Incredible Blue-Eyed Soul From The Wildweeds

Wildweeds “No Good To Cry” (Cadet, 1967 )
Wildweeds “It Was Fun While It Lasted” (Cadet, 1968)

I’ve been wanting to write up one of today’s tracks for as long as I’ve been doing this blog (which is over a year now in the format you see today!) but the time has never felt right.  After enough time elapsed I realized I may never find the moment in time that I’m looking for and I may as well put it up now rather than waiting till I fall off a cliff or have an anvil dropped on me and risk having some people out there not know about this great group and their great songs.

No Good To Cry was the debut release on Chess subsidary Cadet for the Blue-Eyed Soul group hailing from Connecticut (just a hop skip and jump down river from where I’m sitting now in Western Mass).  The songwriter in question for both songs is lead man “Big” Al Anderson who later went on to perform with another legendary New England group NRBQ.

The Wildweeds only put out a few singles, two of the four on Cadet you have here and there were a couple other releases on Verve.  I picked up an LP collecting a lot of their releases along with a few unreleased tracks and rarities that’s worth tracking down if you can.  Come 1971, Anderson firmly entrenched himself in the NRBQ camp where they put out lots of great music with the help of Terry Adams, Joey Spampinato and the recently and tragically deceased Tom Ardolino (who put out an AMAZING LP “Unknown Brain” that consisted of his teenage recordings with the localMystra label a few years back).

Anderson continues to make music to this day spending a lot of time in Nashville.  I have to admit, I missed an NRBQ reunion about 5 years ago where they played a bunch of Wildweeds’ songs.  I only found out about it while taking with an acquaintance who has an equal love for their music.  As you can guess, the performance was stellar and Anderson’s pleading but powerful voice has not lost a step.

Interesting to note that the pre-cursor to ZZ Top, The Moving Sidewalks, did a decidedly more relaxed version of No Good To Cry that’s worth checking out while Jimmy James and The Vagabonds did a fairly straight cover on the Atco label that’s pretty easy to come by but, for me, other than a cool organ accompaniment, doesn’t have the strength of the OG.

I hope you enjoy these sides half as much as I do and roll with the melancholy as the coldness of fall begins to set into your bones.

All the best,

-George / Snack Attack

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