Savoy Brown - Raw Sienna 1970

This high-water mark by the band finds them softening their rougher edges and stretching out into jazz territory, yet still retaining a blues foundation. There's not a bad cut here, with enough variety (bottleneck slide, acoustic guitar, horns, and strings) to warrant frequent late-night listenings. "A Hard Way to Go," "Needle and Spoon," and "Stay While the Night Is Young" are especially strong, as are two instrumental numbers. Unfortunately, leader Kim Simmonds lost his greatest asset when vocalist Chris Youlden quit for an ill-fated solo career after this recording. Youlden had one of the most distinctive voices in British blues, and Savoy would never fully recover from his exit. AMG.

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Tim Curry - Read My Lips 1978

On "Sloe Gin," Tim Curry sounds like John Cale playing Lou Reed. That Reed guitarist Dick Wagner and producer Bob Ezrin are involved in Read My Lips, the solo debut from the star of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, should come as no surprise. Wagner's tastefully brilliant guitar on "Sloe Gin" underscores the melancholy vocal, and these journeymen are the perfect crew to work on this "film for the ear" sequel. Dick Wagner sounds very much like Nils Lofgren here, and Lofgren shows up playing accordion. It's a big cast and a big sound, but Bob Ezrin refines it all, keeping the large musical presence as subtle as possible. Perhaps the best compliment one can give this record is that it is almost back to Berlin, the brilliant Lou Reed recording, this time put in a commercial setting. Curry mutates from Cale to Mitch Ryder with his shouting in "Harlem on My Mind," then he mutates midsong to some '30s crooner. Since Berlin (the album, not songwriter Irving Berlin, who composed "Harlem") was the aforementioned film for the ear, it makes sense that some of the crew involved with that epic disc would do another such endeavor when the cat who performed in the ultimate cult film had an album to cut. The sheer drama of "Anyone Who Had a Heart" is the album's zenith, highlight, and treasure. It is so good it takes away from the beauty of the rest of the disc. It's Dr. Frank N. Furter dancing a waltz with Dionne Warwick trapped on the psychic network. It is brilliant. The Regimental Pipers and Drums of the Forty-Eighth Highlanders of Canada are superb, blending their marching-band sounds with Curry's unique voice -- halfway to Alice Cooper but detouring to Robert Goulet's house. This isn't Brian Eno's Portsmouth Sinfonia, nor is it Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk"; this is a mini-epic which should have at the very least appealed to the myriad fans of Berlin and at most sold millions of discs. A reggae version of Lennon/McCartney's "I Will"? It is reverent and works better than Lou Christie running through "If I Fell," to give just one Beatles cover comparison. As an interpreter, Curry is marvelous; he relishes this role as he did Rocky Horror. Roy Wood's "Brontosaurus" might be an oddity, but so is covering Joni Mitchell's "All I Want" or stretching Irving Berlin's "Harlem on My Mind." It's an amazing cast of rock & roll characters who come to the party: Lee Michaels on keyboards, Allan Schwartzberg on drums, and a record that should have been put on video. It works so much better than Bob Ezrin's Kiss venture, Music From "The Elder", and only goes to show that Lou Reed taught them well. Irving Berlin on the sequel to Berlin --- now that's very Lou Reed, and a very clever tip to the master. AMG.

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Sorry Bamba - Du Mali (Songhoi) 1977

A pivotal figure in the history of Malian music, Sorry Bamba was a popular and influential musician whose work bridged the gap between Mali's cultural traditions and the new freedoms of the post-colonial era. Bamba was born in 1938 in Mopti, a city crossed by the Niger and Bani rivers and known for its cultural diversity. Bamba's father was a distinguished veteran of Emperor Samory Touré's military and a nobleman in Malian society; however, this meant young Bamba was forbidden to make music, as under the nation's caste system, music was an art form reserved for the Griots. However, the death of Bamba's parents when he was ten threw his life into chaos, and he found solace in music, initially teaching himself to play a simple six-holed flute. In his teens, he developed a taste for a rich variety of music -- traditional Malian music, highlife from Ghana, local accordion master Toumani Touré, Corsican vocalist Tino Rossi, and Luis Mariano, a singer from Spain's Basque Country -- who would influence his later work. In 1957, Bamba formed his first band, Group Goumbé, named for a dance style then popular along the Ivory Coast; the band featured Bamba on trumpet, an instrument he was still teaching himself to play, and a handful of percussionists. Group Goumbé developed a loyal youth following through aggressive self-promotion, and after Mali gained its independence from France, Bamba and his group benefited from a new openness toward local music on the state-run radio network Radio Mali. Group Goumbé evolved into a more sophisticated ensemble, Bani Jazz, whose ambitious music was married to lyrics influenced by folk tales of the Dogon people. As Mali established nation-wide Youth Week competitions to give music and dance troupes an opportunity to show their talents, Bani Jazz and Bamba's later ensemble, the Kanaga Orchestra, won three biennial trophies as Mali's best band (in 1976, 1978, and 1980), and their fusion of Latin jazz, Western R&B and funk, and traditional Malian styles made them a favorite across the nation. Bamba was also the director of a dance troupe in Mopti as well as a second group strictly devoted to traditional music. As Mali's national support of music fell to the wayside, Bamba relocated to Paris in the '90s, where he continued to write and record music, releasing Sigui in 1994 and Dogon Blues in 2010. In 2011, the American independent label Thrill Jockey Records released 1970-1979: Vol. 1, a collection of classic recordings from Bamba's back catalog compiled with the participation of the artist himself. AMG.

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Bob Dylan - John Wesley Harding 1967

Bob Dylan returned from exile with John Wesley Harding, a quiet, country-tinged album that split dramatically from his previous three. A calm, reflective album, John Wesley Harding strips away all of the wilder tendencies of Dylan's rock albums -- even the then-unreleased Basement Tapes he made the previous year -- but it isn't a return to his folk roots. If anything, the album is his first serious foray into country, but only a handful of songs, such as "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight," are straight country songs. Instead, John Wesley Harding is informed by the rustic sound of country, as well as many rural myths, with seemingly simple songs like "All Along the Watchtower," "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine," and "The Wicked Messenger" revealing several layers of meaning with repeated plays. Although the lyrics are somewhat enigmatic, the music is simple, direct, and melodic, providing a touchstone for the country-rock revolution that swept through rock in the late '60s. AMG.

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Love - Da Capo 1966

Love broadened their scope into psychedelia on their sophomore effort, Arthur Lee's achingly melodic songwriting gifts reaching full flower. The six songs that comprised the first side of this album when it was first issued are a truly classic body of work, highlighted by the atomic blast of pre-punk rock "Seven & Seven Is" (their only hit single), the manic jazz tempos of "Stephanie Knows Who," and the enchanting "She Comes in Colors," perhaps Lee's best composition (and reportedly the inspiration for the Rolling Stones' "She's a Rainbow"). It's only half a great album, though; the seventh and final track, "Revelation," is a tedious 19-minute jam that keeps Da Capo from attaining truly classic status. AMG.

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The Doors - Waiting For The Sun 1968

The Doors' 1967 albums had raised expectations so high that their third effort was greeted as a major disappointment. With a few exceptions, the material was much mellower, and while this yielded some fine melodic ballad rock in "Love Street," "Wintertime Love," "Summer's Almost Gone," and "Yes, the River Knows," there was no denying that the songwriting was not as impressive as it had been on the first two records. On the other hand, there were first-rate tunes such as the spooky "The Unknown Soldier," with antiwar lyrics as uncompromisingly forceful as anything the band did, and the compulsively riff-driven "Hello, I Love You," which nonetheless bore an uncomfortably close resemblance to the Kinks' "All Day and All of the Night." The flamenco guitar of "Spanish Caravan," the all-out weirdness of "Not to Touch the Earth" (which was a snippet of a legendary abandoned opus, "The Celebration of the Lizard"), and the menacing closer "Five to One" were also interesting. In fact, time's been fairly kind to the record, which is quite enjoyable and diverse, just not as powerful a full-length statement as the group's best albums. AMG.

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The Beau Brummels - Bradley's Barn 1968

After taking the Beau Brummels to the pop/folk psychedelic edge, producer Lenny Waronker took the band to Nashville, literally. Possibly influenced by the Byrds Sweetheart experiments, the group (now down to just Sal Valentino on vocals and Ron Elliott on guitars) wedded with Nashville's finest, including guitarist Jerry Reed and drummer Kenneth A. Buttrey, both veterans of Dylan's Nashville sessions. These players were not just good musicians, but smart musicians, easily embellishing the Elliott/Valentino duo as if they had been playing with the two for years, not days. The resulting masterpiece, no doubt due to the awesome Brummels original songs (especially "Cherokee Girl," "Turn Around," and "Deep Water"), is a virtual tapestry in country and rock. AMG.

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Bo Grumpus - Before the War 1968

Bo Grumpus was a trippy, sometimes edgy folk-based psychedelic band that came out of Boston in 1967. Their story goes back to the mid-'60s and guitarists Eddie Mottau and Joe Hutchinson, who had been performing as Two Guys from Boston. In the latter guise, they had crossed paths in the mid-'60s with Noel "Paul" Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary, who ended up producing their one and only single, which was released on the Scepter label. They had performed as far away as Dayton, OH, which was where drummer N.D. Smart heard them. They later asked him in, to form a trio, and he agreed and brought Jim Colegrove in on bass, the two Ohioans relocating to Boston. The quartet, initially working as the Bait Shop, made their debut at a bistro called the Loft on Charles Street. Mottau and Hutchinson knew Felix Pappalardi, a New York-based musician who had played bass on their duo recordings, and who had lately moved up to producing, most notably the work of the Youngbloods. They were able to persuade him to come up to Boston to check out their sound, and he liked what he heard. The result was a publishing deal and a recording contract with Atlantic Records. By June of 1967, they had moved to New York and were getting ready to make their first album -- it was around this time that Pappalardi got them to abandon the name the Bait Shop, in favor of a moniker that his wife, artist Gail Collins, suggested: Bo Grumpus. The name came from a drawing she'd made that hung on their living room wall -- in defense of the choice, it was unusual enough so that people (and the press) would look at it twice and remember it. It was also a name that, as Pappalardi once observed, "meant nothing," which meant that it could be defined by the quartet's trippy hard rock sound -- and this, after all, was the second half of the 1960s, in the middle of the Summer of Love, a period in which decisions made by lots of people might elicit an observation of "what was I thinking?" In any case, the band couldn't have asked for a better New York debut than the Gaslight Cafe in Greenwich Village, and from there they moved on to the legendary Cafe Wha? Recording of the album went more slowly than anticipated, and by the month of December, it still wasn't completed, and it was at that point that N.D. Smart jumped ship, joining the D.C.-spawned Kangaroo. He was succeeded by Ronnie Blake, formerly of the Hello People, who got to play on part of the album, as did Herb Lovelle. Finally, in the spring of 1968, the group's one and only album, entitled Before the War (Atco), was released. Then trouble came along, in the form of a new opportunity and legal problems with the group name. Pappalardi was offered the chance to produce a record at the Bell label in New York, and he wanted to shift Bo Grumpus there. But then a dispute arose with their publishing company over the ownership of the group's name -- having invested their time and first album in "Bo Grumpus," they were forced to give it up. And following a suggestion by Eddie Mottau, Bo Grumpus became Jolliver Arkansaw and, using that identity, went into the studio early in 1969 to record. The resulting album, Home, was released in mid-1969 and quickly fell into obscurity. The group fell apart soon after the album's release, in the summer of 1969, when Jim Colegrove joined his former bandmate N.D. Smart in Great Speckled Bird, while Eddie Mottau eventually returned the favor that Paul Stookey had done him a few years before, becoming the latter's producer as well as playing guitar on Stookey's solo albums. Colegrove reportedly has a record label in Texas, while Ronnie Blake seems to have left music. But Joe Hutchinson, who wrote most of the songs on Home, was living in Florida as of 2009, playing regularly at the Gibson Inn in Apalachicola. Ironically, the biggest beneficiary of Bo Grumpus' efforts turned out to be Leslie West, the guitarist who played the solo on "Gray Afternoon" from Home. Pappalardi already knew West, who had been with the Vagrants and had several single sides produced by Pappalardi, but apparently it was this early 1969 session that convinced him that the guitarist was worth working with more closely -- which led to the West solo album Mountain and the formation of the group of the same name, initially as a trio with the ubiquitous N.D. Smart. Bo Grumpus' Before the War was re-released on CD in 2008 by Wounded Bird. AMG.

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