Ten stone cold 1970s bangers that time has forgotten
By Jonathan Eig
“THE NIGHT I GOT OUT OF JAIL” – Ten Wheel Drive (1971)
Sometimes billed as Ten Wheel Drive with Genya Ravan, Ten Wheel Drive was considered Blood Sweat & Tears with a woman singing. They incorporated horns into their particular brand of jazz-tinged blues rock. In Ravan, they had a vocalist who could approximate Janis Joplin, and in Aram Schefrin and Michael Zagar, they had songwriters who could compose high-powered rockers that may have been brand new but sounded like old-time classics.
That is never clearer than on “The Night I Got Out of Jail,” which opens with Schefrin serving up a classic blues riff on guitar before Ravan starts wailing. The horns do their best to keep up with her energy. She gets a break in the middle as Zagar’s organ picks things up for a while before the horns begin blasting away. It takes three trumpets, a trombone, and a sax to match what Ravan is putting out with her voice.
She could sing quieter and sweeter, but Ravan was at her best when totally unrestrained, which is what you get on “The Night I Got Out of Jail.” She would remain on good terms with Schefrin and Zagar, but would soon leave to pursue a solo career. After briefly trying to replace her. Her partners decided to pull the plug on Ten Wheel Drive in 1974.
“TROMBONE GULCH” – Audience (1972)
Audience, in their original incarnation, only lasted a few years. But in that time, they opened for titans like Led Zeppelin and Rod Stewart. Another band that incorporated horns into their rock and roll, Audience veered more toward classic blues rock than toward the jazzier sounds of bands like Chicago and Blood Sweat & Tears. Keith Gemmell was their permanent sax player, but by the time of their fourth album, Lunch, they were bringing in guest horns of every stripe to expand the sound.
Audience was an anomaly – a hard rock band without an electric guitar player. Frontman/songwriter Howard Werth played an acoustic, and that contributed to a bluegrass quality to much of their output. They leaned into that rollicking brand of bluegrass roots with urban horn blasts the most on “Trombone Gulch,” which sounds like it could be on the soundtrack of a Coen Brothers neo-western. Not, bad for some boys born and raised in East London.
A few years after Lunch, Audience split up, with each member going off in a new direction. None ever found more success than they had together for that brief time in the early 1970s.