Archive Review: Bo Diddley's The Black Gladiator (1970/2012)

By the late 1960s, Bo Diddley wasn’t the musical force that he’d been almost a decade previous when cuts like “Road Runner” and “You Can’t Judge A Book By Its Cover” were burning up the R&B world even while they also inched onto the pop charts. Even worse, Diddley-influenced acolytes like the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton had become the new rock ‘n’ roll royalty, leaving Bo as a respected elder statesman and the architect of a revolution that he seemingly no longer had a role in shaping.

As a result, Diddley would turn back to his blues roots, recording a pair of albums with other Chess labelmates that re-purposed several of his rhythm-heavy hits with bluesier performances – 1967’s Super Blues, with Muddy Waters and Little Walter, and 1968’s The Super Super Blues Band, with Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. Neither of these albums did much to revive the flagging careers of the various participants and, in 1969, the unexpected happened when Leonard Chess, the patriarch of the Chess Records family, passed away. The label had already been sold to a company that had little or no idea what to do with its legendary catalog of music, or its rich stable of artists, further marginalizing Diddley’s career.

Bo Diddley's The Black Gladiator

When he entered Chicago’s Ter-Mar Studios in January 1970, the mighty Bo was faced with a daunting task – recording a follow-up to his last solo album, 1965’s 500% More Man. Black music hadn’t been standing still as Diddley was singing the blues with his fellow Chess label colleagues, and the popularity of both blues music and the sort of raucous, houserockin’ R&B that Diddley pioneered had been surpassed with young African-American listeners by the groove-laden funk of Sly & the Family Stone and the Parliament-Funkadelic empire. Similar to what had been done with Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf in attempting to re-mold the old-school bluesmen as psychedelic-blues artists, The Black Gladiator saw Bo Diddley staking his claim as a funkateer in the new decade.

Disregarded by critics at the time, Diddley’s The Black Gladiator was a bold attempt at contemporary legitimacy by the often-misunderstood artist. Unlike Waters’ similarly-dismissed Electric Mud album, or even the Wolf’s This Is Howlin’ Wolf’s New Album, both of which tried to force the bluesmen into a stylistic straitjacket against their will, Diddley seemed to be a willing traveler on this particular musical sojourn. Working with a crew that included such long-time Diddley musical foils as bassist Chester Lindsey and drummer Clifton James, keyboardist Bobby Alexis was the lone new ingredient for this fresh musical direction, and his over-the-top key-pounding would often vie with, and push Diddley’s guitar-playing to new heights.

To be honest, The Black Gladiator is neither as bad as 1970s-era critics would claim, nor as seminal as the album’s newfound 21st century admirers would have you believe. It didn’t take a major leap of imagination to take Diddley’s rhythmic trademarks and stretch them out in the creation of a deeper, fatter groove, as the band does with the album-opening “Elephant Man.” Seemingly drowning in a sea of sound, the rhythm section builds a foundation on top of which Diddley sings/shouts his often-bodacious lyrics above his stinging guitar licks and Alexis’s chiming keyboards. The song evinces a slick groove and an undeniable anarchic spirit, and Diddley’s fretwork is truly inspired. The album’s lone throwback, “You, Bo Diddley,” is the sort of self-aggrandizing rap that Diddley made his reputation with, but while it sports a semi-modified Bo Diddley beat and energetic backing vocals, it’s at best a pale imitation of similar early 1960s performances.

Hot Buttered Blues

Much better is the fluid, funky “Black Soul,” which pairs raw production with a more assured Diddley vocal, Alexis’s livewire keyboard riffs, and a groove deep enough to drive a semi-truck through. Diddley’s wiry chicken-picking is supported by solid rhythm playing from an unknown second guitarist (thought to be his nephew, Ricky Jolivet a/k/a Bo Diddley Jr.). The muscular “Power House” offers the best of both worlds, welding a slowed-down version of the familiar swaggering Diddley beat with a fine, boastful vocal turn, scorching fretwork, and a swinging rhythm.

“I’ve Got A Feeling” opened the original vinyl album’s second side with an infectious funk that rivaled Sly Stone, the slightly-echoed production style providing a more immediate sound. Alexis’s often-discordant keys are part of the bass-drums cacophony upon which Bo embroiders some imaginative guitar lines as the vocals of backing singer Cooke Vee (Cornelia Redmond) were multi-tracked to create a “girl group” sound on a budget, an effective technique. The slow-burning “Hot Buttered Blues” is Bo’s lone nod towards the blues music he cut his teeth on, a loping groove rolling throughout the song as Bo ladles on some fine guitar in this ode to the Chicago blues scene.

Another of the album’s long-lost gems is “Funky Fly,” a blues-rock-funk hybrid with a greasy Mississippi Delta groove, a mesmerizing circular guitar riff that is often echoed by the keyboards, a jackhammer rhythm, and nonsensical shouts and noises that punctuate the song’s deadly instrument jamming. By contrast, “I Don’t Like You” is an odd bird, indeed, Diddley’s vocals mimicking an operatic aria, sounding like a cross between Bugs Bunny and Pavarotti. At the heart of the song is a game of “the numbers” as Bo and a second, higher-pitched voice hurl insults at each other above a slippery groove and choogling keyboards. The effect is disconcerting and absurd even for Diddley, who was certainly no stranger to musical flights of fancy.

The Reverend's Bottom Line

It’s safe to say that you’ve never heard Bo Diddley quite like this before! Out of the ten tracks on The Black Gladiator, six are fully-satisfying performances that display Bo’s larger than life personality and often-underrated musical skills, as well as the talents of his top-notch backing band. A couple of the songs here are merely so-so, passable but more filler-like in quality, and a couple of these tunes will chafe your eardrums.

It’s interesting to note that after releasing this album, Diddley would abandon his funk muse in an attempt to re-make himself as a contemporary songster with 1971’s Another Dimension album before finally returning to the blues, soul, and R&B on which his legacy was built. Overall, in re-considering The Black Gladiator, I’d give the album a B- for sheer chutzpah and a handful of innovative musical ideas. It’s not the Bo of lore, but it ain’t half-bad, either... (Light In The Attic Records, reissued 2012)

Buy the CD from Amazon.com: Bo Diddley's The Black Gladiator

Also on That Devil Music: Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters & Little Walter's Super Blues CD review

Link Wray’s S/T 1971 LP reissued on vinyl!

The legendary Link Wray hadn’t released an album in nearly eight years when a self-titled LP appeared on record store shelves in June 1971, released by Polydor Records. Featuring a stark photo of Wray clad in native Shawnee Indian garb on the front cover in honor of his Native American roots, the collection can best be characterized as what we’d call ‘Americana’ these days, the mostly-original songs an inspired blend of roots-rock, blues, country, and folk music.

On July 28th, 2017 Future Days Recordings – a Light In The Attic imprint – will reissue Wray’s Link Wray for the first time on vinyl since the early ‘70s on both standard black vinyl and as a limited, 400-copy edition on “Juke Box Mama Gold” wax. The album has been newly remastered, includes new liner notes by Chris Morris, and is packaged in a reproduction of the original die-cut album gatefold jacket.

Link Wray, the album, was recorded by the guitarist in a makeshift three-track studio slapped together in a chicken shack on his brother Ray’s property in rural Maryland that was dubbed ‘Wray’s Shack Three Track’. Wray was backed on the songs by pianists Bobby Howard and Bill Hodges and drummers Doug Wray and Steve Verroca, who co-wrote several songs and co-produced the album with Ray. Recording in as primitive of conditions as one could conceive, Wray was defiantly shrugging aside the slick production of contemporary records in favor of a raw, simpler sound.

Featuring Wray’s ramshackle vocals – he’d lost a lung to TB while serving during the Korean War – and his trademark high-flying fretwork, the album eschewed the guitar-driven instrumentals like “Rumble” and “Rawhide” on which he’d built his reputation in the 1950s and ‘60s. The move didn’t win Wray many new fans, and it alienated many of his old listeners. Nevertheless, the album has since been reconsidered as a minor classic of pioneering Americana music, with several semi-biographical songs penned by Wray like “Fire and Brimstone” and “Fallin’ Rain” later covered by artists as diverse as the Neville Brothers, Nick Cave, and Calexico.

To accompany the vinyl release of Link Wray, Light In The Attic is also distributing three other albums of a similar vintage by the guitarist that have been reissued by Tidal Waves Music. Also recorded at Wray’s Shack Three Track, 1971’s Mordicai Jones (a pseudonym for pianist Bobby Howard) and Beans and Fatback (released in ’73) are available from LITA as is 1972’s Be What You Want. All four vinyl albums are also available in a budget-minded bundle from the Light In The Attic Records website.

Light In The Attic Reissues Third Power LP for Record Store Day!

Record Store Day is still 63 days away as of this writing, and little has been revealed about what sort of vinyl labels – large and small – will be releasing for the holiday. Light In The Attic Records has announced a few items for RSD, though, including a Shaggs’ 7” single, but hard rock collectors will be salivating over the first release on vinyl in 45+ years of the Third Power’s Believe album.

Third Power was formed by guitarist Drew Abbott, bassist/singer Jem Targal, and drummer Jim Craig in 1965 in Detroit, but they didn’t get their act together to perform live until 1968, at which time they joined a thriving and competitive Motor City rock scene that boasted of future legends like MC5, Bob Seger, the Stooges, SRC, and Dick Wagner’s Frost. Third Power’s growing reputation as a live band performing at rough ‘n’ tumble clubs like Detroit’s legendary Grande Ballroom got them signed to Vanguard Records, also Frost’s label.

Working with Samuel Charters, who had produced albums by both Frost and Country Joe & the Fish, Third Power recorded their only album, Believe, which was released by Vanguard in 1970. Believe barely scraped its way onto the Billboard Top 200 albums chart (#194) and Third Power was subsequently dropped by the label, the band breaking up shortly thereafter. Abbott went on to become an integral part of Bob Seger’s Silver Bullet Band during the late 1970s and early ‘80s, and Targal released a single solo album before disappearing from the scene.

Over the years, Third Power has become considered as one of many revered Motor City cult bands (along with SRC, the Up, and the Rationals). A classic power trio in the Cream vein, Third Power was capable of pulling off fine melodies and vocal harmonies amidst its roaring instrumental Sturm und Drang, the band mixing psychedelic and hard-rock with a hint of folk and blues influences. Lost for decades even as it grew in status, Believe was first released on CD by Italy’s Akarma Records and has seen subsequent CD reissue – mostly as a dodgy semi-bootleg – by a number of fly-by-night outfits.

Light In The Attic’s vinyl reissue of Believe is a 2016 Record Store Day exclusive pressed on red wax and mastered from the original tapes. The album is housed in a deluxe gatefold “tip-on” jacket and will include a download card for eleven bonus tracks, including a non-album B-side, a couple of live tracks from the Grande Ballroom, and a bunch of studio outtakes. Liner notes by Willy Wilson include quotes from Abbott and Targal as well as producer Sam Charters, and the accompanying booklet includes previously unpublished photos.

“Like a meteor shooting across the horizon, the Third Power lit up the Detroit music scene with a ferocious roar like no other group before them. But like all meteors, they only burned bright for a short while…” Wilson writes in the liner notes, which perfectly captures the brilliance that was Third Power. If you’re a fan of high-energy Motor City rock ‘n’ roll, or just guitar-driven 1970s-era hard rock, you’re gonna love Believe! Get your ass down to your local indie record store on April 16th and buy a copy...

CD Reissue: Carole King & The City’s Now That Everything’s Been Said

The good folks at archival label Light In The Attic Records have plucked a real gem from obscurity for their next CD/LP release – The City’s Now That Everything’s Been Said. Originally released in 1968 by producer Lou Adler’s Ode Records, the band comprised singer and pianist Carole King, bassist Charles Larkey, and guitarist Danny Kortchmar (with help from drummer Jim Gordon). The album didn’t really go anywhere and failed to chart; a year after its release, when Ode switched distributors, Now That Everything’s Been Said was deleted from the catalog and not reissued again until it appeared on CD in 1999.

At the time, although she had recorded some singles of her own, Carole King was best known as one-half of a mega-successful Brill Building songwriting team with her husband Gerry Goffin. With King creating music that featured her distinctive melodies, and Goffin penning the lyrics, the pair scored a slew of hits in the mid-to-late ‘60s with artists like Aretha Franklin, the Drifters, the Monkeys, and even King’s babysitter, Little Eva. When the duo’s marriage broke up, King moved to Laurel Valley with future husband Larkey and created the City in an attempt to jump start her long-dormant music career.

Fate had different plans for Ms. King, however, and after the City’s lone album crapped out, she started a proper solo career that, two albums in, blew up big-time with the 1971 release of Tapestry. The album would hit number one in the U.S. and Canada and number four on the charts in the U.K. on the strength of its chart-topping hit “It’s Too Late,” launching King’s solo career into the stratosphere as the album eventually went 10x Platinum™.  A string of a half-dozen hit albums would follow, King becoming the most commercially successful female artist of the decade. Her star would begin to recede in the ‘80s as mainstream musical tastes moved away from her sort of singer-songwriter fare, but she’s continued to make music, most recently scoring a Top Ten album with Live at the Troubadour, recorded in collaboration with longtime friend James Taylor. 
  
As for the City, Now That Everything’s Been Said displayed King’s songwriting acumen in a band setting, the accompaniment by Kortchmar (a talented guitarist who would make a name for himself playing with folks like James Taylor, Warren Zevon, and Jackson Browne as well as on King’s solo albums) providing invaluable balance to King’s piano and vocals. King’s stage fright prevented the band from touring in support of Now That Everything’s Been Said, which was released two or three years too early to capitalize on the 1970s-era West Coast singer-songwriter boom. The album’s disappointing sales weren’t due to a lack of quality material, however – several songs from Now That Everything’s Been Said would result in hits for other artists, including the Byrds (“Wasn’t Born To Follow”); Blood, Sweat & Tears (“Hi-De-Ho”); and James Taylor (“You’ve Got A Friend”).

Light In The Attic’s long-anticipated reissue of Now That Everything’s Been Said features 24 bit/96 kHz re-mastering from the original master tapes, and new liner notes by writer Steve Hochman that include interviews with the band members and producer Adler. This represents the first official vinyl reissue of the album in 45+ years (yes, there were numerous counterfeit copies floating around in collectors’ circles in the late 1970s and throughout the ‘80s), available in limited edition gold wax as a LITA subscriber exclusive, and black & white haze wax for those that pre-order the LP from the label.  

The Reverend has to admit a certain fondness for The City’s lone album…a former flame and Carole King fanatic had originally turned me onto Now That Everything’s Been Said which, in the wake of King’s enormous solo success and the album’s poor sales, had made it a rare, expensive, and sought-after vinyl collectible by the late ‘70s. Imagine my surprise when, moving to the Detroit area in 1979, I discovered five copies of the album in a local record store (which never sent anything back to their distributor) at $5 each! I bought ‘em all up, keeping one and selling the rest at $25 a piece at Detroit-area record conventions…the profits of which were promptly reinvested in Springsteen bootlegs. If you’re a fan of introspective 1960s and ‘70s rock music, the City will be right up your alley…

Buy the CD from Amazon.com: The City's Now That Everything's Been Said