Walls of Sound

I can’t figure out when the phrase “Wall of Sound” was coined - it just seems to be one of those hyperbolic descriptors that’s been tossed around for years in discussions of pop music. Unlike, say, “New Weird America” or John Coltrane’s “Sheets of Sound,” it’s a phrase that seems genuinely serviceable, though. “Wall of Sound” refers to the ‘60s pop production style of erratic Los Angeles studio wizard Phil Spector, and the phrase conveys something crucial about any classic Phil Spector production: its physicality.

Even if you’re not familiar with his name or story, you’ve likely heard Spector’s handiwork. The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby,” the Crystals’ “Then He Kissed Me” (a personal favorite), the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” - they all have that peculiar sense of physical, cavernous space. I can almost feel the earth rushing up to meet me when I hear Spector’s “River Deep, Mountain High.”

Orchestrated and heavily engineered studio productions were nothing new to pop or rock ‘n’ roll or R&B in the early ‘60s. The history of commercial recording seems to be the history of producers wresting artistic control from the artists themselves; the Wall of Sound aesthetic, however, set a new precedent for rock ‘n’ roll. Everything was essentially subordinated to the producer’s art.

This week’s selections - while not Phil Spector productions themselves - were inspired by that ethos of grandeur. Singers were stripped their backing bands, their voices becoming indistinct in a densely orchestrated mix. Guitar riffs were overwhelmed by echo. Bells rang out from distant rooms. For the Wall of Sound, the musician’s individuality and role in the creative process was deemphasized in a fundamental way. This, in the case of Phil Spector, is not condemnation, though. He and his ‘60s protégés could be heavyhanded, overbearing megalomaniacs - and they were, without a doubt. But the Wall of Sound was conceived when use of technology like multi-tracking and studio echo was still innovative and full of experimental possibility. It was unashamed of its studio conception. It had no reason to be, either - it was a bold new form of pop.

1. The Date With Soul, Yes Sir That's My Baby (York)
Jack Nitzsche was a quintessential West Coast studio man. He began his career in the Los Angeles of the late 1950s as an arranger and session musician, working his way into studio production and scoring a 1963 hit with the instrumental “The Lonely Surfer.” Having provided the arrangements for many of Phil Spector’s ‘60s sessions, Nitzsche also absorbed, at least initially, some of those grandiose Spectorian production sensibilities.

This group - the Date With Soul - was a studio project for Nitzsche, and it found him laboring in full Wall of Sound mode. His version of the enduring “Yes Sir That’s My Baby” is pure distillate of the Los Angeles studio world; the notable voices buried in the chorus include, apparently, Brian Wilson, Jackie DeShannon, and Sonny and Cher, amongst others. Soul vocalist Edna Wright sang lead, but this wasn’t soul, really - not even the polished Motown variety of soul. Slowness was used to great, dramatic effect here. Strings - another Nitzsche hallmark - descended in prismatic tones. So what was this, exactly? No one else quite seemed to know either, but sensing that this was some freakish new species of pop, “Yes Sir That’s My Baby” was passed along from record label to record label and released three different times between 1964 and 1967.

This version on the York label was to be its last appearance.

2. Ruby and the Romantics, Your Baby Doesn’t Love You Anymore (Kapp)
Love. Gone right, it’s sunshine. You know the feeling? It’s chocolate and strawberries and endorphins, all gently floating on the breeze. It’s Paris in Springtime. Then it goes wrong. Very wrong. Apocalypse Now wrong. Darkness descends. Food goes bad in the refrigerator. Sleep? Don’t even think about it. Hearts are ripped out, dragged to the desert and shot unceremoniously.

Distinguished by Ruby Nash’s gorgeous lead vocals and - behind her - the sophisticated harmonies of the Romantics, Ohio’s Ruby and the Romantics were masters of smooth, romantic soul. 1963 hits like “Our Day Will Come” and “Hey There Lonely Boy” exemplified their sophisticated style. Their lyrical fare was urbane, their productions jazzy and lush. Ruby and the Romantics knew what they were doing.

“Your Baby Doesn’t Love You Anymore” isn’t the sort of sentiment you’d naturally ever care to hear, but, if it came down to that, it was better to hear it from seasoned professionals. There’s something about Ruby and the Romantics that says “dignified pathos” instead of “three unshowered weeks spent watching Turner Classic Movies.” Your friends mean well and everything, of course. But believe me - you’re better off letting Ruby and the Romantics handle this sort of heartbreak. They were the professionals.

This 1965 jewel was produced and arranged by New York-based studio veterans Tom Catalano and Alan Lorber. Lorber was shortly to engineer one of rock’s most infamous cash-in campaigns, the “Bosstown Sound.”

3. The Flirtations, Nothing But a Heartache (Deram)
Eager for chart success and a more receptive audience, the Flirtations, an American female R&B vocal group, managed to find both in England in 1967 with the assistance of aspiring producer Wayne Bickerton. Bombastic in the best possible way, with crescendo after breathtaking crescendo of deep girl group harmony sound, their “Nothing But a Heartache” was a major UK hit and an instant sensation among the Motown-worshipping mods of 1960’s Britain.

Decades later, it was just as instantly spoiled for these same souls after it was used in a television commercial for a popular fried chicken vendor.

Doin' the promo mash

1. The Houston Post, Get With it (Pams Productions)
The basslines thump and the bongos bounce. “Get with it,” the voices exhort, “get with the Houston Post!” The mood is celebratory. A manufactured celebratory. But still - it's celebratory.

If music is a reflection of the society which engenders it, then the Houston Post’s America breathed an atmosphere that was equal parts ersatz discotheque glamour and marketing pitch. Sure, the Houston Post was trying to sell more newspapers, but that’s only half the story. “Get With It” doesn't worry itself with advertising the Post’s expanded sports section or its new Washington office.

Instead, it advertises the broader idea of the Post’s get-with-itude. It’s classic branding, and the Post’s determination to be something more than just the first choice in newpapers for Houston suburbanites is obvious here.

The flipside of “Get With It” contains the instructions for a dance named, against better judgment, the Wink. You can get a sense of how it goes here. A little later here, too - you’re coming along nicely! Still, a little further along - everybody ready to Wink? You think you are, but actually you’re still not quite ready to do the Wink. Finally, after interminable instruction, it all comes together here, sort of.

No one ever learned how to Wink. That wasn’t the point. Inventing a zany dance was, however. It was an obligatory part of branding your product to the young and the hip in 1966.

Alas, such outreach never paid off for the Post. The paper eventually folded in 1995; the youthful demographic they so desperately appealed to grew up and started reading the Houston Chronicle instead.

A short history of the Houston Post can be found here.

2. Vox, Wah-Wah
This was a product demonstration record for the new Vox Wah-Wah guitar pedal, the device that quickly became any self-respecting guitarist’s choice for sounding way groovier. The Wah-Wah would endure as one of pop music’s emblematic guitar sounds throughout the ‘60s, heard to ever sleazier effect as the ‘70s wore on. In early 1967, however, the Vox Wah-Wah was still an unproven commercial commodity. Likewise, the quarry here was not the average amateur teenaged musician but rather the business community, the music shops and suppliers and studios. They needed a little persuasion before stocking something ostensibly little more than a psychedelic do-dad.

If you can’t make it through the first four-and-a-half minutes of sales pitching, you can jump to the last bit, where everything is breezily wrapped up for us with the Benzedrine-inhaling verve that we're accustomed to.

Originally distributed on a laminate card to music shops that stocked Vox guitars and amplifiers, this selection has all the inevitable fidelity of music etched into cardboard grooves. The musician patiently demonstrating all of this for us is the California session guitarist (and inventor) Del Casher. There’s a good interview with Del here, where he reminisces about his involvement with the Wah-Wah pedal, Fender’s EccoPhonic Tape Delay/Echo unit, and a mysterious entity known as the Vox Ampliphonic Orchestra.

3. The Utica Club Natural Carbonation Band, The Utica Club Natural Carbonation Beer Drinking Song (RCA Custom)
Sadly, this garish discotheque existed only in TV commercials for Utica Club, once touted as the flagship beer of the Matt Brewing Company.

An indispensable part of any Far Out scene is a balcony bar where characters from disparate moments in history could convene over a cold one.

Anything could happen at Utica Club, we're told. Life-sized paintings came to life. Waitresses slid down firemen’s poles. Octogenarians. Anything.

It was a spontaneous and strangely psychedelic fraternity that awaited you at Utica Club. As far as the music went, “The Utica Club Natural Carbonation Beer Drinking Song” was basically a post-“Incense and Peppermints” variation on the same theme of inebriated spontaneity. While you and your buddies hully gullied in place, trying to make sense of all this, why not also hully gully your way over to the Wegman’s for a case of discount brew?

This selection was created for Matt Brewing Company by one of commercial music’s best-credentialed composers, the great Sasha Burland. Burland was also the brains behind two albums by the Nutty Squirrels, the jazz cousins to those loathsome rodentia, Alvin & the Chipmunks.

“The Utica Club Natural Carbonation Beer Drinking Song” has been documented before at Otis Fodder’s ur-music blog, the 365 Days Project. The discussion which originally ensued was instrumental in writing this post.

Organ safari

Rarely did exotica masquerade as authentic simulacra. That’s part of what made exotica exotica. An odd minor key and a flourish of African percussion here. Some warmed-over Arabic melody there. Exotica, in all of its post-War American pop music splendor, created an aura of mystery and taboo with only a vague musical relationship to the culture it attempted to evoke.

In the hands of, say, Les Baxter (an all-time favorite artist of mine), the exotic was more likely be a “Congolese-ish orchestral tone-poem" than passed off as anything genuinely Congolese. Other compositions might venture even further from their source of inspiration; exotic in title only, you get the sense they were mostly an opportunity for musicians to exorcise some of their darker creative impulses. That’s why I love the more obscure strains of exotica (including early psychedelia). Like this week's selections, they maintained a basic degree of air-conditioned comfort for the sedentary daydreamer, but, by leveraging the idea of the exotic, musicians could paint with wilder, weirder strokes than they might have conventionally used.

All of this can be problematic, of course. Intentional or not, invoking the exotic is also invoking old stereotypes about the “primitive” and a long and shameful history of ethnocentricism. I’m not thinking about that right now, though. Instead, I’m back to the way those conga drums ricocheted around in my speakers. Did you hear that?

1. Jimmie McGriff, Jungle Cat (Part 1) (Jell)
With his hit version of Ray Charles’ “I Got a Woman,” Philadelphia organist Jimmy McGriff was one of the first to achieve broader success in the gospel and R&B rooted idiom that came to be known as soul jazz. An exotic mood piece from 1964, McGriff’s obscure “Jungle Cat” is an anomaly among his generally bluesy work, however.

2. Jimmie McGriff, Jungle Cat (Part 2) (Jell)
McGriff is joined on “Jungle Cat” by his longtime guitarist Larry Frazier (with a stunning solo on part two) as well as his brother Hank (on, naturally, bongos). Together they lurch forward into a thick, fetid gloom of studio echo, leaving it to the listener to decide whether they ever emerged again.

McGriff, a legendary, prolific career to his name, is still active today, I'm happy to report.

3. Walter Bolen, Lion Hunt (Part Two)
It was getting progressively harder to find, but, in 1967, exotica was still available in the open market. You just had to ask around a little. You could find it being sold with hopelessly dated titles like “Lion Hunt.” It was out there in different formats, too: jazz, easy listening, soundtrack mood pieces, greasy R&B instrumentals.

"Lion Hunt" managed to be nearly all those things. This selection was also the first release on Pick-A-Hit records, a label run by aspiring Los Angeles R&B producer and impresario Bobby Sanders, and one of many independent labels that - depending on who you asked - either serviced or exploited Los Angeles’s fascinating jazz, soul, R&B, and Latin music scene. Other than writing, arranging, and playing on it (presumably either the saxophone or organ), Walter Bolen remains a total mystery, however.

Part One of “Lion Hunt,” is, if you're curious, the same track - just without “roaring lion” sound effects.

4. The Living End, Jumpin’ At the Lion’s Gate (Bolo)
Like other regions, the Pacific Northwest had its own circumscribed rock ‘n’ roll scene in the twilight years before the British Invasion. Popular groups like the Kingsmen, Paul Revere & the Raiders, the Wailers, and the Sonics all emerged from this scene, honing their raucous R&B-infused version of rock ‘n’ roll on the Northwest’s legendary club circuit and mixing it up with versatile (and sometimes racially integrated) seven- and eight-piece horn combos.

If this selection’s flipside - a tight James Brown-inspired instrumental entitled “Skyride” - is any indication, the Living End were pretty typical of the scene.

Part mod-ish jazz instrumental, part screwball romp through a Go-Go bar floorshow, “Jumpin’ At the Lion’s Gate,” is altogether another story, however. Maybe the Living End didn’t set out to be exotic, but this number probably sounded pretty primal after throwing back a few Coffee Grogs fireside at Kona Kove.

The lone record by the Living End, "Jumpin' At the Lion's Gate" was released on Bolo, which, along with sister label Seafair, was one of the Pacific Northwest’s great indie labels. (Sharp-eyed readers might remember another Seafair/Bolo 45 from this post.) Being released in 1966, it was also definitely an endnote in the chronology of the Northwest sound.

I was so confident that there once stood a club named “The Lion’s Gate” in Seattle. I could find no such references, however - it seems likely it was named for this famous Vancouver landmark, instead.

Raga rock

There came that point in the mid-‘60s when everything was culminating in a great big blur of flowers, sex, drugs, and haphazard Eastern mysticism - and rock music was right there, the preeminent vector of a new pop counterculture. If you couldn’t avail yourself of a sitar you at least made your electric guitar sound like one. If your suburban upbringing precluded any established familiarity with Eastern religion, you could overcome that, too, with lyrics which came across as mystical, provocative, or - depending on your listener's patience - frustratingly enigmatic.

The Yardbirds had “Heart Full of Soul,” the Rolling Stones had “Paint It Black.” The Kinks did it with “See My Friends” and the Beatles, too, did it with “Rain.” There wasn’t anything authentically Eastern - Indian, Arabic, or otherwise - about this new sound in the pop charts. Nor was that really the point. I believe that most pop musicians generally understood their limitations, and understood, too, that - odd exotic modes and chords and Pentatonic scales aside - heavy amplification and psychedelic Eastern-sounding guitar solos belonged together in some sort of profound, predetermined way. It was kismet, in other words, and if someone somewhere was flashing on the Taj Mahal and blue clouds of hashish smoke, then so much the better.

1. The Off-Set, Xanthia (Lisa) (Jubilee)
The Off-Set were a popular band in mid-‘60s Brooklyn, recording their debut 45 as the Jagged Edge before renaming themselves for their second record, the stunning “Xanthia (Lisa).”

A peerless psychedelic dirge that seems to have shared AC current with cross-town compatriots the Velvet Underground, “Xanthia (Lisa)” would also be the Off-Set's last 45. However briefly, though, the Off-Set flourished in the atmosphere of 1966 pop experimentalism. Vocalist Elliot Ingber breaks into something that sounds like Latin two thirds of the way into the song, and when it came time for a solo, there’s the singular sound of a steel Zippo lighter slid against guitar strings. After all, the Byrds had a hit with their 12-string guitar freak-out “Eight Miles High,” so why not try the same with Zippo lighters, mysterious communiqués from “the night wind,” and a metric tonne of reverberation?

The Off-Set were Drew Georgopulos (rhythm guitar and vocals), Art Steinman (lead guitar and vocals), Kenny Bennett (drums), Elliot Ingber (lead vocals), and Harley Wishner (bass). Check out Mike Dugo’s great interview with lead guitarist Art Steinman here (with the story of this recording) , and Steinman’s personal history and official site for the band here. Both features were used in writing this post.

Xanthia is a genus of nocturnal moth.

2. 1st Century, Looking Down (Capitol)
The 1st Century’s exact origins remain unknown. If the involvement of Don Nix (former Mar-Keys saxophonist and future blues songwriter) is any indication, though, “Looking Down” was a Memphis production, the 1st Century themselves likely a one-off group of studio musicians.

“Looking Down,” their only recording, features sophisticated lyrics straight from a lost epilogue to The Doors of Perception, and the hypnotic propulsion of an unidentified stringed instrument. Is it an oud? A Greek bouzouki? Whatever it is, the miracle of “Looking Down” is that this instrument had worked its way up the Mississippi and into some corner of a Memphis studio, making producers uneasy for years before that epochal moment in 1968 when, finally, it could be picked up and put to proper use.

Authorship credit here goes to Ray Stinnett, former guitarist for Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs (of “Wooly Bully” fame).

3. The Raves, Mother Nature (Smash)
In 1967, it wasn’t always enough for just your guitar to sound like a refugee from the Arabian Desert. Sometimes you needed your harmonies, organ, bass, and your guitars all to hang in the air and literally vibrate in sympathetic melisma with the East. In the process of doing so, the Raves generated this sublime psychedelic pop classic.

One of innumerable garage combos who released a few fine 45s in the 1960s and who've languished in obscurity since (or, conversely, that have always languished in obscurity), the Raves’ blissful harmony sound is reminiscent of the era’s West Coast recordings. Their exact whereabouts a mystery, the involvement of A&R and production stalwarts Ron Haffkine and Jerry Ross on this 45, however, suggest that New York City was home to the brothers Jimenez.

The Now Sound!

You could give it an exotic quality with chimes, flutes, and bongos. You could supercharge it with fuzztone distortion. You could purr, hum, and sing the word “groovy” all you wanted. Beneath the racy exteriors of this week’s selections, however, beat the cocktail-tippling heart of an older generation. Uniformly the work of veteran New York City and Los Angeles studio arrangers, composers, and musicians, they’re selections unconsciously calculated to appeal to a slightly older set - a set that was happy to acknowledge current pop culture, but that needed this pop culture to fade into the background, too, when necessary.

The Now Sound was just that. It did not suggest a whole countercultural lifestyle the way that, say, the wild and threatening strains of rock music might. Rather, the Now Sound accessorized, and, in doing so, it unwittingly gravitated to the more commercial end of the American musical landscape, eventually finding its proper home in ‘60s soundtrack and television themes, advertisements, game shows, and your bachelor uncle’s living room.

1. The Big Game Hunters, See the Cheetah (Uni)
Upcoming social occasion? Looking for something more festive than just another snappy beat and a catchy refrain? This groovy little number, with its roomy, wood-paneled interior, reclining bucket seats, bouncy sex kitten insouciance, and patented Zowie-Flute® will turn even the most sexless bachelor pad into a pulsating discothèque within seconds. Just push back the furniture, turn down the lights, blend the peppermint juice, and GO! Wall-mounted Hi-Fi? Yeah, you’re gonna need that too, pal.

As Pop art as a Lichtenstein print or any Batman episode, “See the Cheetah” was written by Alden Shuman (composer of the 1973 soundtrack to The Devil in Miss Jones), produced by Dave Pell (veteran West Coast bandleader, musician, producer) and Russ Regan (ubiquitous West Coast A&R man), and arranged by our guy Mort Garson. It was, in other words, a pure distillation of the Los Angeles studio world. These were the kind of session veterans who could sit down at a table in 1967, rub their hands together, and half an hour later records would be hurtling themselves into heavy rotation over at KHJ.

2. The Distant Galaxy, Blue Scimitar (Verve)
After the engineering fantasies of 1950s Popular Science-style articles and paranoid overtones of the early Space Race, galactic adventure assumed more stylish tones in the late ‘60s. If you watched Star Trek, you knew, for instance, that space was the place for a groovy extraterrestrial rendezvous. If you sat through the first two hours of 2001: A Space Odyssey, you vowed to be at least acutely stoned if you ever found yourself orbiting Jupiter. There were space stations out there with gleaming ensembles of mod, plastic-molded furniture. And, if the planets lined up just right, there’d be a Star Gate of swirling stroboscopia. It could be one heavy head trip, the cosmos. Think of the Distant Galaxy that way. Just none of that metaphysical business about higher consciousness, or returning to the earth as the Star Child. This Distant Galaxy was where you went to cool your head in the soothing light of the nebulae after, say, a night of Sake Bombs.

The Distant Galaxy was in reality the studio project of Don Sebesky, a composer and arranger best known for a fruitful series of collaborations with producer Creed Taylor. Their lush, commercial orchestrations for jazz artists were ubiquitous in the late ‘60s twilight of jazz’s mainstream currency. “Blue Scimitar,” which features Richard Spencer on soprano sax and the stinging fuzztone guitar of the young Larry Coryell, was taken from the 1968 Verve album of the same name, the first (and better) of two groovy, lightly psychedelic pop-jazz albums from Sebesky.

3. Marty Manning and the Cheetahs, Tarzan (Tarzan’s March) (Columbia)
Marty Manning was one of many New York City arrangers, composers, and musicians who might play the occasional jazz or pop date, or cut an album or two under their own name. Mostly, though, they toiled (and made their living) in the anonymity of their studio pop, jazz, and soundtrack work. Manning, one of the busiest, is nonetheless best known today as the creative genius behind 1961’s The Twilight Zone: A Sound Adventure in Space, a memorable one-off album that, though affiliated with Rod Serling’s television show, was truly its own entity: a conceptual assemblage of outer space melodies and moods, darkly scored by exotic percussion and the eerie croon of primitive electronic instrumentation and wordless vocals.

"Tarzan's March," likely recorded around 1966 as a tie-in with the NBC television show, is obviously something else altogether. It marches forward with fuzztone guitars, organ, and a spirit of justice and a manifest destiny-like sense of its own rectitude. It would have made a lot of sense as an updated theme for some Dragnet or Perry Mason morality drama. I guess it’s comforting, though, that this sort of righteous virtue was available to Tarzan Lord Greystoke as well.