Archive for the ‘Tom McGuinness’ Category

Casey Jones & The Governors

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

CaseyJones, Casey Jones & The Govenors, Huey Piano Smith, Philips, Eric Clapton, Tom McGuiness

Listen: Don’t Ha Ha / Casey Jones & The Governors CaseyJonesHaHa.mp3

Casey (real name Duncan) Jones left Liverpool for London stumbling around with rotating-door lineups that included Eric Clapton and Tom McGuinness in his band The Engineers. Like a few before them, off to Germany they went. Why I’m not sure. I always thought England was the happening place in the 60′s. It was in Hamburg that Casey Jones & The Governors formed and had some success as a live band, basically reinventing RnR standards of the day with a Beat Goup twist.

I picked this up in one of those 39ยข bins of flop 45′s at a Two Guys Department Store near the Thruway in Syracuse back in ’74. It was a treasure trove, predominantly loads of Philips/Smash/Mercury/Fontana titles, for some reason.

Listen once and you’ll hear that it’s Huey Piano Smith’s ‘Don’t You Just Know It’. Smith is credited as writer and the title switch fooled me into thinking it was an original for years.

McGuinness Flint

Friday, July 24th, 2009

mcguinesswhen, mcguiness flint, tom mcguiness, capitol, manfred mann

Listen: When I’m Dead And Gone / McGuinness Flint McGuinnessWhen.mp3

mcguinessmalt, mcguiness flint, tom mcguiness, capitol, manfred mann

Listen: Malt And Barley Blues / McGuinness Flint McGuinessMalt.mp3

Manfred Mann, despite having several massive US hits, would always find it hard getting radio attention for the two or three followups each time. US radio never had any loyalty to many artists or it’s listeners. The audience takes a record to #1, but there’s no responsibility to let that same loyal customer hear the followup – unless of course the station was brown bagged an incentive. Manfred Mann were no exception. So it was really surprising when the McGuinness Flint (featuring Manfred Mann’s Tom McGuinness and Hughie Flint from John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers) debut, a very British sounding single ‘When I’m Dead And Gone’, got immediate play – and became a bit of a hit (#47). Guess what, it didn’t last. The above pattern fell right into place. It’s followup, the equally great ‘Malt And Barley Blues’ got not an airing.

Long forgotten, I was reminded how much I valued them and as ‘When I’m Dead And Gone’ suddenly came in to my head the other night, I couldn’t get home fast enough to pull it out of the library. There next to it was ‘Malt And Barley Blues’. Been playing them both steady for a good couple of days ever since.