Various Artists - The Hitmakers Sing Warren Zevon (2018)

Warren William Zevon was born on 24 January 1947 in Chicago, and began his musical career early, forming a duo with his high school friend, Violet Santangelo, called lyme and cybelle. Bones Howe produced their first single, the minor hit 'Follow Me', which was written by Zevon and Santangelo and reached number 65 on the Billboard pop charts in April 1966. A follow-up single, a cover of Bob Dylan's 'If You Gotta Go, Go Now' flopped, and Zevon left the duo, spending time as a session musician and jingle composer. He wrote several songs for his White Whale labelmates The Turtles, such as Like The Seasons' and 'Outside Chance', and another early composition 'She Quit Me' was included in the soundtrack for the film 'Midnight Cowboy' in 1969. His first attempt at a solo album, 'Wanted Dead Or Alive' in 1970 was spearheaded by 1960's cult figure Kim Fowley, but received almost no attention and did not sell well, and so for the next few years he returned to session work with other musicians. During the early 1970's he toured regularly with the Everly Brothers as keyboard player, band leader, and musical coordinator, and he worked particularly closely with Phil, arranging and playing keyboards on his first and third solo albums, 'Star Spangled Springer' in 1973 and 'Mystic Line' in 1975. These small successes were not particularly rewarding financially, and his dissatisfaction with his career and lack of funds led him to briefly move to Spain in the summer of 1975, playing in the Dubliner Bar, a small tavern in Sitges, near Barcelona. By September 1975 Zevon had returned to Los Angeles, where he roomed with Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, who had at this time become members of Fleetwood Mac. He also collaborated with Jackson Browne, who produced and promoted Zevon's self-titled major-label debut in 1976, which featured contributions from Nicks, Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, members of the Eagles, Carl Wilson, Linda Ronstadt, and Bonnie Raitt, with Ronstadt later recording many more of his songs. 

'Warren Zevon' was his first album to chart in the United States, peaking at No. 189, and the Rolling Stone Record Guide called it his "most realized work". In 1978, Zevon released 'Excitable Boy', once again produced by Jackson Browne with guitarist Waddy Wachtel, which gained both critical acclaim and popular success. The title tune is about a juvenile sociopath's murderous prom night, and referred to "Little Susie", the heroine of the song 'Wake Up Little Susie' made famous by his former employers the Everly Brothers, while songs such as 'Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner' and 'Lawyers, Guns And Money' used deadpan humour to wed geopolitical subtexts to hard-boiled narratives. Tracks from this album received heavy FM airplay, and the single release 'Werewolves Of London', which featured Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, was a relatively light-hearted work featuring Zevon's signature macabre outlook, and it reached No. 21 on the charts. This new-found success prompted other artists to investigate his work, with cult rockers The Flamin' Groovies later tackling 'Werewolves Of London', and Jerry Garcia recording a cover of 'Accidentally Like A Martyr' in 1977. Since then all of the other songs from the album have been covered by a variety of artists, and so here is their interpretation of Warren Zevon's 1978 album 'Excitable Boy', with a classic Linda Ronstadt  cover plus one of his earliest songs added to close the post.   

Track listing

01 Johnny Strikes Up The Band (Phil Cody 2014) 
02 Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner (The Escatones 2014)
03 Excitable Boy (Dreadnaught 2005)
04 Werewolves Of London (The Flamin' Groovies 1979)   
05 Accidentally Like A Martyr (Jerry Garcia 1977)
06 Nighttime In The Switching Yard (Dotline 2018)  
07 Veracruz (Casey Brents 2018)
08 Tenderness On The Block (Shawn Colvin 1992)
09 Lawyers, Guns And Money (Derringer 1978)
10 Hasten Down The Wind (Linda Ronstadt 1976)
11 Outside Chance (The Turtles 1966)

...and on guitar - The Book (2023)

Now that I've posted what could turn out to be the final entry in the '...and on guitar' series, here's something that I've been thinking about doing this for quite a while. When the number of posts in the series reached over 75 then I thought that now was the time to put them all together in one place, almost like a book. So what you have here are all the write-ups for the '...and on guitar' series, presented in alphabetical order, so that they can be dipped into as you are listening to the albums, or just read as a history of the lives of all these great guitarists. 

Soulseek hint      book aiwe

Kendell Kardt - Buddy Bolden (1971)

There was one artist in the recent Ronnie Montrose post that might be unfamiliar to many people, and so here's a bit of information about him. Kendell Kardt was born on 27 February 1943 in Ridgewood, Queens, New York, and he grew up in Brooklyn and Queens, where he attended public schools. Because his religious parents discouraged his 'worldly' interest in music, he left home at age nineteen to attend college, where he received his Bachelor of Arts Degree with a major in music in 1967. He soon abandoned classical pursuits in favor of popular music, and while still in college he joined his first rock band, The Frozen Flowers, who performed locally in Queens. They released one single, 'Are You In Love', written by band member Bob Zaidman, and after the breakup of the Frozen Flowers, Kardt performed briefly as a founding member of The Fugs in the mid-1960's. During this time he began to pursue songwriting, at first with collaborator Matt Fried, and then on his own, focusing on developing a rock ensemble as a vehicle for his new songs. In 1967 he formed a power trio called Black Betty, in which he was the bassist and lead vocalist, and they attracted the attention of record company entrepreneur Jac Holzman, whose Elektra Records label was still based in New York. Holzman agreed to record Black Betty if the band found a replacement for guitarist Jack McNichol, but Kardt refused and the deal fell through. The following year he formed the quartet Rig, which also included guitarist Artie Richards, bassist Don Kerr, and drummer Rick Schlosser, and after playing the New York club scene for a couple of years, the group recorded an album for Capitol Records in 1970, under the auspices of new manager Bill Graham and producers Elliot Mazer and Adam Mitchell. At the same time as being in Rig, he was also a session player, and appeared on the Archies 'Sugar Sugar' album, playing the Rhodes keyboard on the title track. 

At the end of 1970, Rig broke up and Kardt relocated to northern California with co-manager Mark Spector in order to be closer to Graham's San Francisco operation. In 1971 he recorded a solo album titled 'Buddy Bolden', scheduled for release on Capitol, and including musicians such as Ronnie Montrose on lap steel, electric and acoustic guitar, Spencer Dryden on drums, David Torbert on bass, Jerry Garcia on pedal steel guitar and banjo, Ed Neff on fiddle, and Pamela Polland, Barbara Mauritz and Lynne Charles on background vocals. When Ronnie Montrose formed his band Montrose, they recorded one of the songs,'Black Train', for their 'Warner Bros. Presents Montrose!' album, and this prompted interest in the shelved album once it became known where the song came from. Kardt himself has posted the songs on his own website kendellkardt.com, and so you can now hear this legendary album in all it's glory, housed in a sleeve that celebrates the title character, the African/American cornetist who was regarded by contemporaries as a key figure in the development of a New Orleans style of ragtime music in the early 1900's, which later came to be known as jazz. Kardt continued to write and perform his compositions nationally as a solo artist until 1984, after which he retired from performing and writing to devote himself to his family and other projects, and now lives quietly in rural New Hampshire.

Track listing

01 Buddy Bolden
02 Black Train
03 Mr White's Song
03 Get On By Me
05 Country Lullaby
06 Jesse, Jesse
07 Don't You Worry, Darlin'
08 Arabian Queen
09 City Lights
10 After The Rain
11 My Delight

Jerry Garcia - ...and on guitar (1974)

Jerry Garcia's musical career is inevitably closely intertwined with The Grateful Dead, but he also spent a lot of time in the recording studio helping out fellow musician friends in session work, often adding guitar, vocals, pedal steel, sometimes banjo and piano and even producing. Artists who sought his help included the likes of Jefferson Airplane (most notably 'Surrealistic Pillow', where he was listed as their 'spiritual advisor'), and where he also played uncredited guitar on 'Today', 'Plastic Fantastic Lover' and 'Comin' Back to Me'. He also added guitar to 'The Farm' from their 'Volunteers' album, as well as helping out Tom Fogerty, David Bromberg, Robert Hunter, Paul Pena, Peter Rowan, Warren Zevon, Country Joe McDonald, Pete Sears, Ken Nordine, Ornette Coleman, Bruce Hornsby, Bob Dylan, It's a Beautiful Day, and many more. He played pedal steel guitar for fellow-San Francisco musicians New Riders Of The Purple Sage from their initial dates in 1969 through to October 1971, when increased commitments with the Dead forced him to opt out of the group, but he does appear as a band member on their debut album 'New Riders Of The Purple Sage', and produced 'Home, Home On The Road'. He contributed pedal steel guitar to the enduring hit 'Teach Your Children' by Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young, and also played it on Brewer & Shipley's 1970 album 'Tarkio', and despite considering himself a novice on the pedal steel, he routinely ranked high in player polls. This album is just a snapshot of the many artists that he's appeared with, covering just the years 1969 to 1974, and yet it still had to be a double album. 

Track listing 

Disc One
01 The Farm (from 'Volunteers' by Jefferson Airplane 1969)
02 Oh Mommy (from 'Tarkio' by Brewer & Shipley 1970)
03 Teach Your Children (from 'Déjà vu' by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young 1970)
04 Starship (from 'Blows Against The Empire' by Paul Kantner/Jefferson Starship 1970)
05 Soul Fever (from 'Papa John Creach' by Papa John Creach 1971)
06 What Are Their Names (from 'If I Could Only Remember My Name' by David Crosby 1971)
07 Man In The Mirror (from 'Songs For Beginners' by Graham Nash 1971)
08 Change Partners (from 'Stephen Stills 2' by Stephen Stills 1971)
09 When I Was A Boy I Watched The Wolves (from 'Sunfighter' by Kantner/Slick 1971)

10 Hickory Day (from 'Rowan Brothers' by Rowan Brothers 1972)

11 Sick And Tired (from 'Excalibur' by Tom Fogerty 1972)

12 Southbound Train (from 'Graham Nash - David Crosby' by Crosby & Nash 1972)

Disc Two
01 Looks Like Rain (from 'Ace' by Bob Weir 1972)
02 Deep, Wide And Frequent (from 'Rolling Thunder' by Mickey Hart 1972)
03 Venutian Lady (from 'New Train' by Paul Pena 1973)

04 Expressway (To Your Heart) (from 'Fire Up' by Merl Saunders 1973)
05 Walkin' (from 'Baron von Tollbooth & The Chrome Nun' by Kantner/Slick/Freiberg 1973)
06 Down In The Willow Garden (from 'Angel Clare' by Art Garfunkel 1973)
07 Tuscon, Arizona (from 'Be What You Want To' by Link Wray 1973)
08 Someone Else's Blues (from 'Wanted Dead Or Alive' by David Bromberg 1974)
09 Standing At Your Door (from 'Tales Of The Great Rum Runners' by Robert Hunter 1974)