Short Rounds: The Band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Dana Gillespie, Manfred Mann, Mick Ronson & A-Squared Records (2020)

New album releases in 150 words or less…

The Band – The Band (Capitol Records)
Celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Band’s visionary, groundbreaking sophomore album with this deluxe two-disc reissue. Although the untarnished, pioneering Americana of the original LP, with classic tunes like “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” “Up On Cripple Creek,” and “Across the Great Divide” should be enough to pull you in, a slew of bonus tracks in the form of alternate takes and instrumental mixes round out the first disc. The second CD offers rough mixes of the Band’s appearance at Woodstock 1969, released here for the first time ever, a magnificent performance comprised of eleven classic songs. Another seven bonus tracks comprised of studio outtakes and alternate versions fills out the CD, but it’s the live stuff that you’ll listen to again and again, making the set an essential addition to the library of any fan of the Band, Bob Dylan, or American music overall. Grade: A+   BUY!

Creedence Clearwater Revival – Live at Woodstock (Craft Recordings)
By the time Woodstock happened in August 1969, Creedence Clearwater Revival had released three LPs in little more than a year and had enjoyed a handful of Top 10 singles. One of the festival’s higher-profile acts, CCR nevertheless demurred from appearing in the Woodstock movie or soundtrack albums. Fifty years later, Live at Woodstock marks the first release of the legendary band’s hour-long set from the festival, the eleven tracks here including some of the most revered classic rock songs of all time. The band rips through gems like “Born On the Bayou,” “Bad Moon Rising,” “Proud Mary,” “I Put A Spell On You,” and “Suzie Q” like flaming dervishes. Much like the Band’s Woodstock above mentioned performance, why did it take so damn long to release this show? The CD offers better sound quality than the vinyl release, but the raucous performance stands on its own regardless of format. Grade: A   BUY!

Dana Gillespie – What Memories We Make: Complete MainMan Recordings 1971-1974 (Cherry Red Records U.K.)
Blue-eyed soul singer/songwriter Dana Gillespie’s What Memories We Make is a two-disc set that features the powerhouse vocalist’s two RCA Records albums recorded while she was hanging around David Bowie and was managed by Tony Defries’ MainMain. This includes her bluesy, critically-acclaimed 1973 RCA debut Weren’t Born A Man and its rapid follow-up, 1974’s Ain’t Gonna Play No Second Fiddle. Both LPs have long been out-of-print but in-demand with collectors due to Bowie’s involvement and contributions of superstar session players like Rick Wakeman, Eddie Jobson, and Bobby Keys. Throw in some alternative takes and demo recordings from the rare 1971 BOWPROMO promotional-only album and you have a complete document of an important era in the artist’s career. Rediscovery of Gillespie’s immense talents continues apace – aside from What Memories We Make, Rev-Ola Records label also recently reissued the singer’s first two albums for Decca Records on CD as London Social Scene. Grade: A   BUY!

Manfred Mann – Radio Days, Volumes 1-4 (Umbrella Records)
I’m gonna cheat here and include all four of these two-disc BBC collections of the British rock ‘n’ roll legends in one review. Curated and authorized by the band, these are absolutely essential for any Manfred Mann fan – volume one features the Paul Jones era, volume two features singer Mike D’Abo – and both sets include the band’s hits and rarities alike from a five-year period circa 1964 to 1969, great songs like “Pretty Flamingo,” “If You Gotta Go,” and “Mighty Quinn” as well as band interviews. Radio Days, Volume 3, representing the band’s ‘Chapter III’ incarnation, is a little too-much jazz-skronky for my tastes, but it’s the road that took Mann and cohorts to Radio Days, Volume 4 featuring the Earth Band, “Get Your Rocks Off,” and a different slant on the same ol’ prog-rock. At a minimum, at least three of these volumes deserve a place in your library. Grade: A   BUY!

Mick Ronson – Only After Dark: The Complete MainMan Recordings (Cherry Red Records U.K.)
I’ve written of Mick Ronson’s talents before, and the lack of respect he’s proffered as one of the great rock guitarists of the 1970s. Perhaps it’s the dearth of solo material available that has prevented a re-estimation of Ronson’s status an as innovator rather than a mere sideman, an injustice that the four-disc Only After Dark box should right. Documenting every note Ronson recorded for manager Tony Defries’ MainMan company, the set includes both of the guitarist’s excellent 1970s-era solo records (1974’s Slaughter On 10th Avenue and 1975’s Play Don’t Worry), both enhanced with a slew of live tracks and demos. The other discs feature previously-unreleased recordings (including some of Guam, Dylan’s backing band on the Rolling Thunder 1975 tour) and live performances showcasing Ronson’s creative depths. Only After Dark is reasonably-priced, too, allowing listeners to re-discover the extraordinary guitarist trusted by legends like David Bowie and Ian Hunter. Grade: A   BUY!

Various Artists – An A-Squared Compilation (Third Man Records)
The Reverend lived in Detroit circa 1979-81 and witnessed the city’s high-octane rock ‘n’ roll bands of that era in person. The real action took place during the decade of the ‘60s, though, and many of the best of Detroit’s rockers could be found on A-Squared Records, formed by producer Jeep Holland and named for his hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan. This two-disc vinyl reissue from Motor City native Jack White’s Third Man Records expands upon a 2008 CD compilation, offering up two-dozen electrifying tracks by bands like rockers the Scott Richard Case (SRC), blue-eyed soul legends the Rationals, guitar hero Dick Wagner & the Frost, the Prime Movers (with Iggy Pop), Stoney & the Jagged Edge and others, and features updated liner notes by music historian Alex Palao. Not all of these tracks were released by Holland’s revered label, but they all crackle with pure rock ‘n’ roll energy. Grade: A   BUY!

Previously on That Devil Music.com:
Short Rounds, December 2019 (Holiday Gift Suggestions): Cindy Lee Berryhill, Black Pumas, Alice Cooper, Robyn Hitchcock & Andy Partridge, Handsome Dick Manitoba, The Muffs, Harry Nilsson, The Rosalyns & Bobby Rush 
 
Short Rounds, April 2019: Steve Earle, Nils Lofgren, Lone Justice, Sour Ops, Robin Trower & Jimmie Vaughan

The talented Dana Gillespie

CD Review: Manfred Mann's Mann Made Hits (1966/2018)

It’s a memorable scene from the hit 1981 movie Stripes, a military comedy starring Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, and John Candy. The platoon, in a full-gear march, is led in cadence by Ramis’s character with a version of Manfred Mann’s 1960s-era hit “Do Wah Diddy Diddy.” The scene is so memorable that, during my own short stint in the military, our platoon marched to the mess hall to “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” when left on our own at the Fort Leonard Wood reception center over a long holiday weekend. Manfred Mann, named for band keyboardist Mann, was one of the first ‘British Invasion’ bands to find an audience in North America. While the band’s stateside commercial success was sporadic and largely dependent upon the strength of their then-current single release, Manfred Mann nevertheless enjoyed a string of U.K. chart hits between 1964 and the band’s break-up in 1969.

As was frequently the practice in the ‘60s, different versions of the band’s albums were released on the two continents, with the U.K. versions representing the ‘true’ album and U.S. releases generally ‘frankensteined’ together from a band’s singles, EPs, and album tracks. By way of example, Manfred Mann’s first U.K. album was the stellar 1964 release The Five Faces of Manfred Mann, which displayed the band’s blues and R&B roots with a mix of solid originals and covers of material by revered artists like Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and Bo Diddley. Manfred Mann’s debut U.S. album, the imaginatively-titled The Manfred Mann Album, took eleven songs from the band’s U.K. debut and tacked on the chart-topping hit single “Do Wah Diddy Diddy.” An album titled The Five Faces of Manfred Mann was subsequently released stateside in 1965, but it only had two songs in common with its British doppelganger. Got all that?

The British Invasion

The band’s proper sophomore effort, titled Mann Made, was released in 1965 in both the U.K. and the U.S., where it was the band’s fourth (!) studio album, and they shared a lot of songs between them. Singer Paul Jones and guitarist Mike Vickers both left the band in early 1966, and EMI’s His Master’s Voice imprint, which had enjoyed significant sales with Manfred Mann, dropped the band but kept singer Jones on contract, feeling that he was the real ‘star’ of the outfit. Whereas Jones subsequently scored a handful of hits – most notably 1966’s “High Time” and the following year’s “I’ve Been A Bad, Bad Boy” – he would split his time between music and acting from the late ‘60s well into the ‘70s before becoming a popular British radio and TV personality.

Meanwhile, Manfred Mann moved bassist Tom McGuinness to guitar, added singer Mike d’Abo and bassist Klaus Voorman (after the legendary Jack Bruce kept the seat warm for a few months), signed a new deal with Fontana Records, and continued to chalk up hit singles for the next couple of years. After Jones’ departure from the band, however, EMI played a number of dirty tricks on Manfred Mann, first cashing in with a quickie EP of early, unreleased songs titled As Was (designed to be confused with the band’s first post-Jones LP, As Is). Then they used session players to complete an unfinished Manfred Mann song, “You Gave Me Somebody To Love,” which featured Jones on vocals, the single hitting #36 on the U.K. charts despite the band officially disowning the release.

Manfred Mann’s Mann Made Hits

In a move that would be duplicated numerous times over the years by different record labels exploiting other bands, EMI released a ‘posthumous’ compilation album of the band’s singles and album tracks titled Mann Made Hits. In this case, however, the label really did fans a favor by collecting all this material together under one roof. Billed as “Manfred Mann with Paul Jones,” Mann Made Hits provides the perfect bookend to Jones’ successful years with the band. Across fourteen tracks, the album showcases the many facets of the band’s talents as well as its enormous musical chemistry, with songs running the stylistic gamut from ‘60s pop, rock, and jazz to American blues and folk music. Manfred Mann’s big cross-continental hits are all here – the love-struck yearning of “Pretty Flamingo” (#1 U.K./#29 U.S.), the band’s breakthrough rocker “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” (#1 U.K./#1 U.S.), the poppy singalong “Sha La La” (#3 U.K./#12 U.S.), and the soulful ballad “Come Tomorrow” (#4 U.K./#50 U.S.).

But there are a lot of great songs on Mann Made Hits that will be unfamiliar to even the most avid Anglophile. There are those British singles that never sailed across the Atlantic, fine songs like the revved-up rocker “5-4-3-2-1,” which would become the band’s first Top 10 U.K. hit and the theme song for the popular British TV show Ready Steady Go. The band’s first flirtation with the Bob Dylan songbook, a faithful cover of the Bard’s country-flavored “If You Gotta Go, Go Now,” hit #2 on the U.K. charts while their reading of Dylan’s haunting “With God On Our Side” is, perhaps, the definitive recording of the song, Jones’ emotional vocals accented by Mann’s reverent piano accompaniment and swelling instrumentation. A couple of Jones’ original songs stand out, notably the self-referential “The One In The Middle,” a strutting R&B-styled rocker with swagger to spare, and the blues-infused “I’m Your Kingpin,” which features Jones’ subtle harmonica-play, jazzy free-form piano, and Mike Hugg’s shimmering vibes.

The Reverend’s Bottom Line

The band that recorded much of the material found on Mann Made Hits – singer Jones, keyboardist Mann, talented guitarist/bassist Tom McGuinness, guitarist Mike Vickers, and drummer Mike Hugg – essentially ceased to exist by the time of the album’s release. But the music they made together has proven to be timeless, and if they’re not as well-known as other British Invasion bands like the Beatles, the Kinks, and the Rolling Stones, Manfred Mann nonetheless left their mark on the decade’s pop-rock firmament. The band members recently formed their own Umbrella Music label to reissue these early albums on CD, and the U.K. versions of these albums, including Mann Made Hits, are readily available online.

As for the band members’ future endeavors, as mentioned above, Paul Jones became a British radio and TV personality while also fronting the popular U.K. act The Blues Band (which also included Manfred Mann guitarist Tom McGuinness). Manfred Mann, the band, soldiered on until 1969, their last big hit a chart-topping cover of Dylan’s “The Mighty Quinn.” Manfred Mann, the musician, formed the short-lived jazz-rock band Manfred Mann Chapter Three with Mike Hugg, releasing a pair of albums in 1969 and 1970 before forming Manfred Mann’s Earth Band in 1971. A prog-rock oriented outfit with pop-rock undercurrents, the Earth Band carries on to this day, but found modest success throughout the late ‘70s and early ‘80s with albums like The Roaring Silence (1976), Watch (1978), and Somewhere In Africa (1983), among many others…but that’s a story for another time. Grade: A (Umbrella Music, released July 6, 2018)

Buy the CD from Amazon.com: Manfred Mann’s Mann Made Hits