I fully admit that this installment of “5 Songs” is the most esoteric entry so far in the series. 1960’s Folk-Rock is hardly endemic to most of our contributors or readers. (Colin Gawel - for one - was born AFTER all of the songs detailed/selected today were released.) All of today’s selections are drawn from a homemade “mix CD” I made for myself from my old vinyl singles and albums when I first got a CD burner back in 2001. I wrote liner notes to that CD in 2002 when I met Joe Peppercorn of Mrs. Children/The Whiles (perhaps Columbus’ all-time best folk-rock band) and made him a copy.
Non-italicized song-notes below are drawn from those liners, italicized entries are from 2026.
“Briefly, the guitars ring, the voices ache and the lyrics yearn. The ache in the voices suggest that the lights were never so bright as the guitars imply and that no one was ever quite so innocent as those high harmonies might claim.”
- Ariel Swartley, defining folk-rock in the Boston Phoenix, 1983
First off, I guess you would have to picture the painfully shy, socially inept Ricki C. when he was just Rick Cacchione, cocooned in his parents’ basement on the West Side of Columbus, Ohio in 1966, listening to his 45 rpm singles, his most prized possessions.
He had yet to ever touch a guitar, had never kissed a girl, but Lord how he loved those rock & roll records. He already worshipped The Who for their power & swagger, their utter command of a rock & roll stage; but maybe more importantly there was already a place in his heart for The Kinks, for the undercurrent of sadness that rolled & flowed through “Tired Of Waiting For You” and some other Ray Davies tunes that served as Kinks b-sides. Young Rick Cacchione was just waiting; primed for folk-rock to happen.
THE YOUNGLOODS / “ALL MY DREAMS BLUE” / 1967
One of those songs I have always found impossible to resist.
I saw Cat Mother & the All Night Newsboys open for Jimi Hendrix in November 1969, in Chicago, as a high-school senior on a journalism field-trip. Our newspaper moderator - Sister Ann Mary (“Sam” for short) - took me down to the Chicago Armory the day of the show and told the box-office guys I was, quote, “A resident of the Catholic foundling home” she worked at, and could they possibly see fit to let me into the show for free? “I have parents, you know,” I whispered to Sam under my breath, and she curtly replied, “Do you wanna see Hendrix or not?” They let me in. Hendrix was good, but every song was 20 minutes of meandering guitar solos, and he barely PERFORMED. (The show I saw in March 1968 in Columbus was much better.) The Cat Mother guys, on the other hand, were pretty great. I bought their album when I got home and this killer ballad was one of my favorite cuts on the record.
CAT MOTHER & THE ALL NIGHT NEWSBOYS / “CHARLIE’S WALTZ” / 1969
THE BEAU BRUMMELS / “ONLY DREAMING NOW” / 1967
I wrote the following paragraph in 2002 for the mix CD liner notes. It later became a longer short story you can read linked here, if you are so inclined.
In autumn 1970 I started going out with a girl named Teresa. We had met the summer before when I was helping with music for a play that she and my best friend Dave were starring in. She was possibly the saddest person I have ever met, that kind of deep-seated sadness that music, love and/or drugs can’t touch. She was the adopted daughter of an incredibly well-to-do family in Bexley (I could show you the house sometime), but ached to find the birth mother who had given her away 18 years before. Given that baggage, she was an easy mark for that end-of-the-60’s cocktail of eastern mysticism, nascent new age philosophy, cheap drugs, Ripple wine, Jesus freaks, phony prophets, Rod McCuen poetry and The Grateful Dead. Teresa was doing maybe five different kinds of drugs – pot, acid, prescription valium and prescription painkillers she purloined from her adoptive mother, and some speed just to balance the equation – and she was amazed I didn’t do any. I told her, quite truthfully at that point, that all I needed was rock & roll. She asked me to loan her one record that was better than drugs. I gave her the Beau Brummels Triangle album. She flushed all the pills, at least for one weekend. It didn’t last. She wound up running away to a hippie commune/crash-pad in Boston about a month later. The Bexley police came to my West Side home to ask questions. My recently widowed mother (who recognized a crazed, kindred spirit in Teresa and loved her) was not amused. Do I think about Teresa to this day when I hear these songs?
Of course I do.
SEATRAIN / “LET THE DUCHESS NO” / 1969
An off-shoot band of The Blues Project.
The Turtles / “Me About You” / 1967
Okay, let’s finish off with a band you may have actually HEARD OF; hitmakers The Turtles with one of their shoulda-been-but-wasn’t-a-hit tunes.
Coming up next in part seven of “5 Songs” - Punk-Rock of the 1960’s. (When “punk-rock” meant something very different than the 1970’s to today.)
And, in conclusion - for any 60’s folk-rock completists out there in Pencil Storm-land - the complete track listing for my Autumn Songs mix-CD.
Autumn Songs / 1960’s Folk-Rock & Chamber-Pop
1) She’s A Lady – John Sebastian
2) All My Dreams Blue - The Youngbloods
3) Charlie’s Waltz – Cat Mother & The All Night Newsboys
4) It Came Without Warning – Jake & The Family Jewels
5) Steve’s Song
6) Gentle Dreams
7) Sometimes In Winter – tracks 5-7 Steve Katz
8) Suzanne
9) Close The Door Lightly When You Go
10) I Don’t Know Where I Stand - tracks 8-10 Fairport Convention
11) Only Dreaming Now
12) Painter Of Women – tracks 11 & 12 The Beau Brummels
13) Let The Duchess No
14) Rondo – tracks 13 & 14 Sea Train
15) Time Will Show The Wiser
16) You’re A Very Lovely Woman – tracks 15 & 16 The Merry Go Round
17) No Milk Today – Herman’s Hermits
18) From The Underworld
19) Paradise Lost
20) I Can Fly – tracks 18-20 The Herd (Peter Frampton)
21) You Know What I Mean
22) Me About You
23) Somewhere Friday Night
24) Love In The City
25) Lady-O – tracks 21-25 The Turtles
Ricki C. is 73 years old. He has been involved professionally in rock & roll in some capacity - performer, roadie, rock writer - since 1968 when he sang his first song for pay in public; “Magic Carpet Ride” by Steppenwolf at a classmate’s birthday party. Today he takes a great new song wherever he can find it.