Corben Simpson: The Collection (Frenzy)

In some circles singer/songwriter Corben Simpson is best know – and perhaps only known – for his hippie-era hit Dance Around the World based on a Margaret Mahy story and which was a finalist in the Loxene Gold Disc Awards in 1972.

Others can add more to that: he was a member of the Blerta and appeared naked at the 1973 Ngaruawahia festival.

But his story – neatly told in the booklet which accompanies this 19-song career overview – began a decade before that when the teenage Simpson from Auckland's North Shore was shipped off to Rotorua to live with an aunty to straighten him out.

He joined a local band the Plague (how many locals have carried that name?) then Dizzy Feelings with Murray Hancox and a few short-lived solo shows and in backing bands. He had a spot at that festival where Robin Gibb was dismissed rudely.

He met Prince Charles and Princess Anne at some other festival: Superpop 70 I am told.

Then he was in the Hamilton band The Movement who entered a Battle of the Bands and relocated to Wellington. Where he hooked up with drummer Bruno Lawrence (who had quit Quincy Conserve).

Blerta would subsequently emerge, but first Simpson in The Movement (for the second time) recorded his original Have You Heard a Man Cry which won the 1971 Apra Silver Scroll.

There was the subsequent album under his own name on which he covered Van Morrison's Crazy Love and Moondance, as well as The Girl From Ipanema and other familiar songs. Just one original, Mystery Lady.

Then it was a Littlejohn album (where he re-recorded Have You Heard a Man Cry) Blerta, Ngaruawahia . . .

Aside from being an accomplished songwriter, he was a fine interpreter of a song (he changed Mungo Jerry's jug-band In the Summertime into a slinky soul-touched version) and could easily have been groomed into a mainstream performer.

Moondance (Van Morrison cover)

 

But his thoughts ran in another direction and his rare and sometimes strange Get Up With the Sun album of 1973 (which went onto digital platforms a decade ago).

In subsequent decades, Simpson drifted far off the radar although in 1985 he re-recorded Have You Heard A Man Cry again, this time with with a slight reggae and jazz influence.

Have You Heard a Man Cry, 1985 version

 

His highest profile moment in recent decades was at the 2019 Silver Scrolls where he performed Dance All Around the World with a choir to the amazement and delight of the surprised audience.

In many ways Simpson's career was short, focused to a period between the late Sixties and mid Seventies and – with the exception of that '85 version Man Cry – this collection pulls that together, a time when his flexible, strong and sometimes piercing voice could command material by artists as diverse as Van Morrison, Stevie Wonder (Love Every Little Thing About You) and Goffin-King (a somewhat frightening primal therapy treatment of Goin' Back) as well as the half dozen originals here.

If Corben Simpson was only ever Dance Around the World to you, here's plenty of evidence that he was so much more.

Although a fair comment would also be that when he really throws himself into a song some might feel the need to nip off to the kitchen for a cup of tea.

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