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Bread on the Radio – Why Play Just the Hits?

Among the joys of doing occasional "mostly oldies" programs at an alternative radio station in Madison, WI (for well over 30 years) is playing selections from the first Bread LP and other relatively heavy and/or obscure Bread songs that don't fit the softer image fashionably and mindlessly perpetuated by the commercial oldies stations with their limited playlists. (See the "WORT Streams" box on Page Three.) When was the last time your favorite oldies station played "Fancy Dancer," "Why Do You Keep Me Waiting," "Down On My Knees," "Take Comfort," the original "It Don't Matter To Me" or even "Could I"? (Slade's cover of "Could I" is worth a listen. They really made it their own.) Many of the solo Gates and Griffin singles included in the discography herein have also been featured on my shows as well as associated groups like The Pleasure Fair, The Beethoven Soul and The Travel Agency. Albums by the last two groups were among the many Griffin productions of the late 1960s, and they are classic period pieces; see the "red box" on the left for links to photos.

During their heyday in the 1980s, the Madison band Chunky Pie was into the spirit of things and included "Truckin'" in their Bread Medley.

When I had a classical music program on the same station (back in the 1900s) and found ways to link everything together, Moondog's 1956 recording of "To A Sea Horse" (an excerpt of which can be heard here) and David Gates' "Chain Me" (on the "Never Let Her Go" LP) made a most interesting double-play. Indeed, classical influences can be heard in a number of Bread-related recordings. Further examples: A fleeting motif in Howard Hanson's "Sinfonia Sacra" inspires the melody in The Pleasure Fair's "Today," and Anton Bruckner's ponderous influence is felt throughout Griffin's "The Light Of Your Mind" which was arranged by Al Capps. Alas, my classical programs became a bit too diverse and alternative; even in such a community that so prides itself on its appreciation and promotion of diversity it appeared that the general listenership expected a more category-conscious, top-40 orientation when it came to classical music. Thank goodness for people like Peter Schickele who can make true alternative radio programming so appealing to so many.

Some More Notes about Jimmy Griffin's Career

Qualified individuals have written extensively on the web about Jimmy Griffin's life and career, and it is not the intention here to provide a detailed biography. (Click here for one that is pretty good.) Hopefully the James Griffin Recording Legacy is in good hands and great things are planned. Perhaps some prominent use of his singing in movies could generate enough public interest in a compilation CD? One that would provide at least a representative sampling of his notable four decade-plus recording and writing career would be just the thing for a reissue label to put out. A comprehensive multi-CD set (such as what the renowned El Toro and Bear Family labels release) would probably be too much to ask for at this point, but the true Bread fans can only hope for an intelligent career retrospective to come along.

While driving home from a gathering of some of his friends and fans in Memphis on his birthday in August, 2005, the idea of a roadside marker took shape in my mind. While an actual roadside marker probably won't materialize any time soon, a virtual one can be downloaded by clicking on the image on the right and then installed anywhere. As the sign would indicate, those who actually take the trouble to really seek out his work are indeed rewarded greatly.

True and lasting fame may not come in an artist's lifetime, and of course the artist cannot be whisked forward in a time machine to see what mark he might have left. An interesting episode of Doctor Who comes to mind, specifically "Vincent and the Doctor" which ran in 2010. Hidden away on the BBC America site is a video that deals with this "what if" speculation. (With a little patience, you can get to it.) Click here and – at the finish of the featured video – click on the "Doctor Who: Vincent van Gogh Visits" link.

On this website are discography pages which include (1) Griffin's solo and duo recordings and (2) his work as a member of groups other than Bread. Further involvement in studio work (more duets and supporting vocals, productions, etc.) is only hinted at by examining the very incomplete list on (3) this page which also includes some of his songs recorded by others.

Mention having already been made about Griffin's pre-Bread recordings and his writing association with Michael Z Gordon (see Page One), the following section is a rough chronology of some more things.

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Jimmy Griffin in the movies: Singing "I'm Gonna Walk All Over This Land" from "For Those Who Think Young" (United Artists, 1964) and sticking up for his Lieutenant in "None But The Brave" (Warner Bros., 1965). And on TV: "They Said It with Music: Yankee Doodle to Ragtime" (CBS, 1977).

There are a number of songs performed in movies and on TV which still have not seen the light of day on disc – a couple examples: Griffin performed "I'm Gonna Walk All Over This Land" in the 1964 film "For Those Who Think Young." He also sang (off-camera) "Yesterday's Love" on the "Programmed for Panic" episode of "Ironside" which aired September 28, 1972 (in Season 6, not yet released on DVD).

Griffin played a significant singing role in the CBS-TV special "They Said It with Music: Yankee Doodle to Ragtime" which aired on July 4, 1977 and featured Flip Wilson and the others mentioned below. How well I remember stumbling upon this program and – to my great surprise and delight – seeing Griffin's significant contributions to the various routines. One can only hope that this show will someday be made available on DVD, and some scenes are beginning to appear on YouTube! We see him here portraying a Southern soldier shivering in the snow followed by a scene in which Jean Stapleton receives a sad letter from her son. Tony Randall, Bernadette Peters, Jason Robards and Ms. Stapleton are featured together here. The UCLA Music Library appears to have the music for this show in their collection under "They Said It with Music." They just don't write songs like that any more.

Three Bread songs appear on James Griffin solo albums. "Love You Till The Cows Come Home" and "She Knows" had their origin in Bread sessions before the first breakup of the group in early 1973, and these songs are found on the "Breakin' Up Is Easy" LP, a full-page ad for which is shown on the right. For session details, see footnote JJ on this page for photos of the LP's inner sleeve.

The third of these "displaced" Bread songs – "That's All I Need" – was written by Robb Royer and recorded by Griffin, Gates, Botts and Knechtel in September, 1974 (quite the reunion!) and is found on the import-only "James Griffin" LP which was originally released in Germany in 1977. Also on this LP is "Blood From A Stone" – an "almost-Bread" track recorded in Dec., 1974 – produced by Griffin, Knechtel and Royer with Mike Botts on drums. This album may become reissued on CD once improved masters for some of the songs are obtained. See footnote L on this page for photos of the LP's covers which include the session details. Being quite a short album (but still full of substance), one would hope that some non-LP Polydor tracks can be added, such as the very interesting B-sides "Beachwood Band" and "Melody Maker."

In 1982, Griffin and Terry Sylvester collaborated on the album Griffin & Sylvester. The idea for this LP came during the recording of Terry Sylvester's 1976 "I Believe" album for which Jimmy participated in a duet of the Paul Williams/Roger Nichols song "Travellin' Boy." This duet is found only on the original U.K. LP; a punched-up solo version produced by Alan Parsons appears on the U.S. editions of the LP and all CD reissues, so the original duet has become somewhat of a rarity.

A large number of musicians contributed to the legendary "Black Tie" LP of 1985 including James Griffin and Robb Royer, and the Black Tie group that emerged publicly had Griffin, Billy Swan and Randy Meisner as its core members. A 1990 revision of the album which became available on CD featured Griffin more predominantly on the tracks "Learning The Game" and "Chain Gang" – both of which were released on a 45 rpm single. Charlie Rich, Jr. joined Black Tie in 1992. As Griffin became involved with other projects, Black Tie was disbanded, and the core group subsequently became known as Meisner, Swan & Rich. A related story or two is told here.

Jimmy Griffin created great music wherever he worked – Memphis (his home town), Nashville, Los Angeles, etc. – and he ultimately centered his activities in Nashville. In the early 1990s, he achieved notable success in country music, co-writing the hits "You Can Depend On Me" for Restless Heart and "Who's Gonna Know" for Conway Twitty. I once thought of "Who's Gonna Know" as another one of those dime-a-dozen "country cheatin' songs" until I considered the alternate (and more appealing) boss/subordinate scenario, exemplified by the long-simmering O'Neill/Carter relationship on Stargate SG-1. (Ya think?) Griffin's group The Remingtons introduced some fresh and unique harmonies to country music, hitting the country charts with the release of two CDs and five singles in 1991-93 which are listed here. The recently-released "Sessions 1990-92" CD by The Finnigan Brothers (an authentic outlaw country band) includes a duet with Griffin; group and CD details are here.

Griffin could be found in the recording studio making demos of a number of his own songs and those of others. Performing a repetoire search on the BMI website reveals details concerning his writing career and suggests that a considerable quantity of demos may exist, and there is certainly no need to reproduce any list of his many dozens of compositions here. "For All We Know" has already been released on the "Retrospective" CD, and I am still hoping to come across the demo for "Get The Message." One may come upon a 16-track collection of nearly-finished productions titled "James Griffin's Greatest Hits (or A Legend in My Own Mind)" which he was passing around on cassette tape as a promotional item in 1997. (It was previously listed on the solo recordings page until I thought better and deleted it from the discography. I have yet to open up a listing of self-promotional and "gray-market" items, and it would probably be counterproductive to do so.) An item which has become "viral" among fans is a solo recording of "Just Say When," performed live before an audience. I would expect that – in the coming years – many of these recordings will be released in a form that resembles their originally-intended production; some are already included in the aforementioned "Jimmy Griffin" CD!

Griffin, Robb Royer, Larry Knechtel and singer/mandolinist Todd Cerney emerged in Nashville clubs in the 1990's as Toast, and you can read about that (along with an interesting career retrospective) here. Some tracks were recorded for an album titled "Radio Dixie" which was never completed. However, four Toast tracks can be found on Todd's CD "We'll Be Back," and you can hear "Slow Train" here as the opening track of the new "Jimmy Griffin" CD highlighted back on Page One. As the millennium turned, Griffin worked with Terry Sylvester and John Ford Coley as Soft Rock Cafe and later with Rick Yancey and Ronnie Guilbeau as GYG whose CD was released in 2005 and is still available here along with some downloadable tracks from the album. The GYG video, "Down In The Sunken Road" is seen here.

Griffin provided backing vocals for diverse artists including Billy Burnette, Paul Burlison, Bob Cheevers, Lorrie Morgan, Micky Newbury, Billy Joe Royal and Charlie Taylor. Especially notable is the 2001 "Conjure Man" CD by Micheal Smotherman (produced by Robb Royer) which has Griffin singing background vocals on each of the ten tracks; listen to a complete track here. His association with Dobie Gray resulted in a duet on the old Sam Cooke classic "Cupid." Griffin and Rick Yancey can be heard as background vocalists on the "Nashville Sessions" CD by Edwin Lewis, released in 2005.

A page on the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB) summarizes some of his movie and TV-related work including "Something Else Altogether" (mentioned on Page One). Two more items which can be added to the list are "They Said It with Music: Yankee Doodle to Ragtime" (discussed above) and another songwriting effort – "Built For Blue Jeans" – a line-dance classic which is in the 2007 movie Camille.

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In his last year, Jimmy Griffin recorded "Share This Love" – his last song written with Robb Royer – which is part of the collection of songs on the new "Jimmy Griffin" CD. He also participated in three more notable Nashville recording sessions whose CDs emerged in the marketplace in 2005:

• In April, 2004, he provided background vocals for the "Honeycomb" CD by Frank Black (aka Black Francis). A Bread-Pixies connection – what a concept! You can hear Jimmy quite prominently on "Lone Child" and "Atlantis"; the latter is the bonus track on the Japanese edition of the CD and features Al Franken speaking the intro! Four songs from the "Honeycomb" session are included on the 2006 CD "Fast Man Raider Man." Over the past decade, Frank has been touring with the Pixies and also "solo" with other fine musicians. Photos from a November 2, 2006 appearance in Madison, Wisconsin are shown here.
  
  
• Jimmy recorded a duet with Lynn Bryant of Todd Rundgren's "Can We Still Be Friends" which can be found on her "Woman Enough" CD.
  
  
• Jimmy's duet with Holly Cieri on a definitive recording of his Academy Award-winner "For All We Know" was recorded in early June, 2004 and released on a CD single in April, 2005. A country mix was released in January, 2006 and is presently available here where you can also find Holly's recording of his "Dance On The Moon."
  

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Material on this page last modified on 1/21/12 at 11:15 AM, CST.
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