever and wherever she could, including a concert arranged by her older brother at the University of Birmingham when she was just 16.
In 1968 Armatrading joined a repertory production of the stage musical “Hair” which eventually led her to a recording contract.
But it wasn’t until her third album in 1976 “Joan Armatrading” (featuring today’s selection) that she truly began to receive “love and affection” from fans and critics alike, both at home and abroad, thereby propelling her to become the first black British female singer/songwriter to enjoy international success, with a career that has now spanned 40 years.
Gavin and Iain Sutherland out of Aberdeen, Scotland were a sibling folk/rock duo who’d had a couple of minor hits (most memorably “Sailing” which later became a big hit for Rod Stewart) prior to joining forces with a local rock band named Quiver in 1973. Not unreasonably the collaborating entities began to record and tour under the new name of The Sutherland Brothers & Quiver.
Although the brothers would eventually return to being a duo when Quiver decided to go its own way, it was as a six-piece conglomeration that both groups had their greatest success, with the biggest hit of all first appearing as a track on their fourth concerted album, “Reach for the Sky” in 1975.
Written by Iain Sutherland and released as a single the following year, today’s selection peaked on the UK Charts at Number 5 and was also a big hit in much of Europe. Surprisingly (for such a memorable song) it only made it to the Number 81 spot in the U.S. before falling off the Billboard charts…and softly back into the “Arms of Mary”
After releasing their self-titled debut album in the spring of 1972, the members of Pure Prairie League spent the summer at a horse farm north of Toronto to record their second album “Bustin’ Out”. Summer’s a beautiful time to be in Southern Ontario but the main reason they were there was because lead singer and co-founder Craig Fuller was dodging the draft.
Formed in Columbus, Ohio and with some success in Cincinnati prior to landing that record deal, Pure Prairie League (PPL) got its name from a 19th Century Temperance Union mentioned in the (coincidentally titled) 1939 film, “Dodge City”. That debut album featured a Norman Rockwell drawing of an old cowboy that had first been featured on a 1927 cover of the “Saturday Evening Post” a concept so agreeable that “Luke” as the cowboy came to be known, was featured on every PPL album from then on.
Shortly after “Bustin’ Out” was released in October of ’72, the group returned to Ohio and Craig Fuller was tried for draft evasion. Although he would eventually receive conscientious objector status and a full pardon by President Gerald Ford, he was sentenced to six months in jail in early ’73 and was forced to quit the band. In the years ahead he would come to re-kindle his music career but would miss out on the national prominence that Pure Prairie League would soon come to enjoy…national prominence that was mainly due to a girl named Amie.
Included as a track on “Bustin Out” and preceded by the accompanying “Falling in and Out of Love” as a doublet of sorts, “Amie” was written and sung by Fuller about an on-again/off-again relationship he’d once had. Although it initially received little airplay it became a college tour favorite for PPL after Fuller’s departure, with radio stations receiving an increasing number of requests for the song. Finally released as a single in late 1974 it peaked at Number 27 on the Billboard charts in the spring of ’75, nearly three years after it was recorded.
You couldn’t ask for a better mnemonic device. Having an “older” American automobile while living and working in Canada in the late ‘80s, necessitated the conversion of business mileage into business kilometers when filling out a corporate expense report, with one mile equal to 1.609 kilometers.
That meant that at the end of every junket there came the time for “Deacon Lee” to prepare “his sermon for next week.” Sing the first four lines of this song to yourself a few hundred times (lyrics below) and you too will surely remember the conversion factor of miles to kilometers until your “dying day.”
It’s hard to deny that Elton John was at his creative peak between 1969 and 1973. After the release of his second (and breakthrough) album, “Elton John” in the spring of 1970 came “Tumbleweed Connection” in the fall of that same year.
Despite the fact that it didn’t produce a solitary single, this concept album inspired by lyricist Bernie Taupin’s penchant for Western Americana, would be the second of three certified gold records for Elton John (preceded by his eponymous second album and followed by the sound track he scored for the film, “Friends”) in as many months.
Born Leigh Anne Bingham in New Braunfels, Texas, in 1976; Leigh Nash started singing and playing country music at the age of 12. “I was really, really shy,” she said, “but just had this desire to get on stage and started calling clubs myself to ask if I could come down and sing”. As a result she was singing Loretta Lynn and Tanya Tucker songs on (alcohol-free) Sunday nights backed by “a middle aged band of town locals.”
Despite the allure of country, Nash, who was also inspired by Christian music never developed an accent and also enjoyed such groups as the Cranberries and Innocence Mission. In the early 1990s she met songwriter, Matt Slocum at a church retreat and the two (as we know from a previous selection) set out to form the Nashville-based “Six Pence None the Richer,” named for a line from C. S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”.
Despite major success with such hits as “Kiss Me” and (of course) “There She Goes” the band broke up in the mid-2000s (happily they have since reformed) and in 2006 Nash released a debut solo album “Blue on Blue”, which included this selection.
Drawn from a group of University of Kent at Canterbury (England) musicians as well as members of the Duke’s Folk Club in Whitstable, the ever-changing line-up of Fiddler’s Dram had an enthusiastic following in the late ‘70s, playing regularly at local Canterbury area pubs.
In 1978 a “permanent” line-up released an album “To See the Play” which featured traditional English tunes along with today’s selection, written by Duke’s Folk Club member Debbie Cook, who subsequently went on to write scripts for “The Archers” (an ages-old BBC radio soap) and BBC TV’s “EastEnders”.
Apparently the song was inspired by a day trip to Rhyl, a seaside resort 35 miles east of Bangor, North Wales, but because Bangor had an extra syllable and slipped off the tongue more easily it was used instead. A great outcry from Rhyl councilors and businesses is said to have ensued after the song reached Number 3 on the UK Singles Chart because the publicity would surely have boosted the tourist economy.
Although the group quickly released an eponymous follow-up album, they were unable to achieve any further recording success. “Day Trip To Bangor” according to the fiddler, “was the kind of success you don’t easily recover from. Fiddler’s Dram did one more tour then gratefully took the money, and the gold discs, and ran.”
In 1964 an up and coming “juke box standards band” from the Bay Area town of El Cerrito, were offered a record deal by Fantasy Records, an independent jazz label looking to add some rock n’ roll groups to its catalogue. They called themselves The Blue Velvets and consisted of three guys named, Doug, Stu and John, who had known one another since junior high school, along with John’s older brother Tom who served as lead singer.
When it came time to release the band’s first single one of the label owners asked them to change their name to the Golliwogs (in reference to character featured in a series of 19th Century children’s books popular in England, which then became a popular doll and jam manufacturer “mascot” while also serving as precursor to the offensive racial slur, “wog”) in the belief that it would help to tap into the British Invasion fad then sweeping the States. A number of singles followed, all of them local.
In 1967 Fantasy Records was sold. By this time (younger brother) John, who had begun to write all the group’s material had moved over to lead vocalist, while Tom concentrated on rhythm guitar. The new owner was impressed and presented them with an opportunity to record a full-length album…if only they would change that name.
There was certainly no argument from the band and to make it interesting they opted to combine a number of elements: Tom had a friend named Credence Newball, whose name they always liked, and for good measure they decided to add in an extra ‘e’ so that it resembled the word “creed”. Next, they snagged the word “Clearwater” from an Olympia Beer commercial, and lastly they threw in the word “Revival” referring to what they felt was a new commitment to the band.
The resulting 1968 debut album, “Creedence Clearwater Revival” attracted a great deal of national attention with keen musicianship all around, and songwriter, Fogerty’s penchant (despite his Northern California upbringing) for Deep Southern imagery and a “swamp/roots rock” sound. CCR (for short) was well on its way.
Today’s selection, which reached Number 2 on the U.S. Billboard Charts and Number 1 on the UK Singles Chart, was featured on CCR’s third studio album, “Green River” released in 1969. According to Fogerty the inspiration for writing it came about while he was watching the 1941 film, “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” which features a hurricane scene that got him to thinking about “the apocalypse soon to be visited upon us.”
Although the song’s refrain is “there’s a bad moon on the rise,” it is often misheard as “there’s a bathroom on the right,” and Fogerty himself regularly parodies the mondegreen (“the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase as a result of near homophony”) by singing the misheard version in live performance.
As my sources are admittedly im-peach-able, I’ll only report what I solemnly surmise. It’s an undisputed fact that the legendary Southern Rock/Blues Allman Brothers Band was the final act at Fillmore East (as in New York’s East Village) before that one-time Second Avenue Yiddish Theater, with the incredible acoustics, closed for good in June 1971.
It’s also a fact that the band’s breakthrough album “At Fillmore East” (recorded that spring) was released just a few weeks later and would become certified gold within months, when the Allman Brothers were well-along in producing their definitive follow-up album.
And it’s an incredibly sorrowful fact that slide-guitar-extraordinaire (and big brother to Gregg) Duane Allman was on his way to becoming one of the greatest guitarists of all time when he was thrown from his motorcycle on a sloping road near his Macon, Georgia home.
By all accounts Allman was prone to breaking the speed limits and when he crested the hill he was confronted with a flatbed lumber truck (it’s an urban legend that it was a peach truck) stopping to make a turn directly in front of him. But as he swerved to go around, his motorcycle hit a sharp dip in the road causing him to lose control and…after the bike landed on him he never regained consciousness. He was 24.
Although the band had decided to carry on and finish the album, no one was happy with the proposed title, “The Kind We Grow in Dixie”. Then someone noticed the peach on the already-completed artwork for the album cover and remembered something Duane had said in an interview shortly before his death. “There ain’t no revolution. It’s evolution, but every time I’m in Georgia I eat a peach for peace.”
Released in early 1972, one writer (Greil Marcus) described, “Eat a Peach” as an “after the-the-rain celebration…ageless, seamless…front-porch music stolen from the utopia of shared southern memory.” Partially recorded live/partially studio-recorded, the album was big on innovation and featured a number of acoustic melodies, including today’s selection, which was recorded by Allman a few weeks before the accident and is considered by acoustic virtuoso (and one of our favorites) Leo Kottke, to be “the most perfect guitar song ever written.”
Evidently influenced by Jimi Hendrix, whom he had met in New York, and the only track on the album that he had solely written, Duane Allman claimed to have intended it as an ode to his girlfriend, Dixie Meadows. However, the namesake for “Little Martha” was twelve year old, Martha Ellis (1824-1836), whose distinctive memorial he encountered during his regular visits to Macon’s Rose Hill Cemetery.
Before the song’s 1972 release Allman himself would be buried at Rose Hill, as would bandmate Berry Oakley, who also perished on a motorcycle at the age of 24, later that year.
thisrightbrain 