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Billy C. Farlow: Too Much Fun |
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Friday, 13 January 2006 19:19 |
Billy C. Farlow
Too Much Fun
Appaloosa Records
By John Sinclair
In the pretentious, overblown world of popular music today, authentic rockabilly madmen lke Billy C. Farlow are few and far between. Maybe it's always been this way, except for that brief golden period in Memphis in the mid- 50s when Sam Phillips seemed to have the key to some mysterious storehouse where a succession of young white men with country backgrounds, gospel roots, and big ears for rhythm & blues sat around drinking whiskey, smoking cigarettes, writing songs and rehearsing their bands of fellow rockers while swarms of ladies waited for them to come outside and take them away: men like Carl Perkins, Billy Riley, Warren Storm, Jerry Lee Lewis and their rare counterparts from other regions of the country--Gene Vincent, Jack Scott, Eddie Cochrane, Dale Hawkins, Bobby Charles, Jimmy Clanton and Rusty York.
While this scene has faded out of sight for more than 30 years now, Billy C. and his frantic stage presentation bring us back a glimpse of the genuine article: balls-out, what-the-hell, no-holds-barred rock & roll in the Sun Records tradition--trembling with musical passion, frantic with unrepressed desire, afraid of nothing or no one in its relentless drive to burn down the house, blow out all the walls, totally destroy every member of the audience and swagger away grinning, a girl on each arm, ready to rock all night, sleep all day, and come back for more as soon as the sun goes down again.
Billy C. has paid his dues up several times over; his card is punched all the way around, yet he's still out there riding cross-country in vans packed with beat-up equipment, playing in bars and hellholes all over America, somehow summoning up the incredible energy that propels his performances night after night with no end in sight, a tireless troubador of musical kicks and pursuer of off-stage fun in whatever form it might present itself. Long an insufficiently recognized showman and key member of Commander Cody's various frenetic ensembles, Billy C. is finally featured as a leader on his own recording, showing off his own original (though deeply traditional) rockabilly compositions and a hand-picked, rip-roaring ensemble of fellow Southerners held together by the steady production hand of Fred James.
Born June 9, 1948, in Greensburg, Indiana, Billy C. Farlow has lived in Alabama, Texas, Michigan, and California, where he presently resides between tours with the Commander Cody band. Billy C. comes from a musical/religious Southern family and credits his mother for his early exposure to music: "She always had the radio on." As a youth, Billy C. drew inspiration from the musicians--both black and white--he saw performing at fairs, supermarket openings and church functions, gradually picking up the guitar and harmonica. He made his first public appearance in 1964 at a Church of God camp meeting, "where I sang the old standard 'Do Lord' with two other boys at a rousing, break-neck tempo while beating glorious hell out of an ancient F-hole guitar."
Billy C.'s family moved to the Detroit area around 1964, and the transplanted Southerner started sitting in at the west-side blues coffeehouse, the Chessmate, "performing blues on acoustic guitar and backing up other artists on the harp, including Sippie Wallace, Big Joe Williams and John Lee Hooker." He also hung out and jammed with the James Cotton Band during their frequent visits to the Motor City and became friends with drummer Sammy Lay, with whose band he would work during 1968-69 following the untimely and tragic death of Farlow's harmonica master, the great Little Walter, who had been featured with the group.
Farlow formed his first band, Billy C. & The Sunshine, in the fall of 1966 with pianist Lawrence "Boot Hill" Hamilton and guitarist Larry Welker. "We may have been the first white blues band in Detroit, I don't know." Billy C. & The Sunshine gained a small but fanatical following in the Detroit-Ann Arbor area, working gigs with the MC-5 and other local favorites at the Grande Ballroom, The See, First Unitarian Church, and other area venues, culminating in a New Year's Eve appearance at the Grande opening for Cream.
The Sunshine clouded over and finally disbanded when Welker and drummer Lance Dickerson joined the Charlie Musselwhite Blues Band and Boot Hill left to go with Sam Lay. Billy C. joined Lay's band for an East Coast tour in February 1968 and continued to work with him off and on through 1968 and into 1969. At the same time he was doing a lot of jamming with Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen in and around Ann Arbor. He became a full-time Airman in the spring of 1969 and moved with the band to Berkeley, California that July.
Billy C. recorded eight albums with Cody for Paramount Records between 1969 and 1976, when the band finally threw in the towel. "For the next six years I tried unsuccessfully to get it together with my own groups in California, C. says. We toured the Northwest and around to Texas, but no products, no money, no glory. In 1982 I moved my family to the Tennessee-Alabama border area, Billy says, and worked as a farmer, cook, day laborer, you name it," before organizing the band heard on this recording, called variously the Congo Cruisers, the Hell Hounds, and the Morgan County Mutants. Farlow rejoined Commander Cody in 1987 and continues to tour and record with the Commander.
Reviewing his illustrious career for this writer, Billy C. attests: "Over the years I have performed with such luminaries as John Lee Hooker, Sippie Wallace, Bobo Jenkins, Chuck Berry, Linda Ronstadt, and Big Joe Williams. I have also appeared on the bill with such as the Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead, Starship, Bob Seger, John Lennon, The Eagles, Beach Boys, Bobby 'Blue' Bland, Fred McDowell, Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, The Byrds, Poco, Gene Vincent, Jack Scott, Kenny Rogers and once passed up the chance to fornicate with Buddy Holly's widow."
At last, dear listener, you have the chance to enter into intimate musical congress with this unbridled son of the South, Mr. Billy C. Farlow and his hard-kicking ensemble from down Tennessee-Alabama way, recorded in Nashville during 1988-89 and now available in disc form. Don't pass this one up--it might be another 30 years before something this splendid comes around again!
--Detroit
January 31, 1991
(C) 1991, 2006 John Sinclair. All Rights Reserved.
Billy C. Farlow
"Too Much Fun"
Appaloosa Records
"Too Much Fun"
"Honey Girl"
"You Put Your Mark On Me" (Fred James)
"Oh Babe"
"Sit On Dadddy's Knee"
"Demon Lover"
"A Little Meat On The Side" (Fred James)
"Love Bandit"
"Jerry's Playhouse"
Produced By Fred James
Engineer: Joe Fundaburk
Recorded at Creative Workshop, Nashville, Tennessee, 1988-89
Personnel:
Billy C. Farlow, lead vocals, harmonica
Roger Younger, lead guitar (Lake County, TN)
Granny Grantham (Nashville, TN) or Jimmy Grey (Oklahoma), bass
J.T. Thompson, drums (Huntsville, AL)
Plus:
Fred James, lead guitar, background vocals (Topeka, Kansas)
Deanna Bogart, keyboards & saxophones (Baltimore, Maryland)
Billy West, drums (Nashville, TN)
Linton Wages, saxophones (Georgia)
Mary Ann Brandon, background vocals
unknown keyboards
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