Essra Mohawk: "Primordial Man" - worth spending £21.99 on or not?

(Christgau D = rest of world A+)

Essra Mohawk - Primordial Lovers - Reprise, 1970

Essra Mohawk's first album, Sandy's Album Is Here at Last, was, thankfully, the end of her career as Sandra Elayne Hurvitz. She changed her name for 1970's underrated Primordial Lovers, which writer Ramsay Pennypacker calls "a challenging, often breathtaking blend of jazz, '60s pop and what would soon be known as the singer/songwriter sound." He adds, "The album went nowhere, as the label, Reprise, had put its money behind someone named Joni Mitchell. Mohawk was nothing if not groundbreaking--this disc followed her stint as the first woman in Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention--and today Lovers routinely makes the best-album lists of numerous critics and High Fidelity-type music freaks." Including us.

"The general public also ignores Essra Mohawk, who just refuses to go away. She's like the roaches in my apartment. I spray all the Raid I have but they still come back. 30 years ago she was a Laura Nyro imitator. In the 1970's she ripped off everyone from Leon Russell to Etta James to Donna Summer (that awful howling/shrieking quasi disco album she did with the coked out flower photograph on the cover). In the mousse haired 80's it was the synthetic new wave and Cyndi Lauper sound. The 90's she tried to ride the country linedancing haycart, and now it's blues. Damn, doesn't this woman have a style of her own? Given, her voice isn't bad but it has deteriorated badly after so many years and it not near the several octave soprano of yore. If you like this style of music you're much better off buying the latest releases by Tracy Nelson and Maria Muldaur. At least those women have their hearts in the blues and not just their wallets."

rob, what's so difficult about it? is it worth investing the time with it if i ever find it?

got this in the Other Music used bin the Other Day...it is really good...I had only known one song of hers ("Full Fledged Woman", from Barney Hoskyns' Back To California comp), and had been meaning to check out this "feral Laura Nyro"...I am not disappointed...

I was not surprised to see Marcello's name as the thread-starter here...MC: did you ever pick this up?

i found an 80s record of hers. new wave. kinda crap

Primordial Lovers sounds like some Cadet Concept jump.

deju vu!

I just realized that Ultramarine sampled Essra's version of Gershwin's "Summertime" for their "British Summertime" track...meaningless trivia, on the face of it, but I just love it when I uncover these links...

LEGENDARY ARTIST ESSRA MOHAWK’S ’69 AND ’70s ALBUMS
FOR BIZARRE, REPRISE AND ASYLUM
TO BE REISSUED ON COLLECTORS’ CHOICE

Her first three albums were pivotal in the American singer-songwriter movement. The classic Primordial Lovers has fondly been christened the Mother Album of “grrrl power.”

LOS ANGELES, Calif. —Sandy Hurvitz’s transformation into Essra Mohawk happened as a result of undeniable singing and songwriting talent plus a series of happy accidents. The young Philadelphian issued a Liberty single (at age 16) that was deemed a “Newcomer Pick” in Cashbox; she then contributed songs to artists as disparate as the Shangri-Las and Vanilla Fudge. But her career really accelerated in 1967 when she met Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention in New York. When Mother Don Preston was under the weather, Zappa asked to hear her play the piano and sing. He invited her to join the band on the spot. Next thing she knew, she was a de facto member of the Mothers, reluctantly accepting the endearing nickname “Uncle Meat.” Her solo career was about to unfold.

Her three solo recordings from 1969 (Sandy’s Album Is Here at Last!), 1970 (Primordial Lovers) and 1974 (Essra Mohawk) will be reissued on CD by Collectors’ Choice Music on February 23, 2010. The reissues are digitally remastered and contain bonus tracks. Richie Unterberger wrote the liner notes with extensive interview material from Mohawk.

At just 17, Mohawk turned down an offer from a well-known Brill Building publishing house. A few years later she made her debut album, Sandy’s Album Is Here at Last!, on Zappa’s Bizarre/Verve Records label. Zappa started out as her producer, but then surrendered the chair to Mother of Invention Ian Underwood. Mohawk deemed Underwood an “anti-producer, anti-arranger,” leaving the tracks unfinished. “It’s like it wasn’t my album,” she says. “It was really raw.” Nonetheless her talent and unique voice emerged from the production murk. The song titles alone auger a trippy ride: “Archgodliness of Purpleful Magic,” “Tree of Trees” and “I Know the Sun.” The Collectors’ Choice reissue contains the bonus track “Life Is Scarlet,” never before available on CD (except on a Japanese limited edition reissue, no longer available).

Mohawk was scheduled to play Woodstock but her driver missed the turn to the heliport and they arrived by car too late. Good was to come from this as it was her description of the event to Joni Mitchell that inspired Joni to write the song “Woodstock.” 1969 was also key as Essra married producer Frazier Mohawk (born Barry Friedman), known for his work with Kaleidoscope, the Butterfield Blues Band, the Holy Modal Rounders and Nico. For her second album, 1970’s Primordial Lovers, Mohawk moved to Reprise, brought in by label head Mo Ostin after he heard her sing at a club in New York. The album featured several notable musicians: Lee Underwood from Tim Buckley’s sessions; Dallas Taylor from Crosby, Stills & Nash; Doug Hastings from Rhinoceros (a band Essra was originally asked to join); and guitarist Jerry Hahn. 2010 marks the 40th anniversary of the release of this landmark album, which in 1977 was ranked among the Top 25 Albums of All Time by Rolling Stone.

Mohawk retains fond memories of the songs from this period, several of which she still performs. “Thunder in the Morning,” written about Stephen Stills on Lowell George’s baby grand piano, became a turntable hit in early album-rock radio. Sadly the album fizzled commercially, went unpromoted and there was no agent and no tour. “I gave it all,” says Mohawk. “But I wasn’t given in return what my music rightfully deserved.” The Collectors’ Choice reissue contains five bonus tracks: “Could You Life Your Heart,” “Drifter”, “Question,” “Someone Has Captured Me” and a piano-and-vocal version of “I Have Been Here Before,” which was the inspiration for David Crosby’s “Déjà Vu.”

Mohawk moved to Elektra/Asylum Records for her self-titled 1974 album Essra Mohawk, which Melodymaker called “the most unheralded event in American music.” The song structure is slightly more conventional, but the imagery and imagination run free. For the first time, she included a cover song, George Gershwin’s “Summertime.” Tom Sellers produced the album, which contained only two tracks featuring her signature piano and vocal. She placed her favorite song, “Magic Pen,” at the end of the album. “Most people try to out their best foot forward first [in the sequence]. So usually — not always — my favorite stuff is at the end of the album.”

As with its predecessor, the album received little promotion, perhaps because it was originally slated for release on Paramount Records, then was switched to Asylum at the last minute, leaving the Asylum staff feeling creatively uninvolved. The Collectors’ Choice reissue of Essra Mohawk contains two bonus tracks: a fully produced version of “I Cannot Forget” and “I Stand Here Naked” featuring Philadelphia backup band Edison Electric and Jeremy Steig on flute.

In the decades since her ‘74 album, Mohawk has continued to perform, write, record and release music. A successful songwriter, she wrote Cyndi Lauper’s hit “Change of Heart.” Her songs have been covered by Tina Turner, Lorrie Morgan, Peabo Bryson, Rita Coolidge, Annie Haslam, and Keb’ Mo’, among others. Her next incarnation gained even newer fans as she was the vocalist on the wildly popular School House Rock songs “Interjections,” “Sufferin’ Till Suffrage” and “Mother Necessity.”

Mohawk states, “My aim is to help people understand themselves and all life. I get a lot of responses from people that it’s helped their lives, so I keep doing it. If I didn’t continue to get that good response and thought I was banging my head against the wall and no one was listening, I would have stopped long ago. Not that you can really stop. The music just kind of comes out of me. I really couldn’t stop it if I wanted to.”

RIP Dallas Taylor

At just 17, Mohawk turned down an offer from a well-known Brill Building publishing house.

Interestingly (to me), she wrote the underrated late-period Shangri-Las B-side “I’ll Never Learn.”

Here's a pretty funny quote from a 2003 interview:

The Vanilla Fudge, well actually Mark Stein, their organ player, stole another song of mine called "Where is My Mind" and put it out as their first 'original' single without giving me any credit. I only found out about it a few years ago. They kept the beginning the same and changed the rest of the song. If you listen you can tell because it starts out great and then deteriorates after that. Mark should've stolen the whole song!

Funny that Dallas Taylor is commemorated on this thread and not the woman herself. She died last week of cancer at the age of 75.

I've only heard her 1974 album, and I'm not sure why she excites either outrageous plaudits or outright condemnation. She was a talented songwriter whose performances were sometimes overstated, as if she thought audiences wouldn't get it otherwise; maybe that side wasn't as natural for her. Maybe she should have kept the name Uncle Meat to provide a stage persona.