From the Vaults

Memphis Jug Band: Cocaine Habit Blues (1930)

1 Mar 2013 | <1 min read

The curious thing about cocaine in popular culture is the vast majority of users (as with most drugs) had a great time, but when it comes to writing songs about it those who came out the other side are pretty down on it. There's something honest about those who say, "Yeah I did this and it was terrific" -- but of course in the interests of minors we should naturally adopt the... > Read more

Big Daddy: A Day in the Life (1992)

28 Feb 2013 | 1 min read

Although it's not hard to find truly awful versions of Beatles' songs -- many are collected by Jim Phelan for his Exotic Beatles series of albums -- and a decent number of rather excellent treatments, there aren't that many which are just plain fun. Big Daddy are a retro group which made a reputation by taking contempoary songs and recasting them as doo-wop, Fifties rock'n'roll and so on.... > Read more

Del Shannon: Keep Searchin' (1964)

26 Feb 2013 | 1 min read | 2

Del Shannon -- who died in 1990 age 55 -- is best and perhaps only remembered for the great chart-topping single Runaway of '61, even now a thrilling slice of energetic pop. But far from a one-hit wonder as classic hits radio would have you believe, he also did top 10 business with Hats off to Larry and Little Town Flirt -- and he was smart enough to feel the winds of change blowing in the... > Read more

The Mystery Trend: Johnny Was a Good Boy (1967)

18 Feb 2013 | 1 min read

Just as DJs like to discover rare grooves to enhance their cachet as being cutting edge, so too the internet is full of sites where people haul out the most obscure Sixties garageband and psychedelic rock tracks . . . not all of it any good, of course. That's not the point though. The point is along the lines of, "I've heard this and you haven't so . . ." The Mystery Trend... > Read more

Cilla Black: Liverpool Lullaby (1969)

15 Feb 2013 | 3 min read

Liverpool today is a very different place from the tough port city it was in the years after the war: a world perhaps only familiar from documentaries about the Beatles' early years where bomb-scarred buildings still littered the landscape. That lost world is celebrated in song and commemorated in film. Today, if nothing else, there are new architectural projects and civic... > Read more

The Off-Set: You're a Drag (1966)

14 Feb 2013 | <1 min read

When it came to forming groups in the Sixties, Don Sallah was a serial offender. Mostly studio-based, Sallah started the decade in Little Moose and the Hunters (he was the wee moose), recorded an all-instrumental album as The Pioneers and then formed the Emeralds, a vocal harmony group. With Hank Cardello from the Emeralds he then formed the Off-Set who hooked into the folk-rock thing for... > Read more

Ozzie Waters: A Rodeo Down in Tokyo and a Round-Up in Old Berlin (1943)

13 Feb 2013 | <1 min read

While we might agree that war brings out the best and worst in people, it undeniably brings out the utterly atrocious when it comes to patriotic songs. Most are sentimental, stridently nationalistic, simplistic to the point of insulting and largely forgettable other than for some unintentional humour in later years. At From the Vaults we have posted a few which fall into all of those... > Read more

Honeyboy: Bloodstains on the Wall (1953)

8 Feb 2013 | <1 min read

Not much is known about Honeyboy (Frank Patt) other than he was born in 1928 in Fostoria, Alabama -- and that this song, considered his finest outing on the Speciality label in the Fifties, sold around 50,000 copies. You can see why: Jimmy Liggins plays tense and moody guitar, Gus Jenkins offers similar low key piano . . . and the lyric about coming home to what must be a murder scene is... > Read more

Neil Young: Cocaine Eyes (1989)

5 Feb 2013 | 1 min read

Given his tendency to release as much music and as often as he can, it's increasingly hard to make the case for anything by Neil Young as being rare. His Archives Volume 1 scooped up vast tracts of early material, and when Vol 2 rolls around (no one would dare put a date on that, the first volume was spoken about for decades) then maybe songs like this one will be included. But for now... > Read more

Robin Zander: Fly Me to the Moon (2011)

4 Feb 2013 | <1 min read | 1

On the basis of recent evidence Robin Zander -- singer with the smarter-than-thou Cheap Trick -- has really lost it. Lost his cheekbones, his slim frame and, worst of all because those are forgivably inevitable with advancing years, his sense of taste. Perhaps it was having uber-brain Rick Nielsen helming Cheap Trick that allowed them to pull off three superb albums in a row -- and deliver... > Read more

Carl Perkins: Dixie Fried (1956)

31 Jan 2013 | 1 min read

Known mostly these days as the writer of Blue Suede Shoes (he sang it before Elvis' chart-topping cover), Carl Perkins was the man who was the most hillbilly cat of them all in the early rock'n'roll era. Looking like a cadaver with his sunken cheeks, and a heroic drinker, the married Carl was the Hank Williams of rockabilly . . . and Sam Phillips knew Perkins could be his next big star... > Read more

Dinah Washington: Big Long Slidin' Thing (1954)

30 Jan 2013 | <1 min read | 1

It's about a trombone player's instrument, of course. Well, of course it is . . . But the sexually voracious and seldom satisfied Washington (seven husbands, countless lovers) knows exactly what this is about and manages to milk the innuendo in her typically sassy way. Her real forte was torch songs and she crossed effortlessly between jazz, blues, pop and rhythm and blues -- and songs... > Read more

Cliff Richard: Schoolboy Crush (1958)

29 Jan 2013 | 1 min read

Although there is still some debate about which was the first rock'n'roll record, the critical consensus appears to have decided on Rocket 88 written by Ike Turner at the famous Riverside Hotel in Clarksdale, Mississippi. When it comes to the first British rock'n'roll record there is no doubt. It is Move It by Cliff Richard. Recorded at Abbey Road in July 1958 with entrepreneur Norrie... > Read more

? and the Mysterians: Can't Get Enough of You Baby (1967)

25 Jan 2013 | 1 min read

It's a common enough sentiment, but in the fast-changing world of pop "If it ain't broke, why try to fix it?" just doesn't work. That idea would have kept the Beatles singing variants of She Loves You and I Want To Hold Your Hand for a few years and in all likelihood they would have become one of those rapidly redundant pop sensations remembered only for their Ed Sullivan Show... > Read more

Alberta Hunter: You Can't Tell the Difference After Dark (c1936)

24 Jan 2013 | 1 min read

When Alberta Hunter enjoyed a career revival in the late Seventies -- when she was in her mid 80s -- people who had forgotten her were scrambling to acclaim her saucy and sassy blues, and to look back at where she had come from all those decades previous. Hunter had been born in 1895 and wrote the classic Downhearted Blues in 1922. Her peers included Bessie Smith who had a hit with... > Read more

Maurice Rocco: Darktown Strutters Ball (1945)

23 Jan 2013 | 1 min read | 1

No matter how innovative a musician can appear to be, you can almost always track down a predecessor. There usually seems to be someone who was doing something similar a little earlier, most often to no great acclaim. The impeccably attired boogie-woogie pianist Maurice Rocco from Ohio was, however, widely hailed for his lively style and he appeared in a number of movies (notably 52nd... > Read more

Pete Townshend: Behind Blue Eyes (1983)

22 Jan 2013 | <1 min read

In '83 Pete Townshend of the Who released the first of three double albums of demos, outtakes, working drawing for songs and unspecified instrumental tracks. Under the generic title Scoop -- not definitive, just scoops he said -- these were fascinating documents for anyone interested in the creative process. You could hear how some of his songs underwent major overhauls between conception... > Read more

Larry Wallis: Police Car (1977)

18 Jan 2013 | 1 min read | 3

The punk era tossed up -- threw up? -- some real oddities, few more unexpected than Wallis who was no spring chicken in the world of short haired rock'n'roll for angry 18-year olds. He'd been in the music game for over a decade and in the Sixties had been in such household names as The Entire Sioux Nation and Shagrat. To be fair, Shagrat morphed into the Pink Fairies (which had... > Read more

Ernest Tubb: It's For God And Country and You, Mom (1965)

17 Jan 2013 | 1 min read

War always produces songs from all sides of the trenches and Vietnam was no different: a slew of patriotic and tally-ho songs in the early days then more cynical, anti-war sentiments coming through as the body count rises. Here Ernest Tubb and His Texas Troubadours deliver one from those early days of US military involvement when some saw the issue very simply: there was a line drawn to... > Read more

The Lemonheads: Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye (2009)

16 Jan 2013 | 1 min read

When, in 2004, I interviewed Evan Dando -- the golden boy of great promise who fronted the Lemonheads -- he was pleasingly unapologetic about having taken most drugs known to man . . . and a few only familiar to animals. He thought taking drugs, getting out of it and generally having a good time were part of the contract in rock'n'roll. But of course, these days he was clean and sober... > Read more