Pleasin’; Boll Weevil Holler; Hori Horo; Bad Girl; Lord Greggory; Grooveyard; Dearest Dear
Running time: 44.16
Current CD: Fledgling FLED3052
Further listening: The Graham album Folk, Blues And Beyond (1964) took folk guitar deeper into alien worlds of modern jazz, blues, Indian and even Arabic music. Further examples can be heard on the excellent compilation Fire In The Soul (1970).
Further reading: www.daveygraham.org; www.shirleycollins.co.uk
Download: Not currently legally available
Graham was always one of the British folk scene’s maverick characters. While he was instantly lumped in with the scene because he played an acoustic guitar and worked London’s Soho club circuit – so fashionable in the early ’60s – he was forever in search of a broader canvas. A compulsive traveller and an avid musical adventurer (perhaps because his father came from the Isle of Skye and taught Gaelic and his mother hailed from Guyana), he was heavily into blues, modern jazz, Indian and Arabic music, playing it all on the guitar while barely out of his teens.
It was Shirley Collins’s former husband Austin John Marshall who suggested that his inventive interpretations of Indian ragas might provide an intriguing accompaniment for one of Shirley’s traditional tunes, Pretty Saro. Graham, it transpired, was a big Collins fan (he also loved Robert Johnson, Charlie Parker, Mary Wells and Rimsky-Korsakov) and joined her onstage at a concert at London’s Mercury Theatre in July 1964. The audience may have been baffled, but the results were extraordinary enough for the pairing to dive into the studio at the first opportunity. Many purist British folkies were appalled, but after a 2,000-mile journey trekking through the southern states of America collecting blues, gospel, jazz and folk songs with Alan Lomax, Shirley’s ears were nothing if not open to different musical styles, and she threw herself into the project with a relish that startled many.
The fusion, light years ahead of its time, didn’t sell particularly well but was massively influential, opening the way for other inventive guitarists such as John Martyn. Even now, in a time when world music is only a high street store away, the otherworldly settings of traditional warhorses like Nottamun Town, Love Is Pleasin’ and Reynardine still sound extraordinary.
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones
British beat moves up a gear; Jagger wanted to make this LP ‘the best ever by a British group’.
Record label: Decca
Produced: Andrew Loog Oldham
Recorded: Regent Sound Studio; January 3–February 25, 1964
Released: April 17, 1964 (UK) May 30, 1964 (US)
Chart peaks: 1 (UK) 11 (US)
Personnel: Mick Jagger (v); Keith Richard (g); Brian Jones (g, v); Bill Wyman (b, v); Ian Stewart (k); Charlie Watts (d); Gene Pitney (p on Little By Little); Phil Spector (maracas on Little By Little)
Track listing: May–Route 66; I Just Want To Make Love To You; Honest I Do; Mona (S/UK); Now I’ve Got A Witness; Little By Little; I’m A King Bee; Carol; Tell Me (S/US); Can I Get A Witness; You Can Make It If You Try; Walking The Dog; Not Fade Away (S/US)
Running time: 30.48 (US) 33.24 (UK)
Current CD: Decca 8823162 – not available on CD in original form, current CD replicates US release England’s Newest Hitmakers: The Rolling Stones
Further listening: Rolling Stones #2 (1964); Boxed Set Singles 1963–69 (1980)
Further reading: Stoned (Andrew Loog Oldham, 2000); www.rollingstones.com
Download: iTunes
The time manager Andrew Loog Oldham walked in on Keith Richards revising Buddy Holly’s Not Fade Away was the day he knew his Stones could write as well as roll; the time he locked Mick and Keith in the kitchen and wouldn’t let them out until they’d finished a song was the night that they realised it too. And the January 1964 sessions which produced the Stones’ debut album told the world that they weren’t going to be a blues band forever. Stylistically, of course, The Rolling Stones is little more than a verbatim recounting of the band’s live set of the period – Bobby Troup, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, American soul and R&B. One dramatic Jagger/Richard ballad, Tell Me, joined a couple of pseudonymous efforts which disguised the team’s own early bashfulness – the instrumental Now I’ve Got A Witness, dedicated to Phil Spector and Gene Pitney (and rewriting the stage staple Everybody Needs Somebody To Love), and Little By Little, co-starring both, and co-written with Spector. On paper, the album is the sound of British beat 1964, pure and simple. It was what was done with the beat that mattered, though. Engineer Bill Farley recalls, ‘When they arrived, no one had any thought about arrangements. They just busked it until they got the feeling of the number,’ and that is what made the Stones as musicians, and Oldham as producer, so special.
The Rolling Stones emerged with a freshness and vitality which belied the rigidity of its repertoire and the sterility of the studio. There was no overdubbing, no gimmickry, no prima donna virtuosity. They played, they taped, they jammed, they relaxed, and when it felt right to everyone, it was finished.
Making a record, Oldham confirms, is not a craft, it’s an art. ‘It’s not something you know, it’s something you feel, in your heart, in your gut, in every fibre of your instinct.’ The Rolling Stones is all heart, gut and instinct.
Dusty Springfield
A Girl Called Dusty
The debut album, recorded only months after the split of The Springfields.
Record label: Mercury (UK) Phillips (US)
Produced: John Franz
Recorded: 1964
Released: April 1964
Chart peaks: 6 (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Dusty Springfield (v); Ivor Raymonde (ar); The Breakaways (bv)
Track listing: Mama Said; You Don’t Own Me; Do Re Mi; When The Lovelight Starts Shining Thru His Eyes; My Colouring Book; Mockingbird; Twenty-Four Hours From Tulsa; Nothing; Anyone Who Had A Heart; Will You Love Me Tomorrow?; Wishin’ And Hopin’; Don’t You Know
Running time: 56.33
Current CD: Mercury 534520-2 adds: I Only Want To Be With You (remix); He’s Got Something; Every Day I Have To Cry; Can I Get A Witness; All Cried Out; I Wish I’d Never Loved You; Once Upon A Time; Summer Is Over
Further listening: The Dusty Springfield Collection (1998)
Further reading: Dancing With Demons: The Authorised Biography Of Dusty Springfield (Penny Valentine, 2001); www.dustyspringfield.co.uk
Download: iTunes
Very few British pop albums from 1964 were built to last: pop was still a singles form, and long-players seemed like little more than a couple of hits and ten other tracks. Dusty Springfield’s debut was an amazing exception, though it followed the already familiar path of including covers of contemporary hits. Springfield created an album that bore almost no resemblance to the style she’d found success with as one of The Springfields, who’d played their farewell concert only six months before this album’s release. She had already had a solo hit with I Only Want To Be With You – the first record ever to be played on Top Of The Pops –