With seven releases available for Record Store Day, the Liberation Hall label has been busy; those records are Charlie Parker’s The Long Lost Bird Live Afro-CuBop Recordings, the various artists collection Bossa Nova at Carnegie Hall, Muddy Waters’ Hollywood Blues Summit: Live at The Ash Grove July 30, 1971, The Sir Douglas Quintet’s Texas Tornado Live: Doug Weston’s Troubadour, 1971, Romeo Void’s Live from Mabuhay Gardens: November 14, 1980, Phil Ochs’ The Best of the Rest: Rare and Unreleased Recordings and Eddie Money’s The Covers. We cover all seven below.
The Long Lost Bird Live Afro-CuBop Recordings documents a half dozen different live dates with the great alto saxophonist Charlie “Yardbird” Parker the commonality, but only a portion of the 2LP really falls into the Afro-Cuban stylistic category. Parker obsessives might know this material from a 2015 CD issued by RockBeat (where the track order was different), but I’m unsure about prior appearances on vinyl. In a nutshell, this isn’t the place to start with Parker, but lovers of the saxophonist and the original bebop era will find much to enjoy. Overall, The Long Lost Bird radiates a vibe similar to those Archive of Folk & Jazz Music LPs on Everest Records that used to turn up fairly regularly in the bins.
The sound quality is acceptable to good and the performances are consistently worthwhile. Much of the set includes Parker’s fellow bebop architect Dizzy Gillespie, but interestingly, the trumpeter is absent from two of the selections with Afro-Cuban flavor; it’s Howard McGhee playing trumpet on those, along with a large Afro-Cuban band, from a concert held at the Renaissance Ballroom in New York City in 1950. Dizzy is instead heard in two small bands captured in ’45 and ’47 in Los Angeles and NYC respectively, with the participants including pianists Al Haig and John Lewis and vibraphonist Milt Jackson.
Dizzy also takes part in a ’54 concert from Portland, OR’s Civic Auditorium that paired him and Parker with the Stan Kenton Orchestra; “Manteca” from this date adds considerably to the Afro-Cuban quotient and finds Dizzy nearly stealing the show (in ’54 and on this LP, as the performance wraps up side four). But Parker is heard sitting in with Woody Herman’s group in Kansas City, MO in ’51 (offering “Cuban Holiday”), and there’s a wonderfully breakneck-paced “Salt Peanuts” from Birdland in ’50 with trumpeter Red Rodney, pianist Kenny Drew, bassist Curley Russell, and drummer Art Blakey.
Bossa Nova at Carnegie Hall is a reissue of Audio Fidelity’s 1963 LP, with the contents documenting a show held at the hallowed venue from November 21 of the previous year. That the original LP came out so quickly and on Audio Fidelity was no accident, as the label’s president Sidney Frey set up the concert, the anticipation of which far exceeded expectations, as a reported 1,000 peopled waited outside in the rain hoping to get tickets.
Additionally, musicians from outside Frey’s organizing (both bossa and jazz players) flocked to NYC to be part of the concert, which complicated matters, and makes this single LP a collection of highlights rather than a scaled-down representation of the entire evening (the participating jazz musicians, including Lalo Schifrin and Stan Getz, are not included).
There are numerous big bossa nova names on the record however, all of them in strong form, such as pianist Sergio Mendes (his sextet opens the record), guitarist Bola Sete with singer Carmen Costa, guitarist Luiz Bonfá (bringing his composition “Manhã de Carnaval” from Black Orpheus to the proceedings), and guitarist João Gilberto (who’s immediately identifiable). Unsurprising given the original label, the sonics are nice, and this set does a fine job of communicating what the early ’60s bossa nova fuss was all about.
The title of Hollywood Blues Summit: Live at The Ash Grove July 30, 1971 might lead to suspicions of at least a few interloping rock stars, but the players on this set are all regulars from his band of the period, with pianist Pinetop Perkins (a solid sign that the music will be something other than uninspired), guitarists James “Pee Wee” Madison and Sammy Lawhorn, bassist Calvin “Fuzz” Jones, drummer Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, and harmonica player Paul Oscher.
This is essentially the same band that plays on the 1971 Chess LP Live at Mr. Kelly’s, but a major difference between the two records is that Kelly’s (the original LP, at least) features less celebrated Muddy originals peppered with a few versions of songs borrowed from other bluesmen (and nothing by Willie Dixon), while Hollywood Blues Summit offers a handful of the best known tunes from Muddy’s repertoire, including the Dixon-penned “Hoochie Coochie Man,” “Long Distance Call,” “Honey Bee,” and “Got My Mojo Working.”
Three of those songs were included on The Best of Muddy Waters, so it’s pretty clear the intention on the evening in question was to satisfy folk who’d recently gotten hip to Muddy’s work. Kelly’s and Hollywood do have two songs in common, “Strange Woman” and “Blow Wind Blow,” but the Liberation Hall LP, opening with “Juke,” finds Muddy in potent form throughout. It’s a terrific dose of this blues giant’s thing in his later years but before he fell under the sway of Johnny Winter.
At 29 minutes (and pressed at 45rpm), Texas Tornado Live: Doug Weston’s Troubadour, 1971 is a too short but very appealing dose of The Sir Douglas Quintet deep into their California period but with four-fifths of the original lineup still intact. Even with its short runtime, the set underscores the group as a robust and lean vessel of roots science and a solid singles band, opening with “She’s About a Mover” and including “Mendocino” and “Dynamite Woman.”
“Dynamite Woman” lacks the fiddle that helps make the original single such a treat, but it’s still a worthwhile version. More importantly, they manage to pull off the soul horn section that makes “I’m Glad for Your Sake (But Sorry for Mine)” and “It Didn’t Even Bring Me Down” such killers. And these successes directly relate to how Doug Sahm and company (including Augie Meyers on the distinctive Vox Continental organ) avoided succumbing to specious stylistic additives and general bloat. Instead, the Tex-Mex foundation is sturdy.
Live from Mabuhay Gardens: November 14, 1980 jumps forward to the following decade and establishes a clear stylistic break, as Romeo Void were firmly ensconced in San Francisco’s punk/new wave uprising, though their encore for this set is “Double Shot of My Baby’s Love,” by The Swingin’ Medallions, a band that’s situated not especially far from the Sir Douglas Quintet in the overall ’60s scheme of things. But Romeo Void’s version of “Double Shot…” is drenched in edgy new wave alienation and urgency, qualities that define the entire set as it predates the release of Romeo Void’s debut album by eight months.
As pointed out in Jack Johnston’s liner notes, Romeo Void hadn’t released any material at the point of this show; in fact, as the first recorded documentation of original drummer Jay Derrah, Live from Mabuhay Gardens captures the band at their earliest, and it’s a blast from start to finish, establishing what they sounded like before decisive stylistic decisions were made and major label Columbia got their hooks in. Listening to this LP, it’s easy to understand Romeo Void opening shows for such SF punk heavies as The Avengers, Crime, and Dead Kennedys. As a bonus, the fidelity is quite good.
At the moment of this early Romeo Void show, the Bay Area-based Eddie Money was a bona fide rock star. If his stature has slipped since, that’s down to the natural cycle of things; it suffices to say the work that vaulted him to fame has aged pretty well, in part because he was something of a back to basics kind of guy. He may not have the same kind of cred, but the pop-rock that Eddie Money (and kudos to Edward Mahoney for choosing that handle) specialized in wasn’t THAT far from Springsteen, Petty, Seger, the pub rockers and a few of the names on the Beserkely roster.
In 2009, Money (who passed in 2019) released two CDEPs of cover tunes; The Covers collects them for their vinyl debut. Given that back to basics sensibility, you might expect the ’60s to dominate the choices, and that’s right, as there are two from The Beatles (“She Came in Through the Bathroom Window” slightly bettering “Ticket to Ride”), and one each from The Spencer Davis Group (“Gimme Some Lovin’”), The Four Tops (“Reach Out I’ll Be There”), and The Doors (“Roadhouse Blues,” technically a ’70s tune, and the record’s only borderline misfire).
Money also tackles AC/DC (“It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘N’ Roll”), but in an unexpected twist (and to Money’s credit), the two strongest tracks on The Covers are of a ’90s vintage, namely Train’s “Drops of Jupiter” and Green Day’s “When I Come Around.” There’s a modest aura to the proceedings, but Money puts his full self into it and his voice is still strong. I can’t imagine The Covers appealing to many listeners who aren’t already full-blown Eddie Money converts, but I suspect quite a few of them still walk among us.
Do fans of Phil Ochs still trod this earth? Given the tumultuousness of the last decade, It’s safe to say he’s more popular now than at any point since his death by suicide in 1976. That The Best of the Rest: Rare and Unreleased Recordings, first released on CD in 2020, is getting a 2LP edition supports the idea that Ochs has a solid listenership in the present time.
Consisting mostly of demo material cut for music publishers Warner/Chappell while Ochs was still recording for Elektra, The Best of the Rest is an all acoustic guitar and vocal affair save for one track, the closing “No More Songs,” which features Ochs at the piano. And the overall thrust here is toward the man’s topical material, with versions of “Here’s to the State of Mississippi,” “I’m Going to Say It Now,” and “Love Me, I’m a Liberal” included, but there’s also an increased depth in these songs that points to Ochs’ A&M period.
Listening to this set, it’s remarkable how well those topical songs have held up. It can also flirt with the disheartening that they often remain so relevant, but the clarity of vision captured here ultimately registers as inspirational. If Ochs’ life had a tragic end, his work lives on, with his legacy strong. It’s tempting to say, as was observed about the Charlie Parker record above, that this isn’t the place to start with the Ochs discography, but really, any newbies who grab this on Record Store Day will get a fine introduction to one of the very greatest of the ’60s folksingers.
Charlie Parker, The Long Lost Bird Live Afro-CuBop Recordings
B+
V/A, Bossa Nova at Carnegie Hall
B+
Muddy Waters, Hollywood Blues Summit: Live at The Ash Grove July 30, 1971
B+
Sir Douglas Quintet, Texas Tornado Live: Doug Weston’s Troubadour, 1971
A-
Romeo Void, Live from Mabuhay Gardens: November 14, 1980
A-
Eddie Money, The Covers
B
Phil Ochs, The Best of the Rest: Rare and Unreleased Recordings
A-
