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Songs From Venice Beach
Overview
The tracks on this CD were taken from the 2 volume Venice Beach Tapes, recorded in 1985 and originally released on vinyl and on a now deleted Munich Records CD. (The missing tracks are now available on the CD Love You Most of All.) Only one of the tracks selected for this CD was written by Ted, the remainder are cover versions. Highlights are Just My Imagination and Too Busy Thinking About My Baby. For me the magic of the Venice Beach Tapes was the wonderfully sparse recording featuring just Ted and his accoustic guitar. This treatment is far more sympathetic than his recordings with session musicians which, The Next Hundred Years aside, did him no favours. Among his studio albums only The Kershaw Sessions bears comparison. For me Songs From Venice Beach is the quntessential Ted Hawkins CD, if my house was burning down it's the one I would reach for. Well worth the trouble of accquiring.
Availability
USA & online record stores. Released 1995 on Evidence Music. ECD 28000-2
Track Listing
- 1. Searching For My Love
- (Robert Moore)
- 2. I Got What I Wanted
- (Brook Benton/Margie Singleton)
- 3. Ladder of Success
- (Ted Hawkins)
- 4. Having a Party
- (Sam Cooke)
- 5. There Stands the Glass
- (Russ Hull/Mary Schurtz/A. Greisham)
- 6. Quiet Place
- (Samuel Bell/Norman Meade)
- 7. Good Times
- (Sam Cooke)
- 8. Too Busy Thinking About My Baby
- (Norman Whitfield/Janie Bradford/Barrett Strong)
- 9. Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)
- (Barrett Strong/Norman Whitfield)
- 10. He Will Break Your Heart
- (Calvin Carter/Jerry Butler/Curtis Mayfield)
- 11. Gypsy Woman
- (Curtis Mayfield)
- 12. Somebody Have Mercy
- (Sam Cooke)
- 13. Share Your Love With Me
- (Alfred Braggs/Deadric Malone)
- 14. All I Have to offer You Is Me
- (Dallas Frazier/A.L. Owens)
Produced by H. Thorp Minister III
© 1995 Evidence Music Inc
Inlay Notes
When the late Ted Hawkins' The Next Hundred Years was released on Geffen Records in 1994, Americans finally got a chance to hear, en masse, what people in Europe and on Venice Beach had been listening to and celebrating for years: A voice that held within it the complete history of country blues, soul and R&B. And in true fashion, they responded with accolades, cheers, and their pocketbooks. They flocked to clubs to hear him, his record got airplay in the most unlikely places, and people were buying his record in WalMart stores. Even mainstream newspapers and magazines were writing about him and featuring his picture.
Americans were suddenly interested in hearing the story of the Venice Beach street singer who had been a lifelong wanderer, and they felt they had discovered a great new talent. That record with its gorgeous songs and simple production was a revelation to many who had grown up with only the legends of the original bluesmen and souls singers, to those who had heard the music second-hand and had never experienced the thrill of a new voice from the complex, golden age of American music. That it was even possible in the '90s was a shock in itself. After all, hadn't all the surprises already happened!
And then, as suddenly as he seemingly appeared, he went away. Just after Christmas of 1994, as the fanfare and the fame were beginning to approach like a freight train, Ted died from a stroke.
After all the decades of struggle and persistence and bad deals, Ted has one year where he lived the dream he never let go of: that people all over the world would get a chance to hear and respond to his music. I know it's the truth because Ted told me that himself on a cold spring day in a downtown Detroit seafood restaurant.
"If I don't ever get anything else, I am getting this thing now. People are hearing my music and it's making them happy. For years on the beach, I would sing to people all day and make them feel better and they liked me and they paid me well. Now I'm making more people happy and they seem to like me even more. I just want my music to be out there and have people hear me sing, because I have something for them."
But that's far from the whole story. Indeed, it's only a fraction. Truth has a way of reducing some legends, but the truth in Ted's case only makes him bigger, more profound, more heroic, and, hopefully, as time passes and the story gets told to more and more people, he'll become a true American institution. And all the people that heard The Next Hundred Years thought they were in on a discovery? They weren't really, but Ted didn't want to spoil their fun.
The CD you are holding is an integral part of Ted's story. These recordings, made by a young man named H. Thorp Minister, III in Nashville in 1985, have never been available in the United States before. Originally released in two volumes under the title On The Boardwalk: The Venice Beach Tapes, the songs compiled here from those volumes reveal Ted Hawkins as a singer able to interpret other writers' songs with the same passion, mystery and grace that he sang his own. And indeed, it was these tapes that helped establish Ted in Europe.
This collection stands in stark contrast to Ted's other recordings - the two he made for Rounder Records, Watch Your Step in 1982 and Happy Hour in 1986, [I love You Too] the record that he produced himself in 1989 that was only released in England , and most certainly The Next Hundred Years.
What we get here is Ted Hawkins the singer, raw and direct, and Thorp Minister's attempt to capture what he heard on Venice Beach a decade ago with Ted only accompanied by his guitar. The music here is comprised of familiar tunes in the soul and R&B canon, sung by a man who was profoundly moved by both the emotion he found in them and in the mortality they conveyed. They are ambitious efforts, certainly, with Hawkins reading the hits of his own heroes, such as Sam Cooke and Brook Benton. It would be daunting material for anyone to cover; anyone but Ted, that is.
The truth of the matter is that, in the grain of Ted's voice, many of these songs became "real" stories; they weren't metaphors or relics. In Ted's delivery, the story in each, whether it's his own telling Ladder of Success or the classic Having a Party, or All I Have to Offer You is Me, transferred the emotional intent of the writer tenfold. This is the same energy that Tad put into his weekend sessions on the beach, and the same emotion that moved people, thousands of them, who heard them. It's all here on this disc, a document to move your soul from sorrow to joy.
As a man, Ted Hawkins was one of the most fascinating I've ever met. In one afternoon, he told me the story of his life, of his -wandering and drifting and buying a one-way train ticket to a place that didn't get cold. He spoke of his first single, Baby b/w Whole Lotta Women, released on Money Records in 1966, and the pride he felt at having a record out. He told me about singing in downtown L,A. and finding his trademark milk crate, and how at the beach he could make enough money on the weekend to live for the whole week. He also told me he knew where he was going when he died. He had been reading Dr. Raymond Moody's books about near-death experiences and said he knew that God loved him and that he was forgiven for anything that he ever did that hurt anybody. Ted said, without a note of cynicism or irony in his voice, that he knew what mercy, grace and love were, and that nobody could ever take that away from him.
In his last years, Ted Hawkins found people who cared about him and would help him to get his music across. While Ted's record made a critical impact in the U.S., it was only in Australia that he hit the charts, and for him that was good enough, to be on a Billboard chart, any Billboard chart, In fifty-eight years, Ted Hawkins could say he lived his dream and realized it. How many of us can say that! But the most wonderful aspect of his life is that we get to benefit from his having pursued it.
I miss Ted Hawkins; I miss his songs and his voice and his spirit, but I can continue to take comfort in the body of work that he left. This CD is not only a fitting testament, it's evidence of an original American story.
Thom Jurek, Metro Times, Detroit