On this week’s Monday Morning Brew, alongside some new releases from the likes of Eva May and The Decemberists, are some gems from the past, including an obscure Japanese acid folk 1974 private press, early soulfolk of Cleveland Francis and a short psychedelic-rock wonder that went out on a tiny label in Australia only to resurface again on an excellent compilation from Now-Again Records. Not forgetting a beautiful home recording of Sandy Denny covering Jackson C Frank’s Blues Run the Game.
It opens to Cleveland Francis with a track from his 1970 self-released album ‘Follow Me’. In 2022, Forager Records released an Anthology titled ‘Beyond the Willow Tree’, which, alongside ‘Follow Me’, featured unreleased demos recorded in 1968 along with one 45 only single recorded in 1970. The anthology is available on streaming services and via Bandcamp. The notes for the release highlight how his body of work seamlessly blends deep, soulful vocals with the stripped-down acoustic instrumentation of folk. In the late ’60s, Francis coined the term “soulfolk”, playing his genre-bending music across college campuses and coffee shops while earning a medical degree at William & Mary.
“These recordings are a look into my soul through a long and lonely journey to understand feelings of my childhood, poverty, racial segregation, bigotry, war, love and hope. It represents my attempt to express and come to terms with all that I have seen and felt as a Black man growing up in America.”
Cleveland Francis
You can also hear music from Judy Henske. In ‘The Great Folk Discography’, Martin C Strong likened her vocals to Mama Cass on a day out with Janis Joplin. High Flying Bird was the title track of her 1964 album, penned by Billy Edd Wheeler (who didn’t release a recording of his song until 1967). There were other covers, notably by Jefferson Airplane, who recorded it at a 1965 studio session and performed it at the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967 but didn’t release a recording until 1974 as part of their Early Flight album. The song also influenced the name of Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds.
Some lesser-known tracks also feature:
Australian artist Frank McNamara and his very short psychedelic-rock wonder ‘Digging’. The track featured on ‘Yeah Captain,’ on which he plays all the instruments. The album was only issued once on the tiny Australian Nationwide label in 1971. The track later resurfaced on the excellent compilation from Now-Again Records Pale Shades Of Grey: Heavy Psychedelic Ballads and Dirges 1969-1976 – “Digging is an amazing, prescient piece of music I can only describe as what sounds like DJ Muggs travelled back to the early 70s and produced a song for Tom Waits.”
Described as sounding something like Neil Young in Japan, Niningashi’s 1974 private press debut Heavy Way is a long-lost Japanese acid folk holy grail that has now been lovingly reissued by Kay Suzuki’s Time Capsule (Bandcamp):
“Although he was training as a pharmacist, Kazuhisa Okubo was much more interested in prescribing musical medicine. A coming-of-age album, Heavy Way captured a turning point in Okubo’s life, and Japanese society more widely as a nostalgia for the pastoral calm of the traditional life, met the cosmopolitan thrill of coffee, sex and cigarettes in the big city.”
Enjoy
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