Donât forget your past...while you look to the future.
The newly re-mastered two-disc set featuring 25 rare & unreleased recordings and 1968 vintage radio interview
Packaged in a hardbound booklet with rare photos and sleeve notes featuring commentary from Valentino, Elliott, Waronker, and lyricist Bob Durand
After releasing the baroque-pop classic Triangle in 1967, The Beau Brummels shifted gears radically the following year when singer Sal Valentino, guitarist Ron Elliott and producer Lenny Waronker traveled to Nashville to explore the crossroads of country and rock. Working with some of Music City's hottest session players, the West Coast group recorded BRADLEY'S BARN, an album whose fusion of styles earned critical acclaim, but was too far ahead of the curve for the average rock fan to enjoy commercial success. Rhino Handmade rediscovers this unheralded gem of early country-rock and gives it its due as a two-disc set that comes in a hardbound booklet with rare photos and lengthy sleeve notes by Alec Palao that feature commentary from Valentino, Elliott, Waronker, and lyricist Bob Durand. The collection includes the original Warner Bros. album remastered by Dan Hersch and Andrew Sandoval, 25 rare and unreleased tracks, and a 1968 radio interview with Valentino and Elliott. Unlike the stripped down approach The Byrds employed on Sweetheart of the Rodeo (which was recorded around the same time), Waronker summoned a multilayered "guitar orchestra" for BRADLEY'S BARN, using it to explore Elliott's complex melodies, and create clean but intricate arrangements to showcase Valentino's velveteen voice. The band heard on most of BRADLEY'S BARN features Elliott, Valentino, keyboardist David Briggs, and bassist Norbert Putnam, plus guitarist Jerry Reed and drummer Kenny Buttrey, both of whom played with Bob Dylan during his Nashville years. The first disc contains the newly remastered original album supplemented by several bonus tracks, including three previously unreleased songs: the alternate version of "I Love You Mama"; the 1967 demo for "Just A Little Bit Of Lovin'" recorded in Hollywood; and the stereo mix of the demo for "Black Crow." Even more unissued recordings are revealed on the second disc, which features: alternate takes of "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" and "Lift Me"; an alternate mix of "Love Can Fall A Long Way Down"; an alternate demo of "Another"; the demo for "Confessions"; and a cover of the classic country weeper "Long Black Veil." The disc also contains several of Valentino's post-Brummels solo recordings including several singles from the era making their debut on CD as well as three more unreleased songs: an alternate version of "An Added Attraction (Come And See Me)" and the Johnny Cash covers "A Little At A Time" and "Home Of The Blues." Along with the trove of unreleased material, BRADLEY'S BARN also contains seven outtakes from the album's sessions that were originally compiled by Rhino Handmade on Magic Hollow, the now sold out retrospective spanning The Beau Brummels' entire career released in 2005. Valentino and Elliott get the last word, literally, on BRADLEY'S BARN, which concludes with an interview of the two that was originally broadcast on San Francisco's KMPX-FM in October 1968. The conversation, which occurred around the time of the album's release, has never been released.
The Beau Brummels -- Sal Valentino, Ron Meagher, John Peterson and Ron Elliott, from left -- got back together at Cafe du Nord to open Baypop 2000. Chronicle Photo by Michael Macor.Â
Decades in obscurity, Beau Brummels front man surfaces to remind us what the fuss was all about
Sal Valentino, right, lead vocalist for the British Invasion era SF rock group Beau Brummels, has finally released his first solo album after 45 years in the business along with the help of his longtime
Sal Valentino was washed up. "No one called in a long time," he says. "No one knew where I was."
There were even reports of his death. "My mother laughs every time she hears that," the 63-year-old rock singer says. "I didn't call her, either."
As lead vocalist of the Beau Brummels, San Francisco's answer to the British Invasion, he sang the 1965 hit "Laugh Laugh." That record and the subsequent "Just a Little" were his high water marks on the charts, but the Brummels went on to record cult-classic albums such as "Triangle" and "Bradley's Barn," and Valentino's haunting vocals made him a famous talent in record industry circles. He sang the scratch vocals on the original recording of Randy Newman's self-titled premiere album in 1968, although Newman overdubbed his own vocals later.
More than just San Francisco's first rock star, Valentino could transform a song with the sound of his voice. That skill is evident on his new CD, the first solo album of his 45-year career. Valentino and his longtime collaborator John Blakeleystruggled for nine years to release "Dreamin' Man," a masterpiece shot through with the sort of artistic confidence and depth of character that takes a lifetime to accumulate.
"He's like a Van Morrison," says Blakeley, a producer and arranger who played with Morrison in the '70s. Valentino's "got a personal musical style I've never heard anybody even come close to."
Blakeley lives in the San Francisco basement record studio where the album was recorded. When health problems led to a 1997 heart transplant, he rented out the upstairs and moved downstairs when he couldn't work. The studio control room window now looks into his living room, which is decorated in acoustic tile. The former vocal isolation booth now serves as his bedroom.
"We talked about it before the transplant," says Blakeley, who first worked with Valentino in 1969. Blakeley had been contributing to an album by singer-songwriter Ron Nagle on which Valentino sang some backup vocals. Blakeley and Valentino then found themselves playing side by side in a hippie troupe being filmed for a Warner Bros. movie called "The Medicine Ball Caravan." Out of that dubious enterprise emerged a rock group called Stoneground with which Valentino and Blakeley made three albums before splitting to work local clubs in a band called Valentino. Blakeley quit that group to play guitar with Morrison.
Valentino moved back and forth between Los Angeles and San Francisco, finally resettling in town in the mid-'80s when his father grew ill with cancer. Valentino took over his father's job selling Racing Forms at Bay Meadows before moving south and taking a job as a parimutuel clerk for more than seven years. "I hated that job," he says. "You couldn't trust anybody on either side of the window or working alongside of you."
Born Salvatore Spampinato, Valentino grew up a prince of North Beach. His father, also raised in the neighborhood, played sandlot ball with the DiMaggio boys. Yellowed photos still hang in Gino and Carlo's on Green Street of the fighters Sal's father handled in the '50s. He gave Sal the Valentino name, in fact, from one of his favorite fighters.
As a young man he had matinee idol looks, and Valentino has managed to age gracefully. He carries himself with the stately elegance of an Italian count and still speaks with a soft, musical voice. He never had the warrior's zeal necessary to thrive in the music business and admits he lacked ambition. His big score after the Brummels was a $5,000 finder's fee for bringing Ricki Lee Jones to Warner Bros. Records.
When he met Catherine Kopinski almost 12 years ago, he was splitting his time between his mother's place in the Central Valley, staying in Reno with some musicians who formed a Beau Brummels tribute band and living in a tiny apartment in Sacramento above a restaurant. That's where he met the eighth-grade teacher from Detroit with two grown sons. They were married within months. Her medical insurance finally allowed him to replace his missing front teeth.
"I love her," he mutters happily to no one in particular, as he answers a cell phone call from his wife.
The material for "Dreamin' Man" goes back years. Valentino tried out some of the songs in Blakeley's studio almost 20 years ago. Valentino once offered the ebullient "Love Song" to Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers. "Phil loved it," Valentino says. "But I never could write a lyric for the chorus." On "Dreamin' Man," he simply hums where the chorus might go.
The record was pieced together in between hospital stays as Blakeley went through a nightmare recuperation from his transplant operation. He developed lymphoma so advanced his neck was swollen like a bullfrog. The drugs that cleaned out that cancer also wiped out his immune system. Three days after returning home, he turned around and went back to the hospital, staying for 58 days. The slightest infection could ravage him. He spent months suffering from a biblical infestation of warts that left him unable to play guitar. His dressing table is still filled with pill bottles.
Blakeley and Valentino, both climbing back from their respective abysses, would meet at Blakeley's Duncan Street Studios, work on the songs for a few days and then go back to their struggles, Blakeley battling for his health and Valentino, who hadn't been married since he was in his 20s, adjusting to married life in Sacramento. "I wasn't doing much," he says, "trying to get the lay of the land up there, not doing much good, getting used to being married again."
Valentino first put his toe back in the music scene on a 2003 record with 25-year-old Sacramento-based songwriter Jackie Greene, "Positively 12th and K," a live Bob Dylan tribute recorded at a Sacramento club. "I was part of the gigs before I even knew what a mentor was," Valentino says. "I had to ask my wife."
Greene, a hot young talent set to release his major label debut next week, first met Valentino when they were playing open-mike nights at Sacramento's Fox and the Goose, Sal's first tentative step back into performing in many years. Greene even worked producing a record with Valentino that fell to the wayside when his own career caught fire. Valentino and Blakeley recorded Greene's "Valley of Woe," and Valentino also performs the young songwriter's "Every Now and Then."
After not having recorded in more than a quarter-century, Valentino finds himself releasing two new CDs almost at the same time. On the heels of the brilliant "Dreamin' Man" comes an album recorded in Texas, "Come Out Tonight" on Fat Pete Records, on which Valentino not only cut more songs by Greene but also re-recorded two of the songs from "Dreamin' Man," "Catherine I Do" and "Looking for You," a track that has a practically mythic guitar sound on "Dreamin' Man."
"I walked in one day, plugged it in and there it was," says Blakeley, who played all the guitar parts on the album. "It was one of those days -- now we do all the solos."
The Brummels thing, of course, never goes away for Valentino. Of all the American garage bands to follow in the British footsteps, the Brummels maintain a loyal, dedicated following that counts among its numbers rock stars such as Tom Petty, Nils Lofgren and Bruce Springsteen. A limited edition four-CD box of rare and previously unissued Brummels recordings from the group's Warner Bros. years, "Magic Hollow," sold out on release last year.
The group's chart career only lasted 18 months. But Dylan visited the band backstage at Hollywood's Whisky A Go-Go and Otis Redding wanted to record a song with the group. The Brummels appeared in Hollywood teen drive-in fare ("Village of the Giants") and were portrayed in cartoon version on "The Flintstones." Chris Hillman of the group's Los Angeles counterparts, the Byrds, has says he studied the Brummels.
After recording a series of singles and two albums for the San Francisco label Autumn Records, where the group's records were produced by a young Sly Stewart -- later to become Sly Stone -- the Brummels moved to Warner Bros. Records, where the band continued to make records, although none of them sold. The group was a favorite of Warner Bros. president Lenny Waronker, who also commissioned solo projects for Brummels songwriter Ron Elliott and vocalist Valentino, although Valentino's Warner Bros. solo recordings never progressed far beyond a single 45 release, co-produced by Van Dyke Parks with a young, unknown Ry Cooder on guitar.
The group reunited in 1974 for a lackluster album, although the early rehearsals and out-of-town tryout at Sacramento's Shire Road Pub were promising. A live tape of the Shire Road Pub dates was released in 2000. Songwriter Elliott's "Singing Cowboy" from the reunion remains one of the great unheard songs of the era.
Blakeley has posted information about "Dreamin' Man" on the Beau Brummels' Web site and fills orders on his own (duncanst.com ). The pair recently tested the waters with a live performance at a coffeehouse in Folsom and Valentino will be making an appearance on behalf of the Fat Pete release next month at Austin's South by Southwest music festival.
All this hardly amounts to a major comeback. But from where Valentino sits, he is all the way back. He has been missing in action for 25 years, but "Dreamin' Man" makes everything clear. He is a master of his craft, a gifted songwriter and one of the great, unique vocal stylists of rock. If Morrison made an album as good, he would be blooming on magazine covers and radio station playlists.
To Valentino, the music he and Blakeley made says everything and delivers him from the fate awaiting him before he met his wife.
"I thought I was going to be living on tips," he says.
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