‘It Ain’t A Matter Of Pork ’n’ Beans . . .’

 by whiteray

A lot of the entries I post here at Consortium of Seven come from the stuff I wrote for my now-closed blog, Echoes In The Wind. (And because of that, sometimes I get confused about what I’ve posted here, which results in last week’s post being very similar to one I left here in February 2021. Sorry about that.) 

Some of the stuff in my old blog’s archives won’t fit in here, but frequently, I find a post there that with just a little bit of tinkering can work here, even some years after I wrote it. And this week, I found a series of posts that fit that description, posts I wrote about one of my favorite album tracks of the early 1970s (as well as several other versions of that song). So, today we’re going to sift through the track that brought my attention to the song, and next week, we’ll head on. 

Just to tease things along a little, here are the backing musicians on that album track: 

Guitar: Ron Wood and Sam Mitchell.
Piano: Ian Armitt.
Tenor sax: Alan Skidmore.
Bass: Rikki Brown.
Drums: Mickie Waller.
Chorus: Lesley Duncan, Madelene [should no doubt be “Madeline”] Bell, Doris Troy, Kay Garner, Liza Strike, Tony Burrows, Tony Hazzard and Roger Cook.
Producer: Rod Stewart. 

There are some interesting names there. The obvious ones are Wood and Stewart. Among the vocalists, the name of Doris Troy (“Just One Look,” No. 10, 1963) jumps out, as does that of Lesley Duncan, who did a lot of session work in England and released some singles in the 1960s and several well-regarded albums during the 1970s. Another name that pops out at me is that of Tony Burrows. Why? Here’s part of what All-Music Guide has to say about Burrows: 

“By rights, Tony Burrows should be a one-man oldies package tour – though he never charted a record under his own name, he holds the unusual honor (you can look it up in The Guinness Book of World Records) of having four records in the British Top Ten at once, all under different names. The British session vocalist sang Edison Lighthouse’s ‘Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes),’ White Plains’ ‘My Baby Loves Lovin’,’ the Pipkins’ ridiculous ‘Gimme Dat Ding,’ and the Brotherhood of Man’s ‘United We Stand,’ all of which were big hits in both the U.S. and U.K. in 1970.” 

But Burrows – as fascinating as his story is – remains a backing singer here. Whose record was this? 

Well, I wondered that, too, the first time I heard the track in question. That likely happened at Minnesota’s St. Cloud State College in early 1972, in the tiny room we used as a lounge at KVSC-FM, the college’s student-run radio station. And I know I heard the track – which was released in 1971 – on several other stations, as it got airplay on a good number of FM stations in the months after its release.

It was, to be sure, an odd track, even by the standards of a relatively free-form station: It starts with a soliloquy backed by a piano tracing a slightly bluesy, slightly jazzy figure, and it takes a little more than three minutes before the speaker gets to the end of his tale and the music kicks in. 

But fifty years after I first heard it, I still get an adrenaline rush as Long John Baldry finishes his tale and Ian Armitt’s piano leads the band into three-and-a-half minutes of kick-ass British blues-rock. Here’s Long John Baldry’s “Don't Try To Lay No Boogie-Woogie On The King Of Rock & Roll.”

(Baldry’s tale and the song are presented as one track on the original LP version of It Ain’t Easy [listed here last year as one of my favorite albums from 1971]. On CD, for some reason, the track is listed as two tracks: “Conditional Discharge” and “Don't Try To Lay No Boogie-Woogie On The King Of Rock & Roll.” I hold to the original titling.)