Remembering Richie Havens 1/21/1941 - 4/22/2013

Richie Havens was a regular performer in the Greenwich Village folk scene at the same time as Dylan and often sang a "A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall," assuming their mutual acquaintance Gene Michaels wrote the tune. "I used to have arguments about that with different people. It was terrible [that I didn't know]," 

Havens recalled in a 1994 DISCoveries interview. 

“I remember singing it at Folk City and a guy walking up to me with tears in his eyes, and telling me it was his favourite version of that song – and then walking away. I headed down to the dressing room down in the basement, and Dave Van Ronk was coming up.  

He said to me, 'Do you know who that was? He wrote that song.'  

I said, 'No, he didn't! Gene Michaels wrote that song.'  

Van Ronk said, 'No, he didn't! Bob Dylan wrote that song, and that was just him!'  

And it blew my mind that he had complimented me for singing one of his songs. At the time, I didn't even realize it."

here

Richie Havens – Live At The Cellar Door And The Santa Monica Civic Auditorium

Wonderful live helping of Richie Havens doing some of his most evocative songs ever. His patter is great too. Easily a four star album, dunno why AM gave it so few, probably just the automatic bias against live discs. If you dig Richie Havens, you absolutely should acquire this superb work.

The album features two concerts from Richie's early-'70s peak; in fact, this performance at the Cellar Door is the one from which his hit recording of Here Comes the Sun was taken! And the Santa Monica show was taped by remote recording whiz Wally Heider, so EXCELLENT sound. Also includes Fire and Rain; God Bless the Child; All Along the Watchtower; No More, No More; Dolphins, and more.

Highly recommended.


Tracklist:

1 Can't Make It Anymore
2 All Along the Watchtower
3 Helplessly Hoping
4 God Bless the Child
5 The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
6 No More, No More
7 Preparation
8 Here Comes the Sun
9 Fire and Rain
10 Superman
11 Dolphins
12 Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen/My Sweet Lord

Richie Havens - My Own Way (1967 / 2012)

In 1967, producer Alan Douglas heard some tapes of solo performances by Richie Havens. In Douglas' own words, as taken from a note on the back cover of this reissue, "We decided that a solo recording was just too difficult to compete in the exploding record market...So we went back to the studio and overdubbed musical backgrounds onto Richie's solo sessions." The results yielded two albums on his own Douglas label, "Electric Havens", and "Richie Havens Record", issued at a time when the singer was reaching much bigger audiences with Verve albums conceived with full-band arrangements from the start. "My Own Way" is a 14-song CD compilation of material from those Douglas LPs, and is flawed in several crucial respects. True, Havens' performances -- largely of traditional or traditional-oriented folk and blues material, though there are more contemporary items like Ray Charles' "Drown in My Own Tears" and Fred Neil's "The Bag I'm In" -- are OK, and characteristic of the style with which Richie came to prominence. However, the overdubs are sometimes notably out of sync with the original contents, smacking of a hurried rush to exploit the folk-rock sound. Even the liner notes concede Douglas' additions were done "to the great displeasure of purists everywhere," and though they're not nearly as controversial or well-known as the posthumous overdubs he laid on some Jimi Hendrix tapes, they can likewise be criticized for insensitivity.

Even if one takes the attitude that the Douglas productions are nonetheless of historical interest, this CD blows an opportunity to gather all of the material in one place, by including only 14 of the 18 tracks from the original LPs. "I'm a Stranger Here" (from Electric Havens) and "I'm Gonna Make You Glad," "It Hurts Me," and "I'm on My Way" (from Richie Havens Record) are all missing, even though there was ample room for their inclusion on the CD, which runs 51 minutes. As another annoyance, there are no songwriting credits. If you do need to find these tracks for their historical interest, it's still preferable to hear them in their entirety than in this slightly abridged and unsatisfactorily packaged version. - www.allmusic.com

Tracklist:

1 C.C. Rider 3:20
2 Oxford Town 3:19
3 Norah's Dove 3:37
4 9000 Miles From Home 3:44
5 Shadow Town 3:55
6 3:10 To Yuma 3:18
7 The Bag I'm In 3:46
8 Drown In My Own Tears 4:20
9 Down In The Valley 4:03
10 Chain Gang 2:49
11 Babe, I'm Leaving 4:36
12 Daddy Roll 'Em 2:40
13 Boots & Spanish Leather 5:38
14 My Own Way 2:11

Richie here at Zero . . .