The Beach Boys - "Landlocked"

After the release of the Beach Boys’ Sunflower album, engineer/producer Stephen Desper assembled a collection of songs consisting mostly of Sunflower outtakes deemed suitable for a follow-up album. There is a lot of debate over how far this project got and whether it was actually ever named Landlocked.

But it does seem that something was being pieced together before the project was scrapped and the Beach Boys eventually produced the album Surf’s Up. Assuming that both Add Some Music and Reverberation albums had been released (see our earlier blog entry) and Sunflower had not been, I looked at the remaining songs and created an album I’m titling Landlocked. 

SIDE A

1. Sound of Free (Dennis Wilson/Mike Love)

2. Where is She? (Brian Wilson)

3. Games Two Can Play (Brian Wilson)

4. H.E.L.P. is on the Way (Brian Wilson)

5. I'm Going Your Way (Dennis Wilson)

6. Cool, Cool Water (Brian Wilson/Mike Love)

SIDE B

1. Soulful Old Man Sunshine (Brian Wilson/Rick Henn)

2. Big Sur (Mike Love)

3. Carnival (Brian Wilson)

4. Walkin' (Brian Wilson)

5. It's About Time (Dennis Wilson/Bob Burchman/Al Jardine)

6. My Solution (Brian Wilson)

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What stands out the most (at least to me) is that Brian Wilson dominates the songwriting here. Half of the album was written solely by him, and three other tracks are co-written by him. I think there’s often the feeling that after SMiLE, Brian didn’t contribute much to the band for many years. But this is proof that that's not true.

The album starts off with "Sound of Free," a song co-written by Dennis Wilson and Mike Love. I'm not sure, but it may be the only Beach Boys song that these two worked on together without others. Oddly enough, the song was officially released as a single and credited to Dennis Wilson and Rumbo after being cut from at least two Beach Boys albums.

Two of these songs appear on Sunflower: “It’s About Time” and “Cool, Cool Water.” Two other songs are outtakes from Sunflower: “Soulful Old Man Sunshine” and “Carnival.” “Soulful Old Man Sunshine” is available on the Endless Harmony soundtrack, but I think “Carnival” is still only on bootlegs.

“Games Two Can Play” and “H.E.L.P. is on the Way” can be found on the Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of the Beach Boys box set. “Sound of Free,” “Where is She?” and “Back Home” are available on the Made in California box set.

The version of “Big Sur” I’m using is the original, not the remake that appears on the Holland album. I think bootlegs are the only source for it currently. Two other songs only available on bootlegs are “Walkin’” (an outtake from the album 20/20) and “My Solution,” meant as a Halloween novelty song. I added it to the end of the album as kind of a hidden joke.

I found the album cover a few years ago on a Beach Boys blog. I'm sorry to the person who created it, as I didn’t record it at the time. 

Ervin Rucker -- "So Good"

This time around I decided to go with a project that's a bit more obscure than others I've done.

Ervin Rucker cut six singles for tiny Duplex Records between 1958 and 1960. Duplex, run by R&B band leader Jimmy Liggins, never released any albums. But Rucker was the most prolific in the label's short existence. Gathering the dozen songs together we can create an album that never existed but was worthy of being.

SIDE A
1. Baby, You Were Meant for Me
2. I Want to Do It
3. Two People in Love
4. If You Have It
5. Hideout
6. Ada from Decatur

SIDE B
1. Searching for Love
2. Done Done the Slop
3. So Good
4. No More Rivers to Cross
5. Blues for Love
6. If You Really, Really Love Me

I placed the A-side of Rucker's last Duplex single as the lead track. On the label of the original single for "I Want to Do It," Mattie Jackson is incorrectly listed as the lead vocalist. But one listen will convince you it's a man singing and that the man is Ervin. Mattie is likely the backup singer on the song.

The rest of the tracks are presented basically chronologically. These songs are good examples of West Coast R&B, the music that was permeating from the clubs along L.A.'s Central Avenue in the 1940s and '50s.

Ten of the tracks are available on the CD Jimmy Liggins Presents the Best of Duplex Records. The two that are missing ("Two People in Love" and "Ada from Decatur") you'll likely have to rip from vinyl singles or from YouTube.

For a cover, I figured a small label like Duplex wouldn't be able to afford anything fancy so I went with something simple. This is the only photo of Ervin from this era I could find and I tinted it blue. I titled the album So Good after one of the tracks.

Johnny Cash -- Sun albums

As I showed in previous posts about Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley, discographies from the 1950s were in complete disarray, especially when it came to albums. Back then, singles were king, and albums were seen as simply a way to earn extra money from the most devoted fans. Johnny Cash’s album discography was no different.

Making it a bit more difficult to reorganize is that overdubs were sometimes done on some of Cash’s songs at much later dates than the initial recordings. So do you place the song in the timeline of when it was originally recorded or when it received overdubs?

In the end, I used the Time-Life Johnny Cash box set, The Complete Sun Recordings, 1955-58, as a guide, which is somewhat surprisingly thorough. It doesn’t have a bunch of alternate takes or demos, just the masters, and they’re in fairly good chronological order. Going by this, Johnny should have had five albums of 12 tracks or more while at Sun Records. But the label mixed and matched various tracks and often repeatedly rereleased the biggest hits.

So here we try to remedy the situation with what could have been.

Johnny Cash

SIDE A

1. Folsom Prison Blues

2. Wide Open Road

3. Hey Porter

4. Cry! Cry! Cry!

5. My Two Timin’ Woman

6. Port of Lonely Hearts

SIDE B

1. So Doggone Lonesome

2. I Couldn’t Keep from Crying

3. Trail to Mexico

4. Mean Eyed Cat

5. Luther Played the Boogie

6. Get Rhythm

Johnny didn't release his first album at Sun until October 1957. In fact, it was Sun's first-ever album. But the label could have if it had the resources and wherewithal, released Johnny's debut album in mid-1956. And the album could have looked like this. Johnny Cash leads off with his big hit "Folsom Prison Blues" and also contains several other of his classics, such as "Hey Porter," "Cry! Cry! Cry!," "Mean Eyed Cat" and "Get Rhythm" (which concludes the album). For a cover, I used the one Sun used for the album Johnny Cash Sings the Songs That Made Him Famous and altered it a bit.

Johnny Cash with the Tennessee Two

SIDE A

1. You’re My Baby (Little Woolly Booger)

2. There You Go

3. I Walk the Line

4. Don’t Make Me Go

5. I Love You Because

6. Train of Love

SIDE B

1. Goodbye Little Darlin’

2. Next in Line

3. My Treasure

4. Straight A’s in Love

5. Home of the Blues

6. Give My Love to Rose

The title of this album gives some overdue credit to Johnny's backups, Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant (the Tennessee Two). The giant hit "I Walk the Line" would have propelled this album. The last batch of these tracks was recorded in the summer of 1957, which means this could have been a late 1957 release, possibly in time for the holiday shopping season. :) I found this cover of yet another compilation and altered it a bit

Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar

SIDE A

1. Rock Island Line

2. I Heard That Lonesome Whistle Blow

3. Country Boy

4. If the Good Lord’s Willing

5. Goodnight Irene

6. Remember Me (I’m the One Who Loves You)

SIDE B

1. Belshazzar

2. I Was There When It Happened

3. Big River

4. Wreck of the Old ‘97

5. Ballad of a Teenage Queen

6. Doin’ My Time

Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar was the actual first of Johnny's Sun albums. This version shares eight songs with the original, including the first four tracks. "Ballad of a Teenage Queen" was completed in late 1957, which would allow this album to probably come out in early 1958. 

Now Here’s Johnny Cash

SIDE A

1. Sugartime

2. Come in Stranger

3. Life Goes On

4. Born to Lose

5. Leave that Junk Alone

6. You Win Again

SIDE B

1. Oh, Lonesome Me

2. Always Alone

3. You’re the Nearest Thing to Heaven

4. The Story of a Broken Heart

5. You Tell Me

6. Guess Things Happen that Way

"You Win Again" was the last of these tracks recorded during a session in May 1958 when Johnny also recorded several Hank Williams songs (that we use for the next album). Therefore, we can see Now Here's Johnny Cash coming out that summer, and would have been the last Sun album released before Johnny left the label. For the cover, one of many Sun compilations that I took and changed around.

Johnny Cash Sings Hank Williams

SIDE A

1. I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love with You)

2. Hey, Good Lookin’

3. I Could Never Be Ashamed of You

4. Cold, Cold Heart

5. I Forgot to Remember to Forget

6. I Just Thought You’d Like to Know

SIDE B

1. The Ways of a Woman in Love

2. Blue Train

3. Katy Too

4. Fools Hall of Fame

5. It’s Just About Time

6. Down the Street to 301

7. Thanks a Lot

Perhaps knowing that he was leaving Sun and preferring to save his own songs for his Columbia debut, Johnny recorded several Hank Williams songs. Sun released Johnny Cash Sings Hank Williams in 1960, but theoretically could have issued it the year before. Perhaps the strangest thing about the released album is that it didn't originally include "Cold, Cold Heart." My version does. In fact, my version only includes three songs that were on the actual album as Sun decided to paste in old hits. I used the original cover. It's kind of an odd one. Since Johnny had left the label, I guess they just had some guy hold a guitar and face away from the camera to mimic him.

Greatest!

SIDE A

1. Cry! Cry! Cry!

2. Folsom Prison Blues

3. So Doggone Lonesome

4. Mean Eyed Cat

5. Luther Played the Boogie

6. Get Rhythm

7. I Walk the Line

SIDE B

1. There You Go

2. Train of Love

3. I Love You Because

4. Goodbye Little Darlin’

5. Straight A’s in Love

6. Next in Line

I debated whether to include this or not, but ultimately decided to do so because Sun got it so wrong. The title implies that it's a greatest hits collection, but that's not what was on the actual album. So, I fixed that, as these are all hits. I took the original cover, changed the list of songs, and added the Sun logo, which was suspiciously missing.

Greatest Hits, Volume 2

SIDE A

1. Guess Things Happen That Way

2. Give My Love to Rose

3. Home of the Blues

4. Rock Island Line

5. Big River

6. Come in Stranger

7. Ballad of a Teenage Queen 

SIDE B

1. The Ways of a Woman in Love

2. Oh, Lonesome Me

3. You’re the Nearest Thing to Heaven

4. Katy Too

5. Thanks a Lot 

6. It’s Just About Time

And if we're going to include one batch of hits, we might as well have a second volume with the remainder of the hits. Again, I used an existing compilation cover and altered the graphics.

So here are five full albums that Sun could have issued without repeated tracks, plus two best-of compilations. You have to wonder what record companies were thinking back then, but perhaps not much thought was put into albums at all.


Note: Thanks not only to the Time-Life box set but also to the Johnny Cash: The Sun Sessionography, 1954-1964 website: http://www.meaneyedcat.net/johnny_cash_at_sun.html

Jimi Hendrix -- "First Rays of the New Rising Sun"

Wow! I've now been posting these for a full year. Time flies. I wasn't even sure I'd be able to do more than a dozen, and yet here we are.

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Jimi Hendrix's First Rays of the New Rising Sun is basically one of the holy trinity of unfinished albums, along with The Beach Boys' Smile and The Who's Lifehouse. Debate rages on about what tracks Jimi would have included on the album had he lived to complete it.

What we know is that it was to be a double album and that two tracklists have surfaced, one incomplete and the other possibly without Jimi's input.

I am working with the incomplete track list (that only shows tracks for the first three sides) because I just have a feeling that it has a logical flow. 

• Side A is easy enough to put together since all five songs are shown on the list. 
• Side B lists only four songs and appears to be pretty short. Some argue that they think Jimi wanted it that way. I think he hadn't yet decided on the final song for that side. 
• Side C shows "Night Bird Flying" as the opening track, but the title had also been written in darker pencil as the second track on Side A. And obviously the song wasn't going to be used twice.
• Anyone familiar with this tracklist knows that the final side was left blank. So what to do?

SIDE A
1. Dolly Dagger
2. Night Bird Flying
3. Room Full of Mirrors
4. Belly Button Window
5. Freedom

SIDE B
1. Ezy Rider
2. Astro Man
3. Drifting
4. Straight Ahead
5. Izabella

SIDE C
1. Earth Blues
2. Drifters Escape
3. Come Down Hard on Me
4. Beginnings
5. Angel

SIDE D
1. Stepping Stone
2. Bleeding Heart
3. Lover Man
4. Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)
5. In From the Storm

For the last song on Side B, I went with the rockin' "Izabella." To me, this mirrors the selection of "Freedom" from the first side. I chose "Earth Blues" to replace the second listing of "Night Bird Flying" as the opening track on the third side. For the final side, "Stepping Stone" seems like a natural for the opening track, and the hard-driving "In from the Storm" as a great way to end the album. "Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)" seems like from the title alone it belongs somewhere, and I chose it as the second to last track. Both "Bleeding Heart" and "Lover Man" fill out the side.

Is this perfect? No. Is this the way Jimi would have done it had he lived? Most probably not. But I think it works, and works a lot better than the version that was officially released in 1997.

The album cover is from http://idesignalbumcovers.tumblr.com.