Dave Edmunds

[Ron Phillipchuk]

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1= Girl Talk
2= I Hear You Knocking


David William "Dave" Edmunds (born 15 April 1944) is a Welsh singer, guitarist and record producer. Although he is mainly associated with pub rock and new wave, and had many hits in the 1970s and early 1980s, his natural leaning has always been towards 1950s style rock and roll.

Edmunds was born in Cardiff. As a teenager, he first played in 1954 with a band called the Edmunds Bros Duo with his older brother Geoff (born in 1940, Cardiff); this was a piano duo. Then the brothers were in the Stompers later called the Heartbeats formed around 1957 with Geoff on rhythm guitar, Dave on lead guitar, Denny Driscoll on lead vocals, Johnny Stark on drums and Ton Edwards on bass and Allan Galsworthy on rhythm.

Then Dave and Geoff were in The 99ers along with scientist and writer Brian J. Ford. After that Dave Edmunds was in Crick Feather's Hill-Bill's formed in c 1960, with Feathers (Edmunds) on lead guitar; Zee Dolan on bass; Tennessee Tony on lead vocals; Tony Kees on piano and Hank Two Sticks on drums.  The first group that Edmunds fronted was the Cardiff-based 1950s style rockabilly trio The Raiders formed in 1961, along with Brian 'Rockhouse' Davies on bass (born 15 January 1943, Cardiff) and Ken Collier on drums.

Edmunds was the only constant member of the group, which later included bassist Mick Still, Bob 'Congo' Jones on drums and John Williams (stage name John David) on bass. The Raiders worked almost exclusively in the South Wales area.
In 1966, after a short spell in a Parlophone recording band, the Image (1965–1966), with local drummer Tommy Riley, Edmunds shifted to a more blues-rock sound, reuniting with Congo Jones and bassist John Williams and adding second guitarist Mickey Gee to form the short lived Human Beans,  a band that played mostly in London and on the UK university circuit. In 1967, the band recorded a cover of "Morning Dew" on the Columbia label,  that failed to have any chart impact.

After just eighteen months, the core of 'Human Beans' formed a new band called Love Sculpture that again reinstated Edmunds, Jones and Williams as a trio. Love Sculpture released their debut single "River to Another Day" in 1968. Their second single was a quasi-novelty Top 5, a reworking Khachaturian's classical piece "Sabre Dance" as a speed-crazed rock number, inspired by Keith Emerson's classical rearrangements.  "Sabre Dance" became a hit after garnering the enthusiastic attention of British DJ John Peel, who was so impressed he played it twice in one programme on "Top Gear".  The band issued two albums.

After Love Sculpture split, Edmunds had a UK Christmas Number 1 single in 1970 with "I Hear You Knocking",  a Smiley Lewis cover, which he came across while producing Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets' first album entitled A Legend. The recording was the first release on Edmunds' manager's MAM Records label. This single also reached No. 4 in the US, making it Edmunds' biggest hit by far on either side of the Pond. It sold over three million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.

Edmunds had intended to record Wilbert Harrison's "Let's Work Together", but when he was beaten to that song by Canned Heat, he adapted the arrangement he intended to use for it to "I Hear You Knocking", producing a highly original remake. Unfortunately, the success of the single caused EMI's Regal Zonophone Records to use an option that it had to claim Edmunds' album, 1972's Rockpile, and the momentum from the single's success on a different label went away.

Edmunds' only acting role followed, as a band member in the David Essex movie Stardust.  After learning the trade of producer, culminating in a couple of singles in the style of Phil Spector, "Baby I Love You" and "Born to Be with You", he became linked with the pub rock movement of the early 1970s, producing Brinsley Schwarz, Ducks Deluxe, and also the Flamin' Groovies, using a stripped down, grittier sound. Also in this time frame, Edmunds produced the 1972 debut album of the British blues band Foghat.

Edmunds had bought a house in Rockfield, Monmouth, a few miles away from Charles and Kingsley Ward's Rockfield Studios where he became an almost permanent fixture for the next twenty years. His working regime involved arriving at the studio in the early evening and working through till well after dawn, usually locked in the building alone. Applying the layered Spector sound to his own productions it was not unusual for Edmunds to multilayer up to forty separately recorded guitar tracks into the mix.

[montage]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT0cwGYwUzA


"Girls Talk" is an Elvis Costello song. Originally written during the sessions for Costello's 1980 album Get Happy!!, the song was later recorded by Dave Edmunds and Linda Ronstadt. Edmunds' version peaked at #2 on the UK Singles Chart.

As with many of Costello's previous songs, it is tricky to ascertain a particular meaning, as his lyrics are replete with such double meanings as "though you may not be an old-fashioned girl, you're still going to get dated".  However, in the liner notes for the 2002 Rhino reissue of Get Happy!!, Costello stated that the record was about women's gossip.

The most successful cover version of the song was by Dave Edmunds, to whom Costello says he donated the song "in a moment of drunken bravado."  Released in June 1979, Edmunds' version charted at #2 on the UK Singles Chart,  spending 11 weeks on the chart. It was his final top ten hit in that country,  and began his album Repeat When Necessary. Costello's version, however, did see the light of day when released as the B-side of his single "I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down",  and was a fixture of the set lists for his tours for some time after it was recorded.

A music video was produced for the song. It features Edmunds and Rockpile playing on the roof of the Warner Brothers Records building in Midtown Manhattan as well as assorted shots of people walking through Manhattan.

Stewart Mason of AllMusic gave the song a positive review, complimenting the tone of "suppressed menace", and saying that "it features some of his sharpest lyrics of the era".

In addition, Debra Rae Cohen of Rolling Stone said that although Edmunds' version was "cocky [and] rowdy", "Costello restores the tune's paranoiac underpinnings with the nervous quaver of his voice and soft keyboard parts that echo like footfalls".

[montage]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry2td7q5ZMc



"I Hear You Knocking" (or "I Hear You Knockin'") is a rhythm and blues song written by Dave Bartholomew. New Orleans rhythm and blues singer Smiley Lewis first recorded the song in 1955. The lyrics tell of the return of a former lover who is rebuffed and Huey "Piano" Smith provided the prominent piano accompaniment in the style associated with Fats Domino.


"I Hear You Knocking" reached number two on the Billboard R&B singles chart in 1955, making it Lewis's most popular and best-known song. Subsequently, numerous artists have recorded it, including Welsh singer and guitarist Dave Edmunds, whose version reached number one in the UK in 1970 and was in the top 10 in several other countries.