Friday Links: Oh So Sweet

Man that’s everything Madsen wasn’t – those SHOES, did you see Jones’ shoes? And that collar? You can get away with a lot with that ensemble, even Madsen probably could have pulled it off. Well except for his hair.

My mum saw Tom Jones last month, said the place was half empty, what the hell is wrong with people.

…Ready, Steady, Go! The Otis Redding Special in 66. Otis was the crown jewel at Stax at the time and the label put on a series of shows in Europe called the Stax/Volt Review. You can buy it as a live album:

http://www.amazon.com/Stax-Volt-Revue-Vol-London/dp/B000002ISR

The show with the above clip was recorded in London during that tour.
I don’t see Steve Cropper or Duck Dunn in the band so it’s probably a group of the Mar Keys and other artists with the labels.

Pre-1968 Stax was one of those golden musical moments where white and black musicians really came together with styles from rural gospel, honky tonk, tin pan alley, and hillbilly to create the Memphis Soul sound. Of course, like any good 60s era American music, before it was coldly co-opted by white American musicians on MOR radio, white British kids took their shot at it and…well, they got it. The Animals and Eric Burdon represent about the best fusion of American soul and white British drive. Of course, the soul aspect of this fusion eventually died down and guys like Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page found more to like in the blues while the mod kids veered off into kitsch and Tom Jones. However, even with Jones, you don’t end up singing like that if you don’t have a good handle on the source material and I’ve seen a few clips of the guy where he shows that he can really blow. Even when plastic and blue eyed soul came back around, it was Brits (and Irishmen) like David Bowie and Van Morrison that really brought it on home.

I visited the Memphis Museum of Soul earlier this year and they have a video with a quote from Steve Cropper about how things changed at the label following MLK’s assassination and perhaps the reason why you didn’t see any white American acts really pick up where the British kids took off was because there was simply too much baggage to deal with and while English guys like Eric Burdon were really digging into soul, American white musicians who would have fit right in branched off to southern rock and Gram Parsons country…which is nothing to sneeze at, but a shame that one of the great American musical fusions couldn’t have been carried a bit further.

Anywho, speaking of Brits and mods, here’s a scene from one of my favorite movies:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSJGEn4FDys

The famous Yardbirds scene in Blow Up. Yep, that’s the beginning take at Train Kept a Rolling. And yes, that’s Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck. Of course, we all know where that little strain of blues infused madness ended up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9i2fqxSjTI