Spooky Tooth - a fine title you've gotten me into

November 23^rd – I’m a blues man at heart. Most of my musical core stems from those early recordings I heard of Sonny Boy Williamson II, John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters, and I only came across them by accident as I used to spend inordinate amounts of time shuffling through the serried ranks of records in my local store. In fact, I do believe I spent so much time in there one guy actually thought I was on the payroll. I’ve mentioned before how, as a kid, I used to collect disused cigarette packets so the culmination of all these different coloured single labels and album covers was just a natural titillation of my collecting gene; but the added bonus was the music. It was Mr. Williamson II who drove me to take up harmonica playing and even though I say it myself (and I have to as there’s no one else to ask so you’ll just have to take my word for it) I got to be PDG on it, wouldn’t have baulked at standing alongside The Master, albeit in a subservient role. Haven’t picked one up for years (35 poss 40) but I wanted to put this down as a marker to emphasise the fact that all drummers are not necessarily musically inept…quiet at the back there!

I had the good fortune to support a lot of the, what I suppose one can call (without being rude) pseudo-blues bands of the 60’s and 70’s. Band’s that were superb performers and interpreters in their own right and used the backbone of the blues upon which to build there repertoire; bands like Taste, Savoy Brown Blues Band, Duster Bennett and Brian Auger and the Trinity. I guess these bands are not that well known to many, certainly not if you’re not of that time zone. That reads very patronisingly, it’s not meant to, you know me better by now; it’s not your fault you’re young, indeed crusty old buggers like me think it’s in your favour. However I know that the Rolling Stones or The Who will be known to you all. They all based their early acts and rise to stardom on the back of the collected output of such as Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Terry, Big Bill Broonzy, Lucille Bogan or Elmore James to name just a few. One band that may not be familiar to many however and that I held a sneaking regard for was Spooky Tooth.

I figure the reason they didn’t make any great strides along the shit street of success is because they held true to their roots in 95% of all their work. Whilst all around them were concentrating on getting that chart-topper (at any price) Spooky Tooth were staying grounded (and probably poor) with such classic tracks as Evil Woman, Better By You, Better Than Me and Waitin’ for the Wind. Probably a-typical of their treatment of now well-known songs is their rendition of Tobacco Road which was penned by John D. Loudermilk in 1960 or ‘61’ I think. Most people who know the song think of the Nashville Teens hit, which is very up-beat, and Johnny/Edgar Winter do a passable version but the Spooky Tooth track from their 1968 album It’s All About is probably the gig; not to everybody’s taste I know, but the commitment and feel are just excellent, and the depth of their immersion in what gave them their reason to make music in the first place (the blues) are clearly on display.

The codicil to all this guff is that on this day in 1974, Gary Wright, one of the original members of the band left to launch a solo career. Nothing remarkable in that one might think except…

Spooky Tooth suffered 11 line-up changes in forty years and a total of 12 musician changes in the same time period. Their members have filled positions in the foremost rock bands of the 20^th century including Humble Pie, Joe Cocker’s Grease Band, Matthew’s Southern Comfort, Foreigner, Stealer’s Wheel and Mott the Hoople and are still performing today with, ostensibly, the original line-up… Not bad going for a gang of blues-hookers, and it has to be said they have, IMHO, the finest album title ever: You Broke My Heart So I Busted Your Jaw. Good innit.