Farlowe Freak Out!

CHRIS FARLOWE-Moanin'/What Have I Been Doing GERMANY Columbia C 23 562 1967

Back in the late 90's when Radio Free Europe went under the Princeton Record Exchange became the recipient of all it's 45's which were offered to the public (after a few select collector's had picked through them, missing among them, a 45 of "Crawdaddy Simone" by The Syndicats, more on that some other day). My pal Haim Kenig and I spent a day and a half on our hands and knees picking through literally several hundred white cardboard 45 boxes pouring over the singles. It's fair to say that 75% of them were pressings from the European continent, mostly Germany. I came upon this German Chris Farlowe picture sleeve 45 among them. I paid it little mind and hung the sleeve on my wall amongst my mosaic of 60's U.K./Euro p.s's. My jazz aficionado pal Jennie Wasserman brought it to my attention and asked if I liked it. I told her I didn't know, she assured me I'd love it. I pulled it down and played it, she was right (she hasn't steered me wrong yet).

The A-side of a full on 1967 version of the Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers/Lambert, Hendricks and Ross number. Like most Immediate sessions it featured a host of top notch players, among them Jimmy Page, who adds the heavy fuzz guitar and possibly the sitar noodlings. Farlowe uses his skill at jazzy vocals to easily sing this in a way that works (which sadly was not always the case with a great deal of his covers on Immediate, especially some of the soul sides) and the back end is brought up by some nice brass .

"What Have I Been Doing" is a tepid ballad with some nifty little sitars and acoustic guitar in the back ground that make it interesting and brings Donovan's "Ferris Wheel" to mind but the tune itself sadly falls flat .

Both sides are available on Farlowe's CD set "Out Of Time:The Immediate Anthology".

Hear "Moanin':

https://youtu.be/pu_Ae83bIW4

Hear "What Have I Been Doing":

https://youtu.be/j2Yj4fZFwZc