Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 40

Record label: Elektra

Produced: Paul Nelson with Koerner, Ray And Glover

Recorded: The Woman’s Club, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; March 24, 1963

Released: November 1963

Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)

Personnel: ‘Spider’ John Koerner (v, g); Dave ‘Snaker’ Ray (v, hm, bottleneck guitar, 12-string); Tony ‘Little Sun’ Glover (v, hm)

Track listing: Linin’ Track; Ramblin’ Blues; It’s All Right; Hangman; Down To Louisiana; Creepy John; Bugger Burns; Sun’s Wail; One Kind Favor; Go Down Ol’ Hannah; Good Time Charlie; Banjo Thing; Stop That Thing; Snaker’s Here; Low Down Rounder; Jimmy Bel

Running time: 41.41

Current CD: Elektra 8122765062 adds: Ted Mack Rag; Dust My Broom; Too Bad; Mumblin’ Word and the album Lots More Blues Rags And Hollers (1964).

Further listening: Lots More Blues Rags And Hollers (1964); Koerner and Glover’s Spider Blues (1965); Koerner and Willie Murphy’s Running, Jumping, Standing Still (1994)

Further reading: Follow The Music (Jac Holzman, 2000); www.wirz.de/music/krgfrm.htm (fan site)

Download: emusic

Back in 1963 Paul Nelson, the editor of folk magazine The Little Sandy Review, had been approached by Ed Nunn, a hobby-recordist and independent record label owner, who was looking for a folk act to record. Nelson suggested Koerner, Ray And Glover and for 300 bucks they recorded an album for his Audiophile label (his previous bestseller was an album with one whole side devoted to a thunderstorm). Ensconced in an old Women’s Club for a ten-hour session fuelled by a little speed and some good burgers, the trio cut 40 songs in a variety of set-ups; a cappella, accompanied, duets, solo and all three together playing live. ‘It wasn’t exactly a comfortable situation,’ recalls Tony Glover. ‘We were on the edge about recording and the producer wouldn’t allow us our usual lubrication.’

Further reduction left a 20-track set of raw and rattling blues – still an unusual pursuit among young white boys. A limited edition of 300 copies were pressed, including their spirited versions of Leadbelly’s Hangman, Robert Johnson’s Dust My Broom and Blind Lemon Jefferson’s One Kind Favor, interspersed with suitably raucous rallying calls of their own making. It sold out immediately.

Glover: ‘We figured that this would be our only album, so we wanted to get as many tunes on as possible. But the tracks went right up to the label and cut out on some people’s players.’ When Elektra’s Jac Holzman heard it he lost no time in signing the trio and buying out the rights to re-issue their debut. Elektra removed four songs per side (which are reinstated on the Red House CD reissue) in order to enhance the sound quality and Blues, Rags And Hollers helped establish it as the hippest of labels.

‘Some years later, Love were being courted by every label on the scene,’ Holzman remembered. ‘But Arthur Lee insisted on Elektra because it was the label that released Koerner, Ray And Glover. The same thing happened with Paul Butterfield and The Doors.’ John Lennon was a fan too. What had impressed them all was the intense passion that Koerner, Ray And Glover displayed for the material. People had never heard anything like it before.

As The Lovin’ Spoonful’s John Sebastian noted: ‘It was played much faster than the originals because it was done by three excitable young white guys.’