This was written by Clarence “Sonny” Henry and originally recorded by jazz percussionist Willie Bobo on his 1967 album Bobo Motion. Bobo was Latin Jazz percussionist who was a big influence on Santana and played on some of their tracks in the late ’70s.
Gregg Rolie (who joined Journey in 1973) performs the lead vocals and plays a Hammond organ solo in the middle section. The double-time coda includes a guitar solo performed by Carlos Santana who also does the backing vocals.
This was the first hit for Santana, who released their first album “Santana” shortly after their appearance at the Woodstock festival, which had brought them to notice in the music world.
Santana – Evil Ways at Woodstock, Live in 1969:
On first pressings of both Santana’s debut album and the single release, the songwriting credit was given to Jimmie Zack. Zack was a minor rockabilly artist out of the Midwest who recorded a song with the same title in 1960, credited as Jimmie Zack and the Blues Rockers, however, it was not the same song as recorded by Santana.
Rather surprisingly, Johnny Mathis released a cover of this in 1970. A departure from his usual repertoire of romantic ballads he is known for. With a little less Latin flavor, his version added a little more orchestration.
Before The Moody Blues recorded it, this was an obscure soul single for Bessie Banks, who released it in 1964. Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller produced her recording, and it was written by her husband Larry Banks and Milton Bennett, in 1963. The song was arranged by Gary Sherman with Cissy Houston, mother of singer Whitney Houston, as one of the backing singers. Cissy was also aunt of singers Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick, and a cousin of opera singer Leontyne Price.
Bessie Banks later commented:
“‘I remember 1963 Kennedy was assassinated; it was announced over the radio. At the time, I was rehearsing in the office of Leiber and Stoller. We called it a day. Everyone was in tears. “Come back next week and we will be ready to record ‘Go Now'”; and we did so. I was happy and excited that maybe this time I’ll make it. ‘Go Now’ was released and right away it was chosen Pick Hit of the Week on W.I.N.S. Radio. That means your record is played for seven days. Four days went by, I was so thrilled. On day five, when I heard the first line, I thought it was me, but all of a sudden, I realized it wasn’t. At the end of the song it was announced, “the Moody Blues singing ‘Go Now'”. I was too out-done. This was the time of the English Invasion and the end of Bessie Banks’ career, so I thought. America’s DJs had stopped promoting American artists.”
Banks’ recollections are questionable, because her single was released in the US in January 1964, and the Moody Blues’ version was not released until November 1964 (in the UK) and January 1965 in the US.
“Go Now!” was made popular internationally later in 1964 when an English beat group from Birmingham named The Moody Blues recorded it, with Denny Laine on guitar and lead vocals, Clint Warwick on bass, along with Mike Pinder (piano, organ), Ray Thomas (harmonica, vocals), and Graeme Edge (drums). In contrast to other songs from their debut album The Magnificent Moodies, “Go Now!” contained many early elements of what later would become progressive rock, such as the lush instrumentation, the innovative variations of the Fifties Progression, as well as strong baroque elements that would later become hallmarks of prog rock.
This was the first “version” of the Moody Blues. They had little success with singles after “Go Now!” in the mid-1960s, which led to Laine’s departure from the band, later being replaced by Justin Hayward. Denny Laine left the band to set up his own Electric String Band in 1966 and later joined forces with Paul McCartney in Wings. Bassist Clint Warwick had already departed the band at this time. Rodney Clark had replaced him for a while before they recruited John Lodge. With the new lineup, The Moody Blues continued to perform “Go Now!” for a short time, up until they began writing their own material.
Denny Laine recalled to Gibson.com how the band came to cover this song:
“It came in one of these suitcases full of records from America. This guy, James Hamilton, he was a friend of B. Mitchel Reed, who was a DJ, and he would send this stuff across. So I picked that one out especially because Mike Pinder was a piano player. (chuckles) We’d always get the gig where the piano would be out of tune and we’d get the slow handclap because they were waiting to tune the piano… (laughs) Anyway, we did ‘Go Now’ because it was a song with a piano in it.”
TV Version:
As reported in The Independent, a 21-year-old Denny Cordell, who was working for an artist management company, placed this song with The Moody Blues, who were a new group looking for their first hit. Cordell convinced the band to sign an unusual business agreement that earned him £36,000 when the song became a hit. Cordell would later work with Joe Cocker, producing his version of “With A Little Help From My Friends” and organizing his first US tour. In the ’70s, Cordell set up Shelter Records in Tulsa, Oklahoma with Leon Russell.
While the actual title is “I Got You (I Feel Good)”, it is a twelve-bar blues with a brass-heavy instrumental arrangement similar to Brown’s previous hit, “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag”. It also features the same emphasis “on the one” (i.e. the first beat of the measure) that characterizes Brown’s developing funk style. The lyrics have Brown exulting in how good he feels (“nice, like sugar and spice”) now that he has the one he loves, his vocals punctuated by screams and shouts.
This is a reworking of “I Found You,” a song recorded and released by Yvonne Fair and produced by James Brown in 1962. Fair was one of Brown’s backup singers on the road.
The original 1964 version of this song had no guitar. When Brown redid it 1965, he made his screams more pronounced and added some instrumentation, including more sax. Some of the players on the recording were Maceo Parker on sax, his brother Melvin Parker on drums, Nat Jones on organ and Bernard Odum on bass.
This song has a very convoluted release history. Brown recorded it in September 1964 and leased it, along with some of his other songs, to Smash Records, who planned to release it as a single but couldn’t because Brown’s label, King Records, filed a lawsuit. In October 1964, a judge ruled that Smash Records would be allowed to issue only instrumental recordings by Brown, and all masters of vocals by JB would become property of King Records.
The song was pulled, but Brown had already been promoting it: he played it on the road (335 nights a year) and performed it on The T.A.M.I. Show and Shindig, as well as a movie called Ski Party. Brown then recorded a new version of the song in May 1965 at Criteria Studios in Miami, creating the first gold record to come out of Criteria, where the Eagles did Hotel California and Derek and the Dominos did Layla.
Their first hit was a cover of Earl-Jean’s “I’m into Something Good”, written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King who found themselves in danger of obsolescence, as most of the British groups wrote their own material. Carole King has said that she wrote the song inspired by Brian Wilson: “I make no bones about it, that song was influenced by Brian’s music”.
The song was originally recorded by Cookies member Earl-Jean on Colpix Records in 1964. Her older sister, Darlene McCrea, and the other original members of the Cookies – a group first formed in 1954 – eventually evolved into Ray Charles’ backing group, the Raelettes. In 1961, Earl-Jean was persuaded to join a new version of the Cookies. She became pregnant while on tour, and Gerry Goffin (married to Carole King at the time) was named as the father. She left the Cookies, and signed for Colpix, where she recorded the Goffin and King song
Barry Whitwam has stated that the Hermits themselves played on the track, not Jimmy Page, since Mickie Most and former lead singer “Herman” (Peter Noone) had implied otherwise after having lost the rights to the band’s name. Whitwam further states, in regard to exaggerations of songs on which they supposedly did not play:
“Everything he says is that it was Jimmy Page, and Jimmy Page probably can’t remember any of the songs that he played. If you look at our top ten in America, “I’m Into Something Good”, it was us. All Hermits. There was only a piano added on. That was on a two track machine so we played at the same time. That got to number thirteen. “Can’t You Hear My Heartbeat”, there were no other instruments. That got to number two. “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter” got to number one. “I’m Henry the VIII”. Number one. “A Must to Avoid”. Number eight. “Listen People”. “Leaning on the Lamppost”.
That’s six in the top ten with Jimmy Page or anybody else not involved! Another seventy of the tracks on the albums is only the Hermits. I think I worked it out, and I think in only thirty percent of all the songs ever recorded the Hermits didn’t do the backing, but the Hermits were always on the vocals doing the harmonies. So he’s trying to discredit us, saying that we didn’t have anything to do with anything.”
“Why Do Fools Fall in Love” is a song that was originally a hit for early New York City-based rock and roll group Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers in January 1956. Frankie was 15 when he wrote and recorded this song.
In late 1955, The Teenagers (at that time calling themselves The Premiers) auditioned a song called “Why do Birds Sing So Gay?” for George Goldner, recording producer and owner of Gee Records. Herman Santiago, tenor of the group, had written the song based on a line from some love letters given to the guys by a tenant in bassist Sherman Garnes’ apartment building.
One of them featured the words “Why do birds sing so gay?,” which fit in with lyrics of other songs that Herman had been writing. So Herman worked with it, creating a song for Herman Santiago to lead, and adjusting the harmony to take advantage of Frankie Lymon’s high tenor/soprano. Along the way, Herman changed some of the lyrics.
During the audition Frankie’s voice stood out and, at Goldner’s suggestion, the lead in subsequent recording sessions was given to Frankie. Frankie did some improvising and re-created the melody to match his own style. According to Jimmy Merchant, what happened at the recording session was a combination of “Frankie’s singing ability coupled with George Goldner’s special ability to bring out the best in Frankie.”
“Bike” is the final track featured on their 1967 debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. The song was written for Barrett’s then girlfriend, Jenny Spires.
In the song, Syd Barrett’s lyrical subject shows a girl his bike (which he borrowed); a cloak; a homeless, aging mouse that he calls Gerald; and a clan of gingerbread men, because she “fits in with [his] world.” With each repetition of the chorus, a sudden percussive noise is heard similar to the firing of two gunshots. Towards the end of the song, he offers to take her into a “room of musical tunes”.
The final verse is followed by an instrumental section that is a piece of musique concrète: a noisy collage of oscillators, clocks, gongs, bells, a violin, and other sounds edited with tape techniques, apparently the “other room” spoken of in the song and giving the impression of the turning gears of a bicycle. The ending of the song fades out with a tape loop of the band members laughing reversed and played at double speed. It is reminiscent of a loop of quacking rubber ducks, recalling the loop the Beatles added to the end of the second side of the album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
The simplicity of Barrett’s lyrics only seem apparent. More
specifically, the songwriter seems to deliberately cultivate ambiguity
as he tells his story. The most obvious example occurs in the third
verse, when Barrett sings: “I know a mouse, and he hasn’t got a
house./ I don’t know why I call him Gerald”. It is very difficult to tell
whether the narrator does not know why the mouse has no house or
why it is called Gerald.
The last song on The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, “Bike” is also one
of the most curious. The words and music are of an apparent
lightness of tone, but leave a disquieting impression, if only for the
juxtaposition of the main material with the chaotic finale. Some
observers would see in this the beginnings of the songwriter’s future
psychological collapse. While this is possible, the main thing we should take from “Bike” is a sense of Barrett’s talent, which expresses itself in a proliferation or teeming of ideas, even if we feel at the same time that he is teetering on the edge of the precipice.
The song features Jim Gordon on drums, as does the bulk of the Pretzel Logic album. The guitar solo is by Jeff “Skunk” Baxter who would soon go on to join The Doobie Brothers. It is the most successful single for Steely Dan. It peaked at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1974.
According to a 2006 interview, the Rikki of the title is Rikki Ducornet, a New York writer and artist. Steely Dan co-front Donald Fagen met her while both were attending Bard College, a small liberal arts school located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Ducornet said they met at a college party, and even though she was both pregnant and married at the time, he gave her his number, although not in the same context as the song. Ducornet was intrigued by Fagen and tempted to call him, but she decided against it.
Victor Feldman’s flapamba (a rare and unusual instrument that is a variant of the marimba) introduction to the song, which opens the album, is cut from the original ABC single version. The MCA single reissue (backed with “Pretzel Logic”) includes the flapamba intro but fades out just before the actual end of the track. The introductory riff is an almost direct copy of the intro of Horace Silver’s jazz classic “Song for My Father”.
This version appears to be a Pianola (player piano) roll that was created by Joplin himself in June 1916. Joplin’s later biographer Edward A. Berlin notes that the “Maple Leaf Rag” roll was “painfully bad” and likely to be the truest record of Joplin’s playing at the time. The roll, however, does not reflect his abilities earlier in life. Berlin theorizes that by the time Joplin made these recordings he may have been experiencing discoordination of the fingers, tremors and an inability to speak clearly, symptoms of syphilis, the disease that took his life in 1917.
Scott Joplin was born in 1868 (tombstone says November 24, 1868), the son of a former slave. He was born into a musical family of railway laborers in Texarkana, Arkansas, and developed his musical knowledge with the help of local teachers. Joplin grew up in Texarkana, where he formed a vocal quartet, and taught mandolin and guitar. During the late 1880s he left his job as a laborer with the railroad, and travelled around the American South as an itinerant musician. He went to Chicago for the World’s Fair of 1893, which played a major part in making ragtime a national craze by 1897.
Scott Joplin
(photographer unknown)
As a young man, he takes up piano and several other instruments and plays for dances and shows. His formal musical education seems to have been brief; all the same, he forms the goal of creating popular music that would have the prestige and cultivating force of “art” music. In the 1890s, he settles in Sedalia and meets John Stark, a music-store owner who will become his publisher. In one version, Stark is in a club having a beer when he first hears Joplin’s music. (As with much of Joplin’s biography, the real facts are hard to ascertain.)
This is an early ragtime musical composition for piano composed by Scott Joplin. It was one of Joplin’s early works (he wrote 44 original ragtime pieces, one ragtime ballet, and two operas) and became the model for ragtime compositions by subsequent composers. It is one of the most famous of all ragtime pieces.
Joplin played as a solo musician at dances and at the major black clubs in Sedalia, among them the “Maple Leaf Club”. It is possible that the rag was named after the Maple Leaf Club, although there is no direct evidence to prove the link, and there were probably many other possible sources for the name in and around Sedalia at the time. The date the club was founded is uncertain, but it was no later than November 24, 1898, when the first Maple Leaf ball was held. It is possible though that the actual music predates this. The “Maple Leaf Rag” was already known in Sedalia prior to its publication in 1899; composer and pianist Brun Campbell claimed to have seen the manuscript of the work in or around 1898.
“Maple Leaf Rag” was published while he was living in Sedalia, Missouri between August 10 and September 20, 1899, the latter being the date the score was received by the Copyright Office.
As a result Joplin was called the “King of Ragtime”. The piece gave Joplin a steady if unspectacular income for the rest of his life (a contract which gave him a one cent per copy royalty). Despite ragtime’s decline after Joplin’s death in 1917, the “Maple Leaf Rag” continued to be recorded by many well-known artists.
Soon after the “Maple Leaf Rag’s” publication the earliest recordings of the rag took place; band leader Wilbur Sweatman recorded it onto Phonograph cylinder a year later, but there are no known copies which have survived. The first surviving record of the rag comes from the second known recording of the rag by the United States Military Band from 1906.
In 1903 Stark, the original producer Joplin signed with, issued a “Maple Leaf Rag Song”, an arrangement of Joplin’s music with words by Sydney Brown. Brown’s lyrics tell the story of a poor man from Accomack County, Virginia, who stumbles into a ballroom where, in spite of his anxiety over the state of his appearance he manages to wow the crowd with the Maple Leaf Rag. While the men are jealous of his dancing abilities and draw their razors, the women love him, and the “finest belle” sends for a carriage and the two of them ride away.
This was Taylor’s first single and reflects Taylor’s homesickness at the time, as he was missing his family, his dog and his state. He was signed to The Beatles’ Record Company, Apple Records, after pitching his demo to Peter Asher, who was good friends with the band and worked for Apple. “Carolina in My Mind” wasn’t issued as a single until a few months after his debut album was released, and by that time he was tending a heroin habit in a psychiatric facility, which left him unable to do touring or promotion. The song stalled at #118 US, and soon Taylor was dropped from Apple.
The original recording of the song was done at London’s Trident Studios during the July to October 1968 period. The song’s lyric “holy host of others standing around me” makes reference to the Beatles, who were recording in the same studio where Taylor was recording his album. Indeed, the recording of “Carolina in My Mind” includes a credited appearance by Paul McCartney on bass guitar and an uncredited one by George Harrison on backing vocals.
The song references Taylor’s years growing up in North Carolina. He started writing the song at producer Peter Asher’s London flat on Marylebone High Street, resumed work on it while on holiday on the Mediterranean island of Formentera, and then completed it while stranded on the nearby island of Ibiza with Karin, a Swedish girl he had just met. There has been a great deal of speculation as to the identity of Karin, the woman he sings about in the line, “Karin, she’s a silver sun.” Until 2009, Taylor would not reveal her identity, leading listeners to create their own theories: Some felt that Karin was a poetic name for Carolina, others believed that Karin was a beautiful young woman that James met while on a trip to Spain, and many have said that this song is about drugs, since at the time it was written, Taylor was trying so hard to kick a serious addiction to heroin.
Taylor cleared this up in a concert screened by BBC Television in March 2009, when he revealed the identity of the Karin alluded to in this song.
At some point Taylor skipped across to the islands of Formentera and Ibiza, where he met Karin. She was Scandinavian, about twenty-four years old, and had shoulder length blonde hair. This appears to have been a fleeting relationship, or perhaps simply a meeting, but he never saw her again. Her ghost was still haunting him 35 years later, but sadly, Taylor appears not to have been reunited with his lady friend, whatever their relationship.
Some subtle strings can be heard on this track. In an interview with Taylor’s producer, Peter Asher, he said: “In the case of the Apple James Taylor album, I did specifically think about some kind of orchestrations because I really wanted to establish the fact that he was not just another long-haired folkie with an acoustic guitar. I wanted people to take him seriously as a composer.”
When Taylor left Apple, Asher became his manager as well as his producer. His next album, “Sweet Baby James,” had a lot less orchestration.
The original band line-up featured lead vocalist and guitarist Steve Marriott from The Small Faces, vocalist and guitarist Peter Frampton from The Herd, former Spooky Tooth bassist Greg Ridley and a 17-year-old drummer, Jerry Shirley, from The Apostolic Intervention.
The song, a Steve Marriott composition released in 1972, bemoans being arrested for possession of small quantities of illegal drugs, including cocaine; Durban poison, a potent strain of marijuana, and Red Lebanese and Black Nepalese, two types of hashish. “New Castle Brown” is often mistaken as a reference to Newcastle Brown Ale but actually refers to heroin also known as “Brown” or “Smack”. The song refers to Borstal – “some seeds and dust, and you got Borstal”- referring to Borstal Prison and its borstal ilk – any manner of a British juvenile gaol (British for jail). (Most lyrics listings get this wrong, and say “buzzed on” or “bust on”.) Marriott has said that inspiration for the title came from a Humphrey Bogart/James Cagney movie he saw on TV, where Bogart plays a prisoner who gets sent to “30 days in the hole.” Marriott may have been referring to the 1938 movie Angels With Dirty Faces, although that line is never uttered in the film. It’s also possible that the film was Somebody Up There Likes Me, a 1956 movie where Paul Newman is threatened with the “30 days in the hole.”
Pie guitarist Clem Clempson (who had replaced the original guitarist Peter Frampton) has said it is one of the tracks he would most like his career to be remembered by. But the predominant group personality shown through by the song is Marriott’s; so much so that for example when years later Clempson was asked about efforts to reform the group without Marriott, he simply declaimed, “It’s a waste of time.”
Their first major hit was “I Don’t Need No Doctor”, a 1966 R&B song, on their album “Performance Rockin’ the Fillmore” released in 1971.
Steve Marriott joined the newly formed Humble Pie after he left The Small Faces, who were founded in 1965 by members Steve Marriott, Ronnie Lane, Kenney Jones, and Jimmy Winston, although by 1966 Winston was replaced by Ian McLagan as the band’s keyboardist.
While they were well known in England, they became noted in the U.S. with the release of two songs in particular: “Tin Soldier” and “Itchycoo Park”. “Tin Soldier” was originally written by Marriott for British soul singer P.P. Arnold but decided to keep it for his own. Here’s a television version by The Small Faces with her:
Steve’s unmistakable vocals had the hint of their other hit “Itchycoo Park” released in 1967.
The song was one of the first pop singles to use flanging, an effect that can be heard in the bridge section after each chorus. Most sources credit the use of the effect to Olympic Studios engineer George Chkiantz who showed it to the Small Faces regular engineer Glyn Johns; he in turn demonstrated it to the group, who were always on the lookout for innovative production sounds, and they readily agreed to its use on the single.
After a long career and a hard life of fame, drugs, and alcohol abuse (which he partially recovered from), at about 6:30 am on 20 April 1991, a passing motorist saw the roof of Marriott’s cottage ablaze and called the fire brigade. It was reported that four fire engines were needed to put out the fire. Steve was found deceased in the bedroom.
In September 2007 Marriott, along with the other members of the Small Faces and manager Don Arden, were honoured with a plaque unveiled in Carnaby Street.
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