Los Angeles-based Concord Music Group, owners of the Memphis Stax Records archive, has embarked on a yearlong series of reissues celebrating the soul label's 50th anniversary. But a pair of new English re-releases put the spotlight on Stax's lesser known but still influential rock subsidiary, Enterprise Records.The bonus tracks are both sides of a 45 recorded later. Here's the album cover missing from the article, and the back side too, courtesy of an Amazon.com user:
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Also originally released on Enterprise, Memphis blues rock band Moloch's eponymous LP (Fallout Records), released here with a pair of bonus tracks, is today revered as one of the most complete documents of the guitar prowess of the late Lee Baker.
Moloch -- Baker, drummer Phillip Durham, bassist Steve Spear, organist Fred Nicholson and vocalist Gene Wilkins -- was a lynchpin of the Memphis psychedelic scene of the late '60s, sort of a bluesier Grateful Dead with Midtown substituting for the Haight. Their one and only album was produced by Don Nix (the Mar-Keys, Leon Russell), who also wrote most of the songs on it. Wilkins and Baker are the stars of the effort, however, with the latter giving a pointed schooling in the essentials of blues-rock guitar on tracks such as the original recorded version of the standard "Going Down."
Following the demise of Moloch the following year, Baker would go on to a storied career backing up Furry Lewis and Alex Chilton and forming the groups Mudboy & the Neutrons and the Agitators. Unfortunately, his career was cut short when he was murdered in 1996, but with this first CD reissue of Moloch, his legacy perseveres.
I think the front cover is from a scan I submitted to allmusic.com some time ago, because you can see the cutout punch in the upper right-hand corner that existed in the promotional copy I had.
I road-managed and lived with these guys for a couple of years circa 1971-72, and played some hand percussion and wrote a couple of songs for them later on. Don Nix produced and wrote all the songs on the album.
Click these links for music samples of: All tracks on the re-released Moloch album; AMG's picks off the album; Lee Baker singing on the original recording of "Going Down" (since covered many times); and drummer Phillip Dale Durham's amazing original vocal on "Same Old Blues" that freaked Freddie King out so badly that he had to record the song himself.
RIP Lee Baker.
I saw these guys open for the MC5 and the Stooges at the NY State Pavilion at the fairgrounds in Queens in 1971. The Rolling Stone review of their first album was unkind to say the least, but I thought they had some pretty decent songs and chops.
ReplyDeletePart of Iggy Pop's shtick was to sort of dive off the stage during the set into the audience (the stage was about 7 feet high and the floor of the New York State Pavilion concrete). Well, the people in the front of the crowd, those nearest the stage, caught him, beat the shit out of him, stuffed a full Orange Julius carton in his mouth and threw him back onto the stage. I thought it was funny as shit.
ReplyDeleteThe next night (it was a two-nighter) backstage I asked Iggy, "Man, I'm curious, doesn't it hurt when you fall head first off the stage." Iggy, "Yeah." He seemed to be having a little trouble getting around that second night so I didn't bother him any more after that.
David Peel and the Lower East Side were also on that gig.