Johnny Rivers – Secret Agent Man:The Ultimate Johnny Rivers Anthology
Johnny Rivers may well be the most underappreciated musical visionary among 1960s hitmakers. For all the commercial success he enjoyed at the time, it was his bad fortune to be on the wrong side of rock’s sea change (more like a tidal wave). He was a singles artist during the rise of the concept album, AM when FM was hip, an interpretive stylist at a time when serious artists wrote their own songs, an American solo throwback at the height of the British Invasion bands.
Yet with a signature style that encompassed the best of blues, rock ‘n’ roll, soul and folk, Rivers not only took his synthesis toward the top of the charts, he helped provide the template for what we now know as Americana. (He also nurtured the Fifth Dimension, discovered songwriter Jimmy Webb, and started his own Soul City label.)
Disc one of this two-disc retrospective could stand as a greatest-hits package for the New York-born, Louisiana-raised, Los Angeles-based Rivers. It traces his rise from house act at L.A.’s Whisky A-Go-Go, where his live versions of Chuck Berry’s “Memphis” and “Maybelline” became summer smashes in 1964, through his revivals of “Mountain Of Love” (his first studio single and, to my ears, his best), “Midnight Special”, and Willie Dixon’s (by way of Mose Allison’s) “Seventh Son”. His laid-back drawl, swamp guitar and stripped-down rhythm section turned material from a wide variety of sources into a cohesive musical progression.
Though “Poor Side Of Town” was Rivers’ only self-penned hit (and only chart-topper; “Secret Agent Man” went only to #3), his move into more soulful balladry testified to his ear for great material wherever he might find it. It took real confidence to revive “Baby I Need Your Lovin'” and “The Tracks Of My Tears” so soon after the definitive versions by the Four Tops and the Miracles, respectively, but Rivers didn’t merely mimic Motown, he put his own personal stamp on the songs and got top-10 hits with both.
What elevates Rivers as something more than another glorified oldies act are the revelations on disc two. Though the hits stopped in the mid-’70s, Rivers has remained a creatively vital artist, as the selections here from his little-heard 1990s albums attest. The live “China” shows his command of dynamics as a bandleader, his soulful falsetto on Curtis Mayfield’s “Curious Mind (Um, Um, Um, Um)” showcases his voice at its supple best, and his self-penned “Down At The House Of Blues” is far richer than its product-placement title might suggest. A harder-driving “Midnight Special” from 2004 shows how his music has continued to evolve, while a 2006 rendition of Chuck Berry’s “Let It Rock” brings the anthology full circle.