CHRIS DARROW

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CHRIS DARROW Sept 3, 2020 1:08:46 GMT

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Post by the Scribe on Sept 3, 2020 1:08:46 GMT

CHRIS DARROW: AN APPRECIATION
LATEST, MUSIC NEWS JANUARY 23, 2020 HARVEY KUBERNIK

“I often read about artists that have supposedly shaped Americana music—Chris Darrow WAS Americana music. He always will be.” - Michael Macdonald.

www.musicconnection.com/chris-darrow-an-appreciation/

Influential musician and songwriter Christopher Lloyd Darrow was born July 30, 1944, in Sioux Falls, SD. He died on January 15, 2020, at 1:00 pm at the Pomona Valley Hospital in Pomona, CA following complications from a stroke.

I have interviewed Chris Darrow many times over the last 44 years.

I first saw Chris and photographer Henry Diltz in 1967 at a Love-In in Los Angeles at Elysian Park. Diltz eventually took the cover photo of Sweet Baby James.

The heralded multi-instrumentalist moved with his parents as a tyke to Claremont, CA (via Pasadena, CA). After high school at the Webb School and Claremont High, he attended Claremont Men’s College and graduated with a degree in Art and was in the MFA program at the Claremont Graduate School. Darrow has been in the same home since the '50s.

At Pitzer College in Claremont, Darrow was an assistant to the well-respected folklorist Guy Carawan, who gave the world the anthem “We Shall Overcome,” and it was Carawan who played opening night at the Ash Grove folk club in 1958. Carawan was teaching American Folk Life Studies at Pitzer College. For two years, Darrow worked for him at the school. Later, in the mid-'70s, Darrow produced an album on Carawan, The Telling Takes Me Home.

Darrow was co-founder of The Kaleidoscope and session man on Songs Of Leonard Cohen debut LP. Darrow is the bassist on “So Long Marianne” and “Teachers” from those 1968 recording dates.

Additional credits include work with John Stewart, Hoyt Axton and he served as Linda Ronstadt's band leader from 1969-1971. In addition, he worked onJames Taylor’s Sweet Baby James and was a onetime member of The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Darrow also penned Ben Harper’s debut Virgin Records single “Whipping Boy.”

In late spring 2008, his first two solo albums were reissued on the potent Ever Loving Records label based in Los Feliz, CA.

extensive history for Chris:

www.musicconnection.com/chris-darrow-an-appreciation/

Last Edit: Sept 3, 2020 1:30:38 GMT by the Scribe

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CHRIS DARROW Sept 3, 2020 1:16:27 GMT

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Post by the Scribe on Sept 3, 2020 1:16:27 GMT

excerpt from: www.musicconnection.com/chris-darrow-an-appreciation/

In 2019 I emailed Darrow to comment on his pivotal and game-changing work with Linda Ronstadt during 1969-1974.

“Jeff Hanna and I left the Dirt Band to start our own country-based band, which we called the Corvettes,” Chris reflected.

“John Ware, an old friend from college, became the drummer and John London, from Lewis and Clarke Expedition, played bass. London was Mike Nesmith’s best friend and this led us into a record deal for the legendary Dot Records label with Mike Nesmith as producer. We did two singles that failed to chart and our future was uncertain.

“Linda Ronstadt had just had a hit with Mike’s version of Different Drum, which had come from a Greenbrier Boys record with John Herald on vocals. She needed a band pronto and asked if we would back her up. We asked to keep our identity and we performed a song per set as the Corvettes.

“Jeff decided after a while that he wanted to return to the Dirt Band and we replaced him with Bernie Leadon. This was a great band and really set the tone for the country-rock period of Linda’s career.

“My first meeting with Linda Ronstadt and her then producer, Nik Venet, came while doing Dick Clark’s American Bandstand with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. She was singing her follow up to Different Drum, John Herald’s High Muddy Water. I fell in love with her deal immediately and, little did I know, that I would work with them both later on in the future.

“My stint with the Corvettes eventually led us to become Linda Ronstadt’s band,” Darrow underscored. “This was after poor sales on our Dot Record singles that were produced by former Monkee, Mike Nesmith. Linda needed a band, we needed jobs. I had always been in my own bands before. Suddenly, for the first time, I was an instant sideman for an established artist. John Stewart saw me with her and asked me to go on the road with him as well. So I was touring with both of them at the same time.

“While in New York in 1969 and staying at the Chelsea Hotel, I saw Peter Asher checking in to the hotel. He had just left Apple records and was in transit to take over the role of A&R director at MGM records.

“I asked him to come to the Bitter End and see the show. It turned out he was a real Ronstadt fan and loved the show and the band.

“He asked if he could produce the Corvettes for MGM. We were stoked, but by the end of our stint in New York, Bernie had been asked to join the Flying Burrito Brothers, and John and John were recruited by Mike Nesmith for his First National Band. I was left to eventually become a solo artist and soon signed with Fantasy Records.

“While working with Linda Ronstadt I had been spotted by John Stewart, who wanted a multi-instrumentalist for his band. With Linda, I was performing a Cajun tune called ‘Alligator Man,’ which was always a crowd-pleaser. I continued to perform this song with John, which led me to my meeting with Doug Kershaw.

“John was performing at Doug Weston’s Troubadour and the band was Russ Kunkel, drums, Arnie Moore, bass, Loren Newkirk, piano and myself on guitar, slide, dobro, mandolin and fiddle. One night Kershaw came into the club. John called Doug up on stage to sing with us. He did ‘Louisiana Man’ and I instantly fell into his brother’s Rusty harmony part. He kept looking over at me and wondering how I knew the song.

“My mother Nadine was a big Kershaw fan and was in the audience a different night with my sister Liz. I was going over to their table to watch the show when Doug called me up on stage.

“He handed me his fiddle and picked up his accordion and said, ‘Let’s play.’ I was stunned and excited at the same time and we played an impromptu fiddle and accordion duet, which rocked the house. It was probably the proudest moment of my mother’s life,” exclaimed Chris.

Last Edit: Sept 8, 2023 2:26:56 GMT by the Scribe

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CHRIS DARROW Sept 3, 2020 1:19:08 GMT

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Post by the Scribe on Sept 3, 2020 1:19:08 GMT

In 1970, Darrow was asked by John Stewart to introduce him to Peter Asher, who then produced Stewart’s Willard album.

As a songwriter, bandleader, record producer and fan, Chris Darrow gets excited by a good tune.

“I’m a song guy, by that I mean I love good songs and try like mad to search them out,” he muses. “I feel that much of my contribution to the various musical aggregations I have been with was the songs that I brought to the table. Much of the Kaleidoscope and Dirt Band stuff came from my record collection or my pen.

"In 1970 while playing with Linda Ronstadt, she and I went on a song search for her next record. John Boylan was her producer and boyfriend at the time. We spent a couple of days in Woodstock at the Mill Stream Inn, looking for material.

“One evening Maria Muldaur came by and sang a song that just nailed both of us. It was a song written by Anna McGarrigle of the McGarrigle sisters. The song was ‘Heart Like a Wheel.’

“My band the Floggs had done our own versions of Betty Everett’s ‘You’re No Good’ and Smokey Robinson’s, ‘Tracks of My Tears,’ two songs that I dearly loved. We added those to the list and I couldn’t resist suggesting ‘Dark End of the Street,’ the classic James Carr song of adulterous love and the first collaboration of Dan Penn and Chips Moman. It might be my favorite song.

“When we returned from our New York sojourn, neither of us could wait to suggest these songs to Boylan. He didn’t like any of the ideas that we had come up with, so I exited. Too many cooks in the kitchen, I guess.

“However, I did continue to play for Linda. In wasn’t until 1974 that she finally got to record these songs and all but one was on the same album, Heart Like a Wheel. ‘Tracks of My Tears’ was on the follow-up record, Prisoner in Disguise. Peter Asher had become her producer and the rest is history.”

There’s a new documentary Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice, produced by James Keach, directed by Jeffrey Friedman and Rob Epstein that premiered in 2018 at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2018 and released theatrically in September 2019.

Chris Darrow wasn’t interviewed for the movie.

Darrow is heard on the spring, 2004 CD reissue Moogy Klingman assembled on Moogy Music, Take Your Place in the Freak Parade, a re-release of the 1969 Music from Free Creek sessions that included Keith Emerson, Dr. John, Linda Ronstadt, Mitch Mitchell and Chris Wood. Chris is on the Ronstadt’s tracks “He Darked The Sun” and “Living Like a Fool” with Bernie Leadon and Red Rhodes.

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