Dawn Vinnie Bell (1964)

Dawn, by Vinnie Bell
Verve Records V-8574, 1964

HEAR HERE DAWN - Vinnie Bell

When he recorded this album in 1964, Vinnie Bell was just beginning to hit his stride as a session guitarist. He'd already earned a reputation as a tinkerer, a guy who was always experimenting with pick-ups, bridges, and various ancillary equipment to see what new sounds he could produce. Despite the fact that he was quite capable of playing just about any straight guitar part the job called for, having studied with such masters as Carmen Mastren and Tony Mottola, his gift for special effects was the main thing musical contractors had in mind when they hired him. Fellow guitarist Buzz Feiten recalled that Bell " ... got all the jingle work because he could make the guitar sound like a Wha Wha because he had all these wacky effects which nobody at that time had." Bell's most famous innovation was the invention of the electric sitar, which became a staple of psychodelic pop recordings in the late 1960s. Bell's gift for gimmickry was something of a double-edged sword. It certainly kept him one of the busier session musicians in a town with lots of busy session musicians, and it made him one of the recognized names in a time of uncredited studio players. On the other hand, it wasn't necessarily where his own stylistic preferences lay. The best example of this is his album Pop Goes the Electric Sitar, where the only real inventiveness, frankly, came before the record was cut, when Bell came up with the instrument in the first place. The solo work on the record itself is quite straight forward and conservative. Had he been playing an acoustic guitar instead of an electric sitar, no one would be paying $40 and up for a copy these days. The liner notes to Whistle Stop also illustrate Bell's predicament. At the very start appears the following: SPECIAL NOTE TO THE CONSUMER AND RECORD REVIEWER: This album contains recordings by VINNIE BELL, at this writing New York's busiest studio guitar player. It is designed to show-case Vinnie's electronic genius and his musicianship. The album is based on the contemporary, popular, instrumental approach to recording. This is not a JAZZ recording. Talk about a label trying to distance itself from its own artist! The above is liner note-ese for, "Don't listen to this as serious music; it's just a gimmick." The notes go on to say, "Better open the window and get ready to toss out every idea you've ever had about what a guitar should sound like" and praises Bell for coaxing the sounds of a trombone, violin, French horn, cello, pipe organ, and baritone sax out of the guitar through his experimentation. The net effect is to marginalize a perfectly good album. Admittedly, both Verve and its customers could ask, "A perfectly good what album?" Clearly, Verve, one of the great jazz labels, felt a responsibility to keep this record out of the jazz bins. But it's not really a rock and roll album, either, though "Dawn" is a great two-minute slice of rock. Nor is it easy listening by any stretch of the definition. I'd be interested to know where retailers ended up sticking this record. Not up front, that's for sure. This probably sold under 5,000 copies, and is fairly rare today. Ah, the curse of in-betweeness that dogs so much of the best Space Age Pop. Whistle Stop is, arguably, Bell's best album by far. It's got a killer ensemble: Bell on lead, Everett Barksdale on bass, and Paul Griffin on organ, with Al Gorgoni on rhythm guitar and Gary Chester and Buddy Saltzman trading tracks on drums. The tracks are individually uncredited, but Bell, Claus Ogerman, and Charles Calello (who did most of the arrangements for the Four Seasons) are all identified as arrangers. It's tough to pick just one cut to feature, but for me, "Dawn" stands out in its compact intensity. It starts revved up and keeps the pedal to the metal right to the last note. Bell's fuzzed-out tone is pretty remarkable to hear, given that it's just 1964. (On the track just before this, "Fever," we can catch the famous Bell "watery" guitar sound five years before it captured attention in the Ferrante and Teicher hit version of "Midnight Cowboy.") It's the kind of track that blows the dust out of the speakers and leaves compilation makers wondering how to possibly follow it up. Bell does, by the way, by debuting one of his other inventions, an electrified imitation of the Greek bouzouki he called the Bellzouki (which is also the title of the track). In other words, with another gimmick. Well, it kept the bills paid. Very nicely, in fact. (Take note that the album cover spells his name "Vinny," while the back cover reads "Vinnie," which is correct. Pretty easy to guess that Verve didn't plan on releasing a second Bell album.) From Space Age Pop

Stan Kenton & Richard Wagner

Kenton/Wagner, by Stan Kenton
Capitol Records STAO 2217, 1964

LISTEN HERE "RYDE THE VALKYRES"

Stan Kenton is one of my personal heroes. Like Duke Ellington, he somehow managed to keep a big band going when there was no rational business model left. Not just to keep it going, but to keep arrangers and composers writing new material and record companies to record it despite the fact that almost nobody was buying their albums. But Stan took artistic risks the always-suave Duke was too sane to even consider. Bob Graettinger's "City of Glass" is the example Stan's fans always cite. His album with Tex Ritter--or Kenton/Wagner, the album this track comes from, are better ones. Duke would have slept on the idea and thought better of it in the morning. Stan would be halfway through the recording session by then. Jazz and classical are hardly strangers. Heck, Duke recorded a version of "The Nutcracker Suite." But Wagner and jazz? Maybe it had a slim chance in, say, 1925, but by the time the Third Reich had finished with him, Wagner brought so much contextual baggage with him the hippest cat on Earth couldn't have made him groove. And Stan was hardly the last word in grooving. When he was first getting his band going, the standard crack was that he played dance music for people who couldn't dance. But I celebrate Kenton's willingness to experiment. I'd argue he was a greater risk taker than acknowledged innovators like Ornette Coleman. If you look at his work through the Sixties, you find him going out on the limb at every turn. Scraping together the money to pull off the Neophonic Orchestra, redoing his classics with Pete Rugolo just to see if they worked with a vocal chorus, or covering the music from Hair: it seems there were few things he wouldn't try, if only to see if they worked. Well, Kenton/Wagner didn't. There are bits that hold up. Certainly Kenton's powerful brass section, with people like the Candoli brothers and Bud Bribois screaming into the stratosphere, is every bit as over-the-top as the Goterdammerung spirit of the original. And while our freund Richard wouldn't have considered integrating a clave rhythm into his music, there have been worse combinations. But when the melody passes from the brass to an anemic sax/flute section, it sounds as die Valkyrie suddenly go from riding the heavens to hitch-hiking along a county road. Still, I give Kenton credit for trying. Not every experiment succeeds. So Kenton/Wagner is something of a failure. The act of experimentation inherently propels our culture forward every bit as much as it does in science. Had someone picked up up Kenton's torch and carried it on, continuing to take risks and try out ideas good and bad, who knows what amazing sounds might be coming out of big bands now. (Space Age Pop)