{"id":5889,"date":"2014-07-03T05:30:51","date_gmt":"2014-07-03T09:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=5889"},"modified":"2024-08-01T09:01:19","modified_gmt":"2024-08-01T13:01:19","slug":"keith-allison-man-of-action-part-four","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2014\/07\/03\/keith-allison-man-of-action-part-four\/","title":{"rendered":"Keith Allison: Man of Action (Part Four)"},"content":{"rendered":"

continued from Part Three<\/a>…<\/em><\/p>\n

Bill Kopp:<\/strong> A guy I vaguely know put together some unauthorized DVDs of It’s Happening<\/em> episodes. He sent me copies and I reviewed them. The next day he got a cease-and-desist order from Dick Clark Productions!<\/span><\/p>\n

Keith Allison:<\/strong> I just talked to the archivist over there [at DCP]. They contacted me; they’re talking about putting together a bunch of Where the Action Is<\/em> stuff, and putting it out on DVD.<\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> They are finally<\/em> thinking of doing that?<\/span><\/p>\n

KA:<\/strong> Well, they contacted me a couple of years ago, and they came back and said it would cost so much money. But [this time] they said, \u201cWhat if we didn’t use any of the stuff from the record company, but used the stuff that you guys recorded [at Armand Steiner<\/strong>‘s Sound Recorders]. Who owns that stuff?\u201d I said, \u201cDick Clark Productions!\u201d We were work-for-hire, and it was cut at Steiner’s or wherever. So all they’d need to do is get song clearances from the publishers.<\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> and that’s<\/em> the stuff that all us hardcore fans really want! Because those tracks are the whole band \u2013 including Revere \u2013 playing live in the studio.<\/span><\/p>\n

KA:<\/strong> Yeah. It’s The Raiders, and me<\/em>. On guitar and\/or piano. And Steve Alaimo <\/strong>and Linda Scott<\/strong>, the whole cast doing the \u201cfamily numbers,\u201d y’know.<\/p>\n

Someone sent me a bunch of DVDs of kinescopes of Where the Action Is<\/em>. And I was surprised that Steve and I did so many duets. We did medleys of Little Richard<\/strong> songs, and medleys of something else. One of the greatest cuts of all was all of us doing [the doowop arrangement of] \u201cBlue Moon.\u201d [sings the bom-ditty-bom part] We each took part of that part and drew it out; it was the funniest thing you ever heard.<\/p>\n

When I joined the show, The Raiders \u2013 before they got so busy \u2013 would cut fourteen, sixteen songs in an afternoon. And there were no overdubs; it was two-track.<\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> that material is the Holy Grail for Raiders fans…<\/span><\/p>\n

KA:<\/strong> Do you know that I had the tapes for all those tracks? In a storage place. And I lost it all. Every one of the damn quarter-inch playback tapes. I had every one<\/em> of ’em. It was a big box full of ’em.<\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> When you say \u201clost…\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

KA:<\/strong> The place was robbed, or flooded, or something. All my memorabilia. Amplifiers. Multi-track masters of Ringo<\/strong> and me at Tittenhurst. All kinds of stuff. But the biggest loss was every one of those tracks we cut for Where the Action Is<\/em>. Evidently, whoever got all that stuff kept the stuff that looked like it was worth money: armoires and stuff. They probably looked at the box of tapes and thought, \u201cThrow this shit out.\u201d They probably had no idea what they had.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> One of your original tunes \u2013 in fact, the only original on the first release of In Action<\/em> album \u2013 \u201cFreeborn Man\u201d went on to become something of a standard. I don’t know how many versions of it have been recorded…<\/span><\/p>\n

KA:<\/strong> I don’t either. I’ll tell you, one time \u2013 I don’t know what year this would have been…must have been around 1970 \u2013 Johnny Cash<\/strong> had the TV show in Nashville. It was very successful. It was eclectic, and a highly watched show. Well, he went on tour with that, and he had The Oak Ridge Boys<\/strong>, Carl Perkins<\/strong>. Anyway, one might my sister called me from San Antonio: \u201cKeith! You won’t believe this, but we went to see the Johnny Cash show. And Carl Perkins opened the show with ‘Freeborn Man’!\u201d And then I found out that all the great bluegrass guys started cutting it.<\/p>\n

When I did it, when we put on the vocals, Mark had come in to sing on it with me. After I was finished with that, I was moving on to background vocals for the album with Gary Usher<\/strong> and Glen Campbell<\/strong>. We did that on the all the songs I cut, with the exclusion of The Raiders things. Glen had shown up when we were still working on \u201cFreeborn Man.\u201d And he was in the control room. He said, \u201cThat’s a great song! Who wrote that?\u201d I said, \u201cWe did.\u201d He asked, \u201cWould you guys send a tape over to Capitol?\u201d So we ran off a quarter-inch tape of it. Then he cut it, and it was going to be his next single.<\/p>\n

And then his producer said, \u201cY’know, I got this other song in. I want to cut this other song before we release ‘Freeborn Man,’ and see how it turns out.\u201d and then they cut \u201cGentle on My Mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> Always the bridesmaid, never the bride, huh?<\/span><\/p>\n

KA:<\/strong> Yeah! How many times can I tell you this kind of story? And every one of ’em is true.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

So he had it in the can. It wasn’t the single, but it ended up on an album. And then he had \u201cBy the time I Get to Phoenix.\u201d But it’s on an album called A New Place in the Sun<\/em>. It sold well over a million copies. And then The Outlaws<\/strong> cut it down in Georgia, and they<\/em> sold well over a million copies.<\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> Junior Brown<\/strong> did a great version of it…<\/p>\n

KA:<\/strong> Bill Monroe<\/strong> cut it. Jerry Lee Lewis<\/strong> cut it. Jimmy Martin<\/strong> cut the definitive bluegrass version of it. Dan Tyminski<\/strong> of Union Station<\/strong> does it; it’s fabulous. One night I was watching TV in bed in New York. I was channel surfing because my wife was already asleep. I ran across some show, a Pine Knob Theatre thing out of Lexington Kentucky. This song starts, and it’s the Rounder Records All-stars<\/strong>. It was Alison Krauss<\/strong>, Jerry Douglas<\/strong>, Bela Fleck<\/strong>, and Tony Rice<\/strong>. And they’re into the second verse before I realize. I was half asleep. I bolted straight up in bed and yelled, \u201cHoly shit!\u201d And I turned it way up. It blew me away.<\/p>\n

BK:<\/strong> So I guess when you wrote it, you had absolutely no idea it was going to be a hit.<\/span><\/p>\n

KA:<\/strong> It was well into a life of its own before I even heard about it. It’s kind of like Mike Stoller<\/strong> coming back from Europe, getting off the boat, and Jerry Leiber<\/strong> saying to him, \u201cWe’ve got to get to work. We’ve got a hit with ‘Hound Dog.’\u201d And Stoller says, \u201c’Hound Dog’ with Big Mama Thornton<\/strong>?\u201d \u201cNo. It’s this kid, Elvis Presley<\/strong>!\u201d \u201cWho the hell is that?\u201d \u201cI don’t know. But the damn thing’s taking off!\u201d<\/p>\n

Click to continue<\/a>…<\/em><\/p>\n

Follow \u201cthe_musoscribe\u201d on \"\" Twitter<\/a> and get notified
\nwhen new features, reviews and essays are published.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

continued from Part Three… Bill Kopp: A guy I vaguely know put together some unauthorized DVDs of It’s Happening episodes. He sent me copies and I reviewed them. The next […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,51,62,64],"tags":[1235,1668,1796],"class_list":["post-5889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interview","category-pop","category-rawk","category-reissue","tag-keith-allison","tag-paul-revere-and-the-raiders","tag-real-gone-music","cat-41-id","cat-51-id","cat-62-id","cat-64-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5889","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=5889"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27890,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5889\/revisions\/27890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}