''CONSTRUCTION #1''
1969
41:39
1 /Tightrope
Genya Ravan / Leon Rix/5:10
2 /Lapidary
Aram Schefrin / Michael Zager/4:32
3 /Eye of the Needle
Aram Schefrin / Michael Zager/8:11
4 /Candy Man Blues
Louis Hoff/4:36
5 /Ain't Gonna Happen
Aram Schefrin / Michael Zager/5:37
6 /Polar Bear Rug
Aram Schefrin / Michael Zager/4:34
7 /House in Central Park
Aram Schefrin / Michael Zager/4:32
8 /I Am a Want Ad
Aram Schefrin / Michael Zager/4:27
Louis Hoff /Flute, Sax (Baritone), Sax (Tenor), Wind
Peter Hyde /Flugelhorn, Horn, Trumpet
Richard Meisterman /Flugelhorn, Trumpet
Dennis Parisi /Trombone
Walter Raim /Producer
Genya Ravan /Harmonica, Tambourine, Vocals
Leon Rix /Cello, Drums, Percussion
Steve Sattan /Horn
Aram Schefrin /Guitar, Percussion, Vocals
Jay Silva /Flugelhorn, Flute, Trumpet, Wind
Bill Takas /Bass
Michael Zager /Clarinet, Keyboards, Organ, Piano
Review
By Joe Viglione
This exemplary recording by songwriters Aram Schefrin, Mike Zager, and singer Genya Ravan was highly experimental in ways that Chicago, Big Brother & The Holding Company, Traffic, and other of their contemporaries wanted to be. Imagine Ronnie Spector leaving The Ronettes to join Blood, Sweat & Tears, and realize the sweet Goldie Zelkowitz from Goldie & The Gingerbreads did just that by reinventing herself here as the great Genya Ravan. The Ravan co-write, "Tightrope," is five-minutes-and-ten-seconds of psychedelic blues-jazz-funk. This is the sound Janis Joplin would refine for her Kozmic Blues experience, and while Janis Joplin and Kozmic Blues performed at Woodstock, Ten Wheel Drive were getting such a buzz they turned Woodstock down. History would, indeed, have been different had they played "I Am a Want Ad" at that event, but with Sid Bernstein as co-manager, and songs like "Lapidary," the band had a lot going for it. "Lapidary" is a complete about face, Traffic's "John Barleycorn" with a female vocalist. "Eye of the Needle," on the other hand, was an eight-minute-plus show stopper of horns and guitars that come in like some country's national anthem. With Ravan's amazing wail at the end, it becomes powerful stuff. Songwriter Louie Hoff got to arrange his "Candy Man Blues," which puts Ravan in a nightclub setting, the piano and flutes changing the mood dramatically. This is such an adventurous and remarkable record by such a talented crew, it is a shame they didn't record 20 or more platters. A Polydor executive made a statement that if they couldn't break Slade, they weren't a real company. Polydor did, in fact, fail to launch that British supergroup in America, and one wonders if these recordings were made for another label, if oldies stations wouldn't be playing Ten Wheel Drive today. "Ain't Gonna Happen" is extraordinary, showcasing a band on the prowl and a singer who pounces every chance she gets with a voice that does all sorts of wild things. If "Polar Bear Rug" and "House in Central Park" were a bit too evolved for Top 40, their A&R man should have brought them a single. Ten Wheel Drive could, like Etta James, play to those who crave this wonderful fusion of jazz and blues with a rock edge. A Ten Wheel Drive reunion, bringing this music back on-stage, is something that would make the world a better place.
Biography
By Joe Viglione
Ten Wheel Drive was a highly influential rock/jazz group not afraid to push the envelope while exploring various musical styles. Though musicians came and went, including the original lead vocalist, by the time the fourth album was released, the records have stood the test of time, influencing the successful Bette Midler breakthrough film The Rose, inspiring women with the drive and ambition to front their own group in a once male-dominated industry, getting sold on auction sites like Ebay to be discovered by new generations of music lovers. The original lead vocalist and founding member, Genya Ravan, spoke with AMG concerning how she formed the band: "I went to see Billy Fields, he was going to manage me. He had a friend in New Jersey that befriended two guys that were writers and they were looking for someone to sing their songs. Billy asked me if I wanted to hear them, I said 'OK' since I was always looking for material, so I met with Mike Zager and Aram Schefrin at a dinky little piano studio in Times Square. They played "Polar Bear Rug" and "I Am a Want Ad" and got me interested even though I thought they sounded more like show tunes, I was also an actress, so I liked it. At this time, I had an R&B band and they came to hear me in some sleazy bar and they liked what they heard and saw. They did not have a band nor musicians in mind, I knew some good jazz players, so (we) got the musicians and started to audition and rehearse."
When asked how the idea took shape, Ravan replied: "When I heard Blood, Sweat & Tears -- (the) first record with Al Kooper ( Child Is Father to the Man), my fave. I said, oh I want a horn band. It was 1969, we started to rehearse at the Bitter End, Sid Bernstein joined in the management with Billy Fields. It was a very exciting time, we played the Atlanta Pop Fest. Every great band that lived played that gig, that gig is what broke our band (and) we were an instant success." On the material, Ravan said she "seldom wrote with Ten Wheel Drive...Aram was a brilliant lyricist, Mike and Aram were easy to work with, so I wrote some, it made me feel good, because the ones I wrote turned out to be the most soulful, like "Pulse," "Tightrope." I came into my writing more during the Urban Desire and ...and I Mean It! recordings." Those were the albums that came out on 20th Century Records at the end of the '80s, apart from Ten Wheel Drive.
The group signed with Polydor when Sid Bernstein brought Jerry Schoenbaum to the band's rehearsal and to one of their gigs at the Bitter End. The vocalist noted: "Jerry flipped. Signed us immediately." There were artistic consequences to having phenoms like bassist Bill Takas and drummer Leon Rix moving on to LaBelle and Buzzy Linhart, Rix recording with Bette Midler as well. Over the span of four albums, guitarist Aram Schefrin and keyboard player Mike Zager (no relation to Zager & Evans of "In the Year 2525" fame, though because of the point in time, there was some confusion in rock circles) worked with more than a dozen and a half different players. When Ravan was asked about this, she replied: "It turned out to be good for us, fresh blood, it was creative, I love changes like that. I did not like the canning of musicians, but I was the one that had to do it. New blood is always exciting, You know how laid-back jazzers can be, they get excited for the first five minutes." The band played Carnegie Hall on Ravan's birthday and she cites the Central Park gig for WNEW when the Nightbird disc jockey Allison Steele hosted it, as well as the Atlanta Pop Festival as just two of the highlights of their brief but important career. Steele would later co-write the liner notes to Bill Levenson's 1995 16-track compilation on Polygram, The Best of Ten Wheel Drive With Genya Ravan. With all the excitement the band generated live, there was, unfortunately, no full concert performance on video or record. "One of the last gigs we did was a show at Carnegie Hall with a symphony," Ravan said. "Mike and Aram were geniuses. This was their forte -- they wrote this rock opera of "Little Big Horn" and it was brilliant, Polydor did not want to record it, I swear 'til this day, had it been recorded, Ten Wheel Drive would have gone down in history, it was one of the reasons I was disillusioned into leaving the label, it made me want to quit the business." There were no unreleased gems recorded and left in the vaults, Ravan stating that everything happened all too fast. And then she left the group she founded: "Things started to get complicated. The music was not the main thing anymore, it was too expensive to have that many people involved. We had accountants, lawyers, roadies, and of course the group, we could not tour Europe because it was to expensive to get there and stay there. I just felt like there would be no future for me with the band anymore, also some personal stuff went down, that made it awkward. It just felt like it had hit the end for me." Ravan recorded a solo album in 1972 for Columbia Records with Schefrin and Zager co-producing. They enlisted the Rascals vocalist Annie Sutton to sing on the self-titled 1974 Capitol release that featured Hall & Oates on backing vocals, but it wasn't the same. The band created essential music and has a revered place in rock history. Schefrin practices law in Rhode Island, having produced other records after the final breakup of Ten Wheel Drive; Zager does soundtrack work; and Ravan continues to record.
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