ALBUM: Joe Cocker/With a Little Help From My Friends (1969)
MVC Rating: 5.0/$$$$
When you see Joe Cocker writhing on stage, singing in his most gravelly-gritty Joe Cocker voice, having what appears to be an epileptic seizure, you just want to take a stick and poke him (from a distance).
“Bear. bear. are you all right?’
(Growl).: You feelin’ alright?
I’m not feelin’ too good myself
Well, you feelin’ alright?
I’m not feelin’ too good myself
Cocker had perfected the Ray Charles-Otis Redding growls and gravel throated singing style. Cocker turned it into a great career of interpreting other people’s songs. Popular songs from the Beatles, Dylan and Dave Mason.
Inexplicably he writhed, and contorted himself while singing; it was kind of a cross between playing air guitar, air piano and air drums with a touch of the palsy. All the while he is putting so much emotional grit in each word of a song.
“Well, I’ll try with a little help from friends.”
The sad bear eyes and vocals indicating great inner turmoil made you want to take a thorn out his paw.
He had a good humor though about his seemingly uncontrolled histrionics.
In 1976 on Saturday Night Live John Belushi joined Cocker as Cocker and they both went through some contortions.
Although he went on to bigger things with Top 40 ballads (You are So Beautiful) and some duets (Up Where We Belong w/ Jennifer Warnes), this album, his debut, was his prime rock and roll album with covers of Feelin Alright, With a Little Help from My Friends and Just Like a Woman.
Check him out on video.
Counting down my 678 vinyl records before I die of brain disease.