My Vinyl Collection 23
Chick Corea (2 albums), Josie Cotton, John Cougar (2), The Cowboys (2), Crack the Sky (3). A slice of American music history on the shelf. All vinyl, 33 rpm.
23. Chick Corea to Crack the Sky
180. Chick Corea with Return to Forever, Where Have I Known You Before (1974)
181. ——————————————-, No Mystery (1975)
Corea began playing piano at four, went to Julliard, plunged into the New York jazz scene and never looked back. An authentic jazz great. Innovative. Fully confident at the keyboard. Started with Mongo Santamaria in ’62, then Blue Mitchell, later with Herbie Mann and Stan Getz. Corea’s recording debut came in ‘66 as the leader of Tones for Joan’s Bones.
Then Miles Davis called. 1968. Davis at the end of his hard bop phase, moving into what became fusion. Davis introduced Corea to the new electric piano and they produced the wild fury that brought jazz right to the edge of rock and roll with the seminal Bitches Brew.
Corea by then, 1970, had enough of Davis. Moved on to avant-garde acoustic jazz. Next year, he made the two records where I finally caught up to him. With Return to Forever, a Brazilian group. Latin fusion, My records’ covers are so worn I should replace them. The music plays just fine. Rocky, jazzy, these records are simply beautiful music. Just simply beautiful. Wow!
From there — big band, then with Herbie Hancock in acoustic duets. More Latin. Dabble classical.
“I pretty well ignore the numbers that make up 'age',” Chick Corea said on his 75th birthday. “I have always just concentrated on having the most fun I can with the adventure of music." Dig it, baby, dig it.
182. Josie Cotton, Convertible Music (1982) A light-weight vocalist known for her song “Johnny, Are You Queer?” A song dumped into the early years of the Ronald Reagan-Jerry Falwell administration of rabid anti-gay ideology. And I saw you today, boy/ Walking with them gay boys/ God, you hurt me so, now I gotta know/Johnny, are you queer?
Conservatives went a but nuts over a silly song. One said Josie was “a gay man trying to convert unsuspecting straight men into a homosexual lifestyle.” On the other side, The Village Voice ran the headline "Josie, Are You a Bitch?” That was it for Cotton’s singing. She went on to a career as a producer of girl groups in L.A. Comeback in 2019 makes for a strange ending.
183. John Cougar, John Cougar (1979)
184. —————, American Fool (1982) John Mellencamp was raised to follow the rules. Indiana, near Bloomington, in an affluent family. His father, vice president of an electric firm, demanded his son be a good student and play football. The son didn’t buy it. He smoked dope and listened to the radio, then formed a rock and roll band at age 14. Mellencamp (Cougar in his band) was determined to do his own thing. He bolted from his home at 18. Worked low rent jobs, peddled his demos, went to New York City, made some flops, but would not get along-go along. In 1982 … jackpot — American Fool.
He found a sweet spot. Speaking for small town America. The farmer, sunrise to sunset. The factory guy, his back aches. Cougar found fans who ate it up. Playing St. Louis next year, tickets are going fast for $108 to $726.
He’s had 22 Top 40 hits, sales of 60 million. He’s estimated to be worth $30 mill. Happy? Make a record, tour, make a record, tour. “I don’t know why I do it sometimes,” he says.
“Do I need more money? Do I need more platinum and gold records? The only thing I can think of is ego.”
An American fool? You make the call.
185. The Cowboys, Golden Pheasant (1982)
186. —————-, How the West Was Won (1985) From Seattle comes a remarkable unknown band that crashed through the city’s musical morass to set the stage for the grunge explosion of Nirvana and Pearl Jam. In the early eighties, the Cowboys, from Aberdeen, Wash., belted originals. Ian Fisher, the lead, screamed, “I’m a rock and roll cowboy!” Thrashed New Wave, reggae, roots rock, British power pop, punk.
Fisher: “Young people came out in droves, wearing New Wave gear from head to toe, shoes man, the chicks wore the sexiest shoes back then, the hair, the asymmetric cuts, big hair, colored hair, bleached, waxed, sprayed, buttons and belts and zippers, a lot of zipper clothes, yuppies, dudes, punkers, wannabes, divorcees, coke dealers, man it was insane.”
As the band played five years, in the wings waited the young Kurt Cobain, leader of Nirvana, also from blue-collar Aberdeen. Cobain formed his band in 1987 just as the Cowboys burned out.
“I gave it everything. Then I got tired,” Fisher said years later. “It’s about having that fire in your belly. I couldn’t care about it anymore.”
Fisher died of a heart attack Oct. 23, 2007, on Samui Island in Thailand. He was 51.
187. Crack the Sky, WBAB-Radio Broadcast (1976)
188. —————-, Animal Notes (1976)
189. —————-, Safety in Numbers (1978) How would you feel? You drifted out of a coal town in West Virginia, met some guys in Pittsburgh, wrote some songs, got a record contract and your LP was named “debut album of the year” by Rolling Stone? Nobody doubted the leader of the band, John Palumbo, when he said Crack the Sky was the next big thing.
But now, who ever heard of Crack the Sky? The band signed without reading the contract, signing with a brand hew label. Could have been called Clueless Records. No distribution. No records in the stores. No sales. Simple as that.
The records on my shelf are a pleasure. Prog rock ala Pink Floyd and Genesis. Lyrically interesting through all three records. Complex structures, dramatic story telling. Opened for Supertramp, Rush and Foreigner. But … no sales. No future. One member's lifetime royalties: $2.43.