![]() Of course, the Lovin’ Spoonful weren’t an actual latter-day jug band like, say, Jim Kweskin & the Jug Band. The Lovin’ Spoonful often described their sound as jug band music – a nod to the African-American folk genre that flourished in Memphis in the 1920s-’30s with groups like Gus Cannon’s Jug Stompers and the Memphis Jug Band. The group name came from a line in Coffee Blues by Mississippi John Hurt, a bluesman whom Dylan also admired and emulated. And when the rhythm section of Steve Boone (bass) and Joe Butler (drums) fell into place, the Lovin’ Spoonful were born. Yanovsky had the scope and six-string wherewithal to provide just the right licks and tricks to serve this agenda. Like a lot of ambitious songwriters, he aspired not only to write hit songs but to write in a variety of styles that are considered great songwriters’ genres – mournful country ballads, Tin Pan Alley standards, raunchy blues, risqué rags… Sebastian brought his own impressive range of stylistic influences from early 20th-century blues, jug band, string band, ragtime and kindred styles. “Out of this we could, I thought, craft something with real flexibility.” “He could play like all these people, yet he still had his own overpowering personality,” Sebastian later recalled. Yanovsky’s wide vocabulary as a guitarist is what led aspiring singer/songwriter John Sebastian to poach him from the Mugwumps, enticing him to join a new band that Sebastian and his manager were putting together in late 1964. ![]() I was never a big Elvis fan, but I liked Hank Williams, Les Paul and Mary Ford, Ray Charles, Fats Domino and Huey ‘Piano’ Smith.” ![]() Hank Ballard’s Finger Poppin’ Time blew me away. “The first time I heard That’ll Be the Day, it was a killer. “I liked Elmore James, Chet Atkins, Floyd Cramer,” Yanovsky told one interviewer. I was never a big Elvis fan, but I liked Hank Williams, Les Paul and Mary Ford, Ray Charles, Fats Domino, and Huey ‘Piano’ Smith Zal Yanovsky But he was drawn to a broad range of players and styles. Charlie Christian’s guitar work on One Sweet Letter from You with Lionel Hampton was one of the tracks that entranced him as a teenage guitar novice. “Zally” brought a dazzling range of styles to the picture, based on his deep listening to American vernacular music. In New York, Yanovsky and Doherty joined forces with Cass Elliot, another future Mamas & Papas singer, to form the Mugwumps – a group that has been described as Greenwich Village’s first rock band. There were more skilled folk pickers per square foot of Greenwich Village real estate – which, unbelievably, was relatively cheap back then – than had probably ever been amassed in any previous time or place.īy the time Yanovsky landed in the Village, he’d teamed up with fellow Canadian, and future Mamas & Papas singer, Denny Doherty to form the Halifax Three. Folkies flocked there hoping to be next in line. The Village had launched Dylan, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul & Mary, and others into the pop mainstream. Born in Toronto, he was among the folk-rooted Canadians – Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen and Robbie Robertson among them – who’d migrated down to New York’s Greenwich Village and its legendary folk scene in the mid-Sixties. Yanovsky had come up as part of that wave. Accomplished folk pickers like Jerry Garcia, Roger McGuinn, Stephen Stills, Jorma Kaukonen and others began ditching their Martins for Strats, 335s, Rickenbacker 12s, and, yes, even the odd Guild Thunderbird. Along with the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield and Simon & Garfunkel, the Lovin’ Spoonful were one of the key groups to emerge as part of the folk-rock scene that Bob Dylan had ignited in 1965 by bringing electric instrumentation into his previously all-acoustic music.Įlectrifying folk traditions opened up new stylistic vistas in rock music and rock guitar playing. ![]() ![]() As is their importance in the music we now call Americana. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |