Friday, September 26, 2014
Thursday, September 25, 2014
betty harris - there's a break in the road (1969)
PHENOMENAL!
...it was produced by Allen Toussaint & Marshall Sehorn, but the backing band is The Meters, who Aaron Neville was a part off. They were the backing band for a lot of acts from New Orleans in the late 60s / early 70s such as Lee Dorsey, Aaron Neville, Betty Wright, Dr John...
margie mills & the executives - "knock on any door" (1963)
Originally released on the microscopic Pick Hit label. Writer/producers Joe Hooven & Hal Winn would later form Double Shot records and strike gold with The Count Five & Brenton Wood.
the theme of the day is '60s pop songs with something a little... off about them! the call-and-response (creating a "knock" effect), the loopy flute, and the slightly off-key organ catapult this tiny single into my heart.
del shannon - keep searchin
dunno if this is true or complete urban legend / wiki wankery, but i was just reading about terrence malick's "badlands," which led me to the story that inspired the movie, the starkweather-fugate murder spree of 1958... and when i was looking at the pop culture bits inspired by *that* story (and there are many of them!), i saw this:
The Del Shannon song "Keep Searchin' (We'll Follow The Sun)" was a fictional love-letter written from Charles Starkeather and is based on testimony from his trial.
which made me go "whoa," because, compared to the other things inspired by a murder spree: yeah, i'd expect a bruce springsteen song, some assorted metal songs, but a del shannon song?!
which brought me back around to his original hit, "runaway":
which isn't quite as straight and narrow a tune as i remembered!
both of these tracks have the usual '60s pop stuff going on, but with a touch of something else that distinguishes them. "runaway" is distinctly 1961, with one foot in the bubbly sock hop numbers of the 1950s and the other foot toeing the line of garage psych rock flourishes. "keep searchin" sounds more like 1964 -- more "hello, we're in the midst of the '60s" -- but with some wailing in the pre- and post- chorus bits (especially in the outro)... which brings to mind a wide nebraskan field of dirt, with a single highway stretching through its middle, and a man trekking for miles.
which brings me back to malick's "badlands"!