Tag Archives: The Lovin’ Spoonful

Nashville Cats on a Tennessee Ant Hill

The Lovin’ Spoonful

Yeah, I was just fourteen way back in 1966 and “you might say I was a musical proverbial knee-high.” My entire life swirled around the sounds of the times as a compulsive record collector and a late-night radio-dial twirler who was all ears and in possession of a Silvertone guitar bought straight out of the Sears and Roebuck catalog. I was teaching myself how to play by sheer repetitive listening, catching the latest riffs of the day from the opening notes from songs like “Sounds of Silence” and “Last Train to Clarksville.”

It was the year of the mixed bag, with the airwaves not dominated by one band or genre over another, but a hodgepodge of one-offs and classics. Wilson Pickett blended into the soundtrack with Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass and Ike and Tina; Nancy’s boots walked alongside The Supremes’ chiffon dresses and choreography; The Beatles, Stones, and Beach Boys pumped out one hit after another, and one song released the week of Thanksgiving became my obsession.

Yeah, I was just thirteen, you might say I was a musical proverbial knee-high
When I heard a couple new-sounding tunes on the tubes and they blasted me sky-high
And the record man said every one is a yellow sun record from Nashville
And up north there ain’t nobody buys them and I said, “But I will.”

Released two years before Gram Parsons and the Byrds’ Sweetheart of The Rodeo, considered by many to be the keystone to modern day Americana, John Sebastian’s slightly geographically misplaced love for country music and the folks who played it — Sun Records was 200 miles away in Memphis — it was both a lyrically poetic and instrumental masterpiece that didn’t sound like anything else being played on the radio at the time. “Nashville Cats” was the ninth track of the Lovin’ Spoonful’s third studio album, Hums of The Lovin’ Spoonful, and each song sounds different from the next. The first big hits were “Summer In The City” and “Rain on the Roof,” and the only commonality with the other 15 tracks were that Sebastian either wrote or co-wrote each song and sang lead on most.

Well, there’s thirteen hundred and fifty-two guitar pickers in Nashville
And they can pick more notes than the number of ants on a Tennessee ant hill
Yeah, there’s thirteen hundred and fifty-two guitar cases in Nashville
And any one that unpacks ‘is guitar could play twice as better than I will

I’ve read that Johnny Cash’s “I Walk The Line” was one of Sebastian’s influences, since he was indeed just thirteen and living in Greenwich Village when it was released on Sun Records. The real story of how the song came about can be found here in this interview Sebastian did in 2016 for Epiphone, but the inspiration was the late Danny “The Telemaster” Gatton.

Zal Yanovsky was the guitarist and co-founder of the Lovin’ Spoonful, and I must have listened to him playing on “Nashville Cats” ten thousand times while trying to capture and replicate that great lead he did on his big Fender. When he passed away in 2002, Rolling Stone ran his obituary and quoted Sebastian on his playing: “He could play like Elmore James, he could play like Floyd Kramer, he could play like Chuck Berry. He could play like all these people, yet he still had his own overpowering personality. Out of this we could, I thought, craft something with real flexibility.”

Thirty-three years after it first came out, Del McCoury and his band covered it on his album The Family. Although I’m not able to confirm it, I think he may also have performed it with Steve Earle on The Jools Holland Show in 1999. In addition to Johnny Cash’s version and the Homer and Jethro parody, it was also done by Flatt and Scruggs. And while I hate to throw in this pretty awful novelty record, for you completists out there, this is The Lovin’ Cohens.

Nashville cats, play clean as country water
Nashville cats, play wild as mountain dew
Nashville cats, been playin’ since they’s babies
Nashville cats, get work before they’re two

I’ll close this out with Tony Jackson, the former Marine and banking executive who had a viral video (over ten million Facebook views) with George Jones’ “The Grand Tour” a couple of years ago. Hustled into a studio to record his debut album that came out in May 2017, he was backed by an incredible group of musicians and covered “Nashville Cats” for his first single, featuring John Sebastian, Vince Gill, Steve Cropper, Billy Thomas, Glen Worf, and steel guitar legend Paul Franklin. It’s a mighty fine version of the classic song that takes me right back to those late nights in my bedroom alone with my Silvertone, tryin’ hard to “pick more notes than the number of ants on a Tennessee ant hill.”

This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.

Welcome Back: A Spoonful of John Sebastian

John Sebastian (left), with Happy Traum. March 2016. Photo by Jane Traum.

At about ten after ten on Christmas Eve, I was sitting on the couch across from my oldest son, each of us engrossed in our own digital universes. Mindlessly killing time by scrolling through Facebook on my phone, an image posted by Woodstock-based musician Happy Traum caught my eye. Painted by his mother back in 1929, I saw that some mutual friends of ours had already hit the “like” button and I read a personal holiday memory of Happy’s mom that was left by Catherine Sebastian.

Although we’ve never met, I knew Catherine was both John’s wife and a photographer whose work I’ve seen and admired. You can read about her work here.. But it was at that very moment, as if Santa himself had just slid down the chimney carrying an autoharp and harmonica, that I heard the following song blast through the speakers of my son’s computer.

Recognizing the opening notes of one of the Lovin’ Spoonful’s most famous songs, my head shot up quickly as I looked at him with bewilderment and asked how he knew what I was reading. He looked over and asked what I was talking about. C’mon dude … how would you know to play this and what the hell is it? He shrugged and looked away. Does that a lot.

Susan, sometimes spelled Suzan if directly taken from the Japanese katakana transliteration of her name, is a pop singer and model who began recording in the early eighties, and often collaborated with members of the Yellow Magic Orchestra. Her records were never released in America. That my twenty-two year old NYU music major graduate would actually know of this obscure recording would not be surprising if you knew him. That he chose to play it at this particular moment was the absolute f*cking Miracle on 34th Street.

When I woke up on Christmas morning, I had a song in my head, one written by John Sebastian and the late Lowell George. Still laying in bed, it took only a minute to locate it in my digital library.

“Face of Appalachia” is from Sebastian’s fourth solo album, Tarzana Kid. It was produced by Erik Jacobsen, who I believe did most if not all of the Spoonful’s records. The list of musicians and backup singers who played on the album, in addition to Lowell George’s guitar and vocals, include the Pointer Sisters, Emmylou Harris, David Grisman, Ry Cooder, David Lindley, Phil Everly, Jim Gordon, Buddy Emmons, Amos Garrett, Kelly Shanahan, and Ron Koss.

The album originally came out in 1974 but was never really promoted by the label. In 2006, Collector’s Choice Music reissued it along with the other four of Sebastian’s Reprise Records solo albums. In the new liner notes for Tarzana Kid, music journalist and author of Music USA Richie Unterberger wrote:

“With so many skilled singers and instrumentalists pitching in, it’s unsurprising that Tarzana Kid travels across a considerable range of rock and folk combinations, though this eclecticism had been a constant feature in Sebastian’s work. The singer-songwriter had a rather overlooked eye for ethnic styles that were not widely known in the US in the early 1970s, using a steel band from Trinidad on his 1971 LP The Four of Us, which also included a cover of a tune by then-obscure zydeco giant Clifton Chenier.

Tarzana Kid‘s opening track, a cover of Jimmy Cliff’s “Sitting in Limbo” (featured in the classic 1972 movie The Harder They Come), was a pretty adventurous move at a time when reggae was just starting to make inroads into the American consciousness. Certainly one of the most noted tracks on Tarzana Kid was “Dixie Chicken,” which guest guitarist Lowell George had previously recorded as part of Little Feat on the 1973 album of the same name.”

If I had time to write 50,000 words instead of 500, I’d love to share my love, respect, and admiration for the music that John Sebastian has created and collaborated on. His Wikipedia page is a damn good place to start if you’d like to learn more. From jug band music to film and television work, doing classic sessions with the Doors to CSNY, playing with NRBQ and his own J-band, appearance in the film documentary Chasin’ Gus’ Ghost, he’s a great storyteller, performer, music instructor, and activist.

I’ll close this out exactly how I got here, through Happy Traum. On his website bio, it notes that he studied guitar with the blues master Brownie McGhee. Coincidentally, the Lovin’ Spoonful recorded McGhee’s “Sportin’ Life” on their album Do You Believe in Magic?, and Sebastian revived it on Tarzana Kid, although it seems he chose to skip this verse:

Now, I’m goin’ to change my ways
I’m gettin’ older each and every day
When I was young and foolish
I was easy, easy let astray.

This was originally posted as an Easy Ed Broadside column, at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com.