I think I must’ve been, like…15 or 16 when I first heard Terry Reid wail.  It was when he opened for Cream in 1968, I think. 

He was all of about 18 or so.   Just this little scrawny English kid—beautiful scrawny English kid, though.  Still, we weren’t expecting much.  Until he stepped up to the mic and made the walls vibrate.

I am not joking.  Or exaggerating--you just heard it.   And that is why though you may never have heard of this man, musicians from Cheap Trick to Jack White have covered his music—most notably, Speak Now and Rich Kid Blues from his legendary and aptly named Superlungs album.  Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects features three of his songs, too.

But no one can duplicate the “wail.”  I have to admit that half the time I have no idea what he’s saying.  I’ve never been able to get to the bottom of Terry’s particular brand of “mush mouth,”  though back in the day it may have been mildly drug or alcohol induced.  His heyday was, after all, the 60s and 70s, as you can readily tell from the psychedelic effects and musical style in these clips.

So I can’t tell you he taught me all kinds of beautiful truths.  I can’t say he was a magical mystery man who unlocked the secrets of life in his lyrics.  But he sings with such passion and power that…I didn’t have to know the words.  Whatever he was saying…he believed it, and he made me believe it, too.

And I can also say that along with the late Steve Marriott and Rod Stewart, he was considered one of the mightiest mouths in the business by fans and critics alike.

And he was also very, very, very easy on the eyes. 

Yeah, well…again, it was the 60s and 70s and I hung out with some of the most notorious groupies of the day.  They knew how to pick ‘em.  And they chased his pretty little ass all over the place, hitch hiking to keep up, when they had to.

He fell on hard times, later.  I’m not sure why.  And again, I don’t care, except that that amazing voice never made it beyond cult status and as you listen, you’ll see why those of us who loved him found it so hard to understand how those bionic vocal cords didn’t keep him in the forefront for decades.

Life…isn’t fair.  Simple as that, I guess.  I love this article for saying just that, and it gives you a nice rundown on what happened:

 http://blogs.houstonpress.com/rocks/2009/01/lost_tuneage_terry_reid.php

And he has Web sites, too, thank God—the first is the official one, the second a “temple” by a fan:

 http://www.terryreid.net/

http://www.terryreid.org.uk/intro.html

A YouTube playlist of his work is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajx1Pln0KYQ&playnext=1&list=AVGxdCwVVULXfmntsZ-5GD8_LKjG1RowIh&fmt=18

I myself am just sooooo  glad I saw his name somewhere the other day.  I immediately rushed to Spotify and then to ITunes and then to Amazon.com and bought everything I’d had on vinyl and a few things I hadn’t even heard before.

I’m going to start my walk down memory lane with Believe in Magic, the surprisingly and delightfully funky Rogue Waves song that blew the top of my head off years after I’d just about forgotten about him.  I was still writing about music, and the vinyl version arrived at my door one day.  I smiled,  put it on my turntable…and braced myself.  The wail had improved with age and gotten a little more soul, too, too.

Bowangi almost blew the roof off the house—and proved he was still rockin’ hard.   And he turned the old Crystals girl group song And Then I Kissed Him into a roaring rock anthem, too—renamed for gender's sake and revved up to 11.  That last  "Wanna kiss ya'" at the very end sent my heart racing like old times.  He still had it.

And here they are:

 One of his most beautiful early songs, Mayfly--if the link to July comes up at the end, another beautiful ballad, CLICK and marvel: 

 And I cannot forget Speak Now:

Can he still wail?  Oh, hells yeah--here's a live clip from 2010: