Fallout Rec. The Folkswingers : Raga Rock (US,1966)***'
I am still not sure what really caused the sitar boom in pop music. I can only say that after the first introduction of classical Indian music in America, with Ravi Shankar for instance, without showing yet real adaptations of fusions with both worlds first, and with the first attempts of combinations with jazz since 1966, it was especially George Harrison (The Beatles) and his interest for Ravi Shankar the year thereafter, that there was no way back from including the sitar into pop music standards. From then on, many musicians started to explore and use the sitar. It only took a little time before pop music made a subgenre exploiting pop music with the use of sitar. The most known LP’s from this subpop genre are the Lord Sitar/Big Jim Sullivan releases, the first Ananda Shankar release (which was more expressive in style than his later albums), but I also heard a few others, like the albums, very similar to The Folkswingers, by the Balsara & His Singing Sitars. These were all albums that mostly chose the pop icons who had tried to use sitar in some songs. But it were the Folkswingers who had been the first example of sitarpop-exploitation.
Sitar player Harihar Rao had played before with many Indian sitar masters, and was a teacher for the Ethnomusicology Department of UCLA. He also wrote some introduction manual for the sitar. He had also appeared with Don Ellis and the Hindustani Jazz Sextet at the Los Angeles Centre, and had played sessions before with several LA jazz groups. The arrangements on this album were done by George Tipton who had his own fame of production work and arrangements in jazz, and for television and shows. Some of the accompanying session musicians had recorded and played before in jazz or related genres, like Dennis Budimir on 12-string guitar (Bud Shank Quintet, and various sessions since the 50s), Tommy Tedesco on guitar (Elvis Presley, Beach Boys, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra,..), with Herb Ellis guitar on other tracks, Bill Pittman on bass, and Lyle Ritz on Fender bass. It also featured drummer Hal Blaine (who is known as a famous Phil Spector session musician ; he recorded before some sessions with Elvis Presley, and together with Phil Spector’s crew for groups like the Ronettes, Crystals, Beach Boys and lots of West Coast pop musicians, like Jan and Dean, The Mamas and the Papas, The Byrds, Love, The Association, The Carpenters, Sonny and Cher, and so on). Larry Knechtel on organ & electric piano was known before from The Rebels also would become a Phil Spector session musician, had previously recorded bass on "Mr. Tambourine Man" by the Byrds, and later would join Bread. (Also Frank Zappa later would show interest in some of these session musicians).
The Folkswingers had released another session musicians album (with other members, mostly from bluegrass ensemble the Dillards) before in 1963 called “12 String Guitar!”. But this is a completely different group. Like in the fifties pop hits were arranged for big bands and orchestras, this album was a production for giving a groovy version of what was called “raga rock” for fashionable measures, while the name Folkswingers just referred to the ethno-folk instrument which the sitar in those days still was. And this “swinged” all right ! The sitar in various tracks plays often over the music, fast like a bird between the groovy up and down rocking volume measures, while on some other tracks the sitar plays in combination with one of the guitars. The tracks are short, with fuzz, and not for one moment loses the groove of attractive pop-rock “swing”. It still is hard to believe this was done in 1966 already, but one must realize that several of the hits they assembled had already some Indian music association somewhere. No wonder that later, The Beatles, thanks to George Harrison's interest, were almost forced to show their own fashionable version soon in this newly launched fashion. It is funny to realize how afterwards people tended to believe that it was the Beatles who first introduced the sitar into pop, but this is not really true. Even when this album is a deliberate studio project meant to sell in a certain rationalized fashionable style, the album succeeds well and convinces. Compared to all other albums who expressed something similar, still manages to withstand time as one of the more successful and attractive ones.
