Gallant Sons (1940)

Featuring 104 pages of Behind The Scenes photos, personal band memories, & set-lists from throughout the tour + Exclusive CD Feat. 10 tracks (inc. 2 exclusives).

The Sons of Champlin released three albums on Capitol Records between 1969 and 1971 (Loosen Up Naturally, The Sons, and Follow Your Heart), none of which was a commercial hit for various reasons, but not for lack of musical quality. This 78-minute CD makes a reasonable selection of the highlights from those LPs, demonstrating that at their best, the Sons were a collection of talented musicians who packed their songs full of good solos that grew out of complicated arrangements. Although they were a part of the psychedelic San Francisco scene of the time, their music never quite fit the mold, leaning much more toward jazz and R&B than, say, the Grateful Dead. the Sons played instruments including saxophones and a vibraphone, not otherwise typical of the San Francisco Sound, and they were less interested in songs than in creating platforms for soloing. They might start a tune like "Love of a Woman" as a gentle, romantic ballad with an acoustic guitar, but midway through that would suddenly give way to a jazzy instrumental section in a different time signature, return to the ballad, then again go off into jazz.

The Sons Of Adam—a lean, mean rock’n’roll machine from the Hollywood rock scene of the mid-1960s—quite literally blew the competition off the stage. Led by influential lead guitarist Randy Holden (Other Half / Blue Cheer), the Sons boasted an affable frontman in Jac Ttanna (Genesis) and an incomparable rhythm section in Mike Port and Michael Stuart-Ware (Love). Schooled in surf, emboldened by the British Invasion, the band had a fearsome reputation as a live act. In this unprecedented anthology, Saturday’s Sons features a previously unreleased 1966 full concert performance from San Francisco’s famed Avalon Ballroom, a recording so powerfully dynamic that few listeners will doubt the band’s masterful live presence. The quartet enjoyed a brief but incandescent three-year career which is fully documented on this compilation with rare 45s, studio outtakes and demo recordings, including fiery surf material from their early incarnation The Fender IV, and the legendary single “Feathered Fish”, donated to the band by Love’s Arthur Lee.

This 2014 three-fer contains Loosen Up Naturally, The Sons, and Follow Your Heart, the albums the Sons of Champlin recorded between 1969 and 1971. These are also the Sons' first three albums and it's possible to hear them stretch out with each subsequent record, deepening their grooves, highlighting their jazz inflections, and eventually folding in a rather smooth, sun-kissed gloss. Unlike many of their San Franciscan brethren, they weren't particularly hard-edged or Dionysian: they had a stronger sense of soul and rhythm, they reveled in feel over texture. This can mean that all three of these records meander a bit – songwriting wasn't a Sons specialty – but there's an open-hearted attitude to the trinity that remains appealing.

Recorded in Bruce Walford's studio in San Anselmo, this album sees the Sons in transition. Tim Cain, the sax player who co-founded the band with Bill Champlin back in 1965, had left, as had trumpet player Jim Beem. The stripped down band has an opportunity to stretch out on a number of fine Bill Champlin compositions, and the album also features the recorded debut of Terry Haggerty's "Follow Your Heart", a tune that would stay in the band's set list until Haggerty's departure in 2001 (a more polished version of the tune appeared on the out of print Circle of Love album, and there is a great performance on The Sons Live CD released in 1997). Soon after the release of this album Bill Champlin took the first of his sabaticals from the group, returning to a new rhythm section and a revised name (Yogi Phlegm) several months later. Not quite as good as Welcome to the Dance, this album still cooks pretty hard and is definitely worth a listen.