Tuesday, December 24, 2024

Duffy Power - Power Station (1967)

Raymond Leslie Howard, aka Duffy Power, was born on 9 September 1941 in Fulham, South London and grew up loving music, with his influences including composers from George Gershwin to Edward Elgar, as well as singers ranging from Paul Robeson to Al Jolson. He was drawn to blues and jazz as a young teenager, and that eventually led him to the music of Elvis Presley and Ray Charles, and by the age of 15 he'd left school and was fronting a band as a singer and guitarist under the stage name Duffy Howard. His performances tended toward the bluesy side of rock & roll, and he was apparently as happy to cover a Leadbelly song as an Elvis Presley number. He was discovered at age 17 by promoter/manager Larry Parnes at a performance at a local theatre, and Parnes signed him up, and rechristened him Duffy Power, as he did with all his acts, like Marty Wilde, Billy Fury and Vince Eager. After seeing Cliff Richard and Marty Wilde perform in concert, he gave up the guitar to free himself up as a singer, and was later signed to Fontana Records, where he recorded a number of covers of songs from the commercial side of rock & roll, such as 'Dream Lover', 'Ain't She Sweet' and 'Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On'. Meanwhile, his heart still lay with the grittier side of American music, and while appearing on extensive package tours arranged by Parnes, he developed his skill as a singer in directions that gave him a range and flexibility far beyond the needs of the British teen idol image that his manager cultivated. 
In 1963, even as that brand of teenage singing star was fading from the charts, Power took steps to show what he could really do, releasing his cover of The Beatles' 'I Saw Her Standing There', some time before poaching the quartet's albums for singles became the thing to do. For this, and some of his later recordings, he was backed by The Graham Bond Organisation, who were already becoming an important part of the British blues scene in London, and whose members included Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker. But the most impressive aspect of the recording, given its early date, was Power and the band's thorough reinvention of song, a strong hint of just how much talent and ambition resided behind that fading teen idol persona. Over the next several years, as he proceeded to develop his song-writing as well, reinventing himself as a serious blues singer, and he was often heard in the company of the latest version of Blues Incorporated, the band founded and led by his long-time idol Alexis Korner. Their major joint legacy was an LP entitled 'Sky High', which is regarded as one of Korner's stronger mid-to-late 60's efforts, and during this period Power also crossed paths with Danny Thompson and Terry Cox, later of Pentangle. 
Within a few years, it was clear that Power had a knack for attracting top up-and-coming talent to his orbit, as many of those former backing musicians became stars in their own right. Somehow, he was never able to find a proper vehicle to showcase his own talent to a wider public, as he could have been another Chris Farlowe or Long John Baldry, but he never managed the kind of pop hits that either of them did. Duffy's Nucleus, his late-'60s group, languished in relative obscurity, and a self-titled solo album release in 1972 failed to sell, even though it was co-produced by Andrew Loog Oldham, who had helped lift Farlowe into the pop charts in the previous decade. By the second half of the 70's, Power had taken a government job, leaving the music business behind, and although he did re-emerge slowly in the 1980's, his best work was to be found on the singles he released in the 60's. Although he loved to cover classic blues songs, his original compositions were equally as memorable, and by 1967 he'd written enough material to be able to release an excellent blue album, but he couldn't seem to get a label interested, with them preferring him to record yet another version of 'Hound Dog'. If he'd just managed to find an accommodating record label then he could have released this self-penned album in 1967, and it could have been just the breakthrough that he needed to put him up there with Farlowe and Baldry as one of the UK's best blues singers. 



Track listing

01 Love's Gonna Go
02 Rosie
03 I'm So Glad You're Mine
04 It's Funny
05 Little Girl
06 I Don't Care
07 Comin' Round No More
08 She Don't Know
09 Give Me One
10 What Now?
11 Just Stay Blue
12 Woman Made Trouble 
13 There You Go Again
14 Mary, Open The Door
15 If I Get Lucky Someday
16 Little Boy Blue

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