Ingrid Boulting, 1970, by Norman Parkinson for Vogue.
The Byrds - Precious Kate
From their not exactly amazing 1971 album “Farther Along,” this particular song is really embodying the romantic, warm, bittersweet, doomed, apocalyptic 70’s Los Angeles vibes I seem to be emanating this evening.
“Precious Kate, it’s our fate, to meet inside the center of a California earthquake.”
Warren Zevon, your music may not be for everyone, but I have a soft spot for all those orange-washed, grimy Los Angeles hippie vibes of the 60’s and 70’s. To me, you’re still an underrated, wild, long-haired, dirty angel.
Vitautus Alphonsus “Vito” Paulekas was an American artist and bohemian, who was most notable for his leading role in the Southern California “freak scene” of the 1960s…
According to writer Johnny Rogan, Paulekas’ “free thinking lifestyle and artistic passion inspired beatniks, aspiring existentialists and Valley girls in need of rebellion.”
Françoise Hardy - Can’t Get The One I Want
My favorite ye-ye girl doing a cover of a Beverley Martyn song. Perfect.
Barbara Keith - Walk A Little Closer
Released in 1969 on Verve Records, Barbara Keith’s self-titled debut features singer-songwriter stylings with a definite country-rock, down-homey kind of vibe. Her voice has this slight shake to it like a higher range Marianne Faithfull or even a little bit of Dolly Parton.
This release often gets confused with her ‘72 release on Reprise because they are both self-titled but these two albums are completely different beasts. Personally, I’m partial to this album, the production is a little bit rougher around the edges than her Reprise release (her most well-known one), but there is something so soulful about the way she sings on this particular album. Of the many 60’s and 70’s chanteuses I have found in my diggings, she continues to be one of my favorite ones.
Today, she lives in Massachusetts, playing shows mostly locally with her band The Stone Coyotes which features her husband, John Tibbles, on the drums, Barbara Keith singing and playing guitar and their stepson Doug on the bass.
Why do I dig?
Recently I was inspired to start posting some more of the hidden gems I’ve come across in my extensive diggings for music from the mid-60’s to mid-70’s. While I dig for a lot of very different kinds of music (more like, what don’t I dig for?), I have a huge soft spot for that era. Not only was the fervor of new ideas being spread at a rapid rate in the United States, it was a fever that was spreading to every part of the world. So what does that mean for music?
People started testing the limits of the traditional music genres we had come to know so well. It was a wild fire of song influenced by drugs, politics, a love of music, and even a fear of the world not changing, but because there was so much music being produced around this time, so many musicians got drowned out by all the waves of psychedelic noise and the clamor of a thousand electric guitars, lost down the deep, soulful river of blues and folk, hidden in the gospel chorus with all those other honky tonk angels.
What’s even crazier and keeps me on this goose-chase is that all too often, these musicians were right under our noses. So many of them played on albums for musicians we know too well, occasionally even produced by big-named producers. So many of them were talented enough to have made it huge but it just never happened and they get lost in the liner notes of one of your favorite musician’s albums, a footnote in musical history.
So, I dig. I dig because there is so much history and talent hiding in crates of your local record store, I dig because it’s so telling of the times and I want to better understand how that wave of change came, so I can learn to apply it to today. I dig because I think everyone deserves to be heard. Now, the question is, can you dig it?
Four Songs - Boys
Laura Nyro, Tim Hardin, John Martyn, and Barbara Keith.
Four Songs - Abracadabra
Today’s mix includes swamp sounds, fuzzy folk, bluesy psych, and a soulful organ. You can listen to it here.
Richard & Linda Thompson - When I Get To The Border
“If you see a box of pine with a name that looks like mine, say I drowned in a barrel of wine when I got to the border…”
