Classic Led Zeppelin posters unearthed for sale

In case you somehow missed these two big news items today:

1. Happy 70th birthday to Jimmy Page!
2. Robert Plant has just announced plans to tour Europe and Japan this June, July and August. Fourteen live shows are on the books with his band the Sensational Space Shifters. Check out his website for all the details.

Here's another item that will be of interest to collectors of Led Zeppelin concert posters. We've probably all seen these UK posters from the Bath Festival 1969 and 1970.

The Bath Festival in 1969 featured Led Zeppelin fourth on the bill.

Although Led Zeppelin headlined the Bath Festival 1970, all band names were printed in the same size, much to the chagrin of Led Zeppelin manager Peter Grant.

Henrietta Bannister, daughter of Bath Festival promoter Freddy Bannister, emailed me today about two forgotten posters her family had just discovered. Reprints are now available for sale through her company, Rock Music Memorabilia.

Bath Pavilion 1968

One is the poster for Led Zeppelin's show at the Bath Pavilion half a year before the first Bath Festival. The date was Dec. 16, 1968, within two weeks before the group left for their first tour of America. An earlier version of the poster advertised the Jeff Beck Group as the headliner, but Beck was becoming unreliable at that time and canceling shows. This was one of those instances. As the Rock Music Memorabilia website explains: "At short notice we received a phone call from Peter Grant's office saying Jeff Beck was unable to appear, but if we wished we could have the New Yardbirds, now known as Led Zeppelin." Henrietta Bannister's email to me expands on this: "Led Zeppelin replaced Jeff Beck because of illness. In fact, my father was quite annoyed because in 1968 Jeff Beck was a much bigger attraction than Led Zeppelin." The concert poster reprint being sold today lists Led Zeppelin in Beck's place and contains a disclaimer about the previously advertised headliner. This poster should also be of interest to fans of Muddy Waters and The Who as their own Bath Pavilion dates are also listed.

Alternate Bath Festival 1969

The other newly discovered Led Zeppelin artifact is an alternate Bath Festival 1969 poster. As the original poster features a faceless and bare-chested woman, some store owners complaining that it was obscene refused to advertise the show with it. They were given this alternate poster design instead, which features the side of the woman's face in a lot more detail.

For a limited time only, a set of these four posters is available from Rock Music Memorabilia at a special discount of over 30 percent off. For more specific information, visit www.rockmusicmemorabilia.com. In the spirit of full disclosure, I've been offered one of these sets for mentioning this here.

Fats Domino tribute released with two Robert Plant tracks

On a new two-CD collection produced both as a tribute to 79-year-old singer/songwriter Fats Domino and also to benefit the music culture in New Orleans, Robert Plant lends his vocals to two cover songs.

Domino, a New Orleans native who lost his home to Hurricane Katrina two years ago, has been recording since the late 1940s. He earned his first pop hit in the United States and England in 1955 with "Ain't That a Shame." John Lennon's cover version of the song, originally released 20 years later, now exists as the appropriate choice to open the tribute album released tomorrow in the United States.

As for Plant's involvement in the project, New York Times reporter Nate Chinen tells the story in an article published on Saturday: Plant had first agreed to contribute only one song for the compilation, a version of Domino's 1961 single "It Keeps Rainin'." However, one was not enough; he chose to record another, engaging in an impromptu recording session with a large vocal ensemble dropping in from another continent.

In April recording sessions attended in person by Domino, Plant committed both songs to tape during a three-day visit to New Orleans. For "It Keeps Rainin'," he was assisted by the Cajun sounds of the accordion-wielding Lil' Band O' Gold, a swamp-pop group from the southern Louisiana town of Lafayette. Plant and the band laid down their rendition on Thursday, April 19, according to Scott Jordan in a blurb for Lafayette's Independent Weekly and Keith Spera in a blog entry for The Times-Picayune.

Spera adds that following the recording session, Plant stopped by three New Orleans concert venues to take in some live performances. One of the acts he watched was Lil' Band O' Gold member Steve Riley's other band, the Mamou Playboys, performing at the Mid-City Lanes Rock 'n Bowl. Plant also listened to local mainstays The Trio at the Maple Leaf.

At Tipitina's, the top-billed act was not an area group but the 26-member Soweto Gospel Choir from South Africa. During their stay, they were ushered into a recording studio with Plant to record an impromptu cover of "Valley of Tears." In the original version, released 1957, Fats Domino was assisted by a pop choir and saxophone solo. However, the only musical accompaniment in the new recording of that song comes from some light percussion. Plant provides two verses of restrained vocals in this track, which stretches just barely over two minutes in length.

While it might be construed as an atypical combination of forces to outsiders, at least one person familiar with the New Orleans music scene was quoted in the New York Times piece as declaring Plant's recording session with the Soweto Gospel Choir was commonplace. “So you have the Led Zeppelin guy with a South African gospel choir doing a Fats Domino song,” said Bill Taylor, executive director of the Tipitina's Foundation and executive producer of the double album. “It’s an example of what happens here musically every day.”

Plant and Domino met again in the afternoon on Saturday, April 21, before the British singer joined the Lil' Band of Gold onstage for a half hour at Tipitina's. They were reported to have played both "It Keeps Rainin'" and "Valley of Tears," in addition to a few Elvis Presley songs, the blues song "Hoochie Coochie Man" made famous by Muddy Waters, and snippets of Led Zeppelin songs.

Led Zeppelin fans may best know Domino as the author of the song "Blueberry Hill," famous for a performance as an encore at a single Zep show 37 years ago this month. An unsanctioned recording of the concert by an audience member was released in the 1970s without authorization of the band, making it one of the very earliest bootlegs of a rock concert ever produced.

The double album, Goin' Home: A Tribute to Fats Domino, is to be released Sept. 25 by Vanguard Records. It is not the first musical release for which proceeds benefit the Tipitina's Foundation. It is preceded by Domino's independently released 2006 album, Alive and Kickin'.

The correct bassline that inspired "Black Dog"

John Paul Jones has claimed numerous times through the years that he was inspired to write the bassline that became the backbone of "Black Dog" after listening to Electric Mud, the psychedelic album by Muddy Waters.


One of these instances was in a lesson for Guitar World Online in about 2001 that included a transcription of the bassline live Zep recording seekers recognize from the intro of 1969 versions of Howlin' Wolf's "Killing Floor."

Guitar World also featured the bassline from "Black Dog" with accompanying text about how the one bassline inspired the other (and, subsequently, how "Black Dog" riff evolved in its development).


The original URL of that feature was here, although it's no longer online; however, one can retrieve the text of this feature via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. I copied the relevant portions here though, and Jonesy's discussion begins as follows:

Let's begin this first lesson by talking about what I've often heard people refer to as the classic Led Zeppelin "stomp groove." A prime example of this can be found in the song "Black Dog," from our fourth album.

As you probably already know, Led Zeppelin was heavily influenced by blues music-Robert Johnson, Howlin' Wolf, Elmore James, Muddy Waters, B.B. King and many others.

At this point, the Guitar World Online page included the sheet music, seen here, and a WAVE audio file for the riff we recognize as the intro to Zep's live versions of "Killing Floor." For Mac users (like Jonesy himself), it also included an AIFF file. Alas, these files are no longer retrievable. Jonesy continued:

I was inspired to write the "Black Dog" riff after learning this old blues riff in E (see Figure 1) from the Muddy Waters album Electric Mud (Cadet, 1968). It's a swampy, circular, single-note riff and Jimmy Page and I used to love to play it forever! I wanted to write an original riff that had that same type of busy, yet plodding, feel.

His use of "single-note" means no more than one note is played at a time, rather than that the riff is composed entirely of a drone or repeated note of one pitch. At any rate, there you have it: the claim that it's from Electric Mud.


However, that's a whole album, not a song. So, it must be on one of the tracks, right? Well, if so, you should be able to go back to that album and listen for that precise riff. You can do that until the cows come home, and you'll never find it anywhere on that album.


It is, however, on the track "Smokestack Lightning" from the Howlin' Wolf LP in 1969, recorded with the same intentions as Electric Mud: to make a bluesman look silly doing some psychedelic music that, who knows, might actually earn some younger-generation fans who'd previously overlooked him.


So, what happened? It's my contention that -- gasp! -- Jonesy make a mistake. (Hell, he called me out on a mistake in my newsletter once, so I'm just repaying him the favor.) The two albums are similar in spirit, so he just got them confused.


But that's not the only instance of him citing Electric Mud as the source, is it? No, it's not. He certainly goofed up a number of times!

You know how you learn something wrong, and you can never get it right? Especially if you are never told that it is wrong?


Then we all started reciting it as fact. If Jonesy said it, it must be true. And if Jonesy said it five gazillion times, it must be really, really true! So, we learned it wrong, and he kept saying it wrong year after year, interview after interview. Until somebody stopped him. And that somebody was yours truly.


On Dec. 10, 2001, I interviewed John Paul Jones for four hours. At one point, he and I sang the riff together, and I asked him where it was from. He said Electric Mud. I told him I had that album on CD and I couldn't find the riff anywhere. He said he could be wrong but didn't suggest any alternative. And life moved on for both of us.


The following April was when I discovered where it was really from. I bought the Howlin' Wolf LP from 1969 on eBay and played it for the first time on April 26, 2002, on the 33rd anniversary of the third of four San Francisco shows that week at which Led Zeppelin played that very riff. In my April 27, 2002, edition of "On This Day In Led Zeppelin History," I wrote that the correct source of that bassline is Howlin' Wolf's LP. But he didn't necessarily read that newsletter, did he? Good thing my story doesn't end here!


Two years later, on Aug. 19, 2004, I greeted John Paul Jones on the closing night of his tour with Mutual Admiration Society. I held up the 1969 Howlin' Wolf LP cover to him, which reads, "This is Howlin' Wolf's new album. He doesn't like it. He didn't like his electric guitar at first either." Jonesy saw me and knew exactly what I wanted to talk to him about. While he was signing items for other fans, he talked to me, and I told him this album's third track was the source of that riff. Taking my word for it, he admitted that he'd been wrong all those times in the press when quoted on Electric Mud. I offered Jonesy to take the LP back home to England with him for old time's sake. Instead, he let me keep it -- but now with his autograph scrawled on the front.


If I wasn't entirely sold on the album by then, I like it just fine now.