By Richie Unterberger
Before
Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Country Joe & the Fish, Big
Brother & the Holding Company, and other bands made the San
Francisco Sound a household term, Autumn Records laid the foundation
for the 1960s San Francisco rock scene. In its brief time as a working
label in the mid-1960s, Autumn had the first national hits by a San
Francisco group in the wake of the first wave of the British Invasion;
released the first recordings to feature the vocals of one of the
biggest superstars of San Francisco psychedelia; and recorded early
folk-rock with bittersweet melodies and male-female vocal harmonies
that became trademarks of '60s Bay Area rock. All of those achievements
are represented on San Francisco
Roots, which was the first compilation LP to assemble a
cross-section of tracks by Autumn's most notable artists.
The LP editions of San
Francisco Roots have an odd and confusing history, as two
separate but similar albums bearing the title were released. The first
of the records was a 13-song disc issued around 1968 by Vault Records,
whose Jack Lewerke had acquired the Autumn catalog after Autumn went
out of business in 1966. In 1976, Lewerke's JAS label issued San Francisco Roots again with a
different cover, as well as additional liner notes by Lewerke and
Rachel Donahue (widow of Autumn co-founder Tom Donahue), though the
original liner notes by pioneering San Francisco music critic Ralph J.
Gleason were also included. Most important, the 1976 version added
three extra tracks, even though the two cuts by the Vejtables (which
appeared on both editions of the LP) were mislabeled as Beau Brummels
recordings, using the wrong title for one of the songs for good
measure. This CD reissue uses the track listing from the 1976 edition,
and also properly labels the two songs that were previously mistakenly
ascribed to the Beau Brummels under different names.
Autumn was co-founded by Tom "Big Daddy" Donahue, a
well-known figure in San Francisco as a DJ on KYA, and Bob Mitchell
just in time to catch the first burst of San Francisco rock after the
Beatles and other British groups had totally changed the way Americans
made pop music. Though Autumn was a small independent label, it managed
to score big national hits with the Beau Brummels and Bobby Freeman, as
well as more modest ones by the Mojo Men and the Vejtables. Being one
of the only games in town for aspiring recording artists, they also cut
some early material by musicians who would become heavyweights in San
Francisco psychedelic rock, like the Grateful Dead, Sly Stone, the
Charlatans, Dino Valenti, and Grace Slick (as part of the Great
Society), though much of it was not released at the time. Yet Autumn
quickly ran into financial difficulties, the label winding down its
operations not long after its first flush of success, their artist
roster getting acquired by Warner Brothers. Donahue went on to become a
major figure in the rise of underground FM rock radio on the San
Francisco stations KMPX and KSAN, dying in 1975; Mitchell had passed
away long before, in 1969.
It's no surprise that the Beau Brummels are the
Autumn act most heavily represented on San Francisco Roots, as they were
by far the label's most successful rock band. "Laugh Laugh," the track
that leads off this CD, was not just a Top Twenty hit in early 1965—it
was arguably the very first
American hit to convincingly emulate the sound of the British Invasion.
"Laugh Laugh" wasn't a mere Beatles imitation, however, its forlorn
harmonica, melancholy melody, and blend of acoustic and electric
guitars also pointing the way toward folk-rock.
Two of the other Beau Brummels tracks on San Francisco Roots, "Stick Like
Glue" and "If You Want Me To," come from the group's first Autumn LP,
and ably display their knack for exuberant British Invasion knockoffs.
Yet the two other selections by the band, "Don't Talk to Strangers" and
"Sad Little Girl," show them moving into more straightforward
folk-rock. The ringing guitars and hazy harmonies of "Don't Talk to
Strangers," which just missed the Top Fifty in 1965, couldn't fail to
bring to mind the Byrds; "Sad Little Girl," used as a B-side later that
year, was one of the band's most underrated tracks, building to a
dramatic climax paced by Sal Valentino's reliably rich and stirring
vocals. The Beau Brummels had much more music in them than the two LPs
and handful of singles they issued on Autumn, but their remaining 1960s
releases would find their way to the world through Warner Brothers,
their contributions to igniting folk-rock and the San Francisco Sound
remaining underappreciated to this day.
When the first version of San Francisco Roots appeared in
1968, the Great Society's "Somebody to Love" and "Free Advice" were the
two most coveted cuts by a long stretch. These had been the first
recordings on which Grace Slick's vocals could be heard when they were
first issued as a 45 on Autumn's subsidiary Northbeach in early 1966,
with "Somebody to Love" still bearing its original title "Someone to
Love." The problem was, very few people actually heard it at the time,
the single not gaining any distribution beyond DJ copies and a few that
were available at the Psychedelic Shop on Haight Street. Getting
satisfactory recordings of the tracks with young producer Sly Stone had
been quite an ordeal, with the B-side, the raga-influenced "Free
Advice," needing 53 takes.
A good number of additional Autumn recordings by the
band that remained unreleased at the time, and more particularly some
explosive early psychedelic live tapes (eventually issued on Columbia)
later in 1966, showed the Great Society to be a band of enormous
potential, Slick's vocals and songwriting already attaining brilliant
heights. The Great Society disbanded, however, when Slick replaced
Signe Anderson in Jefferson Airplane in late 1966, taking Great Society
guitarist Darby Slick's "Somebody to Love" into her new band's
repertoire. Jefferson Airplane's version made the Top Five in 1967, but
the Great Society performance you hear on the CD was the first one to
get onto record, if barely into distribution.
Autumn's biggest hit was actually not by a rock
band, but by veteran early rock'n'roll singer Bobby Freeman. Six years
after hitting #5 with the 1958 classic "Do You Wanna Dance," he rose to
the exact same position with the early soul dance smash "C'mon and
Swim." Both parts of the two-part single were among the tracks added to
the 1976 version of San Francisco
Roots, where they were not wholly accurately titled "Swim Part
1" and "Swim Part 2." Freeman did try to follow up his hit with a
different 1964 single titled "S-W-I-M," but neither that nor any other
release could return him to the Top Forty.
Autumn also had a bit of national success with a
couple groups on their roster whose paths would eventually intersect.
The Mojo Men's rough'n'ready frat-garage-rock hybrid "Dance with Me"
made #61 in late 1965; both that cut and its follow-up single, "She's
My Baby" (both produced by Sly Stone), were on San Francisco Roots. Featuring
drummer/vocalist Jan Errico, the Vejtables made #84 with the winsome
folk-rocker "I Still Love You." Both it and its highly Beau
Brummels-like B-side "Anything" also made it onto San Francisco Roots, though the
1976 edition mistakenly credited "Anything" to the Beau Brummels and
listed "I Still Love You" as the Beau Brummels' "Still in Love with You
Baby"! Errico would soon join the Mojo Men, who after a move to
Reprise hit the Top Forty with a cover of the Buffalo Springfield's
"Sit Down, I Think I Love You."
Rounding out San
Francisco Roots were relics by two of Autumn's most obscure
acts. The Tikis, represented by their 1965 single "If I've Been
Dreaming"/"Pay Attention to Me," evolved into the sunshine pop group
Harper's Bizarre, with ex-Beau Brummel John Petersen on drums; another
member, Ted Templeman, went on to produce popular albums by the Doobie
Brothers, Van Morrison, and Van Halen. The Knight Riders never even got
as far as releasing anything on Autumn, with their elementary garage
rocker "I" making its first appearance on San Francisco Roots.
Autumn Records has never really gotten its due for
its huge role in launching the 1960s San Francisco rock scene. It would
take hit records on major labels like RCA, Warner Brothers, and
Columbia—some of them including musicians who had once recorded for
Autumn—to make the music (and the city's counterculture) a national
phenomenon. The music on San
Francisco Roots is where it all started. – Richie Unterberger
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