I picked this up in the dollar bin a couple of months ago, and after some TLC, the vinyl cleaned up surprisingly well. I mean really well.
The gatefold was in decent shape, but if there were any liner notes, they were lost to time.
This was an album that intrigued me, and the song I was most excited to listen to was "Rock & Roll, Hoochie Koo," as I was curious to hear how different this was from the version I was most familiar with: Rick Derringer's 1973 killer from his solo debut album All American Boy.
Oddly enough, only a few months after Roadwork was released in 1972, The Edgar Winter Group would release They Only Come Out at Night, and the rest, as they say, is history. That album would yield two of his biggest hits in "Frankenstein" and "Free Ride," both of which would be forever cemented in the foundations of what would become classic rock.
However, this isn't about that album. This is about their double live album Roadwork.
I was coming in with a fresh set of ears to something my nine-year-old self wouldn't have known how to process, let alone appreciate, most likely.
The first thing I love about albums from this time period is how the labels would sequence the records. The first album contains sides one and four, and the second has sides two and three.
I'm likely just stating the obvious, but who knows? Maybe someone doesn't know why this was done.
After all, not that long ago I was walking the dog with my (awesome) niece, and a guy walks by wearing a shirt with a giant yellow 45 insert adapter on it. I laughed and asked her if she knew what it was. She had no idea, leaving me to try and explain what a 45 was, and it sort of just went downhill from there.
But it was a nice walk.
The reason the album was sequenced like this was because, back when I was a kid, the big hi-fi units like my parents had allowed you to multi-stack several records. If you had a double live album, you could "automatically" play sides one and two, then flip the stack and play sides three and four.
If you didn't know this before, now you do. You're welcome.
By the way, I found this picture on an auction site, and this is what my mum still has. At the time it went really loud (I know this because, when they weren't home, I would crank it and it would rattle the sliding doors), although it's kind of spotty now.
But sheesh, this thing weighed a ton and was real walnut.
Anyway, I'm meanderambling... worse than normal.
Playing the album now is a pain in the ass because I have to actually swap out records, so I generally just play the first and last sides, and then can listen to the middle two in order. It's not so bad, but there are times I want to hear it and follow along with the credits.
As I have the luxury of working backward through time, and knowing a little about Edgar Winter and Rick Derringer, and not as much about Johnny (I so badly want a tobacco burst Gibson Firebird with the three pickups and shitty vibrola tremolo system), in my head I was expecting a rock and roll extravaganza filled with blistering riffs, keyboards, soaring vocals, and saxophone.
What I got was an awesome record for sure, but the music is more rhythm and blues than straight-ahead rock like "Free Ride" or even "Frankenstein."
But that's okay.
I was groovin', and I actually started thinking about the Blues Brothers. Then lo and behold, on comes Otis Redding's classic "I Can't Turn You Loose," and dang, I know it was a half dozen years before Jake and Elwood Blues would don the black suits and matching fedoras, but I wanted to shout out:
"These guys are on a mission from God."
There are some great songs on these albums, and of course it would be hard not to call out the side dedicated to a seventeen-minute version of "Tobacco Road." Wisely, it starts as a relatively straight-ahead, albeit extended, version before heading off into the solo tangents, which are great and a lot of fun - but after a bit, they do get tiring to listen to after a couple of listens.
Oh, and the early version of "Rock And Roll, Hoochie Koo" is decent and all, but it doesn't have any of the spark and swagger of Rick's later version. Weird, because it's the same song. Sometimes a song just needs the right arrangement.
Side four starts off with a set recorded at the legendary Apollo Theatre in New York. The band is introduced, and you can hear an audible gasp as Edgar walked onto the stage.
I suppose if there were any reservations about White Trash, they were quickly dispelled as the band appeared to win over the audience.
In addition to the songs recorded at The Apollo, performances were taken from the Academy of Music, also in New York, and The Whisky a Go Go in L.A.
Overall, this was a really great mix of R&B, with gospel overtones—especially on the first cut, "Save the Planet" - and good old rock and roll.
The band was tight, and between Edgar, Jerry LaCroix, and Rick Derringer, there were three lead vocalists on stage - well, four, counting the cameo by Johnny. Not to mention both Jerry and Edgar played sax, a trio of trumpet players, and a solid rhythm section with Bobby Ramirez on drums and Randy Jo Hobbs on bass.
It's kind of cool to think the album went gold in 1974, a couple of years after it was initially released.
It makes me wonder how many others were drawn to his back catalogue because of his "hits" only to discover his R&B roots and be just as enthralled?
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