VRD: What’s That Round, Black Thing?

Find all Vinyl Record Day blogswarm posts starting at jb’s blog, The Hits Just Keep On Comin'. The complete list of Vinyl Record Day posts is here.

August 12, 1877. Before that day, every sound ever produced by an animal, a falling tree, or the Earth, as it matured, evaporated shortly after its creation. When Thoreau described the sound of the train in Walden, published in 1854, he was describing a sound some of his readers would never hear. Before August 12, 1877, if you didn’t go to a railroad track to hear an engine roar by, you never heard one. No one could bring the sound to you.

It would still be another ten years or more before most people heard reproduced sound, but this date marks the possibility of hearing a sound wave outside of real time. As early as 1860, you could see a sound wave, thanks to a French inventor, Léon Scott, who created something called the phonautograph. But he never developed a way to play back the sounds. Thanks to firstsounds.org and massive advances in computing, the oldest phonautogram, a snippet of Au Claire de la Lune, can now be heard.

Thomas Edison, though, did think in terms of playback, and he succeeded in creating one of the few enduring technologies of the nineteenth century. While his first thoughts for the phonograph did not turn to music, he invented a delivery medium for artistic expression that could not be rivaled for portability until the VCR became part of our lives.

Let me fast-forward 85 years. (There’s a term that would not exist without Edison.) It may well have been August 12, 1962 when I became aware enough of music to ask what my mother was doing to produce it. She used a little box and some flat black discs to make groovin’ sounds. And she could do it over and over. She was a miracle-worker, my mother.

Radio stations can ignore the lights on their phones when they don’t want to take requests, but my mom was stuck with the monster she had created. I would not let go of music. So, before I turned three, she taught me to put the vinyl on the platter, move the tonearm carefully to the beginning of the groove, and drop it onto the blackness that somehow exploded with sound (and color, but that’s a different discussion).

Her short investment of time reaped great rewards for her, as she never had to wonder about my whereabouts once she showed me the intricacies of the record player. I was hooked on music. I have audible proof of how much music mattered to me when I was three years old, thanks to this Christmas recording.

I don’t know if listening to Edison’s invention made me musical, or if I was going to have an urge to produce sounds of my own, and that made me love other people’s records. But it doesn’t matter: as abiding as my delight has been in playing a piano, a guitar or a tin whistle, nothing has ever pleased me more than putting a vinyl record on a turntable.

I was fortunate to have grown up in an era where the 45 was king, and everyone wanted to cash in by creating a record label and producing a hit. That rush in search of black gold led to a variety of 45 labels that were appealing to the eye, in hopes that a splash of color or an intriguing logo would lead a potential buyer to give the song a spin. It also led to the release of some strange recordings, the likes of which would never be issued in an era where a one-size-fits-all disc is expected to contain a dozen songs.

But for a little kid who was discovering music via the 7” 45 rpm record, the world was full of sonic delights. It helped that I had an uncle who bought cutout 45s from a local department store and brought them to me, twenty at a time. Each new pile of vinyl provided at least 80 minutes of joy the first time through, and while cutout 45s were by nature unpredictable as far as quality went, I found a lot of classic tunes in those stacks.

I have never mentioned on this blog that I found trips to the hardware store with my dad a wistful experience. While he was making his purchases, I would eventually wander by the section where sandpaper was sold. There, you could buy sanding discs that would spin on a sander. To my five-year-old eyes, their flat, circular form, complete with label in the middle, looked like a vinyl record.

That image always made me wish they had music on them, so I could bug my dad to buy one for me. The elegance of the flat black circle with a label and a hole in the middle imprinted itself so deeply in my psyche that recently, when I visited a hardware store with my dad, the sanding discs still tugged at me, telling me that wishing music onto their gritty surface would make it so.

Given that I am an audiophile, you can imagine my joy at reading in Billboard around 1980 that Philips and Sony were concocting a scratchless, popless, skipless medium for playing music that would hold more than seventy minutes of sound and provide previously unimagined dynamic range. I had LPs that, even when they were new, sounded gritty on the last track because of the way the tonearm interacted with the grove. I was all for clarity and precision.

The CD, when it arrived in 1983, proved to be compact (1000 of them fit in the space of my 400 LPs), durable (as I don’t touch the surface, the first CD I bought still sounds the same) and convenient (they work much better in the car than vinyl does). I can even say that I almost always can tell you if a song is being played from a CD or vinyl, thanks to the tiny bit of static, the occasional crushed sibilant, or the wow and flutter of vinyl.

I can also distinguish vinyl from digital by the nuance of sound that gets snipped out by a limited digital sampling rate. I love my CDs, but I have learned over the years that there really is something to be said for listening to a tenderly kept piece of vinyl on high-end equipment, beginning with an impeccable stylus. There is simplicity in the mechanics of cutting a sound wave into a plate that then presses that exact sound into a piece of vinyl. The process brings all of the presence of the original performance from the studio to your ear. If there are a few pops along the way, it’s no worse than hearing a concert live and having someone cough during a quiet passage.

I never thought I could prove how magical vinyl is, but now I can. I bought a new stylus a couple of years ago so I could digitize some songs I had on vinyl but not on CD. In most cases, I got what I expected: warm recordings with some pop and chatter. In one case, I got far more than I bargained for: I got a spectacular example of why vinyl, and thus Thomas Alva Edison, still matters. The recording of “Down Under” by Men at Work that I took off my LP, as I didn’t have it on CD, displays vinyl at its best.

Even though I was stupid enough to delete the wav file when I compressed the audio, the resulting digital file is amazingly crisp and warm. It shows why vinyl is still here 25 years after we went digital, whereas the 78 rpm lacquer disc gave way to vinyl in five years or so. It shows, too, that an idea first implemented on August 12, 1877 stands the test of time. There is really no improving on the vinyl record; there are only lateral moves from the lateral groove.

A note on the recordings: I am posting both my LP and my CD versions of “Down Under.” I am doing so to give you a chance to guess which version comes from vinyl. If you have a second, after you listen, please use the poll to the right to make your guess as to which track is from the LP. I’ll divulge the answer on Saturday.

Tomorrow, it’s back to business as usual, and I’ll be discussing one of the last newly issued 45s I bought, in 1988. Thanks for stopping by, and I invite those of you who are here for the first time to stop by for new posts on Wednesdays and Saturdays. You can subscribe to the blog via the links to the right, if you wish. See you tomorrow!

Men At Work, Down Under, version A

Men At Work, Down Under, version B

Summer of Steed, Part 2

This Saturday post, coming on Sunday, is late because of out-of-town connectivity issues, and not because I was too busy primping for my 30th high-school reunion. Honest. Sorry about the delay. Before I start the post, I'd like to mention also that I am participating in the Vinyl Record Day blogswarm on Tuesday, August 12. You will find links to other participants here if this happens to be the music blog you check out first. And now, the Saturday evening post:

The summer of 1970 was waning when one of the best Eternal Summer singles hit the charts. Bobby Bloom's only Top 40 hit, "Montego Bay" (L&R/MGM 157), joined the rotation at WLS in Chicago just as the final echoes of "Lay a Little Lovin' on Me" faded from the air. I was home, back at school, when "Montego Bay" arrived on the scene, so I managed to get a copy of this gem while it was in the store.

I relate the song to Steed Records because Bobby Bloom worked with Jeff Barry at Steed, and Jeff co-wrote and produced the song. Bobby and Robin McNamara often contributed backing vocals to each other's songs.

If you're familiar with Jeff's production work beginning (perhaps) with "Iko Iko" by the Dixie Cups, you understand how important percussion has been to his overall sound, and especially Caribbean rhythms. (To paint the complete picture, I should note that Neil Diamond's version of "La Bamba," produced by Jeff and Ellie Greenwich, sounds pretty much like "Cherry, Cherry" and thus is not a successful foray into the world of Latin percussion.)

"Montego Bay" should, of course, have a Caribbean feel, and its authenticity owes a lot to the real-life experiences that led to the writing of the song. More on that in a moment.

As was the case with Andy Kim's "Baby, I Love You," Jeff recorded all of the percussion for "Montego Bay" one instrument at a time. The result is an extremely clean recording with great separation. He and Bobby Bloom recorded the song with no additional musicians at all.

What first attracted me to the song was the mention of an MG in the first verse. My dad bought a baby-blue MGB convertible in 1970, and we tooled around Northwest Indiana in that thing. I remember a trip to the Big Wheel restaurant at the Gary-Merrillville border for chocolate sundaes. We sorted out a lot of our relationship then, what it would be with my mother gone. The reality that you really needed two MGBs, one to drive and one to leave with the mechanic, didn't keep me from loving that car. And there was Bobby Bloom, singing about driving one in Jamaica.

Since I already owned a Jeff Barry single, finding his name on "Montego Bay" was an added treat. This knowledge, in fact, helped cement his position as my most admired songwriter/producer, coming as it did on the heels of "Sugar, Sugar."

The song itself doesn't strike me as a bubblegum tune, despite its link to two purveyors of the genre. Bobby Bloom and Jeff Barry were talking about experiences they had had separately in Jamaica, and Jeff helped Bobby mold specific real-life references into the striking visual imagery that makes up the lyrics. The song is catchy, but the discussion of deliveries of cool rum is not aimed at teens.

The song has an added feature, a promo clip that is actually one of the earliest modern-form music videos I have ever seen. By that I mean that the video doesn't merely show Bobby Bloom lip-synching the song on a stage; money was spent to put him (and a camera operator) in the water, Bobby in a canoe, paddling as he lip-synched. Very 1980s MTV, very beautiful surroundings. Check it out:



The events of Bobby Bloom's life were not always so beautiful. Born in 1946, by age 23 he was known as a recording engineer as well as a music producer and songwriter. He was a friend of Vini Poncia, who later produced work by Kiss. One of the songs he co-wrote with Jeff Barry, "Heavy Makes You Happy (Sha Na Boom Boom)," was turned into a Top 40 hit by the Staple Singers. Bobby contributed to the latter-day Monkees album Changes with the Barry-Bloom compositions "You're So Good to Me" and "Ticket on a Ferry Ride." He helped put Kama Sutra and Buddah Records together.

On February 28, 1974, he was shot to death "under mysterious circumstances." The shooting seems to have been accidental, but the culprit never was identified. The shooting silenced a good guy with a great voice.

We do have "Montego Bay." In case you are one of the dozen or so people who have not heard the song, here it is. And on Wednesday, I'll bring you the flip side of perhaps the last new single I ever bought. Look for the Vinyl Record Day post Tuesday as well. See you then!

Bobby Bloom, Montego Bay

Summer of Steed, Part 1

The second floor of my Aunt Eileen’s house in Gary, Indiana wasn’t a proper second floor. The ceiling rose and fell to match the contours of the roof, including alcoves for windows and slopes to keep the snow or rain from overburdening the rafters. White stucco walls blended into the white stucco ceiling not at sharp angles, but with smooth curves that gave the ceiling the feel of an upside-down ski slope. I slept in the alcove by the window facing Kentucky Street for most of July and August of 1970.

Sending me to Aunt Eileen was easier for my dad than making me fend for myself while he worked. My mom was dead, and Aunt Eileen was her sister. My teenage cousins, Bob and Jim, shared their room with me, and in the nighttime darkness, Bob played WLS at a low volume until we all fell asleep.

Probably to keep me from thinking too much, Bob developed a game where we would guess song titles as soon as we could from their intros. They call it Name That Tune on TV, but we called it . . . well, we didn’t call it anything. I held my own in the game, and this week, I am going to talk about two related songs, one that figured prominently in the summer, and another that came along in the autumn when I was back home and often sleeping in yet another house that was not ours.

The first song got a lot of airplay while I was at Aunt Eileen’s. “Lay a Little Lovin’ on Me” by Robin McNamara (Steed 724) joined the Top 40 ranks on July 18, 1970, peaking at #11, and it must have captured someone’s imagination at WLS, because I heard it every night during August. The song had a groove I couldn’t get out of my head during the day, which turned out to be a good thing. I loved the part where Robin called out: “Now just the girls sing it,” and all of the male voices disappeared. The singers turned out to be the cast of Hair, of which Robin was an original member. I knew about Hair, but I was not offered a chance to see it that year.

It was a good thing I remembered the song, because, by the time I got back home and could buy records, “Lay a Little Lovin’ on Me” had disappeared from the bins. I never heard the song, except in my memory, from October, 1970 until the mid-1980s, when Rhino came out with the delicious Have a Nice Day series. I never heard it in stereo until I grabbed Volume 2 of the Rhino set. And oh, I played that song over and over the first few days I had it.

That was when I connected it to Saturday’s song, another Steed single that I did manage to buy. That was also when I connected it to Jeff Barry, my musical hero. I was pleased rather than surprised to find Jeff had produced and co-written the tune, as he had Saturday’s song.

Falling asleep on sweltering August nights under the rafters of a house in Gary was a lot more pleasant because of that radio and this song. Anytime I play it, it transports me back there. I can’t escape that memory. I think I’m glad about that.

Robin McNamara is a Boston area native, and you can learn much about his past and his present at his website. There, among other things, you can find a clip of Robin singing “Lay a Little Lovin’ on Me” on TV, complete with a couple of pairs of hands clapping between the camera and Robin. Watch for a flub when one pair of hands expects a nonexistent clap.

Saturday brings a single by a guy with an amazing voice. See you then!

The site is buggy today, so I can't post a poll. Check back when you can. Thanks.

Robin McNamara, Lay a Little Lovin’ on Me

Holy Disappointment, Batman!

I wrote on Wednesday about my experience with Neal Hefti’s “Batman Theme.” I said it was the second “Batman” record I bought. Now I get to tell you about the first one.

In 1966, for all his DJ experience and needle-dropping expertise, five-year-old caithiseach was not wise to all of the pitfalls associated with record-buying. Most of my collection of 45s came as gifts from Uncle Tom, and I had gone record-shopping myself just once before, for a single I’ll discuss in November. I had to have the Batman theme, of course, so I pulled the right strings and got myself a ride thirty blocks north to a record store in Gary.

By this time, I had experience with the concept of saving money to buy something. I got 25 cents per week as an allowance, though most of the time I didn’t get far enough away from home to spend that quarter. In 1965, a coin caught my eye, a silver dollar from Canada that celebrated Charlottetown, Québec’s centennial. I had to save for four weeks to come up with the purchase price of one dollar American. But I did it, and the purchase was a sweet one.

When I went to buy my first 45, the transaction was easy. The subsequent trip for the Batman single, however, was as fraught with peril as any experience the Caped Crusader ever faced, at least on the small screen.

I wrote before about soundalike records, specifically Hit Records and Big 6 Records. In the case of Batman, soundalikes were not an issue, but competing versions created a challenge.

I marched into the record store, my mother in tow, and told the very tall older lady (age seventeen, five feet tall) that I wanted the Batman record. She yanked out a Liberty single, I handed over my 69 cents, plus one cent state sales tax, and we slalomed through traffic on Broadway as smoothly as Batman in the Batmobile in order to get me home so I could play my new 45.

What an experience that was. I didn’t know then that three artists had released chart songs related to the Batman TV show:

The Marketts, “Batman Theme” (Warner 5696) hit Hot 100 2/5/1966, reached #17
Neal Hefti, “Batman Theme” (RCA Victor 8755) hit Hot 100 2/12/1966, reached #35
Jan & Dean, “Batman” (Liberty 55860) hit Hot 100 2/12/1966, reached #66

I wound up with the Jan & Dean recording. I blame the tall, older lady, because she had to know that this scrawny kid with 70 cents to his name was after the show’s original theme music, yet she foisted off the less successful Liberty release on me to relieve pressure on her overstock. I could have waited a year and gotten a copy for a nickel from Uncle Tom.

So I sat there, stunned, listening to something that most definitely was not the proper recording. My poor mom felt bad for having been co-duped by the short pimply teen girl. Maybe the girl thought she was giving me what I wanted, since I asked for “Batman” rather than the “Batman Theme.” I’ll never know, because I neglected to get her name so I could interview her for this piece. But it’s 42 years later, so she’s 60, and I have the satisfaction of imagining that she’s still stuck in a retail outlet, selling the wrong CD to some kid who gets only ten dollars’ allowance per week.

I’d like to be able to say that I still have the Liberty single, but it didn’t even make it to the Great Meltdown. At some point shortly after its purchase, I sat on it, and it broke in two.

That was not a clever ploy designed to get me a replacement single. I had broken a few other records along the way, once in cooperation with my mom’s recliner, and once when my kindergarten classmate Glen sat on a 78 I took to school. Ooh, I said last time that I was allowed just two contributions to the nap-time music series, but I got to play that 78, name now forgotten, as well. But I was three for three in the clapping vs. napping department.

After I broke my Jan & Dean 45, the decision was made that I could get another 45, and this time there would be due vigilance and, thus, the proper recording would make it into my collection. I played that Neal Hefti record an awful lot in the spring of 1966, and not just as a prelude to Batman’s TV exploits. It was all Batman, all the time, for a month or so.

Neal Hefti, the composer of the Batman theme I sought, was born in 1922 in Nebraska. He enjoyed a very solid career in the bebop era, playing trumpet for Woody Herman and composing/arranging for Herman and Count Basie. He became known as an extremely gifted arranger, and he influenced the Basie sound for two decades, beginning in 1950, with a combination of distinctive arrangements and significant compositions.

He moved into film and TV scoring in the 1960s; he wrote the theme to The Odd Couple as well as the Batman TV theme, for which he won a Grammy. He put together bands from time to time and remained active into the 1990s.

His chart competition for the “Batman Theme” came from the Marketts, essentially a Hollywood studio group made up of whichever session players were available to producer Joe Saraceno, who also produced work by the Ventures. The Marketts, who generally dealt in surf music, scored three Top 40 hits, including the #3 smash “Out of Limits.”

And Jan & Dean, who ran the Batman concept through the Jan & Dean filter and made it sound like all of their other hits, are legends of surf rock who should need no introduction. If you think you haven’t heard them before, their song “Batman” will remind you so much of “Surf City,” “Dead Man’s Curve” and “The Little Old Lady (From Pasadena)” that you will know this duo immediately.

Now that I have purged Batman from my musical soul, I’ll revisit 1970 next week. Until then, enjoy this other Batman song, which is kind of fun, as long as you’re not fervently hoping to hear the TV theme. See you Wednesday!

Jan & Dean, Batman