Evie Sands

Listen/Download – Evie Sands – I Can’t Let Go

Listen/Download – Evie Sands – You’ve Got Me Uptight

Greetings all.

I hope everyone took the chance to pull down the ones and zeros on this month’s Iron Leg Radio Show. If you haven’t, please take a moment to do so now, and while you’re at it, grab all the previous episodes from the archive (see the tab in the header).

The tune I bring you this week is a long time favorite, that I only managed to score on a 45 this very week (though I’ve been looking for years).

‘I Can’t Let Go’ – a song I first heard performed by Linda Ronstadt (when I was a kid) and then fell in love with in the epic version by the Hollies -  is one of the truly great pop songs of the 1960s.

The version you see before you, by Miss Evie Sands, is the original.

Sands was a NY-based singer who made several excellent records with Chip Taylor and Al Gorgoni, including the original versions of ‘Take Me For a Little While’ and ‘Angel of the Morning’.

Her story is a seemingly endless series of missed opportunities and bad timing (you can read more here) which kept some amazing music from reaching the audience it deserved.

The two 45s that Sands recorded for Blue Cat in 1965 are both excellent (A and B sides).

Sands was a particularly interesting singer because she bridged slightly earlier girl group sounds with what for lack of a better term might be called blue-eyed soul.

Though lesser known, she ought to be spoken of in the same breath with singers like Timi Yuro and Dusty Springfield.

Her version of ‘I Can’t Let Go’ manages to layer Sands’ rich and vaguely husky voice over a very nicely produced bit of imitation ‘Wall of Sound’. The beat is taken at a slightly slower, more deliberate pace than many of the covers.

The flip side, ‘You’ve Got Me Uptight’ is a more directly soul-influenced number with some groovy organ bubbling up underneath things.

All in all this is a very groovy 45 that you ought to take the time to stuff into your ears whenever you can.

It bears mentioning that there is a decent amount of vintage film of Sands, on shows like Shivaree and Hollywood A Go Go performing her Blue Cat era material.

I hope you dig the sounds and I’ll see you all next week.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

Beep beep beep beep…..

Playlist

Hawkshaw/Mansfield – Action Scene (KPM)
Brenda Lee – Is It True (Decca)
Nat Stuckey – Listen To the Band (RCA) Echoes In the Wind
Nat Stuckey – In the Year 2525 (RCA)
Fabulous Thunder – Jealous of You (Tight)
Dino Desi and Billy – I’m a Fool (Reprise) Lee Hazelwood
Dino Desi and Billy – The Rebel Kind (Reprise)
Pinking Canandy – Hello Hello (Uni)
Pinkiny Canandy – Mr Keiley’s Roof (Uni)
Pinkiny Canandy – Goodbye Goodbye (Uni)
The Knack – Time Waits For No One (Capitol)
The Knack – I’m Aware (Capitol)
Paul Revere & the Raiders – Pontiac Judge Commercial

Hub Kapp and the Wheels – Radio Spot
Hub Kapp and the Wheels – Sigh Cry Almost Die (Capitol)
Hub Kapp and the Wheels – Boney Moronie (Capitol)
Tom Northcott – 1941 (WB)
Tom Northcott – Blackberry Way (Uni)
Tom Northcott – Iron Pines (Uni)
Frankie Valli – The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore (Philips)
John Frangipani – Jingle Jangle (Mainstream)
Dave Van Ronk and the Hudson Dusters – Clouds (Both Sides Now) (Verve)
Carnation Instant Breakfast Commercial

Enoch Light and the Light Brigade – Over Under Sideways Down (Project 3)
Keith Mansfield – Boogaloo (Epic)
Sweet Charity OST – The Pompeii Club (Rich Mans Frug) (Decca)
Walter Wanderley – Kee-Ka-Roo (Verve)
Dave Grusin – Ascent To Virginity (ABC)
Mr Jamo – Shake What You Brought With You (SSS Intl)
Henry Mancini – The Theme From the Party (vocal) (RCA)

Listen/Download -Iron Leg Radio Show Episode 9 – 156MB/256kbps

Greetings all.

Welcome back for the ninth go-round in the Iron Leg Radio Show saga.

This time out we have all kinds of goodies for your earholes, including some unusual country-pop, beat, late-60s power pop, prime Canadian folk-rock and a long set of explosive now sound goodness.

If you haven’t yet picked up last month’s (or any of the other previous) episode on MP3, please do yourself a favor and grab it (them).

I hope you dig this episode, and I’ll see you all next week.

See you next Monday.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners

The Royal Guardsmen

Listen/Download – Royal Guardsmen – Leaving Me

Greetings all.

The tune I bring you today is a number I first heard (and fell in love with) back in the 80s on the Mindrocker comp.

It shocked me at the time because I had no idea that the Royal Guardsmen had done anything outside of their Snoopy-related tunes, especially nothing like ‘Leaving Me’.

I searched high and low for a copy of the 45, not realizing at the time (pre-interwebs) that it was one of the rarer tracks on the label, so I kept my copy of the comp and whipped that out whenever I needed to hear the song.

Then, last year I was out digging and found a cheap copy of the second album by the band and was gassed to discover that the fantastic, fuzzed out ‘Leaving Me’ was the last track on side two!

Though I was a little pissed that I’d wasted so much time looking for the 45, I was finally happy to have a copy of the tune (as well as a couple of other very interesting cuts from the album).

Formed in Ocala, Florida in the early 60s, the Royal Guardsmen released their first 45 ‘Baby Let’s Wait’(which had ‘Leaving Me’ on the flip) in 1966. That tune went nowhere at the time, but hit the Top 40 when it was reissued (with a different B-side) in 1968.

All of their biggest hits were Snoopy/red Baron-related, with ‘Snoopy vs the Red Baron’ (#2 in 1966), ‘The Return of the Red Baron’ (#15 in 1967) and ‘Snoopy’s Christmas’ (which hit #1 in 1968, #15 at Christmas 1968 and again at #11 during Christmas 1969!).

They broke up in 1969 after two albums, though their Wikipedia page says that a reformed band has been playing together for years, even recording a new Snoopy song, ‘Snoopy vs Osama’ (?!?!) in 2006.

I hope you dig the track, and I’ll be back next week with the latest installment of the Iron Leg Radio Show.

See you then.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

Listen/Download – Fabulous Thunder – Jealous of You

Greetings all.

I hope everyone is having a groovy New Year (so far) and that you all had a chance to pull down the ones and zeros on the Year In Review mix.

The tune I bring you today is a fantastic example of how sometimes things just kind of fall into your lap.

I’ve gone into the fact that my father-in-law has on many occasions grabbed stacks of records he comes across at garage and estate sales, once a stack so large that it consisted of many thousands of records that took me the better part of two years to really digest.

So, late last summer he and my mother-in-law were down visiting and he handed me a shopping bag full of unsleeved 45s.

Upon first look, it didn’t seem like much (mostly 70s Top 40 pop) but I’m always game to paw through a pile of records, so I said thank you and brought them home.

As is often the case, I didn’t really give them a close look until much later, at which time I pulled out maybe half a dozen interesting looking things and put them aside, not really digging into that pile for another month.

The big surprise in that bunch was the record I bring you today, the inclusion of which in this sack of wax was all but inexplicable.

I’ll always gravitate to 45s on unknown labels, especially ones with group names like  ‘Fabulous Thunder’.

I think I was expecting some kind of surf/hot rod instro action, so imagine my surprise when I drop the needle and discover not imitation Link Wray, but rather a slice of poppy, mid-60s folk rock.

How this got into a pile of Anne Murray and Starland Vocal Band 45s I do not know, but I sure am glad that it did.

That said, other than the fact that the Fabulous Thunder hailed from Florida, and that this record came out in 1966, I haven’t been able to turn anything up (other than the volume).

It may not be gut-crunching, fuzzed out punk, but as we’ve learned in this space before, not everything that came out in 1966 was.

I hope you dig it, and I’ll see you next week.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

Playlist

Unrelated Segments – Where You Gonna Go (Liberty)
Spats – She Done Moved (ABC)
Underdogs – Loves Gone Bad (VIP)
Pretty Things – Don’t Bring Me Down (Fontana)
Tweeds – We Got Time (Coral)
Bruce Johnston – Jersey Channel Islands Pt7 (Columbia)
Beverley – Where The Good Times Are (Deram)
The Gas Co – Your Time’s Up (Mirwood)
Thorinshield – Wrong My Friend (Philips)
PJ Proby – Don’t Forget About Me (Liberty)

Pt2

Chad and Jeremy – Rest In Peace (Columbia)
Don Agrati – Protoplasm Blues (Elektra)
Mama Cass – Talking To Your Toothbrush (Dunhill)
Grace Markay – Sally Go Round The Roses (Capitol)
Bobby Vee – The Passing of a Friend (Liberty)
Incredible String Band – No Sleep Blues (Elektra)
MFQ – If All You Think (WB)
Sonny Curtis – The Straight Life (Viva)
Marian Segal and Silver Jade – Amongst Anemones (DJM)
Peggy Lee – Is That All There Is (Capitol)

Listen/Download -ILDT37 – Iron Leg 2011 Year In Vintage Pop – 115MB/256kbps

Greetings all.

Welcome to the 231st annual Iron Leg Year In Vintage Pop.

Of course it hasn’t really been that long, but this being the intertubes and all there’s always the chance that some gullible soul will happen by and think they’ve stumbled on the first blog ever.

That said, what we have here is a cross section – as determined by the management – of the best stuff featured in this space during two thousand ought eleven.

What I’ve done, instead of stirring too vigorously, is allowed the vibes to separate as it were, with the heavy stuff up on top and the lighter, slightly deeper stuff resting on the bottom end.

It has been a very interesting year hereabouts, with me tracking down all kinds of groovy music that was new (at least to me), getting the rare chance to DJ Iron Leggy stuff out in the world and dealing with a serious “outside world” crisis that almost put the kibosh on the blog for the second time in two years.

Things seem to be rolling along nicely at the one-post-a-week pace, allowing me to keep my shit together outside the blog, and still get to post some cool stuff here as well.

Hopefully I’ll be able to keep it together for another year, or at least until Iron Leg celebrates it’s fifth anniversary this coming June.

So, I hope you have dug what I brought you this year, and continue to dig what comes up in the future.

Happy New Year to all, and I’ll see you all in 2012.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners

Bobby Vee

Listen/Download – Bobby Vee – The Passing of a Friend

Listen/Download – Bobby Vee – One

Greetings all.

Welcome to another week here at Iron Leg.

I hope you all had a chance to pull down the ones and zeros on Episode #8 of the Iron Leg Radio Show, and if you have not, that you take the opportunity to do so.

The tunes I bring you today are from an album I found a few months ago during an unexpected digging opportunity.

While I was certainly familiar with the early, big hits of Bobby Vee, like ‘Rubber Ball’ (1960) and ‘Take Good Care of My Baby’ (1961) with the latest thing I’d ever heard being 1967’s ‘Come Back When You Grow Up’.

I had no inkling that he’d done anything after that, assuming (incorrectly, of course) that he had gone out to pasture like any number of oldies acts, playing state fairs, revues and the like.

So, when I happened upon the album ‘Gates, Grills and Railing’, and took a look at the song titles I was suitably intrigued, forked over my three dollars and took it home.

Now, early-period rockers making a stab at late-period relevance is certainly nothing unusual.

Things evolved and styles changed so rapidly in the 1960s that anyone that didn’t keep up with the flow was often left behind, and many of them, whether out of record company hopes or simple self-preservation, tried to step back into the zeitgeist.

I haven’t been able to nail down the release date of ‘Gates Grills and Railings’, but it includes Vee’s 1968 single ‘(I’m Into Lookin’ For) Someone to Love Me’, so it’s a pretty safe bet that the LP came out around the same time.

What’s really groovy about this album, is that it shows that Vee was an artist with taste and imagination, and unlike so many others from the early 60s, really had something to offer a more mature and sophisticated listening audience.

The album features a variety of era-specific style points, but its finest moments arise when things edge up against baroque pop with just the tiniest hint of psychedelia.

The first track I bring you today is especially interesting because it was penned by a pre-Bread David Gates. ‘The Passing of a Friend’ is a fantastic bit of chamber folk, with moments that almost anticipate the sounds that Nick Drake would soon be working with.

The second cut is an interestingly arranged (by Artie Butler) cover of Harry Nilsson’s ‘One’. I’m always game for any Nilsson covers (more coming I assure you) and this one is especially nice.

While I wouldn’t go as far as to label ‘Gates Grills and Railings’ as some kind of a lost classic, I would say that it was unjustly ignored and certainly deserves reappraisal.

It has been reissued on CD paired with 1972’s ‘Nothing Like a Sunny Day’ which he recorded under his full name, Robert Thomas Velline.

I hope you dig the sounds and I’ll see you all next week.

Oh, and Merry Christmas!

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

Beep beep beep beep…..

Playlist

Hawkshaw/Mansfield – Action Scene (KPM)
Turtles – Outside Chance (White Whale)
Tommy Roe – Leave Her (ABC)
Van Dyke Parks – Vine Street / Palm Desert (Warner Brothers)
Van Dyke Parks – Music For the Ice Capades Pt1 (WB)
Van Dyke Parks – Music For the Ice Capades Pt2 (WB)
Van Dyke Parks – Music For the Ice Capades Pt3 (WB)
Zombies – Beechwood Park (Epic)
Who – Rael (Decca)
Mindbenders – Getting Harder All the Time (Fontana)
Cheetah Club Promo

Hour Glass – The Power of Love (Liberty)
Heather Black – She’s My Woman (Double Bayou)
Heather Black – Bill (the Black Militant) (Double Bayou)
Tygers – I Still Love Her (Teen Town)
Gary Lewis and the Playboys – Heart Full of Soul (Liberty)
The 10:15 – Joes Acclamation (Private Press)
Dave Van Ronk and the Hudson Dusters – Alley Oop (Verve)
Dave Van Ronk and the Hudson Dusters – Head Inspector (Verve)
Dave Van Ronk and the Hudson Dusters – Chelsea Morning (Verve)
Nobody’s Children – I Can’t Let Go (Bullet) Maryland
Rolling Stones – Rice Krispies Commercial

Small Faces – Tin Soldier (Immediate)
Small Faces – All or Nothing (RCA)
Unchained Mynds – Going Back To Miami (Buddah)
Walker Brothers – Hurting Each Other (Philips)
Scott Walker – Mrs Murphy (Philips)
Marian Segal and Silver Jade – Amongst Anemones (DJM)
Marian Segal and Silver Jade – Fly On Strangewings (DJM)
Bob Seger and the last Heard – Sock It To me Santa (Cameo)
Hals Record Shop Commercial

Listen/Download -Iron Leg Radio Show Episode 8 – 155MB/256kbps

Greetings all.

Welcome to Episode #8 of the Iron Leg Radio Show, your home for all things vintage pop.

We’ve got some very cool stuff for you this month, including some rare, early Van Dyke Parks, wherein he wrestles with a Moog, pages from an unheard chapter in the history of Dave Van Ronk, a lost bit of groovy acoustic guitar from a very odd source, vintage garage and pop 45s and exactly one Christmas record.

I hope you dig the sounds, and if you haven’t picked up on any of the previous seven episodes, get your download on and luxuriate in the wonderfulness.

See you next Monday.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners

The Hour Glass

Listen/Download – The Hour Glass – The Power of Love

Greetings all.

I hope the new week finds you all well.

The tune I bring you today is something I picked up recently, and while I have been a fan of the band in question for a long time, their vinyl output has eluded me until recently.

I should start by saying that of all the stereotypically classic rock of my youth, much of which has (rightfully) fallen by the wayside, the music of the Allman Brothers has remained in favor.

They are, much like the Grateful Dead, unfairly lumped in with a lot of bands that look the way they do, with little regard for how they actually sound.

This probably has a lot to do with the bare-chested, greasy haired fan base, many of them wrapped carelessly in little more than tattered Confederate flags, which is truth be told more an accident of geographical proximity than anything else.

It’s a wonder how many hillbillys forget that the Allman Brothers Band was integrated, not to mention that fact that for all of the so-called jazzy improvisers of the late 60s and early 70s, few of them did it as well as they did.

Sure, they have hung on tie-dyed life support long since they should have, but that shouldn’t diminish their early greatness, which brings me around to the band that I being you today, the Hour Glass, which is as early and great as the brothers Allman (specifically Gregg and Duane, i.e. brothers in actuality) get.

Formed in the mid-60s from the ashes of the ill-named Allman Joys (like the candy bar, dig?), the Hour Glass were far less jazzy (and jammy) that the Allman Brothers Band would become, and much more a fusion of blue-eyed soul and 60s pop.

They emigrated to Californ-y where they hooked up with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band/Liberty Records axis, which is where they found stellar material like the Jackson Browne-penned ‘Cast Off All My Fears’.

The tune I bring you today ‘The Power of Love’ is from the band’s second album (which also bore that title). Written by the legendary Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham, the song is a great showcase for Gregg Allman’s always wonderful voice, and manages to encapsulate all that was good about the Hour Glass into just over two and a half minutes of sweet, vaguely psyched out soul.

Both of the Hour Glass albums have been reissued on CD with copious bonus material, and are definitely worth hearing.

I hope you dig the tune, and I’ll see you all next week.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

The Tweeds, Dave Constantino front and center.

Listen/Download – The Tweeds – We Got Time

Greetings all, and welcome to another ride on the good ship Iron Leg.

The tune I bring you today is a little something I discovered while traipsing around the intertubes looking for wax.

I had gotten an e-mail about an auction filled with 60s garage and psyche, so I wandered over and started checking out the goods.

There were a bunch of things I knew and/or had, a couple of choice rarities that I couldn’t afford, and a few goodies that I didn’t know (which is always a good thing).

When auction day came down, I was outbid on a few records, but I decided that ‘We Got Time’ by the Tweeds was the one I liked the best, so I dug in and got it for next to nothing, which brings me to an odd little detour.

As it turns out, while researching the band I discovered that I had seen a member of the Tweeds play on stage once, long ago, in a very odd setting indeed.

Back in the day, following my high school, longhair quest for Zeppelitude, I dabbled a bit here and there in what was once known as heavy metal, in its greasy, pre-hairspray and makeup days.

It was during an excursion to hear same (I think the main attraction that night might have been the Joe Perry Project) in a club once dubbed ‘The Rock Capitol of Brooklyn’ (what?!?) that I saw a very interesting opening band by the name of Talas.

What I remember from that night, about Talas specifically, was the fact that their bass player was an absolute demon, squeezing all manner of Hendrixian sounds out of his four strings and a huge bank of rack mounted computer-type boxes behind him.

That cat was Billy Sheehan, who would shortly leave Talas to take on the bass duties in David Lee Roth’s post-Halen band.

However, the member of Talas that ties this all together was their lead guitarist, Dave Constantino, who happened to have gotten his start in a Buffalo, NY band by the name of The Tweeds.

Yes, these Tweeds.

The Tweeds were formed in the mid-60s in Buffalo, when Dave Constantino was somewhere in the area of 13 years old! They recorded a couple of very tasty 45s, including today’s killer ‘We Got Time’.

‘We Got Time’ is a rock solid garage stomper with a UK flair and a very tasty guitar solo by young Master Constantino that sounds like it was played by someone twice his age.

Constantino and Tweeds drummer Paul Varga would hook up with Billy Sheehan in the early 70s, and went on to regional and briefly national success.

Following Sheehan’s departure, Constantino reformed the Tweeds for a time, with Talas reuniting further on down the line.

I hope you dig the track, and I’ll see you all next week.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.

Tony Roman and Nanette Workman

Listen/Download – Tony Roman and Nanette Workman – Hey Joe

Greetings all.

I hope the new week finds you all well.

Things in our part of the world are still tense and emotionally trying, but progress (no matter how incremental) is being made, so we can dig that.

I hope all of you had a chance to listen to the latest edition of the Iron Leg Radio Show, and if you haven’t, get thee to the archive and pull down the ones and zeros.

The tune I bring you today is something I picked up recently on something between a whim and an educated guess, and got lucky (as you shall soon hear).

Though I’ve only featured one example of it previously, I am fascinated, and simultaneously clueless about Quebecois rock of the 60s.

I’d say that it has something to do with the language barrier (much of it being en francais) but so is Dutronc and all of his Gallic amis, and that doesn’t stop les collecteurs.

I can say that there was a fairly significant (for a single Canadian province) scene, but what I have seen is mostly in reissue.

That said, I had an in of sorts with today’s selection because I already had a 45 by Nanette Workman in my funk crates, a particularly tasty cover of Labelle’s ‘Lady Marmalade’.

Workman is an American who worked for a while on Broadway, then emigrated to Canada in the 60s after meeting Tony Roman (already a star in his native country).

She and Roman recorded a number of 45s and at least one album in a Sonny and Cher style (see here) before Workman moved yet again, this time to the UK where she recorded backing vocals on the Stones ‘Let It Bleed’ as well as her own records.

‘Hey Joe’ was recorded for the duo’s 1968 LP ‘Fleurs D’Amour, Fleurs D’Amitie’, and is a very cool, moody, vaguely punky interpretation of the classic.

It starts out with a drum break (?!?) , with Workman and Roman trading lines.

It’s a cool take on the oft recorded folk punk chestnut, and I thought you might like to hear it.

I hope you dig it, and I’ll be back next week.

Peace

Larry

PS Head over to Funky16Corners for some soul.