Fatal Shore -- "Morning Dew" (1997)

Now there's no more morning dew

What they were sayin' all these years is true

'Cause there's no more morning dew

All of the versions of "Morning Dew" that were previously featured on 2 or 3 lines were recorded in the sixties.

I haven't exhausted the sixties covers of the song -- Lulu (of "To Sir With Love" fame) recorded it . . . as did Duane and Gregg Allman (before the Allman Brothers Band was formed) . . . as did Lee Hazlewood (best known for his collaborations with Nancy Sinatra) . . . as did the Grateful Dead.

(I was tempted to feature one of many live Grateful Dead versions of "Morning Dew."  After all, the Grateful Dead were a hugely popular band, and they performed this song live for decades.  But that temptation passed quickly when I listened to a few of the band's performances of "Morning Dew."  Generally speaking, the Dead were godawful musicians.  It's become a cliche to observe that the popularity of the group is largely explained by the fact that their audiences were usually as high as kites, and would have cheered lustily for the screeching of a couple of unneutered cats having at it in an alley fight.)

There were plenty of covers of "Morning Dew" in the subsequent decades as well -- including those by Nazareth, Clannad, Long John Baldry, Devo, Screaming Trees, Led Zeppelin alumnus Robert Plant, Mungo Jerry, and Serena Ryder.

One of the more interesting "Morning Dew" covers from the eighties was the one done by Einstürzende Neubaten (a German avant-garde group).  Click here if you'd like to hear it.  

I think it's time to bring the "Morning Dew" series to an end -- I don't want to try your patience too much.  (After all, I already try the patience of some of you more than enough with pictures of Kim Kardashian's posterior.)  Today 2 or 3 lines is featuring a 1997 cover of "Morning Dew" by Fatal Shore.

The Fatal Shore album

A lot of Johnny Cash songs featured what was termed a "freight train" rhythm -- boom-chicka-boom-chicka-boom, etc.  Fatal Shore's cover of "Morning Dew" features that rhythm and has a "western" (as opposed to country-western) feel generally.

That's odd given that the band was formed in Berlin, Germany, in 1996.  And that's odd given that the founders -- the late Bruno Adams and Phil Shoenfelt -- were born in Australia and England, respectively.  

According to the official Fatal Shore website, Adams and Shoenfelt originally got together for a tour of war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina.  During that tour, they were fired upon by Serbian snipers and attacked by axe-wielding mujahideen.  While they were in Slovakia the next year to record their debut (and eponymous) album, Fatal Shore was held captive on a train by Ukrainian guest workers who wanted to hear one more song.

Shoenfelt and Adams

After the death of Bruno Adams in 2009, Shoenfelt and Fatal Shore drummer Chris Hughes formed a new band called Dim Locator (whatever that means).  They describe their music as "stripped-down industrial psych[edelic]-rock with influences from The Stooges, Beasts of Bourbon, The Birthday, Pink Fairies and Hawkwind."  So many bands, so little time . . .

Here's the Fatal Shore's cover of "Morning Dew":

Click here to buy this track from Amazon:

The Damnation of Adam Blessing -- "Morning Dew" (1969)

Thought I heard a young girl cryin', too

Thought I heard a young girl cryin', too

You didn't hear no young girl cryin'

The Damnation of Adam Blessing was a Cleveland group that formed in 1968 and issued three albums in the next three years.  The band’s frontman was a guy named Bill Constable, who got the name of the band from a 1961 Vin Packer mystery titled The Damnation of Adam Blessing.  (I don't think Constable ever read the book.  Apparently he just saw the name in an advertisement in the back of a different paperback.)

(Vin Packer was actually one of several pseudonyms used by author Marijane Meaker, who wrote the very popular lesbian pulp novel Spring Fire in 1952, and later wrote several nonfiction books about gay men and lesbians.)

The group was a very popular live act in Cleveland, and once headlined at the Whiskey a Go Go in Los Angeles.  They opened for a number of legendary rock-and-rollers (Eric Clapton, Janis Joplin, Traffic, Grand Funk, and Alice Cooper –and their fellow Clevelanders, the James Gang), but none of their albums was a commercial success.  The group changed their name to Glory, released one more album, and broke up in 1973.

The band’s music is usually described as psychedelic or acid rock, but they weren’t exactly consistent when it came to musical style.  Allmusic compares them to the Yardbirds, Amboy Dukes, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Moby Grape, and Quicksilver Messenger Service. 

The cover of The Damnation of Adam Blessing (1969)

Most of the songs that The Damnation of Adam Blessing recorded were originals, but they did some covers as well – including a rather odd “Last Train to Clarksville” and a version of “Morning Dew” that sounds nothing like Bonnie Dobson’s original.  (Both songs are on the group's eponymous debut album, which was released in 1969.)

Their "Morning Dew" does sound quite a bit like the Jeff Beck Group’s version, which had been released the year before.  (I actually like Adam Blessing’s vocal better than Rod Stewart’s.)

Ray Benich takes a solo in 1970

In 1972, when the group was playing at a club in Ft. Lauderdale, a “dark-haired beauty from Delaware” named Sarah caught the eye of the band’s bass player, Ray Benich.  I’ll let Ray tell you what happened next.

After our last set of the night, [which ended] around 4 a.m., as the night owls drift[ed] their separate ways, I saw Sarah standing on the dance floor talking to her girlfriend.  I approached her from behind, and without saying a word, I gently placed my hands on her hips and drew her body next to mine.  As the contours of our bodies met I could feel the energy flow.  For a few seconds she hesitated, then turned to me and said, "Do you always introduce yourself like that?”  Sheepishly I confessed, "No, I'm sorry, you just looked soooo beautiful, I lost control."

After returning to Cleveland, Ray got a call from Sarah.  At that point, things began to get complicated.

When Sarah came to Cleveland, several weeks later (having phoned from Lauderdale to say, "I'm on my way to New York, on a fashion assignment, I was wondering if I could stop over in Cleveland to see you"?) it was inevitable that this situation would be viewed in a dim light by my first wife Sue. 

Hold the phone -- so Ray was married?  Don't you love the way he slips that fact in?  ("Viewed in a dim light by my wife"?  That may the understatement of all understatements.)

Sue and her family hated my career and almost everything it brought me into contact with, other than the money. They tried their best to talk me into giving up music and going to work for her father, who was an executive at the Ford plant in Cleveland.  This very issue had a great deal to do with exactly why I was "playing around" on Sue.  When I met Sarah I was in fact looking for a friend, a lover that would accept me for what I was.  When both girls started showing up at the bands gigs in the Cleveland, area, it presented some very sensitive situations, that the other band members found quite amusing.

But the eventual outcome of Ray’s affair with Sarah was far from amusing.

I had fallen so deeply in lust with this girl, how could I have ever imagined, in my wildest dreams, that one day she would silently stand by and watch as an attempt was made to murder me.  And when that failed, she would lie under oath in a court of law, to help insure my conviction to charges that would equal more than a life sentence.

A Delaware prison

Ray’s account of what happened next is somewhat unclear.  What is clear is that he was involved in “a crime of passion” – a shooting.  Ray is at pains to point out that “no one was permanently injured,” which I take to mean that someone was injured.  

In spite of having no prior criminal record “except for that Glory album” – give Ray credit for maintaining a sense of humor – Benich was sentenced to 27 years in prison.  He ended up serving 17 years and 10 months in Delaware prisons.

After his release in 2000, Ray Benich briefly reunited with his The Damnation of Adam Blessing bandmates for a reunion concert at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Benich after his release from prison

Ray Benich has written a book about his experiences titled Illusions of Justice.  I don’t think it has been published, but you can click here if you'd like to read some excerpts from it on Ray’s website.

Here's an excerpt from a lecture Ray Benich gave to a sociology class at the University of Tennessee after he was released from prison:

Here's Damnation of Adam Blessing's cover of "Morning Dew":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Morning Dew -- "Young Man" (1969)

When I was a young man

I had my ups and downs

Some things never change, do they?

Let's take a break from our current series, which features some of the many versions of Bonnie Dobson's "Morning Dew," and feature a song by the group Morning Dew.

In 1961, Mal Robinson and Don Sligar were schoolmates at Holliday Junior High School in Topeka, Kansas.  With various friends, they formed several bands -- like the Impax, the Durations, the Runaways, and the Toads.

Check out the Impax, a Ventures-style instrumental band from 1963.  (These dweebs made my old group, the Rogues -- who wore white dinner jackets and ascots when we appeared as 8th graders at the 1966 South Junior High "May Fete" -- look almost cool.)

The members of the Toads liked the Tim Rose version of "Morning Dew" so much that they changed their name to Morning Dew in 1966.  (It appears that Morning Dew never recorded "Morning Dew," however -- I wonder if they ever performed it live?)  

Once the Toads, now Morning Dew

For the next several years, Morning Dew criss-crossed Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, occasionally taking a few days off to record a single at a local recording studio.  

Roulette Records became interested in the group based on a demo they recorded in the summer of 1968 at Fairyland Studios in Columbia, Missouri, but the band's original bass player had been drafted and the label wanted to hear what the new lineup sounded like before offering them a deal.  

So the Morning Dew returned to Fairyland in May 1969 and recorded "Young Man" -- like most of their original songs, it was written by singer-guitarist Mal Robinson.  They recorded a cover of "Get Together" by the Youngbloods the same day.

That's Mal Robinson at the mike

Roulette must have liked what they heard because they signed Morning Dew to a two-record deal shortly thereafter, and the boys drove to New York City a couple of months later and recorded an eponymous album.  For some reason, it wasn't released for a year.  

The album didn't sell, despite having a nude couple on the cover.  (Unfortunately for us red-blooded males, you see a lot more of the guy than the girl -- he does have a nice butt, ladies.)

The group recorded more original music in the summer of 1970, but Roulette never released a second album.  Morning Dew broke up in 1971 but reunited in 2010 to play together one more time when they were inducted into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame.  Click here for a video of them performing "Young Man" that night.

"Young Man" sounds a little like the MC5, who had released their first album just a few months before.  The most distinctive thing about it is the very abrupt key change that occurs at 1:40 of the song.  The band returns to the original key just before "Young Man" ends.  

I'm not sure what I think about that key change.  The song has a killer hook, but it is a bit repetitive, I suppose -- the key change shakes things up, but I think I would have been quite happy without it.

Here's "Young Man":

Click here to buy the Cicadelic Records CD containing Morning Dew's album and the songs they recorded for the never-to-be second album.

Bonnie Dobson -- "Morning Dew" (1969)

You can't go walking in the morning dew today

You can't go walking in the morning dew today

In 1969, Bonnie Dobson re-recorded “Morning Dew” for an eponymous album that was released in the United States on RCA.  

The album was produced by Jack Richardson, a Canadian who is best-known as the Guess Who’s producer.  (Richardson also produced albums by Alice Cooper, Poco, Badfinger, and Bob Seger’s very successful Night Moves.)

Dobson’s previous album had what one reviewer termed a “sparse, chaste style” – most of the tracks featured only Dobson’s voice and an acoustic guitar.  (Think early Joan Baez.)  But her 1969 album represented a shift in style from traditional folk to middle-of-the-road pop – the arrangements incorporated a little percussion but a lot of strings.  (Think Bobbie Gentry without the Southern accent.)

I like this arrangement of “Morning Dew” a lot.  Dobson has a very pure soprano voice, and her vocal style is simple and straightforward.  There’s nothing groundbreaking about the arrangement or her performance, but there’s nothing objectionable either.   Primum non nocere – “first, do no harm” – applies to musical performance as much as it does to the practice of medicine.

The lyrics on Dobson's 1969 recording of "Morning Dew" are slightly different from the original lyrics.  This version has five verses, although the first and last verses are essentially identical.

Bonnie Dobson in 1969

Each verse consists of two pairs of repeated lines.  The second pair of lines seems to be spoken by a different person, and represent a negative response to the first pair of lines.

For example, here's the first (and last) verse:

Take me for a walk in the morning dew, my honey

Take me for a walk in the morning dew, my love  

You can't go walking in the morning dew today

You can't go walking in the morning dew today

The first speaker in the second verse says (twice) "I hear a man moaning, 'Lord.'"  The second speaker responds by saying (twice) "You didn't hear a man moan at all."

In the third verse, the first speaker says "I know I hear my baby crying, 'Mama!'" and then repeats herself.  But her companion answers in the negative: "You'll never hear your baby cry again" (and then repeats himself).

Finally, the first speaker in the fourth verse twice asks "Where have all the people gone?"  Mr. Answerman twice responds "Don't you worry about the people anymore."

So the whole song really has only eight lines.  It doesn't seem as if it would be that hard to come up with eight lines.  But I've never come up with eight lines that I've turned into a song.  (Have you?)  Bonnie Dobson has, which is why 2 or 3 lines is talking about her today.

Bonnie Dobson in 2009

By the way, Bonnie released yet another version of "Morning Dew" on her 2010 album, Looking Back.  I don't like that arrangement as much as the one on the 1969 recording, but I think her voice is just as pure and beautiful as it was 40 years ago.  (It's hard to believe she was almost 70 when Looking Back was recorded.)

Here’s Bonnie Dobson’s 1969 recording of “Morning Dew”:  

Click the link below to buy the 2010 version of "Morning Dew" from Amazon:

Jeff Beck Group -- "Morning Dew" (1968)

Thought I heard a young man cryin'

Thought I heard a young man cryin' today

You didn't hear no young man cryin'

You could say that the Yardbirds had some pretty good lead guitarists.  Eric Clapton joined the band in late 1963.  Jeff Beck replaced him in May 1965.  Beck’s good friend, Jimmy Page, joined the band in 1966 – initially he played bass – and remained when the band gave Beck the boot later that year.  Rolling Stone ranked those guys as #2, #5, and #3 on their “100 Top Guitarists” list.

Jeff Beck

After he was fired by the Yardbirds, Jeff Beck formed the Jeff Beck Group.  Rod Stewart was the group’s lead singer and Ronnie Wood (who later joined the Rolling Stones) its rhythm guitarist.   "Morning Dew" is from the group's 1968 debut album, Truth.  

The most interesting song on the album -- an instrumental titled "Beck's Bolero" -- had been recorded in the spring of 1966 by Beck, Keith Moon of the Who, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones (a busy session musician who shortly thereafter joined forces with Jimmy Page to form Led Zeppelin), and Nicky Hopkins (best known for his keyboard work on several classic Rolling Stones albums).

Beck had hoped to record an entire album with this group, but contractual difficulties presented what might have been the ultimate supergroup album from getting off the ground.  (Damn lawyers!)

Here's "Beck's Bolero," which was composed by Jimmy Page:

The Beck-Stewart-Wood lineup recorded one more album before Beck broke up the band just before a scheduled appearance at a little outdoor music festival which has come to be known as “Woodstock.”  Bad timing, n’est-ce pas?

The Jeff Beck Group

Beck's "Morning Dew" followed the Tim Rose template rather than the Bonnie Dobson-Fred Neil template.  For example, the Dobson version said "I hear a young man moaning', Lord," while Fred Neil and Vince Martin sang "I heard a young man moanin', Lord."  But there Rose-Beck versions go with the lines quoted above.  

The Rose and Beck recordings have another verse that is almost exactly the same, except that it refers to a young girl instead of a young man, although Rose the "young girl" verse before the "young man" verse, while Rod Stewart sings those two verses in reverse order.  (I don't read much into that -- it was probably just an accident.)

Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page in 2009

Beck's version is also like Rose's when it comes to being more rock-and-roll than folk in style.  

Here's Jeff Beck's version of "Morning Dew," featuring Rod Stewart on vocals:

Click here to buy the song from Amazon:

Tim Rose -- "Morning Dew" (1966)

Now there's no more morning dew

What they were sayin' all these years is so true

They have chased away all our morning dew

You regular readers of 2 or 3 lines may be surprised to see me posting on a Thursday.  

("Surprised?" I can hear you saying to yourselves.  "Thrilled is more like it!")

I usually post three times a week -- Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday.  (Except for February, when I post each and every day, and twice on SuperBowl Sunday.)  This week, you're getting a bonus fourth 2 or 3 lines at absolutely no extra charge -- you don't even have to pay additional shipping and handling!

Of course, the free bonus post is about a cover of the same song that was featured in the previous two posts.  Back in the day, I might have written one big-ass post featuring not only the original version of "Morning Dew" but also all the significant cover versions.

Now that I'm an experienced blogger, I've learned to break those long posts into four or five small ones . . . make it look like the reader is getting more product when he or she is really getting less.  (Hey, I'm a busy guy.  I still have a lot of Christmas shopping to do.)

Why am I giving you this peek behind the curtain of my wildly successful blog?  Because I'm honest with my readers -- I believe in full transparency.  Also because I've pumped this post full of enough hot air that I only have to do a cursory research job on Tim Rose to end up with enough material.

Tim Rose grew up in the Washington, DC, area in the fifties, and graduated from Gonzaga College Prep School, a noted Jesuit all-boys high school near the U.S. Capitol.  

After a brief stint with the Air Force, Rose joined forces with his boyhood friend, the late Scott McKenzie, who had a big hit in 1967 with "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)," and John Phillips (of Mamas & Papas fame) to form a group.  Later, Rose was in a folk trio called "The Big 3" with Cass Elliot before going solo.

In 1966, Rose's single of "Hey Joe" was getting a lot of airplay, especially in San Francisco.  The song had been copyrighted in 1962 by singer Billy Roberts, but Rose claimed he had heard the song sung when he was child and credited himself as the author of the song on his single.  Jimi Hendrix released his version of "Hey Joe" -- which was similar in style to Rose's -- later that year.

Rose's 1966 cover of "Morning Dew" was inspired by the Fred Neil-Vince Martin version.  Rose claimed a co-writing credit for the song, which outraged the song's creator Bonnie Dobson.

"If anyone is going to be credited as co-writer or co-lyricist, it should have been Fred Neil because all Tim Rose did was take Freddy Neil's changes," Dobson said in a 1993 interview.  "I've written songs with other people and never claimed them for my own.  I just think it was a dreadfully dishonest thing to do."

The lines quoted at the beginning of this post are from Rose's cover of the song -- the Bonnie Dobson and Fred Neil-Vince Martin versions did not include those words.  I thought that the "morning dew" referred to the radioactive fallout that was about to snuff out the lives of the people who had survived the fictional nuclear war in the movie On the Beach, which inspired Dobson to write this song.  In Rose's version, "morning dew" seems to refer to . . . morning dew.

Rose's take on "Morning Dew" is much more rock-and-roll than Bonnie Dobson's or Fred Neil's.  It influenced many of the bands who did subsequent covers of the song -- those covers use Rose's lyrics and feature a similar musical style.  

Tim Rose in 2002

Rose released six albums between 1967 and 1976, but then his career stalled.  He worked as a construction laborer, sang jingles and did voiceover work, graduated from Fordham University in 1984 (when he was 43), and worked for a time as a stockbroker.

With the help of Nick Cave, Rose moved to the UK and revived his career in the nineties.  He released his final album in 2002, and died of a heart attack later that year.

Here's Tim Rose's version of "Morning Dew":

Here's a link you can use to buy a CD of Rose's 1969 album, Through Rose Colored Glasses (which includes "Morning Dew"), from Amazon:

Fred Neil and Vince Martin -- "Morning Dew" (1965)

Walk me out in the morning dew, my honey

Walk me out in the morning dew today

The first cover version of "Morning Dew" was recorded by Fred Neil and Vince Martin and released on their legendary 1965 folk album, Tear Down the Walls.

Neil is best known for his song "Everybody's Talkin'," which he wrote and recorded in 1966.  (The song was a huge hit for Harry Nilsson in 1969, and was featured on the soundtrack of Midnight Cowboy, the only X-rated movie to ever win the "Best Picture" Oscar.)

I don't remember hearing any of Neil's music back in the sixties, but discovered it only after he died in 2001.  He's a remarkable singer, and 2 or 3 lines will feature more of his music in the future.

Bonnie Dobson, who wrote "Morning Dew," remembers getting a call from Jac Holtzman, the founder and owner of Elektra Records, who told her that Neil wanted to record it.

Fred Neil

Neil revised the lyrics before he and Martin recorded it.  For example, the first line of the song as Dobson sang it was "Take me for a walk in the morning dew," which Neil changed to "Walk me out in the morning dew."  He changed Dobson's "You'll never hear your baby cry again" to "You didn't hear no baby cryin', mama."

Neil's changes were fairly subtle, but the effect was to take a song whose lyrics were a little stiff and literary-sounding and make them considerably more natural.

The Neil-Martin version of "Morning Dew" is very restrained but quite powerful.  The two men have very different voices -- Neil sings in an unusually low register, and is the more distinctive singer -- but the combination is very pleasing.  

The musical accompaniment is very simple -- an acoustic guitar and a guitarrón mexicano (literally, "Mexican large guitar" -- a six-string acoustic bass guitar commonly seen in mariachi bands), which was played here by Felix Pappalardi, a founding member of Mountain and the producer of several classic albums by Cream.  (Lovin' Spoonful founder John Sebastian played harmonica on several Tear Down the Walls tracks, but not on "Morning Dew.")

A big-ass guitarrón mexicano

This is perhaps the best of the "Morning Dew" covers.  The only thing I don't like about it is the guitar chord progression at the very end.

Here's "Morning Dew" by Fred Neil and Vince Martin:


Here's a link you can use to buy the song from Amazon:

Bonnie Dobson -- "Morning Dew" (1962)

Take me for a walk in the morning dew, my honey

Take me for a walk in the morning sun, my love

Bonnie Dobson was a folk singer/songwriter who was born in Toronto in 1940.  In 1960, she left her university studies and came to the United States to perform at folk festivals and coffeehouses from California to New York.

Dobson was working in Los Angeles when she saw On the Beach, a post-apocalyptic movie starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, and Tony Perkins, that was set in Australia.  The movie, which is based on the 1957 novel of the same name by Nevil Shute, is about the aftermath of a nuclear war that has wiped out the entire population of the northern hemisphere.  As deadly radioactive fallout drifts inexorably towards Australia, most of the population opts to take suicide pills rather than waiting for the inevitable.

I remember On the Beach vividly -- especially the movie's score, which featured the traditional Australian song, "Waltzing Matilda."  The movie scared the hell out of me, and it had a similar effect on Bonnie Dobson:

[I]t made a tremendous impression on me, that film. Particularly at that time because everybody was very worried about the bomb and whether we were going to get through the next ten years. . . . I remember I was singing in Los Angeles . . . and suddenly I just started writing this song. . . . I'd never written songs and this song just came out and really it was a kind of re-enactment of that film in a way where at the end there is nobody left and it was a conversation between these two people trying to explain what's happening. It was really [about] apocalypse . . . .

Dobson later told an interviewer that she thought she first performed "Morning Dew" at the Ash Grove, a famous folk music club in Los Angeles.  (Doc Watson, Pete Seeger, Muddy Waters, Johnny Cash, Phil Ochs, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, and many other greats played at the Ash Grove.)

But the song first came to the attention of a larger audience at the inaugural Mariposa Folk Festival in Orillia, Ontario, in 1961.  (That festival is still going strong after 50 years.)

This version of "Morning Dew" was recorded live at Gerdes Folk City, another legendary music venue in lower Manhattan, in 1962.  (Folk City was where Peter, Paul & Mary and Bob Dylan debuted, and where Dylan met Joan Baez.  Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendrix, the Byrds, Emmylou Harris, Phoebe Snow, Hüsker Dü, and Sonic Youth also performed at Folk City before it lost its lease and closed in 1987.)

Gerdes Folk City

A lot of people have covered "Morning Dew," and the next several 2 or 3 lines posts will feature the most significant of those cover versions.

Here's Bonnie Dobson's original recording of her song, "Morning Dew," which is sometimes called "(Walk Me Out in the) Morning Dew":

Here's a link you can use to buy the song from Amazon: