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Studio One Session

11/27/2016

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    Britt Dean and Clay Spurz had gone to the same college in St. Pete--it was called Flordia Presbyterian College at the time. And on drives between Florida and Princeton in the early 1970s, Spurz had stopped in Atlanta for long night jams with the large group of FPC pals that had gravitated there. There’d be 20 or 30 people singing along to “This Could Be the Last Time,” “Tracks of My Tears,” “Long Black Veil”—a grand chorale of folk, pop, and R&B. Britt had “the prettiest voice I’ve ever heard,” says Spurz, and he improvised gorgeous harmonies. So Spurz for years had in his head a band with Buddy Miller  (see Nov. 19 post) playing guitar and singing lead; Britt singing ultra tenor, and himself writing and adding a third part.
    Britt’s brother, bassist T. Wesley Dean,
was doing studio work at Studio One in Doraville, Ga., for a producer named Steve Clark. Clark had been in charge of sales at VeeJay Records in Chicago, and he pitched the first U.S. Beatles singles when the company acquired the rights for the then unknown (in the U.S.) Fab Four in 1963. He then went to LA and was involved with The Association and other acts before ending up in Atlanta.   
    Through his brother, Britt got Spurz's song “What You Think You Gonna Find in Texas” a hearing from Steve Clark, who offered to produce a demo.  So in the summer of 1976 Spurz went to Atlanta, where Britt had recruited pianist John Healey, another FPC grad, and Mark Ford, guitarist, for the session.  Clark asked about other songs, and Spurz sang him “Need You So,” a duet built around Britt’s soaring range.  T. Wesley Dean played bass, and Charles Wolff--his partner in the rhythm section of Thermos Greenwood and the Colored People--played drums.   Hank Bruns added pedal steel and Clark asked Joe South’s sister, Barbara, to sing another layer of  high harmony.

    The result was these two demo tracks:
All music, lyrics, and other content Ⓒ 1976-2016 by Larry J. Schulz
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THE BAND OF DESPERATE MEN FROM THE FIRST

11/9/2016

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     In the early 1970s, Clay Spurz was living in Princeton, NJ, under an assumed name and doing research in I Ching studies. While there, he’d come under the spell of Buddy Miller, who played “high speed honk” in local bars with a 5 piece band called the Desperate Men and sometimes sat in with a bluegrass band called Strait Grain.
     Spurz sang lead on bluegrass standards for Strait Grain and adapted tunes like Sam Cooke’s “Good News” to their instrumentation along with Waylon Jennings and Beatles songs.  He loved Buddy’s harmonies and, of course, the guitar mastery for which later The American Music Association named  him “Instrumentalist of the Year” in 2007 and 2008.
     After a couple of years poring over rare editions of the I Ching in Taiwan, Spurz returned to Princeton and started writing C&W songs that he thought might be good enough for Buddy’s band.  Buddy had decided to try his luck in Austin.  Still, he said he’d bring his band to the wood framed attic above the Cabinet Shop in Princeton and back Spurz on a demo. So Spurz called his pal Britt Dean in Atlanta--he of the sweet, high harmony--to see if he’d come and sing on it. It was minimally miked and recorded by Ken Burger, who had what Buddy called "the best half-track machine around."  Here's "I'll Never Love Someone (the Way that You Love Me)," Spurz's first Desperate tune, from that session. 
And "Play Me One More Song " in high speed honk ":
All music, lyrics, and other content Ⓒ 1976-2016 by Larry J. Schulz
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    Britt Dean,
    ​Clay Spurz

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