![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/johnnys_uncalled_four.jpg\")
It\u2019s among life\u2019s little ironies that some of us are lucky enough to cross paths with individuals whom we see as regular-ol\u2019-people-like-us, only to discover that under their unassuming exterior, they\u2019re quite remarkable or noteworthy. That happened with the team at Wick\/Daptone; they had long been working with mastering engineer John Golden when they stumbled upon some of his earliest work.<\/p>\n
Now, when Wick\u2019s Mikey Post met Golden, the latter was already well known as a mastering engineer par excellent. His skills have been applied to recordings by everyone from Black Flag to The Fifth Dimension. But as Post explains in an introductory essay printed on the inner sleeve of this new LP, as Johnny Golden, the young Ohio musician had made recordings with his band Johnny\u2019s Uncalled Four. And while these previously unheard tapes don\u2019t qualify as the legendary great lost rock album, they are an authentic and engaging slice of what Post succinctly calls \u201cpost-Elvis\/pre-British Invasion, unadulterated rock \u2018n\u2019 roll.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Uncalled four were at their best when digging into twangy instrumentals like Duane Eddy\u2019s \u201cMoving \u2018n\u2019 Groovin.\u201d With Golden on lead guitar \u2013 and with stellar production values \u2013 the quarter ripped it up. Cut juat months before the Beatles stormed our shores, the band traded very much in that particular style of the era. The band was solid, but Golden was the chief talent, singing lead on tunes like a cover of Buddy Holly\u2019s \u201cMaybe Baby\u201d and then \u2013 with seeming effortlessness \u2013 shifting to lead guitar, then back to vocals.<\/p>\n
Singer, guitarist…songwriter. Johnny Golden composed a number of tunes in those days, and while \u201cWhy Do I Wonder?\u201d is pretty standard stuff, there\u2019s a guilelessness about the tune s that makes them a delightful retro trip. \u201cDaydream\u201d is a stock instrumental a la \u201cSleepwalk,\u201d but it too is nice in its own way, especially seeing as it\u2019s the product of efforts by youngsters. The stomping \u201cPlease Say,\u201d on the other hand, is a nice slab of proto-garage. The lyrics are a bit on the tame side, but the arrangement has a whiff of teenage snarling petulance that makes it a winner.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m mentioning it now so as not to end the review with a discussion of it:<\/em> A cover of Gershwin\u2019s Summertime\u201d is a bit listless, but then that quality isn\u2019t miles away from the feel the song\u2019s supposed to have. Unfortunately, it\u2019s easily the weakest (in fact, only<\/i> weak) cut on the whole LP, and a dubious way in which to conclude a delightful album.<\/p>\n So let\u2019s back up and dig in: A reading of the DC5\u2019s \u201cGlad all Over\u201d is pretty ace, and doesn\u2019t shamelessly ape the original. Link Wray\u2019s \u201cJack the Ripper\u201d is delivered in manic style. A twangy, Shadows-styled take on \u201cHouse of the Rising Sun\u201d works surprisingly well. A swooning cover of Johnny Otis\u2019 \u201cEvery Beat of My Heart\u201d would have been a necessary slow-dance number in the Uncalled Four\u2019s live set. Golden\u2019s original \u201cExhibit A\u201d has a Del Shannon flavor and features some highly accomplished lead guitar work.<\/p>\n Nailing it on 13 out of 14 tracks is a high standard for any artist, and doing it as a bunch of kids in pre-Beatles America (and then releasing it to a discerning 2023 audience) is a supreme achievement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s among life\u2019s little ironies that some of us are lucky enough to cross paths with individuals whom we see as regular-ol\u2019-people-like-us, only to discover that under their unassuming exterior, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25938,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,49,62,65,73],"tags":[5227,5228],"class_list":["post-25937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-compilation","category-new-release","category-rawk","category-review","category-vinyl","tag-john-golden","tag-johnnys-uncalled-four","cat-19-id","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","cat-65-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25937"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25939,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25937\/revisions\/25939"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}