There's a time in life for Hoagy Carmichael. There's a time in life for Claude Debussy. There's a time in life for Jerry Lee Lewis. There's a time in life for Destiny's Child. All these things have their moment. ~Elvis Costello
The date of 20th October 1977 is remembered as one of the saddest moments in the music industry for the disaster that fell upon the rock band Lynyrd Skynrd.
A Convair CV-240 was chartered by the rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd from L&J Company of Addison, Texas and the jet ran out of fuel and crashed near Gillsburg, Mississippi very close to the end of its flight from Greenville, South Carolina going towards Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The lead singer of the band Ronnie Van Zant, vocalist and guitarist Steve Gaines, backing vocalist Cassier Gaines, and the managing crew including assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, died in the crash.
The pilot of the plane was Walter McCreary, who also perished along with his co-pilot Willian Gray; twenty other passengers, however, survived the crash.
On the day of the crash, a mere three days after the release of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Street Survivors, the band decided to charter a Convair CV-240.
The Convair CV-240 had been inspected by members of Aerosmith’s flight crew for possible use earlier in 1977, but was rejected because it was felt that neither the plane nor the crew were up to standards. Aerosmith’s assistant chief of flight operations Zunk Buker tells of seeing pilots McCreary and Gray passing a bottle of Jack Daniel’s back and forth while his father and he were inspecting the plane. Aerosmith’s touring family was also relieved because the band, specifically Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, had been trying to pressure their management into renting that specific plane – Walk This Way: The Autobiography of Aerosmith
However, it did not contain enough fuel for the entire journey and came down in South Carolina. The band was coming back from a performance at Greenville Memorial Auditorium, and members were on their way to LSU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana…
In the interest of the betterment of your overall pop music knowledge/ability to spout random trivia…here’s another installment in the always popular (with me) I Didn’t Know That Was a Cover! series. Part 2 is subtitled: I Didn’t Know That Would Become a Series! Let’s dive in:
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Our first three songs are examples of artists covering themselves; that is, revisiting songs they’d previously recorded with less well-known bands.
“Do Ya”-Electric Light Orchestra
Years Before Jeff Lynne’s “Do Ya” appeared on ELO’s 1977 A New World Record LP and peaked at #24 on the pop chart, he recorded a less polished version with The Move, a band that included English rock legend Roy Wood and another ELO member, Bev Bevan. Their version came with no strings attached.
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“Somebody to Love”-Jefferson Airplane
Grace Slick’s band The Great Society recorded the original version of her “Somebody to Love”, as well as “White Rabbit”. Both later appeared on Jefferson Airplane’s 1967 Surrealistic Pillow album and are probably that band’s two most important/popular recordings. This clip suggests that Airplane was much the better band.
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“Cherry Bomb”-Joan Jett & The Blackhearts
Another member of The Runaways was mentioned in the previous post on this topic. This time it’s Joan Jett, whose “Cherry Bomb” was first recorded with that band. While both versions have their fans, neither exactly blew up (blew up I say) on the pop charts.
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“Take Me In Your Arms (Rock Me)”-The Doobie Brothers
The Doobies proved their versatility in 1975 by following up their first #1 single–the bluegrass-flavored “Black Water”–with an old Holland-Dozier-Holland chestnut originally recorded ten years earlier by Kim Weston.
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“They Don’t Know”-Tracey Ullman
British actress/comedienne and sometimes singer Tracey Ullman was a one-hit wonder in the U.S. although several of her singles were well-received abroad. Her schtick was to update the 60’s girl group sound, and “They Don’t Know” was an irresistible nugget of retropop. The backing vocals were supplied by the same woman who provided the song itself, Kirsty MacColl. Kirsty’s version is much the same–Tracey just upped the cute factor some.
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“Big Ten Inch Record”-Aerosmith
This song certainly clashed stylistically with the rest of the classic 1975 Toys in the Attic album, but I think that was the point. It’s a safe bet to be the only Bull Moose Jackson song in most Aerosmith fans’ collections.
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“Unchained Melody”-The Righteous Brothers
What we have here is your all-purpose guide to “Unchained Melody”, starting with the Righteous Brothers and moving backward in time. (We will ignore versions by LeAnn Rimes, Heart, The Sweet Inspirations and even Elvis Himself, all of whom recorded versions after the Righteous Brothers, none of whom should have bothered.)
The above clip is a little medley, a Bill Medley if you will, of snippets of the six versions of this song that matter. Here’s what you hear in succession:
The newly recorded 1990 version done by the Righteous Brothers in response to demand created by the song’s inclusion in the Patrick Swayze/Demi Moore film Ghost. This is not, however, the version which appeared in that movie. This version charted at #19 in 1990.
The Righteous Brothers’ first hit version, which went to #4 in 1965 and climbed to #13 in 1990 after its inclusion in Ghost. Yes, incredibly they had two different recordings of their song chart at numbers 13 and 19 in the same year.
Vito & The Salutations’ fast doo wop version from 1963. Sounds like a parody of the Righteous Brothers, but it actually came two years earlier.
Roy Hamilton’s #6 hit from 1955
Al Hibbler’s #3 hit from 1955
Finally, Les Baxter’s #1 version, also from 1955 and the only time the song has gone to the top of the charts. If you count June Valli’s #29 hit of the same year, the song had four top 40 versions in 1955 alone, three of them top ten.
If you’ve always wondered why this song carries around such a strange title, it’s because Les Baxter’s original version was from the movie Unchained (which starred football star Elroy “Crazylegs” Hirsch).
p.s. Why don’t football players have nicknames like “Crazylegs” anymore?
The phrase “power ballad” means something different to everyone who hears or uses it. For me the term is inescapably accurate for describing a type of music that holds an undeniable fascinating and appeal for me. The next several songs I’ll share have the traits I consider this type of song to possess.
They would include something I can only describe as a latent-sounding power, a feeling of something held in reserve. Perhaps a lead vocal sung in a voice that’s clearly built for screaming rather than cooing to an audience. Or a mix that’s a little heavier on the drums or bass than the producer of a ballad-singing artist would have thought appropriate. And an overall rough-edged sound that gives you the feeling you’re hearing a band in a tender moment, but that it’s clearly a band who doesn’t often have tender moments–giving the song, of course, more “power”. “You See Me Crying”, from Aerosmith’s 1975 Toys in the Attic LP fits my definition at least of the term “power ballad” perfectly.
I must digress for a moment to say that Toys… is far and away Aerosmith’s greatest moment as a band. Not only does the album contain classics “Walk This Way” and “Sweet Emotion” but it’s loaded with great album cuts like “Adam’s Apple”, “No More No More”, title track “Toys in the Attic” and their cover of boogie-woogie blues chestnut “Big Ten Inch Record”, which surely would have been covered by David Lee Roth, with or without Van Halen, had Aerosmith not beat him to it.
“You See Me Crying” is the perfect closer to this classic album, and a nice contrast to everything that precedes it. Joining the melancholy piano figure opening the track are a pair of woodwinds–an oboe, of all things!–and Steven Tyler’s ragged voice is nicely offset by a gradually swelling orchestral arrangement.
Alice Cooper’s “Only Women Bleed”, which was released as a single in the same month of April ’75 and was the shock rocker’s first foray into power ballad territory, uses an almost identical formula. If you haven’t heard it recently, listen again to its breathtaking arrangement, which beautifully incorporates horns and strings alongside traditional rock guitar/bass/drums for maximum emotional impact. It’s a true rock masterpiece–perhaps the greatest “power ballad” of them all.
The lead singer of the band Ronnie Van Zant, vocalist and guitarist Steve Gaines, backing vocalist Cassier Gaines, and the managing crew including assistant road manager Dean Kilpatrick, died in the crash.
Every Moment Has A Song 