Theo Bikel - I Love My Dog/ The Great Mandella (The Wheel Of Life)

 

Actor, folk singer, composer and political activist Theodore Bikel seemingly adds "dog lover" to his list

Label: Reprise

Year of Release: 1970

If anybody told Theodore Bikel "Find out what you're really good at, focus on that alone and you might become great", he obviously wasn't listening. Closing down his career options really didn't seem to be his thing. He had a butterfly mind, being an actor on television and in the theatre, a political activist, a singer of folk songs (he was one of the first signings to the fledgling Elektra Records) and occasional songwriter himself. His CV of appearances in everything from "My Fair Lady" to "200 Motels" to "The African Queen" and "Dynasty" is enough to make your head spin - from serious productions to light musicals and soaps, to performing at the Newport Folk Festival inbetween, the man seemed to do everything he wanted in his lifetime without much pause for thought.

I have to admit to being something of an ignoramus around his recorded work, so when I found this slightly battered 7" single selling for £1.99, I was somewhat sceptical and it was only the presence of Richard Perry on production duties which made me jump for it. Perry's arrangements and productions throughout the late sixties are often exceptional, his work on Tiny Tim's LPs elevating them above and beyond mere eccentric curiosities. Unsurprisingly, this doesn't disappoint either.

Cat Stevens' original version of "I Love My Dog" is a fine single, but is somewhat subdued in its delivery, sticking to a galloping rustic rhythm rather than letting fly as much as you suspect it could. Perry and Bikel really put that right here by pushing things up several gears, introducing urgent drumming, psychedelic diversions, orchestral flourishes and joyous vocals. Bikel sounds like he means it when he sings "I love my dog as much as I love you/ But you may fade, my dog will always come through" - sentiments seldom heard in pop music but ones some of us can certainly relate to.

This wasn't a hit in any country and certainly didn't generate royalty payments for Cat Stevens akin to the ones Ugly Kid Joe and Boyzone dropped in his lap many years later, but it's a fine example of how adaptable the man's work is, here performed by another gentleman who would seemingly try anything once. 

Reupload - Sasha Caro - Grade 3 Section 2/ Little Maid's Song

 

Cat Stevens produced singer-songwriter with top quality psych 45

Label: Decca

Year of Release: 1967

Sasha Caro was one of those interesting characters who was everywhere but nowhere on the sixties London scene. He was born in Rangoon in 1940, but his family fled to England when Burma was invaded by the Japanese, remaining on these shores thereafter. A love of music quickly sucked him into both the business and creative side of the "industry", and he took some promising steps at commercial songwriting. Originally beginning his career under the name Rick Minas, he co-wrote the non-hits "Lease On Love" by the Graham Bond Organisation and "I Won't See You Tonight" by Hamilton and The Movement, besides setting up the cheap recording studio RayRik with his business partner Bruce Rae. He also had a deeply obscure solo folk 45 out on Polydor in 1965 entitled "Well I Want No Part Of It". 

Very few of their other songs managed to gain a release, though several appeared on an episode of "Dangerman" in the sixties as part of the episode "Not So Jolly Roger", which took place on a pirate radio station. All the "top sounds" the DJs spun throughout the episode were actually just recordings of Rick Minas's work, though none of these gained a commercial release after the episode aired. 

Somehow, Cat Stevens managed to discover Rick through his songwriting demos, and took him under his wing to attempt to launch him as a star in his own right. His name was changed to Sasha Caro, and the two resulting Stevens-produced Decca 45s are damn good - it's astonishing that they didn't find a place on "Rubble" or one of the other many compilations that swept up the best of the Decca and Deram labels psychedelic output. On the sprightly and intricate folk-pop styled "Grade 3 Section 2" Rick's voice is on fine form, swooping beautifully all over the song. The track manages to be rustic sounding without losing any catchy pop appeal, and while it does share a similar sound to Cat Stevens' own work, it's nonetheless a fine single. 

Sadly, I can't include the flip side "Little Maid's Song" below as it was recently compiled on the "Piccadilly Sunshine" series, and therefore remains commercially available. However, you can listen to it on YouTube if you want. 

Peter Janes - Emperors and Armies/ Go Home Ulla

Ex-Cat Stevens partner on an epic psychedelic folk trip

Label: CBS

Year of Release: 1967

Peter Janes may not seem like an immediately familiar folk name, but it could all have been so different. His career began in a duo with Cat Stevens, and had fate wriggled a different way, there's every possibility his harmonies could have intertwined with Stevens' melodies, propelling both of them to stardom as some kind of British answer to Simon and Garfunkel.

Sadly, for every person who has success there's usually a long list of could-have-beens left behind, who might have also become millionaires had they only stuck with the project - well, kinda. Naturally, it's never quite as simple as that. Winning formulas sometimes only emerge when elements have been removed from, rather than added to, the equation. We can speculate all we want, but Cat Stevens did more than many artists do for their ex-associates and continued to support his friend and ex-partner's career producing his records and playing on them, and presumably giving them the mightiest promotional push he could.

Janes (along with and independently of Stevens) played numerous gigs on the British sixties folk circuit, playing on the same bills and in the company of Paul Simon, Al Stewart and Sandy Denny, and "Emperors and Armies" gives an impression of just how powerful his work could be. Moody, despondent but still somehow strident and distinctly 1967 flavoured, it's a towering tune which sounds like a hit. Sadly, the era was littered with powerful songs, and this one seems to have become ignored despite CBS's obvious push - that picture sleeve, rare in the sixties, is proof that they were spending extra money on him.

The track was recorded at Olympic Studio in Barnes and featured a large menagerie of session musicians who, Janes felt, made the track feel somewhat over-produced, and the sessions were also poorly timed to coincide with a bout of tonsillitis; but whatever his original vision or his vocal weaknesses on the day, you'd have to be extraordinarily picky to find an awful lot of fault with this. If anything, the slightly chocolate box arrangements make it sound like a mid-winter anthem.

Sasha Caro - Grade 3 Section 2/ Little Maid's Song

Label: Decca

Year of Release: 1967

Sasha Caro was one of those interesting characters who was everywhere but nowhere on the sixties London scene. He was born in Rangoon in 1940, but his family fled to England when Burma was invaded by the Japanese, remaining on these shores thereafter. A love of music quickly sucked him into both the business and creative side of the "industry", and he took some promising steps at commercial songwriting. Originally beginning his career under the name Rick Minas, he co-wrote the non-hits "Lease On Love" by the Graham Bond Organisation and "I Won't See You Tonight" by Hamilton and The Movement, besides setting up the cheap recording studio RayRik with his business partner Bruce Rae. He also had a deeply obscure solo folk 45 out on Polydor in 1965 entitled "Well I Want No Part Of It". 

Very few of their other songs managed to gain a release, though several appeared on an episode of "Dangerman" in the sixties as part of the episode "Not So Jolly Roger", which took place on a pirate radio station. All the "top sounds" the DJs spun throughout the episode were actually just recordings of Rick Minas's work, though none of these gained a commercial release after the episode aired. 

Somehow, Cat Stevens managed to discover Rick through his songwriting demos, and took him under his wing to attempt to launch him as a star in his own right. His name was changed to Sasha Caro, and the two resulting Stevens-produced Decca 45s are damn good - it's astonishing that they didn't find a place on "Rubble" or one of the other many compilations that swept up the best of the Decca and Deram labels psychedelic output. On the sprightly and intricate folk-pop styled "Grade 3 Section 2" Rick's voice is on fine form, swooping beautifully all over the song. The track manages to be rustic sounding without losing any catchy pop appeal, and while it does share a similar sound to Cat Stevens' own work, it's nonetheless a fine single. 

Sadly, I can't include the flip side "Little Maid's Song" below as it was recently compiled on the "Piccadilly Sunshine" series, and therefore remains commercially available. However, you can listen to it on YouTube if you want. 

The follow-up "Molatov Molatov" is also worthy of investigation, being a slice of Russian-tinged psychedelia which is far more OTT and decidedly bizarre. It's already worked its way on to my "wants" list for being such a full throttle collision of chaotic ideas.

As for what became of Rick (or Sasha, or whatever we want to call him or he would prefer us to call him) nobody seems to know. He apparently gave up music and took up a career as an accountant not long after his two Decca records flopped. This seems like a horrible waste of some very obvious talent, so I can only hope he had a change of heart somewhere along the line and still occasionally plays and writes.