The first Capricorn Records album I purchased was "Livingston Taylor".<\/p>\n
My older sister bought me James Taylor’s debut for my birthday, it was the rage at BU.\u00c2\u00a0 That Apple album finally came out on CD, and unfortunately its production has not worn well.\u00c2\u00a0 But, at the time, it was my absolute favorite.\u00c2\u00a0 With the interludes, the way one song slid into another.\u00c2\u00a0 And my favorite track was "Carolina In My Mind".\u00c2\u00a0 It’s not the version you’re familiar with.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s played faster, with optimism.\u00c2\u00a0 Every morning I woke up and immediately cued up the record on my turntable.\u00c2\u00a0 To the point where my father even started to sing along.<\/p>\n
And not long thereafter, I journeyed to Boston and saw JT at Harvard.\u00c2\u00a0 You know how you see an act and you get goosebumps, know you’re experiencing something special?\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what it was like.\u00c2\u00a0 Just James sitting on a stool, even playing "For Free", the soon to be released song from his girlfriend Joni Mitchell’s album, "Ladies Of The Canyon".<\/p>\n
JT mania really didn’t hit until the fall.\u00c2\u00a0 He wasn’t on the cover of "Time" magazine yet.\u00c2\u00a0 Every Taylor hadn’t released an album.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, we only had Livingston, who was legit.\u00c2\u00a0 I needed more of that touch your soul sound.\u00c2\u00a0 I bought the record.\u00c2\u00a0 And immediately became enraptured with "Carolina Day".\u00c2\u00a0 Which still tickles my fancy decades later.\u00c2\u00a0 As for the label?\u00c2\u00a0 Wasn’t it just another Atlantic Records imprint?\u00c2\u00a0 Akin to Cotillion, which was the label of record for the "Woodstock" three disc set?<\/p>\n
No.<\/p>\n
But we didn’t know that yet.\u00c2\u00a0 We had to wait until the following winter.\u00c2\u00a0 When the Allman Brothers Band finally got traction.<\/p>\n
I heard "Midnight Rider" on the radio this morning.<\/p>\n
I’m very rarely up in the morning.\u00c2\u00a0 But even scheduling two months in advance, I could get an appointment with Dr. Brackmann no later than 10 a.m.\u00c2\u00a0 And elated that my hearing hadn’t deteriorated, I cranked the radio on the way home. And at the intersection of Alvarado and Hoover, the southern rock sound started pouring out of the speakers.<\/p>\n
It took me years, but I finally realized "Midnight Rider"’s got the beat of a horse’s gallop.\u00c2\u00a0 It sets you in a groove akin to riding on the back of a palomino.\u00c2\u00a0 You know how riding is, you’re lolled into a trance, your mind is set free. "Midnight Rider" has the same effect.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s why we were all closed on the Allmans.\u00c2\u00a0 It was like they snuck up on us and became our best friends while we were unaware.\u00c2\u00a0 It just felt natural.<\/p>\n
And by August, when "Fillmore East" finally hit the racks, the Allmans were suddenly the hottest, the hippest band on the planet.\u00c2\u00a0 Even though they’d had nary a single, never mind a hit.<\/p>\n
Maybe it was Bill Graham’s anointment.\u00c2\u00a0 They’d closed the venerable East Village emporium.\u00c2\u00a0 The final act on the final night.\u00c2\u00a0 The Allmans were for driving, for relaxing, for getting high and contemplating your life.\u00c2\u00a0 They weren’t mindless.\u00c2\u00a0 Our music wasn’t mindless.<\/p>\n
And the Allman Brothers were on Capricorn Records.<\/p>\n
At this point, we knew the label was masterminded by Phil Walden.\u00c2\u00a0 In an era when music news was scarce, we scraped for every bit of information.\u00c2\u00a0 This guy who was Otis Redding’s manager, his best friend, he was the king of a new sound, southern rock.\u00c2\u00a0 If it was on Capricorn, you paid attention.\u00c2\u00a0 Until Captain Beyond.<\/p>\n
I’ve heard Captain Beyond on Deep Tracks.\u00c2\u00a0 All these years later, they were pretty good.\u00c2\u00a0 But what were they doing on Capricorn?\u00c2\u00a0 Was Phil Walden getting too big for his britches, thinking he could conquer every genre of music?<\/p>\n
But then came the Marshall Tucker Band.<\/p>\n
Gonna take a freight train Can’t you see The opening track on Marshall Tucker’s debut was "Take The Highway".\u00c2\u00a0 It took off like a shot.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what we learned from the Stones, your opening track had to be aggressive, and utterly fantastic.\u00c2\u00a0 And "Take The Highway" qualified.\u00c2\u00a0 The band fired on all cylinders.\u00c2\u00a0 And this guy, he had a voice akin to smoked honey.\u00c2\u00a0 It had brawn, but smoothness.\u00c2\u00a0 You were enraptured, whether you were a girl or a boy.<\/p>\n And then came "Can’t You See".<\/p>\n Somehow, all these years later, Marshall Tucker is seen as a COWBOY band.\u00c2\u00a0 With hats, singing shitkicker music, like "Heard It In A Love Song".<\/p>\n Forget all that, forget everything after the first album.\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, you only need the first two cuts on that very first album.\u00c2\u00a0 "Take The Highway" and "Can’t You See".<\/p>\n Neither of them were singles.\u00c2\u00a0 But within a few years, there wasn’t a baby boomer who hadn’t heard them.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, there was radio play.\u00c2\u00a0 But someone always had the record.\u00c2\u00a0 You’d hear the tracks at parties, in dorm rooms, apartments.\u00c2\u00a0 When you were toking up, when you were kicking back and having an afternoon beer.<\/p>\n It was all about how the music made you feel.\u00c2\u00a0 And "Can’t You See" made you stop everything you were doing and relax, and get into the music.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s the acoustic guitar intro, the flute, and the GROOVE!\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, it takes almost thirty seconds for the band to settle into said groove, and another thirty before the vocal begins.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s electric guitar picking.\u00c2\u00a0 Bending of notes.\u00c2\u00a0 My girlfriend would like foreplay this good.\u00c2\u00a0 And when the singing begins, you’re SOLD!<\/p>\n But the song isn’t compartmentalized, it’s not a ditty, out in a little over three minutes.\u00c2\u00a0 It stretches.\u00c2\u00a0 On for over six.\u00c2\u00a0 You REVEL IN IT!<\/p>\n But that was my last Capricorn hurrah.<\/p>\n Maybe it was the death of Berry Oakley.\u00c2\u00a0 Or Gregg Allman testifying against that roadie.\u00c2\u00a0 Or maybe I just graduated from college.\u00c2\u00a0 I loved those Lynyrd Skynyrd tracks, but I fell off the Capricorn bandwagon.\u00c2\u00a0 And soon, so did everybody else.<\/p>\n Phil Walden helped Jimmy Carter get elected President, but his musical empire started to fail.<\/p>\n And now not only are Duane and Berry gone, but the Caldwell brothers too.\u00c2\u00a0 And Phil himself.\u00c2\u00a0 The king of southern rock is history.<\/p>\n Southern rock was everything the Grateful Dead were supposed to be.\u00c2\u00a0 The Dead were sloppy, their voices were substandard.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas the Allmans and the other Capricorn bands were rehearsed.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s as if Phil had never forgotten his roots with Otis Redding.\u00c2\u00a0 You had to be able to play, you had to be able to slay the public, you had to convert them with one listen.<\/p>\n And I was converted to another one of Phil’s charges the other night.\u00c2\u00a0 Wet Willie.<\/p>\n Oh, I knew "Keep On Smilin’".\u00c2\u00a0 A good-timey track, the only time the band got it right.\u00c2\u00a0 Wrong!<\/p>\n There was Grinderswitch.\u00c2\u00a0 Sea Level.\u00c2\u00a0 Too many substandard southern rockers.\u00c2\u00a0 At least that’s what I thought.\u00c2\u00a0 You see we couldn’t hear too much of this stuff.\u00c2\u00a0 You had to buy it to truly hear it.<\/p>\n But through the miracle of satellite radio, three decades on, I was finally introduced to Wet Willie’s "Dixie Rock".<\/p>\n Come on play some good time music Maybe I underestimated Phil, maybe I had it all wrong, maybe he truly was on the pulse.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe I gave up on Capricorn TOO EARLY!<\/p>\n There’s a studio take of "Dixie Rock", but in classic southern rock tradition, you’ve got to hear the live rendition.<\/p>\n Fire up the doobie, buy a case of Boone’s Farm.\u00c2\u00a0 Grow your hair out, and get ready for that Les Paul, it’s gonna pick you up off the couch and make you COME ALIVE!<\/p>\n I pull up in front of Felice’s house around midnight, and I can’t get out of the car.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m shimmying and shaking in my seat.\u00c2\u00a0 Nobody’s watching, it’s just me and the music.\u00c2\u00a0 I can relax and be myself.\u00c2\u00a0 The music has set me FREE!<\/p>\n These rockers were southerners, but they were our brothers.\u00c2\u00a0 They marched to the beat of their own drummer.\u00c2\u00a0 They took no bullshit.\u00c2\u00a0 And they wanted to impress us, by showing us how great they could play!<\/p>\n If you’re getting tired of trouble <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The first Capricorn Records album I purchased was "Livingston Taylor". My older sister bought me James Taylor’s debut for my birthday, it was the rage at BU.\u00c2\u00a0 That Apple album finally came out on CD, and unfortunately its production has not worn well.\u00c2\u00a0 But, at the time, it was my absolute favorite.\u00c2\u00a0 With the interludes, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-g8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1000\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Down at the station, lord
I don’t care where it goes
Gonna climb a mountain
The highest mountain
And gonna jump off
Nobody gonna know <\/em><\/p>\n
Oh, can’t you see
What that woman, lord
She been doin’ to me
Can’t you see
Can’t you see
What that woman
Been doin’ to me<\/em><\/p>\n
Just the way we used to do<\/em><\/p>\n
If you’re feeling down and out
Listen to the funky shuffle
Way they play it way down south<\/em><\/p>\n