Stand tall (Burton Cummings) (LP 2270 - 2274)

Burton Cummings  Burton Cummings (Vinyl and CD, Portrait Records, 1976) ***  

Burton Cummings  My Own Way To Rock (Vinyl, Portrait Records, 1977) ***

Burton Cummings  Dream Of A Child (Vinyl, Portrait Records, 1978) ***   

Burton Cummings  Up Close And Personal (CD, Hip-O Records, 1997) ***   

Burton Cummings  Above The Ground (CD and DVD, Sony BMG, 2008) ***  

Genre: Pop rock

Places I remember: Vinyl Countdown; Slow Boat Records; Real Groovy Records

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Charlemagne

Gear costume: Break It To Them Gently

Active compensatory factors: The charismatic voice of The Guess Who embarked on a solo career in 1976. It had the sniff of inevitability about it really. So was my decision to collect his solo efforts.

The Guess Who is a band that I grew up with and adore. Live at The Paramount was my gateway drug and so, here we are with Burton Cummings.

Having watched a making-of-the-album video that came with Above The Ground, I'm not a fan of the man (he came off as arrogant, snippy - a jerk basically), but his singing ability is peerless - so I'll stick with that.

The first album was a super slick, confident effort. That voice is immediately presented to great effect.

 While it's certainly commercial sounding, it just doesn't sound rough and ready rock and roll, it's too polite. That was obviously the policy - to move away from the raw aspects of The Guess Who and promote the piano playing sophisticated side of Burton Cummings. As far as that goes - it all works, but it just doesn't appeal to me in the same way that his work with The Guess Who does.

Stand Tall was a massive hit and really started off the solo Cummings career with a massive wave of success. But it sort of sums up my previous point.

Really weak moment: an ill-advised lounge singer version of You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet. I'd love to know what Randy Bachman's reaction was to it, although Cummings says it ended a five-year-old feud that the two were experiencing.

His second effort, My Own Way To Rock, does away with the nice suit and moody photos and replaces them with an in yer face title and shit eating grin photo for the cover.

Richard Perry is the producer again, and although he's brilliant on the Ringo album and elsewhere, he's not a rock and roll producer to my mind. Worth noting at this point that Cumming's third solo album was self-produced.

That third album, and biggest selling one, was Dreams Of A Child. There were no hits from the previous album, but this one made up for that with Break It To Them Gently which was all over the radio in the late seventies.

The live Up Close And Personal set has B C at his piano and while his playing is great and singing remains superb, it's a bit too much of the same same. That may be a bit harsh - he does a number of Guess Who songs which is a bonus.

The 2008 studio album is solid. In fact he sounds much more convincing on the rock tunes like We Just Came From The USA than he did on the past solo efforts. 

Only problem is with the length - thanks to the CD age this one is also guilty of over-reaching. Still - a double album of mostly on form Burton Cummings is not the worst crime in the world.

Where do they all belong? I was keen to collect the rest of his solo albums until I saw that DVD. These days I tend to stick with what I've got. The Guess Who though - that's different.

Tuff E nuff (Johnny Otis) (LP 134 - 135)

The Guess Who Wild One (Vinyl - Pickwick, 1972 ) ** 
The Guess Who The Way They Were (Vinyl - RCA, 1976 ) ***  

Genre: Canadian pop/ rock

Places I remember: Wild One - Real Groovy Records (Auckland); TWTW - Music Box Record Exchange (Hastings)

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Species Hawk




Gear costume: Tuff E Nuff is a load of hunky fun, as is This Could Be Love with youthful Burton Cummings vocals. On TWTW, Silver Bird and Palmyra hinted at greatness to come. The Answer road tests the distinctive harmonies.

Active compensatory factors: These two are bracketed because they both pre date Wheatfield Soul, their first 'real' album.

Wild One features the Chad Allan led version of the band. Strictly speaking, it's a compilation of material done between 1965 and 1967 but because of the narrow focus it sounds like a bona fide studio album. 

Weirdly, their first hit, a 1965 rendition of Johnny Kidd & the Pirates' Shakin' All Over is not included in the package. Nor are other singles of this era!

Just to weird it out some more, Chad left in 1966 and so the band effectively continued as a quartet for the next four years with:

• Burton Cummings (keyboards/ vocals)
• Randy Bachman (guitars, backing vocals)
• Jim Kale (bass, backing vocals)
• Garry Peterson (drums, backing vocals)

The Way They Were is also an oddity, including as it does some good stuff recorded before Wheatfield Soul with Jack Richardson but not released until 1976 (after the original band called it a day).

Hope you're keeping up! 

That's the background. What about the music?

Wild One's sound is nowhere near the Burton Cummings' led band that we all know and love. Instead it's a tentative series of songs in thrall to American rock of the mid sixties, looking for a distinctive voice. As such, it sounds a lot like New Zealand music of the time. Outsiders both.

Chad Allan sounds like the American teen idol that, I guess, he wanted to be. Randy Bachman tries out surf guitar and some psychedelic licks at times, but it would have been going out on a limb to think these guys would evolve to mega stardom.

By the time they recorded the material on The Way They Were the band had taken a quantum leap forward. Burton had become a much more assured vocalist and Randy's guitar style had also undergone a transformation into a more distinctive heavy riffing style.

And the songs had improved! No more covers - Cummings/Bachman had become a thing.

Where do they all belong? Wheatfield Soul would prove itself to be a game changer.

People, taking me for a ride (Guess Who)

Burton Cummings has a great rock and roll voice.

I picked up a mint copy of The Guess Who's  Artificial Paradise album (1973) from New Plymouth's Vinyl Countdown on the weekend. Only cost me $3 which was a bargain.

The album does crop up a lot in remainder bins which is a bit of a mystery. Although not really - I liked the band in the seventies but it's taken me 40 years to own this album. Gotta be a reason for that huh.

I'm listening to it as I write; it's a good (not great) Guess Who album with a naff cover (to my eyes). It attempts to present itself like a envelope from a mail order company so it looks fairly cheap and nasty but I'm not sure that's what the music required.

During the early 1970s the band were at a series of crossroads with the departure of Randy Bachman and a subsequent period of revolving door musicians. Amid all this the band did manage to peak on the sublime Live At The Paramount album.

Stylistically the Artificial Paradise album is all over the shop. There are hard driving rock and roll songs (Bye Bye Babe is a great opening track), ballads (Lost and Found Town), the quirky Follow Your Daughter Home, the downright weird (Hamba Gahle-Usalang Gahle) and the nifty pop single Orly (a non hit at the time bizarrely).

No thematic cohesion, dodgy packaging but the sound is great. The band were certainly a cohesive unit and the recording is spot on.

And there is always Burton's voice. He can do it all - of course the ballads but he is a much better rock singer than he is given credit for. Try Orly again and remind yourself of his immense talent and ability to sell a song.