Only Solitaire: G. Starostin's Record Reviews, Reloaded c intro Notes


COMPLETE RECORDINGS: VOL. 5 (1930-1934/2002)



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COMPLETE RECORDINGS: VOL. 5 (1930-1934/2002)
1) Dry Well Blues; 2) Moon Going Down; 3) We All Gonna Face The Rising Sun; 4) Moaner, Let's Go Down In The Valley; 5) Jesus Got His Arms Around Me; 6) God Won't Forsake His Own; 7) I'll Be Here; 8) Where Was Eve Sleeping; 9) I Know My Time Ain't Long; 10) Watch And Pray; 11) High Sheriff Blues; 12) Stone Pony Blues; 13) Jersey Bull Blues; 14) Hang It On The Wall; 15) 34 Blues; 16) Love My Stuff; 17) Poor Me; 18) Revenue Man Blues; 19) Troubled 'Bout My Mother; 20) Oh Death; 21) Yellow Bee; 22) Mind Reader Blues.
Fortunately, the final volume of the boxset once again manages to focus on Patton himself rather than friends — although not before making us sit through eight tracks by the Delta Big Four, a vocal quartet that just so happened to get captured in the tin can sometime in May 1930 in the same Grafton, Wisconsin studio; and no, Patton is not playing with them and he certainly is not contributing guitar. If you are a fan of pre-war barbershop quartet music, these recordings are of mildly passable quality, and the four guys harmonize fairly nicely, but personally, I'd rather sit through eight different takes of ʻStone Pony Bluesʼ instead.
Almost everything else is Patton: two more tracks from the June 1930 Grafton sessions (ʻDry Well Bluesʼ and ʻMoon Going Downʼ), and a batch of his final recordings in New York City, produced during a three-day session (January 30-31 and February 1, 1934); Patton died three months later, on April 28, in Indianola, allegedly from heart problems; it is probably a coinci­dence that one of the last songs he'd recorded was a duet with Bertha Lee on a spirited version of ʻOh Deathʼ, since he was probably used to performing these spirituals on a regular basis, but still a little eerie. (There are also two solo tracks by Bertha Lee appended at the bottom).
There's nothing particularly revealing about that last session, and, in fact, quite a few of the tracks are just rehashes of older recordings (ʻStone Pony Bluesʼ is, obviously, a new take on ʻPony Bluesʼ; ʻHang It On The Wallʼ is ʻShake It And Break Itʼ, etc.), but there's one piece of good news: the quality of the recordings is tremendously superior to the 1929-30 recordings, with very little hiss and crackle to obscure the singing and playing — and given that Patton remained in top performing form until the very end, this probably transforms the 1934 batch into the finest intro­duction to the man's talents. ʻ'34 Bluesʼ, with its wonderful superimposition of rhythmic strum and melodic lead lines, perfectly illustrates his mastery of the six-string; and ʻPoor Meʼ may be his best (or, at least, best appreciated) vocal performance, with heart-tugging overtones of sadness and melancholy emanating from the ragged-rough crust of his croaky vocals (and once again reminding the modern listener of how much Tom Waits owes to these pre-war moans).
So, is it really a historical accident, caused by the timing of the re-issues, that Robert Johnson had gone on to become a household name, and Patton has to limp in his shadow? At least with this 1934 session in your hands, it is hard to make an argument based on sound quality — these tracks sound as discernible as anything Johnson would go on to record several years later. A more likely theory is that Johnson sounded far more «modern» in the 1960s, when he was «rediscovered» by British and American bluesmen, than Patton — with his cleaner vocals and a sharper, more understan­dable guitar style that was also easier to relate to Chicago electric blues than Patton's original wild Delta style, where chord strumming, crude bass «pings», whiny high-pitched leads and percussive stomps could replace each other so unpredictably. And that voice, too — of all pre-war blues players, there probably isn't one other (with the possible exception of Blind Willie Johnson) capable of giving you the illusion of taking you back even further, at least into the dark depths of 19th century slavery, if not into the even darker depths of ancient tribal Africa.
So, you could imitate Robert Johnson to a certain degree, but as for Patton, he could only remain a source of admiration and reverence, rather than an active influence. Even Howlin' Wolf, who clearly was influenced by his one-time senior partner, does it a different way — his vocal style was all about, um, carnality, whereas Patton's style could hardly be described as «sexy»: more like something with a direct connection to Mother Earth herself. There may have been others like Charley, walking American highways in the pre-war years; but there hasn't really been another one like him ever since, and there certainly never will be. Which, allegedly, makes this 5-CD set a must-have in your collection, even if it means throwing out extra money for all of Charley's colorful retinue of fiddle players, lady pianists, and barbershop quartets.

Part 2. The Early Rock'n'Roll Bands Era (1960-1965)


CHER



ALL I REALLY WANT TO DO (1965)
1) All I Really Want To Do; 2) I Go To Sleep; 3) Needles And Pins; 4) Don't Think Twice; 5) She Thinks I Still Care; 6) Dream Baby; 7) The Bells Of Rhymney; 8) Girl Don't Come; 9) See See Rider; 10) Come And Stay With Me; 11) Cry Myself To Sleep; 12) Blowin' In The Wind.
It's too bad, I think, that the debut album of Cher as a solo artist does not include ʽRingo, I Love Youʼ — her first single, issued in 1964 under the rather hideous name of Bonnie Jo Mason and allegedly co-written by Phil Spector in person. It is such a silly Beatlesque pastiche (one out of hundreds, of course) that the only point of interest there are Cher's vocals, so unusually low for the time that, rumor has it, some radio stations refused to play it because they thought they were being duped. And although she probably had no say whatsoever in these early decisions at the time, the song still set a career pattern that would be rigorously adhered to for the next fifty years: if it ain't trendy, the dark-haired lady can't be bothered.
Fast forward a bit to October 1965, by which time the dark-haired lady had teamed up with Sonny Bono and became an international celebrity by means of ʽI Got You Babeʼ. No sooner had the duo released their first LP that Sonny put forward the idea of crafting a parallel solo career for the wife — a golden throne for her and a grave for himself, as it would later turn out, but seeing as how he, at the moment, was the only one of the two with songwriting talent, the poor guy obviously could not see it coming. And thus, with the release of ʽAll I Really Want To Doʼ as a single and the same-titled LP quickly following it up, the green light was given to one of the most, umm, let's say «predatory» careers in show-business, ever. A career as historically instructive as it is almost delightfully tasteless, and one well worth studying in detail, if only because it pretty much reflects the entire history of pop/rock music in its crooked mirror.
Anyway, it's October 1965, and the Byrds are one of the hottest things on that side of the Ame­rican market that tries to be friendly to «mainstream» and «alternative» audiences at the same time, so, naturally, at this time Cher is a folk-rocker, singing pretty arrangements of Dylan (three songs), Pete Seeger and The Byrds themselves (ʽBells Of Rhymneyʼ), Jackie DeShannon, and a bit of British Invasion to round out the picture (a cover of The Kinks' ʽI Go To Sleepʼ which they never released officially at the time anyway). No expense was spared during the recordings, as a large part of The Wrecking Crew was recruited for the sessions, and Sonny's production, though not as masterful as Phil Spector's, still managed to come close to capturing the wall-of-sound effect — actually, considering that most folk-rock at the time was produced by young bands without much experience or simply with no desire to go beyond minimalistic arrangements, Sonny had the advantage of merging the «innocence» of the folk sound with Spectorian bombast, and at least in purely technical terms, he did it well.
Of course, Cher's voice at this time is both an asset and a problem. Asset, because if you care for low-timbred female vocals at all, there's just no way that at least some Cher songs could not ap­peal to you — when she's really on, she's a powerhouse, and as calculated as the whole thing (and the whole Cher career) is, I struggle to think of a 1965 album by a female artist (white, at least) that would better convey the idea of «woman empowerment». Problem, because one thing Cher has never had is subtlety — she rips through all this material, diverse as it is, as if she had boxer gloves on throughout the sessions, and while this is perfectly all right for some songs, it is defi­nitely not all right (and, in fact, embarrassing) for others.
First, the highlights, though. ʽAll I Really Want To Doʼ, set to the predictable, but tasteful jangle guitar and chime keyboard, is a stunner — definitely a song more suitable for Cher than even The Byrds, taking Bob's tongue-in-cheek joking chauvinist jab at over-intellectualized females and turning it inside out in favor of the other sex. It is actually the only song on the album where the lady sounds like she's having fun — playing around with her limited range and sometimes arching out that "all I really wanna doooooo..." as if teasingly mocking the song's addressee — and it's kind of a pity that the other two Dylan covers here are ʽDon't Think Twiceʼ (a tune that is not intended to be screamed out, whatever the cost!) and ʽBlowin' In The Windʼ, done in a manner as grand as any national anthem and just about equally stultifying. Of course, it would have been too much to expect her to go ahead with ʽSubterranean Homesick Bluesʼ (although she'd probably do a great job with it), and there'd be gender problems with ʽIt Ain't Me Babeʼ, but... uh... ʽMaggie's Farmʼ, perhaps?
Other tunes where she is vocally spot on include ʽShe Thinks I Still Careʼ, a bitter-mocking rendition of Dickey Lee's ʽHe Thinks I Still Careʼ; and a rousing ʽSee See Riderʼ which manages to pack just enough brawn and arrogance to stand up to all the sprawling competition. Some others are just bizarre — for instance, a reading of Jackie DeShannon's ʽCome And Stay With Meʼ that should have honestly been retitled ʽCome And Stay With Me, Bitchʼ: where Marianne Faithful, who originally performed the song, sings the lines "I'll send away all my false pride and I'll forsake all of my life" as if she really means it, tender and on the verge of breaking, Cher's natural, never-shifting timbre makes it sound as if she's totally mocking the guy — probably giving him the finger behind the back, too. I do not doubt that the irony was unintended, and that, like so many other titles here, it was simply a matter of poor song choice, but the effect is still hilarious all the same, especially considering that this is one of her best-sung tunes here.
Specific downers, on the other hand, would include ʽNeedles And Pinsʼ — Sonny wrote it, yes, but not for her, and she just ploughs through the subtle hills and valleys of that song with a vocal bulldozer — and ʽBells Of Rhymneyʼ, where she seems to just lack the technique and even ends up singing awfully off-key in spots. And although the dreamy baroque arrangement of ʽI Go To Sleepʼ is a very nice alternative to the minimalistic piano demo accompaniment of Ray Davies, one thing Ms. Cherilyn Sarkisian will always have a very hard time to simulate is that feeling of late night loneliness without a loved one. (Oh, I mean, it might just be a matter of her voice, it's not as if I'm implying she never ever felt lonely without a loved one herself.)
Overall, this is just like it will always be from now on — there's material that lends itself to the Cher treatment, and then we're in for a hell of a treat, and then there's material that fights back, and then we're either in for a hilarious oddity, or, more often, for a corny embarrassment. But this is precisely what makes the exploration of her backlog such a fun thing — you find yourself in the position of an involved historiographer, describing the never-ending shift of balance between treats, oddities, and embarrassments, and isn't that what life's all about in the end?
THE SONNY SIDE OF CHER (1966)
1) Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down); 2) A Young Girl (Une Enfante); 3) Where Do You Go; 4) Our Day Will Come; 5) Elusive Butterfly; 6) Like A Rolling Stone; 7) Old Man River; 8) Come To Your Window; 9) The Girl From Ipanema; 10) It's Not Unusual; 11) Time; 12) Milord.
You'd think that with a title like this, all the songs on this album should have been written by Sonny, but just like on their duet records, he only contributes a few — in this case, ʽWhere Do You Goʼ, a slow folk waltz oriented at the «frustrated teen market» ("where do you go when you're too young?", asks the 20-year old Armenian diva who seems to have already figured that out for herself), and ʽBang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)ʼ, a slow Latin groove oriented at Nancy Sinatra, who later recorded her own version that was later made famous by Kill Bill, from which we draw the obvious conclusion that back in early 1966, Sonny Bono was the happy owner of a time machine (maybe that's why he decided to go into politics as well).
Anyway, both of these songs aren't too bad, and ʽBang Bangʼ is, in fact, melodically and lyrically quite awesome — the problem with both being the singer, who is simply incapable of delicately handling this sort of material. In fact, out of 12 songs on here, there's only one that fully appeals to her immanent vocal style: the English-language cover of Edith Piaf's ʽMilordʼ, where her deep, dark, sneering voice creates the perfect cynical atmosphere. This is where you realize that if the woman was born with the idea to sing anything at all, then the anything in question would just have to be the nonchalant-hedonistic cabaret style — French, German, English, whatever, as long as she's portraying the strong-hip-cynical female with, perhaps, a slight overdose of mas­culine hormones. You'd think she might extend that credibility to Dylan's ʽLike A Rolling Stoneʼ (after all, has there ever been a song more cynical than that one?), but unfortunately, it does not seem like she's properly understanding what the song is about, so no.
Everything else is a disaster — tender French, British, and American pop standards of the time, all of them given the same type of baroque-folk arrangement and all of them sung in exactly the same style. ʽThe Girl From Ipanemaʼ, supposed to be one of the lightest, springliest pop tunes in existence, an emblem of the happy flight attitude of the early Sixties, simply sinks under the weight of her voice — more like "the girl from Ipanema goes stomping", if you ask me. Good songs like ʽOl' Man Riverʼ and Bob Lind's ʽElusive Butterflyʼ get a Vegasy treatment in terms of vocals, and then there's fairly hokey songs like Michael Merchant's ʽTimeʼ (at least, it sounds hokey: I've never heard the original, if there ever was one).
Overall, there are two problems which you simply cannot work around: (a) weak source material, drifting way too far into the corny direction of mainstream pop rather than guitar-based pop-rock or folk-rock; and (b) inappropriate source material for Cher's one-trick voice, where attempts at diversity actually fail — be it Dylan, Tom Jones, Charles Aznavour, or Antonio Carlos Jobim, they all end up Cher-ified. The good news is — if she can only sing in one style, this means it's her natural style and she's being sincere about it. The bad news is, why do we even have to endure this in the first place? Bang bang, my baby gave thumbs down.
CHER (1966)
1) Sunny; 2) The Twelfth Of Never; 3) You Don't Have To Say You Love Me; 4) I Feel Something In The Air; 5) Will You Love Me Tomorrow; 6) Until It's Time For You To Go; 7) The Cruel War; 8) Catch The Wind; 9) Pied Piper; 10) Homeward Bound; 11) I Want You; 12) Alfie.
Same mistake again: Cher seems just about as interested in delivering most of this material as her passionate, emotion-torn, devastating facial expression on the front cover might suggest (I decode it if not as a "who am I?" sort of expression, then at least as a "what am I doing here?" variety). Instead of making her cover ʽSatisfactionʼ or ʽPositively 4th Streetʼ or at least the Stones' ʽStupid Girlʼ re-written as ʽStupid Boyʼ — songs that would have put her deep, aggressive vocals at an advantage — Sonny keeps saddling her with sentimental ballads that were never that good in the first place (although I must say that ʽYou Don't Have To Say You Love Meʼ makes me fondly re-appreciate the Dusty Springfield version), or with cleverly written, subtle folk-rock tunes whose magic is turned to mindless brawn (ʽHomeward Boundʼ).
I can only hope that the cover of ʽSunnyʼ here was not meant to read ʽSonnyʼ — considering the circumstances under which Bobby Hebb wrote the song, and its general atmosphere, you'd think it mighty strange for Cher to sing of Sonny Bono as a dead man 32 years before she put him on a radio-controlled pair of skis and drove him into a tree to mercifully spare him the agony of enduring the success of ʽBe­lieveʼ for the rest of his life. Actually, she gives a fairly convincing reading — ʽSunnyʼ works well as a strong statement of faith and power, rather than lyrical senti­mentality, and that's one thing that Cher can give; in this particular case, I'd certainly rather have her cover the song than Paul Simon, Donovan, or Dylan. (Not that anyone could ever beat the Boney M version, but oh well. Disco days weren't quite there yet back in 1966).
Weird choice of the day: ʽI Want Youʼ as the Dylan choice, with Cher forgetting the lyrics ("I wait for them to read your looks, while drinking from my broken cup" — geez, lady, that doesn't even rhyme!) and nobody giving a damn about it. Sonny reference of the day: "The cruel war is raging / Sonny has to fight" instead of "Johnny has to fight" in Peter, Paul & Mary's ʽCruel Warʼ. As far as I know, Sonny was never drafted, so we should be taking this as a metaphor, but I'm pretty sure quite a few of Sonny's friends must have given him some anxious calls about the mat­ter. The "Much Ado About Nothing" reference of the day: ʽAlfieʼ, the title track to the famous movie that made a star out of Michael Caine and whose hit status was disputed between Cilla Black, Cher, and Dionne Warwick — as far as I'm concerned, it's just another saccharine pill from Burt Bacharach, and the song sucks in any version.
The most «interesting» song of the lot is arguably ʽI Feel Something In The Airʼ, Sonny's only original composition here that is more intriguing because of its lyrics that deal with accidental pregnancy than the actual music (although it does feature a bold triple change of time signature, briefly becoming a waltz and a Motown girl group tune in the bridge section). Unfortunately, the tune did not manage to properly conquer the American charts — not because of the lyrics, but be­cause of the lack of an instantly gripping hook — and the album in general became a commercial disappointment, heralding the establishment of The Great Cher Sinusoid, wobbling between success and failure with almost befuddling regularity. Well, actually, the regularity becomes less befuddling when you realize it simply took time for her to catch up, and in late '66, she had problems with that. I mean, even Donovan was already way beyond pallid Dylan imitations like ʽCatch The Windʼ in late 1966, so come on already. Thumbs down.
WITH LOVE, CHER (1967)
1) You Better Sit Down Kids; 2) But I Can't Love You More; 3) Hey Joe; 4) Mama (When My Dollies Have Child­ren); 5) Behind The Door; 6) Sing For Your Supper; 7) Look At Me; 8) There But For Fortune; 9) I Will Wait For You; 10) The Times They Are A-Changin'.
I think this must have been the time when Sonny and Cher began dressing in ridiculous furs to boost their hip credibility, but also releasing anti-drug statements to bring it back down. Anyway, With Love, Cher is an important landmark — not only is its first side arguably the finest Cher side released up to that date, but it's almost as if Sonny finally found a style for her. With the ex­ception of ʽHey Joeʼ (which is ridiculous, but isn't that bad, by the way — decent combo of bluesy lead guitar with orchestration), the first four songs, three of them written by Sonny and one by master songwriter Graham Gouldman, are interesting cases of not-too-banal art-pop, with sentimental stories told in the form of mini-suites, with actual musical development, unpredic­table mood shifts and... well, intelligence.
The Gouldman song, ʽBehind The Doorʼ, is the most ambitious of these, and they dared release it as the first single, though it did not chart — too weird for Cher, people must have thought: a slow, melancholic, draggy lament, with mandolins a-plenty and the lead singer, apparently, wailing about all the evil things that go on behind locked doors, culminating in lines like "the people are awaiting... and still they go on mating!" Then, suddenly, it breaks into a quasi-Morriconesque Western theme for a dramatic moment, before reverting back to the original formula. If we did not know it was Cher, who really does not discriminate all that well between any kinds of mate­rial she is offered, we'd call the tune «emotionally resonant», but as it is, we'd rather exercise caution and just call it «weird», which is, after all, precisely what you'd expect from a soon-to-be 10cc member.
Sonny's songs are certainly less weird, but they're still good. The dramatic waltz ʽMama (When My Dollies Have Babies)ʼ is another of his attempts at monumentally pompous «Euro-art songs», but the multi-layered orchestral arrangements are nothing to laugh at, and even if one thinks that the song contains little of Cher's own soul, it is hard not to feel at least a bit of Sonny's, not to mention some pretty serious composing work. ʽBut I Can't Love You Moreʼ, for all of its Vegasy nature, is still catchy, and the brass / string / guitar arrangement is nothing less than excellent. The song that actually charted was the lightest of them all, ʽYou Better Sit Down Kidsʼ, and once you get used to the odd perspective of Cher singing this breakup tune from the father's point of view (then again, Wikipedia doesn't exactly have a «Cher as a gay icon» page for nothing), it's another cool tune, a bit of «progressive music-hall» with an odd funky-folksy mid-section. No, it hardly conveys all the pains and traumas of divorce, but it's a curious musical experiment.
Bad things wake up and go bump in the night on Side B, by which time Gouldman is no longer there, Sonny is getting tired, and Cher resorts to covering ʽSing For Your Supperʼ (nice try, but with Mama Cass in town, this is like John Lennon trying to battle Muhammad Ali), The Umbrel­las Of Cherbourg (no, no, please no!), Phil Ochs (Freedom Fighter Cher on the horizon), and ʽThe Times They Are A-Changin'ʼ, even though the times have already changed, and there was hardly any need to keep rubbing that in our noses. All of this stuff is completely expendable and forgettable, and basically reduces the value of the album to that of a small EP. Still, a break­through is a breakthrough, and the record does establish a certain «Cher formula» that would last well into the early 1970s, and arguably represents the only things of some artistic worth that she (with a lot of help from her husband) brought into this world, so thumbs up.

BACKSTAGE (1968)
1) Go Now; 2) Carnival (Manhã De Carnaval); 3) It All Adds Up Now; 4) Reason To Believe; 5) Masters Of War; 6) Do You Believe In Magic; 7) I Wasn't Ready; 8) A House Is Not A Home; 9) Take Me For A Little While; 10) The Impossible Dream (The Quest); 11) The Click Song; 12) Song Called Children.
Whatever hope may have been gained with the relative success of With Love was just as easily scattered away with Backstage, the inevitable next dip in quality in this endless win-some-lose-some game. Honestly, it is not easy to understand what they were thinking: this album, in sharp contrast to the previous one, has no original material whatsoever, not a single new Sonny Bono composition, and its choice of covers generally ranges from the tacky to the ridiculous.
Admittedly, the opening cover of ʽGo Nowʼ (probable reasoning behind the inclusion: «The Moody Blues are no longer doing this, so let's grab it before somebody else does!») is surprising­ly fine, with an almost dazzlingly complex arrangement of lead organ, brass, and strings, and with Cher herself rising to the challenge — apparently, her natural timbre is just perfect for all these "whoah-oh-oh-oh" bits, and besides, she usually sounds more convincing when telling some­body to go rather than stay, so it's okay. It's a powerhouse of a song that is well suited to her persona­lity, even if it was a little strange to try and rekindle the old flame whose overall relevance had ended with the passing of the original Moody Blues.
But what follows next is misfire after misfire. The theme from Black Orpheus, neither properly Latin in nature nor passionate in execution. Tim Hardin's beautiful ʽReason To Believeʼ, perfor­med by a well-meaning string quintet but sung without an ounce of real interest. Dylan's ʽMasters Of Warʼ, oddly reinvented as a sitar drone — I think Cher tried to think of herself as Joan Baez when doing it, but she still has a hard time mustering the tense hatred necessary to make this song work on the alleged gut level. The Lovin' Spoonful's ʽDo You Believe In Magic?ʼ, slowed and softened up — I'd never think that this song, one of the catchiest tunes of its epoch, could ever be murdered by anything short of being reinvented as a combo of generic synth-pop and hair metal, but apparently, all it takes is turning all the instrumental and vocal hooks into sonic mush, and that is precisely what is being done here.
Worst of all, if you really needed a perfect signal here of the «Not To Be Taken Seriously!» vari­ety, she gives it in the form of a cover of Miriam Makeba's ʽThe Click Songʼ — why? The lady does her best to learn the few necessary lines phonetically, but, of course, she is unable to pro­nounce even a single click, and the whole thing is 1968's musical equivalent of amusing people by putting on blackface (in the same year, that is). The most amazing thing is that they actually put it out as the first single from the album — probably the single not just most tasteless, but also the most commercially suicidal decision in Cher's career up to that point. Of course, the single did not even begin to chart, and I would not be surprised to learn that it may have made a laughing stock out of the artist at that moment (this was, after all, before "Cher" and "Las Vegas kitsch" became near-perfect synonyms).
Overall, the only recommendable tracks remain the opener and the closer: Bob West's ʽSong Called Childrenʼ is another excellent example of baroque instrumentation — a small chamber ensemble combining neo-romanticism with neo-classicism and providing a great background against which Cher's melodramatic delivery, mechanical as it is, acquires a certain epic quality. (Unfortunately, not having heard the original, I cannot say just how original this particular musi­cal arrangement is, but in any case, it has a breath of its own, regardless of whoever is singing on top of it — a saving grace for all these early Cher albums in general: some of the arrangements by the Wrecking Crew and other musicians stand the test of time much better than the singer's cool-calm-collected anti-emotionality).
In a way, Backstage closes the door on the first period of Cher's solo career — jamming a few toes in the progress. As long as Sonny could still write inventive baroque-pop ballads for her, the results could be at least mildly touching; once things were out of his hands, no amount of 18th century strings could save us from the schmaltz. Things were bound to reach nadir sooner or later, and there is nothing that could save Backstage from an embarrassed thumbs down, yet its criti­cal and commercial success did some good at least inasmuch as they gave the lady a pretext to cast off some of her musical past, and open up the next, and arguably the most interesting and redeeming chapter of that strange career.
3614 JACKSON HIGHWAY (1969)
1) For What It's Worth; 2) (Just Enough To Keep Me) Hangin' On; 3) (Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay; 4) Tonight I'll Be Staying With You; 5) I Threw It All Away; 6) I Walk On Guilded Splinters; 7) Lay Baby Lay; 8) Please Don't Tell Me; 9) Cry Like A Baby; 10) Do Right Woman, Do Right Man; 11) Save The Children.
Common wisdom often rates this as the finest record in Cher's career, and that might not be far from the truth. According to Cher herself, she did not have any objections to hardening up her sound at the time — Sonny did, though, and as long as he at least compensated for that by writing good songs for her to sing, it was okay; but when he did not, the results were embarrassing, as on Backstage. So sometime in 1969, as their contracts expired, Cher finally took a break from Sonny's gui­dance, got herself a solo contract with Atlantic, and went to the Muscle Shoals Studio to make a brand new record with a brand new sound.
The result — a combination of the Muscle Shoals session band, easily the hottest R&B combo in 1969, and of Cher's iron-lady voice — may not be particularly stellar, but it did somehow bring out the best in Cher, as her singing suddenly becomes more self-confident, full of purpose, versa­tile, and, most importantly, well attuned to the music. As I already said several times, she is never at her best when playing vulnerable or sentimental, but she can really hit it off with aggression and power, and that definitely combines better with funky riffage and cocky brass blasts than gallant baroque-pop arrangements. So, even if it may be a rather banal choice to cover ʽFor What It's Worthʼ, right from the opening bars of syncopated acoustic guitar you get the feeling that "there's something happening here"; and when she sings "there's a man with a gun over there, telling me I've got to beware...", it's like "...telling ME I've got to beware? Does he have any idea who he's messing with in the first place?", and that's when you get The Click and the rest of the album rolls on smoothly.
Of course, not everything is perfect, and there'll always be some sentimental balladry to spoil the day, but the album will be remembered not for the sentimental balladry, but for really tough stuff like the cover of Dr. John's ʽI Walk On Guilded Splintersʼ, where the combination of the threate­ning hard rock riff with Cher's tough-guy delivery is honestly ravaging — I mean, she has abso­lutely zero of that voodoo angle of Dr. John's, and it's impossible to take her "Je suis le grand zombie!" literally, but as a general allegory of her toughness, well... "I wanna see my enemies on the end of my rope" hardly sounds like an empty threat. Too bad they did not include more tracks like this — it's totally the kind of swaggery stuff that the woman was born for, and one song she could really steal away from the originator.
Still, there's plenty of ballsy stuff on the rest of the record, and, amazingly, some of the best numbers are three Dylan covers, all of them from the recently released Nashville Skyline: solid rhythm section, tasty slide guitar licks, pompous brass fanfare, and powerhouse vocals transform ʽTonight I'll Be Staying Here With Youʼ, ʽI Threw It All Awayʼ, and ʽLay Lady Layʼ (the latter appropriately — semantically, if not phonetically — converted to ʽLay Baby Layʼ) into brazen anthems instead of quiet country ditties that they used to be, and they're all excellent, as Cher gets into all three tracks with verve, not to mention aggressive femininity. Even more curiously, she gets in credible renditions of Otis Redding (ʽDock Of The Bayʼ) and Aretha (ʽDo Right Womanʼ) that you'd probably never think her capable of in the early days — although one must always re­member to give proper credit to the musicians, providing the ideal bedrock for her to rise to the challenge and pump out some extra voltage on those vocals.
I am almost embarrassed to admit that the last and most explicitly soulful track, Eddie Hinton's ʽSave The Childrenʼ, generates a genuine emotional response despite an aura of soapiness around it (no, it's not about Ethiopia, it's about putting off a divorce so as not to leave the kids without a daddy), even though Cher can still sound a bit wooden in places, and "pleading Cher" is nowhere near as convincing by definition as "threatening Cher". Still, they help her out with a turbulent string arrangement and the closest thing they can find to a grand finale on the whole, and besides, considering how much Sonny was (reportedly) cheating on his wife at the time (while she was pregnant with Chaz — oh look, we're going all tabloid here), you can understand how she might have easily identified with the song's sentiment.
Overall, it does not really matter how much control she had during the recording of 3614 Jackson Highway — even if Jerry Wexler had all of it, that would only be for the better, since the man found her the right band and the right songs to cover. Reportedly, Sonny, despite standing there together with everybody and grinning at us on the front cover, felt himself shut out and never liked the record all that much, but hey, serves you right, man — (a) don't cheat on your wife and (b) don't make her cover Miriam Makeba and Black Orpheus. Isn't this what "a little respect when you come home" was all about in the first place? Thumbs up.
GYPSYS, TRAMPS & THIEVES (1971)
1) The Way Of Love; 2) Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves; 3) He'll Never Know; 4) Fire & Rain; 5) When You Find Out Where You're Goin' Let Me Know; 6) He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother; 7) I Hate To Sleep Alone; 8) I'm In The Middle; 9) Touch And Go; 10) One Honest Man.
The Seventies started on a high note for Cher, what with the popularity of The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour — and, most importantly, with the release of Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves, an album very different from the rockier sounds of 3614 Jackson Highway, but, surprisingly, of as high quality as a Vegasy album of show tunes and ballads could possibly get. And it is not a mat­ter of musicianship (fairly ordinary for its times), nor of particularly great songwriting (Sonny's songs are not featured on the original album at all, except for two bonus tracks on the UK re­lease); mostly, it is a matter of getting Cher in good form, so that she can deliver some of these tunes as if her very life depended on it.
I mean the title track first and foremost, of course — written by Bob Stone and originally titled ʽGypsys, Tramps And White Trashʼ before the producer demanded something a little less offen­sive for the title. It's a nice pop song by itself, but something clicked, and Cher sounds even more powerful and angry here than she did on ʽI Walk On Guilded Splintersʼ: perhaps digging into her real (and quite troubled) childhood for inspiration, she is totally convincing when singing "I was born in the wagon of a traveling show" — then again, the song's chorus ("they'd call us gypsys, tramps and thieves / but every night all the men would come around / and lay their money down") could be said to allegorically describe Sonny & Cher's career up to that point, in a way, so it's not that surprising to witness her getting into the performance with such verve.
The same arrangement style («lush» production, steeped in acoustic guitars, strings, and wood­winds) is employed for almost all the tracks, but emphasis is never taken away from Cher's vocals, which are, as if by magic, liberated — for instance, she transforms James Taylor's quiet (and, honestly, quite plain and boring) ʽFire And Rainʼ into a powerstorm, with an awesome use of overtones that make that voice sound bass-deep and sky-high at the same time. ʽHe Ain't Heavy, He's My Brotherʼ does not work nearly as well as the Hollies' version (possibly because it's really more of a «male song», and Cher makes the mistake of singing it in her lowest register in order to sound more «male», which is a bit embarrassing), but she more than makes up for it with the up­beat-catchy cover of Peggy Clinger's ʽI Hate To Sleep Aloneʼ, and particularly with Ginger Greco's ʽOne Honest Manʼ — that one's almost as much of a keeper as the title track: "But I can't find one honest man / Why can't I find one honest man?" is a killer chorus, no doubt, once again inspired by real life events (curious that Sonny never raised a fuss about the song being on the record — then again, he wasn't that much in control by that point).
The only song that I actively dislike on the album is its second single — ʽThe Way Of Loveʼ, adapted from a 1960 French original (ʽJ'Ai Le Mal De Toiʼ), another one of those puffed-up French torch ballads that you either have a craving for or tend to dismiss because of their corni­ness. Personally, even despite the powerful singing, I'd throw it in the wastebasket along with all of her previous French material, and concentrate on the other nine songs, all of which are less pompous and do not come across as cheap tear-jerkers. In any case, they're generally faster, tougher, poppier, and snappier than standard Vegas schlock, so even if the arrangements on the album never go beyond orchestrated soft-rock, the album as a whole does not give the impression of being ready made for one of those glitzy Cher galas where she'd be dressed up like an Amazo­nian princess in heat.
UK listeners actually got an even better deal out of it: the US release was drastically short (just five short songs on each side), but the UK version had a Sonny song appended on each side — ʽClassified 1Aʼ, with a completely different, piano-based arrangement, was a ballad sung from the perspective of a soldier wounded in the Vietnam war (not one of Cher's best vocals, though: too operatic and leaden), and ʽDon't Put It On Meʼ was a percus­sion-heavy folk-pop song with curious key and time signature changes all over the place — melodically, one of the most expe­rimental numbers ever written by Sonny. On the other hand, though, both of those tunes are totally incompatible with the overall style of Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves — it is clearly seen that they come from a different place and with a different attitude. In any case, either edition gets a very strong thumbs up. If you're up for a bit of soft rock with a hard-sung edge, give this one a try: it does not have the rocking power of its predecessor, but still manages to hit hard in quite a few spots — possibly the most «human» album of Cher's entire career.
FOXY LADY (1972)
1) Living In A House Divided; 2) It Might As Well Stay Monday; 3) Song For You; 4) Down, Down, Down; 5) Don't Try To Close A Rose; 6) The First Time; 7) Let Me Down Easy; 8) If I Knew Then; 9) Don't Hide Your Love; 10) Never Been To Spain.
With a title like that, you might be expecting a bunch of tight, hot, sweaty Hendrix covers, but no dice. Once again, the album was produced by Snuff Garrett, with only marginal involvement from Sonny, yet the results were much less satisfactory than on the previous record. Two reasons come to mind immediately. First, the arrangements have become much more schmaltzy, with excessive use of Vegasy orchestration overshadowing the basic melodies — and second, Cher herself has become much more schmaltzy. The entire record, for crying out loud, sounds like one big rehearsal for an upcoming Vegas gig.
The best song of the lot is probably the first one, ʽLiving In A House Dividedʼ; although written by corporate songwriter Tom Bahler, it was a totally appropriate choice for Cher to sing, consi­dering her strained relationship with Sonny at the time. However, the arrangement is dreadfully generic, and the vocal performance is completely unconvincing — again, Cher finds it hard to express broken-hearted suffering, trying to compensate for this with a powerhouse screamfest, but ultimately she just ends up stuck somewhere between pain and anger, and the emotional potential of the tune ends up wasted. (Compare ʽGypsys, Tramps & Thievesʼ, where the anger mode worked to near-perfection).
And yet, the tune is still better than almost anything on this collection of mostly boring, hyper-orchestrated musical slush where everything goes wrong — mediocre songs, by-the-book arran­gements, uninvolved singing. Leon Russell's ʽA Song For Youʼ is another possible exception, but the song has been covered by just about everybody on Earth, so why would you want to add a Cher ver­sion? At least somebody like Karen Carpenter could capture all of its nuances and make it sound like a dialog between her two inner selves — Cher knows nothing about nuances, and be­sides it's almost impossible to picture her being "alone now and singing this song for you", con­sidering how natural it is for her to "act out my life on stages with 10,000 people watching".
There is no need whatsoever to comment on all the other schlock here; the main problem is not the songs, the main problem is the performer — she cannot even show a decent sense of humor on Hoyt Axton's ʽNever Been To Spainʼ, a cool demonstration of friendly ignorance and endea­ring nonchalance on which she ends up badly overacting and ruining the joke. (Granted, it's not as bad as the far more popular Three Dog Night cover, but only because Cher as a concept by which we measure our pain is vastly preferable to Three Dog Night in the same function in general). The only thing left to do, really, is just wonder at how they could miss the point so badly second time around — but then, the Sixties already showed us that the Cher story would always be a ran­dom lottery of many losses and few wins, and Foxy Lady, alas, initiates yet another losing streak, not to mention firmly cementing the dame's Seventies' image as that of a glam Vegas queen. Which worked all right for her at the time, to be sure, but now it's thumbs down all the way.
BITTERSWEET WHITE LIGHT (1973)
1) By Myself; 2) I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good; 3) Am I Blue; 4) How Long Has This Been Going On; 5) The Man I Love; 6) Jolson Medley; 7) More Than You Know; 8) Why Was I Born; 9) The Man That Got Away.
Surprisingly, this isn't that bad. Temporarily (actually, for the last time) under Sonny's productive control again, Cher retains the Vegas angle, but now it is applied to material that is more Vegasy by definition — the Great American Songbook — and the entire record is given over to lushly arranged, sprawling, time-taking covers of the Gershwins, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, and other Tin Pan Alley wonders. Of course, for a formerly «rocking» (to some extent) artist to record an album of golden oldies in the middle of 1973 was bound to be a commercial suicide, and so it was — prompting another rift between Cher and Sonny, and the eventual return into the hands of the more «modern-sensitive» Snuff Garrett. But nowadays, as we don't expect all that much from any Cher album by definition, it somehow manages to stand out as a particularly odd curiosity, for at least a couple of reasons.
One: it is curious to hear Cher's powerhouse approach applied to these songs — usually, you hear them as romantic and sentimental, or as melancholic and introspective if they're done by a Billie Holiday, or, you know, Sinatra-style, or Ella-style, but how about hearing them done in "I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in" style? Because most of these Tin Pan Alley creations are really only what the performer makes them — and Cher takes a big whip to all of them and makes them scale epic heights, as if, you know, she was some kind of Juno and the average male protagonist of every song was some kind of Jupiter, and we'd be sitting in the amphitheater and watching them sort it out on Olympus through a looking-glass. (Although that does not prevent her from having her little jokes — it is quite telling that the first song in the ʽAl Jolson Medleyʼ is ʽSonny Boyʼ: "Climb upon my knee, Sonny boy / You are only three, Sonny boy" — I do so hope the dynamic duo made good use of that line on the Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour).
Two: the arrangements. They are actually above the generic Vegasy level, because Sonny Bono, the great lover of complex, multi-layered sound, drags just about every instrument possible in the studio and produces really thick, lush, polyphonic tracks — listen to ʽWhy Was I Bornʼ, for in­stance, where, in addition to the strings, you have flutes, brass, piano, harps, electric guitar (actu­ally, two electric guitars in a call-and-response session), and once Cher ceases singing, there's also a lengthy semi-psychedelic coda, with each of the instruments forming a gentle swaying wave of its own: honestly, it is hard to imagine the staggering amount of work that must have gone into this arrangement — and for what? Just so that the album could flop, because everybody would predictably concentrate on the a priori foolishness of the idea of Cher singing Tin Pan Alley material?.. Geez, Sonny boy, perhaps you were only three after all.
But on the other hand, it's really not that foolish. The combination of Sonny's production with Cher's Gargantuan vocals results in something that's somewhere half between kitsch and artistic bravery, and besides, you'd need Gargantuan vocals to rise above all the wall-of-sound ruckus created by a dozen or so musicians at once (listen to ʽThe Man I Loveʼ — strings, trumpets, gui­tars, and piano all compete with each other, caught in a wild bet on who of them, precisely, will be able to drown out Cher's voice... they all lose in the end, as she sustains that last note for about 20 seconds, which, come to think of it, comes a good quarter century before A-ha's ʽSummer Moved Onʼ, so, Morten, eat your Harket out!). So, in the end, there's something good about the idea, even if I can't quite put my finger on it. Really, I can't give the album a thumbs up because, honestly, I, too, couldn't care less about Cher doing the G.A.S., but at least they tried a highly unusual angle here, and it's up to anybody to decide if that angle really means something or if it's just a failed attempt at genre appropriation. In any case, worth hearing at least once.
HALF-BREED (1973)
1) My Love; 2) Two People Clinging To A Thread; 3) Half Breed; 4) The Greatest Song I Ever Heard; 5) How Can You Mend A Broken Heart; 6) Carousel Man; 7) David's Song; 8) Melody (Little Bossa Nova); 9) The Long And Winding Road; 10) This God Forsaken Day; 11) Chastity Sun.
Back into the arms of Snuff Garrett — once the idea of «The Great American Songbook As Re­imagined By The Sonny Bono Orchestra And Re-Testosteroned By Cher» turned out to be com­mercially defunct, Cher decisively ditched Sonny as producer (and, less than a year later, would ditch him as husband) and returned to Mr. Garrett for yet another record of pure Vegasy schlock. On the whole, this one is a tiny bit better than Foxy Lady, yet still nowhere near a return to the moderately high quality of Gypsys.
You can probably sense the difference if you compare the title tracks — both pictured Cher as the abused protagonist in outcast fantasy scenarios, but where ʽGypsies, Tramps & Thievesʼ had a ringing note of truth to it, ʽHalf-Breedʼ is almost purely theatrical, relying more on its pop catchi­ness than on a nuanced vocal performance. Ironically, of the two, it is ʽHalf Breedʼ that should have struck closer to home — Cher does have some Cherokee ancestry on her mother's side, al­though I highly doubt it that "the other children always laughed at me / Give her a feather, she's a Cherokee" comes even remotely close to being autobiographical. Nevertheless, the proto-disco strings, the overall arrangement that gives the impression of a poor soundtrack to some blacks­ploitation movie, and the lack of a particularly striking vocal move prevents the song from being taken too seriously, and puts it too close to the territory of simple vaudeville entertainment.
Not that there's anything wrong with simple vaudeville entertainment, and I do like the song, written for Cher by master entertainer Al Capps — the real problem is that there's not enough of pure, healthily cheesy vaudeville entertainment on the record. Instead, the tracks that draw most of the attention are covers of hit ballads — two McCartney tunes, done decently but unspecta­cularly (ʽMy Loveʼ is sung well, but that pitiful guitar solo in the middle is a pathetic joke compared to the elegant solo by Henry McCullough on the original release; and ʽThe Long And Winding Roadʼ shouldn't be touched by Cher, who can't do «pleading» to save her life), and one Bee Gees tune, done unconvincingly (again, to do ʽHow Can You Mend A Broken Heartʼ, you have to at least create the illusion that you actually, like, have a broken heart — Cher's heart, meanwhile, always gives the impression of being encrusted with steel plate armor, and its 80-year guarantee has not expired yet).
Of the tracks that draw less attention, only one other is also a piece of bouncy, light-hearted cheese, but this time it pretty much stinks — Johnny Durrill's ʽCarousel Manʼ, another silly tale of outcast life in the Wild West, with not a shred of conviction; and the rest is still more balladry, this time obscure, but probably for a reason. Dick Holler, Jack Segal, pre-Toto David Paich... steady, reliable, sparkless composers as interpreted by a steady, reliable, sparkless singer. The only time she does sparkle is at the very end, when she takes a recent Seals & Crofts song and re-writes it as ʽChastity Sunʼ, dedicating it to her daughter (not particularly relevant now that the daughter is no longer a daughter, but it's fun how, what with Chaz Bono's sex change adventure and all, the words "When I look at you / In your eyes I see / The world that God meant to be" now take on a starkly progressive meaning) — anyway, that song is probably the only one on the whole album where Cher stops being Cher for a moment and becomes a genuinely loving mother, even finding it in herself to introduce a little falsetto during the tenderest moments.
Still, one sweet moment, scattered bits of cheesy entertainment, and a few (botched) megahits with originally great melodies do not earn Half-Breed a lot of respectability — on the whole, it's just one more generic early Seventies' LP, aimed at the target audience of the largely unfunny Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, and even the fact that it temporarily put Cher back on the charts again (album sales were much higher than for Bittersweet White Light, and ʽHalf-Breedʼ was a number one for her) does not mean much in the grand scheme of thumbs down.
DARK LADY (1974)
1) Train Of Thought; 2) I Saw A Man And He Danced With His Wife; 3) Make The Man Love Me; 4) Just What I've Been Lookin' For; 5) Dark Lady; 6) Miss Subway Of 1952; 7) Dixie Girl; 8) Rescue Me; 9) What'll I Do; 10) Apples Don't Fall Far From The Tree.
Cher's last album with Snuff Garrett is even campier than Half-Breed, but at this point in her life, the idea of Cher doing ridiculous camp looked more promising than the idea of her doing roman­tic ballads — if you're gonna go Vegas, at least do it burlesque style, rather than sink in boring sentimentalism (ʽI Saw A Man And He Danced With His Wifeʼ). The hit single, this time around, did not even pretend to seriousness: where ʽGypsys, Tramps & Thievesʼ and ʽHalf-Breedʼ gave thin hints at «autobiographic» potential (or at least could metaphorically relate to the singer's personal history in some way), ʽDark Ladyʼ is simply a tongue-in-cheek mock-murder ballad with corny gypsy overtones and a super-catchy chorus — total kitsch, exploiting every lyrical and musical cliché in the book, impossible to take seriously ("the fortune queen of New Orleans was brushing her cat in her black limousine" — the first two lines pretty much say it all), but with a strangely lively pulse through it all: enough to drive the single all the way to No. 1, giving the lady her second mega-success in a row after ʽHalf-Breedʼ... and then it would be her last No. 1 until ʽBelieveʼ opened a whole new wide world for her and Autotune.
There are a few tunes here that are honestly better than ʽDark Ladyʼ: ʽTrain Of Thoughtʼ, writ­ten by Alan O'Day, is a fine, fast-tempo R&B number, late Elvis style, with cool orchestral swoops and a genuine powerhouse vocal (while the story of betrayal on ʽDark Ladyʼ is just too crude to be believable, it's always great to hear Cher bawling at her adulterous man on general principles, and ʽTrain Of Thoughtʼ gives her a great opportunity to set her entire army on poor Sonny). ʽMiss Subway Of 1952ʼ is not half-bad if you like good old fashioned music hall (think Ray Davies and ʽShe's Bought A Hat Like Princess Marinaʼ), and the cover of Fontella Bass' ʽRescue Meʼ... well, the best thing about it is that it taught me about the original, which is better (although it is almost the same song as Otis Redding's ʽI Can't Turn You Looseʼ), but Cher's version here benefits from a well-expanded brass section that would probably have been impossible in 1965, so... OK.
Nothing else stands out, honestly: a bunch of plastic ballads from all ages (including Irving Berlin's ʽWhat'll I Doʼ, because it had just been used in The Great Gatsby, so why pass up on a good opportunity?) and some lackluster pop with titles like ʽApples Don't Fall Far From The Treeʼ that are the most memorable thing about the song. Altogether, in terms of consistency Dark Lady is perhaps a bit of an improve­ment on Half-Breed (one really good song, one decent cover, two guilty campy pleasures), but who really cares? Both of these records are decent restaurant level entertainment, nothing else. You know what is the most important credit on the entire album? «Dress: Calvin Klein». I don't even have any idea about who plays what, but they're totally right, it's all about the dress.


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