JOHNNY CASH AT THE CAROUSEL BALLROOM

On 13 January 1968 Cash played his legendary concert before an audience at the infamous Folsom Prison in California. Columbia were also there to record the concert for future album release. 

A few days before the release of the album Cash played a concert at the Carousel Ballroom in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. The show was recorded by audio engineer Owsley Stanley and now, more than fifty years later, the concert has been issued through the Owsley Stanley Foundation and Renew Records/BMG.

Before we review the new release we take a look at the life of Owsley Stanley, the history of the Haight-Ashbury scene and the Carousel Ballroom.

Owsley Stanley

Owsley Stanley was born on 19 January 1935, affectionately known to his friends as 'Bear' and, depending on your point of view, was either a legend or a serious threat to society. He was one of the first citizens to mass produce large quantities of LSD during the early-sixties. Kicked out of Charlotte Hall Military Academy for smuggling alcohol on to the campus he was committed to St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington. A spell at the University of Virginia saw him study engineering but he dropped out and enlisted in the U.S. Air Force where he served for 18 months before his discharge in 1958. Over the next few years he attended college, studying ballet, took a technical job at KGO-TV, relocated to Los Angeles and then returned to the Bay Area.

Owsley Stanley (Photo: Associated Press)

All the time he continued to manufacture LSD although several years later he would be arrested and served three years in prison. His lab was discovered with over 300,000 doses of LSD and in his defense he claimed it was for personal use, the authorities and the courts did not take this seriously.

He is more well known in the music business as the guy who developed the notion of concert PAs and sound systems during his work as a soundman with the Grateful Dead. He was always adding and improving on the bands sound system and started to record many of their shows, creating an impressive archive of concert recordings, many of which have been released on CD. Following his release from prison he continued to work with the Grateful Dead but in the 1980s he moved to Australia with his wife where, in 2011, he died in a car crash. As we shall discover later he also recorded other artists during his time in America, including Johnny Cash.

Haight-Ashbury

Haight-Ashbury is an area of San Francisco on the intersection of Haight and Ashbury Street, from where it picked up its name. The streets commemorate two San Francisco leaders... Henry Haight, pioneer and banker, and Munroe Ashbury, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in the late-1800s.

Haight-Ashbury (Photo: Michael Ochs Archives)

The area was well known in the sixties as the centre of the hippie movement and counterculture. The Summer of Love in 1967 became synonymous with San Francisco and the Haight-Ashbury area. Media coverage of the area and the hippie lifestyle attracted the attention of youth from all over America. In the New York Times Magazine, Hunter S. Thompson labelled the area 'Hashbury' and the press covered the activities on a regular basis. Haight-Ashbury became a community of hippies based on counterculture ideals, drugs and music. It helped create a social experiment that soon spread across the country.

Psychedelic music was gaining popularity and with the success of Scott McKenzie's song San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Flowers In Your Hair) and the Monterey Pop Festival, local bands from the area were soon receiving attention. Bands included Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother And The Holding Company and the Grateful Dead. All the media attention popularised the whole hippie movement and counterculture not only in America but around the world.

However, in time the area deteriorated with overcrowding, drug problems, crime and homelessness forcing many to leave and continue their studies and life elsewhere.

The Carousel Ballroom

There were many venues that the locals would pack out when their favourite bands appeared and one such venue was the Carousel Ballroom, located at the southwest corner of Market Street and South Van Ness Avenue. It was originally known as the El Patio Ballroom in the 1920s and during the swing-era of the late-1930s and 1940s it became The Carousel Ballroom. The venue was owned by Bill Fuller who also had dance halls in New York, Boston as well as in England. It was promoted as 'America's Finest Ballroom'.

Back in 1966 concert promoter Bill Graham had opened The Fillmore at the intersection of Fillmore Street and Geary Boulevard serving as his principal venue between 1966 to 1968. The economic decline of the neighborhood along with the fact that the venues capacity was modest forced Graham to abandon this venue after only two years.

The Carousel Ballroom (Photo: Unknown)

In July 1968 he moved his main concert location to the Carousel Ballroom, which was less than a mile from the original Fillmore. He called this new venue the Fillmore West, he already had a venue in New York City called the Fillmore East.

For the first few months of 1968, before Graham took over, the Carousel Ballroom had been operated by a collective formed by the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jefferson Airplane and Big Brother And The Holding Company. The idea being to create a social/musical 'laboratory experiment.' It's six-month existence coincided with the height of the Haight-Ashbury scene.

Among the acts that appeared at the venue, during its time as the Carousel Ballroom and Fillmore West, included Chuck Berry, Tim Buckley, Buffalo Springfield, Jefferson Airplane, Johnny Cash and the Grateful Dead who were regulars at the venue playing over sixty concerts between 1968 and 1971.

In 1971 Graham closed the Fillmore West with five nights of concerts featuring, among other acts,  Santana and Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Johnny Cash

The previous few years had seen Johnny lost in the wilderness as far as his career was concerned but 1968 would prove to be a turning point, not only in his career but also his personal life.

In January he played a concert before the inmates at Folsom Prison, the show was recorded and the resulting album Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison would spend more than 90 weeks on the country charts with three spent at the top spot. A few weeks later, on 1 March, he married June Carter at a small, private ceremony in Franklin, Kentucky. It was the start of a successful year for Cash which would lead to the kind of success and achievements that a year earlier seemed out of reach.

Before the years end he would tour the United Kingdom twice, record a religious album, The Holy Land, play at the famous Carnegie Hall in New York and put on a benefit show for the Sioux Indians at the St. Francis Indian Mission in South Dakota before visiting the Wounded Knee Battlefield.

The year was also tinged with sadness though. In August Cash's long-time guitarist and original member of the Tennessee Two, Luther Perkins, died following a fire at his home. 

Country music fans, rockabilly fans, Native Americans, inmates... Cash had always attracted a diverse audience and on 24 April 1968 he attracted a new kind of audience when playing in front of the 'hippie' youths of San Francisco.

Recorded just a few days before the release of the Live At Folsom Prison album the CD finds Cash performing in the heart of Haight-Ashbury. A different kind of audience from his prison and regular concert performances saw him perform songs that were often overlooked in his live shows.

Backed by the Tennessee Three (Luther Perkins on guitar, Marshall Grant on bass and W. S. 'Fluke' Holland behind the drum kit) along with his new bride, June Carter-Cash, this concert was a departure from his normal set list.

Cash opens with Cocaine Blues, a song he recorded early in his career as Transfusion Blues and follows with Long Black Veil and Orange Blossom Special, all three also featured in his Folsom Prison concert and album.

As mentioned earlier Cash performed many songs not often included in his live shows. Highlights here include strong renditions of Goin' To Memphis, Old Apache Squaw, Bad News, Lorena and Rock Island Line.

From the Bob Dylan songbook comes One Too Many Mornings, introduced by Cash as, "a Bob Dylan song that hasn't been released yet," and Don't Think Twice, It's All Right.

Just before singing Forty Shades Of Green he mentions that it is a song he last performed there just before they toured Ireland and tonight it was a request from a 'very distinguished gentleman', Gordon Lightfoot. 

Following a duet with June Carter on Jackson he leaves the stage to Carter who performs Tall Lover Man and a medley of songs that included Wildwood Flower, Foggy Mountain Top, This Land Is Your Land and Wabash Cannonball.

Cash returns to perform another duet, Long Legged Guitar Pickin' Man, before bringing the show to a close with Ring Of Fire, Big River and then an encore of Don't Take Your Guns To Town and I Walk The Line.

An enjoyable concert with a strong selection of songs and great performances by both Cash and June Carter. 

Apparently a second show was recorded but at the time of this release the tapes for the second show could not be located.

In the press release for the album they write, "On it's surface, Johnny Cash's visit to the heart of hippie San Francisco in April 1968 might have seemed unexpected, but with a rare performance of The Ballad Of Ira Hayes the deep kinship between performer and audience that evening comes into full focus." Along with the Folsom Prison and San Quentin albums, Live At The Carousel Ballroom is another example of Cash's ability to give voice to the downtrodden.

The way the concert was recorded by Owsley Stanley gave an entirely different perspective to Cash's live sound from that period and is probably as close as you can get to actually being there.

Stanley's son, Starfinder, recalls, "There's an idiosyncrasy to this recording; on every other Johnny Cash record you've ever heard, Johnny is centered in the stereo soundstage. But on this one, Johnny is entirely on the right channel, and the Tennessee Three are all on the left. That's a bit weird until your brain adjusts, but you quickly realise that you've been set right between Johnny and his band."

Despite the totally different perspective from other live recordings it doesn't take long for the listener to appreciate this unusual recording technique. The sound which is excellent for a live recording and only suffers from the occasional drop-out and technical hitch. Part of June's performance of Tall Lover Man is cut short and according to the liner notes this was due to the tape running out mid-song. 

One thing I did notice is that the CD starts with Cash announcing, "Here's another song from our show we did at Folsom Prison..." This would suggest the start of the concert is missing as it would be strange to open a concert with this statement and it is likely Cash opened with Folsom Prison Blues but this is only guesswork on my part. 

Released in both CD and vinyl formats the accompanying booklet includes liner notes by Starfinder Stanley, Bob Weir from Grateful Dead, Widespread Panic's Dave Schools and John Carter-Cash. New artwork by Susan Archie and a reproduction of the original poster complete the set.

We have been starved of any previously unreleased material for several years now, I'm not counting the awful RPO pile of ****, and this is a welcome release and an essential addition to the collection.

PARADIS REGAINED

I first heard Vanessa Paradis back in 1987 when the song Joe Le Taxi was receiving a lot of airplay and attention. I bought the single and her first album M & J and at that time they were seldom off the record player. Over the years I have followed her career, collected all her albums (now on CD), a few of her films (despite being in French) and an archive of photos.

I hoped one day to see her live in concert and maybe even get an interview with her. The interview never happened, despite my best efforts, but I finally saw her in concert in 2014 at The Forum, Kentish Town in London and it was a great show. I was due to see her again last year but the Covid pandemic put paid to that and as of now the concert hasn't been rescheduled. 

Back in 2004 I wrote an article on Vanessa Paradis for the music magazine Record Collector which covered her career up to 2001 and I am reprinting the article here exactly as originally published, with additional images.

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Fifteen years after her 'Lolita'-like launch, Vaness Paradis is one of only a handful of French Singers who have had chart success in the UK. Peter Lewry celebrates her career.

Photographer Unknown

Until the success in recent years of dance acts like Daft Punk and Air, few French artists had ever graced the UK charts, particularly the Top 30 singles. A look back over the past 25 years shows Mireille Mathieu at No. 26 in 1967 with La Derniere Valse, Sacha Distel's No. 10 hit Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head, and Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg, who scored a No. 1 single with the controversial Je T'Aime... Moi Non Plus. And there's always Jean-Michel Jarre...

To this exclusive list can be added Vanessa Paradis who, at the tender age of 14 reached No. 4 with Joe Le Taxi, the first Top 5 French single in nearly 20 years. Interestingly, it wasn't an overly ambitious mother who steered her in a musical direction but her uncle, producer Didier Pain, who would also become her manager.

Born on 22 December 1972 in the Paris suburb of St. Maur-des-Fosses, by the age of seven she had made her first public appearance on French TV on the amateur talent show L'Ecole Des Fans, singing Chanson d'Emilie Jolie. It was Didier Pain who entered her in the contest and then, six years later, recorded her singing La Magie Des Surprises Parties which, although not released as a single at the time, led to a meeting with the composer/lyricist team Franck Langolff and Etienne Roda-Gil.

The due promised to a write a song for Vanessa and eventually came up with Joe Le Taxi, about a Parisian taxi driver with a penchant for rum and Latin music, who knows where all the bars are. The song had to be re-written slightly to be more appropriate for her tender age.

Pain took a demo of the song to both Virgin and Pathe with no success and finally received a positive response from Polydor. They were interested, provided they could first meet Vanessa and be sure she wasn't being pushed into showbusiness by her parents. It only took her five minutes to convince them and in February 1987, just a couple of months after her fourteenth birthday, she signed with the label and went into the studio to record the song.

Released in April, the song reached No. 1 on the French charts and not even Madonna could dislodge the single. Available in several formats, the UK issue with a poster picture sleeve is valued at £25, while the French four-track CD/video single, that included a Spanish language version of the song and video performance, is highly sought-after and commands a £35 price tag.

The song immediately became a hit throughout Europe, staying at No. 1 in France for 12 weeks and a Top 5 hit in the UK, and pushed Vanessa firmly into the spotlight. "Finally, success gave me the freedom to say what I liked... and what I didn't like."

She followed this with a string of successful records including Manolo Manolette, Marilyn Et John, a song about the rumoured romance between Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy, Maxou, about her idol James Dean and Mosquito all penned by the winning combination of Langolff and Roda-Gil.

Following the success of Joe Le Taxi, and not wanting to miss a marketing opportunity, the record label AB released her recording of La Magie Des Surprises Parties, although copies were scarce and the single now fetches anything up to £120 for a mint issue.

Fame had a price though. Despite her success, the French public refused to accept this precocious schoolgirl and she found herself at the receiving end of hatred and jealousy, and was often spat at in the street or called a 'slut' and a 'whore'. During her time at school she had to suffer regular insults from other girls and in an interview in 1988 she recalled that "I no longer wanted to see anyone. I was crying every five minutes."

Photographer Unknown

A few years later, during an appearance at the Cannes Film Festival where she performed Joe Le Taxi, she was jeered at. Even recent glossy magazines have run headlines like 'Why Do Women hate Vanessa?' stating that she is 'vain, pampered, dissolute and precociously sexy.' Her Lolita schoolgirl image, while  being a major selling point, was also proving to be a downside to her fame.

The success of the single, not only in France, but throughout Europe necessitated an album. The result, M & J, released in 1988, was a collection of Langolff/Roda-Gil compositions that demonstrated that she was far from a one-hit wonder. Despite pop music never being taken seriously in France the album was widely acclaimed as a French masterpiece, qualified for a platinum disc and was voted one of the five best domestic albums by the daily paper Liberation.

In the UK the album stalled at No. 45 and she was unable to capitalise on the success of Joe Le Taxi. It would be another four years before she would have another hit on this side of the Channel. Vanessa was happy with most of the album but felt that tracks like Chat Annas, which features her serenading a kitten, was too childish. Even at the early age of 15 she wanted to record material with a harder edge.

In 1989, in a move away from the music business, she made her film debut in Noce Blance (White Wedding), playing a Lolita-like pupil who seduces her teacher. Her performance won over her critics and she was awarded two of the most sought after French awards -- a Cesar for Most Promising Actress and the Prix Romy Schneider for the Most Promising Debut Performance on screen. Many more films would follow including Elisa, based on a song written by Serge Gainsbourg, The Girl On The Bridge and the romantic comedy Un Amour De Sorciere.

She also signed a three million franc contract with the perfume company Chanel to be the face of their perfume Coco. In the advert, filmed by Jean-Paul Goude, ex-husband of Grace Jones, she appeared as a bird in a gilded cage, complete with a set of feathers, while a white fluffy cat looked on! Once again Vanessa found herself the centre of more controversy. Many people thought the idea of a woman displayed in a cage to be sexist.

Despite a successful film career, her singing was not forgotten. Vanessa concentrated on her music and during this time she met up with Serge Gainsbourg, best known for his hit single with Jane Birkin, Je T'Aime... Moi Non Plus. He was taken with this new French sensation commenting that "She has a little bit of Bardot in her."

Her second album Variations Sur Le Meme T'Aime, produced by Gainsbourg and released in 1990, was a fine collection of music by Frank Langolff and the lyrics of Gainsbourg. With the exception of one track, the album was recorded entirely in French, the exception being a cover of the infamous Lou Reed song Walk On The Wild Side. It was proof that Vanessa was now a mature 17-year-old who was ready to handle harder material with stronger feelings. Even the music leaned towards a bluesier, rockier feel.

Three singles were lifted for the French market, Tandem, the beautiful Dis-Lui Toi Que Je T'Aime and L'Anour En Soi, all accompanied by promotional videos. Released in several different formats these singles fetch between £9-£18.

In the UK the failure to capitalise on the success of Joe Le Taxi and the follow up singles meant that nothing from her new album would be issued in that format in the UK. Following the release of the album Vanessa, once again, found her private life splashed across the pages of many tabloids, most seemed to concentrate on her supposed affair with Gainsbourg.

Her third album found her working with yet another producer/songwriter in a different country. Sessions for Vanessa Paradis, released in 1992, were held at Waterfront Studios in New Jersey with Lenny Kravitz producing and arranging all the tracks. She had met Kravitz backstage at a concert given by him in May 1991 where he told her "If you need me, just give me a call." The years of verbal abuse that she had endured in recent years finally drove Vanessa to leave her flat in Paris and move to New York. It was there that she made contact with Kravitz, and they hit it off straight away. The rumour mill was working overtime yet again with stories of an affair between Vanessa and Kravitz, fuelled by intimate photographs of them on holiday in the Caribbean.

Be My Baby, the first single to be lifted from the album was a hit in both France and the UK where it reached No. 6. Two more singles were released for the UK market Sunday Mondays and Just As Long As You Are There reaching No. 49 and 57 respectively -- disappointing, especially after the success of Be My Baby. In France both Natural High and Gotta Have It were issued as singles. As with the previous album, she turned to Lou Reed for a song. On his I'm Waiting For The Man she perfectly fulfilled the role of siren with a dangerous edge -- a marketable combination.

Since the release of Joe Le Taxi she had been a regular on French television and had made appearances in the UK on Top Of The Pops and the chat show Wogan but had not toured to promote any of her albums. In 1993 she finally undertook the massive 70-date Natural High Tour of Europe, with appearances throughout France as well as a one-off concert in London. A show at the Olympia in Paris in April 1993 was recorded and released as Vanessa Paradis Live the following year.

The concerts and subsequent album showcased songs from her previous three albums and one of the highlights of this set is As Tears Go By, originally recorded by Marianne Faithful and performed by Paradis in an almost breathless whisper. She also performed La Vague A Lames as a tribute to the late Serge Gainsbourg.

It would be six years before she released a new album. her film career went from strength to strength and she met and moved in with actor Johnny Depp, falling pregnant and enjoying life with her daughter Lily-Rose.

Bliss, released in 2000, was another collection of mainly French language recordings recorded in Los Angeles. She had more involvement in the making of the album, contributing lyrics and music to many of the songs and producing or co-producing most of the album. The track Commando was lifted for single release in France and was issued in several formats.

In 2001 she went out on the road again for only the second time in her career and, in November 2001, a live album was recorded during her Bliss Tour at the Zenith in Paris. Au Zenith included two Serge Gainsbourg songs that she hadn't recorded before, L'eau A La Bouche and Requiem Pour Un Con. There was also a cover of the old Zombies track, This Will Be Our Year.

As a sellable product and sex symbol her picture has appeared on countless magazine covers and in recent years she has featured in a variety of French magazines including Photo, Tele Cable, Femme and Paris Match as well as making the cover of the US publication Rolling Stone.

Photographer Unknown

So what of the future for Vanessa? With the addition of a young son to the Depp/Paradis family and a successful film career it might be that her music career takes a back-seat for a few years but there is no doubt that music is a major part of her life and fans of this talented French singer hopefully look forward to more albums in the future.