Tim Rose

Track	Album
Morning Dew	Tim Rose (1967)
Hey Joe	Tim Rose (1967)
Come Away Melinda	Tim Rose (1967)
Long Time Man	Tim Rose (1967)
Where Do You Go To My Lovely	Love - A Kind Of Hate Story
(You've Got To) Hide Your Love Away	Tim Rose (1972)
You Can't Keep Me	Tim Rose (1972)
She Was Born To Fly	American Son
I Never Knew (So Much To Lose)	American Son
Time Slips Away	Snowed In

 

Tim Rose playlist

 

 

Contributor: Dave Stephens

I feel by rights that this piece should have the One Hit Wonder tag attached to it but that record never made it into any hit parade. I’m talking about Morning Dew of course, one of Tim’s two claims to fame. The other was his slow version of Hey Joe which was widely reputed to be the version that inspired the Hendrix hit. Both songs came out in single format and were also present on his self-titled debut album released in 1967. That album is indisputably the best thing that Tim ever did. I bought it at the time and found it something of a curate’s egg, magnificent in parts but flawed. Time hasn’t caused me to change that opinion.

I still remember going into one of those record booths in the underground floor of the mighty Imhofs in New Oxford Street, clutching a copy of the follow up LP in my hands. Through Rose Colored Glasses it was called. I was heavily disappointed and didn’t buy it. I subsequently lost interest in Tim; in the late sixties there were plenty of other musical acts vying for my attention (and pennies). So I must confess up front, that I’m coming to this Toppermost effectively under false pretences. My knowledge of Mr Rose is limited to that one album, extremely dim memories of the second, and little else. But, given the absence of Tim to date in the Toppermost Hall Of Fame, I felt that a musical exploration might be of interest, and there was always the Comments section for more devoted fans to use to correct any errors of taste or information on my part. One conclusion you can legitimately draw is that I wouldn’t have submitted this piece for publication if I didn’t feel there was sufficient of interest in Tim’s overall oeuvre to bring it to your eyes and ears.

So, the album:

Morning Dew was the first track on side 2. It dated from those days when they tried to put what they felt were the strongest tracks at the beginning of each side for reasons that shouldn’t need explaining. They got it right with a vengeance on this album but some words on the song’s lineage are in order. It was written by Canadian folk singer Bonnie Dobson in 1961 and the first version to be recorded was contained on her live At Folk City LP in 1962 (see also Footnotes):

The song was from the cold war era and it presupposes the mutually assured destruction of a nuclear war. Two survivors are talking. She’s pleading with him for both to go out into the scorched, toxic landscape. The song unfurls in repeated requests/statements/questions, then repeated responses over a minimal sequence of descending chords.

Take me for a walk in the morning dew, my honey
Take me for a walk in the morning dew, my love
You can’t go walking in the morning dew today
You can’t go walking in the morning dew today

In true coffee house style, this version of the song was sung to the accompaniment of her own hand picked guitar – a relatively pretty form of delivery for such chilling lyrics. Bonnie’s first studio version, which didn’t see release until her self-titled 1969 album, was prettier still, with swirling strings included in the backdrop, possibly symbolic of a civilisation being destroyed (or possibly not, that might just have been me thinking aloud).

The first studio version of the song actually came from Fred Neil and the now forgotten Vince Martin in their 1964 Elektra album, Tear Down The Walls. The guys make a valid attempt at a more threatening mood with a drone effect from strummed rhythm guitar replacing the more conventional finger picking. They also very effectively vary the general hushed sound with a loud, angry verse about two thirds in.

Fred and Vince made a marginal word change at the start, with “walk me out” replacing “take me for a walk” and it’s those words that appear in later versions.

Reportedly, Tim Rose first heard the song via Fred Neil and probably as sung solo in clubs rather than via the studio cut with Vince Martin. In his version, the arrangement, which is credited to him and producer David Rubinson, is different again, and is more than an apt foil for the Rose voice. The most striking thing about it is the repeated motif, sometimes played on bass, sometimes on piano and/or both. It’s the sort of upfront vibe that could have come straight from a soul jazz record. That might have had something to do with the presence of drummer Bernard “Pretty” Purdie, a soul music legend, whose role here is to gradually build to a thunderous crescendo. Alternatively, bass player Felix Pappalardi could have supplied ideas of his own. He was on the Neil/Martin album and might have played on the earlier Morning Dew.

Tim himself shouldn’t be ignored in all this. His voice was anything but pretty; when he used it as he did on this song and much of the album, it’s hardly a voice at all in conventional terms. He starts off in near David Essex conversational style but rapidly moves to shouting. It’s a technique that won’t work on many songs but here it’s successful in conveying anger, lack of acceptance, frustration, defiance.

It’s a technique that gets deployed liberally starting with the first track, I Got A Loneliness. However, while there are valiant attempts, nowhere does it come together as well as it does on Morning Dew. For some songs he maintains an in your face stance all the way through, consistent with the (intended/pseudo/real?) macho image on the sleeve. Hey Joe is one such track.

The song has a curious, slightly mysterious, history. The Rose version has the credit, ‘Arranged and Adapted by Tim Rose’ with the implication that it was traditional. It’s possible that Tim did think that was the case but what has been pieced together about the song’s origins strongly suggests otherwise. The best, certainly the most readable, version I’ve heard, of the song’s origins sits in Richie Unterberger’s book, “Jingle Jangle Morning”, and I’ll summarise it below.

The man who registered the copyright of the song was little known American singer/songwriter Billy Roberts. According to Wiki, Scottish folkie Len Partridge claimed to have helped Roberts write the song while they were performing in Edinburgh clubs in 1956. (That addition isn’t present in the Unterberger version.) While Roberts didn’t record the song at the time, it was picked up by several other folkies who saw Roberts’ act. Dino Valenti (or Valente, whichever you prefer), attempted to copyright it but was rebuffed. Several L.A. rock groups also picked up on the song. The Leaves were the first to record it but they were followed by the Byrds and Love; Crosby, reportedly, was very keen on the song. All these groups recorded a fast version quite unlike the Hendrix cut we all know. Below are the two Leaves’ recordings of Hey Joe, the first released in November ’65 and the second in April ’66. The first shows no song writing credit. The second shows Dino Valenti.

 

The Tim Rose version was released in May ’66. It’s distinctly slower than any of those above (and that includes Love, the Byrds, and Buffalo Springfield, all of whom were including it in their stage act) and whether Rose had heard these, we don’t know. What we do know is that Chas Chandler, discoverer of Hendrix, heard the Rose single and vowed to get it to someone to record.

The arrangement and tempo of the Rose and Hendrix versions were very similar (though of course, Jimi scored through sheer personality not to mention technical capability). If, in some parallel world, the song had never reached Jimi, the Tim Rose master would still have been judged as a fine record.

Back to the album. It contains three songs that can be loosely termed ballads, (and that’s in the popular music sense rather than the folk sense), I’m Gonna Be Strong (the Mann/Weil number made into a hit in ’64 by Gene Pitney), You’re Slipping Away From Me (penned by Tim), and Come Away Melinda. The last named is, for me and several other commentators, the other “big” song in the set. It’s another post nuclear apocalypse epic only this time a father is talking to a daughter, and imploring her to “come in and close the door”. The daughter has, while digging in the rubble, found a picture book, or what later transpires to be a photo album from “before we had the war”. The song was written by Fran Minkoff and Fred Hellerman, one of the original Weavers, and there were already versions of it from the Weavers themselves, and from Theodore Bikel, Judy Collins, Harry Belafonte and the Big 3. The last named being the group that Rose was in prior to going solo. Here is the trio with Cass Elliot on lead vocal. On their rendition, the sweetness of the delivery is at odds, possibly deliberately, with the horror of the lyrics.

In strong contrast, the Rose version goes for the throat from the outset. The arrangement is Spectorian in concept and execution, with banks of strings and tympani hammering away like mad. Tim is at his most restrained – he needs to be of course while playing the Melinda part – but does get excitable at times. It’s OTT but if you’re not allowed to get OTT on subject matter like this, when can you?

My final selection from this set is yet another one which raises questions regarding its origin. Makes A Long Time Man Feel Bad is an Afro American prison song recorded by Alan Lomax:

There was a version from Dylan that got taped off his radio sessions with Cynthia Gooding, and the Big 3 also recorded the song (but no one has uploaded it on YT). Tim’s Long Time Man retains the punch line in full, and broadly the melody (though it varies across the versions) but he does introduce new lyrics. It’s credited solely to ‘Tim Rose’. For me, this should definitely have been a Trad Arr. Regardless of all that it’s undoubtedly powerful and is one that I always think that Tim would like strongly associated with him.

I’d give honourable mention to another song in this set, Eat, Drink And Be Merry (For Tomorrow You’ll Cry) which comes from an unusual source (and I don’t mean Ecclesiastes and/or Isaiah and/or Corinthians). It was written by twin sisters Sandra and Celia Ferguson in 1954, and was originally sung by Porter Wagoner:

As we’ve come to expect, the arrangement on the Rose version is significantly different than the original. Indeed, you’d never have guessed that a dyed-in-the-wool country singer had ever performed the song. It’s restrained both in production terms and in Tim’s delivery – this is the quietest he is all album, and it works. Resigned sadness is the mood that comes across. My only regret is that the three-four time which is such a feature on the Porter version becomes less explicit on Tim’s.

I’ve spent a long time on the first album but I feel it’s warranted because it is his most cohesive. It contains songs which have stayed in his stage set over the years and have been given the compliment of multiple re-recordings. That said, it’s not all comfortable listening. Tim’s anger, or attitude as it would be called now, was something that would not disappear over time.

 

THE STORY

He was born, Timothy Alan Patrick Rose, in September 1940 in Washington, D.C. In the fifties he sang with Scott McKenzie in a school group called the Singing Strings. However, prior to moving to a full time music career, he received training to be a priest (but got thrown out), served as a navigator in the Strategic Air Command, had a spell as a merchant seaman, and worked in a bank. Which all sounds a bit too varied and/or exotic to be true but such work roles/vocations appear in several Rose biographies, including the one on his authorised website.

Depending on who you read, Tim may or may not have started his professional music career with a group called the Smoothies, who later morphed into the Journeymen. What isn’t in doubt is that he was in a duo in 1962 with ex-Smoothie Michael Boran; they were known as Timothy and Michael. Later that year he met Cass Elliot, who, of course, became Mama Cass of the Mamas and the Papas. Michael was dropped and Tim formed a group with Cass plus a gent called Jim Hendricks, which they named the Big 3. Their style of music was what we’d now term pop folk. Below is a sample with Tim on lead, and starting to develop some of those vocal characteristics that get a much fuller outing in the solo album. Ostensibly, he wrote the song though it’s more of a college style pastiche on Stephen Foster.

The group made a couple of albums and got themselves considerable visibility on television. They split up when Tim discovered Jim had married Cass but the pair had kept it secret. Following the break, Tim launched himself on a solo career with gigs in clubs, and some supporting big name headliners at rock venues. CBS signed him up, no doubt scenting another Dylan. Up and coming young gun David Rubinson was assigned to produce the first album with a crack team of session men at his disposal. What came out the other end was Tim Rose. While it didn’t exactly set the world alight it did garner a lot of support, particularly on this side of the big pond, and particularly within the music industry itself, and by that I mean the musicians themselves rather than the people behind the scenes.

There was one more CBS album, Through Rose Colored Glasses, and then Tim decamped to live in the UK for much of the seventies. A number of albums were recorded which didn’t all see release at the time (see discography below). Disappointed with lack of sales, Tim returned to New York in, I believe, 1978, though accounts are a little vague.

For the eighties and roughly half of the nineties, Tim had only limited involvement with the music scene. He got married and divorced. He worked as a construction worker, as a voice-over and jingles provider for telly ads, as a teacher and as a stockbroker. He took a college degree in history. He also battled alcoholism.

In 1986, Nick Cave recorded Tim’s Long Time Man on his album Your Funeral … My Trial. He also encouraged Tim back to the music scene which eventually resulted in gigs at the Albert Hall and the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Tim died after an operation for cancer in 2002. He is buried in Brompton Cemetery, London. In the last few years of his life he was very active in the recording studio though much of the material laid down was only released posthumously.

 

DISCOGRAPHY

Tim Rose’s output has come out on a bewildering variety of labels. While I don’t usually include an album discography, in this instance I felt it would be of help. In addition there are several twofers which I haven’t listed. There is also a potential confusion factor if the reader looks him up on sites that purvey music, of a totally different ‘Tim Rose’.

1963 The Big Three (The Big 3) FM Records
1964 The Big Three Live At The Recording Studio (The Big 3) FM Records
1967 Tim Rose CBS
1969 Through Rose Colored Glasses CBS
1970 Love – A Kind Of Hate Story Capitol
1972 Tim Rose Playboy (US 1972) / Dawn (UK 1974)
1975 The Musician Atlantic
1976 Unfinished Song Tiger Lily – recording date not known, bootleg for a time
1987 I’ve Got To Get A Message To You See For Miles – listed in discographies but never released
1991 The Gambler President – recorded in 1977
1997 Haunted Best Dressed Records *
2002 American Son Mystic Records
2002 Not Goin’ Anywhere Love Label **
2003 Snowed In Cherry Red Records
2004 The London Sessions 1978-1998 Market Square
2004 Mirage Market Square ***

* Haunted was subsequently rereleased as Morning Dew with the same tracks but reordered.

** Not Goin’ Anywhere was by Norwegian group Headwaiter. It featured four songs with lyrics by Tim plus one song, Strange Things Happen, on which he duets with Per Jørgensen.

*** Mirage is the debut album by folk group The Greenhouse Band and features one track, The Snows, with guest vocals by Tim.

 

AND MORE MUSIC …

The first two albums recorded in London, Love – A Kind Of Hate Story and Tim Rose, cast Tim largely as a rock artist. The first, produced by Shel Talmy, had support from the ever reliable Clem Cattini, Alan Hawkshaw and Herbie Flowers, while the second had Gary “Spooky Tooth” Wright behind the production console. One of the most unusual tracks on Love… was a version of Peter Sarstedt’s Where Do You Go To My Lovely. What was unusual about it was the treatment which I can only describe as a slow variant on the long rock fade (sometimes called the Hey Judish genre). It needs one or two listens to get used to (and I suspect that not everyone will) but after that it takes on the proportions of a well worn favourite glove. Tim in semi full-on mode duets with an excellent axe man (who doesn’t get a credit on my crib sheet) and a brass section who hove into earshot every now and again. The whole thing has such a satisfying ebb and flow that the six minutes plus duration seems to evaporate in no time.

Tim Rose (the 1972 album) has a track that seems almost laughable when you come across it. The Tim Rose/Gary Wright arrangement on You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away is such a blatant attempt to “do a Joe Cocker” on another Beatles number that you’re inclined to dismiss it as a pastiche. And it is – a pastiche, that is. And it’s that rare thing, a pastiche that works. I was initially determined to resist but there’s something rather glorious about the excess of it all, possibly to do with that Spooky/Procol organ. See what you think:

There were a few moments of relative quiet on both albums. You Can’t Keep Me, which was part written by Rose, has some of the near folk feel of the first LP. It also benefits from a bridge which provides a lift from the usual descending phrases that constitute a typical Tim Rose tune.

The last few years of Tim’s life were some of his most prolific, and luckily for us listeners, his voice hadn’t degenerated significantly in spite of battles with alcohol. All bar one of the tracks on American Son, the last album to be released in his lifetime, were written by Tim and many have a downer quasi-autobiographical edge about them with accompaniment usually uncluttered. A typical example is She Was Born To Fly. “In ’62 he was a boy who went to New York town; he thought he knew the answers, he thought he’d been around” is obviously referring to one person only and his finger picked guitar is evocative of that period. The Norwegian backing ensemble fill out the accompaniment very pleasingly from about half way in and the melody is one that lingers in the brain.

I Never Knew (So Much to Lose) is quieter still. Tim counts himself in and from then on it’s just him and his guitar. Bare, I guess is the word. On songs like this, Tim managed to achieve something of the simplicity of those Johnny Cash Sun tracks, albeit without the pared-down elegance of lyrics from Charlie Rich or Jack Clement.

I hope she doesn’t see me now
Hope she never does find out
I’ve been crying
‘Cause I’ve got those blues

Snowed In which reportedly included his last ever recordings, was bleaker still. The title was a mortality metaphor like Dylan’s loss of light, and references abound in the set. Once again he took most of the writing credits, sometimes along with producer, arranger and principal provider of musical support, Colin Winston-Fletcher. The pair were responsible for Time Slips Away which opens with “Cold and I’m wounded, why do I keep hanging on”. Seriously depressing stuff, beyond even Cohen and Van Zandt, but rather remarkable.

I’ve used up all my selections but I’d refer the reader to another track which is something of a curio. A further posthumously released album, The London Sessions 1978-1998, contained a version of the Paul Anka written Buddy Holly number It Doesn’t Matter Any More (which was released only days before Holly’s death). In Buddy’s hands it’s a bitter sweet affair. Anka had caught the Holly approach of bouncy melody coupled with miserablist lyrics with some panache. In Rose’s version he does make the bitterness, or perhaps resigned acceptance, a little more explicit but it’s a valid interpretation and worth digging out – unfortunately it’s not on YT but you can find it on Spotify (check our playlist above … ed.).

 

COVERS AND VERSIONS

Tracks from Tim’s first album have been recorded by a wide range of artists over the years, some going back to the source and some using Tim’s take as the base.

Kicking off with Morning Dew, the song was featured in the Grateful Dead’s stage set from their very early days and got included on their first LP – the one that was relatively non psych:

There’s also an excellent version from the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band which is present on their second album (which is confusingly labelled Part One). They take liberties not only with the title, which is listed as Will You Walk With Me, but also with the melody line. It is very effective regardless of the changes.

There are also versions of the song from Lulu, the Jeff Beck Group, the Allman Brothers, Long John Baldry, Nazareth, Devo, and more. That ‘more’ includes a very short-lived Irish group called Sugar Shack who actually hit #17 in the Irish Chart with a version that owed quite a bit to Rose:

Hey Joe was recorded by more garage/L.A. style pop groups in the mid/late sixties than I mentioned in my main text – these included the Surfaris and the Standells. There have been claims that the former were the first to record the song, but most authorities go with the Leaves. It’s worth a listen to the Surfaris though. Their cut opens with a Byrds style Feel A Whole Lot Better riff – it was present in other versions but this one makes it almost the theme:

The Weavers’ version of Come Away Melinda isn’t available on YouTube other than as part of the entire 1963 Reunion At Carnegie Hall. Digging through that, though, does reveal that the person answering Melinda is Mummy rather than Daddy even though the part is sung by a male. The Judy Collins version is present however. What that version does do is accentuate the difference between the Melinda voicing – bouncy/almost jolly – and mummy’s lines – solemn.

The most well known post Rose version is the one from Uriah Heep which builds in a somewhat similar manner (and uses the rather predictable approach of having the two participants in the conversation on left and right stereo channels). For completeness, this is it:

To the best of my knowledge there are but two cover versions of the Tim Rose’ Long Time Man (as opposed to the earlier Makes A Long Time Man Feel Bad). The one from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds:

… and the one from the French band Noir Desir comes from live performance in ‘92/’93:

 

FINAL WORDS

While that splendid debut album seemed to offer the potential of a long term music career for Tim Rose, it also amply demonstrated the truism that he fell between categories – folk, rock, blues, and even a little country, were all in there somewhere but rarely in a clear cut manner. The attempts to move him into a more obviously commercial rock/blues role in the seventies met with zero success, in part due to a failure in marketing, but also, to be brutal, because the results were not of consistently high quality. It’s also possible that Tim’s heart wasn’t really in it.

Late period work from the man, however, seemed to show him reconnecting with his muse (if I can be allowed to use such a corny and overused expression). There was a higher reliance on his own storytelling skills on songs that he actually related to, rather than attempts to deliver in line with a producer’s vision. The results could at times be grim but the man himself still emerged as a flesh and blood singer, guitar player and writer. I think this is illustrated on a later version of Come Away Melinda in a live environment. It’s present on the album Haunted which was released in 1997 and was part studio and part live. The live numbers were recorded at The Garage and at the Royal Albert Hall. Several tracks from Tim’s regular stage set were included, not least this splendid take on Come Away Melinda, minus the sturm und drang of the version appearing on the ’67 debut album. I was almost tempted to switch my selection to this one, but a goodly number of years living with the original stayed my hand.

 

FOOTNOTES

1. Bonnie Dobson is a Canadian folk performer and song writer who was born in Toronto in 1940. Her father was a union organiser who loved opera so it comes as no surprise that Bonnie’s early influences were the Weavers and Paul Robeson. She was part of the Toronto folk scene but subsequently moved to the US, performing in clubs and coffee houses. She recorded some acoustic albums in the first half of the sixties and then a couple with fuller arrangements at the end of the decade. In 1969, she moved to England and largely gave up musical activity. That is, until 2014 when she released a new album entitled Take Me For A Walk In The Morning Dew (surprise!). In Record Collector, reviewer Max Bell commented “a triumphant return from an artist no longer lost”.

2. Morning Dew is reportedly the first song to be written by Bonnie Dobson. The word changes that were present in the Fred Neil/Vince Martin version were retained by Tim Rose. However, while the Fred/Vince cut had Bonnie Dobson down as sole writer, the Rose version added his name, suggesting a 50/50 split, presumably due to the lyrical change, since the tune, under the bombast, is essentially the same. At the time, but without sight of the changes, Dobson agreed to the split. When she did learn of their relatively limited nature, she was considerably less happy and has continued to resent the split credit over the years (but has made no attempt to fight it through legal channels). In the end, the Dobson royalties were set at 75% on the basis that she had sole rights to the melody line.

Personally, I can’t see any justification for the addition of the Rose credit and would view it as outright theft on his part. It does rather muddy the memory of an otherwise splendid record.

3. I should put in a plug for the Richie Unterberger, Kindle only, “Jingle Jangle Morning”. It contains his two earlier books on folk rock, “Turn! Turn! Turn!” and “Eight Miles High” plus a substantial appendix which consists of sleeve notes to an imaginary folk rock box set. While I have slight reservations about volumes 1 and 2, it’s the appendix that makes the whole thing sing.

4. Tim’s version of Come Away Melinda was included on The Rock Machine Turns You On from CBS, released in 1968. Wiki tells us that this LP was the world’s first bargain priced sampler album. It certainly couldn’t have done Tim any harm to have one of his tracks included.

5. Felix Pappalardi was a producer, arranger and bass player with classical training. He contributed to several Elektra albums and produced the Youngbloods and Joan Baez. Moving more into a rock role, he was involved in both arranging and song writing capacity with Cream (see Toppermost #163), and was a member of the hard rock band Mountain (see Toppermost #302), led by Leslie West.

6. The Smoothies, originally the Abstracts, were a vocal group formed by John Phillips and Scott McKenzie and a couple of others, in Alexandria, Virginia. Their major influences at the start were the lounge style harmony outfits like the Freshmen and the Hi-Los. Folk came later. The group split up in 1960 and Phillips and McKenzie formed the Journeymen with Dick Weissman. The Journeymen were folk pop and broadly comparable to the Kingston Trio (more info on Scott McKenzie and the Journeymen at Toppermost #607).

7. The Big 3 tend to be referred to that way in print (though not absolutely consistently), probably to distinguish them from Liverpool band the Big Three, who were active in a similar time frame.

8. The album American Son was recorded in Bergen, Norway between March and December 2000.

9. Our Esteemed Editor has found another version of Come Away Melinda, this time from Birmingham psych band Velvet Fogg who contained a pre-Sabbath Tony Iommi. This one saw release prior to the Uriah Heep version.

 

Tim Rose (1940–2002)

 

The Official Tim Rose Website (archived)

Tim Rose fan site

Tim Rose on Discogs

Tim Rose biography (Apple Music)

Dave Stephens had a long career in IT – programming, consultancy, management etc. – before retiring in 2007. After spending time on the usual retiree type activities he eventually got round to writing on one of his favourite subjects, popular music, particularly, but not only, the sort that was around in his youth. He gained experience at ‘the writing thing’ by placing CD reviews on Amazon. This led to his first book “RocknRoll” which was published for Kindle in 2015. He followed this up with “London Rocks” in July 2016. You can follow him on Twitter @DangerousDaveXX

 

Here are just some of the other Toppermosts by David Stephens:

Terry Allen; Solomon Burke; Buddy Holly; Waylon Jennings; Little Richard; Lonnie Mack; Charlie Rich; Doug Sahm; Gene Vincent

TopperPost #623