Sunday, February 15, 2009

P.J. Proby- How To Split Your Trousers and Influence People

 P.J. Proby's story is one of those crazed, it should be a movie but no one would believe it tales that I love so much. This is a mere thumbnail sketch of a man who's voice can raise a fan's enthusiasm to seismic proportions. A quick Google search will keep you busy reading and watching videos all week. The great Nik Cohn, perhaps the most insightful chronicler of pop music the U.K has ever produced (I even love his book on New Orleans hip hop, Triksta (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005) and I don't even like the music) dedicated an entire chapter to him in his classic work Pop: From The Beginning (Rock: From The Beginning in the U.S., Stein & Day, 1969).    P.J. Proby, born James Marcus Smith in Houston, Texas, 1938, into an upper class banking family headed to L.A. in the late 50's to make it as either a singer or pop star. His first managers renamed him Jett Powers (after James Dean's character in Giant) and it was as Jett Powers he cut two incredible rock'n'roll 45's that would have insured his infamy even if he'd headed back to Houston and taken his father's job running the Second National Bank. The first 45, released in '58 was on the Design label, a subsidiary of the budget Pickwick Records (where Lou Reed started out)-- Go Girl Go b/w Teenage Quarrel on which he was backed by a rockin' little combo called Vince Paris & the Raunch Hands (where the Crypt Records group would steal their name from) is, I think, the pinnacle of his entire recorded catalog. 1959 saw his second release-- Loud Perfume b/w My Troubles on Beta, an L.A. label, features Marcus/Powers/Proby fronting the Bumps Blackwell Orchestra, the same session players heard on all of Little Richard and Sam Cooke's early L.A. recordings. Both singles sank without a trace but have been re-issued dozens if not hundreds of times over the ensuing decades. To make ends meet he began recording demos for Elvis and Johnny Cash (amongst others), his voice had an amazing range and he was a spot on mimic who could reproduce nearly any style from Hank Williams to Mario Lanza.
Marcus tried his hand as a songwriter, selling the rather peculiar "Clown Shoes" to Johnny Burnette, then he struck up a songwriting partnership with Sharon Sheeley. Sharon Sheeley was one of those characters who would have been inducted into the rock'n'roll hall of fame years ago  if that idiotic institution had anything to do with rock'n'roll.  She wrote hits for Ricky Nelson (including "Poor Little Fool"), Eddie Cochran ("Something Else"), Brenda Lee, Irma Thomas ("Break-A-Way", her best) and others. She was Eddie Cochran's last girlfriend, and was in the cab when it crashed and killed him.  It was Sheeley who brought James Marcus Smith to the attention of British producer Jack Good, then working in L.A. on the U.S. TV show Shindig (best R&R TV show ever) where Sheeley herself was working as a writer.  Good spotted Marcus' potential and signed him up. Good's dream was to produce a rock'n'roll version of Othello and at various times names like Jerry Lee Lewis and  then newly renamed P.J. Proby were put forth as his Iago (it was eventually produced on film as Catch My Soul with Lance LeGault in the Iago role, Ritchie Havens played Othello, Tony Joe White was Cassio, it's unwatchable). Good brought Proby to London in '64 and launched him on a career with more ups and downs than Elvis' pill box.  Proby was an immediate sensation scoring a string of U.K. chart topping hits--Hold Me, Together, Somewhere, Maria (from West Side Story), et al, that were well made, even moving, histrionic pop, sort of Johnny Ray meets Elvis meets Tom Jones only better. It was the voice, his voice could overcome the schmaltziest material. These records may sound goofy to you hard core rockers, but with the studio guitar team of Big Jim Sullivan and his young side kick Jimmy Page, the pair that livened up so many U.K. pop discs from Dave Berry's The Crying Game to Donovan's Sunshine Superman, and Proby's over the top, operatic delivery they retain a certain appeal that is not camp but genuinely soul stirring.  Last time I looked his hits could be found here  (but you never know with these things, if the link no longer works try the Chewbone blog on the right). 
After his first hits Proby set out on his first headlining tour of the U.K., super stardom seemed assured.  He cut a striking figure, his hair cut into Beatles like bangs with a long pony tail trailing down his back, blue crushed velvet tunic and tight pants, buckle shoes.  The first night of the tour his tight velvet pants split, exposing his stuff to the audience.  The effete Brits were appalled but forgiving, the first time. When the same thing happened the second and third night of the tour it caused a sensation.  The third night the curtains were dropped on him mid song and the following day the press went wild.  Proby responded by issuing the single I Apologize, it went top ten.
    Proby lived hard.  He drank bourbon like it was water.  When Cohn interviewed him in 1966 he found him barricaded in a luxury hotel surrounded by acolytes, court jesters, groupies, body guards and the usual assortment of trash any rock star attracts.
You really owe it to yourself to track down a copy of Ugly Things magazine #19 (the last of the great fanzines in the tradition of Who Put The Bomp and Kicks). In it you'll find an interview with Kim Fowely (someone should do a book of Kim Fowley's greatest interviews) who recounts wild and wooly tales of time spent in London with Proby complete with  X-rated cameos by Diana Dors and Haley Mills
 Proby became Fleet Street's favorite whipping boy. And he gave them plenty of ammo. While he would have hit records until 1967 (his last hit Nikki Hoeky, an early delve into swamp rock that Tony  Joe White and Creedence would take to the bank, it was his only U.S. hit), he was constantly in trouble, getting drunk, throwing tantrums (often onstage),  getting banned, making headlines. He retired for a year to raise horses (1966-7) only to end up having to declare bankruptcy after finding himself
L200,00  in debt.  In the early 70's he would star in a West End musical portraying Elvis, record with Dutch prog rock group Focus (of Hocus Pocus fame), in the 80's he went new wave, recording Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart and other post-punk tunes.   
   But at heart Proby was always a rocker, his LP's, especially the early Liberty ones like I Am P.J. Proby always have some great rock'n'roll tunes thrown in, I prefer this stuff to his hits. Take a listen to his version of Ray Sharpe's classic Linda Lu, or this over the top work out on Stagger Lee (I think this is my favorite version ever). Another great LP track is the rockin' Caldonia. His choice of cover tunes was all over the place, for example this whacked out take on the Jayhawks' Stranded In The Jungle
is quite impressive or how about this rendition of Huey Smith & the Clowns'  Rockin' Pneumonia (and the Boogie Woogie Flu), or the killer version of the Five Keys' Ling Ting Tong on the top clip (above).
All his early albums are well worth searching out more for the filler material than the hits. An excellent selection of his rockers was here as recently as yesterday (be sure to note the password).
   Every now and then Proby hits the road and plays some supper clubs to pay the bills. His fans still love him.  So somewhere out there he sits-- P.J. Proby, he should be as big as Tom Jones, or at least Englebert Humperdink. Proby and his bottle of bourbon, in front of the tv set, cursing under his breath. That's the way I imagine it. Who knows, maybe he's playing golf or looking at porn on the internet.  I wonder what he's doing right now.  I wonder what he's thinking....

16 comments:

  1. Can you post some quotes from Ugly Things #19? I'm having trouble tracking it down...

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  2. I remember that nik cohn book when I was 14 (1973)it impressed me,and that book is where I first heard about Gene Vincent.

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  3. Since the demise of the Hound show,this blog is the fix,which in these paltry times is even more needed.the rock n roll hall of fame should dissapear under seagull guano

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  4. Years ago I met a Dublin journo who told me about interviewing a very crazed and bitter Proby (who was living in some shithole flat in some shithole English town at the time, and working for the Council picking up litter or something similar) - the interview tapes, said this journo, would be his retirement money, as he could never use them until everybody named therein was dead, given the scurrilous and obscene and libellous nature of Proby's accusations against such legends as the Walker Brothers and Elvis. It pleases me to imagine Proby there, still hanging on to this life against all the odds, raging against the bad luck that has him in the gutter while Jerry Lee is in his platinum Winnebago (there are some of Jerry Lee's songs from Catch My Soul available online now, after years of unavailability, and they're kind of great). Thanks for this, your posts continue to inform and astonish.

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  5. Thanks for the tip---I love over-the-top, bathos-laden pop, kinda like a more threatening Gene Pitney.

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  6. Anonymous said...
    Can you post some quotes from Ugly Things #19? I'm having trouble tracking it down...

    I'll try and find my copy and re-type the pertinant quotes, the whole interview is 35 pages, I just noticed they're sold out of it. It may take a while for me to track it down, it's in a pile of mags, unsorted, in the basement.

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  7. http://bedazzled.blogs.com/bedazzled/2006/02/p_j_proby_on_di.html

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  8. The dog in the video clip Cookie posted above, according to Fowley: "If a girl wanted to fuck Proby...Bongo Wolf would have to jack off at the foot of the bed and Mr. President the Basset hound would have to eat her pussy first. So Proby was fucking and the dog was slurping and Bongo was there watching, all so the girl could have the great Proby cock". I don't think I can reprint the whole interview, it's copyrighted material and legally, fair use is a couple of sentences.
    Anyone who really has to have the Proby parts can e-mail me and I can xerox off parts about Proby.

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  9. Nice post...in case anyone's up for reading what Proby's been up to since his Nik Cohn-lionized (and rightly so) heyday, have a looksee here at a piece I writ for PERFECT SOUND FOREVER a few yrs back...
    www.furious.com/perfect/pjproby.html

    From an aging punk fanzine scribe and NEW ORDER reader...
    cheers!

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  10. Hi! Great blog! Is "Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom the Golden Age of Rock" by Nik Cohn the book you're writing about in a renamed reprinted version? Based on your recommendation I just realised I need to check out Mr Cohn, and this book seems to be quite easily bought on the internet...
    Thanks,
    Erling

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  11. Is "Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom the Golden Age of Rock" by Nik Cohn the book you're writing about in a renamed reprinted version?

    I think that's a collection of stuff from several books including Pop:From The Begining....it's all good

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  12. Everything by Cohn is worth reading but his non-rock'n'roll stuff often gets ignored - King Death is Jean-Pierre Melville's film Le Samourai reimagined as the story of Elvis Presley, the King of Death; The Heart of the World, Cohn's return to writing after his jail time, is a wonderful book about a walk from the top to the bottom of Manhattan, along Broadway, that took several months to complete; and of course Triksta is required reading for anyone interested in 21st Century America. I should say, though, that you need to take some of the things Cohn says he did in the book with a pinch of salt as I know the person (barely credited in the published version) who did them for him. As it sometimes goes, the greater the talent, the meaner the gesture.

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  13. " I should say, though, that you need to take some of the things Cohn says he did in the book with a pinch of salt as I know the person (barely credited in the published version) who did them for him"

    Cohn eventually admitted the story that the movie Sat. Night Fever was based on he made up. I loved King Death and Heart Of The World, also one called Yes We Have NO which is Cohn's take on UK in the Britpop era as he travels the country is worth reading. Ball The Wall (a collection from various books) has some excellent stuff not printed elswhere also. The only one I haven't tracked down is called Need, anyone out there know anything about it?

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  14. Check alibris.com. There's lots of cheap copies of "Need" there. And of course I found the other recommended books there, too...

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  15. hey jim...did ya ever hear proby's insane techno industrial bunner freakout version of the cramps garbageman done with someone named lord horror???woah...

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  16. I've actually just finished a show with Proby, one he's doing in Sweden, and he's absolutely amazing! So funny, so charming, so full of incredible stories. I spent hours with him last night, just listening to him tell stories about his life. He should have been a superstar, that's one thing that's for sure!

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