Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 149

Record label: Warner Brothers

Produced: Lenny Waronker

Recorded: Bradley’s Barn, Wilson County, Tennessee; 1968

Released: 1968

Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)

Personnel: Sal Valentino (v); Ron Elliott (g); Jerry Reed (g); Wayne Moss (g); Harold Bradley (g); Billy Sanford (g); Norbert Putnum (b); David Briggs (k); Kenny Buttrey (d)

Track listing: Turn Around; An Added Attraction; Deep Water; Long Walk Down To Misery (S); Little Bird; Cherokee Girl (S); I’m A Sleeper; The Loneliest Man In Town; Love Can Fall A Long Way Down; Jessica; Bless You California

Running time: 31.50

Current CD: Collector’s Choice COLC3172

Further listening: The Brummels’ Triangle (1967) is well worth casting back over and there’s a good Rhino retrospective Best Of The Beau Brummels (1981) if you want to scan their whole career from Mersey to flower power and beyond

Further reading: www.beaubrummels.com

Download: iTunes

The Beau Brummels had spent the early ’60s interpreting the British invasion from the safety of their San Francisco home. Impressed by the Fabs and The Searchers, they’d hit on an angular version of beat music which songwriter Ron Elliott perfected for the deep, country-toned voice of singer Sal Valentino. Their early records on the Autumn label (some produced by hip young house producer Sylvester Stewart AKA Sly Stone) were state-of-the-art pop rock and they enjoyed several American hits, but Autumn crumbled in 1966 and members of the band started to peel off.

Moving to Warner, they cut Beau Brummels ’66 and then in 1967 hit on a folk vein which they mined for the moderately successful but quite exquisite album Triangle. Their Warner contract demanded another album forthwith, and the last remaining original members, Valentino and Elliott, decided to decamp to Nashville to come up with the goods. It was to prove a real culture shock for them. ‘To be sure, Dylan and Ian And Sylvia had recorded there,’ sleeve note compiler Stan Cronyn pointed out. ‘But this was The Beau Brummels who flew down to meet the younger Nashville musicians on common ground.’

‘We arrived in a Chrysler and all the Nashville guys had Cadillacs,’ recalled Sal. Musical differences were also on the cards when they sat down with the local musicians and unveiled their songs. ‘It was a 180-degree shift from what Nashville was about.’

The venue for the showdown was, of course, Bradley’s Barn and the resultant collection, although not the style-shattering opus the press and public at the time were led to believe, is an exceptional example of roomy country playing which envelops Valentino’s rich, resonant voice. Cronyn’s notes conclude that ‘In Bradley’s Barn a pop album was created in a hush!’ and indeed the far-reaching effects of this mild-mannered country rock can’t be underrated. Bradley’s Barn is as much about the ambience of its setting as anything else. In that, it’s a quiet classic.