T. Talton / B. Stewart / J. Sandlin
Thursday, July 16th, 2009
The late sixties and early seventies were the golden years for the independent record labels. This was long, long before the entire music industry was swallowed up and controlled by three or four giant conglomerates. Like many record aficionados I had my favorite indie record labels. Asylum was my very favorite. In the mid-seventies they seemed like the label that was releasing everything I loved: Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon, The Eagles, Joni Mitchell, John David Souther, Linda Ronstadt, Souther-Hilllman-Furay Band, Tom Waits, etc. There were also some lesser known, but still very good artists I liked such as Dick Feller, Andrew Gold, David Blue and Dennis Linde. And, of course, they had two Bob Dylan albums (Planet Waves and Before The Flood) and the Byrds reunion album. It got to the point where I knew every album on the Asylum label by the catalog number (For Everyman was 5067, Desperado was 5068, etc.). Other favorite labels included Elektra (which later merged with Asylum), Island, Capricorn and Arista. I wouldn’t go as far to say that I would buy anything on one of these labels, but I would certainly consider it. If there was a band or an artist I’d never heard of before I’d pay more attention simply because they were on one of these labels. Due to their excellent track record, labels like these had credibility with me (and lots of others). Sure there were some misfires now and then, but that’s to be expected. But these were the days when indie labels like this were really run by music lovers, music fans. Sadly, they would all be swallowed up at some point by major label greed and all that credibility would slowly run down the drain. There are still excellent indie labels around (there will always be) but they don’t have the standing, power and marketshare that these labels had back in the day.
Capricorn was the home to “southern-rock,” mainly The Allman Brothers, The Marshall Tucker Band, Wet Willie, Elvin Bishop and more. They also released a couple of fantastic albums by Livingston Taylor (brother of James). One of my favorite releases on Capricorn is a very hard to find album by Tommy Talton, Bill Stewart and Johnny Sandlin (listed on the album as T. Talton / B. Stewart / J. Sandlin) called Happy To Be Alive released in 1976. It’s never been released on CD (of course) and to be truthful I’ve never even found anyone else who’s heard it. It’s a real shame, because this is a great album. It’s very unique album, quite unlike anything else ever released on Capricorn.
Tommy Talton was a member of Cowboy, another Capricorn band who released four albums in the seventies (Reach For The Sky, 5′ll Get You Ten, Boyer & Talton and Cowboy). The band made some fine albums (none of which are available on CD), but never really garnered much of a following outside of their home base in Macon, GA, though they did tour with Gregg Allman and had two songs featured on his 1974 live album The Gregg Allman Tour (which is also, unfortunately, no longer available on CD, though it is available as an MP3 download at Amazon and iTunes). Talton plays all the guitars and handles all the vocals. Bill Stewart, a well known rock drummer, plays drums on the album. Stewart worked with folks like Roy Buchanan, Cowboy, Bonnie Bramlett, Greg Allman, The Allman Brothers, Tim Hardin, The New Riders Of The Purple Sage and lots of others. Johnny Sandlin was a very in-demand producer and engineer for the Capricorn stable of artists as well as the head of A&R for the label. He produced records by Cowboy, Alex Taylor (another James Taylor brother), Duane Allman, Wet Willie, White Witch, The Allman Brothers Band, Dickey Betts, Elvin Bishop and a whole lot more. He was the drummer for Hourglass, the band led by Duane and Gregg Allman before the Allman Brothers. He also plays drums, guitar, bass and probably a few other instruments. Sandlin produced this album and plays bass (and guitar on two songs).
I have no idea how this album came about. It looks, sounds and feels like a one-off project, though I’m sure if it had seen some success those involved would have been happy to continue on. This is not a “big” album. It’s not a grand statement. It’s really just three friends (with a little help from a few guest musicians) hanging out, recording some songs and basically just doing what they do best, making music. But don’t let that fool you. It’s honest, heartfelt music that really stands up remarkably well over thirty years later.
Tommy Talton wrote nine of the ten songs on the album (one is a co-write with Art Schilling and one is an Allen Toussaint cover). ”Don’t Ride Away” opens the album and sets the mood. It’s an distinctive mix of southern-rock and singer-s0ngwiter with just a touch of reggae. The acoustic based ballad “Never In My Life” features a unique arrangement that gives it a nice feel (again with a very slight reggae feel on the choruses). “Baby Could We Be Alone?” takes the reggae up a step or two. Now, don’t get me wrong, this is NOT a reggae album. But the influences are undeniable and very cleverly woven into a southern-rock sound. “Stalemate Blues” is a straight ahead, direct, standard blues work out with everyone locking together in a nice solid groove. Some great keyboard work from Chuck Leavell. “It Might Be The Rain” is a slow, moody, slinky piece of southern blues.
The band works through several more fine songs (especially “Strong And Weak” the closest thing to a “single” on the album), including a fun rendition of Allen Toussaint’s “Workin’ In A Coal Mine” (where they sound as if they are just having a ball), but the highlight of the album is the title track, the last song on the album. “Happy To Be Alive” is a minor masterpiece of a song: moving, infectious and altogether impossible to get out of your head. A poignant ode to coming of age, changing, growing and loving life throughout it all.
Happy To Be Alive is one of those albums that I hold near and dear, in part because it seems like my own little private secret. I’d love to see it released on CD, but that seems very unlikely. I’ve transferred by vinyl copy to CDR (it sounds great) and listen to it on a regular basis. I never get tired of it.
Other Listens on July 16th:
Long Distance Voyager by The Moody Blues
Neil Young by Neil Young
Jerry Jeff by Jerry Jeff Walker
Grace by Jeff Buckley
Whistling Down The Wire by Crosby/Nash
Reckless Abandon by The David Bromberg Band
Down In The Cellar by Al Stewart
I listened to a lot of music even back in high school. It was mostly 8-track tapes for me in those days. I had a home player, and when I was finally old enough to drive I had a player in my car. When I’d get in trouble at home the favorite punishment of my Mom and Dad was to take away my 8-track player. They’d lock it in the trunk of the car so I had no chance at getting to it. I guess it was clear how much I loved my music, even back then. I also had a little portable player that I could carry around (a boom box if you will, way before boom boxes became popular). I remember taking it to school a few times and getting in a lot of trouble. But even though I tried to keep up with popular music, there was, of course, just way too much to really do so. Especially when my finances were pretty limited. A lot of bands slipped through the cracks. With some I might have been able to get one album, but it didn’t go much further than that. And with many more I only knew of them from the radio and was maybe familiar with a hit or two here and there. As I get older, and as more and more albums have been remastered and reissued on CD, I’ve been making a concerted effort to go back and fill in the missing pieces for a lot of these bands: The Jefferson Airplane, The Guess Who, Sly & The Family Stone, The Steve Miller Band, The Grateful Dead, Santana and Led Zeppelin are some good examples. I remember I had an 8-track at one time of Thirds by James Gang. All I remember of the album was the hit “Walk Away.” I was familiar with at least one other of their hits, “Funk 49.” But that was about all I knew of James Gang for the next thirty plus years. I’d never bought any of their albums on CD. Until recently.
I can trace my love of music directly back to a transistor radio I had when I was 10 years old. I actually had two radios: a small, portable transistor radio and a bedside clock radio. I had lots of paper routes when I was growing up (I once had three different ones at the same time) and I would almost always take my radio along with me as I was cycling through the neighborhood delivering papers. If it was summer I might sometimes be listening to a baseball game, but most of the time I was tuned in to WING-AM or WONE-AM, both out of Dayton, Ohio. I lived in the very small town of Bellbrook, Ohio (about 15 miles or so outside of Dayton) from the age of 9 to 13. In my bedroom, reading or studying I would almost always have the clock radio turned on. I found it so cool that I could set it to come on automatically and wake me up for school. I was always curious to find out what song would be playing when the radio suddenly started to gush out hit songs each morning. But where I really became hooked was bedtime. My mom wouldn’t let me listen to the clock radio when I went to bed, so I’d sneak my transistor radio under my pillow. I found the perfect volume setting where I could hear it if I pressed my ear down hard enough, but no one else would know it was on. There was many a night I would fall asleep with one sixties pop nugget after another playing just inches away from my ear. I went through a lot of batteries this way as the radio would often play through most of the night. I’d eventually wake up and turn it off, but sometimes that was many hours later. As I got older I eventually got a record player and began to buy 45 singles and 12″ albums. But I still listened to the radio a lot as well. In those days I only had a handful of singles and albums and I was always listening to the radio looking for new songs. It was all about the song in those days. I gradually became more and more aware of the artists, but at the beginning it was the song, just the song.
The 1966 tour through Australia, Europe and especially the UK is more historically significant and more musically consequential. There’s no denying the power and the majesty of those performances. The acoustic performances are positively ethereal. Dylan sounds truly stoned out of his mind yet perfectly in the moment. His harmonica playing on those tracks is unlike anything else I’ve ever heard. He wanders off into unbelievable solos and riffs that wind over, under and around themselves like twisted angelic musical prayers. And, of course, the electric sets are truly groundbreaking. The ferociousness of the band, the power that each and everyone of them brings to each song is truly unique in recorded music. This was a band, with Dylan at the helm, doing battle with their audience each and every night. It brought out something in them that’s never been touched since. I once had a talk with an artist I was working with as an A&R man. He is a truly rare, extraordinary and unique songwriter with not an ounce of business sense in his body. A show he and his band did at 12th & Porter, here in Nashville, in late 1999 remains one of the finest, most powerful and moving performances I’ve ever seen live. Hands down better than most of the concerts I’ve seen by the rich and famous rock stars. Most likely you’ve never heard of him. I haven’t kept in touch with him since I left the music business. Last I heard he was living on the side of a mountain outside Knoxville, Tennessee. We were talking about music, about audiences, about connecting with listeners, about following your true muse wherever that took you and most of all about the difficulty of doing that when no one else seemed to be able to come with you. He too is a big Dylan fan. Think of the irony, and in the end the true triumph of Dylan’s 1966 tour I said. Here he was being booed, not just casually, but deeply and forcefully, by every audience, every night. I don’t care how famous, how self-assured, how strong, how deeply set in your beliefs you are, that must do an incredible trip on your head. And here we are forty years later and this music is commonly, widely even universally, considered some of the most important live music ever recorded. Talk about full circle. It’s Vincent Van Gogh 100 years later with a guitar. Though, thankfully, Dylan didn’t have to die before his genius was recognized. 
There’s a great version of Jerry Jeff Walker’s classic song, “Mr. Bojangles,” on his 1969 Atco album, Five Years Gone. I didn’t discover Walker until a few years later when he released his self-titled album on Decca (still my favorite album of his and still unavailable on CD). It’s referred to in the liner notes as “the famous drunken recording made early in the morning on WBAI with David Bromberg.” It’s just Walker and Bromberg playing acoustic guitars live at a radio station. It was recorded in November 1967, during a period when Bromberg would regularly back up Walker. David Bromberg is what you might call the textbook example of a “musician’s musician.” He’s played with a ton of people over the years. There’s a great tape circulating of Emmylou Harris playing live on a radio broadcast in 1969 (this was six years before her “debut” album Pieces Of The Sky) with Bromberg backing her. He’s played on sessions with everyone from Bob Dylan to John Prine to Willie Nelson to The Eagles playing everything from fiddle to guitar to mandolin to dobro to bass.
I worked a four different record labels in the nineties. They were all independent labels. I never worked at a major label. Still, I think I have a pretty good idea of how the record business works and what’s involved. That’s why I just don’t understand the reluctance on the part of most major labels to make so much of their back catalog available digitally. Back in the “old” days when CDs ruled it made more sense. At each of the labels I worked at we would license material from major labels. Albums they just didn’t want to bother reissuing on CD. I used to talk to the folks that worked at these labels a lot. They would say their bottom line was 20,000 CDs. If they didn’t think a reissue could sell at least 20,000 copies they weren’t interested. It wasn’t worth their time and energy. Now, 20,000 is a LOT of CDs to sale, especially on a reissue. So, it was no wonder that a lot of albums languished in the vaults. Their reasons were pretty simple to understand. To make a reissue financially viable they had to pay for remastering, new artwork, pressing up CDs, distributing those CDs, warehousing the CDs, etc. Now an indie label could do the same thing much cheaper. We didn’t have to sell near that many CDs to break even or to make money. But that’s all changed now. To make an out of print album available as a digital only release, on iTunes, or wherever, the costs are dirt cheap. All you have to do is make a decent transfer of the master tape to digital files. Sure, you can remaster it if you want, but that’s not always necessary. For a few hundred dollars someone can transfer the tape and presto, you’ve got the digital files. No artwork costs. No distribution costs. No pressing costs. No warehousing costs. So, it boggles my mind why the labels don’t seem to be making more of an effort to make more albums available. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I could make a list of at least 100 albums in a flash that I would buy as digital downloads if only they were available. With all the trouble the labels are having making money these days it’s just incredible that they are not diving into their catalogs and making all this great music available. Each album might not sell 20,000 copies or anywhere near that, but really, how many would they have to sell to break even? I don’t understand it. They’re just letting money sit there on the shelves of their vaults.
For some reason I’ve never been able to completely understand, America seems to require that most of our “artists” stick to one medium. As far as I can tell Elvis was the last musical artist to also have a real career in another field (film). And really, even he wasn’t taken seriously as an actor. Recent American history is full of case after case of artists trying to cross over from one medium to another and, often times, failing miserably. Now, to be fair, sometimes they are just plain bad at the new “field” they are trying to work in (Madonna as an actress?). But I think there’s more to it than that. It seems our first impulse is to automatically scoff at the very idea of an actor fronting a rock band. Or a musician writing a novel. Or a singer wanting to act. Sometimes it works but I think those cases are the exceptions. Jimmy Buffett and Kinky Friedman have both written many successful novels. Kris Kristofferson has done pretty well bouncing back and forth between films and music. But then you have Keanu Reaves and Russell Crowe both fronting rock bands (and neither getting much respect). I have a terrific country album that Sissy Spacek made in 1983 (Rodney Crowell produced it). I don’t think many people even knew it existed at the time. Mick Jagger and David Bowie both tried acting back in the 70s. I just find it interesting that it seems the initial reaction from our culture is to try and pigeonhole artists into one field. The very fact that they excel in one area of creativity seems to indicate that they may also be able to flourish in other areas given the chance. Now, sometimes if an actor “sneaks” a performance into a film it’s more easily accepted. Gary Busey played lead guitar and sang all the vocals in the 1978 film The Buddy Holly Story and did a fantastic job (the music even won an Oscar). Sissy Spacek did all the vocals in the 1980 Loretta Lynn biopic Coal Miner’s Daughter (for which she won a Best Actress Oscar). The soundtracks to each film featured their vocals, not the vocals of the stars they were portraying. But the thought of either of them doing an album outside of a movie didn’t generate much interest.
