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Psychedelic And Other Situations

The musical career  of Jimmy Curtiss

As I promised already I wrote my story about Jimmy Curtiss in English as well now. I also compiled two CDs. The first one contains songs sung and/or performed by Jimmy Curtiss himself as a solo singer or with his groups The Hobbits and The New Hobbits respectively between 1961 and 1969. The second CD contains music writen and/or produced by Jimmy Curtiss but performed by other artists between 1968 and 1971. All tracks come from original vinyl sources. I tried to clean the recordings from hiss or crackle using Adobe Audition 1.0, however, to keep the original sound intact these efforts had to be made very carefully. Tracklists and more info about the CDs you'll find here.

From the beginning

My first contact with Jimmy Curtiss was in the spring of 1967. In a local radio programme in Berlin I heard the single "Psychedelic Situation", wich they played quite frequently until the summer. At the time I mostly recorded my favourite songs from the radio using a small Japanese reel-to-reel tape recorder. I didn't have enough money to buy a lot of singles. And so I didn't even bother to ask for a Jimmy Curtiss record at my local dealer. I had the song "Psychedelic Situation" on my favourite party tape for a while. But then the tape got lost and I lost track of the song and the man for years. In early 1973 I heard about Lenny Kaye's great "Nuggets" compilation in that same radio programme, and my interest in the US garage and psych punk scene in the Sixties began to rise. I also remembered that song "Psychedelic Situation", which led to a search, if not a quest, that hasn't really ended, yet. In 1977 I bought the single in an auction in a German record collector's magazine. For many years this 7"45 remained the only testimony of the music of Jimmy Curtiss for me. And for some reasons I can't really explain this single became an obsession and at the same time the best piece of pop music ever, at least for me! You'd consider it a nice little psychedelic bubblegum number in the first place. A typical period piece. But if you listen closer, you will find that it pretty much sums up all pop music was made of in 1967! It's fast, really catchy, and you can dance to it. It's highly original with a strong and easy to sing along melody. Arrangement and sound effects are typical for that time. Simple but very clever. Jimmy Curtiss' singing, his falsetto voice in the refrain is unique and very easy to recognize. Don't get me wrong. There was an unbelievable number of great songs and singles in those years 1966/67. And considering objective criterions you had to rate a lot of them much higher than "Psychedelic Situation". Be it "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys, "Strawberry Fields Forever" by the Beatles, or "Paint It Black" and "We Love You" by the Stones, to name but a few. All these songs aren't worse than "Psychedelic Situation", of course not. But for me personally this single became the essence of that period in time. And the song's lyrics describe in a simple naive way quite precisely what a teenager feels on his first trip.

Today I know that the single "Psychedelic Situation" or it's flipside "Gone But Not Forgotten" had been played by radio stations in other parts of Germany as well at the time. I got several mails from Sixties' fans from all over Germany showing me, I'm not alone with my obsession. And I learned more about Jimmy Curtiss and his music. Although I didn't manage get in touch with him in person or find out where he lives today.

From Doo Wop to Anti-War Blues

Jimmy Curtiss was born in the early 1940s, I presume. His real name might be Curtiz or Cortez or something like that, because the rare photos of the man, that I've seen, point to a Latin-American or Spanish origin. For the first time Jimmy Curtiss appears as a member of a doo wop outfit The Enjays, who released three 7"45s around 1959/60. In the following year J.C.'s first solo single appeared on United Artists. Teen pop you'd call this innocent, clear, very melody oriented phase in US mainstream pop. Bobby Vee, Bobby Darin, Dion & The Belmonts were it's main exponents. I know of at least three singles Jimmy Curtiss released during this period of his career around 1961/62. His voice is already unmistakeable. Already then he wrote or co-wrote most of his material. "Five Smooth Stones" for example is a nice and highly original version of the Bible's tale of David and Goliath. According to Vernon Joynson (in "Fuzz, Acid & Flowers") he was a "phenomenal songwriter ... throughout", who even sold songs to Bobby Darin and Ellie Greenwich.

In the first half of the Sixties J.C. worked in the advertising field but also continued writing songs in his spare time. In 1967 he turned into a fulltime singer and musician. Since 1965 he collaborated with Ernie Maresca and Laurie Records in New York. Three Jimmy Curtiss singles appeared on the Laurie label. The "most famous" being of course "Psychedelic Situation". This was the only release Laurie managed to licence to Ariola in Germany, to great effect as we know today. Otherwise there wouldn't be this feature. "You're What's Happening Baby" (1965) and "The Girl From The Land Of 1000 Dances"/bw "Let's Dance Close" (with The Regents) (1965) were the other two 7"45s on Laurie. Fans of doo wop and teen pop in The US and UK are usually quite fond of this song with The Regents plus the early singles by Jimmy C., while psych pop and bubblegum afficionados prefer Jimmy's music from 1967 onwards.  

Between 1967 and 1969 Jimmy Curtiss worked with a group called The Hobbits in New York. This was presumably more a studio project than a performing live band. Despite the band's name, apparently taken from the universe of Middle Earth, which was very popular in hippie circles at the time, Tolkien's creatures never appear in the songs of The Hobbits, even though the first album is called "Down To Middle Earth" and the last "Back From Middle Earth". There are three LPs and two singles by the Hobbits. "Strawberry Children"/bw "Pretty Young Thing" even appeared as a licence release on Festival Records in New Zealand and Australia. The third album was probably never released officially. At least I only know of copies bearing the imprint "promotional copy". The first two albums, released on Decca in New York in 1967 and 1968 respectively, offer a mixture of sunshine pop and soft psychedelia. Not unlike the music bands such as The Cowsills or Jay & The Americans. There are excellent vocal harmonies, especially on the second album "Men And Doors" (1968). Two female studio singers and a flamenco guitar player were added to the usual line up of bass, drums, guitars, and keyboards, resulting in a special flavour all over the whole recordings.Both most outstanding psych pop songs written by Jimmy Curtiss are included here as well: "The Journey" and "Strawberry Children". Listening to the first album (1967) of the Hobbits I get the impression, that musicians and arrangers are operating in a field they're not really familiar with. Obviously they tried to jump the psychedelic bandwagon in the summer of love, which had already passed it's zenith and was approaching a deadend street. So all efforts of Jimmy Curtiss and his partners Jerry Vance and Terry Philips came too late to gain reasonable success. In the end these efforts were supposedly too tame and evidently made up. The cover artwork of both albums reflect this intended "psychedelic style as well.  A little oddity aside: the German branch of Universal Records released a double CD "The Get Easy! Sunshine Pop Collection" at the end of 2003 - two years after the sunshine pop revival. This collection includes "Sunny Day Girl" from the first Hobbits LP. The third album "Back From Middle Earth" picks up the thread from the first Hobbits LP thematically. But it is very clear, two years have passed. The passion and ingenuousness is gone. The guys in the band turn to new topics, rather serious ones if you like. The record already appeared on Jimmy Curtiss' own label Perception Records in 1969 under the name of The New Hobbits. The band is a totally different one. Only Jimmy Curtiss himself remained. There are hints to the participation of the guys of the group The Bag and other musicians who appeared on J.C.'s solo project a little later. The New Hobbits LP is the rarest of the three. And this is the reason, I guess, for a CD (and supposedly vinyl) re-issue through a British label usually dealing in acid rock and prog rock. Upon solid consideration I'm afraid I have to call the third album the weakest of the three. Instead of naive aplomb there is a distant conservatism at work. It is a half hearted affair. With "Back From Middle Earth" Jimmy Curtiss tried to reinstate happy psych pop times when his inner self obviously was already somewhere else.

In 1968 Jimmy Curtiss founded his own production company Perception. Ever since he produced bands and/or wrote songs for them. A 7"45 "Artificial Rose" by the Lost Souls from North Dakota appeared in 1968 on a tiny label called Dawn Records. The song was co-written by Mr. Curtiss and his old partner Ernie Maresca. Two examples for a pure bubblegum period in Jimmy C.'s career are the singles "Love, Anyway You Want It" by The Sweet Bippies (ca. 1969) and "Da-Da-Da-Da", The Changing Colours (ca. 1969). Can't tell you anything more about these bands. In 1968/69 J.C. also produced three singles and an album by the New York group The Bag, who self described their music as "psychedelic soul". The band came from the same New York based blue-eyed soul scene as The (Young) Rascals or The Soul Survivors. Through his younger brother I got in touch with Dan Mahony, formerly of The Bag, in the summer of 2003. Unfortunately Dan couldn't tell anything really new. As it seems he doesn't remember things very well. After a few e-mails to and fro I didn't hear from him again. But obviously he and the other guys in The Bag were also involved in the recording of the New Hobbits album. Dan is living in Ireland now, and it seems he's still working as a musician. The Bag album "Real" contains several really well crafted soul pop and polished r&b songs with a touch of psychedelia. Not bad at all. And they were a working stage act, as Dan assured me.  

Almost at the same time Jimmy Curtiss and one Steve Kanyon produced the only album by a New York psychedelic folk/rock group called Velvet Night. Besides strangely arranged cover versions of two Tim Hardin and a Donovan song, plus a Cream medley, there are songs written by Curtiss and Kanyon plus one credited to the band's organ player Vinnie Nisi. The record has a rather weird US underground psychedelic sound. Donovan's "Season Of The Witch" certainly comes less menacing than Vanilla Fudge's version, but still much heavier than the original. The Cream medley is rather strange. And Tim Hardin's "If I Were A Carpenter" sounds spherically esoteric. When Lynn Boccumini sings lead vocals, the band even sounds a bit like Jefferson Airplane. Of substantial interest are only the songs we do not know already in other and better interpretations. Again it becomes clear, that Jimmy Curtiss was able to sense atmosphere and specifics of a musical style in a unique way. As a songwriter he wasn't bad either as we do know already.

And the man always found a way to include his own compositions on the records he produced for others. So he did with The Jon Bartel Thing, a band from California, whose lone album was released by Capitol Records in 1969. A great record full of brass dominated, jazz influenced psychedelic pop. Co-producer here was Terry Philips, who worked on many projects of Mr. Curtiss. This album by The Jon Bartel Thing reminds me in some ways a lot of the first Blood, Sweat & Tears LP. An interesting fact by the way, J.C.'s partners Terry Philips and Jerry Vance used to write songs together with Lou Reed for the Pickwick company in the early sixties. "Why Don't You Smile Now" was one of these.         

In 1969 Perception Productions turned into Perception Records. Now Mr. Curtiss had his own record label. The New Hobbits LP bears the catalogue number PLP-10. But with the number PLP-1 appeared - probably a bit later - the Jimmy Curtiss solo album "Life". I'm not sure about the year of release. There's no date on the cover or record. Though most likely it came out in 1969 still. On this record J.C. is miles away from the early doo wop 7"45s but also from the Hobbits' psych pop or from "Psychedelic Situation" for that matter. Folk, singer/songwriter pop, blues in nine songs. All of them written by Jimmy Curtiss alone or in co-operation with people like Marcia Hillman, who was a co-writer for The Hobbits already. The album's opener "Child Of Clay" had been a US TOP 40 hit for Jimmie Rodgers in 1967. This was J.C.'s biggest success as a songwriter. Unusual were the mostly critical and serious lyrics. Really thrilling sometimes. The musical arrangements with wah wah sounds, with strings set rather economically grab one's attention.  The album cover is really anti commercial sporting a primitive black & white photo layout. It's message rather unclear. The meaning of life? - Whatever. Jimmy Curtiss' backing band made another album for Perception under the name of Albert. Drummer Howie Wyeth worked as a session musician for Bob Dylan and others. Together with the album "Life" there appeared a J.C. single on Perception. The A-side "For What I Am" is not on the album. Unfortunately I don't know the song either. Until 1974 steadily appeared new releases (mostly LPs) on the label. One of them was the Jimmy Curtiss produced and mostly written LP "Custer Died For Your Sins" by a native Indian Floyd Westerman. With dobro and lapsteel guitar it's a perfect alternative country album. An album of the Australian King Harvest came out in 1972. It includes the smash hit "Dancing In The Moonlight", which was recently a hit again in a rather dull cover version by a British group whose name I've forgotten. The LP "We Can Be Everything" by American singer/songwriter John Simson was even partly recorded in England. The line up included Mike Kellie on drums. This guy you should know from Spooky Tooth (if you're older) or The Only Ones (if you're younger). The producer's credit have to share - not for the first ime as we know - Jimmy Curtiss and Terry Philips. This time they failed to include a composition of their own. Dizzy Gillespie released a record on Perception, and Astrud Gilberto did the same. Several jazz, funk and soul records appeared on the label.

In 1973 Jimmy Curtiss turned to TV and advertising. The last thing I heard about him is, he produced a really successful TV-ad for Bumble Bee Tuna in 1974. It's a funny song and a typical Jimmy Curtiss tune. If anybody knows, who he really is and where he lives, please get in touch. 

Jimmy Curtiss Discography

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