Joe Cocker belongs in the Hall of Fame--with a little help from his friends

Paul McCartney and Billy Joel agree: Let's vote him into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

In midsummer, 1982, I traveled to Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas, where Island Records founder Chris Blackwell was overseeing the sessions for a comeback record from Joe Cocker. If the abiding memory of that sojourn was walking down a moonlit, white sand beach with Marianne Faithfull (who after her own vicissitudes was making an album with songs like "She's Got A Problem"), my time with Joe–witty, accesssible and with a dignity that shone through the damage– is also persistently memorable, as recounted below.

Joe was a musical genre almost to himself, even as he was clearly devoted to the inspirational genius that was Ray Charles. The very gesticulations and head bobs the world marveled at, first on the Ed Sullivan show in April, 1969, and four months later at Woodstock, exemplified how he was profoundly immersed in a compelling rawness of emotion. His complete immersion meant that that his carousing hits ("The Letter," especially as backed by Leon Russell's Mad Dogs and Enlgishmen) could feel just as poignant as say, a tender cover of Leonard Cohen's "Bird On the Wire."

I'd put almost any one of twenty-odd classic Joe performances in an overflowing bucket that proves how deserving he is, whether it's the pleading take on Dylan's "Dear Landlord" or more obscurely and personally, "Jack-A-Diamonds," from songwriter--and also Joe's sometime sideman– Daniel Moore:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABKFAWUsoWM

Anyone who's ever had or faces a terrible boss is prescribed to put that quiet, unplugged plaint on repeat as I once did. (Also often spilling out of my car speakers is the ever-mysterious "Sandpaper Cadillac," co-written with Chris Stainton.)

To have lived through the era when Joe was on the airwaves, both FM and AM, and on many a concert stage, is to have a memory of his full-on investment in just how feelingly a lyric can be delivered.

Billy Joel, who in 1999 was welcomed into the RRHF by no less than Ray Charles himself ("You're inducted, brother...I got you!"), posted his take: "I thought Joe was the most powerful rock and roll interpretive male singer I had heard since first hearing the iconic recordings of Ray Charles.”

Early in his emergence as a widely popular artist Joel did a more-than-passable musical impression of Joe, a mimicry much gentler than John Belushi's notorious version, and as recently as 2014, three months before Joe's death on december 22, Billy was paying tribute onstage at Madison Square Garden:

McCartney sent the Hall a note on his personal stationery: "Joe was a great man and a fine singer whose unique style made for some fantastic performances,” adding, “He sang one of our songs ‘With a Little Help From My Friends,’ a version produced by Denny Cordell which was very imaginative.

“All the people on the panel will be aware of the great contribution Joe made to the history of Rock and Roll. And whilst he may not have ever lobbied to be in the Hall of Fame, I know he would be extremely happy and grateful to find himself where he deserves to be amongst such illustrious company,"

Below, I'm pasting in the July, 1982 Musician magazine piece about that Compass Point visit. The top section is for subsctibers of all tiers, but in an exception to the usual course of affairs on this newsletter, the latter portion of the text will be reserved to paid subscribers. This is partly due to its length, but also as a note of respect to the wonderfully handy curation site that memorializes it--and thousands of eclectically sourced articles about multiple decades of music: Rock's Backpages. Their wide-ranging and knowledgeable curation is a boon to both music lovers and the writers they include (and to whom they offer a financial taste as well. )

Enjoy, and if you're a R&RHF voter (one of 1200), please show Joe some love. (The public balloting– whcih truly has but marginal impact--closes April 21.)

Joe Cocker's Island Renaissance

Fred Schruers, Musician, July 1982

THE NOONDAY sun has come and gone over the town of Nassau, the Bahamas, and Joe Cocker's afternoon boating party, which left port as proper Englishmen, has come back more like mad dogs – the result of Schlitzes and screwdrivers served on the four-hour cruise.

Mike Lang, who helped organize the Woodstock Festival and now manages Joe, is steering our crammed rental car through a traffic jam. Alex Sadkin, who's been producing Cocker's Sheffield Steel album with Chris Blackwell at Compass Point Studios, is sitting up front. Guitarist and solo artist Barry Reynolds has been shanghaied off to a bar by Marianne Faithfull. And Cocker, parched from an interview, swigs from a beer, looking over a pair of American-grown, longhaired retro-hippies weaving through the traffic on foot. "Up in the morning," Joe has been muttering, "Out on the job..."

Suddenly, with a gravelly, thunderous roar that sets every ear in the car pinging, Joe lets rip: "Work lah-h-gh-hk a dog fo' mah pa-ay!" It snaps the hippies' heads around, sure enough, if that's what Joe intended. If "That Lucky Old Sun" (a hit fro Frankie Laine in 1949 and Ray in 1964) isn't one of those anthems, like 'Feelin' Alright' or 'With A Little Help From My Friends', that Cocker borrowed and sent echoing through the turn of a decade, it does emerge as unmistakably rooted in the raspy, abandoned Cocker style, blowing through the vanilla dust on a Nassau side street and disappearing as abruptly as it erupted.

Everybody grins, but quickly, tightly. It's a thing to be celebrated and cherished, this battered trumpet of a voice. But the immediate echo is a question – how did Joe Cocker let his various demons lead him so far off the trail? He's lived the familiar post-60s story – drugs, booze, management fights, the painful obscurity of living as a former legend – and nobody has worked harder at patching things up than the two guys in the front seat.

"What we're doing is featuring Joe," Alex Sadkin has told me the day before in the quiet half-light of Compass Point Studio A, "letting everybody really hear his voice, with all that gravel and whines and scars. With interesting instrumental tracks, yes, but without any female backing vocals. It would have been easy, it's such a comfortable thing to have these girls sing along on every chorus. But Chris (Blackwell, hands-on executive producer for the album) wanted something fresh. It's risky. But it's Joe."

"Chris woke me up to new ideas," says Cocker, "At the same time, I was saying to him, 'Hold back – I do love my black girls, you know?' Maybe it's a little too bare."

The record is more lean than bare. On 'Shocked', as Joe growls a tale of lost love, Barry Reynolds scratches out a crisply etched pattern of well-fuzzed notes, with an echo reminiscent of Duane Eddy. Wally Badarou's synthesizer underscores the refrain with an oscillating beep that seems to come out of some video game, almost mocking the singer's forlorness. It's interesting to hear the Compass Point All Stars trying to enliven the often-sludgy tempos of the LP's ballads. For all of his gifts as a drummer, Sly Dunbar is still learning the graces of ballad work; his tendency is to simply bat the snare every few beats, leaving detail work to percussionist Sticky's cheese graters and wood blocks.

"Chris petrified with his first invite," recalls Joe. "He said he could hear me singing country and western with these guys. Robbie Shakespeare is an amazin' bass player. When we first went in and were doin' this Jim Webb song – 'Just Like Always' – Wally took me aside and said, 'Joe, I adore these guys but I don't know if they can deal with this tune.' But we got them introduced to the slower stuff and they were great. I mean Robbie, it's not like a G7th means much to him but he would – whoomp – just slide up there and find it."

A little after midnight one evening at Compass Point, Blackwell and Sadkin were sitting behind Studio A's big console, almost holding their breath while Wally caressed a synthesizer to get the kind of wind effect they wanted under Cocker's version of 'Many Rivers To Cross'. The effect went from sounding like something out of a wind tunnel to a muted, distant whisper that finally drew a tentative nod of satisfaction from Blackwell.

Blackwell qualifies as an expert on Cocker. He was there, as manager, in the glory days of 1968, '69 and '70. He introduced him to Dee Anthony, passing him along to Anthony as a management client. Things did not go swimmingly thenceforth. But it would have been hard to keep up the pace at which Cocker burst forth from his early days in the industrial city of Sheffield, England, where he worked as a gas-fitter days and played drums in a band called the Cavaliers at night.

Cocker had heard Ray Charles' 'What'd I Say' one day on the radio and gotten "a sort of cosmic buzz." He bought Charles' Yes Indeed! album, which became the prime influence on a band, Vance Arnold & the Avengers, that got a Decca contract based on Cocker's singing. A cover of the Beatles' 'I'll Cry Instead' and a subsequent tour of U.S. military bases in France netted little support, and the band broke up. Joe hid out for two years. Then, in 1967, he teamed up with fellow Sheffielder Chris Stainton. Their demo tapes impressed Denny Cordell, producer of the Move and Procol Harum, who helped them cut a second Beatles cover, 'With A Little Help From My Friends'.

The song hit, first in England, then in the States. Cocker named his first album – cut with help from Stevie Winwood, Jimmy Page and Jimmy Wilson, as well as Stainton's Grease Band – after the single. Cocker's U.S. debut was on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1968. The show's producer, unenamored of Joe's onstage gyrations, buried him in dancers. The impact, though, was immediate, and the next year found Cocker featured at Woodstock. There he met Leon Russell, who helped him cut a second LP, Joe Cocker! with its big single 'Delta Lady', and Russell then invited him out to California for some rest after the Grease Band split up.

The Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour was just around the corner. "Those were amazing times," says Joe...