We continue our look back at the music of 50 years ago…..
Most rock singers of the 60’s and early 70’s mined the blues for their songs. Break-ups, unrequited love and other sundry maladies were the mothers milk of the recorded output of that time period. But once in awhile, an artist was in a different place, and was able to deliver some fine work with a smile on their face. Case in point, “Tupelo Honey”. the fifth studio LP released by Van Morrison in October of 1971.
Morrison had moved from Woodstock New York to Marin County in Northern California just before the recording of this LP and that, along with his idyllic family life with wife Janet led to an album brimming with happiness and satisfaction from the famously cantankerous Belfast Cowboy. There is no smugness here. No condescension that can mar some of his other work.
With his move west he also had to put together a different group of musicians in the studio for this one and he hit a home run by calling up Ronnie Montrose. Montrose was a San Francisco native who played with a wide variety of artists including the Edgar Winter Group, Boz Scaggs and Herbie Hancock before fronting his own hard-rock band in the 70’s that featured a young Sammy Hagar on vocals. He brought an exuberant playing to many of the tracks, notably the opener “Wild Night” which just swung so hard and sounded great coming through your transistor radio.
The studio band also featured Bill Church on bass, Marc Jordan on piano and John McFee on pedal steel. The drum kit was manned by Rick Schlosser, Gary Mallaber and on four tracks by jazzman Connie Kay. Kay, from the Modern Jazz Quartet, took session work and sounds very nice on his songs which include the classic title track.
The album was initially supposed to be a country themed record and you can certainly hear some of that bucolic sound in tracks like “Old, Old Woodstock”, “I Wanna Roo You”, Straight to Your Heart Like A CannonBall”, & “When The Evening Sun Goes Down.” But, it is Van Morrison singing so the bluesy, soul sound is never far away.
The sentiments are clear in songs like “Starting A New Life” and “You’re My Woman”. Domestic bliss never sounded better on a pop record than this.
Two songs that stand out for me though are the title track and the song “Moonshine Whiskey” that closes the record. I’ve heard it compared to “The Band” in its melding of country and R&B and Morrison would have certainly been soaking up some of that ambiance from his neighbors in upstate New York. But the title track is, as critic Greil Marcus described it “the most gorgeous number on the album” and I agree. Producer Ted Templeman does a nice turn on the organ and Jack Schroer adds a great sax solo. And Morrison finds new ways to enunciate the lyrics. It’s so good, it hurts. For my money, Morrison’s singing was never better than this record. It seems Robbie Robertson and Martin Scorcese agreed…
I know some fans will prefer the jazzy insouciance of “Moondance” or the lyrical mystery of ‘Astral Weeks” or maybe one of his other solid LPs, but I’ll take this. It’s a “desert island” album for me. One I can listen to over and over again.
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