Various Artists
Pebbles Presents Highs in the Mid Sixties, Volume Eight: The South
AIP 10014, 1984

AIP’s eighth volume in the Highs series was a real surprise, featuring a wide variety of sounds from a line-up of truly obscure bands. The Ravin’ Blue manage both the Who-inspired “Love” and the Dylan-tinged “It’s Not Real,” the lyrics of the Gaunga Dins’ “Rebecca Rodifer” are amazingly dark, the Fly By Nites add some psych with “Found Love,” The Moxies buzz the garage with “I’m Gonna Stay,” and a whole lot more! One of my favorite volumes in the series.

Cover: The Guilloteens

Original liner notes:

Until now the South has been almost completely overlooked as a source of punk rock in the Sixties. As this album demonstrates, there was plenty of great teen music in the confederate states, but it didn’t come out of any one hot scene, as far as we can tell, or even a network of scenes such as Texas had. Leaving out Texas and Florida from our loose grouping of southern states, we’re left with a conglomeration of scattered records originating in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, the Carolinas, the Virginias, Arkansas, Tennessee, and most of Kentucky (Louisville belonging more properly to the Ohio scene).

The most familiar southern groups are those which came out of Memphis and Nashville. We think of the Guilloteens, the Gants, the Hombres… otherwise, the bands were spread out so widely over the rural regions that no scene was able to coalesce—at least, not so far as we know. No teen mags, no “battle of the bands” albums, no big regional hits have left their trace. Indeed, there’s hardly a soul in the world of garage band fandom with any reliable first-hand knowledge of what happened.

Sifting through the records that have surfaced from this area—and more are surfacing all the time—little pattern emerges. Successful regional labels, always a good source, were few if any. The university towns of Virginia and N. Carolina left a legacy of frat albums that were all evidently pressed at the same place. In Alabama, a group of labels of similar design offered an array of mostly weak, soul-watered bands. A few good bands crop up on soul or country labels like Paula, Monument, Hickory, etc. A lot of southern groups used horns and tried to be soulful, a ploy which rarely resulted in listenable music anywhere in the country, but unlike the Chicago bands who at least produced a strong commercial hybrid, the southerners just sounded limp.

Decent recording facilities, outside of Memphis and Nashville, must also have been hard to find. Some groups went to New Orleans to record, others to Texas, but omst headed straight to Nashville, the music capitol, where they found not only studios but all manner of hustlers who persuaded them to release their songs on their labels with guarantees of national distribution and promotion. Thus we can’t even identify the origin of many, many groups whose labels give Nashville addresses.

In assembling this album we’ve tried to give you a sampling of the best odds & ends of southern punk. There was an occasional fuzz-thumper, folk-rocker, psychosurf aberration, and while not typical of the south, they stand out as its most memorable relics. At the same time, the influence of soul and blues in the blood of southern boys sometimes bore strange fruit, like the Rugbys’ fine track included here.

When it comes down to it, no part of the country—or the world, for that matter—was untouched by the teenbeat explosion of 1965-67. Dig deep enough and you’ll find great punk bands everywhere. It’s time to start digging the South.

Ravin’ Blue
A high school band of unknown origin whose ability to add a psychedelic tinge to rousing folk-punk won them a 2-single deal with a country label in Nashville. Included here are both sides of their debut waxing, “It’s Not Real” with its Dylanesque blues harmonica, and the slightly Who-influenced “Love.” Their second record, done under a veteran rockabilly producer, actually features more of the psycho-delicacies, while these sides bear an independent production stamp, and were quite possibly their homemade demos.

Gaunga Dins
Now here’s a band we’d like to find photos of. They wandered around Louisiana for a couple years in the late ‘60s, wearing turbans and, who knows, probably loincloths. For that matter, we wouldn’t mind seeing some yearbook snapshots of Rebecca Rodifer, the babe who inspired this bright little ditty. Also here, to prove their punk credentials, is the flip side of their 2nd single.

The Midknights
One fateful day in 1965 or ’66, Style Records of Chattanooga, Tennessee signed a young band they must’ve thought were gonna blow the Beatles off the map. After winning the battle of the bands at their junior high school (the guys range in age from 12 to 15) they went on to city-wide championship and did a regional tour opening for The Guys Who Came Up From Downstairs. The tour wasn’t much of a success, as the headliners weren’t all well known outside their home town of Broken Pump, Iowa.

Fly By Nites
At least these guys were honest about their prospects for immortality. Or maybe the name was a reference to the kind of travel arrangements they preferred—after all, those red-eye flights are quite a money-saver. At any rate, they came from Georgia or Alabama, and where they went is anybody’s guess.

The Original Dukes
Not to be confused with any of the phony Dukes making the rounds, nor with Patty Duke, the Dukes of Hazzard, or the Duke of Earl (Vee-Jay 416), this band recorded in Nashville under the watchful production of Scotty Moore (the Guitar That Changed the World) and took the tapes back to their home swamp where it was released on the Down Home label. I kinda picture them in matching mohair sweaters, razor-cuts, Hush Puppies and shades, and who indeed could quarrel with the assertions of cool fro any band who sounded like this?

Skeptics
More evidence that those jolly ol’ Englishmen never invented anything. This catchy riff originated in Memphis, not a day later than 1967, and not only did it anticipate Marc Bolan by a good 5 years, but the Skeptics did a lot more with the idea anyway. Maybe if they’d had someone to advise them against that controversial title, they could’ve had a worldwide hit.

The Moxies
On Mox Records of Paducah, Kentucky… whew! Somehow they got a publishing deal with Gemco—maybe K-Mart hadn’t gotten into the music biz yet, but why didn’t they hook up with Col. Sanders? Just imagine the drumstick endorsements. Sorry, I’m rambling. Anyway these guys had at least two records, their other one was on the Happening Monza label of Nashville, but this was their best.

The Rogues
No mystery about this crew—they plied their wares in the bayous of Louisiana, and recorded this punk screamer for a Cajun label. What we’d like to know is, did they do anything else, and could they perhaps have some connection with any of the 17 other Rogues in our “Rogues Gallery”? If anybody out there has unreleased concert tapes of this band, be sure to contact us immediately—someone must, right?

The Hazards
This slice of recording history happened in Richmond, VA in late 1966, and was inexplicably beaten out in the carts by the likes of the Byrds, Love, Jimi Hendrix, and even Tim Rose. The Hazards are notable for their pronunciation of “Hand”, equaled only by the way they say “gonna”, which came out something like “guh-huh-unna.”

The Vikings
It would be most disappointing to learn these clowns didn’t wear antler helmets and animal hides on stage, after all that was one of the best things about the ‘60s, that groups knew they looked ridiculous, not like today when idiots like A Flock of Seagulls set fashion trends with far sillier ideas. Remember the Aquamen, who wore frog suits and seaweed hanging from their heads and shoulders? Or the Golliwogs, with those white fur hats (to counter the Palace Guard’s black & red Buckingham Palace duds, maybe) or the Monks, with the coolest tonsures of all time? And most of those groups were in hip, sophisticated California… There’s no limit to what a band like the Vikings couldn’t have got away with out in the wilds of Alabama, right?

The Surrealistic Pillar
It’s not always possible to pin down a release date, but it seems pretty clear this came out sometime subsequent to March of ’67, when the Jefferson Airplane’s second album was released. Like the Rogues, they hailed from Louisiana—in fact, they may even be the Rogues, with an updated moniker. Who the hell knows? Only Eddie Smith, who wrote the songs. Eddie, if you’re out there—give us a call!

The Rugbys
Ah, a famous group as last. Late in the summer of ’69 they got as high as #24 in the Billboard charts with “You, I”, followed by an album for the Amazon label. But it must have been considerably earlier when they cut this blistering blues rocker for Top Dog, a fairly active Kentucky label who recorded the Merseybeats USA around the same time—come to think of it, with a name like that and from the sound of “Walking the streets Tonight” 1964 would be a likely release date.

The Sants
Another Nashville label, two songs written by the guys who produced the session. What’s the story here? We may never know. Probably some hapless high school punk railroaded into putting the producers’ names on their best song; this snotty dirge could hardly have come from a songplugger’s satchel. In fact it’s hard to believe this primitive production was recorded in Nashville at all—sounds more like a barn.

The Guilloteens
Three lovable Memphis boys who were catapulted to fame when Elvis cited them as his fave local band, which led instantly to a deal as the first human group on HBR, a label whose biggest stars at the time were Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hond. Over the next two years (’66-66) they had a number of records that were popular in different regions of the country, an the group toured widely, but a big national hit never came and plans for an album were scrapped. Laddie Hutcherson, Lewis Paul and Joe Davis were never heard from again.

Side 1
Ravin' Blue - Love (A. Christopher, Jr., R. Bernard, L. Nix)
Gaunga Dins - Rebecca Rodifer (M. King, S. Staples)
The Midknights - Pain (Jerry Wallace)
Fly By Nites - Found Love (Fly-By-Nites)
The Original Dukes - Ain't About to Lose My Cool (Hickman, Sonday, Best)
Skeptics - Turn It On (Wayne Carson)
The Moxies - I'm Gonna Stay (G. Coryell, C. Cummings)
The Rogues - I Don't Need You (McDiarmid)

Side 2
The Hazards - Hey Joe (Billy Roberts)
The Vikings - Come On and Love Me (C. Putman, C. Nettles)
The Surrealistic Pillar - I Like Girls (Ed Futch, Eddie Smith)
The Rugbys - Walking the Streets Tonight (D. Sahm)
The Sants - Leaving You Baby (Cirrincione, Wimberley)
Ravin' Blue - It's Not Real (R. Bernard)
The Guilloteens - Crying All Over My Time (Dickinson, Hutcherson)
Gaunga Dins - No One Cares (M. King., S. Staples)

1/1 #masondixon (192kbps, 52.9MB)