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Music et al, Music of the 60s, Woodstock Music and Art Fair

Canned Heat release Canned Heat

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Canned Heat release Canned Heat

July 1967

Canned Heat release Canned Heat

Canned Heat release Canned Heat

Canned Heat released

I have done other blogs on the members of Canned Heat who were at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair on their birthdates. If you’d like to read about  Alan Wilson, Bob Bear Hite, Harvey Mandel, Larry Mole Taylor, or Adolfo de la Parra, please click on their name/link.

Canned Heat release Canned Heat

The album Canned Heat

The band released Canned Heat the album in July 1967, shortly after their appearance at the Monterey International Pop Festival. The personnel on the album differs slightly from the band that appeared at Woodstock.

In 1966, the band had recorded another album, but their label did not release it. In 1970, Janus Records released that album as Vintage Heat.

On the 1969 album, Henry Vestine is the lead guitarist. He will be that until August 1969 when Mandel replaced him. The band’s drummer at the time was Frank Cook and his time with the band was even shorter than Vestine’s. de la Parra replace Cook shortly after the album’s release.

Canned Heat release Canned Heat

Tracks

The members of the band loved the blues as their name, a nickname for the poisonous but alcohol-based Sterno, implies.  Old bluesman Tommy Johnson had a song in 1928 called “Canned Heat Blues.” It told he sad story of an alcoholic desperately drinking Sterno, nicknamed “canned heat.” Here’s the opening track of their first album…a song that Johnny Winter also loved to cover.

Side one

  1. “Rollin’ and Tumblin'” (Muddy Waters, Hambone Willie Newbern) 
  2. “Bullfrog Blues” (Canned Heat) 
  3. “Evil Is Going On” (Willie Dixon)
  4. “Goin’ Down Slow” (James Oden) 
  5. “Catfish Blues” (Robert Petway) 

Side two

  1. “Dust My Broom” (Robert Johnson, Elmore James)
  2. “Help Me” (Sonny Boy Williamson II) 
  3. “Big Road Blues” (Tommy Johnson) 
  4. “The Story of My Life” (Guitar Slim)
  5. “The Road Song” (Floyd Jones)
  6. “Rich Woman” (Dorothy LaBostrie, McKinley Millet) 

As you can see, all but one of the tracks was a cover and from a variety of writers.

Canned Heat release Canned Heat

The Blues

For the typical suburban white teenage baby boomer, of whom there were thousands, discovering Canned Heat might have been cause for an epiphany. Such music was not heard on AM Top Ten formats. This music luckily found a place on the playlists of the emerging so-called “underground” FM rock stations that allowed their DJs the freedom to play more styles than typically heard. (All Music review)

Canned Heat release Canned Heat

Future Heat…

Where the band went following this first worthwhile effort is a story that sounds like many other band stories. Personnel changes. Substance abuse. Premature deaths. Reunions with surviving members.

Nowadays only de la Parra is the only original member in the group who are:

  • Adolfo “Fito” de la Parra — drums, vocals (1967–present)
  • John Paulus — guitar (2000–2006, 2013, 2014–present)
  • Dale Wesley Spalding — guitar, harmonica, bass, vocals (2008–present)
  • Rick Reed — bass (2019–present)
  • Jimmy Vivino – Lead Guitar (2019 to Present)

See them soon!

Canned Heat release Canned Heat

Jazz, Music et al

Miles Davis Sketches Spain

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Miles Davis Sketches Spain

Released July 18, 1960

Miles Davis Sketches of Spain

Miles Davis Sketches Spain

Third Stream

It was not new for jazz artists to take a classical composition and adapt it to their style. Third Stream was a description of such an adaptation in that it was a fusion of jazz, classical European, and world music.

In Sketches of Spain Miles Davis used some of Joaquin Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez (1939) as well as a song called “Will o’ the Wisp”, from Manuel de Falla’s ballet El amor brujo.

George Kanzler described Sketches of Spain as, “…the least jazzy album they [Davis and Gil Evans] made. Suffused with the melancholic, repressed passion of flamenco and shimmering with the brooding modal minimalism of that music, Sketches of Spain is a triumph of moody impressionism.”

1960

Popular music and 10-year-old Baby Boomers were still four years away from Beatlemania and the British Invasion with its reinterpretation of American pop. And popular music was five years away from the touchstone year of 1965 when Bob Dylan went electric, the Beatles went Rubber Soul, and Brian Wilson decided to Pet Sounds.

Jazz

Miles Davis Sketches Spain

Jazz musicians had often been more willing to push the limits of their style. In 1960 John Coltrane released Giant Steps, an album whose tracks continue to inspire today’s  saxophonists. Wes Montgomery did the same for guitar with The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery.

Charles Mingus

That same year, bassist Charles Mingus released Blues and Roots. In the album’s liner notes, Mingus wrote, “This record is unusual—it presents only one part of my musical world, the blues. A year ago, Nesuhi Ertegün suggested that I record an entire blues album in the style of Haitian Fight Song (in Atlantic LP 1260), because some people, particularly critics, were saying I didn’t swing enough. He wanted to give them a barrage of soul music: churchy, blues, swinging, earthy. I thought it over. I was born swinging and clapped my hands in church as a little boy, but I’ve grown up and I like to do things other than just swing. But blues can do more than just swing. So I agreed.”

Miles Davis Sketches Spain
Sketches of Spain

All Music has a wonderful review. Each of reviewer Thom Jurek’s sentences seems to top the previous one in its praise for each track.

While the Beatles were still crafting their skills and trying to decide what name they should stick with, Miles Davis was creating some of the most classic music ever recorded.

Miles Davis Sketches Spain
Music et al, Music of the 60s

Jimi Hendrix Quits Monkee Tour

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Jimi Hendrix Quits Monkee Tour

July 17, 1967

Jimi Hendrix Quits Monkee Tour

Jimi Hendrix Quits Monkee Tour

Everyone Loves Hendrix?

Young visitors to the Museum at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts (where Woodstock was, not where Woodstock is), often bemoan the fact that they weren’t born for that famous festival. That they would have done anything to attend.

I don’t disagree with their wish, but I will point out that despite his fame today, Jimi Hendrix was not beloved by every young person when he initially appeared on the American scene.

Hendrix first became famous, at least in a small corner of America, at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967 when the next day’s headlines read: Hendrix Sets Monterey Afire.

Jimi Hendrix Quits Monkee Tour

Of course the Monkees

To say that the Monkees were very popular in 1967 is an understatement. The Colgems label had released their debut album, The Monkees, on October 10, 1966. It became Billboard’s #1 album on November 12. It remained there  until February 10, 1967! 124 days. What replaced it? Their second album, More of the Monkees, which remained the number one album until June 16…126 more days! Those numbers exceed the Beatles’ opening days in 1964.

Mike Jeffery was Hendrix’s manager and wanted to capitalize on that popularity with his emerging star. How better to do that than hitch Hendrix onto Comet Monkees?

While the Monkees may have been an assembled act whose members were actors more than musicians, that didn’t mean those members didn’t like music. Micky Dolenz, the Monkees’ drummer, had first heard about Jimi Hendrix and seen him in the Village before Hendrix even went to the UK under the aegis of Animal bassist Chas Chandler.

Jimi Hendrix Quits Monkee Tour

The idea is hatched

Dolenz and fellow Monkee Peter Tork saw Hendrix at Monterey. Tork wasn’t impressed…

…but Dolenz was and he recommended the two groups get together on the Monkees upcoming  28-city tour.

Jimi Hendrix Quits Monkee Tour

Quit

It didn’t go well because, as I’ve said, not every young person in 1967 was ready for or wanted to experience Jimi Hendrix. Had the Jefferson Airplane, the Who, or Joan Baez opened for the Monkees, the results would have been the same: kids repeatedly yelling “We want the Monkees!”

Hendrix’s presence thrilled the Monkees, but eight shows into the tour, Hendrix left.

Obviously the Experience didn’t make the date announced in the above radio spot.

Jimi Hendrix Quits Monkee Tour