It was a bit of a sea change, prestige-wise, for Red Rhodes to go from “lowly” Crown (and I say that with affection) to Jac Holzman‘s esteemed Elektra label. Aside from 1970’s supergroup experiment with Red Rhodes, Buddy Emmons, Sneaky Pete, Jay Dee Maness, and Rusty Young – Suite Steel: The Pedal Steel Guitar Album – Rhodes released his first proper solo album in 1973, Velvet Hammer in a Cowboy Band, on Elektra imprint, Countryside (a Mike Nesmith enterprise, as it turns out). Red gets a wonderful shimmering effect on his steel guitar in the soaring instrumental, “Lothario In A“:
Musician credits for “Lothario in A”:
Arranger & Steel Guitar: Red Rhodes
Acoustic & Rhythm Guitar: Dr. Robert K. Warford
Electric Guitar: Jay Lacy
Bass: Colin Camero
Drums: Danny Lane
Piano & Liner Notes: David Barry
Producer: Mike Nesmith
Art Direction & Design: Dean O. Torrence (of Jan & Dean)
Recorded January-June 1973 at the Countryside Ranch
Back cover notes –
Red Rhodes
We didn’t know what we were doing when we made this album, which figures. We’d never made one like it. We weren’t sure it was country and that figures, too. We’d never heard country music like it. We thought in front it would just mean sitting in the studio picking songs we’d been picking in beer bars for years, only without the words. For pickers, that’s something like a third degree drunk without a hangover or getting change back from a dollar bill. It wasn’t what Nesmith wanted. He told us to just sit and pick but he didn’t mean just sit and pick. At least not the way we were used to picking. He always seems to see something we don’t, so we went along. It’s his record company, and there are worse things to do than follow your boss’s hunches.
We didn’t find out what he wanted until after we’d done it. It turned out he wanted us to climb up to our highest creative level and play there. He wanted us to make new sounds, new chord changes and fine new things in old songs. It wasn’t easy to do or to understand when we were finished. Finally we recognized what we’d made: a 1973 country instrumental album that wasn’t like any country album we’d heard. There’s a good reason for that. Country music reflects the way country people think, work and play. 1953 records don’t sound like 1963 records or 1973 records. A country album about 1949 Fords, Arthur Godfrey, farms and paper mills would be out of time for people who drive ’72 Galaxies, punch cards in IBM computers, watch Johnny Carson and ride Boeing 747s home to Oklahoma for Christmas. 1973 country music has roots in 1953 country but it’s much more. The language has divided and multiplied in those two decades. So has country music. What we played is country because we’re a country band. We’ve played truck driving music in honky tonks where you can’t tell the fighting from the dancing without a program. We’ve kicked and scuffled and had our share of sh#t on our shoes. You don’t play music with your feet, though.
*
Velvet Hammer‘s inner sleeve –
deadpan humor
According to Jac Holzman’s memoir, Becoming Elektra:
Mike Nesmith’s Countryside label was an intriguing venture based, in part, on the premise that Nesmith thought it possible to develop a label in California based upon a Western take on country music, and he cited Buck Owens as a model. Holzman thought it worth exploring the idea of a small ancillary label working a potent vein of American music, separate from Elektra’s offices.
“Nesmith could bring unusual talented people together and create a supportive environment,” says Holzman. “He was whip-smart and a pro in the studio. Countryside was an effort to develop a different kind of country music, where country and cowboy and folk merges. We built Michael his own studio around the same analogue mixing console that recorded L.A. Woman. Unfortunately, Countryside was the first thing David Geffen dismantled when he took over [as head of newly-merged Elektra/Asylum].”
Only *two albums appeared: Garland Frady’s splendid Pure Country and one by Nesmith’s renowned steel guitarist, Red Rhodes, Velvet Hammer in a Cowboy Band [*also seven single releases].
At the time of Geffen’s big deal, Holzman would be appointed senior VP and Chief Technology Officer for Warner Brothers-Elektra-Atlantic — an emerging giant now challenging Columbia for supremacy. Important to note that by 1970 Holzman’s label, Elektra, had already been sold for $11 million to the Kinney Corporation.
This album, interestingly enough, was also released as volume 10 in the Steel Guitar Record Club series — other steel guitarists profiled in this series include Speedy West, Jerry Byrd, Buddy Charleton, Buddy Emmons, Herb Remington, Alvino Rey, Lloyd Green, Curly Chalker, Tom Brumley, Hal Rugg, Jimmy Day, Jay Dee Maness & Bobby Black, among others.
Red Rhodes – “I would like to dedicate this album to Jerry Byrd“
