The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

September 14, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Soundtrack Of Our Lives 

Every Sunday, The Soundtrack of Our Lives looks back at some of the music that was popular, and the performers who were influential, around the time Richard Nixon was elected President in 1968.

This week’s Soundtrack looks at two songs that entered the Top 10, but never reached the Number One spot, during 1968. Both these songs and their performers are still very much with us today, while some of the chart toppers are now only remembered by, or of any interest to, nostalgist geeks writing soundtrack posts on internet blogs. Sic transit gloria Billboard.

CHAIN OF FOOLS (DON COVAY) performed by ARETHA FRANKLIN

Today, after some four decades branded on the national consciousness —and the national soul— Aretha Franklin seems inevitable. How could there ever have been a time when this extraordinary talent wasn’t treasured? Even when she was starting out, surely the Queen of Soul was nothing less than a Princess.

Aretha Franklin was born in Memphis in 1942 but she mostly grew up in Detroit. Her father was a popular Baptist minister who became a nationally famous preacher. Aretha was a piano prodigy and before she was a teenager she was thrilling congregations with her playing and singing. Her inspirations were Clara Ward and Mahalia Jackson — both of whom, because of her father’s fame, were often around the house. She had a record contract by the time she was fourteen.

But personal problems intervened, and she didn’t start seriously recording until she turned 18. She moved easily between gospel, pop, jazz, blues, and rhythm and blues. But after several years, with only a handful of minor hits, her career had stalled.

In 1966 she changed labels from Columbia to Atlantic. And in 1967 she was paired with uber producer Jerry Wexler and found her own distinctive voice. Her first record with Wexler —“I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)” broke into the Billboard Hot 100 Top Ten pop charts and was Number One for seven weeks on the R&B singles chart.

Her next single —Otis Reddings’ “Respect”— was released in April 1967. It made her a superstar overnight. She got more than a little of what she was asking for when she hit Number One on both the pop and the R&B charts. In 1968 she won the first two of her twenty Grammys: for Best Record (“Respect”) and for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance.

Her success was so spectacular that less than a year later, in June 1968, she was on the cover of Time.

Apparently overwhelmed by its enthusiasm for her talent, the usually staid weekly news magazine produced a wonderful period piece of hipspeak as it attempted to explain to its white middle class subscriber base that was already comfortable with the Aristotlean concept of Soul, the uniquely American phenomenon of Soul embodied by Aretha Franklin.

Has it got soul? Man, that’s the question of the hour. If it has soul, then it’s tough, beautiful, out of sight. It passes the test of with-itness. It has the authenticity of collard greens boiling on the stove, the sassy style of the boogaloo in a hip discotheque, the solidarity signified by “Soul Brother” scrawled on a ghetto storefront

But what is soul? “It’s like electricity —we don’t really know what it is,” says Singer Ray Charles. “But it’s a force that can light a room.” The force radiates from a sense of selfhood, a sense of knowing where you’ve been and what it means. Soul is a way of life —but it is always the hard way. Its essence is ingrained in those who suffer and endure to laugh about it later. Soul is happening everywhere, in esthetics and anthropology, history and dietetics, haberdashery and politics—although Hubert Humphrey’s recent declaration to college students that he was a “soul brother” was all wrong. Soul is letting others say you’re a soul brother. Soul is not needing others to say it.

In essence, soul seemed to be a lot like porn —- hard to define but you know it when you see it. And to see it all you had to do was take a look at Aretha:

In all its power, lyricism and ecstatic anguish, soul is a chunky, 5-ft. 5-in. girl of 26 named Aretha Franklin singing from the stage of a packed Philharmonic Hall in Manhattan. She leans her head back, forehead gleaming with perspiration, features twisted by her intensity, and her voice—plangent and supple—pierces the hall:

Oh baby, what you done to me . . .
You make me feel, you make me feel,
you make me feel like a natural woman.

“Tell it like it is,” her listeners exhort, on their feet, clapping and cheering. She goes into a “holiness shout”-a writhing dance derived from gospel services, all the while singing over the tumult. This is why her admirers call her Lady Soul. Aretha’s vocal technique is simple enough: a direct, natural style of delivery that ranges over a full four octaves, and the breath control to spin out long phrases that curl sinuously around the beat and dangle tantalizingly from blue notes. But what really accounts for her impact goes beyond technique: it is her fierce, gritty conviction. She flexes her rich, cutting voice like a whip; she lashes her listeners —in her words—”to the bone, for deepness.” “Aretha’s music makes you sweaty, gives you a chill, makes you want to stomp your feet,” says Bobby Taylor, leader of a soul group called Bobby and the Vancouvers. More simply, a 19-year-old Chicago fan named Lorraine Williams explains: “If Aretha says it, then it’s important.”

She does not seem to be performing so much as bearing witness to a reality so simple and compelling that she could not possibly fake it.

“Chain of Fools” was one of Ms. Franklin’s chain of hits from 1967 to 1973.

• Baby I Love You
• (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman
• (Sweet Sweet Baby) Since You’ve Been Gone
• Think
• The House That Jack Built
• I Say a Little Prayer
• Bridge Over Troubled Water / Brand New Me
• Spanish Harlem
• Rock Steady
• Day Dreaming
• Until You Come Back to Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do)

Chain, chain, chain, chain, chain, chain
Chain, chain, chain, chain of fools
Five long years I thought you were my man
But I found out I’m just a link in your chain
You got me where you want me
I ain’t nothing but your fool
You treated me mean oh you treated me cruel
Chain, chain, chain, chain of fools

Every chain has got a weak link
I might be weak child, but I’ll give you strength
You told me to leave you alone
My father said come on home
My doctor said take it easy
Whole bunch of lovin is much too strong
I’m added to your chain, chain, chain
Chain, chain, chain, chain,
Chain, chain of fools

One of these mornings the chain is gonna break
But up until then, yeah, I’m gonna take all I can take
Chain, chain, chain, chain, chain, chain
Chain, chain, chain, chain of fools

This clip —the only one available on YouTube— is OK (but no more) as far as it goes. It’s interesting as a period piece but it doesn’t really show off the song or the performer. To appreciate both the power and the subtlety of the performance, the song, and the arrangement, listen to this track from the 1968 album Lady Soul. If you have stereo speakers attached to your computer you are in for a very special treat.

“Chain of Fools” was written by Don Covay, a singer-songwriter who, like Ms. Franklin, had started out in gospel. He crossed over to secular music in the mid 1950s in a group that also included Marvin Gaye and Billy Stewart. He began his solo career as part of the Little Richard Revue.

In 1964 he cut a single record of his song “Mercy Mercy” accompanied by the still-undiscovered Jimi Hendrix on guitar. That same year Atlantic bought his contract and he released several records with them.

Rolling Stone lists “Chain of Fools” as Number 249 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time:

The second of four hits from 1968’s Lady Soul, this kiss-off was written by Covay as a straight blues about field hands in the South. Covay reworked the lyrics for Franklin; producer Wexler cooked up the propulsive stomp. When songwriter Ellie Greenwich heard the track in Wexler’s office, she suggested an extra vocal-harmony part, which Wexler got her to sing on the final master.

At the beginning of this month —on September 1st —addressing a rally in Detroit, Barack Obama noted the presence of Ms. Franklin by offering a brief rendition of this song. Although ABC’s Jake Tapper dismisses it as “a rather awful rendition, flat and pitchy,” I think it’s pretty cool.

Aretha Franklin’s recording of “Chain of Fools” was used at the Democratic Convention in Denver as the play-on music for Bill Clinton. Wonkette, liveblogging the former President’s speech, noted: “8:56 PM — Wait, what? ‘Chain of Fools’? Really? The symbolism is thick. People are all clapping on 2 and 4, at least.”

According to Wikipedia, “this song was played as the crowd [at the Democratic Convention in Denver] linked arms to form a human chain and swayed back and forth, singing ‘Chain of Fools’ as Barack Obama was on stage.” No other account I can find supports this statement, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

JUMPIN’ JACK FLASH (JAGGER + RICHARDS) performed by THE ROLLING STONES

After its various members had worked their ways through school and forming or playing with other bands, the Rolling Stones —or, as they were known in those earliest days, the Rollin’ Stones— played their first gig in 1962.

A few months earlier, guitarist Brian Jones had placed an ad in the Jazz News music magazine seeking musicians interested in forming a rhythm and blues group. By the time the band recorded its first single in 1963 —a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Come On”— the personnel included founder Jones, vocalist Mick Jagger, guitarist Keith Richards, bassist Bill Wyman, and drummer Charlie Watts.

The musical roots of these English lads —blues and rhythm and blues— lay deep in American soil. When Keith Richards ran into Mick Jagger on a train to London in 1960 (they had been at high school together, and now Richards was attending art college and Jagger the London School of Economics), Jagger was carrying Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry albums with him.

That autumn they toured England on a bill with Bo Diddley, Little Richard, and the Everly Brothers. Their first LP —The Rolling Stones— was mostly blues covers.

When the Beatles arrived on our shores in February 1964, they took America by storm. When the Rolling Stones arrived a few months later in June, they appeared on the popular Hollywood Palace variety show and were actually mocked by that week’s host Dean Martin. Jagger’s activist approach to playing the maracas clearly amused the audience, but his tentative fledgling version of the soon-to-be-famous rooster walk actually drew laughter.

To the show’s credit, it at least gave the band enough time to play Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away” and their own song “I Just Wanna Make Love To You”.

By the time they came back to America only a few months later, they had started to develop a following — partly because of their music and partly because of their cultivated (but not inaccurate) surly, threatening bad boy image, which was a distinct contrast to the witty and scrubbed-up Beatles.

The Stones got priceless publicity when a number of radio stations banned their single of the Willie Dixon blues classic “Little Red Rooster” because of its supposed (and, in fact, very real) sexual connotations. Because of the uproar they created when they appeared on Ed Sullivan’s Sunday night variety show, he said he would never book them again; he did many times.

The third album —1965’s Out of Our Heads— was the big breakthrough; it contained three original songs that became major hits: “The Last Time”, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”, and “Play With Fire”.

“Play With Fire” is one of my favorite Stones songs. For its British audience, the understated but boldly menacing lyrics perfectly expressed the threat (and therefore the excitement, not least in sexual terms) the working class culture of Swinging London represented to the still-entrenched class system.

The song is credited to “Nanker Phelge” — the group’s collective pseudonym for jointly-composed songs; the name was apparently suggested by Brian Jones although, as with most things Stones, there are varying versions of how it was chosen.

Well, you’ve got your diamonds
and you’ve got your pretty clothes.
And the chauffeur drives your car
You let everybody know.
But don’t play with me, cause you’re playing with fire.

Your mother, she’s an heiress,
owns a block in Saint John’s Wood.
And your father’d be there with her
If he only could.
But don’t play with me, cause you’re playing with fire.

Your old man took her diamonds
and tiaras by the score.
Now she gets her kicks in Stepney,
Not in Knightsbridge anymore.
So don’t play with me, cause you’re playing with fire.

Now you’ve got some diamonds,
and you will have some others.
But you’d better watch your step, girl
Or start living with your mother.
So don’t play with me, cause youre playing with fire.

Knightsbridge and St. John’s Wood are two of London’s poshest Tory-friendly areas; teeming Labor Stepney is where Churchill’s “Siege of Sidney Street” took place in 1911.

The next album, 1966’s Aftermath, was all original Jagger-Richards material and included several single hits: “Paint I Black”, “Stupid Girl”, “Lady Jane”, “Under My Thumb”, and “Out of Time”. (The UK version replaced “Paint It Black” with another of my Stones favorites, “Mother’s Little Helper”.

From 1965 through 1967 three-fifths of the band’s members had a number of run-ins with the law, mostly but not entirely involving controlled substances. In June 1967 both Jagger and Richards were convicted and sentenced to prison for possession of cannabis (the “Redlands” case, after a bust at RIchards’ Sussex country home Redlands). The circumstances of the case were dicey, and the defendants found succor from, of all people, the Editor of The Times. William Rees-Mogg wrote an editorial for his paper highly critical of the court’s conduct and verdict:

If we are going to make any case a symbol of the conflict between the sound traditional values of Britain and the new hedonism, then we must be sure that the sound traditional values include those of tolerance and equity. It should be the particular quality of British justice to ensure that Mr. Jagger is treated exactly the same as anyone else, no better and no worse. There must remain a suspicion in this case that Mr. Jagger received a more severe sentence than would have been thought proper for any purely anonymous young man.

It was, incidentally, around this time that I met Brian Jones. A friend from Georgetown had become the manager of the Lovin Spoonful, and when that band visited England I was invited to many of the events — including an after party at the lavish mews cottage of the young Guinness heir Tara Brown — whose official title was Lord Oranmore and Brown.

I have no recollection of the host, who would achieve a small sad fame thanks to a Beatles song.

Two years later Tara Brown was stopped at a traffic light in London while experiencing and LSD trip in his Lotus Elan motor car. A truck rear-ended him and his death at such an early age was a great schock. The lyrics of “A Day In The Life” commemorated the event:

He blew his mind out in a car
He didn’t notice that the lights had changed
A crowd of people stood and stared
They’d seen his face before
Nobody was really sure if he was from the House of Lords.

But I digress. I was among the first to arrive at the party. Already there and sitting cross-legged on the living room floor, strumming on a sitar, was the instantly recognizable figure (with his Prince Valiant blond haircut) was Brian Jones. He was surrounded by a few adoring leggy dolly birds luxuriously stretched out on huge pillows covered with squares of turkish carpet with mirrors embedded in the texture.

The dolly birds remained transfixed, but Brian Jones looked up, caught my eye, and spoke the only seven words ever spoken to me by a Rolling Stone: “Hey man, do you have a joint?”

I had not the slightest idea what he was talking about. (Remember, this was 1965 and I was still an innocent abroad.) As far as I can recall I gave him a noncommittal nod of recognition and headed to the kitchen. At this distance I don’t really remember why — perhaps I thought he was hungry for a large leg of lamb.

In any case, I got myself a drink. His needs were presumably taken care of by someone more worldly. (In the end his needs were only too well taken care of. Two years later he, like Tara Brown, was dead. Brian Jones —who had become estranged from the group largely because of his drug use and had played with them for the last time in December 1968— was found floating at the bottom of his swimming pool after a party in July 1969; it was termed “death by misadventure”.

In June ’67 the Beatles released the album that represented the culmination of their personal, musical, philosophical, and psychedelic journeys, and that was immediately recognized —as it still is today— as a milestone in the development and history of popular music: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Six months later, the Stones released their attempted “version” of this kind of vision: Their Satanic Majesties Request. It had all the attendant psychedelic bells and whistles, but it was, on the whole, underwhelming. Many critics suggested that it reflected the many trials (literal and figurative) to which the Stones had lately been heir.

Whereas the Beatles used Sgt. Pepper as a springboard for continued experimentation, the Stones quickly returned to their old blues and rhythm and blues roots. They went into the studio in January 1968 and recorded the single “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”.

It was this return to roots that produced —at the end of 1968— the Stones’ real equivalent of Sgt. Pepper as a breakthrough album: Beggars Banquet. It included the songs “Sympathy for he Devil”, “No Expectations”, and “Street Fighting Man”.

“Jumpin’ Jack Flash” was released in June 1968. It went to the top of the UK charts and reached Number 3 here.

I was born in a cross-fire hurricane
And I howled at my ma in the driving rain,
But its all right now, in fact, its a gas!
But its all right. Im jumpin jack flash,
Its a gas! gas! gas!

I was raised by a toothless, bearded hag,
I was schooled with a strap right across my back,
But its all right now, in fact, its a gas!
But its all right, Im jumpin jack flash,
Its a gas! gas! gas!

I was drowned, I was washed up and left for dead.
I fell down to my feet and I saw they bled.
I frowned at the crumbs of a crust of bread.
Yeah, yeah, yeah
I was crowned with a spike right thru my head.
But its all right now, in fact, its a gas!
But its all right, Im jumpin jack flash,
Its a gas! gas! gas!

There are contradictory accounts of the lyric’s meaning from the two composers. Richards says that they wrote it while they were staying at his country house and were awakened (having only just retired) by the sound of the gardener —Jack Dyer, who was known as “Jumpin’ Jack”— walking beneath the windows each morning. “The rest of the lyrics evolved from there,” Mr. Richards says.

Mr. Jagger has said that “Jumpin Jack Flash” arouse “out of all the acid of Satanic Majesties… It’s about having a hard time and getting out. Just a metaphor for getting out of all the acid things.” I find this more convincing that Mr. Richards’ anodyne explanation (although I have no doubt the gardener’s name was Jack Dyer).

Anyone who thinks the Stones don’t take their music seriously should consider Keith Richards’ explanation of Jack Flash’s distinctive sound:

I used a Gibson Hummingbird acoustic tuned to open D, six string. Open D or open E, which is the same thing – same intervals – but it would be slackened down some for D. Then there was a capo on it, to get that really tight sound. And there was another guitar over the top of that, but tuned to Nashville tuning. I learned that from somebody in George Jones’ band in San Antonio in 1964. The high-strung guitar was an acoustic, too. Both acoustics were put through a Philips cassette recorder. Just jam the mic right in the guitar and play it back through an extension speaker.

The song has proved one of the most perennially popular in the Stones’ catalog. They have played it on every tour since it was released — which makes it the song most frequently played in concert by the group.

The British music magazine Q placed “Jumpin Jack Flash” at number two on its list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks. And Rolling Stone deemed it number 124 out of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. On VH1’s list of the 100 Greatest Rock Song, “JJF” clocked in at #65.

In 1986, Penny Marshall appropriated the title and the song for her movie vehicle for Whoopi Goldberg, Jumpin Jack Flash. The film was a success at the time, partly because of Ms. Goldberg —who was just at the height of her popularity— and partly because of its excellent soundtrack.

A music video of Aretha Franklin singing the title song (along with Keith Richards, Ron Wood, and other various and assorted rock stalwarts) is one of my favorites of this genre. I maintain that it is impossible for anyone with blood in their veins to watch this without smiling and/or tapping their feet. There are a number of otiose cutaways to scenes from the film — but some is better than none and what there is is stylish and spectacular. (My advice would be: Skip the introductory set-up material and go directly to the beginning of the song at 1:00.)

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