Johnny Rivers: "Poor Side of Town"

November 21, 1966 (1 week)

Gram Parsons may have dubbed it 'Cosmic American Music' but he didn't invent this blend of country, folk, gospel, pop, rock and, soul. Being "cosmic" and all, it couldn't have had an inventor as such. Rather, it was the kind of thing that was always in the air in one form or another. For example, there's the famous story of the musicologist John Lomax travelling the American south in search of supposedly "authentic" music for him to record. While he did get plenty of it, singers like Lead Belly and Blind Willie McTell made it clear to him that they were just as into singing the Broadway hits as they were the lamentations of the poor cotton pickers. Cosmic American Music.

1968 was the year in which country-rock really took off but there were rumblings of the coming revolution two years' earlier. Gone from The Byrds, songwriter Gene Clark pulled himself together to record Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers, a country-folk-rock melange that delighted critics but failed commercially. Meanwhile, The Byrds themselves were without their most talented composer and had to make due with the contributions of others in the group to flesh out what would be their fourth album the sublime Younger Than Yesterday. While leaders Roger McGuinn and David Crosby were tripping on psychedelic rock and baroque pop, bassist Chris Hillman quietly emerged with some fine works of his own, including the country-influenced "Time Between". While by no means quite ready to embrace the country at this stage, Bob Dylan had decided to record his seminal double album Blonde on Blonde in Nashville which likely opened him up to the possibilities in the genre as well as the skill and discipline of Music City's finest session cats.

In the case of Johnny Rivers, 1966 was the year he made the transition from swampy blues-rock to slushy love songs. What a total sellout, eh readers? Well, no. He had already been doing pretty well for himself so more of the barroom rock covers could've kept him in steady employ for the foreseeable future but, much like Lead Belly and Blind Willie McTell before him, he had more to be singing about than what his loyal audience expected of him. At around the same time, he was busy forming Soul City Records which became the home of future stars The 5th Dimension.

I hear some 'Cosmic American Music' in "Poor Side of Town", Rivers' third and final (and best) Canadian number one. No doubt purists disapproved of his shift from the Bayou to balladeering accompanied by a lush orchestra but those people are idiots. Rivers' voice has never sounded so rich and the backing provided by the great jazz and pop arranger Marty Paich complements it beautifully. But while the easy listening sucks the listener in, there's touches of country and soul that clearly never left Rivers. Merging several strands of Americana into his sound must have been easy since they were all second nature for him.

For all of his success, Johnny Rivers is largely a footnote in the history of American popular music. I have previously been critical of his inability to truly stand out from the pack. It's also possible that he wasn't especially influential compared to others (although his earlier work sounds like it must have made an impact on John Fogarty as he was putting Credence Clearwater Revival together). Yet, he had a respectable career based around the music he loved to sing and perform. It was Cosmic American Music and it didn't much matter whether he used that name for it or not.

Score: 7

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Can Con

Voyons donc! According to Discogs, Quebec quintet Les Sultans released twenty-seven singles in their day. So, how is this the first I'm hearing about them? Oh right, because they chose to sing in French which just isn't on if you're to become a big deal in the US and Britain. "La poupee quit fait non" was the group's biggest hit and I suppose the closest thing they would have had to a signature song. It would've been better had the shuffling acoustic guitars been plugged in for a rockier edge but it's a spirited little number all the same. Les Sultans would go on to record in English but they sound far more at home in their native tongue. Quite why they chose not to credit Ray Davies and Them's Tommy Scott for their French interpretations of their songs for their self-titled debut album is anyone's guess. Perhaps they figured no one would notice. Newsflash: we did! (Their first single from back in 1964 was a re-write of The Beatles' "I Saw Her Standing There" called "Toujours devant moi", which was credited to Lennon-McCartney-Descheneaux-Ward, one of Ye-Ye pop's all-time great songwriting teams)