Mercy!/See-Saw

by

Don Covay

Edit

The title of this CD is actually "Mercy!"/"See-Saw." "Mercy!" was released in late 1964; "See-Saw" in 1966. This is essential soul and some crazy stuff. As usual, the people who edit liner notes left in a sentence like "Born in Orangeburg, S.C., on March 24, 1938, Covay's initial singing experience was strictly sacred." What's wrong with that sentence, soul men and women? Oh well, it's the vernacular, right, just like this music. Actually, soul music is quite formal, abiding by the rules more than most styles. The 1964 material might sound a little more old-fashioned to some but it's good and kinda unhinged; cool guitar as well (some believe that Jimi Hendrix played on a few of these songs, and the guitar in "Mercy, Mercy" does bear a resemblance to Hendrix's style). As some of you might know, the Rolling Stones covered "Mercy, Mercy"; it's the first tune on their classic "Out of Our Heads" LP from 1965. And in general, when you listen to Mick Jagger you hear Don Covay. The second LP on this disc, "See-Saw," features a few tracks cut in Memphis at Stax, with the great rhythm section of Cropper, Dunn, Jones and Jackson. "Sookie Sookie" is a dirty song with some truly cubist drum fills; "The Boomerang" sounds completely nuts; Aretha Franklin covered "See-Saw" and I hope Don made a lotta money from it. Don went on to do one of the classic messin'-around songs of the '70s, indeed of any era, "I Was Checkin' Out (She Was Checkin' In)", but that's a hard one to find since the only comprehensive Covay collection, released back in the '90s, is out of catalog. It would be nice to be able to buy all of his work again; Steppenwolf, who covered his "Sookie Sookie," has just about all their stuff available, and if the world needs to hear Goldy McJohn, it sure as heck needs to hear the great Don Covay.

This is an excellent, stereo, two album collection with fine remastering except for one problem. Track one, the title song "Have Mercy" has a tracking error rendering this track unplayable on my computer, my car CD player, my DVD players or my home stereo CD players. All of the rest of the songs on the CD play flawlessly. The error cannot be repaired by scandisc either. I liked the CD so much that I purchased another one from Amazon. The 2nd CD had the same problem. This is a defect overlooked by the people who press CD's for the Koch label. I have other Koch recordings in my collection and have not had this problem. I hope they will place more emphasis on quality control. This is a 5 star CD that I can only give 3 stars due to the error.