Beau Brummels – Bradley’s Barn

Remembered now mainly for the Brit-influenced garage hit “Laugh, Laugh”, the San Francisco-based Beau Brummels featured songwriter Ron Elliott and singer Sal Valentino, both of whom could be expressive — within the conventions of mid-’60s post-folk rock, in ways sometimes reminiscent of the Youngbloods or Fred Neil, for instance.

In parallel to the Byrds’ situation, they’d shrunk to a trio by ’67, and came up with a sometimes country-tinged LP (Triangle), then stepped more directly toward the twang world in ’68, going to Nashville and recording with the musicians at Owen Bradley’s Barn before Sweetheart Of The Rodeo was in the can.

Triangle has all those post-Sgt. Pepper semi-psychedelic sounds going — violins, Van Dyke Parks on harpsichord, horns — but also banjos. A turn on Merle Travis’s “Nine Pound Hammer” has a post-Lovin’ Spoonful new vaudeville tinge about it, but there’s a proto twang-punk tune (“And I’ve Seen Her”) and also “Old Kentucky Home”, from an upstart named Randy Newman who was clearly bent on rural commentary.

Bradley’s Barn has ace Nashville cats Jerry Reed, Harold Bradley, Wayne Moss and Kenny Buttrey providing instrumental excellence, especially noticeable on ballads (“An Added Attraction”, “Jessica”). “Deep Water” has a vaguely Appalachian modal tone, and the lyric themes get country-like, but the Beau Brummels, in truth, travel tentatively into outright country rock, for all their time in Tennessee. The original album notes applaud how little outright country is adopted — as if that experiment had been tried too often already. (By whom, you wonder — Ian & Sylvia? Dean Martin?)

Elliott took what he learned here and used it to work with the Everly Brothers on their seminal Roots album and his song “Empty Boxes”. These two LPs, just reissued, are documents of a moment when folk-rockers started looking for some twang uplift — and occasionally even found it.