Here’s another live demo from the same 1971 session that brought us Kendell’s “Walk on the Water” and “Have a Cigar”, among others. This one was written during his time in San Anselmo, where he lived just up the hill from a popular club called “The Lion’s Share.” The club hosted all manner of bay area notables like the relocated Van Morrison, the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and the Sons of Champlin. When Kendell wasn’t gigging there himself, he’d frequently hang out until closing time. Kendell characterizes “Get in a Groove” as being among his “barroom ballads,” although it will probably lift your spirits a bit more than that category might suggest.
In this live radio recording of “Gypsy Dance,” you can hear Kendell giving a stylistic nod to Van Morrison in his vocal delivery. It turns out that shortly after he moved to San Francisco, he and Rig drummer Rick Shlosser were offered jobs by Morrison – Kendell as leader of his backup unit and Shlosser, of course, as drummer. Part of the deal would be that Kendell could have full access to the band for his own projects. For reasons Kendell in retrospect “can’t really figure,” he opted out (although Shlosser said yes).
It’s easy to hear about this now and to think “oops!”, but talking with Kendell, it’s clear that the gravity of the prospect was hardly lost on him then. Two big factors for him to consider were Morrison’s famously thorny demeanor, which he’d had many chances to observe up close, and his own percolating recording ambitions, which would have had to have been set aside to some extent. Nonetheless, Kendell’s closeness to so many in the entourage enabled him to catch Morrison live a few hundred times. So much so that his admiration for the Irishman, as he puts it, “resulted in an experimental change of style that wasn’t quite resolved and took a while to assimilate.” “Gypsy Dance” comes from this era and would have been included on the ‘72 Columbia LP. For now, though, we’ve got this live radio version which, thankfully, still survives.
Let’s get the weekend going with another one of Kendell’s lost gems. This one, like “Apple Pickin’ Time,” was recorded in San Francisco during the spring of ’72 when he was working as a street singer on Fisherman’s Wharf.
This next track by Kendell comes from his time in L.A., when he was adjusting, as he puts it, to being “just another nobody” in a town where you “had to be careful not to step on a songwriter in the aisles at the local Ralph’s supermarket.” Leaving his heady and heartbreaking time in S.F. behind, he ended up staying in a cottage that happened to be owned by Gram Parson’s manager, who was also an ex-Navy buddy of the already-jailed Charles Manson. Unwelcome and unfriendly visits from Manson’s people, as well as the LAPD, who were exploring the landlord’s curious gardening habits, made Kendell’s eviction – in order to make way for Emmylou Harris – a matter of understandable relief. Kendell then moved in with a roommate who had a couple of teenage sons, and “Sergeant Barkley and Little Tim” is a tribute to one of the boys’ friends, who had gotten in the habit of “liberating the property of the undeserving” and sharing it with others. This sticky-fingered would-be Robin Hood whose ongoing rivalry with one Sgt. Barkley made for another memorable song from Kendell.
Another installment of tracks from Kendell’s 1971 live demo sessions. These were both influenced by his years worshiping at a storefront church in Harlem during the sixties. As he puts it, “my experience at Gospel Church opened many doors. I began to explore the available records of then contemporary gospel artists I could find, in addition to Mahalia [Jackson]. Marion Williams stands out, among others. In any case, I was moved to try to create some songs of my own in that style, and these are 2 examples.” Jim Post, incidentally, recorded “Walk on Water” several years later on Fantasy Records.
“Silver Engine” is a track from the same demo sessions that brought us “Buzzy and Jimmy.” As Kendell puts it, “it’s based on a dream I had which reinterpreted a story my grandmother had once told me about the rapture when I was a little boy.” This is one of Kendell’s better known tracks, and it’s been recorded by a number of artists such as Jim Post and bluegrass group the Morgan Bros., among others. And now, here it is – Kendell’s own unissued version.
From a live demo recorded by Kendell in Chicago in 1976 comes this beautiful track, “Buzzy and Jimmy.” There’s no telling how many albums’ worth of quality material the man has socked away.
Thanks, by the way, to BYM visitor Chris who points out that some of Kendell’s songs can be heard on albums by Jim Post (formerly of Friend and Lover), Redhead, and folk duo Reilly and Maloney.
More prime Americana from Kendell Kardt’s unreleased 1971 Buddy Bolden LP. This is a sweet slice of Old California that features the fiddle of Bay area bluegrass stalwart Ed Neff. Kendell refers to “Mr. White’s Song” as his “tribute to Gene Autry.” Mr. White, incidentally, is a former police chief of San Anselmo who’d built the Bay area house Kendell was living in while recording the Buddy Bolden album. Kendell liked the house so much that he located Mr. White in a retirement home after which the two developed a friendship. It’s a song that anyone from Neil Young to Mr. Autry himself would have been proud to have in his catalog. (Postcard freaks: The above says “Beautiful Foot Hills, Santa Clara County, Ca.)
Here’s another track from Kendell Kardt’s unreleased 1971 solo LP, Buddy Bolden. It’s called “Black Train,” and it features Jerry Garcia on pedal steel as well as Ronnie Montrose on lead guitar and Hawaiian lap steel. Kendell wrote the song with Rig guitarist Artie Richards for a friend of Richards who had recently overdosed on heroin. (A pretty different version of this song, by the way, appears on the 1975 Warner Brothers Presents…Montrose LP.) Grim subtext aside, the song really smokes. So give it a listen and stay tuned – there’s likely more on the way. [Update: “Black Train” officially had three writers, as Richards has pointed out in the comments – Richards, Kardt, and Matt Fried.]
Not long ago I wrote here about Rig, a country rock early seventies outfit I’d gotten curious about. Their only LP – long out of print – was released by Capitol in 1970 and had Elliott Mazer as a co-producer. I’d been especially intrigued by songwriter Kendell Kardt, whose preoccupation with old Americana subjects, as well as his memorable and playful treatment of them, gave the Rig album so much of its personality. After tracking down Kardt in New Jersey, I found out that shortly after Rig unraveled in 1971, he’d gone to San Francisco to record an entire solo LP for Capitol, which featured the helping hands of members of the Grateful Dead and New Riders of the Purple Sage, among others. Due primarily to shakeups in the A&R dept., the finished album – which was to be named after Buddy Bolden, the early 20th century New Orleans jazz icon – was shelved and Kardt’s recording career never really recovered.
When I heard about this, I realized I’d just tripped over another one of those Great Lost LPs that might have made a significant contribution to its era but instead languished in the vaults thanks to music biz shenanigans. I’m really hoping that the album can one day be heard the way Kardt intended it to be. It’ll take a certain bit of legal wrangling to get it properly released, although it’s nothing any moderately well-functioning label wouldn’t be able to handle rather effortlessly. So here’s hoping. The happy news, though, is that Kardt has given me permission to post the album’s terrific title track, never issued anywhere, right here. Sounding like something that would have fit in snugly on any of the early Jesse Winchester or Delaney and Bonnie albums (the female voices, by the way, belong to Barbara Mauritz of Lamb and Pamela Polland of the Gentle Soul), it also glows with the same unique personality you can hear on Kardt’s Rig tracks. “Buddy Bolden” makes a pretty clear case for why the album finally needs to be heard. Give it a listen and see what I’m talking about.
