Review: 'The Real Folk Blues' by Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf (Chess Acoustic Sounds Edition)

In the early sixties, Chess kept its crosshairs on the emerging folkie scene, hoping it might be a market for the label's blues artists who boasted the kind of "authenticity" that was grade-A currency to the coffee house set. If Muddy Waters's Folk Singer was a testing of waters, then those waters must have been warm and inviting enough for Chess to launch its Real Folk Blues series. Muddy, always the first name in blues, was to get the series rolling in 1965, with a second installment, devoted to Howlin' Wolf, following that same year.

Review: 'Jon Savage’s 1965-1968: The High Sixties on 45'

In 2016, Rolling Stone writer Jon Savage began curating double-CD compilations for Ace Records in the UK. Each set was a sort of fantasy mid-sixties pirate radio playlist. His 1965 set mainly featured A-list rock and soul artists such as The Kinks (“See My Friends”), The Who (“Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere”), and The Supremes (“My World Is Empty Without You”), but there was also a sprinkling of more obscure luminaries such as Thee Midniters (“Land of 1,000 Dances Pt. 1”), The Spades (“We Sell Soul”), and Alvin Cash & the Crawlers (“Twine Time”). Each comp devoted to 1966 through 1968 followed a similar format.

To put all of these ace CDs onto vinyl would have required about twelve vinyl discs. Instead, Savage and Ace have opted to boil 192 tracks down to a sampling of 32 for a single, double-LP set. Although some of the big, big artists remain—Donovan with “Hey Gyp”, The Association with “Along Comes Mary”, James Brown with “Tell Me That You Love Me”, Gladys Knight and the Pips with “Take Me in Your Arms and Love Me”, Buffalo Springfield with “Mr. Soul”—Jon Savage’s 1965-1968: The High Sixties on 45 mostly spotlights the artists whose sides are less easy to find on vinyl. So while tracks by The Kinks (“Wonderboy”) and Aretha Franklin (“I Say a Little Prayer”) keep listeners oriented with familiar sounds, we can mostly concentrate on making some new discoveries, such as The Anglos’ infectious soul raver “Incense”, Norma Tanega’s quirky folk popper “Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog”, Ray Sharpe and the King Curtis Orchestra’s dance hall anthem “Help Me (Get the Feeling) Pt. 1”, Freaks of Nature’s garage burner “People! Let’s Freak Out”, and Kak’s psychedelic shaker “Rain”. There are also some relatively obscure numbers by well-known artists, such as The Chiffon’s “Nobody Knows What's Going On (In My Mind but Me)”, The Everly Brothers’ “Lord of the Manor”, and Sly and the Family Stone’s (as “The French Fries”) “Danse a La Musique” (aka: “Dance to the Music” in French).

Yes, some obscurities remain in CD limbo (alas, there wasn’t room for The Birds’ “Leaving Here”, The Blue Things’ “One Hour Cleaners”, Blossom Toes’ “Look at Me I’m You”, Tintern Abbey’s “Vacuum Cleaner”, or Dave Davies’ “Lincoln County”), but if this groovy distillation sells well enough, maybe Ace will some day pull the trigger on that twelve-LP box set we’re really craving.

Review: 'American International Pictures: A Comprehensive Filmography'

In the sixties, James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff’s American International Pictures was best known for pumping out a series of dopey beach party flicks, Roger Corman’s elegant Poe adaptations, and a gonzo slew of fab B-grade genre pictures. However, AIP was even more eclectic than that, distributing prestige foreign films such as The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and La Dolce Vita and films by Robert Altman and Orson Welles and trafficking in Mondo-style documentaries and borderline porno. In all, AIP and its subsidiaries had their talons in over 800 movies. With his new book American International Pictures: A Comprehensive Filmography, Rob Craig attempts to catalog them all. This would be quite the project if Craig had merely tracked down all the titles and listed them, but he goes way farther than that with encyclopedia-like entries for each film, some of which fill entire pages. He covers interesting production details, describes plots, and offers personal critiques and a good deal of sub-textual analysis.

This is where American International Pictures: A Comprehensive Filmography serves its most useful purpose, since the book mainly functions as a film guide. I can usually get a pretty good handle on how much a film-guide writer and I see eye-to-eye and how likely I will be to dig that writer’s recommendations. However, Rob Craig is a tough call. He’s generally politically astute, writes well, and loves many oddball movies deserving of love, but he’s too hell bent on iconoclasm, which is something he signals in an introduction that explicitly challenges notions that some films are or aren’t objectively good. That’s fine, but I can’t get on board with some of Craig’s kookier ideas. I agree with him that Peter Sasdy’s The Devil within Her is a lot of fun, but Craig’s conclusion that it is better than Rosemary’s Baby—a deliberately hilarious film he categorizes as “humorless”—is crazy (Polanski’s still a horrible person though). He thinks Starcrash is better than Star Wars (another movie he dismisses as “humorless) and can’t stand beloved character actor Dick Miller, yet he finds much to admire in crap such as the tedious Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb, the vile Cry of the Banshee, the inept and vile The Last House on the Left, and the shrill, painfully unfunny Comedy of Terrors, which he believes has “hilarious” dialogue. Who is this guy?

And wait ’til you read his entries on The T.A.M.I. Show and The Big TNT Show! He is merciless in his castigation of some of the sixties’ greatest acts, dismissing The Beach Boys as a “pathetic” boy band, deeming The Lovin’ Spoonful “bizarre,” trashing The Rolling Stones and The Byrds, and having little patience for James Brown, whose performance once inspired an entire movie theater audience to leap up in the aisles and dance (I was there). His chastising of the film’s use of some chaste go-go dancers as “perverted” is way more bizarre than anything the Spoonful ever did. Yet, I agreed with Craig in enough instances that I still managed to compile a list of films I’d like to check out on his recommendation. He certainly does a good job of making the movies he likes sound intriguing. Whether or not I enjoy them may be another matter.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 142

The Date: February 19

The Movie: The T.A.M.I. Show (1964)

What Is It?: The first great pop concert film is a lineup of the best soul, pop, and rock acts 1964 had to offer. Fast forward through Jan and Dean’s cornball hosting routine to get to the good stuff: Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, The Beach Boys, The Supremes, Chuck Berry, Leslie Gore, and in an epic show-ending showdown, James Brown and The Rolling Stones. Mick does a valiant job, but he can’t out-Godfather the Godfather.

Why Today?: On this day in 1940, Smokey Robinson is born.

Review: '1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music'

The title of Andrew Grant Jackson’s new book, 1965: The Most Revolutionary Year in Music, made my eyebrows rise. Really? 1965? Sure, it was the year Dylan went electric and the Stones lamented their lack of satisfaction, but wouldn’t 1968—the year of “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud”, “Street Fighting Man”, Electric Ladyland, the formation of Led Zeppelin, the release of the first LP-length rock opera (S.F. Sorrow), and well, “Revolution” — be more apt? Or how about 1967, the year of Sgt. Pepper’s, The Velvet Underground & Nico, the Summer of Love, Monterey Pop, Motown going psychedelic, and Paul McCartney going on TV to say he’s done acid? Or maybe even 1966 with its Revolver and Pet Sounds and Blonde on Blonde and Aftermath.