Listen: The Stumble / Love Sculpture LoveSculptureTheStumble.mp3
An air guitar classic waiting to be. Obviously, Dave Edmunds was a very flash player from the start. Like just about everyone else at the time, he began his professional career in a, you guessed it, blues rock combo. I had a real spot for Love Sculpture, remember seeing them scheduled to play The Fillmore East and wanted badly to go. Couldn’t, thus not sure if they ever made it over.
Listening back to that first album, BLUES HELPING, from which this single comes, the vocals are very white and don’t really fly. Now I see why purists hated these bands. But the album holds a marker sentimentally, and clearly their playing was pretty spot on, as is obvious from this instrumental cover of Freddie King’s ‘The Stumble’.
Love Sculpture’s next album, FORMS & FEELINGS, included their big UK hit, ‘Sabre Dance’, coincidentally also an instrumental, showing off more of Dave Edmunds’ virtuosity. Dave eventually found his footing in rockabilly and jangly pop, where he recorded some classics, all lined up for a later post.
Tags: Dave Edmunds, Fillmore East, Love Sculpture, Parlophone