#Sneaky Pete Kleinow

[joegramoe]

I would give everything I own

[balladofsallyrose]

The Flying Burrito Brothers (1969) photographed by Jim McCrary

[jt1674]

[spilladabalia]

The Flying Burrito Brothers - Hot Burrito #1

[oldshowbiz]

Steel Guitarist: Full or Part Time.

[dearyallfrommatt]

“Big Bayou“

Swampwater.

This band was fronted by a Cajun fiddler named Gib Guilbeau, He was a name in the ‘70s West Coast country rock and played with all the names. Swampwater formed in 1969 to back Linda Ronstadt whose backing band, the Stone Ponys, had split up. This is a pretty good indication of their overall sound, Cajun-flavored country rock, and it’s worth a listen. Guilbeau also played with a reborn Flying Burrito Brothers, The band had broken up in ‘73 but after Gram Parsons's death, their manager pulled together a new band with Chris Ethridge and “Sneaky” Pete Kleinow. All I’m going to say about that is I hope everyone got paid.

[1264doghouse]

The Flying Burrito Brothers: Jon Corneal, Sneaky Pete Kleinow, Chris Hillman, Juanita Hyde, Gram Parsons & Chris Ethridge

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

The Flying Burrito Brothers - Altamont Speedway, Tracy, California, December 6, 1969

Something very special to wrap up the first work week of 2023 — a rare soundboard recording of the Flying Burrito Brothers at Altamont! Thanks to the anonymous donor who passed this along to me. The Burritos were only allotted a half-hour onstage on this fateful day, sandwiched between the Jefferson Airplane and CSNY, but they make the most of it. The hottest Burritos? Maybe! After a quick intro from the familiar rasp of Sam Cutler, Gram Parsons, Chris Hillman, Sneaky Pete Kleinow, Bernie Leadon and Michael Clarke take flight over the Speedway.

"It was the ultimate nightmare," Hillman fondly remembered many years later. "It was the other end of the scale of what happened at Woodstock and at Monterey Pop—the dark side of the experience. There wasn’t anything redeeming about it, and it should never have happened. I was scared to death the whole time I was there. It was a wet, gray morning, and I’ll never forget thinking, ‘This feels like a weird day.' We got into a car accident on the way over. Then we had to park a mile away from the stage and carry our instruments through the crowd, which was scary. When we finally got backstage it was total chaos. No order at all. You’d always hear hectic talk backstage at any big show or festival, but this was nonstop horror stories."

And yet ... what this recording suggests is that for about 30 minutes there ... Altamont was a gas gas gas! There's definitely a go-for-broke energy here that is a bit lacking in other Gram Parsons-era live recordings from the band. Maybe it was the sports bra (?) that Gram was sporting for the gig. (If you want a closer look, this footage showed up in the Library of Congress a little while back.) This upload is a limited time thing — get it while you can!

[mywifeleftme]

224: Hedge & Donna Capers // Special Circumstances

Special Circumstances Hedge & Donna Capers 1970, Capitol

I recently found this record on the street in Portland, Maine and I have to admit to rescuing it purely because I’d never seen a mixed-race ‘60s folk duo before. Special Circumstances is a lot better than I’d expected from a discarded folk-pop record—one mafia-related disappearance or Glenn Frey connection away from a Light in the Attic reissue, say. (We do get Bernie Leadon playing a bit of dobro, which is in the vicinity.) The husband-and-wife duo of Keene Hedges Capers and Donna Capers (née Carson) harmonize as smoothly as you could wish, and the instrumental credits are littered with session studs, including Flying Burrito Brother and pedal steel legend Sneaky Pete Kleinow and Carole Kaye on bass. Janis Ian also drops in to lend piano to Hedge & Donna’s rendition of her treacly number “He’s a Rainbow.”

The pop-leaning tunes (like “Rainbow” and “Sunshine”) aren’t the best use of anyone’s talents but they’re not especially grating,  and the album’s late pivot to gospel is more pleasant than enervating, but Special Circumstances punches its ticket with a run of sublime ballads on the a-side. Most of these songs are Capers originals, but their quality is really a testament to the pros who can make even pedestrian songwriting sound like the relieving warmth that radiates from a good stretch. On “Becoming” the players cup Hedge and Donna’s close harmonies and spiritual sweet nothings like a flower holding a pair of drowsing field mice. The soul jazz-tinted medley that follows (“Higher Country / Uhuru / Adunde”) is more ambitious, Donna’s lead vocal landing somewhere between Sandy Denny and Miriam Makeba as the mystical, minor key “Higher Country” dissolves into a series of African chants. The lazy stream from the title track to “Strawberry Malt” features some of the prettiest country-folk backing you’ll hear on any record from 1970. I’d happily stick these four songs up against nearly anything I’ve heard from the recent glut of b- and c-tier folk reissues.

Overall, Special Circumstances gets a pass from me for its becoming lack of overt commercial ambitions, and the easy craftsmanship nearly every part of it displays. It’s not perfect, but to my surprise it’s managed to grab my ear despite coming home amid a pile of records I actually paid for, even if I’ll probably seldom play the second side again.

224/365

[themusicaldesk]

This Day in Music On 19th Sept 1973, 

country rock singer/songwriter Gram Parsons, formerly of The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers, died under mysterious conditions in Joshua Tree, California at the age of 26. His death was attributed to heart failure but later was officially announced as a drug overdose.  

Parsons formed the Flying Burrito Brothers with bassist Chris Ethridge and pedal steel player Sneaky Pete Kleinow. 

[mudwerks]

(via It Just Might Be A One-Shot Deal)

Sneaky Pete Kleinow on pedal steel

[joegramoe]

The Fabulous Flying Burrito Brothers by McCrary

[balladofsallyrose]

THE FLYING BURRITO BROTHERS (1969) playing poker in Laurel Canyon

[guerrilla-operator]

THE FLYING BURRITO BROTHERS

[chaunceyandchumleysdad]

Sneaky Pete Kleinow

While listening to the Frank Zappa album Waka/Jawaka (a.k.a. Waka/Jawaka – Hot Rats), I read the Wikipedia bio of Sneaky Pete Kleinow, who appears on the album. A proficient pedal steel guitar player, I am familiar with his work as a member of Flying Burrito Brothers as well as his session work. What I did not know is that he was also a visual effects artist and stop motion animator. He worked on the children’s television shows Gumby and Davey and Goliath. He apparently also worked on the 1962 fantasy film The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm. As a young boy, I remember going to see that movie with my dad and being completely enthralled by it. On Waka/Jawaka, Sneaky Pete performs a wonderful pedal steel solo in the middle of the song, It Just Might Be A One-Shot Deal. As with many Frank Zappa songs, it is a musical subsection that is completely out of context with the rest of the song. There is a signature Zappa chaotic passage that leads into Kleinow’s solo (1:48) which then ends in another chaotic transition (3:17). The solo is like a sea of tranquility amid an avalanche of commotion. To my knowledge, it is the only pedal steel guitar solo on any Frank Zappa album and might even be the only time a pedal steel guitar appeared in a Frank Zappa song.

[oldshowbiz]

The guy who composed the theme song to Gumby for Art Clokey collaborated with Frank Zappa on this country rock masterpiece from 1972. 

Sneaky Pete Kleinow is the man of the hour with a hypnotic steel guitar solo kicking in at 1:47. The former claymation employee had just finished his run playing pedal steel with the Flying Burrito Brothers at the time of this recording.