BEE SPEARS & CHRIS ETHRIDGE - R.I.P. WILLIE'S BASSMEN

John Christopher "Chris" Ethridge was a seminal electric bass guitar player in the early days of the country/rock movement. His most famous work was undoubtedly with The Flying Burrito Brothers whose influence on generations of country and rock musicians since has been pervasive. The Byrds, Rolling Stones, Emmylou Harris, My Morning Jacket, Norah Jones have all been inspired by the Burritos mixture on honky tonk, psychedelia, rhythm & blues, soul and country. Ethridge passed away last week of complications from pancreatic cancer in his hometown.

I had been planning the next in my series of blogs on CLASSIC SONGS and near the top of the list was the Ethridge/Gram Parsons composition "Hot Burrito #1 (I'm Your Toy)". A lip-synched version of the Burritos doing the tune leads the blog above. Interesting about this version is the fact that bassist Ethridge actually appears miming the drums and drummer Michael Clarke is attempting to mime playing bass. Seems the boys are getting a nice laugh out of it. The Burritos were a fun loving bunch and indeed a product of the times--their attitude was a bit twisted and tongue-in-cheek, a bit seditious and all about fun but when it came time to write and play the songs they were always serious and respectful students of the music that came before them and that influenced their landmark fusing of musical genres.

Parsons has become an iconic songwriter since his untimely death in 1973 and this gorgeously constructed tune and lyric is one of the most recorded of his songs. Ethridge also penned the moving song "She" as well as the irreverent and more boisterous "Hot Burrito #2" with Parsons. I'll post a couple of the Burrito and Gram's versions of these other songs before dropping a couple of tasty cover versions on you.

"Hot Burrito #2" from the GILDED PALACE OF SIN lp (1969)

In the foreground above that's Chris Ethridge, Sneaky Pete Kleinow, Gram Parsons and Chris Hillman (l-r)

"She" from Gram Parsons solo lp GP (1973)

Born in Meridian, Mississippi the young musician moved west to California at the age of 17. He met up with Parsons in mid-1967 when the latter briefly re-formed the International Submarine Band and played on the band's only full-length lp, Safe At Home. While awaiting the album's delayed release, Parsons left to join The Byrds and participate in one of the most influential country/rock albums, Sweethearts of the Rodeo.

After his short-lived stint with The Byrds, Parsons with Ethridge, ex-Byrd Chris Hillman and pedal steel innovator "Sneaky" Pete Kleinow formed The Flying Burrito Brothers and made their stellar debut album The Gilded Palace of Sin. Before it's time, the album wasn't a huge succes and Ethridge left in mid-1969. Parsons to follow a year later. Though the initial Burritos band would be short-lived it would carry on with a slew of great players who would go on to form or be members of important and successful groups in the country/rock genre such as The Eagles, Firefall, Manassas, Country Gazette. after Parsons untimely death n 1973, his post-Burritos singing partner Emmylou Harris would carry the torch of his music for decades to come.

Ethridge went back to session work where he would contribute to many great albums over the next decade by artists as diverse as ex-Byrd Gene Clark, Linda Ronstadt, Phil Ochs, Arlo Guthrie, Dave Mason, Rita Coolidge, The Doors, Paul Kantner/Grace Slick/David Frieberg, Graham Nash & David Crosby, Leon Russell, Jackson Browne, Judy Collins, Johnny Winter, Randy Newman, The Byrds, Kudzu Kings, P.F. Sloan, Al Kooper & Mike Bloomfield, Johnny Rivers, Bill Withers, Ronnie Milsap, David Blue, the Everly Brothers, Roger McGuinn, Maria Muldaur, Paul Davis, Delaney Bramlett, Steve Gillette, Booker T. & Priscilla Jones, George Jones, John Prine...

He would go on to tour for eight years with Willie Nelson & Family with whom he recorded four albums including the essential Willie & Family LIVE. He had a small role in the Nelson film vehicle Honeysuckle Rose and played on the soundtrack recording. Nelson employed two bassists at that time, the late Bee Spears (see sidebar below) and Ethridge. If anyone can find any video footage of Chris Ethridge and Bee Spears onstage performing together with Willie's band PLEASE send me a link. I'll post it here. Thank you.

Chris also played on three lps by eclectic slide guitarist, songwriter and musicologist Ry Cooder in the 1970s.

In 1975, Ethridge and Kleinow re-formed The Flying Burrito Brothers with fiddler/vocalist Gib Gilbeau, drummer/banjoist/vocalist Gene Parsons (no relation to Gram although he was also an ex-Byrd) and guitarist/vocalist Joel Scott Hill. The latter two had played informally in 1974 as The Docker Hill Boys. Hill and Ethridge had previously played music together shortly after Chris had moved to L.A. in the pre-ISB days. They had also recorded an album in 1971 alongside Johnny Barbata (CSNY/Jefferson Starship drummer) called L.A. Getaway.

Ethridge remained with this incarnation of the Burritos only through mid-1976 though he appears on the 1996 release Eye of the Hurricane. The live albums of the Burritos with Ethridge, From Another Time (recorded live in 1975) and Red Album: Live Studio Party (recorded in 1976) were released for the first time in 1991 and 2002 respectively.

Songs by Ethridge have been recorded by artists as diverse as Dinosaur, Jr; The Pretenders, Emmylou Harris, David-Clayton Thomas, Jefferson Starship, Belly, Big Star, The Coal Porters, McGuinn, Clarke & Hillman, Elvis Costello, Country Gazette, Norah Jones, Gene Clark & Carla Olson, Jose Feliciano, Sylvester, The Black Crowes and The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

Here are a couple of my favorite cover versions...

Norah Jones performs "She" live in 2004

The Black Crowes perform "Hot Burrito #1" live in 1997. I absolutely LOVE Raul Malo's version of this song but this really surprised me by the delicacy the Crowes brought to the tune. Sweet.

Stephen Stills & Manassas live from Amsterdam 1972. This great band featured both Chris Hillman (who is singing lead and playing rhythm guitar here I believe, Stills on lead guitar and backing vocals) and Al Perkins (pedal steel) both ex-Burritos.

Okay, one more round of great covers...I can't help myself. I have to included Elvis Costello's version of "HB #1" from the much maligned but, I believe, essential LP, Almost Blue. The night after Chris passed Elvis played a nice version of this on the road. He introduced the song mentioning that when Jim Dickinson, who had filled in a gig for Attractions' keyboardist Steve Nieve, mentioned to Elvis that Ethridge really loved that Elvis covered his tune. 

Dinosaur Jr.'s take on "HB#2" increases the edge of the original as only J. Mascis can do. It was a bonus track on the 2006 re-release of the Green Mind CD. Listen for the interesting little lyric change.

 

Here's to you, Chris.

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DAN "BEE" SPEARS (1949-2011)

For anyone who has seen Willie Nelson perform live since 1968 you have seen Bee Spears play the bass. Nelson's Family band has been exactly that with very few changes in the core line-up since Nelson, drummer Paul English and bassist Spears left Nashville for the more tolerant confines of Austin, Texas in 1971. Struggling to make it as a performer in the music machine that was the country music business in Nashville, they headed home to Texas where the looseness of the 60s met the hard-scrabbled reality of the Texas sun and earth. Where being an individual was the norm not the road to failure. Taken his songwriting talents, his unique vocal approach and his left-of-center perspective on life, Nelson and his band mates began playing for the long-hairs and the cowboys and their neighbors alike and finally doing it their way. In short order, the burgeoning Austin music scene where like San Franciscoo a few short years before fostered an openness in the music fans where blues, rock, country, folk and Tejano music could co-mingle, interact and blossom into an overflowing bucket of new sounds. For Willie and company, the freedom bred the new hype of The Outlaw movement in country music which in reality may have been more PR than any real movement per se but which allowed a cornucopia of new and not so new musicians a chance to break beyond the endless honky tonk gigs and into some much deserved spotlights. From Austin to Lubbock to Dallas and Houston, new names were poppin' up in venues and on play lists and people like Willie, Waylon Jennings, Tompal Glaser, David Allan Coe, Jerry Jeff Walker, Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt started making some headway, 

Willie's story is well-known. From Abbott, Texas to dj stint and honky tonk gigs, finally to Nashville where he had a couple of quick hits he'd written break for other people like Faron Young singing "Hello Walls" and Patsy Cline's version of "Crazy". Then there were tough times trying to get known as a recording artist himself while still pitching songs in the back room of Tootsie's Orchid Lounge to the Opry stars on their break. The move back to Austin seemed to be the right thing to do and in short order his first Gold record The Red Headed Stranger catapulted Nelson to the top of the country heap. From that time forward his Family band would tour the country insatiably, upwards of 250+ dates a year by bus. By the time "On The Road Again" and "Always On My Mind" hit the pop charts Nelson was a national icon, a movie star, a familiar talking head on TV news and talk shows.

In 1968, Bee Spears from Helotes, TX joined Willie's band and stayed until the day he died. Always over Willie's shoulder keeping one eye on Willie and one eye on the band. For me, Bee was the glue. The first time I saw Nelson back in the early 80s, I was sure that the music was horrible, someone MUST'VE been high. It seemed like no one was playing together, that Nelson was singing twelve bars behind or ahead of everyone else. That they were on a rotating stage and that I was three tequilas and a phatty into the evening didn't help. But by evening's end I realized that it was supposed to be that way. I began thinking of it like a jazz song or of the 2 hour show as one long Grateful Dead set, where things flowed and bounced off of each other and sometimes they got there and sometimes they didn't all get there at the same time. I found that if I listened to Spears bass lines, I could hear some kind of essence of what was going on. He seemed to be reacting to Nelson's idiosyncratic and jazzy behind-the-beat phrasing while goosing everyone else a bit closer to where they needed to be. I was hooked. For the next 30+ years I've been in the audience every chance I get to follow that fascinating flow. Like the Pedernales River in the hill country of Texas, things ebb and things rush and all that's important winds up down stream just where it belongs in good time. 

I had the pleasure of working PR for a couple of records Willie did around the turn of the Millennium and was lucky to catch more than my usual share of shows and to spend a little time with some of the guys on the road including Bee. He was always hilarious, slyly grinning about something you may or may not get wind of eventually. A prankster of strange and wonderful measure, his friends and fans will duly miss him and the music will live on.

In addition to the hundreds of sessions he has recorded with Willie, the thousands of nights on the road playing for millions of people Bee also contributed his presence and bass to records by some of 

Nelson's peers and cohorts Waylon Jennings, Jerry Jeff Walker, Steve Fromholtz, Guy Clark, and Buck White among them. We'll miss you amigo.

Austin American-Statesman Obit for Bee Spears

Billboard's Obit on Dan "Bee" Spears 

 

Bee doing his very best Merle Haggard...back in the day.

      

"BEE SPEARS, Al Perkins & Mark Dreyer Playing till the cows come home RFD TV SONG (Never was aired) IN THE FIELD at Bee's House outro -Porter Wagoner, LITTLE JIMMY DICKENS & HANK COCHRAN - A 10 YEAR OLD CLIP...MDP IN MEMORY OF BEE SPEARS, Porter Wagoner & HANK COCHRAN."

Interview and music with Bee Spears Live in Studio 23 Mark Dreyer Productions for J. Michael Miller www.NashvilleConnection.com

This is interesting. Something you would rarely the Willie Nelson band do is play instrumental music. Here is Bee stretching out with Willie band regulars Mickey Raphael (harmonica) and Billy English (here on drums, with Willie he plays percussion for a good portion of the shows and kit for a few tunes) along with Willie's old friend guitarist Jackie King (in the hat) who was at that time on the road in Willie's band. Jackie had recently recorded an album of jazz and standards that Willie had sang and played on and Willie had also recently recorded his "Night & Day" all instrumental album which was something of a tribute to the great jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. Here the band members join guitarist Bob Miles and keyboardist Jay Davidson for a sweet version of Freddie Hubbard's "Little Sunflower". It's wonderful to hear Bee play like this. I remember after the show the guys being really happy about being able to go in and do things they didn't usually get to do. Look for their version of "Cantaloupe Island" and "All Blues" from the same program.

  Here are three Willie & Family tunes from Amsterdam in the early part of the 2000s. This shows the fluidity of the phrasing and though you don't get to see a lot of Bee you can hear him holding things together. It is an amazing luxury for a musician to have the same band together for so long. Also nice to see Jody Payne and Jackie King with the band at this point.

Here's a wonderful tribute video put together by Bee's long-time friend David Anderson. It's long (51 minutes) and has what is noted as "mild profanity" as well as some very funny, ridiculous and off the wall verbal riffs from the mind of Bee and cohorts as well as some rare music  from Bee, some great pics of family & friends and more. A wonderful tribute to an amazingly unique individual.

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Nothing more interesting than a pirate with a heart of gold and a strange, knowing glint in his eyes. Here's to ya, Bee.

MY FIRST ROCK CONCERT EVER!

So I'm not counting the concerts I was taken to by my parents in a justified but at the time, not truly appreciated, effort to add culture to my Leave It To Beaver life. My mom would always take us to see classical concerts like Peter and the Wolf and we'd go to special Christmas Concerts and Easter things. Not my cup of chowder.

Then Dad started hauling us to something called The Southern California Hot Jazz Society where we were more into getting all grunged up in the L.A. River chasing tadpoles than watching the killin' Dixieland bands he was hot on. But I will write about that experience at length some other time.

So let's define this question a bit narrower...how about the first show that I WANTED to go to without outside influence and was ALLOWED to...

Okay, so I wanted to see the Beatles in '66 when I was ten. After having her ears blasted by screaming girls when she took the four of us (my bro and two cousins) to see HARD DAY'S NIGHT at at he Century Theater in San Gabriel (with my grandma, Nana, whose only comment was, "They looked like the Marx Brothers with better hair"), my Mom wasn't about to deal with that in the flesh.

So I had to wait a few years until ...

#1 - STEPHEN STILLS & MANASSAS – Hollywood Bowl, Hollywood, CA. July 12 or 16, 1972.

I always thought it was the 12th but recently saw a poster that said the latter date. Perhaps they played two shows. I don’t recall and my ticket stub, I’ve yet to find amongst the boxes of same. The concert took place at the Hollywood Bowl.

I went with best friend and music buddy Kenny. We had really cemented our friendship a few years before while checking out a cassette from the “listening library” in 7th Grade at Oak Avenue Junior High. Scanning the lists we oddly both wanted to hear the same title, Buffalo Springfield’s Retrospective, a greatest hits compilation featuring Stills, Neil Young, and Richie Furay who, along with the Byrds prompted the L.A. singer/songwriter movement that caught fire in the early 70s. With just one copy of the tape, librarian Elmo Brigoli brainstormed a headphone splitter and two pairs of phones so we could listen to the music together. Reluctantly, we agreed and over those few minutes between classes became a lifelong friendship based on our love of music.

Within a year or two we were poised to hit our first live concert, if only our parents would agree to let us go. His were pretty easy. His older sisters had already been down that road. In fact, it was their record collection that we’d pick through listening to new things when they weren’t home. We had also started playing guitars and found that we could scratch together reasonable versions of Stills and Nash and Young’s three chord tunes. Other than “Long Time Gone”, Crosby’s complex tunings and chord changes would be beyond us for a couple of years still.

When we saw that MANASSAS was scheduled to play the Bowl, we put our plan into effect and after much cajoling convinced my folks to drop their guard long enough for us to trudge to the May Company and get tickets. The cost was $6.50 each and we somehow scraped up the fundage.

When the day arrived, my folks and brother dropped us off in the station wagon for I was still five months away from my driver’s license. Dad said, "We'll meet you at the gas station at the corner after the show." I’m sure my mother was worried senseless. They killed time at the Cinerama Dome a few blocks away on Hollywood Blvd. and saw Alfred Hitchcock's last movie FRENZY while we “ruined our lives” as Kenny likes to say.

As soon as we found our way up the long inclined drive and through the turnstiles, I was completely overwhelmed by how cool the Hollywood Bowl was. Granted, I'd been there for Easter Sunrise Services with my family many times before as a child which, of course, I hated because we had to get up before dawn, it was cold and early and I had to dress up in church clothes. No doubt some pastel blue Easter outfit. This was different. We were on our own and free in the adult world. The place was teeming with hippies and teenagers and cool people and girls! Wow!

As Kenny and I climbed to our wooden seats about half way up the sprawling Bowl, the anticipation was palpable. We’d heard about what went on at rock shows. We’d seen the Woodstock movie at the Alhambra Theatre. We’d heard about Altamont. The Beatles had played here and girls had leapt into the moat in front of the stage. And, yes, people got high at concerts. Now, we didn't smoke pot at the time. That was about a year away, I think. So I was a bit worried that the hippies would somehow force us to breath in that stuff and at the very least we’d succumb to the dreaded “contact high”. Little did I know we’d spend the next few years using that term to explain our funky smelling clothes, red eyes and voracious appetites to our parents.

If I recall, the guy next to Kenny looked a lot like a young Jerry Garcia and his "old lady" fit the bill too, all smiling in her granny dress and long ponytails with purple shades. Luckily, they were sitting next to Kenny and not me. To my left were a couple of older guys in varsity jackets from Bellflower or somewhere. I felt relatively safe.

Of course, as soon as the show started, the varsity guys lit up numerous joints and the hippies offered us some fried chicken from their picnic basket. Lessons in life were abundant before us.

The concert was great. Manassas was an album Stills had made in a break between CSNY business, the follow-up to his sophomore solo effort, STEPHEN STILLS 2. The band on the album featured Chris Hillman on mandolin, guitar and beautiful harmony & lead vocals from the Byrds and just a great band of stellar session guys. Paul Harris, the keyboardist, I knew from John Sebastian’s records had also backed B.B. King and Eric Anderson. The drummer Dallas Taylor and bassist Calvin “Fuzzy” Samuels had played with CSN (and Y). Pedal steel and slide player Al Perkins was a vet of Hillman’s previous band, The Flying Burrito Brothers and Mike Nesmith's proto-country rock group and would go on to join Emmylou Harris's band in later years. Joe Lala who came from the band Blues Image was ferocious on Latin percussion and added a whole other element to the show. Burrito alum and bluegrass fiddle master Byron Berline was on the LP and the gig during the country tinged numbers.

The band was extremely good, loose and well-oiled. They attempted most of the record and also some Stills solo stuff and couple of CSNY and even a Burritos song I think. Kenny and I were riveted and immediately hooked on the buzz that live music gave us.

Being my first rock concert, I wasn’t yet in the habit of writing down set lists or saving ticket stubs, a habit I would soon acquire. My recollection of the set list, other than the blanket generalities mentioned above, is sketchy. I do remember distinctly, at one point, Stills sitting center stage for a solo segment which featured him on acoustic guitar singing “Word Game” from STILLS 2 and “Black Queen” from his debut solo album.

I also recall the band playing “Sugar Babe” from STILLS 2 and Stills at the piano at one point alone playing “49 Bye-Byes/America’s Children” as on CSNY’s live Four-Way Street album which was a favorite of ours at the time. I believe the way the show was set up was that the band came out and did an electric segment featuring the entire first side of their debut LP. Followed by a Stills acoustic solo set. Then Hillman and Perkins (and Stills?) did a little bluegrass segment joined shortly by the full band (with Byron Berline on fiddle, I believe) for more rock and country tinged tunes before closing with a full band acoustic set. I THINK "The Treasure" was the encore. Love to find a list, or better yet a recording or some footage of this show. It ran about 3 hours.

THE TREASURE live on Euro TV Beat-Workshop from Bremen 1972



The self-titled debut record MANASSAS, was a double LP set made up of four distinctly themed sides - side A was called The Raven and featured bigger rock and Latin tinged tunes; side B was subtitled The Wilderness and was all country/rock and bluegrassy stuff which I loved and was just getting into at the time; side C, dubbed Consider was more acoustic based tunes, sort of like what CSNY called “wooden music” at Woodstock, singer/songwriter, folk/rock stuff, the forerunner of the AAA radio format; side D was titled Rock N Roll Is Here To Stay and was bluesy and rockin', big time and sonically Hendrix-esque in spots times with lots of texture. One of my favorite records of all-time. It is rumored that Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman, who played on and co-wrote "Love Gangster" on the LP, was quoted as saying he'd leave the Stones if they let him play with Manassas.

This was a long show. Afterwards, Kenny and I farted around looking at souvenirs and girls and stuff and when we finally got back to my Dad's car he'd been sitting there for nearly 2 hours (the show being longer than the movie) and he was fuming. Partially because he was still a cop at the time and there was a VW bus parked next to him with kids smoking pot and “acting like idiots” and he couldn't do anything because he had his wife and kid with him. My mother said, "It smelled sickeningly sweet, like burnt rope."...Hahaha...Kenny and I still get a kick out of that. What a memorable night.

While one of the most critically acclaimed albums of Stills’ long and illustrious career, the band would be unfortunately short-lived, releasing just one more single LPs worth of material during their lifetime called Down The Road. The follow-up to their debut featured much more of the Latin flavor that Stills, who spent time as a young man in South America, and Joe Lala were so fond of. There were two tunes in Spanish heavily leaning on Latin percussion. Hillman, whose mainstream bluegrass roots (The Hillmen) and later country hitmaking skills (The Desert Rose Band) would inform the rest of his career, contributed a cool tune, "Lies" as well co-writing the folky acoustic number "So Many Times" with Stills. Stephen's best tunes on the record were “Do You Remember The Americans” and "Isn't It About Time" which he still occasionally performs to this day. There was also the blistering bluesy title track which highlighted Stills guitar playing. It was actually a really fine album but not up to the high standards set by the debut. Rumors of lots of substance abuse in the studio and difficult working conditions which found the Albert brothers, producers of both releases bolting from the session, did not bode well for the future of the band.

Shortly thereafter Stills met with Crosby, Nash and Young and tried to record an album in Hawaii to no avail. He returned and did another Manassas tour with bassist Kenny Passarelli in tow but the spark and drive wasn't there and this coulda-been-a-contender band was knocked out cold. Hillman, Harris, & Perkins went on to join David Geffen's "supergroup" the Souther Hillman Furay band. Taylor struggled with heroin and alcohol addiction and is now recovered and a counselor for recovery programs. Lala continued to play with Stills for many years. I'm not sure where Fuzzy Samuels wound up. Byron Berline continued on with the legendary bluegrass group, Seldom Scene and remaine done of the most in demand fiddlers in country music. Stills obviously has continued to tour with CSN and solo since then with occasion forays with Neil young addd to the gumbo.

Oddly, at the last solo gig I played in Delaware before I came out West this past January, I pulled out a tune from MANASSAS, “So Begins The Task” which I had never played before. I was no doubt inspired by a recent listen to the brand new 2009 Manassas CD entitled PIECES. Strangely enough and without much fanfare, Stills just released this, the first of supposedly many archival projects. It is a single CDs worth of outtakes from sessions for both Manassas albums. It is comprised of of some fantastic material including incredible versions of tunes from his second solo album, "Sugar Babe" and "Word Game" as well as some never before heard gems, both originals and covers. This is indeed what could have been. Not a mish-mosh of lesser tracks but a really great group of tunes often surpassing original versions of these tunes and new songs that stand up to the classics. Even Bill Monroe's "Uncle Pen" gets a wonderful work out as does the old tune covered by the Burritos, Joe Maphis' "Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (And Loud, Loud Music)." Hillman's "High N Dry" which showed up on the SHF album is a real treat. Check this out to hear an amazing but under-appreciated band with these finally seeing the light of day after 38 years in the vaults.

Surprisingly, at my first gig back in Big Bear in February, our mandolinist, Roy Coulter started playing “Hide It So Deep” also from that 1st Manassas album. I followed with “It Doesn’t Matter” from side 3. These songs still resonate for me as standards of excellence and major fulcrums in my development as an appreciator of the music of my time.

HIDE IT SO DEEP live on Euro TV Beat-Workshop from Bremen 1972


IT DOESN’T MATTER live on Euro TV Beat-Workshop from Bremen 1972 the first single


All three albums are worth hearing and are available at iTunes and Amazon.com

During the next three years I’d see 90% of the live concerts I attended with my friend Ken. We’d continue to see shows together on occasion over the next three and a half decades but this one is one neither of us will likely forget anytime soon. The first cut is the deepest.

BOUND TO FALL live on Euro TV Beat-Workshop from Bremen 1972


SONG OF LOVE live on Euro TV Beat-Workshop from Bremen 1972


STILLS INTERVIEW
EntertainmentOnABC Australia
Interview with Stephen Stills and Manassas at Mascot Airport by Jeune Pritchard, Ep 467. Broadcast 12th April 1972