Only Solitaire Reviews: Alex Harvey

	ALEX HARVEY AND HIS SOUL BAND
	Album released: March 1964	V	A	L	U	E	More info:
		4	2	3	3	2
Tracks: 1) Framed; 2) I Ain’t Worrying Baby; 3) Backwater Blues; 4) Let The Good Times Roll; 5) Going Home; 6) I’ve Got My Mojo Working; 7) Teensville USA; 8) New Orleans; 9) Bo Diddley Is A Gun Slinger; 10) When I Grow Too Old To Rock; 11) Evil Hearted Man; 12) I Just Wanna Make Love To You; 13) The Blind Man; 14*) Reeling And Rocking.
REVIEW Of all those artists whose musical career took years and years to get off the ground, Alex Harvey, the national hero of Scotland, must hold an indisputable world record. Success and notability were not to be his until the launching of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band in 1972 — yet his first musical outfit, the Alex Harvey (Big) Soul Band, was active and kicking around the circuits of Scotland and adjacent lands to the south since at least 1959, when the Beatles were still the Quarrymen, Elvis was still in the army, and the word «glam» was still only applicable to describing a certain type of feminine charm.
Then again, was there anything truly special about the Soul Band? Based on their first and only official LP, you would never really know, because, according to Richie Unterberger, it was not actually recorded by the Soul Band itself, but rather by Alex and a little-known Liverpool band, Kingsize Taylor and The Dominoes, during one of Harvey’s stays at the club scene in Hamburg (where, as we all know, Liverpool bands were particularly welcome in the early 1960s). The deception likely does not stop there, because the entire session formally looks like a live album, with crowd noise and applause generously sprinkled all over the proceedings, yet the sound quality is too suspiciously clear for a true live club performance — most probably, the band did perform live, but the audience bits were overdubbed later for «authenticity»’s sake. Nevertheless, it is all reasonably close to what the true Soul Band was up to, as heard from the evidence of a much later, semi-legal, archival release on Bear Family Records which came out in 1999, featured exactly the same title as the original album (do not confuse the two!) and contained a hodge-podge of studio recordings made in 1963–64 both in Germany and in the UK. (One of these recordings, a cover of Chuck Berry’s ‘Reeling And Rocking’, was actually appended as a bonus track to the official CD release of Alex Harvey And His Soul Band — and although it is definitely one of the best sounding tracks on this record, I suspect that this is probably just due to the lack of annoying crowd noises in the background). One thing you can certainly say about both the «true» Soul Band and their doppelgängers is that they (or, at least, their charismatic frontman) had a mighty fine taste in selecting the proper cover material, even if, at this point, Alex himself was almost completely a performer and interpreter rather than an original songwriter. The track listing reflects impressive diversity, featuring everything from straightahead pop-rock (‘I Ain’t Worrying Baby’, one of the two «Harvey originals» but in reality just a carbon copy of the generic Merseybeat sound) to classic R&B (‘Let The Good Times Roll’) to Chicago blues (‘Got My Mojo Working’) to Chicago rock’n’roll (‘Bo Diddley Is A Gunslinger’). Above everything else, Harvey is more than happy to dig out and rearrange old pre-war blues standards such as ‘Backwater Blues’ or ‘The Blind Man’ — and his childhood fascination with music hall values, which would truly flourish again with the rise of the Sensational band, is hinted at by the inclusion of Romberg and Hammerstein’s ‘When I Grow Too Old To Dream’, which is given a much faster tempo, a completely new set of lyrics, and even an appropriately new title (‘When I Grow Too Old To Rock’, arguably making Harvey the first artist to have raised this subject in his music), yet still ends up credited to Romberg and Hammerstein (yeah, I too was surprised to see that Oscar had actually penned something called ‘When I Grow Too Old To Rock’, and would probably have remained flabbergasted for life if not for the Internet age). Clearly, this sort of eclectic and unpredictable approach makes the Soul Band stand out among all the other UK bands, or, heck, make that all the other white bands of the early 1960s — since most of the competition consisted of either Chicago blues purists or big fans of the contemporary Motown and Atlantic scenes; Alex, on the other hand, preferred to cast his net much wider, while at the same time largely avoiding covering the more popular, commercialized hits. Yet this is probably as high as I can go praising this record, whose function as a historical curio by far surpasses its intrinsic artistic value or direct emotional impact. Because simply listening to it is not nearly such a fun experience as its lovable, ambitious frontman would like us all to have. Although blessed from the start with a powerful, expressive voice, Alex Harvey was still years away from crafting and extolling his tragicomic madman stage persona, and his belaboured attempts to make a difference too frequently come across as blunt obnoxiousness — though, admittedly, with a full-blown band behind his back he is nowhere near as obnoxious here as he would soon be on The Blues, where there would be nothing and nobody in between his ego and his listeners. Most of the time, he just sounds like that rowdy Scottish stereotype — you know, the barroom guy who is allowed to sound dirtier, swaggier, screechier, and (occasionally) funnier than the rest just because he is from the Northlands where people are wiser and rowdier by definition. But given Alex’s natural whiny and nasal pitch, there is only so much of that voice one can safely take if it is not supported by other helpful factors; and trying to channel the spirit of Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, or Lonnie Johnson is not a helpful factor under these conditions. As far as the pseudo-Soul Band is concerned, Alex’s sidemen from Liverpool are unquestionably competent — the way your local barroom band would be competent after having played each night for five years — but I keep struggling to find any «edge» to the way they are playing. The only unusual thing is that they have a lead sax player in the standard place of a lead guitar player on most of the tracks, and the guy is good, but not wild enough, and the problem with prominent saxophone in a rock’n’roll band is that you really have to go all-out on the instrument to make it matter (like in the Sonics, for instance). Maybe it works for those who truly appreciate lengthy sax improvs in jazz music; I do not, so do not take my word for this as the ultimate truth. I just think this particular type of sax playing decreases the sharpness of the impact rather than adds to the overall adrenaline level. A good case in point is to compare the album’s opening number, a cover of Leiber & Stoller and the Coasters’ ‘Framed’ — first, with the original, whose perfectly timed and phrased vocal performance is absolutely no match for Harvey’s earnest, but underpowered performance; and second, with Alex’s own reworking of this number on the 1972 debut of the Sensational Band — by which time he would master the epic approach to musical material, and manage to transform the 2-minute little joke number into a slow, sprawling, monumental masterpiece of paranoid-demented musical theater. On here, the song is barely noticeable; on Framed, it would become unforgettable. But the time was not right yet. Nor was it right for convincing people that Alex Harvey could be an impressive solo performer: ‘The Blind Man’, concluding the album on a lonesome acoustic-and-vocal note, presages the overall boredom of his first solo album by dipping far more directly into the area of «whiny» than into that of «soulful». In the end, Alex Harvey’s Soul Band just did not stand a chance if you took it in the context of Johnny Kidd & The Pirates (who rocked out better), the Beatles (who had better songs), the Beach Boys (who had better vocals), the Dave Clark 5 (who had an edgier sax player), the Animals (who had a crazier frontman), the Rolling Stones (who had a more provocative sound), the Americans (who wrote all these songs that Harvey covered), the Russians (who had just flown Gagarin into space three years ago), and the Romulans (who all looked more handsome than Alex Harvey could ever hope to get). If you did not take them in all that context, things would look more on the sunny side, but there is very little chance that future historians of early 1960s’ music will fall upon the Soul Band’s recordings prior to have experienced all those other guys. One thing is for certain: Alex Harvey And His Soul Band is the first of many pieces of evidence which prove that, in the world of popular music, certain types of talents flourish much better at certain times — somewhat like David Bowie, Alex Harvey just happened to be a man of the Seventies whom God, for some reason, had permitted to be born into this world about ten years earlier than necessary.

	THE BLUES
	Album released: 1965 (1964?)	V	A	L	U	E	More info:
		3	3	2	3	3
Tracks: 1) Trouble In Mind; 2) Honey Bee; 3) I Learned About Woman; 4) Danger Zone; 5) The Riddle Song; 6) Waltzing Matilda; 7) T.B. Blues; 8) The Big Rock Candy Mountain; 9) The Michigan Massacre; 10) No Peace; 11) Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out; 12) St. James Infirmary; 13) Strange Fruit; 14) Kisses Sweeter Than Wine; 15) Good God Almighty.
REVIEW I cannot even properly ascertain the original date of release for this LP; the recording sessions are usually quoted as having taken place on May 8–10, 1964, at Studio Rahlstedt in Hamburg, but the release date is given as either 1964 or 1965, with no further specification. Not that this is really significant: we are not talking about a new Beatles or Byrds single here, but rather about a completely out-of-time, out-of-touch experiment in who-gives-a-damn self-expression that, honestly, could have been recorded any decade after the commercial establishment of folk and skiffle by anybody who, well, didn’t give a damn about much of anything. Rumor has it that The Blues was made by Alex as sort of a fuck-you gesture to Polydor after they’d refused to release his planned second LP — but I find it hard to believe, given that (a) despite the minimal effort invested, the record shows plenty of heart and (b) what could have prevented the label from not releasing his third album if they’d already canceled his second one?
In any case, talk about an album that’s actually rare as heck. Be it 1964 or 1965, it was only issued on vinyl once (according to Discogs, only by the German division of Polydor) and had never ever had an official CD (or digital file) release all by itself — only in 2016, with Universal officially issuing the 14-CD boxset The Last Of The Teenage Idols, apparently containing everything Harvey ever recorded, did true hardcore Alex Harvey fans get their first legitimate chance to hear The Blues digitally remastered. And maybe it was for the best, because I do not think that this is a record which could be easily appreciated by a non-hardcore Alex Harvey fan; in order to be kind to it, you are well recommended to work your way backwards, first nurturing an appreciation for Harvey’s artistic persona through the masterpieces of his Sensational Band era and then getting to the roots of that persona by hearing him record a bunch of old blues, folk, and vaudeville standards with only his own acoustic guitar in tow, as well as some subtle backing from brother Les Harvey on the electric six-string. Even if you don’t do that, though (although I guess that’s pretty much the only realistic way to do it), The Blues will still come across as a weird album for its time. In 1964–65, a title like that would bring on very clear associations to the minds of the potential listeners — Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson, Howlin’ Wolf, just about anybody from the Chicago area, or, if you were a real true connaisseur, maybe the big bad old Delta dudes like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charlie Patton, and, of course, Robert Johnson. That would have been the expected roster had, for instance, a guy like Eric Clapton wanted to release an album called The Blues back at the time. But from that entire roster, there are maybe like one or two songs out of fifteen on here — Muddy’s ʽHoney Bee’ is one, and, amusingly, the two «original» numbers credited to brothers Alex and Les themselves (ʽNo Peace’ and ʽGood God Almighty’) are also straightforward 12-bar blues with traditionalist lyrics. (If you have to do some Chicago blues, build up your own Chicago from the ground up!) Everything else is... well, all over the place, and absolutely not the kind of material you’d see on a contemporary rhythm & blues record; maybe some of it is something you could see on an old-timey skiffle record by the likes of Lonnie Donegan (who feels like quite a serious influence on Alex in this period of his life), but even Lonnie, for instance, would not risk taking on Billie Holiday’s ʽStrange Fruit’ and trying to bend it to his own spirit. Rather than classic Delta or Chicago blues, Alex’s tastes ran more toward the vaudeville-tinged old school urban blues — ʽTrouble In Mind’, ʽNobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out’, ʽSt. James Infirmary’ — as well as pre-war folk and country, with material borrowed from artists such as Jimmie Rodgers (ʽT.B. Blues’), Harry McClintock (ʽThe Big Rock Candy Mountain’), and Woody Guthrie (ʽThe Michigan Massacre’). Perhaps this was more of an issue of standing out from the crowds for him, or maybe he felt a stronger personal connection to the toilers and sufferers of the 1930s and 1940s rather than the newly emerging successful stars of the relatively stable 1950s — hard to tell. In any case, the track list already makes the record somewhat unusual for an artist whose original aspiration was to make a name for himself on the Scottish (and British) club scene. Obviously, this unusualness does not guarantee quality, and this is where unprepared listeners may run into trouble. Alex Harvey was never a great guitar player, and his brother Les (the same Les Harvey who would help form Stone The Crows in the early Seventies and then die on stage from electrocution in 1972), despite obvious competence, humbly remains in Alex’s shadow on all of these tracks. As for the singing, Alex pulls no punches: drawing upon both the «scruffy» part of the Delta blues tradition (as represented by rough-voice champions like Charley Patton or Son House) and its relatively recent modernizations by the likes of Bob Dylan, he makes it his vocation to squeeze out any traces of «trained art» from his performances, replacing them with hoboesque grit and waves of shrill, high-pitched, often physically unbearable Authentic Suffering. When the man gets to screamin’ his head off, prepare to run for cover. In an earlier assessment of the album, I pretty much dismissed all the songs as «annoying» and gave it a bad rating, maybe because I already had a headache while listening to it and listening to it made the headache even worse. So, lesson #1: never listen to The Blues (or, for that matter, Alex Harvey in general) when you’re suffering from migraines. Lesson #2: always, whenever possible, take things in their proper historical context — it’s a fairly good way to boost those mind-expanding powers all of us have, but few of us actually use. In 1964–1965, nobody in the pop music business sang this kind of material in this kind of way, even if, when you think about it, it was quite a suitable way to sing this kind of material. What Alex does here is really get inside the skin of some imaginary old-timey homeless person, mighty down on his luck, alternating between sad tales of financial downfall (‘Nobody Knows You’), health deterioration (‘TB Blues’), and general paranoia (‘Danger Zone’) while at the same time occasionally slipping into alcohol-fuelled dreams of paradise (‘Big Rock Candy Mountain’), nostalgia (‘Waltzing Matilda’), or infantile delirium (‘The Riddle Song’). Indeed, it is a surprisingly consistent and coherent picture that these 15 songs paint across two sides of vinyl — without the slightest hint of an «academic» or «tributary» approach, as would have been common for regular interpreters of old blues and folk at the time (or, come to think of it, at any time). Annoying, whiny, excessively dramatic, fairly monotonous, all these things are true, but at the end of the day I actually catch myself wanting to give poor Alex a couple of pounds and a bowl of hot soup, and I had no such inclination with Dave Van Ronk or Joan Baez. (Joan Baez actually sounds like she could give me a bowl of hot soup — and a nice warm bath, and tuck me into bed and everything). Seen from that angle, The Blues might actually be regarded as being ahead of its time: it proudly sports a Pogues-like attitude to old-timeyness, pointing out a direct connection between all these songs and the misery of the lower classes instead of trying to elevate them to the state of cold, beautiful, elitist high art. This is not to say that Alex is being starkly and perfectly realistic; he is simply playing the opposite game — making up his own brand of «folk-blues theater» that goes much further in the above-described direction than it did with Dylan. But he is playing it well, amplifying his Glaswegian temperament to the max both on the light- and heavy-hearted numbers, kicking up an atmospheric dustcloud that could never be appreciated by the way too idealistic youth of 1965. Hamburg — the city that liked it rough and dangerous — was a far more open-minded location in this respect than London at the time, but the tastes of Hamburg could do little for the overall record market, so The Blues was simply bound to fail. I do not always agree with Harvey’s interpretations. Sometimes, in his rush to make everything sound dirty and miserable, he brutally strips the original numbers of their own charm and mystique — an excellent example is his treatment of Jimmie Rodgers’ ‘T.B. Blues’, whose scary power used to come from the fatal message being delivered in the friendliest, sweetest, and most nonchalant delivery imaginable; Alex and Les, however, transform it into a slow, dreary 12-bar blues pounder that gives you a shower of misery and depression as is, and this automatically makes the song unmemorable, because, let’s face it, how many million miserable and depressed 12-bar blues are there already in existence? But on the other hand, you could also argue that singing "gee but the graveyard sure is a lonesome place" in a panicky tone is sort of a more natural thing to do than singing it like you were joyfully celebrating the wonders of nature. One thing is for certain: Alex Harvey’s theatrics may not always entertain, but they are always justified. He understands what these songs are about, and he specifically selects only those songs with which he can have an emotional connection (rather than choosing them for their popularity, musical sophistication, or pure shock factor). It is hardly my purpose to promote The Blues as a record you should hunt for (honestly, save your time), but being a major admirer of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band in its 1972 incarnation, it is my purpose to get to the bottom of the mystery of how such a talent could linger in utter obscurity for more than a decade before breaking out, and The Blues provides part of the answer to that riddle. The raw, exuberant charisma was already all there — it’s just that nobody knew yet how to produce the right kind of bottle for that kind of genie. Perhaps The Mothers Of Invention could have helped, but they were over there and Alex was over here, so he had to patiently wait until the Age of Glam came along and gave him what he really needed (a fate that he, amusingly, shared to a degree with another, though ultimately far more successful, «latecomer» — David Bowie). In the meantime... he just lost that deal with Polydor. No big surprise, if you ask me.

Recording years	Main genre	Music sample
1964–1982	Classic rhythm’n’blues	Reelin’ And Rockin’ (1964)