Plain and Fancy: 07/31/24

Dirty Tricks made its San Antonio debut at a Southside bar known as Randy's Rodeo late in 1976, to rave reviews. It was there that they debuted songs from the upcoming "Hit and Run" and finished the crowd off with an explosive version of the Kinks' "You Really Got Me", a year before Van Halen released their first album with that same song. The next year Joe Anthony (the Godfather - widely respected in the 'Business', having used his experimental, risk-tak- ing style to break bands such as Judas Priest, Rush and Triumph in the U.S.) gave the same treatment to "Hit and Run", playing both sides in their entirety- sometimes for days on end. Unfortunately, from what I've gathered, other markets did not have 'champions' of new music with the same stature as the Godfather, and Dirty Tricks did not take off as they did in south Texas. What a shame for the others.

This album is the perfect bridge between Classic U.K. rock and the NWOBHM. The title track, along with "Get Out On The Street" and "The Gambler" (no, not THAT song, Kenny Rogers fans) grind out blues- driven rock to which to punch your fist in the air. On the other side of the coin, "I've Had These Dreams Before" and "Lost In The Past" invoke an air of a certain, shall we say, smoke-filled reverie... This album received massive airplay in Texas and regions beyond. Andy Bierne replaces John Lee on the drum kit for this outing. Interestingly, this incarnation of the band rehearsed with Ozzy Osbourne as the first Blizzard of Oz before the poor Oz Man had to leave the Motherland due to tax issues. He fled to America, met Randy Rhoades, and the rest, as they say, is history. But, we're left to wonder, What Might Have Been?

Which leads us to today. Although the band has a great following in the U.K. as the Led Zeppelin tribute band, Stairway To Zeppelin, Dirty Tricks has once again found a new cham- pion in Geoff Gillespie and Majestic Rock. Geoff has had a 'thing' for Dirty Tricks, just as I have, for all these years. The difference is that he's in a position to do something about it. I've tried to lend a hand to him as much as I can, with recordings and artwork he may find use- ful. But it is he who has commandeered the master tapes to breathe new life into this proud, 'vintage' engine of Rock N' Roll that is Dirty Tricks. And it is I, along with you reading this, that should offer a 'thanks' and a tip of the hat, if you will, to Geoff and Majestic Rock for making this dream a reality. And with that, I'll end with a heartfelt, if not cliché, "Long Live Dirty Tricks!"

by Zach Hammock, March 2004

Tracks

1. Hit And Run (Andy Beirne, John Fraser Binnie, Kenny Stewart, Terry Horbury) - 3:15

2. Get Out On The Street (Andy Beirne, John Fraser Binnie, Kenny Stewart, Terry Horbury) - 5:43

3. The Gambler (John Fraser Binnie, Kenny Stewart) - 5:24

4. Road To Deriabah (Terry Horbury) - 4:16

5. I've Had These Dreams Before (John Fraser Binnie, Kenny Stewart) - 6:20

6. Walkin' Tall (John Fraser Binnie, Kenny Stewart) - 3:54

7. Last Night Of Freedom (Andy Beirne, John Fraser Binnie, Kenny Stewart, Terry Horbury) - 3:57

8. Lost In The Past (John Fraser Binnie, Kenny Stewart) - 4:39

9. You Really Got Me (Ray Davies) - 3:41

10.Get Out On The Street (Andy Beirne, John Fraser Binnie, Kenny Stewart, Terry Horbury) - 6:53

Bonus Live Tracks 9-10

Dirty Tricks

*John Fraser Binnie - Guitar, Keyboards, Vocals

*Terry Horbury - Bass, Vocals

*Andy Beirne - Drums, Percussion, Vocals

*Kenny Stewart - Vocals

1975 Dirty Tricks - Dirty Tricks (bonus tracks issue)

1976 Dirty Tricks - Night Man (2004 remaster and expanded)

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There’s a select coterie of artists whose voices are recognised as musical instruments in their own right, their unique vocal deliveries transcending lyrics and, without being pure, trained or operatic, tantalising the ear wordlessly like a breathy tenor sax or a sobbing Dobro. Ella Fitzgerald, Richie Havens, Tim Buckley, the late John Martyn all had this talent. Add to this rare gift an astonishing propensity for producing the deepest funk and the most soulful blues on an acoustic guitar, and you’ve got Ellen McIlwaine.

Born in 1945, Ellen grew up in Japan, the daughter of American missionaries, where she listened to AFN and learned to play New Orleans piano after Fats Domino and Professor Longhair. On the family’s return to Atlanta she switched to guitar, rapidly assimilating all the fiery Southern styles. For several years from 1966 she worked around NYC’s East Village, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Muddy, Wolf, Hardin and Hendrix. After a brief unproductive spell leading her own rock band, Fear Itself, she signed to Polydor in ’72 as a solo artist and produced her freshman album, Honky Tonk Angel.

The comparison with Richie Havens is more than appropriate here. As with the bulk of his early work, her primary mission on this album is to take familiar and unfamiliar songs by other artists and cover them in an idiosyncratic and totally individual vocal fashion, accompanied by a fluid and relentlessly rhymthic acoustic guitar. She’d develop her own songwriting on the follow-up and later albums, but here there are only two originals alongside the eight borrowed songs “ but her choice is impeccable, taking in some of the finest writers of the late 60s and early 70s in a plethora of genres.

She covers Isaac Hayes (Toe Hold), Jack Bruce (Weird Of Hermiston), Jimi Hendrix (Up From The Skies), Steve Winwood (Can’t Find My Way Home), Bobbie Gentry (Ode To Billy Joe) and Ghanaian jazz maestro Guy Warren’s Pinebo (My Story), culminating with a momentous retread of the traditional Wade In The Water. Most of the tracks are marked by her jazzy, strident Guild guitar, chock-full of scratchy percussive flatpicking, earsplitting eleventh chords and occasional soaring slide, complementing her astonishingly confident, melismatic, androgynous vocal as she plays shamelessly with the lyrics, frequently wandering into pure scat or an ululating African dialect.

By contrast the gentle Pinebo is a multi-tracked, stereo-separated acapella tour-de-force in Swahili, whilst her reading of the Winwood ditty is masterful and sensitive with immaculate fingerstyling. Half the album was recorded live at NYC’s Bitter End with McIlwaine’s voice and acoustic set off only by adventurous bass guitar and rattling Latin percussion, the remainder at The Record Plant with scarcely denser backing, but McIlwaine’s fretboard pyrotechnics and vocal gymnastics make the whole collection sizzle with excitement. The only sore thumb to stick out from this otherwise homogenous collection is the inexplicable inclusion of the old Kitty Wells country chestnut (It Wasn’t God Who Made) Honky Tonk Angels, done in a po-faced, almost caricatured Bakersfield style with full backing band including wailing pedal steel.

Ellen McIlwaine would go on to an uneven but uncompromising career, her commercial appeal blunted by her determination to make music her own way, but she continues to tour and to release albums at intervals.

by Len Liechti, June 25th, 2012

Tracks

1. Toe Hold (David Porter, Isaac Hayes) - 4:22

2. Weird Of Hermiston (Jack Bruce, Peter Brown) - 5:06

3. Up From The Skies (Jimi Hendrix) - 4:38

4. Losing You (Ellen McIlwaine) - 2:00

5. It's Growing (Smokey Robinson, Warren Moore) - 3:05

6. Ode To Billy Joe (Bobbie Gentry) - 3:48

7. Pinebo (My Story) (Guy Warren) - 2:41

8. Can't Find My Way Home (Steve Winwood) - 3:41

9. Wings Of A Horse (Ellen McIlwaine) - 4:02

10.It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels (Joseph Delton Miller) - 2:38

11.Wade In The Water (Traditional) - 4:50

Tracks 1-6 recorded ''Live'' at The Bitter End, New York City, using facilities of The Record Plant/Wally Heider recording van.

Tracks 7-11 recorded at The Record Plant, New York City, except for ''Can't Find My Way Home'' which was recorded at the studios of Burmese Records, Inc.

Bonus Track 5

Personnel

*Ellen McIlwaine - Vocals, Background Vocals, Guitars

*Thad Holiday - Bass, Background Vocals

*Don Payne - Bass (Track 4)

*Billy Curtis - Congas (Tracks 1,6)

*Candido - Congas (Tracks 6,8,11)

*Don Kaplan - Piano

*James Madison - Drums

*Bill Keith - Pedal Steel Guitar

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