Johnny Rivers

[kenny weir]

Yesterday, for my my 1-hour commute, I took my Rhino 2cd "Anthology 1964-1977" for road music.

(I'm on my fourth copy of it, having given the previous three to friends!)

Road music? It was fucking magic!

So much so that that, despite actually driving 10km/h slower, the trip seemed significantly shorter!

Got me thinking about it being time I got some Rivers in my life.

However, after checking allmusic, the Rivers site, Amazon etc, I'm unsure.

Truth is, the 36-track Rhino comp seems to do a pretty faultless job of combining early hits & singles with cherry-picked later album tracks - Going Back To Big Sur, Into The Mystic and so on.

For sure, I'd love to have another couple of Van covers - Brown Eyed Girl and Wild Night - handy!

(Blimey - it's OOP: And I've just seen Amazon has it ranging from 1 new from $286.65 8 used from $89.99 !!!)

All the albums are available one way or another, but I don't want to lessen the impact his music has for me.

Questions ...

1. What albums do any fans here consider the best?

2. What of later albums - there's been a few in the last couple of decades, and there's a new one out.

3. Anyone seen him live lately? AFIK, he still goes around, but not all that often. I have a New Orleans buddy who saw him about 15 years; he said he kicked ass.

Johnny Rivers: One of those guys who slips under the radar when all the usual talking-heads docos are made, but had a heap of hits, an uncanny knack for picking great songs, had (and continues to have) great players fronting up to play with/for him.Listening to Sea Cruise yesterday, I realised - given Rivers' background - that with a simple twist of fate it could've been him rather than Frankie Ford singing on the original version.

Here's the Rhino song list:

Disc: 1

1. Memphis

2. Maybellene

3. Mountain of Love

4. Midnight Special

5. Cupid

6. Seventh Son

7. Parchman Farm

8. Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

9. Under Your Spell Again

10. Secret Agent Man

11. I Washed My Hands in Muddy Water

12. Poor Side of Town

13. By the Time I Get to Phoenix

14. Do You Want to Dance?

15. Baby I Need Your Loving

16. Tracks of My Tears

17. Do What You Gotta Do

18. Tunesmith

19. It's Too Late

Disc: 2

1. Summer Rain

2. Look to Your Soul

3. Brother, Where Are You

4. Going Back to Big Sur

5. Whiter Shade of Pale

6. These Are Not My People

7. City Ways

8. You Better Move On

9. Muddy River Listen

10. Into the Mystic

11. Fire and Rain

12. Sea Cruise

13. Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu

14. Blue Suede Shoes

15. Help Me, Rhonda

16. Outside Help [*]

17. Swayin' to the Music (Slow Dancin')

Damn! I love Mountain Of Love and Baby I Need Your Loving - as so often with Rivers, not despite them being cover versions but because they are.

[GA Russell]

I was thinking of him yesterday. All the US radio stations seem to have forgotten that Rivers had the original hit of By the Time I Get to Phoenix. Glen Campbell's cover was a bigger hit, and that's the one that history seems to remember.

Phoenix was Rivers' first slow hit. His previous hits were up-tempo, recorded at the Whiskey a Go Go, hair combed back. His Album Changes had slow studio recorded songs with his hiar combed forward.

[AllenLowe]

Rivers' versions of The Poor Side of Down and Baby I Need Your Loving are excellent. I first heard them in the late 1960s on one of his lps.

I wonder what Lester Perkins thinks.

Edited February 24, 2010 by AllenLowe