Category: The Vinyl Dialogues Book Page 6 of 16

Johnny Maestro

The Del-Satins were always looking for an echo. A doo-wop group from New York that formed in the early 1960s, they would search out an overpass in Central Park, a subway station, anywhere that provided a good echo to enhance their sound.

The five original members – Stan Zizka, Fred Ferrara, his brother Tom Ferrara, Keith Koestner and Les Cauchi – had decided to call themselves the Del-Satins as a tribute to their doo-wop heroes, the Dells and the Five Satins. When they weren’t looking for an echo, the Del-Satins would sing on street corners, like many other singing groups from that era.

The Del-Satins had some early success when they got an opportunity to sing with Dion DiMucci. One of the most popular artists of the late 1950s, Dion had split with his singing group, the Belmonts, and was looking for a new vocal group.

“Our manager sent us up to a studio – Laurie Records in New York – because Dion was looking for background vocalists,” said Les Cauchi, original tenor of the Del-Satins. “We did a couple of bars and he grabbed us right away. He said, ‘Yeah, this is the sound I want.’”

Dion immediately went to work on his next project, which was a single called “Runaround Sue,” written by Dion and Ernie Maresca.

“So Dion says, ‘All you gotta do is go “Hey-hey, bomda-heyda-heyda” in union. And maybe in the bridge, we’ll break into a little harmony and clapping.’ We thought he was out of his mind, I gotta tell you,” said Cauchi. “It wasn’t our forte, singing-wise. We liked the harmonies, we studied the harmonies, we practiced the harmonies. Dion got on a rhythm kick though, and it was great. But at the time, no way did we expect what happened.”

What happened was that “Runaround Sue” became a No. 1 smash hit in 1961. The Del-Satins would end up making three albums with Dion, and would sing on many of his other hits, including “The Wanderer,” “Lovers Who Wander,” “Little Diane,” “Love Came to Me” “Ruby Baby,” “Donna the Prima Donna,” “Drip Drop” and “Sandy.”

Changes started happening to the Del-Satins in the mid-1960s. And the biggest change occurred when the group was doing what it always did – looking for an echo.

Members of the Brooklyn Bridge.

“We were looking around this one school and went into the gym looking to do some singing,” said Cauchi. “And down at the other end, sitting on the stage, was this guy with a bass guitar. I said to Fred (Ferrara), ‘Oh my god, that’s Johnny Maestro. What is he doing here?’ He just happened to be there, playing some bass notes, probably trying to figure out a tune.”

Maestro had begun his singing career in 1957 as the lead singer of The Crests, a doo-wop group that had several hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including “16 Candles,” which made it to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart in 1959. The Crests were the first interracially mixed doo-wop group of the era.

But by late 1960, Maestro would leave the Crests for a solo career. Although he did have a couple of Top 40 hits as a solo artist, including “What A Surprise” and “Model Girl,” Maestro was unable to reach the chart heights that he had achieved with The Crests.

By 1967, the Del-Satins were looking for a new lead singer to replace original lead singer Stan Zizka, who had left the group a few years earlier to pursue a solo career of his own. When Tom Ferrera and Cauchi got drafted into military service, Maestro joined the Del-Satins.

In 1968, when Cauchi returned from military service and rejoined the group, it then changed its name to The Brooklyn Bridge and became an 11-piece group, including a horn section, with Maestro as the lead singer.

“That name was actually given to us by an agent because there was a saying, ‘It’s easier to sell the Brooklyn Bridge than it is to sell an 11-piece group,’” said Cauchi. “Wait a minute, let’s call ourselves The Brooklyn Bridge and that’s what happened.”

The new group’s first recording project featuring Maestro on lead vocals was for Buddha Records and would be the self-titled “Brooklyn Bride” album, scheduled for release in late 1968.

“We were short a song for the album, so we were searching through other albums. We liked the 5th Dimension, we liked their style, the voices, the instruments, the things they did,” said Cauchi. “We heard this one song and we went to the producer (Wes Farrell) and said we had an idea to do this song. It’s a good song, it’s definitely within Johnny’s range and it’s the style that Brooklyn Bridge is able to do.”

The song was “The Worst That Could Happen,” written by Jimmy Webb, which had first appeared on a 1967 album of nearly all Jimmy Webb songs called “The Magic Garden” by the 5th Dimension.

Although the song didn’t do much for the 5th Dimension, the recording by Johnny Maestro and the Brooklyn Bridge made it to No. 3 on the Billboard Top 100 Singles chart in February 1969.

“When we finished recording it, we realized that it was something more that just a B-side or an album cut,” said Cauchi. “And the record company realized the same thing. It got on the bandwagon and got the promotion people out there and started to push the song.”

“The Worst That Could Happen” has been a signature song for the Brooklyn Bridge ever since.

Although the Brooklyn Bridge continues to tour – it will be one of the groups featured at the Golden Oldies Spectacular show March 3 at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, N.J. – it does so without some of its original members. Maestro died in 2010 at age 70 and Fred Ferrara died in 2011. Original member Cauchi remains with the group, as does original Brooklyn Bridge saxophonist Joe Ruvio and bass player Jimmy Rosica. In 2013, Joe Esposito took over as lead singer.

“We lost two very important people (Maestro and Fred Ferrara) not only to the band, but to our lives,” said Cauchi. “It was tough but we got through it. Their spirits are always with us on stage and will never go away. It’s part of who we are. But we feel strong enough to carry the legacy and that’s what we’ll be doing.”

Kenny Gamble: Respectfully thanking a legend without saying a word

By Mike Morsch

On October 6, 2017

In The Vinyl Dialogues Book

Kenny Gamble, co-founder of Philadelphia International Records and co-creator of The Sound of Philadelphia, was a presenter at the 2017 Philadelphia Music Alliance 2017 Walk of Fame gala Oct. 4, 2017, at the Fillmore Philadelphia.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

Kenny Gamble had written a song, but it wasn’t complete. He was stuck without a second verse, and he couldn’t quite get it.

But The O’Jays were in the studio – Sigma Sound Studios at 12th and Race in Philadelphia – and ready to go. It was 1972, and they had already laid down nine other tracks for an album they were recording for Philadelphia International Records, co-founded by Gamble and Leon Huff, as well as the background vocals to the final song and were anxious to see how the rest of it would sound.

Gamble called for a five-minute break, left the recording booth and retired to a small back room at Sigma Sound to work on writing the second verse of the song.

Everything in the studio was set up and ready to go. Now, The O’Jays were just waiting on Gamble to finish the song.

A few minutes later, Gamble came out and said he had it. He gave the second verse to The O’Jays and they went back into the recording studio to learn it.

“You know, you’ve got to try it a couple times so you can get it right. And it fit like a glove,” said Walter Williams of The O’Jays. “We were able to use those words and make them fit into the feeling and the spirit of it.”

That’s what The O’Jays did with the song they were recording for Gamble and Huff that day in 1972. It was from their hearts, their souls, and they recorded it with such spirit that it would become the biggest hit the group would ever have.

The song was “Love Train,” and it would go to No. 1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 singles and the Billboard R&B Singles in early 1973.

It would also be the final song that would complete The O’Jays’ first album for Philadelphia International Records, Back Stabbers, a breakthrough album for the group that would be released in 1972 and hit No. 10 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart.

That’s the story as it was related to me by Walter Williams of The O’Jays, detailed in The Vinyl Dialogues Volume III: Stack of Wax.

And that’s the story I was thinking about Wednesday night, Oct. 4, at the Philadelphia Music Alliance’s 2017 Walk of Fame gala at the Fillmore Philadelphia.

Because that’s where I found myself standing right next to Kenny Gamble, on the floor of the Fillmore watching the festivities onstage, midway through the event. Kenny Gamble. One of the pioneers, along with Leon Huff, of Philadelphia soul. TSOP, The Sound of Philadelphia. A Philly music legend. I’m. Standing. Right. Next. To. Him.

Charlie Ingui, left, of The Soul Survivors, and Leon Huff of Philadelphia International Records. Gamble and Huff would write “Expressway to Your Heart,” which became a hit for The Soul Survivors in 1967.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

In addition to “Love Train,” Gamble and Huff wrote so many great songs, like “Expressway to Your Heart” by The Soul Survivors”; “Me and Mrs. Jones” by Billy Paul; “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” by Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes; and “Back Stabbers” by The O’Jays, among others.

What does one say in that situation? What I wanted to say was, “We’re you really in another room working on the second verse of ‘Love Train’ while The O’Jays were in the studio waiting to record the song?”

Or, I would have asked him about the song that Gamble and Huff had written for The Three Degrees in 1973 called “When Will I See You Again.” They both were convinced it was a hit. But according to lead singer Shelia Ferguson, as detailed in The Vinyl Dialogues Volume II: Dropping the Needle, she hated the song and didn’t want to sing it. Eventually, though, she relented and the group recorded the song. It would indeed go on to be a No. 1 hit for The Three Degrees. I would have asked him about that story.

Maybe I would have told him that when I was a kid growing up in the early 1970s in central Illinois, I used to keep a cassette recorder by my bed. And when a song came on the radio – I listed to WLS out of Chicago – that I liked, I hit the record button. I had a whole collection of songs missing the first few notes because I seemed to never be able to hit the record button fast enough to capture the entire song. And the songs I loved the most were by The Stylistics and The O’Jays and The Three Degrees and Billy Paul and Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes, all Philly soul groups recording for Gamble and Huff in the 1970s.

But I didn’t say a word. I didn’t ask for an autograph or for a selfie. It didn’t seem right. I stood next to the man who created The Sound of Philadelphia, the music the had made up a portion of the soundtrack of my life, in silent respect. For several minutes. Right. Next. To. Him.

When it was time for him to take the stage to make a presentation, he turned toward me for just a moment, long enough for me to extend my hand and nod. He shook my hand and nodded back. Neither of us said a word.

It seemed like the appropriate way to respectfully thank a legend.

Channeling the ‘Friday Night at Joni Mitchell’s House’ vibe at the local level

By Mike Morsch

On September 10, 2017

In The Vinyl Dialogues Book

Lizanne Knott, with Tommy Geddes on the drums.
(File photo by Mike Morsch)

It was like sitting around the Algonquin Round Table in New York City in the 1920s with the likes of great writers of the time – people like Dorothy Parker and George Kaufman.

Only the writers this time were musicians – like David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman – and it was the early 1970s.

And the venue wasn’t the historic Algonquin Hotel, in which the greatest writers, critics and actors of that earlier era gathered to exchange wordplay and witticisms. It was the living room of Joni Mitchell’s Laurel Canyon home in California.

There, on any given Friday night, some of the greatest singer-songwriters of their generation would pass around a guitar and play some of the songs they had been working on, songs that hadn’t yet been recorded. Songs that would someday be big hits.

“It was the early days of an incredible singer-songwriter movement in Los Angeles,” said Kaylan, who along with Volman were then members of the Turtles. “You were hearing the best songs that these guys had to offer. So if Graham was working on ‘Teach Your Children,’ that’s what he was playing for everybody.”

As the Friday night jam sessions continued, Kaylan thought that the competition among the artists to produce quality songs became more intense.

Nash didn’t see it that way.

“I never thought it was competitive, like ‘Look at what I wrote.’ Stephen and David and Jackson and Joni are incredibly good songwriters,” said Nash. “I didn’t feel competitive. I thought it was the joy of the discovery of a new song. We had a lot of music in our lives and that’s what we did.”

They were just being musicians, Nash recalls.

Skip Denenberg
(File photo by Mike Morsch)

“When we’d go anywhere, we’d take our guitars with us. That’s what people did. Everyone carried their guitars around,” said Nash. “And of course, those people – me and David and Stephen and Jackson and Joni – we were very creative. We always had new songs, and the first thing you did is play them for your friends.”

That story, about Friday nights at Joni Mitchell’s place, is excerpted from Volume I of the Vinyl Dialogues. And I was reminded of it when some local Philadelphia-area musicians got together Saturday night at a place called The Underground in Lansdale, Pennsylvania.

Lizanne Knott, Skip Denenberg and Michael Braunfeld – accompanied by the talented and always entertaining Tommy Geddes on drums – got together for an “in the round” show where each artist alternated telling stories and playing original songs in an intimate setting to an intimate audience.

It was not unlike sitting in Joni Mitchell’s living room listening to Crosby, Stills and Nash and Jackson Browne debut original material. If one were somehow lucky to be able to have done that.

This is not the first time that Lizanne has done a show like this. She and Skip partnered with another Pennsylvania singer-songwriter Craig Bickhardt for a similar show earlier in the summer.

There is a lot to like about a show like this for someone like me, a guy who asks artists about the back stories of songs and making records and then writes a series of books about that. As a writer, I like to hear about the inspiration and evolution of a song. And I particularly like it in a relaxing and intimate atmosphere, like we’re all just a bunch of friends sitting around the living room listening to music.

Which leads me to this point: Explore the local music scene in your area. If it’s anything like the Philadelphia area, there are some creative and talented artists who make some great music. Support those folks in their efforts, go to their shows and buy their CDs or downloads.

I’m probably never going to get to sit in Joni Mitchell’s living room and listen to David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Jackson Browne play guitars and sing their songs.

But that’s OK. I’ve got a some highly creative singer-songwriters right in my own neighborhood and I love their music just as much. Plus I get to sit right in the front row and listen to all those wonderful stories and songs.

Teach your children that.

A ‘fine girl’ turns 45: Elliot Lurie of Looking Glass details the writing of his iconic song ‘Brandy’

By Mike Morsch

On August 23, 2017

In The Vinyl Dialogues Book

The original members of Looking Glass: Elliot Lurie, far right, Jeff Grob, Larry Gonsky and Pieter Sweval as they looked in the early 1970s.
(Photo courtesy of Elliot Lurie)

Elliot Lurie picked up his J-200 acoustic guitar and sat down in the upstairs bedroom of a farmhouse that he and his bandmates had rented in Hunterdon County, New Jersey.

The farmhouse had been built around the turn of the 20th century and was surrounded by 88 acres of farmland. The band, which had been fairly successful playing bars and fraternity houses in the late 1960s in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, had rented it for $240 a month with the hopes that it would provide an atmosphere that was conducive to creating music that would take the band to the next level.

Even though he was just out of college in 1970, Lurie had already developed his own way of songwriting, which included playing a chord sequence and melody that worked for him, then just free associating from there.

In high school, Lurie had a girlfriend named Randye. So he started inserting the name Randye into the lyrics of what he was creating that day in his bedroom.

“I got the story in my head and I had a few lines with a verse that was kind of interesting. Then I got to the chorus and to Randye,” says Lurie. “But Randye is a weird name because it can be taken as a male name or a female name.

Elliot Lurie as he looked in the early 1970s.
(Photo courtesy of Elliot Lurie)

“The song is about a barmaid, so I thought, why don’t I change the name to ‘Brandy.’ So that’s what I did,” Lurie says. “But when I first finished writing it, I didn’t jump up and down and say, ‘this is a hit.'”

But it was. Not only that, but “Brandy,” released 45 years ago by the band Looking Glass, would go on to become one of the most iconic songs of the 1970s.

There were, however, a series of twists and turns that complicated the efforts to even get the band’s recording career off the ground.

Lurie, keyboardist Larry Gonsky and bassist Pieter Sweval were all classmates at Rutgers University in the late 1960s. They were joined by drummer Jeff Grob, who attended a nearby New Jersey community college.

One evening, the four of them were sitting in Lurie’s 1965 Chevy Supersport convertible — “imbibing something or other,” according to Lurie — and trying to think up a name for the band.

“We were looking in the rearview mirror and we thought, what’s another way to say mirror? Well, looking glass would be another way. And it was the 1960s and that had some kind of psychedelic overtones,” Lurie says. “What we liked about the name was that we were kind of like ordinary guys and we thought we were sort of a reflection of whoever may be listening to us.”

Looking Glass made a local name for itself as a cover band playing local bars and frat houses at Rutgers and Princeton University and at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.

Elliot Lurie as he looks today.
(Photo courtesy of Patti Myers)

As the band became more successful on the local scene, it would mix some original songs into its sets, something that Lurie says was “tolerated” by the local following the band had established.

Upon graduation, the band members wanted to pursue a career in music, an idea that didn’t originally sit too well with their parents.

“Of course, they were all appalled because we were middle class and lower middle class kids and our parents had saved up to send us to state university in New Jersey, and the idea of becoming musicians was abhorrent to them,” Lurie says.

But the band members each convinced their parents to give them a year to see if they could make it in the music industry. And that’s how the young musicians ended up in the rural New Jersey farmhouse, creating music and honing their craft during the week while maintaining their bar and frat house gigs on the weekends.

The band eventually attracted the attention of Clive Davis, then president of Columbia Records, who liked what he heard, especially “Brandy,” and he wanted to see the band perform live. So he set up a showcase gig for Looking Glass to open for Buddy Guy at the Cafe au Go Go in Manhattan. And based on what Davis saw that evening, he signed Looking Glass to Epic Records, the label that Columbia used for new artists.

Things happened pretty quickly from there with the band’s debut album, the self-titled “Looking Glass,” which was recorded in both Memphis and Manhattan.

Four of the songs that ended up on the album were written and had lead vocals by Lurie and the other four songs on the album were written by and had lead vocals by Sweval.

Once the album was completed, it was released on June 6, 1972. But “Brandy” wasn’t the first song to be released as a single. The band members liked a Lurie-penned song, “Don’t It Make You Feel Good,” as the first single.

“We put it out and it did nothing,” said Lurie. “That could have been it right there; that could have been the end of the story.”

But it wasn’t.

As was often the case in those days, Harv Moore, a disc jockey at the Top 40 radio station WPGC-AM/FM in Washington, D.C., was urged by Robert Mandel, a promotions man at the record label, to listen to the “Brandy” track off a test pressing of the LP.

“The promotion man went in to hang out with Harv and he said, ‘Have you heard this Looking Glass thing?’ And Harv said, ‘Yeah, but it’s not really happening.’ And the promotion man said, ‘You really got to listen to the rest of the album, this group is pretty good.’ Back in those days, that could happen. A promotion man could have a relationship with a disc jockey and ask him to listen to something and he would,” Lurie says.

Moore liked “Brandy” a lot. And he played it a lot. A week later, the band members got a call from record company officials telling them that a disc jockey in Washington, D.C., had put “Brandy” in regular rotation on the station and the phones were ringing off the hook.

“We said, are you sure? And the record company guys said, ‘We’ve done this before; we do this for a living. If you have a song in a major market like this and the requests are like that, it’s going to be a hit.’”

Within a few months, other radio stations in other major markets around the country had “Brandy” in regular rotation and the fan reaction was the same.

Looking Glass had a smash No. 1 hit single.

Despite the success of “Brandy,” which made it to No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles charts, the U.S. Cash Box Top 100 singles chart and the Canadian RMP singles chart, the Looking Glass album only made it to No. 113 on the U.S. Top 200 albums chart in 1972.

There was a theory floated in recent years that the inspiration for “Brandy” was actually a women named Mary Ellis, a spinster in New Brunswick, New Jersey, where Rutgers University is located and where Lurie went to college. Local legend has it that Ellis was seduced by a sea captain who vowed to return from his journeys to marry her. Ellis allegedly would look out over the Raritan River in New Brunswick awaiting his return, which never did happen.

But Ellis wasn’t the inspiration for the song, according to Lurie.

“No, that’s an incredible coincidence,” he said. “I write fiction.”

Micky Dolenz and Mark Lindsay getting some kicks out of monkeying around

By Mike Morsch

On July 28, 2017

In The Vinyl Dialogues Book

Mark Lindsay, left, of Paul Revere and the Raiders, and Mickey Dolenz of the Monkees performed the “50 Summers of Love” show July 27, 2017, at the Mayo Center for Performing Arts in Morristown, N.J.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

The Monkees had gone on a press junket to England in early 1967 and the Beatles had welcomed them by hosting a party at the Speakeasy Club – known as “The Speak” – in London.

The party had left such an impression on Micky Dolenz that the following morning, the Monkees’ drummer decided to write a song about it.

“I was just sitting in my hotel room with a guitar and I started writing a sort of stream of consciousness about my experiences over there. All the people and references in that song are somebody that I knew,” said Dolenz in a recent interview. “The Four Kings of EMI are sitting stately on the floor – that was because the Beatles had the Sgt. Pepper album.”

Dolenz called the song “Randy Scouse Git,” a phrase he had picked up from watching the English television sitcom Till Death Us Do Part, the British version – and inspiration for – the hit U.S. TV show, All in the Family, about the life of working-class bigot Archie Bunker and his family, which ran from 1971 to 1979.

Mark Lindsay
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

The father character in Till Death Us Do Part calls his son-in-law a “randy scouse git.”

“And I didn’t know what it meant, I just thought it was funny. It sounded funny. So I named the song that,” said Dolenz.

The song “Randy Scouse Git” would appear on the Monkees third studio album Headquarters, which was released on May 22, 1967, the week before the Beatles released their eighth studio album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Headquarters – the first album on which the Monkees played their own instruments and wrote some of the tracks – had gone to No. 1 on the charts for that first week, only to be replaced at No. 1 by Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band the next week. The two albums wold be No. 1 and No. 2 respectively for the next 11 weeks in 1967.

But RCA Records in England would not release “Randy Scouse Git” as a single in the United Kingdom.

“They got in touch with me and said, ‘We want to release this as a single in the U.K., but you have to change the title.’ And I said, ‘What? Why?’ They said, ‘Because it’s rude.’ I said, ‘Wait a minute, I saw it on British television, on the BBC,’” said Dolenz. ‘But it’s rude, you can’t use that title, you have to change it to an alternate title.’ And so in England, the record is called ‘Alternate Title.’”

Micky Dolenz
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

Unbeknownst to Dolenz at the time was that a “randy scouse git” translates into “horny Liverpudlian jerk” in England, the “scouse” being a derogatory term for someone from Liverpool.

The song was released as “Alternative Title” in the U.K. and went to No. 2 on the singles chart.

The inclusion of “Randy Scouse Git” in the setlist was one of the highlights of the 50 Summers of Love show July 27 at the Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown, N.J.

(This is the 50th anniversary of the “Summer of Love,” where an eclectic group of approximately 100,000 – mostly young hippies – converged on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in San Francisco.)

The show stars Dolenz and Mark Lindsay, lead singer for Paul Revere and the Raiders. The two have known each other for more than 50 years and have put together a mostly unscripted performance reminiscent of the ad-libbed Rat Pack shows that Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. performed at Las Vegas nightclubs in the early 1960s.

“I have always wanted to do a show a little bit more like the Rat Pack if you will, where we come out together and stay onstage together rather than do one person’s set and then the next person’s set,” said Dolenz.

The Morristown gig was the second stop in the tour, which opened July 14 in San Diego, California. Dolenz and Lindsay took turns singing the Monkees and Raiders songs, combined vocals on several others, and worked in a good dose of comedy, which both said going in they thought would be an important aspect of the shows.

“Mark is very, very funny and has a very clever sense of humor. It’s very similar to mine. So when we started working together and doing things, we immediately fell into a really interesting, fun kind of chemistry,” said Dolenz. “Besides the fact that he’s a great singer, of course. We just really hit it off on the comedy end of it, which I love.”

It seems apparent that the two genuinely do like each other, and that comes across on stage. The ad-libbing works as well because the little flubs, both in the banter between the two singers or from a missed word or cue, give the performance a realistic and human quality that lends a certain charm to the proceedings.

There are currently only six more scheduled shows through early November on the 50 Summers of Love tour, which includes stops in New York, Louisiana, Minnesota, Illinois and Missouri.

Lindsay and Dolenz are both talented and entertaining, and the show’s premise provides for a relaxing and fun evening of music. It would be nice to see more dates added.

Doobie Brothers still rockin’ down the highway

By Mike Morsch

On July 23, 2017

In The Vinyl Dialogues Book

Pat Simmons, left, and Tom Johnston of the Doobie Brothers rock the BB&T Pavilion in Camden, N.J., on July 21, 2017.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

First things first: Let’s just put the Doobie Brothers into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame right now. It’s long overdue. Waive whatever rules there all and just pencil the band in to accept the designation and perform at the next induction ceremony.

This is not a new thought, but it certainly was reinforced Saturday, July 21, when the Doobies shared the bill with Chicago (2016 R&RHOF inductees).

Simply put, the Doobie Brothers rocked the roof off the BB&T Pavilion in Camden, New Jersey. They’re just that good. The 15-song set was heavy on the early Doobies, with 13 of the songs coming from albums recorded between 1972 and 1975 – Toulouse Street, The Captain and Me, What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits and Stampede.

That was fine with me. Those were the years that I listened to a lot of Doobie Brothers. I was a sophomore in high school in 1975 in central Illinois and every day during lunch period, I’d pop a quarter in the school’s juke box and play two songs: “My Maria” by B.W. Stevenson, the title cut from his 1973 album; and “China Grove” by the Doobie Brothers, off the 1973 album The Captain and Me, the making of which was featured in the first volume of The Vinyl Dialogues based on interviews with the Doobies’ Tom Johnston and Pat Simmons.

Pat Simmons
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

Johnston famously had to leave the Doobie Brothers at the end of 1974 because of health issues associated with the rigors of a band that was on the road quite a bit. Because of that, Johnston was unable to join the tour in the spring of 1975 to promote the Stampede album. Steely Dan guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter, who had joined the Doobie Brothers after Donald Fagen and Walter Becker of Steely Dan retired from the road in 1974, proposed that songwriter and vocalist Michael McDonald, a fellow Steely Dan alum, fill in for Johnston on the tour.

“When I joined, I thought it was going be like a two to six-month gig,” said McDonald in a recent interview. “I thought I’d better save my money because I wasn’t going to make this much money for a while. That’s how I lived as a musician back then. If I was making a good payday for a while, I didn’t spend it all. I was living pretty much hand-to-mouth. I had no idea what was next and I don’t think any of us did.”

What was next was that the Doobie Brothers had come to a crossroads. To that point, Johnston had been the band’s primary songwriter and now he was unavailable. So the band turned to McDonald for material to supplement what Simmons was writing. The result was the 1976 album, Takin’ It to the Streets.

Tom Johnston and John McFee
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

And it marked a radical change in sound for the Doobie Brothers.

“A door opened rather suddenly with the Doobies. Those guys were so open to anything I had to offer and it caught me by surprise, really,” said McDonald. “I did not expect that having come from another situation with Steely Dan, where Don (Fagen) and Walter (Becker) were the sole source of all the material. I had learned a great deal from them, however. That was probably my whole songwriting education in a way. I grew up writing songs, but it was a real crash course to learn a different approach to arrangement, chords, melody, that I got from working with Donald and Walter.

“So when I came to the Doobies, it was very fortuitous for me to have come from that gig, with all these kind of fresh ideas on how to write a song, what a song’s structure could be,” said McDonald. “And then all of a sudden to be surprised at how open – everybody from the producer (Ted Templeman) to the band members – and generous they were in allowing me to participate in the writing.”

Tom Johnston
(Photo By Mike Morsch)

There are some factions of the listening public – real or perceived – that are divided about the different versions of the band. There is the Tom Johnston Doobies and the Michael McDonald Doobies. What we saw Saturday night in Camden was definitely the Johnston Doobies, as they have been for a while now, with a nod to the McDonald years. McDonald’s “Takin’ it to The Streets” was included in the setlist.

“A lot of people have thrown credit to me for the evolution of the band and changing the complexion of the Doobies’ music. Although I had a part in that, it wasn’t totally me,” said McDonald. “It was really a lot of things that happened. One, Jeff Baxter was a big part of the music changing and bringing me into the band even. The arrangements of our songs and his guitar style and jazz influences brought a lot to the band and to my songs.

“Pat and all the other guys were on board. And one of the biggest components in all this was really the absence of Tommy because Tommy was such a huge influence in the direction of the the band up to that point,” said McDonald. “Just by the virtue of him taking a hiatus and being gone from the next recording, that left a huge hole, for better or for worse. But it was the collective effort to try fill that void that was responsible for the band changing.”

I actually like both sounds that the Doobie Brothers have employed. I like the early Doobies because of my fondness for the songs “China Grove,” “Listen to the Music,” “South City Midnight Lady” and “Take Me in Your Arms”; and I like the late-1970s Doobies songs – written or co-written by McDonald – including “Minute by Minute,” “It Keeps You Runnin’” and “What A Fool Believes,” which was the second No. 1 single for the band on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. (The first was “Black Water,” written by Simmons and released in 1974.)

The contributions of Pat Simmons to the band also have been significant and shouldn’t be overlooked or downplayed in the least. He’s been the only constant from the band’s inception through the transition and back again. He and longtime bandmate John McFee co-wrote another of my favorite Doobies’ songs, “Far From Home” from the 2010 World Gone Crazy album.

Through it all, the Doobie Brothers are still rockin’ down the highway. And it’s time they get the proper recognition. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame should take note.

‘Takin’ It to the Streets’ with Michael McDonald on the Atlantic City Boardwalk

By Mike Morsch

On July 9, 2017

In The Vinyl Dialogues Book

Michael McDonald performed July 8, 2017, at the Tropicana Showroom in Atlantic City.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

Michael McDonald closed his show Saturday night at the Tropicana in Atlantic City with “Takin’ It to the Streets,” which made sense.

The song, from a 1976 Doobie Brothers album by the same name, was the first single written by McDonald released from the first album on which he appeared as a member of the Doobie Brothers. The song made it to No. 13 on the U.S. Billboard Pop Singles chart. It’s a great tune and likely holds a special spot for McDonald among his vast library of songs.

McDonald had replaced Tom Johnston, who was sidelined in 1975 with health issues, in the Doobie Brothers, and “Takin’ It to the Streets” – both the song and album itself – was a signal that the band was going in a completely different direction.

The intro to “Takin’ It to the Streets” came to McDonald in his car while driving through Southern California on his way to a gig.

“I just heard that intro in my head and I knew that it had something to do with a gospel kind of feeling track. I couldn’t wait to get to the gig so I could figure out on piano what it was,” said McDonald in a interview in advance of the Atlantic City show. “I set up my piano as fast as I could, plugged everything in and sat there for a moment, looking for the chord that I was hearing my head. I just picked at it long to enough to where the guitar player looked over at me and said, ‘Hey, we gotta start.’ I was lost in looking for this elusive melodic rhythmic thing.”

According to McDonald, the basic song was written in those couple of minutes. He would fine tune it after the gig when he got back to his apartment later that night.

“The rest of the song was pretty simple. It was just trying to figure out what that intro meant and where it was going musically,” he said. “It seemed like kind of a natural social subject at the time because it felt like gospel music and gospel music always has a message. I had been talking to my sister, who was in college at the time, and she was in a social economics class or something. She was a typical college student and thought the weight of the world’s problems were solvable by those as smart as college students. We talked about how in the inner city, the bottom was dropping out for people and they were falling through the cracks. It seemed like it was a natural marriage of ideas and melody.”

The Atlantic City show saw McDonald mix some old with some new. Casino shows are generally short, in the neighborhood of 75 minutes plus an encore. I’ve been told by several artists that’s because the casinos want people back out into the gambling areas spending money rather than sitting in the theater for two or two and a half hours.

I’ve got no beef with that. Everybody – the artists, the venue, the fans – have their own best interests at heart. But in this instance, that may have worked against McDonald a bit.

His set included a handful of songs from his new album, “Wide Open,” which is due out in September. In a short set, though, that may have rubbed some of the diehard Doobie Brothers fans the wrong way. In a totally unscientific poll from a portion of the crowd sitting within earshot, it appeared some of them would have preferred more Doobie Brothers-era material from McDonald.

In fact, McDonald closed the main part of the show with “What A Fool Believes” – a personal Doobie Brothers favorite – after which a portion of crowd left, missing the entire encore and the spirited version of “Takin’ It to the Streets.”

None of that bothered me, though, because this was the first time I had seen McDonald perform live and I wasn’t going anywhere, including out to the slot machines. I like the Tom Johnston Doobie Brothers, I like the Michael McDonald Doobie Brothers and I like the McDonald solo stuff. From what I heard in the new songs, I’ll buy the album when it comes out.

Boz Scaggs joined Michal McDonald on the bill for the Atlantic City show.
(Photo by Mike Morsch)

Also on the bill with McDonald for this show was Boz Scaggs. And although they didn’t actually perform any songs together during the evening, it’s not breaking news that a show featuring Boz Scaggs and Michael McDonald is going to be a great evening of music. How can it not be?

It’s the second time I’ve seen Scaggs in concert, and he didn’t disappoint. He tends to lean toward more bluesy stuff in his live performances, but he’s well aware that those of us of a certain age are there to hear the hits, particularly from his 1976 album “Silk Degrees,” like “Lowdown” and “Lido Shuffle.”

My personal favorite during the set though was a brilliant version of “Georgia,” also from the “Silk Degrees” album but not one of the four songs released as singles (the other two being “What Can I Say” and “It’s Over”) that charted.

One last note from this show. You’ll notice that I included a photo of McDonald playing the guitar with this piece. McDonald is a piano player by trade, and I would have preferred to use a photo of him at the piano. I use a little point-and-shoot camera with a telephoto lens at concerts that allow non-flash photography. It usually serves its purpose from the vantage point of my seat.

But the camera does struggle with concert lighting at times, and the way McDonald was lit while at the piano located at stage left made those photographs washed out and unusable. When McDonald moved away from the piano for a few songs at the center stage mic, the angle and lighting were a bit better. So what you see is the best shot I could get.

Still, that didn’t take away from an enjoyable evening of music by two of my favorite artists.

Stories behind memorable albums of the 1970s as told by the artists

Category: The Vinyl Dialogues Book Page 6 of 16

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A ‘fine girl’ turns 45: Elliot Lurie of Looking Glass details the writing of his iconic song ‘Brandy’

Micky Dolenz and Mark Lindsay getting some kicks out of monkeying around

Doobie Brothers still rockin’ down the highway

‘Takin’ It to the Streets’ with Michael McDonald on the Atlantic City Boardwalk