Little Green
Green-eyed teenage singer Linda Hoover made a record with some future heavyweights. Then nothing happened.
“Hoover has a strident, slightly theatrical tone.”
IN 1965, after winning a high-school talent contest, 14-year-old Linda Hoover was invited to meet with American singing star Bobby Darin’s manager, Ed Burton, and his young staff-producer Gary Kannon at Darin’s TM Music label. Hoover’s father trusted Burton but wasn’t sure about the young hipster. But she recalls, “I liked Gary immediately, thought he was funny and cool and spoke my language.”
Kannon kept in touch, and several years later invited her to the Brill Building offices of JATA, the publishing company of dwindling hitmakers Jay & The Americans. There she met one of the band, Kenny Vance, who took her to a tiny room just big enough for a piano, a desk and two young songwriters, whose quirky songs Vance thought might suit Linda, now 19, and possessed of a strong voice but not much material.
Those writers were Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, soon to be Steely Dan. Kannon’s real name was Gary Katz, and he would produce all the Dan’s albums in the ’70s. But their glorious decade would commence working on an LP for Hoover which Katz had persuaded hard-ball music man Morris Levy to bankroll. The players would be the nascent Dan, formed after guitarist Denny Dias had placed a newspaper ad looking for musicians, asking that “No assholes” apply.
Hoover’s strident, slightly theatrical tone sounded very much of her generation, as if she might have been in the cast of Hair. Fagen came up with a song called I Mean To Shine, which became the record’s title cut. Fagen and Becker provided five songs. Jones, an early example of their thing about addiction, a favourite topic, might seem slightly out of reach for a callow teen, but Hoover makes a good stab at The Roaring Of The Lamb, a knotty song that immediately rhymes “fullback” with “bivouac”, its chorus like something by Jimmy Webb, tricky with an opaque lyric: “The roaring of the lamb revealed its awesome powers, and the minutes turned to hours, no one’s the same.” Cute, but you can understand why publishers hadn’t been exactly falling over themselves to give these guys a break until they’d mumbled their way into JATA’s office.
Unfortunately, the album was shelved by Levy soon after completion, apparently because he suddenly realised that he didn’t stand to make money from publishing on it. So it wouldn’t provide the kick-start either Hoover or the Dan were expecting.
However, an amended I Mean To Shine was recorded by Barbra Streisand on her 1971 album produced by Richard Perry (which also includes her startling cover of John Lennon’s Mother). And Katz took tapes of the LP to his audition with ABC Records, securing the deal that led directly to Steely Dan. He offered Hoover the chance to join them in California, but she felt too disillusioned and penniless to make the trip. Reluctantly, she returned to live with her parents.
Fifty-one years later, the Hoover/Dan collaboration is given its first official release.
I Mean To Shine (Omnivore) ★★★★, with Linda’s green eyes blazing from Joel Brodsky’s front cover image. Despite an obvious discrepancy between Hoover’s jejune, heartfelt songs and Becker and Fagen’s chewier, more worldly compositions, it’s a remarkably cohesive record with a countryrock leaning. A tender cover of The Band’s In A Station is a highlight, and on Stephen Stills’ 4 + 20 Linda Hoover soars like Linda Ronstadt. Sonically, you wouldn’t recognise this as Steely Dan – with the country aspect and more acoustic guitar than they ever used – but their high standards are audible in the atmospheric brass arrangements and creamy harmonies.
Though she never found stardom, Hoover continued to make music. Her treasured tape copy of her lost album is the source for this fascinating release.