Bleecker & MacDougal

Fred Neil | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 12, 2002)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Collector's Choice
• ASIN: B000060P9M
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #211,253 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Bleecker & MacDougal

2. Blues on the Ceiling

3. Sweet Mama

4. Little Bit of Rain

5. Country Boy

6. Other Side to This Life

7. Mississippi Train

8. Travelin' Shoes

9. The Water Is Wide

10. Yonder Comes the Blues

11. Candy Man

12. Handful of Gimme

13. Gone Again

Editorial Reviews

With a deeply resonant voice that exuded a hundred things at once -- pain, joy, weariness and decades of experience -- Fred Neil created a small body of work that covered the world like paint. No one from the vibrant early '60s Greenwich Village folk scene had more staying power than this legendary recluse. Neil's 1964 debut, Bleecker and MacDougal, captures the great man at the apex of his talents. Exact repro on high-definition vinyl, from the original analog masters! --This text refers to the Vinyl edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars wonderfully resonant Voice of a forgotten music idol, November 22, 2006

By 

rash67 (USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Bleecker & MacDougal (Audio CD)

Fred Neil was the King of the East Village coffee shop, pass-the-hat folksingers in the very early sixties and this cd shows why. Much of his origins and late life are shrouded in rumour and mystery.

Sinatra, Johnny Cash, even Jim Morrison had great baritone voices, but Fred Neil's Sound was really something else. Neil had the most spectacularly deep resonant baritone voice, a voice that would sound wonderful reading the phone book! Everyone idolized him, everyone imitated him, everyone covered his songs: Roy Orbison, The Jefferson Airplane, the Youngbloods, Harry Nilsson, Tim Buckley, Tim Hardin, Judy Henske, John Sebastian, Gram Parsons, Linda Ronstadt, Tom Rush, Roger McGuinn. An unknown, awestruck, social climbing Bob Dylan used to play backup harmonica for Fred Neil and his ringing 12 string in the Village years before these albums. (Dylan mentions this in bio pic "No Direction Home") Fred was one of the main influences on David Crosby, Steven Stills (Crosby, Stills and Nash were going to call themselves "Sons of Neil" before Neil talked them out of it!).
Neil was a Brill Building song writer, like Carol King, for years before venturing out on his own.

The album bursts with early sixtes (there were TWO sixties!) folkie optimism and energy. There is much more energy and precision here than "The Many Side of Fred Neil" which is also worth having.

A line from Neil's song "Toy Balloon" (not on this CD)so impressed Jefferson Airplane's Paul Kantner & Grace Slick that it found it's way into "The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil", in fact "PoohNeil" is a combination of Winnie the Pooh and the gentle Fred Neil. See also "House at Pooneil Corner".

Bleeker & MacDougal is a Neil solo with includes his second most famous song "Other Side of This Life" which was covered by Jefferson Airplane and nearly everyone else. (His most famous is "Everybody's Takin at Me", a hit for Harry Nilsson, and the story on Neil's life. Not included here). "Blues on the Ceiling" has a deep world weary quality to it. "A little bit of Rain" is deeply melancholy. "Sweet Mama" is upbeat with ringing 12 string overtones. When he sings the word "home" on "Bleeker & MacDougal" his voice sets up bass standing waves all over the room! The famous line about dating golddigging women with a "Handful of Gimmie (and a mouthful of much obliged)" found it's way into Tom Rush's "Drop-Down Mama" from the same era. (I don't know if it was Fred Neil's first or not). "Yonder Come the Blues" (dressed in high-heeled shoes)! Not a bad cut on this bluesy second album.

Fred hated the music industry and its commercialism. He dropped out and didn't record for the last 30 years of his life or so, living frugally of the proceeds from "Everybody's Talking at Me", despite offers from Rock Giants to record duets again. Now his incredible talent is forgotten by nearly all but "a small band of admirers (many of them stars in their own right)".

The shy reclusive Fred Neil was the singer's singer. Just listen and let The Voice wash over you. Like deep rich chocolate. he represents the skill and purity of folk, with occational bluesy jazzy tone.

This album (or the combo import "Tear Down the Walls" which includes this) is the best example extant of his talent. (Lost somewhere is rumoured a tape of a young Bob Dylan and Fred Neil jamming).

Excellent sound on this album.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magic experience, July 26, 2004

By 

J. APARICIO "popminator" (Spain) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bleecker & MacDougal (Audio CD)

here is a review that i encountered surfing the web:
...There was always an air of quiet tragedy to Fred Neil, a great singer-songwriter who, despite penning monster hits like Everybody's Talkin' and The Dolphins, remained on the fringes of the Greenwich Village folk-scene before quitting music altogether. These days he refuses interviews, preferring to concentrate his energies on dolphin research. He never had a hit in his own right; it was Harry Nilsson who made Everybody's Talkin' famous after its inclusion on the Midnight Cowboy soundtrack and The Dolphins had its biggest success in the hands of Tim Buckley. Yet, Buckley apart, no-one could harness the stormy elemental power at the heart of his dark ballads quite as convincingly as he could himself. Nineteen sixty-five's Bleecker & Macdougal, named after a crossroads in the heart of Greenwich Village, was Neil's second album - his first as a solo artist - and there isn't a dud track on it.
There are great rollicking jug band blues like Travelin' Shoes and the bopping title track but it's in the slower ballads that Neil really proves his emotional dexterity. A Little Bit Of Rain sounds forlorn one minute, as Neil prepares to let go of his lover and yet, with a slight vocal twist, he turns it right around and suddenly it feels like a celebration, like the transience of love is an inevitable and essential part of its fragile beauty. It's a magical performance...

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Feel sorry for you if you don't own this one!, November 10, 2001

By 

Scott in Vermont (Vermont USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bleecker & Macdougal (Audio CD)

Too many Amazon reviewers give a five-star rating too easily, I feel. That said, this one is worth every one of the five I give it. Also, I'm a hard core jazz fan who doesn't like most folk music. But I love this album! It's got everything: Neil's rich, deep voice (with overtones of Hank Snow), excellent tunes (lyrically AND harmonically first rate), top notch back-up musicians, as noted by other reviewers (catch John Sebastion's wonderful harp work on 'Sweet Mama' and 'Travelin' Shoes'). There's a great 'folk rock' feel to several of the tunes, and Neil's affinty for the blues is present throughout. This CD disappeared from my life for about 25 years, and now I'm to have it on CD at last! I have to confess a personal interest: this one takes me back to the those pre-hippy days of wheat jeans, desert boots, 'chicks' and smoking 'pot.' But that's not the main reason I own it. This one is a musical gem. Get it!