DOWN TO THE NITTY GRITTY THE NITTY GRITTY DIRT BAND’s Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy may have been a success,
spawning the hit single ‘Mr Bojangles’, and was their second album to chart, but perhaps due to its pop-orientated sound it has wrongly been overlooked in recent years. There’s no doubt though that this is one of the finest country-rock albums to be released in that boomyear of 1970. So, through it, let’s ponder how country-rock came to be. Why it came to be. And most importantly, considering that The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band have been at it for over 40 years, how the genre has persevered.
JON ‘MOJO’ MILLS spoke with JOHN MCEUEN. Years may have passed, but the white haired musician still looks every bit the country-rocker and certainly still has affinity for the music he helped forge in the late ’60s.
“I
always feel that people were trying to harken back to a more real time of America,” states McEuen regally when asked why
so many late ’60s groups turned away from acid rock and loud guitars. But first let’s back track to the beginning of the group.
Beginning in ’65 the Dirt Band were just another bunch of wide-eyed kids who’d grown out of Orange County’s Paradox club. Centred around singer/guitarist Jeff Hanna, the group gained and lost members at a rate of knots (including for a brief tenure a young Jackson Browne). Managed by local enthusiast William McEuen, whose fiddle, banjo and guitar playing brother John replaced Browne, the Dirt Band made quite an impression on the local scene. For lads barely out of their teens, dressing in vintage ’30s suits and adopting a manner fashioned on the past was viewed as somewhat odd. To top it off, their novelty jug band sound was something that could not be left unnoticed. “Looking back to the past was a validation that something different might work,” notions John McEuen. “If The New
50
Vaudeville Band hadn’t put out ‘Winchester Cathedral’ we might not have gotten a record deal. Although what we did was really nothing like New Vaudeville Band.” Indeed in ’66 and ’67 music and fashion were progressing rapidly, morals were changing and it almost seemed that the past had been all but forgotten by many. That said, consider The Kinks’ fascination with music hall and the Edwardian inspirations that shaped Sgt Pepper via Lennon’s love of vintage nick knacks and ephemera that included granny specs and circus posters. Then there was the jug band craze that was sweeping America and, conversely, the Edwardian Wild West suits worn by San Francisco’s acid munching proto-hippies The Charlatans. These factors all pointed towards the simpler halcyon days of the turn of the century. For the Dirt Band at least, this may have been born out of necessity instead of intent. “What we wore onstage in the early years was more determined by the fact that for $2 we could get a whole suit from St Vincents De Paul’s or The Salvation Army,” laughs McEuen. “The ’30s look was really hip and also very cheap. You could outfit the whole band for $15.”
William McEuen was a shrewd operator and built upon the group’s local popularity landing them a deal on the LA label Liberty. Debut single ‘Buy For Me The Rain’ (written by Paradox friends Steve Noonan and Greg Copeland) took the Dirt Band into the Top 50, and deservedly so. The single version is marked by that “now sound” of the electric harpsichord with flourishes of strings and a prevalent psychedelic folk-rock feel not unlike The Byrds, The Monkees, Hearts & Flowers and any number of LA bands that would unsuspectingly lay the path for country-rock. Interestingly, the live version the Dirt Band released on their ’69 filler LP Alive (which had been cut in ’67 at The Troubadour) replaces the ornate studio production with McEuen’s delicate plucked banjo, the choral harmonies are toned down and – blow me – it sounds uncannily like country-rock.
Eager to build on the success of the single Liberty followed it up with the LP The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in early ’67. Often comedic, at times too much so, it veered from excellent psychedelic folk-rock (‘Song To Jutta’ – equally as good as anything by The Byrds
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