Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells A Story
Rod the Mod finds his solo footing, headed for stardom, with the Faces in his wake.
6:00 AM GMT 22/06/2011
Features Disc of the day
The Gosdin Brothers
Sounds Of Goodbye
(Capitol, 1968; reissue on Big Beat/Ace 2002)
An aptly titled farewell to an overlooked Bakersfield belter.
Born in Woodland Alabama in 1934, the sixth child in a family of nine Vern "The Voice" Gosdin (who died on April 28 from a stroke) lived a life steeped in music. Although schooled in the family gospel group, who broadcast as the Gosdin Family Gospel Show, it was playing on the southern country circuit with his brother Rex that Vern's fiery musical baptism came about. "Vern and Rex could sound exactly like the Louvin Brothers," Flying Burrito Brother Gib Guilbeau told Alec Palao in 2003, "So they used to play gigs as them... sang all their songs, got paid and split. Nobody ever knew who they really where." Rex and Vern cut their first record, A Lonely Lonesome Street, in Nashville in 1959 before moving to California and becoming part of the early '60s Bakersfield bluegrass scene (Chris Hillman, Jim Dickson, Glen Campbell, Clarence White). Rex and Vern ended up in Chris Hillman's Hillmen. When they disbanded, Vern was asked by Dickson if he (but not his brother) fancied joining a new Beatles-inspired electric folk group called The Byrds. Vern declined, preferring to stick by Rex. Dickson had them open for The Byrds - Vern, Rex, Clarence White and whatever drummer they could find and when Gene Clark split from The Byrds he drafted in Vern, Rex and Clarence to help out on his solo debut. Vern also added guitar and harmonies to The Byrds' Younger Than Yesterday and the duo cut a series of tracks with a backing band of White, Hillman and Michael Clarke. But those tracks either flopped or failed to be released so the brothers cut their hair and then cut the Sounds Of Goodbye LP for Gary S Paxton's Bakersfield International label. Joined by Bakerfield's "wrecking crew" of Clarence White, Gene Parsons, Gib Guilbeau and Wayne Moore the Gosdins went down a melancholy, rough Nashville route: high harmonies, twelve string tapestries and multiple heartaches. It was a sound that McGuinn stole wholesale for his next Byrds incarnation, even going so far as to draft White and Parsons into his band. This compilation brings together that album with every Byrds-related track the brothers ever cut, a melancholy missing link in the late history of '60s country rock.
Andrew Male
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 12/05/2009
Further Listening
Verne Gosdin – Chiseled In Stone (Columbia, 1988)
Gene Clark – With The Gosdin Brothers (Columbia, 1967)
The Byrds – The Ballad Of Easy Rider (Columbia, 1969)
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