Which rocker sang standards first?
How high’s the water? Three feet high and rising? Quick, grab Dellar’s polka, Fripp and covers data!
Who was the first rock singer who recorded an album of standards from the Great American songbook, à la Rod Stewart? You can’t get away from them now.
Neil McLennan, via e-mail
Fred Says: Was it Ringo Starr who invented the genre when he sang Cole Porter, Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer on his mum-friendly Sentimental Journey back in 1970? Actually, you’d have to dig back a mite further for the truth, which is that Bobby Darin was the first rocker to deliver a game-changing songbook album with That’s All in 1959. Earlier linked with such jukebox fillers as Splish Splash, Queen Of The Hop and Plain Jane, That’s All found Darin tackling material by the Gershwins, Alfred Newman, Alec Wilder, Kurt Weill and others in a manner that almost out-Frank’d Sinatra, winning the Grammys for Record Of The Year and Best New Singer in the process.
Other pre-Ringo songbook providers include Ray Charles (Ray Charles And Betty Carter, 1961), The Supremes (Sing Rodgers & Hart, 1967) and James Brown (Gettin’ Down To It, 1969).
WHO PLAYS POLKAFACE ROCK?
In the genre of rock, I can think of only two songs which can be categorised as polkas: Warren Zevon’s Mr Bad Example, and Tom Waits’s Cemetery Polka. No doubt there have been numerous rock versions of polka standards like Beer Barrel Polka, but aside from adaptations of this kind, can you think of any rock songs that
were conceived in polka tempo? David English, Acton, MA, USA
Fred Says: A Texas band, Brave
Combo, immediately spring to mind as an outfit given to aiming their polka-headed accordions in the direction of Purple Haze, People Are Strange, Stairway To Heaven, and suchlike. They released an album titled Polkatharsis on Rounder in 1987. Of course, Weird Al Yankovic has been knocking out polka medleys since the beginning of time, his list of victims including Devo’s Jocko Homo, The Doors’ LA Woman and Iron Butterfly’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, and that’s just on the single Polkas On 45 alone. Who’s to blame? I’d go for Elvis Presley and Wooden Heart.
Your opinions are welcomed, as usual.
WHO VOODOO’D BRIAN?
On a YouTube wander I chanced upon Wall Of Voodoo’s 1987 cover of The Beach Boys’ Do It Again and was surprised to see Brian Wilson himself in the frankly weird video. How did this happen?
Mike Sampson, via e-mail
Fred says: The video is a doozy; Brian is awoken and looks in the huge eye of a Margaret Keane-style ghoul in a bikini, whereupon he sees the band in ’50s suits cooking a pig’s head in a pot, on a dark polluted beach ringed off by barbed wire. Brian grins and mugs along and does some lip-syncing and weight lifting, in an appearance which his controversial then-manager, Dr Eugene Landy, thought would be a therapeutic exercise in the run up to the release of his 1988 solo debut Brian Wilson. Initially the surf cultureparodying clip was intended to include more visual references to Brian’s past – he was meant to be seen playing in a sandbox – but the other scenes never made the cut.
WHO CUT FRIPP SHORT?
Your mention of vinyl mispressings in the Philippines in a recent MOJO [305, April 2019] reminded me of just such an oddity. I lived in the Philippines for 13 years and one very weird item is the Filipino version of King Crimson’s Islands album. Not only does this have an entirely different sleeve, but it omits the spoken-word ‘cocktail party’ at the end of side two and lops off the final verse from The Letters. It was only when I bought a remastered CD of Islands that I realised I had been listening to an edited version. Duh!
David Taylor, via e-mail
Fred Says: There have been several similar tales of woe arriving at the Fred Factory, including one from reader Tim, who relates his friend bought a copy of Blue Cheer’s Vincebus Eruptum, “only to find it played Love Is Blue by Paul Mauriat And His Orchestra. I often think of the unsuspecting easy-listening fan who placed his stylus on side one, track one, and was blasted with Summertime Blues at his weekly bridge party.”
HELP FRED
Does anyone know what Tetsu Yamauchi, bassist for Free and the Faces, is doing now (his 1972 solo record Tetsu is a good and greasy accompaniment to the last two bands)? I heard he moved back to Japan and had gone off rock music, but has he kept playing in some capacity?
Pete Wright, via e-mail