Monthly Archives: April 2016

Birthdays, Music et al, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Guitarist Miller Anderson

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Guitarist Miller Anderson

Guitarist Miller Anderson

April 12, 1945

Miller Anderson Band, “Just To Cry” 2008

Guitarist Miller Anderson

Bumpless festival for some

The Woodstock Music and Art Fair is famous for it’s amazing line up.  Of course, some of that line up was famous before they got to Woodstock. Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Jimi Hendrix, and Jefferson Airplane fall into that category.

Some became famous because of the event. Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, and Ten Years After are a few.

Some were not known and got no Woodstock bump because neither the record nor the movie included them.

Miller Anderson unfortunately falls into both latter troughs. Miller was the guitarist for the Keef Hartley Band. Quite a guitarist. And Miller continues to play quite a guitar.

Guitarist Miller Anderson

Previously

He and Ian Hunter worked together before even a whiff of Fame wafted their way.

As Craig Harris writes at the All Music site: Since cutting his musical teeth in bands with Ian Hunter (pre-Mott the Hoople) and Bill Bruford (pre-King Crimson and Yes), Anderson has been a member of such bands as the Keef Hartley Band, Savoy Brown, T. Rex, Mountain, the Spencer Davis Group, and in groups led by Deep Purple’s Jon Lord and folk-rock balladeer Donovan.

In 1968, Miller Anderson joined the Keef Hartley Band. Miller was with the band when they played Woodstock and was with them for five albums before going solo.

Miller Anderson has a wonderful retelling of his Woodstock experience:

Guitarist Miller Anderson

Through the Mill

In addition to his solo projects (which he continues to do with his Miller Anderson Band) since Keef Hartley he’s worked with with many many more.

When asked which of his recordings he likes the most, Anderson replied, “I usually do not listen to anything I have recorded. When I play my songs live, I like to make them a little bit different each gig. I helps to keep me and the band, and I hope the audience, interested each night . You have to take chances with music!”

In 2016 he released his Through the Mill album:

Thank you Miller Anderson

…and happy birthday

Get out and see his band the next time he’s nearby.

Bob Dylan, Music et al, Music of the 60s

Byrds Mr Tambourine Man

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Byrds Mr Tambourine Man

It was 1965. Bob Dylan had gone electric, had just brought it all back home, and he weren’t gonna’ work on Maggie’s farm no more.

The Beatles had crawled off to sleep in the bath were ready for new horizons, too. By the end of 1965 they would release the Dylan-influenced Rubber Soul, an album that would inspire more musical changes that blossomed into such things as Brian Wilson’s Pet Sounds.

April 12, 1965

But on April 12, 1965 the Byrds released the single, Mr Tambourine Man. The song had appeared on Dylan’s Bringing It… album. The first cut on side two.

Byrds Mr Tambourine Man
45 of record

The Bringing It… album cover is the one with Dylan sitting in what appeared to be a someone’s living room surrounded by lots of items for fans to stare at and discuss. It also had a long-legged woman lounging red-dressed. Cigarette in hand. Sally Grossman, the wife of Dylan’s manager Albert Grossman.

Byrds Mr Tambourine Man

The living room was the second home of Albert and Sally. The place in a little artsy town in Ulster County, NY called Woodstock. In four years a couple of hippies would hatch the idea for a recording studio there. That’s another story for another time.

Byrds Mr Tambourine Man

Wrecking Crew

The Byrds had recorded Mr Tambourine Man on January 20, 1965 at Columbia Studios in Hollywood. Like many LA bands, the musicianship was not as strong as the session men available and Roger McGuinn was the only Byrd to actually play on that recording.  The players had the nickname of the Wrecking Crew and included including Hal Blaine (drums), Larry Knechtel (bass), Jerry Cole (guitar), and Leon Russell (electric piano). Roger McGuinn, David Crosby and Gene Clark sang. 

Byrds Mr Tambourine Man

Folk Rock

Columbia Records released the “Mr. Tambourine Man” single on April 12, 1965 and on June 26 it became Billboard’s #1 song. McGuinn’s jangly electric 12-string Rickenbacker guitar was part of the song’s hook and formed the Byrds’ trademark sound.

Folk-rock had been born thanks to Bob Dylan and the Byrds.

Music et al, Music of the 60s, Peace Love Art and Activism

Pan American Buffalo Springfield

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Pan American Buffalo Springfield

April 11, 1966
Pan American Buffalo Springfield
Buffalo Springfield (photo from https://rockhallows.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/the-troubadour/) Top L – R: Stephen Stills, Bruce Palmer, and Rich Fury. Bottom L – R: Neil Young and Dewey Martin.

Used to play
in a rock ‘n’ roll band,
But they broke up.
We were young and we were wild,
It ate us up.♥

Neil Young, Buffalo Springfield Again

Singular Comet

Some bands are like comets. They streak brightly but briefly across our musical horizon, leaving behind great memories.

On April 11, 1966, the short-lived Buffalo Springfield made their live debut at The Troubadour in Hollywood, California.

They would release three albums:

  • Buffalo Springfield (1966)
  • Buffalo Springfield Again (1967)
  • Last Time Around (1968)

And then they were gone.

Pan American Buffalo Springfield

Beginnings

The first incarnation of the Buffalo Springfield was an international mix: Richie Furay (Ohio) (vocals, guitar), Dewey Martin (Texas) (drums); Bruce Palmer (Ontario) (bass); Stephen Stills (Texas) (vocals, guitar); and Neil Young  (Manitoba) (vocals, guitar)

Stills had first met Neil Young in Canada while Stills was touring there. Bruce Palmer was also from Canada and met Young there. Richie Fury and Stills met in Los Angeles. And when the four of them formed a band they added Dewey Martin.

Their first single was “Go and Say Goodbye” with “Nowadays Clancy Can’t Even Sing” as the B-side, but radio DJs preferred Clancy and that became the minor hit on the west coast.

Pan American Buffalo Springfield

Nowadays Clancy…

All Music describes Clancy, written by Neil Young, as “a kaleidoscope of emotions and feelings of rejection and alienation that touches nerves in anyone who listens. Young has written 100 other songs that are probably “better” than this, but he’s never written anything else quite like it.”

Clancy was the first song I heard by Springfield. I fell in love with it, but it haunted me because I didn’t even know who it was or the title. When WOR-FM first changed to a rock format they had DJ contract issues and it simply played songs unannounced.

Two years later when I went away to college and had to leave my girlfriend behind, I left her a note to open when she got home from leaving me at the airport. It simply read “I miss you now,” a line I’d borrowed from the Springfield’s “On the Way Home.“

Pan American Buffalo Springfield

Buffalo Springfield departs

Despite its great music, the members often had poor chemistry. The government deported Bruce Palmer for drug possession. Neil Young left for artistic issues. Fill-in members came and went.

The band played its last gig at the Long Beach Arena on May 5, 1968. They played with Country Joe & Fish, Canned Heat, Smokestack Lightnin’,  and The Hook.

Pan American Buffalo Springfield

Buffalo Springfield branches out

Of course members went on to great things. Stephen Still to Crosby, Stills, and Nash (and occasionally Young). Neil Young to a still successful solo career with nearly as many variations as David Bowie. Furay and Jim Messina (a late Springfield member) were founding members of Poco.

Furay later joined J.D. Souther and Chris Hillman to form the Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, and Messina teamed with Kenny Loggins in Loggins & Messina.

In other words, the Buffalo Springfield members have  made a lot of great music beside what they first offered.

On  May 6, 1997, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted them in the first ceremony held at the Rock and Roll Museum in Cleveland.

On November 24, 2010, the Buffalo Springfield got back together at the Bridge School Benefit Concert 2010. Original members Neil Young, Richie Furay, and Steven Stills with Rick Rosas on bass and Joe Vitale on drums