40 Year Itch: GET OUT COCKER

 "If I had my way Joe Cocker and his drugged up group would be airlifted straight back across the Pacific." 
    --John Sorell, ATV News

    On October 14, 1972 Adelaide police arrested Joe Cocker after claiming to find "indian hemp" in his motel room.
 In an editorial  ATV's John Sorell says "I'd make sure their passports are marked, never to return. We don't want this type here, they are as welcome as a load of Argentine fruit fly!"
     Cocker is released on bail and performs that night. Five days later, Cocker arrives in Melbourne where a newspaper headline screams "GET OUT COCKER". Cocker tells the crowd that night: "In five years marijuana will be legalised in Australia, and the same cat who is trying to throw us out now will be smoking it himself ."
 That night Cocker and his girlfriend get into a fight at their hotel. Polica areested Cocker again an dthis time Immigration Minister Jim Forbes gave Cocker four hours to leave the country. Concerts in Brisbane and Perth were cancelled.

 
    Marijuana is still not legal, but Cocker has toured Australia another 10 times.
  His 1972 album Something To Say is so awful I'm not willing to post anything from it.

40 Year Itch: "Mouldy Old Dough" Hits #1

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It took seven months for this messy honky tonk instrumental to hit #1 but when it finally topped the charts on October 14, 1972 it held on for four weeks, becoming the UK's second biggest hit of 1972, after the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards' "Amazing Grace". The song won the Novello Award that year.

Mrs Hilda Woodward is one of the piano players. Her son Rob started the band.

In 2005, Jarvis Cocker put this song among his Desert Island Discs on the BBC radio show

40 Year Itch: Spread the A Capella Word

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Brooklyn ,NY a capella quintet The Persuasions didn't get the doo wop is dead memo and released a series of strong and sensitive albums in the 1970's including Street Corner Symphony, Spread the Word and Chirpin' which received a rare 5 Star rating from The Rolling Stone Record Guide. I certainly did not want to spend a year scratchin that 40 year itch without a shout out to The Persuasions.

40 Year Itch: Stealers Wheel

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  When they harmonized together, childhood friends Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan sounded like two Lennons singing through clenched teeth. With Beatlesque melodies, producing by songwriting legends Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and the Fab Four's fave engineer Geoff Emerick at the controls, Stealers Wheel's debut album, released in October of 1972, hits that sweet spot for fans of well made pop. One problem. Rafferty had already left the band by the time album came out.Then, in 1973, the band's first single, "Stuck In The Middle With You", sold a million copies and  hit the Top Ten in the US and UK. Suddenly the band was in demand and Rafferty had to be convinced to rejoin the Wheel--which he described as "a fucking shambles" -- for another album.

The debut opens with "Late Again" which showcases their harmonies.

The video for "Stuck In The Middle With You" was shot after Rafferty returned to the band. The Dylanesque voices were kind of an inside joke. The song itself is about Rafferty and Egan getting caught at a table with managers ( Clowns to the left of me) and record company execs ( Jokers to the Right)

Our deep cut is "Outside Looking In", another cut that appeared on a Stealers Wheel hit compilation I bought in 1978 after Rafferty's City to City hit the top of the charts.

40 Year Itch: Carlos Goes Soul Searching

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Rarely has an artist or a group made such a dramatic turn in the span of just one record. After three classic albums of Afro Cuban blues rock ( the last two hitting #1 on US charts), Carlos Santana apparently needed to stretch out both musically and spiritually. 

       

   Musically Carlos was getting into the fusion sounds of John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra .He also began following the teachings of McLaughlin's Indian guru Sri Chimnoy (who dubbed Carlos "Devadip" meaning "light of the lamp of the Supreme"). 

Despite warnings from CBS executive Clive Davis that he would sabotage the band's Top 40 potential, on Caravanserai Carlos led the band through a new set exploring jazz fusion with mixed results.

 The instrumentals still contain the trademark crystal clear guitar lines fronting the heavy rhythm sections and many Santana fans heap praise on songs like "Waves Within" and "Song of the Wind". However some of the singing sounds not just dated in 2012 but like "Gillette Commercial vocals" to Robert Christgau's ear way back in '72.

Caravanserai went platinum but the revolving door that was Santana began spitting out band members. Seattle keyboardist Greg Rolie and teenage guitar wunderkind Neal Schon both left but they landed on their feet. They founded a band called Journey.

40 Year Itch: Round 2

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What a run Philly's Stylistics went on in the early 1970's! 12 straight Top Ten R and B singles. Nobody could refuse the syrupy falsetto of Russell Thompkins Jr belting his way through those great Thom Bell/Linda Creed tunes.




     The sophomore album Round 2, released in October of 1972, contains more big hits: the #5 Pop hit (#5 R and B) "Break Up to Make Up", the Top Ten ( R and B #4) "I'm Stone in Love with You", the #23 ( R and B #8)"You'll Never Get to Heaven (If You Break My Heart)" and a sweet cover of Carole King's "It's Too Late".

40 Year Itch : 8 Days On The Road

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Howard Tate could effortlessly shift from a dirty Macon, Georgia soul singer ( the same city that gave us Otis Redding, Little Richard and the Allman Brothers) to an angelic grief stricken wailer in not just the same song. Or the same breath. But in the same word. His immaculate Jerry Ragavoy produced singles for Verve in the 1960's are among the classics of that era.  In October of 1972, now a part-time cab driver, he teamed up with Ragavoy again and  released a funky non-charting single called "8 Days on The Road".

       In his A- review of the eponymous album that contained the single, Robert Christgau wrote "This does almost as much for Tate's amazing vocal and emotional range--as cocksure as Wilson Pickett one moment, as sweet and hurting as B.B. King the next, and as corny as Joe Tex to top it off--as his Verve stuff with Ragovoy".