Free Will - Live At Jabberwocky 1970: Previously Undiscovered Gem on Vinyl

 [review by Rev. Keith A. Gordon]

FREE WILL

Live At Jabberwocky 1970

(The Grail Record Productions, Italy)

VENUE: The Jabberwocky, Syracuse NY; July 1970.

SOUND QUALITY: Decent soundboard recording for the era, probably captured on portable reel-to-reel and put through its paces with modern mastering and studio gimcrackery. It could be worse, given the vintage of the recording, the mix awfully dense and quiet to the point of distraction. The entire album could have used more EQ to balance out the frequencies and they could have pumped up the volume with some slight compression. It’s listenable, though, provided you turn it up, and while the vocals are pretty muddy, and the guitars tend to dominate the sometimes sludge-like instrumentation, the two records capture the high spirits of the performance.   

COVER: Pretty dang swanky for a label I’ve never heard of in almost 50 years of collecting and writing about music. The Grail Record Productions out of Italy doesn’t seem to have a very large catalog – a mere four albums listed on Discogs, with three of ‘em by this band Free Will. But Live At Jabberwocky 1970 sports a handsome gatefold cover with cool cover art printed in silver ink against a black background. The inside features a bunch of color photos of the band in typical 1970s rock star poses on stage, while the rear cover lists the songs in gold ink and offers more arcane-looking, silver-printed artwork. Thick slabs of vinyl are housed in slick, high quality paper sleeves. An overall impressive job; I’ve seen major label releases that showed a lot less effort in their packaging than The Grail does here. 

TRACKLIST 

Side One: 1. Good Rockin’ Tonight • 2. Big Boss Man • 3. Someplace Is Something • 4. Handbags To Gladrags • 5. The Hunter • 6. Help Me

Side Two: 7. Carry Me Home • 8. Candy Man • 9. Big-Legged Woman • 10. Country Road • 11. Stormy Monday • 12. Swingin’ Sheperd Blues

Side Three: 13. Needle and Spoon • 14. Free Will Boogie • 15. Bright Lights, Big City

Side Four: 16. Dink Soup • 17. Mother Earth • 18. Ridin’ With the Devil 

COMMENTS: Free Will was a 1970s-era blues-rock band from upstate New York (Syracuse area) that toured clubs and colleges in the East Coast region. Formed in 1968 by singer Joe Whiting and guitarist Mark Doyle, the line-up also included rhythm guitarist George Egosarian, bassist John DeMaso, and drummer Tom Glaister. To be honest, there’s not a heck of a lot of info on the band on the old Internet – they skewed towards a bluesy sound that took advantage of Whiting’s strong vocals, mixing blues and rock covers with a handful of original tunes, and their dynamic live shows earned Free Will a loyal following in the tri-state (NY-NJ-PA) area. 

Somewhere along the line, the band’s demo tapes brought them to the attention of A&R guys at RCA Records and a subsequent record deal. The label changed the band’s name to the absurd moniker Jukin’ Bone and emphasized the “rock” side of the band’s sound across a pair of poorly-received 1972 albums – 1972’s Whiskey Women and Way Down East – neither of which sold all that well. It wasn’t for lack of trying, however, the band touring far and wide and opening for folks like ZZ Top, Freddie King, the Allman Brothers, John Mayall, the Kinks, and others, and they received rave reviews from Creem magazine. But the horrible album cover art and an obvious lack of label support sank the bands hopes and they broke up rather badly in 1973.

Somewhere down the line – most likely when Free Will/Jukin’ Bone frontman Whiting was touring with Kim Simmonds and Savoy Brown – the Italian reissue label Akarma took an interest in the 1970s-era rockers and licensed the band’s early demos for CD reissue. However, this double-live Free Will album comes courtesy of The Grail Record Productions, and although I don’t know if they have any connection to Akarma, the set was licensed from Free Will guitarist Mark Doyle (who is evidently the keeper of the Free Will/Jukin’ Bone flame), so it’s a legit effort. 

Free Will’s Live At the Jabberwocky 1970 captures the band performing a red-hot pair of sets at a long-gone Syracuse NY venue, evidently sourced from a reel-to-reel soundboard recording and offering sound typical for such antiquated technology. What the performance lacks in sonic quality, however, it more than makes up for in energy, inspiration, and talent. The set-list is a curious mix of blues and R&B standards with a handful of pretty cool original songs as well as a couple of “poppier” cover tunes thrown in for good measure. By the tail-end of the band’s second set, they begin to let their freak flag fly with longer and longer takes on tunes like Memphis Slim’s “Mother Earth” (which sounds like early Led Zeppelin) and Chris Youlden’s “Needle and Spoon” (from Savoy Brown’s 1970 album Raw Sienna, an obvious major influence on Free Will).

Live At the Jabberwocky 1970 opens with Roy Brown’s 1947 jump-blues hit “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” delivered with a slow blues grind that’s heavy on bass and circular guitar riffs, the mid-tempo song tailor-made for onstage pyrotechnics. Jimmy Reed’s “Big Boss Man,” a 1961 blues-shuffle that has been recorded by everybody from Elvis Presley to Mercury Rev, is provided some appropriately greasy guitar interplay behind Whiting’s growling, Howlin’ Wolf styled vox while Albert King’s “The Hunter” offers up all the menace of the original with Doyle’s guitar driving the deep-rooted groove. The band delivers a subtle take on James Taylor’s “Country Road,” playing up the song’s folkish leanings with an inspired Whiting vocal and lush backing instrumentation. They dip into the Jimmy Reed songbook again with “Bright Lights, Big City,” augmenting the song’s Chicago blues roots with scorching guitar and swells of instrumentation.

A cover of former Manfred Mann frontman Mike D’Abo’s “Handbags and Gladrags” (listed incorrectly in the album credits) is one of a few oddball song choices here…British singer Chris Farlowe had the original chart hit with the song in 1967 (produced by D’Abo), which would inspire Rod Stewart to cover the tune a couple of years later (with D’Abo on piano) to little or no commercial success. Whiting manages to wring every ounce of emotion out of the lyrics with a fine performance while the band eschews loud and rowdy for a more nuanced instrumental backdrop. A cover of British singer, songwriter, and actor Anthony Newley’s “Candy Man” is another outlier, the band taking the signature Sammy Davis, Jr song and beating it into a slow-burning blues-rock dirge with uranium-heavy guitars and sly vocals that completely change the vibe (if not the original intention) of the lyrics.  

Side three’s cover of Savoy Brown’s “Needle and Spoon” and the following “Free Will Boogie” (patterned after the aforementioned band’s “Savoy Brown Boogie” and incorporating tunes by Carl Perkins, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis, among others) provide nearly 23 minutes of pure booger-rock cheap thrills. Both songs feature extended jams displaying the band members’ instrumental skills (including Whiting’s honkin’ sax), both include plenty of razor-sharp fretwork and chooglin’ rhythms, and both performances come to a conclusion before you tire of hearing them. Ditto for the side four band jam “Dink Soup,” a nasty lil’ stinker with a low-slung groove, Whiting’s brassy saxwork, rolling percussion, and an overall sound that was a couple years ahead of its time, when it would have fit perfectly on FM radio playlists.   

The original material on Live At the Jabberwocky 1970 makes one sit up and take notice. Playing in the same hard rock sandbox as contemporaries like Free, Cactus, and Humble Pie, given the proper producer and some creative nurturing, the band could have ridden its songs up the charts (or at least onto FM radio). “Someplace Is Something” is a lively lil’ shuffle with slinky vocals that beat Jo Jo Gunne to the punch by a couple of years while side two’s opener, “Carry Me Home,” gets funky with some fine chicken pickin’ and a complex rhythmic backdrop that descends into a lovely chaotic mess by the end. The set-closer, “Ridin’ With the Devil,” showcases all of the band’s potential in an exhilarating seven-minute roller-coaster ride of night and day ambiance fueled by explosive, locomotive percussion, thunderbolt bass riffs, and manic guitar-mangling.  

The band’s lyrics aren’t readily discernible on this live recording, but Whiting’s vocals are impressive, the band is tight, and Doyle is an imaginative and entertaining guitarist – i.e. the band was rock ‘n’ roll clay reading for molding by the right production/label team. Sadly, it was not to be, for while Free Will was a promising gang of young hard rockers, their RCA signing, name change, and lackluster LP releases derailed whatever forward momentum the band had created with its electrifying live performances. They would get the original gang back together in 2017 to record a new album, Unfinished Business, for Akarma Records and they would be inducted into the Syracuse Music Hall of Fame at the same time. In the annals of “what could have been” in rock ‘n’ roll, Free Will were one of the good ‘uns.  Grade: B+  

For more info on Free Will, check out the Jukin’ Bone website

Bonus view: