The Greatest Songs of the 1960s that No One Has Ever Heard
Alvin Robinson/The Rolling Stones/Los Jockers — One Great R&B Song, Total Satisfaction!
Alvin Robinson/The Rolling Stones/Los Jockers — “Down Home Girl”
One great R&B song that has travelled the globe — written by Leiber and Stoller — was first released by Alvin Robinson out of New Orleans, then by the Rolling Stones, and then by Chile’s Stones, Los Jockers. Each version gives me such satisfaction!
Alvin Robinson — “Down Home Girl”
Alvin Robinson released the Leiber and Stoller-written “Down Home Girl” as a ’64 B-side on their new Red Bird label. It is “an inspired amalgamation of New York pop and Crescent City R&B. . . . one of the finest [singles] to appear on this impressive label”, and “Alvin’s best record . . . . just about as good as it gets… every time you move like that, I have to go to Sunday Mass.” Dan Phillips says of Robinson’s “brilliant rendition” that:
[“Girl” was] written as a funky and humorous New Orleans grinder and arranged to suit by Joe Jones . . . . Its lack of sales was and is a really puzzling result for such a cool record. Of course, the Rolling Stones famously covered the tune a year later, and effectively buried Shine’s version.
Richie Unterberger writes:
[It is] a rather jovial piece of New Orleans soul, with the brass and lazy, humid feel associated with much of that city’s music. The pretty exaggerated evocations of the down home girl’s down-home Southern-ness — perfume that smells like turnip greens (ugh!), a kiss that tastes like pork and beans (double ugh!), and so forth — gave the song a comic air, and also indicated that it might have been a caricature of Southern Black life to some extent, done by songwriters who were not either Black or Southern.
As to Robinson, All Music Guide tells us:
Robinson was a New Orleans-based session guitarist, and secured a minor hit in 1964 with a recording of a Chris Kenner song, ‘Something You Got’. The single was released on Tiger Records, a short-lived outlet owned by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who then took Robinson to their next venture, Red Bird. His first release there, ‘Down Home Girl’ . . . . but the artist was unable to find another success. Robinson moved to the west coast in 1969 and was one of several expatriate musicians who played on Dr. John’s New Orleans ‘tribute’ album, Gumbo.
The Rolling Stones — “Down Home Girl”
Richie Unterberger calls the Stones’ version “certainly one of the better, most atmospheric LP-only cuts on their early albums [The Rolling Stones, Now!]” and “among the group’s best R&B interpretations.” Unterberger adds:
Although [it] sounds rather like a rocked-up arrangement of a down-home blues tune, in fact the original version of this song was written by a couple of Brill Building songwriters. It first came out on a single by New Orleans singer Alvin Robinson, shortly before the Rolling Stones covered it on their third album, The Rolling Stones Now!. . . . The Rolling Stones’ cover really brought out the salaciousness in the composition, particularly in Mick Jagger’s drawling vocal — about the most blatantly Southern-styled one he did in the mid-1960s — and the funky, stinging guitar. The guitar was especially effective in the stuttering notes immediately following many of the vocal lines. They also took the song at an irregularly paced shuffle, really dragging out the beat and lyrics so that it sounded like a moodier and meaner look at a girl who both oozes sex and reeks of Southern roots. Few other of the band’s tracks make the Stones’ general infatuation with American Southern culture so obvious, and at once admiring and wary. The fade teases out the slightly ominous feel further, as the guitar lines go up an octave for emphasis and some blues harmonica comes in. . . . [I]t was too soaked with blues (and sexual imagery) to qualify as one of the group’s more commercial early numbers . . . . The song . . . was played in July 1969 at their concert in London’s Hyde Park, Mick Taylor’s first gig with the band.
Live in Hyde Park, ‘69:
Los Jockers — “Down Home Girl”
Possibly the best version of all is by Chile’s Rolling Stones — Los Jockers.
Forced Exposure tells us:
Los Jockers were one of the pioneer bands of Chilean rock, ahead of their time, and the first to differentiate themselves from the more romantic “new wave” style, by being ahead of the curve in adopting the psychedelic clothes and long hair that were the image of rock in the world at that time. [The band was] formed in 1964, and started playing live in 1965, and were one of the first rock groups to have great success locally. They used flashy clothes, influenced by the British mods at first, and by psychedelia, and had a very aggressive and raw live show. Their music was called “pop contracultural” (counterculture pop). Their version of the Rolling Stones’ classic “Satisfaction” hit the radios before the original Stones version was known locally, and it was such a smash hit that during their show at the “Viña del Mar Festival” they had to play the song five times.
The Biblioteca Nacional de Chile explains (courtesy of Google Translate):
[V]arious groups and soloists gradually emerged that tried to emulate the music from the United States. All of them constituted a movement of great popularity, which was a reference for the 1960s in Chile, and which became known as the New Wave.. . . Towards the end of the 1960s, Chilean rock began to take on rebellious and rebellious characteristics. Many young people began to wear bizarre clothes, grow their hair long, and sing aggressively and with loud sounds on stage. The sweet rock of the New Wave gave way to the rebellious psychedelia, to the countercultural and aggressive pop proposal, represented in groups such as Los Jockers.
For more on Los Jockers, here is Ana María Hurtado (courtesy of Google Translate):
Together with Los Mac’s and Los Vidrios Quebrados,Los Jockers make up the group of Chilean beat formations, a movement that is brief in time but also one that identifies the first experience of rock made in Chile beyond the pop figures of the New Wave. Their main mold was always the Rolling Stones, and their work greatly advanced the local rock culture through a visual production never before seen in the country. The quintet began calling themselves Los Tigers, first inspired by what they saw in magazines and records imported from England, full of photos of the Shadows, the Yardbirds and the Rolling Stones. The Jockers were between 17 and 19 years old, composed in English and built their own electric instruments in a very rudimentary way. From their first performance (at the end of 1965, to benefit the Barros Luco Hospital) they surprised people with their long hair and colorful clothes, something unusual for the time. The group’s short career was eventful. Their version of “Satisfaction” . . . sold more than 80,000 copies in its single format in 1966. They went to the Viña Festival in 1967 and had to play it five times. . . . That same year, President Eduardo Frei Montalva invited them to the Palacio de la Moneda to meet them. The group failed to stabilize its career beyond three years.
Finally, lead singer Sergio Del Rio recalls how the group channeled their inner Andrew Loog Oldham and became stars (courtesy of Google Translate):
In 1963, once the World Cup was over, a friend invited me to his house one day to listen to music and he showed me The Beatles, The Stones, The Hubabaloo, who wore wigs, and a group that caught my attention, which was the group The Yardbirds, with a fantastic guitarist called Eric Clapton. At that time, the musicians were influenced by The Shadows, but I liked Clapton. That’s when the bug started to bite me to put together a band and I bought a guitar. I started from school to see the shows of the time on Radio Corporación . . . . [B]efore I was even a salvageable musician, I started teaching a cousin of mine to play the bass and we put together the group . . . . [W]e were the precursors of Chilean rock, in the middle of the golden age of the New Wave. Well, we already differentiated ourselves with the type of music we made, but we were missing the theme of image. There we took The Rolling Stones as a reference, we let our hair grow and we ordered ourselves to make different clothes. . . . At the end of ’65, Los Jocker’s performed for the first time with our new songs and our new sound, instruments and equipment, in a hospital that I believe was Barros Luco, at a typical New Year’s Eve party with the nurses and all of that. When we appeared there was screaming, the nurses went crazy and when we got off the stage we signed autographs like crazy. Already in the dressing room I told the boys: “this is the path we have to follow.” It was incredible what had happened to us for the simple fact of changing the look. Even the same record companies that hadn’t caught us before were now acting suspiciously nice to us. But this change of image also caused us problems. Many people thought that wearing long hair and colored clothes was something for degenerates, for drug addicts, and they spat at us in the street. This did not happen with the other New Wave groups. The Jocker’s caused a stir in the streets and that forced us to always go out accompanied by friends to protect us. We started making news in the newspapers . . . .
See my website at bracefortheobscure60srock.com.
