“Raised on records” with special attention to Gale Garnett

Since music in some form has existed throughout history, and since musicians seem to enjoy their work, and it is possible to make a living at it, that is sufficient justification for making music. However, in another section of this website, I will discuss issues concerning art and artists in general which have existed since ancient times, especially about what importance should be given to the arts. How important is music? Is it anything more than entertainment, a way of passing the time? Is it a substitute for something that is missing from the way we live? Is popular music given too much attention (and compensation)? Without trying to answer these questions now, I want to say something below about music. I don’t know if music can teach, but I can’t omit discussing it, especially rock and country music.

I started listening to popular music when I was about 7 years old. I remember my parents telling me that what I liked was just a phase and that as I got older I would change my musical tastes. That has never happened. I first learned about music from AM radio and from those of my older relatives with a record collection, then FM radio, than from books. I haven’t always listened to the same music, but it has always been within the limits of popular music. However, after accumulating a collection of recordings numbering in the thousands over a period of decades, when I reached a certain age, I effectively stopped listening, either to the radio or my own collection. Perhaps, this was because it was no longer important to me. If I was stranded on a desert island today, I would most want to listen to vintage country music. I came to like country music later in life. It makes more sense when a person is older. It is possible that vintage country music is perhaps one of the few musical forms that can actually teach. I will return to that idea again here in the future.

My purpose here now is not to discuss my personal tastes or favorites. I look on that as a matter of personal preference, and there is no way to prove that one person’s preference is better than another. However, I did discover as I started reading about music that the learning process was endless. If I was interested, I could continue to add to my music collection musicians whose names I have read about but whose works I still have not heard, but I simply don’t want to take the time now. If I do get around to it, fortunately, YouTube has made it easier to listen to many of the recordings of musicians whose names appear in books but whose names are unknown to most people. I discovered once I began reading about music, that the obscure musicians were the most interesting to me. My discussion here will be limited to listing the sources I learned from. “Raised on records” was the name of a rock music recording by P.F. Sloan, one of those obscure musicians. I have looked at the books below more times than I can remember. Since they are reference books, most are not meant to be read from cover to cover like a book, but rather looked at to answer a question. Note that I also have a good number of books on specific musicians including biographies and about styles from specific periods of time. Most of those books I have not read yet. Like the other sections on this website, I will try to add to this section in the future.

For country music fans, not to be missed are vintage tv shows with country music performances. Hee Haw was perhaps the most well known, but there were others. Willie Nelson apparently financed the purchase of some of the tapes from several tv shows and made them available to the satellite tv channel R.F.D. All are worth watching. See also the Ken Burns history of country music, although I preferred the earlier episodes to the later ones, and other documentaries as well. See Bob Dylan’s comments about country music in Martin Scorsese’s documentary on Bob Dylan. For those people like me who did not grow up in those parts of the country where country music is virtually all that is played on the radio, you may not already know or like country music, in which case if you are interested in learning, it will take time to learn about it and get used to the sound.

Note: I listened to music mainly by buying recordings. This was before the days of computers when music could be downloaded. When I liked a musician, I tried to collect as many of their recordings as possible, at least until such time as they changed in a way that made them less interesting to me. So my collection of recordings has many more recordings than musicians. My reference collection below is also limited to certain styles or time periods. Some titles below have more than one edition. I bought the edition that covered the period I was interested in. I have not made any attempt to add to my books on music since the time I stopped listening to music. Also essential to mention besides books are music performances on video (or YouTube).

Bibliography

Lillian Roxon’s Rock Encyclopedia (Workman Publishing, 1969)

Lillian Roxon was an Italian-born journalist. If this book wasn’t the first such encyclopedia, it was certainly one of the first and still remarkable for the author’s depth of musical knowledge. This was my first music reference book.

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock, compiled by Nick Logan and Bob Woffinden of New Musical Express (Harmony Books, 1977)

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Country Music, by Fred Dellar, Roy Thompson and Douglas B. Green and the Country Music Foundation (Harmony Books, 1977

The Rolling Stone Record Guide: Reviews and ratings of almost 10,000 currently available rock, pop, soul, country, blues, jazz, and gospel albums, edited by Marsh and Swenson (Random House, 1979)

Trouble Girls: The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock, edited by Barbara O’Dair (Random House, 1997)

Singer-Songwriters: Pop music performer composers from A to Zevon, by Dave DiMartino (Billboard Books, 1994)

Rock Critic’s Choice: The top 200 albums, compiled by Paul Gambaccini with Susan Ready (with contributions from nearly 50 other music writers)

On the cover: “The all-time greatest rock albums chosen by the world’s top DJs and critics” ranked from 1 to 200 (#1 is Sgt. Peppers by the Beatles, #2 and #3 are by Bob Dylan). Of course, no two people are going to agree on the ranking. Depending on what generation you are from, you may not include any of these 200 on your list, but I find it reliable. If this list wasn’t enough, at the back of this book is the personal top 10 album selections of the authors and contributors to this book. This is a kind of “desert island” list, with many obscurities I’ve seen nowhere else.

Encyclopedia of Pop, Rock, and Soul, by Irwin Stambler (St. Martin’s Press, 1974)

Encyclopedia of Folk, Country, and Western Music, by Irwin Stambler and Grelun Landon (St. Martin’s Press, 1969)

The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Country Music

Rock Record, by Terry Hounsome and Tim Chambre (Facts on File, 1981)

This book is different from other popular music reference books. It is basically an alphabetical discography of musicians and musical groups, the titles and dates of recording, but also a listing of who played on a given recording which is a way of tracking information not available elsewhere like identifying names in songwriting credits on record labels.

Pete Frame’s Rock Family Trees (Volume I, Quick Fox, 1980 and Volume II, Omnibus Press, 1983)

Another unique source. The histories of several rock groups presented in the genealogical form.

Reggae Bloodlines: In search of the music and culture of Jamaica, by Stephen Davis and Peter Simon (Anchor/Doubleday, 1979)

Vintage reggae, or even the earlier ska and rock steady styles, have been a favorite of mine for a long time. I also like some blues and rhythm and blues. I have never liked soul music, although Sam Cooke’s Chain Gang was one of the first records I owned at age 7 along with a Neil Sedaka record. Sedaka may not be considered important now, but he claims he would have been as famous as Elvis if not for the Beatles. He worked at the Brill Building (songwriting). That’s important.

The last person I want to mention is a woman singer/songwriter who has never gotten the credit she deserves: Gale Garnett. I always wanted to bring her work to people’s attention, and since I’m writing about music here, I will take this opportunity. She recorded 75 songs but she is only known for one Grammy awarded song. I never heard of her until I noticed two records she recorded on the Columbia record label for sale in a record store, and I bought them. It wasn’t until later that I discovered that prior to those albums she had recorded 7 albums on the RCA record label with RCA’s fine in-house musicians. After her albums on Columbia, she quit the music business for acting except for an occasional music collaboration. She says in magazine articles that she didn’t like the music business which is understandable in view of the lack of recognition. I think her work is on a par with Sandy Denny or Melissa Manchester for example, but to those listening for the first time keep in mind her career was only from 1964-1969. This was very early, and spanned the transition from folk (another style worth learning about), thus cutting any further evolution short.

The two albums she recorded for Columbia were way ahead of their time. A woman led and run band was unheard of at that time, and the material was equally unique. While she wrote most of the songs she sings, even the choice of songs by others shows wide musical knowledge (Johnny Cash is also supposed to have had wide musical knowledge). While her name does appear in some music reference books, the compilers do not seem to be aware of the number of recordings she made, although I have to say that I don’t think her songs have been presented properly. I believe the talent is only apparent when a chronological selection is made from among all her work, including some works that appear only in films or on 45s.

Aside from a very unusual biographical background, some of which can be pieced together from magazine articles (an autobiography is needed), it also appears that there are an equal number of songs to the number that were recorded that were written but not recorded. This reminds me of the documentary Stone Reader which I mentioned in Volume I of my book about a filmmaker with a large literature library who made a documentary about his search for an obscure novelist that he admired, finally finding him after a long search in order to see if he had any unpublished manuscripts. It turns out he did. Finally, other than my supplying to anyone who is interested my list of Gale Garnett’s songs that I think should have been put on a compilation album, and also recommending here that someone from the music industry take an interest in recording an album of her unrecorded songs, the best way I can try to show her talent is with the lyrics of her song, A Word of Advice. Even this does not do justice to the wide range of styles of her music:

“Nobody gives a good godspeed for yesterday’s bravery. The day that you’re a hero is the day before you’re out. And if you were the pioneer who started speaking silently, tomorrow you had better go somewhere and learn to shout. Nobody has a good word for a day-old ideology. …  the faithful followers will con you as they pass. Open up the windows of your mind and take the people through. Stand there looking startled as you’re cut by broken glass. You speak but no one seems to hear. Your fans were not dependable. You stand there and shake with fear to find that you’re expendable. So if they make a god of you, you’d better buy some real estate and lots of heavy clothing for the times when you get cold. And hire a pair of teenage girls to put your clippings in a book so you will have something to read tomorrow when you’re old.”