"Jingle Jangle Morning, The 1960s U.S. Folk-Rock Explosion"

“When folk guitarrist-singers Roger ( then Jim ) McGuinn, Gene Clark, and David Crosby started to make music together around mid-1964, they’d barely begun to play electric instruments. With newly recruited bassist Chris Hillman and drummer Michael Clarke, they devised a full electric arrangement of this then-unreleased Bob Dylan composition that combined the best of Dylan and the Beatles, with ringing electric 12-string guitar and heavenly harmonies. Although only McGuinn played on the single, the result was a #1 hit in both US and UK as summer 1965 dawned, and the dawn of folk-rock itself.”

Não sendo a única, a versão de “Mr. Tambourine Man” inventada pelos Byrds e acima comentada por Ritchie Unterberger, é uma das razões da existência deste blog. O folk-rock ( sobretudo o americano ) é uma outra. 

Caldo perfeito para, com evidente satisfação, receber “Jingle Jangle Morning, The 1960s US Folk-Rock Explosion”; selecção, compilação e notas de Ritchie Unterberger, assistência aúdio de Alec Palao.

A larga maioria dos primeiros arautos do folk-rock provinham do folk e do folk revival do inicio dos 60s. A então deriva eléctrica de Dylan primeiro e dos The Byrds no imediato, funcionou como catalisador para um movimento que cavalgando a onda de British Invasion acabou a competir com esta. 

“Yet folk-rock wasn’t merely a matter of mixing the Beatles and Bob Dylan, or folk songwriters trading their acoustic guitars for electric axes. In the five or so years after The Byrds hit #1 on both sides of the Atlantic with their rocked-up reinvention of Dylan’s ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’, dozens of American acts took the best of both rock and folk to not only create something wholly new.” 

De um ponto de vista histórico e documental “Jingle Jangle Morning” é uma das abordagens possíveis. Haverá certamente outras, muito embora esta, balizada entre os anos de 1965 e 1970, seja susceptível de criar adição.

Os 76 temas que compõem a compilação abordam um largo espectro do género. Do óbvio ao surpreendente, passando pelo inesperado. 

Dylan, Byrds, Phil Ochs, Great Society, Buffalo Springfield, Gene Clark, Tim Buckley, Beau Brummels, Simon & Garfunkel, Fred Neil, Youngbloods, Judy Collins, David Blue, Jefferson Airplane, Tom Rush, Gordon Lightfoot, Love, Tom Paxton ou Tim Hardin entre outros, cabem no campo do óbvio. 

Com maior ou menor grau de surpresa, são aparentemente inesperados os nomes de Nico, Dion, Poco, Lamb, Johnny Winter, Linda Ronstadt, Fugs, Fapardokly ou Holy Modal Rounders por exemplo. Opções do curador que nos convidam a questionar clichés e colocar de novo em perspectiva verdades entretanto adquiridas.

A tudo isto acrescem algumas cerejas colocadas no topo: Blackburn & Snow com “Stranger in a strange land”, um tema que David Crosby escreveu e produziu em 1966 sob o pseudónimo Samuel F. Omar; “Is there anything I can do” dos The Ashes ( pré Peanut Butter Conspiracy ); “2:10 Train” dos The Rising Sons ( com Ry Cooder e Taj Mahal ); “Guinevere” dos The Lemon Drops; “All night long” de Tom Paxton; o inédito “Watch me walk away” dos obscuros Stourbridge Lion, ou o espectacular “Woman don’t you weep” escrito por Steve Young para o único álbum dos Stone Country. 

Seguramente uma das compilações do ano.

 

Artefactos ( 110 )

 

“… One thing about that week in LA; I was sharing the bill with David Ackles – I was topping the bill, but that seemed just unbelievable to me -  there was no way anyone could’ve convinced me that I should be above David Ackles, but they explained to me that he was almost unknown there. I was flabberghasted, but during that week I discovered that people like Tom Paxton, and Ackles, and David Blue and so on are disregarded in LA … they’re much better known here.

David Ackles was briliant … I made a point of watching him every night, and he was just brilliant – and I heard that he only earned something like 5.000 dollars in the whole 1970. At the end of the week, he bought me a half bottle of Scotch and told me how much he’d enjoyed working with me … which was utterly incredible, because I’d always been a number one fan of his. To see that audience just chatting away while he was singing those lovely songs just tore me apart … people were there because the buzz had got around that I was the guy to see and they didn’t give a toss about a great person like him.

One thing that did come out of that, however, was the album he’s just put out; Bernie ( Taupin ) worked on the production of it … the songs are amazing …”.

(Elton John, in ZIG ZAG Magazine # 26, Novembro 1972)