Through the Eyes of Innocent Children. Ah, but how do we know they're innocent? Hmm. Well, I guess they look innocent enough, so I'll go with that. But, given that the kids are singing, should it be "through the eyes of..."? Though, come to think of, it Through the Mouths of Innocent Children would suggest something along the lines of Art Linkletter having kids say "funny" things off the cuff (read: rehearsed), so I'm fine with Eyes.
That matter settled, let me note that I remember this period of pop culture very vividly. Rock had Something Important to Say, and its lyrics allegedly spoke to youth. But I wonder. I remember a very awkward day in eighth grade English, with everyone sitting silent as a rock as our teacher quoted Beatles lyrics and asked us for feedback. He got none. And I still don't know what half of those Lennon-McCartney songs were saying, anyway. And you'll notice, from the photo, that adults were involved in this venture--the concept for this LP, which mainly consists of faith-repurposed Top 40 material from 1964 to 1972, likely didn't come from these Kentucky Methodist children. Just a guess. And I may be the first person ever to use the adjective "faith-repurposed" on the internet. Or anywhere else.
Boy, do I remember the long straight hair from this period (though there are a few curly-haired lasses), and the clothes, and that group-photo type. The girl on the far upper right is gazing up, the lighting and angle giving the impression her eyes are bigger than they they really are, so I wouldn't be surprised to see this scan show up on a paranormal website. Those places must be getting desperate for new images, the way they're recycling the same hundred or so shots. And those "orb" photos--please. Insects and pollen particles caught in the light--more desperate a claim for the supernatural than the ridiculous con known as EVP.
Anyway, this is a fascinating local production (Hamilton, Ohio--near Cincinnati), because it's as "period" as any c.-1972 local production can possibly be, and because the sound (minus some panning effects that I suspect were accidental) is so natural. Part of the reason for the naturalness of the sound may the fact that I'm using my c.-1975 Sony STR-6036A receiver, which I thrifted maybe twenty years ago for (how's this for symmetry) $15.15. I know that because the grease-penciled price is still on the chassis. Here's a photo from eBay.
Still works beautifully. Anyway, as I noted, the selections are mostly repurposed hits from 1964 through 1972, closing with Neil Young's Heart of Gold, which was never one of my favorites, though this version has me sort of liking it. Maybe that's because Neil isn't singing it. (Please send all hate mail to the email in my profile.) That takes care of 1972. Skipping back a couple years, we have Silver Paper (which I barely remember) and My Sweet Lord, which I way remember. (And I recall my shock when the plagiarism charge came out. It was ruled that Harrison had subconsciously swiped He's So Fine, which would have been my conclusion, too. In case anyone asks.) I remember listening (and listening and listening) to Harrison's extraordinary All Things Must Pass with my best buddy Rick, who, at the time, had just about every Beatles and Beatles-related LP ever released.
1970 is also the year of I Don't Know How to Love Him from (as it was called by most folks at the time) "JC Superstar." That tune was huge--it may have enjoyed more nonstop play (is that redundant?) than George Harrisons' almost-departed-from-the-Beatles Something. I kind of dug I Don't Know How..., but it did get old. Older than I realized, even--when I thrifted a copy of Columbia's first microgroove release, Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Minor, I discovered the tune's source. Which is okay, since some other famous Boomer hits were swiped from "the Classics"--For example, J.S. Bach gave us the tune for A Lover's Concerto and A Groovy Kind of Love comes from Clementi, so the Masters were used to this kind of thing. They were also dead and in public domain, so they made for safe pickin's.
Also from 1970, Let It Be, one of my favorite songs, Fab Four or otherwise, and one that required no repurposing on the part of Solid Ground, though of course My Sweet Lord needed a little tweaking, since it wasn't a Christian number--though I've just read that Harrison intended it for use by all religions, so there. The anti-war song One Tin Soldier is from about the same period, and it was AM-radio-played to death in my market, and I grew to not care for it. Of course, it was used as the theme number for the highly violent anti-violence flick, Billy Jack--but, anyway, its inclusion on this LP makes sense, as 1972 Methodists were no happier with war than the 2020 type (including me). But Amazing Grace (hilariously given a "John Newton-Allan Price" credit) to the familiar tune for House of the Rising Sun?? Good grief. I mean, metrically, it goes just fine with the melody, but I swear I once suggested a Grace/Rising Sun coupling as a joke, never imaging that anyone had gone through with it. For the record, John Newton's famous text also goes with Antioch (the standard tune for Joy to the World) and the theme to Gilligan's Island. At least Solid Ground didn't use the latter.
And, of course, a "house of the rising sun" was a... er... Never mind.
I should mention that Let It Be and My Sweet Lord were huge Christian youth-group numbers of their day, as was Burt Bacharach's What the World Needs Now, which I really, really wish they'd have added to this list--but they didn't.
Back to 1967 for Get Together, another played-to-death song that I like well enough--and which didn't need much revision, if any, here. But the prize for odd song choice has to be awarded to His Love, a rewrite of Petula Clark's 1965 My Love, one of those "name the worst song from the 1960s" candidates which I don't think remotely deserves to be thus panned. And I remember when it was played every six minutes or so on the radio, though Clark's monster hit was, of course, Downtown. I loved those wonderful Tony Hatch productions for Petula.
So, My Love becoming His Love--an ingenious bit of reworking, but an odd choice, given the much more current fare that dominates the playlist. Then again, 500 Miles is a pop/country hit from 1963, so I guess I'll have to revise my 1964-1972 year span to 1963-1972. (I hate it when that happens.)
The selections are all highly pleasant amateur efforts, with some decent studio-musician backing, and--despite the weird channel-shifting stuff--blessed with good stereo sound. The Rite Records pressing had some minor issues, but those are why digital sound-fixing was created. So, how to characterize this? Youth gospel? Jesus Movement gospel? "Sacred and country gospel" (from the label)? Psychedelic folk? Folk psychedelic? Folkadelic Psych? Vegas lounge? No, it's definitely not Vegas lounge.
"Folk Christian" would work for me, because in 1972 "folk" had long since become, not the songs collected by John Jacob Niles, John Lomax, or Francis James Child, but a style of pop--eventually, it would come to mean anything featuring acoustic guitar--and because the "happening now" theme had entered popular gospel music--even the highly middle of the road Word label was aiming for young buyers. And folk was happening. (You have to have been there to fully grasp "happening.") It's hard to sum up the merging of rock and gospel which occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s, because there seems to have been a number of different channels. A variety of failed evolutionary branches, you might say.
A very, very fun and interesting relic, and Solid Ground does a fine My Sweet Lord, even if one of the chord choices in the solo section has me wincing. (The chord in question would, as played by Harrison, be designated as a secondary dominant seventh with a flattened ninth--only, no flattened ninth here. Bugs me.) To the innocent children:
DOWNLOAD: Solid Ground--Through the Eyes of Innocent Children
Note: The mangled composer credits for Silver Paper were fixed on my ID tag, and of course "Pete Seager" is Pete Seeger. Blogger just changed its format, so apologies for any sizing issues.
Lee
10 comments:
Enjoyed your commentary very much as always! There was something of a vein of religious and conservative folk music at the time, Up with People and the like, which seemed to be an outgrowth of the New Christy Minstrels ensemble approach to pop-folk. (The name "New Christy Minstels" was an odd one - the original Christy Minstrels were a blackface troupe.)
Anyway, thanks for this.
The new Blogger interface is a mess. Why-o-why do they do things like this?
I agree. It is a mess. So far, though, it's being nice to me. It's even allowing me to update my text. Which is a good thing, as I had to fix three typos and slightly revamp a few portions this time around. Took my a slight while to figure out how to go to the HTML page, but I clicked on the likely choice, and down came the option. Given that Blogger doesn't seem to be working any differently, I assume this is yet another example of change for the sake of change. Annoying. I guess we users are still supposed to get all "excited" over this or that "new look." It gets tedious.
Somehow, I hadn't thought of "Up with People." I think I even grabbed one of those once. I honestly think a number of threads were happening--folk gospel in a rock vein, the beginnings of "praise" music (which I believe to be African-American in origin), various extended works by folks like Ralph Carmichael (which were, for some reason, inspired by the "now" culture of the hippie period), and who knows what else. And I always wondered that about the New Christy Minstrels. Of course, the great Stephen Foster worked with/through the original troupe, so maybe that figured into it in some way. Made the whole idea more respectable or something. Or maybe no one had given it much thought. That's always a possibility.
It was through songbooks that I knew about the trend of repurposing popular songs of the '60s and '70s. It seemed to be a short-lived trend.
Nice find! I keep thinking about putting together a collection of Pop Jesus music from the period, and any number of these selections would fit the bill.
And I love when they sing the words of one song to tune of another! O Little Town Of Bethlehem to House of the Rising Sun was a great version by The Joy Strings, an English Jesus Pop band you're probably aware of. Good stuff!
Similarly to the new blogger interface, there is a trend found in so many things. I'm still looking for a good new (but old-fashined) vacuum cleaner not looking like a extraterrester machine. All brands have the same look from now on. I'm too old surely, my adaptability is now at its minimum
Ernie--I'd never heard of the Joy Strings. I'm not very familiar with the history of Jesus music, which Wikipedia has starting in the late 1960s. All I know is that there doesn't seem to have been a single type. I have an LP put out by Hope Publishing, which seems to coincide with one or more of their songbooks. What's the term for such tie-ins? I think you've used the term at your blog. A type of industry promo. Anyway, glad you like. This one, I grabbed without hesitation. Glad I didn't have to pay an eBay price.
Bob--I just replaced a simply designed Shark vac, and the new one was easy to master--but I've seen the type you're talking about. They look like space shuttle consoles. I don't want a vac that requires a one-hour learning curve...
I just meant the seemingly sudden presence of Jesus in the pop music charts at the end of the sixties, beginning of the seventies. Spirit In The Sky, Jesus Is Just Alright, My Sweet Lord, the whole Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack, even Eleven Long Haired Friends Of Jesus In A Chartreuse Microbus! :)
Wowza on that thrift find! They're getting fewer and fewer these days. I was lucky to find a very nice double cassette deck on half-price day, so I paid $3.49. Now I can finally transfer my old tapes, unheard since my own deck died some 15 years ago. Just mask up before expeditions, all -- thrifters ain't so hot about it.
Wonderful notes...thanks.
My pleasure. Hope you enjoyed the innocent sounds!
Diane,
On that note, I waltzed into the St. Vincent de Paul thrift... without my mask. I had totally forgotten. Neither of the clerks had noticed. I found five LPs, and I had to pull my shirt over my face for a makeshift mask in order to complete the transaction. My only excuse was an epic rainfall--I was worried about getting into the store without drowning, so I forgot all about my face covering.
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