OFF TOPIC with Steve Mixup. A place for me to tell the odd story or two about the post war rock generation. If they couldn’t change the world at least they brought us some wonderful music.
While I was helping out, sourcing songs that might feature on a CD compilation “Northern Songs -The Continuing Story Of The Beatles – (2018)”, I fell upon an unusual cover of The Beatles – I’m Fixing A Hole (not used) and explored further. Jackie and Roy were a jazz vocal team consisting of husband and wife singer Jackie Cain and singer/pianist Roy Kral. They first joined forces in 1946, married and sang together for 56 years. A perfect fit, their voices an octave apart, worked beautifully in an easy listening style that maybe made them somewhat overlooked in serious Jazz circles but made them many fans elsewhere.
The purists would point out that their 1968 album “Grass” by The Electric Jackie and Roy was a mistake, trying to make a ‘pop’ record. Adding to their jazz cannon with covers of The Beatles, Donovan and The Bee Gee’s they made some interesting arrangements to the two Beatles songs on that album in particular. Fixin’ Hole (as they called it) is a favourite McCartney song of mine and both this and Lady Madonna have unusual arrangements which change tempo’s and have psychedelic breakdown endings which must have been a musical departure for them but a delight for me.
Fixin’ Hole with Jackie’s fabulous voice and a wonderful keyboard break which showcase’s Roy’s piano playing ends with a strange last minute of weird noises, clanging and vocal screams. After an up-tempo middle section Lady Madonna drops into an other-worldly last minute and half with mysterious voices crackling through the strange harmony as though, to my ears, Karen Carpenter and the west coast group H.P. Lovecraft had joined forces. Wonderful.
Hear them on YouTube
As always, listening to interesting covers of Beatles songs reminds you how good those songs were. So here are two others they interpreted both taken from the 1966 album Changes, released on Verve in 1966.