Customer Reviews

Bleecker & MacDougal

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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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.

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...

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!

If you're reading this you presumably know Fred Neil's music and don't need me to sell you on it. I bought this CD not knowing what to expect in sound quality, so I'm glad to report that it sounds FANTASTIC! Beautiful, full, rich sound, far better than even the original vinyl pressing. If you're a Fred Neil fan, by all means buy this CD!

After years of squirrelling away every copy I could find of this album from used record store, finally the Japanese have graced us with this album on cd. Truly one of the profound folk albums of the sixties, Fred Neil was THE songwriter's songwriter in the New York folk scene, sort of a ramblin', gamblin' existential Bogart-type, with a guitar. Dylan, Joan Baez, Ramblin' Jack, everybody trooped out to his shows when he hit the New York City clubs. I think this cd is the best document of why. His world weary songs were covered by everyone over the years (Nilsson, Lovin' Spoonful, Tim Buckley, Beth Orton) but the one thing these performers can't touch is the set of pipes Fred Neil possessed. That tangible sadness and wisdom, along with the deepest baritone this side of Brook Benton. If you are so attuned, it will scrape something deep down inside of you. And the instrumentation on this is simple and timeless; just bass, guitar and harmonica. If you loved Neil's "Everybody's Talkin'" (used as the theme from MIDNIGHT COWBOY), this cd is chock-filled with tunes just as striking.

Fred Neil never won a big following in the 1960s. He wouldn't put up with the bullsh*t of the music game and recorded a mere half-dozen or so albums, most of which quickly went out of print, before retiring to Coconut Grove, Fla., to live as he pleased. Thanks to his "Everybody's Talking" (which Harry Nilsson recorded for the "Midnight Cowboy" soundtrack), "The Other Side to This Life" and "The Dolphins" (which were widely covered by artists as varied as Jefferson Airplane and Linda Ronstadt) and "Candy Man" (the Roy Orbison hit), he had the royalities to do as he pleased. Well, it's been our loss. Neil is one-of-a-kind singer, with a soul-searing, gravelly voice and fingers that picked one of the meanest blues guitars in folk. In the early days of the Greenwich Village folk scene (where it's said he gave a struggling kid named Bob Dylan his first job), Neil was a legend. This set, which reflects that period better than any of his other recordings, has been a favorite of mine for 35 years, first on vinyl and now on this tastefully remastered Japanese CD. No, "Everybody's Talking" is not here; but his classic "Blues on the Ceiling," first recording of "The Other Side to This Life," "Candy Man" and "Handful of Gimme" are, among others. It's just Fred, Pete Childs on dobro and second guitar, John Sebastian (later of the Lovin' Spoonful) on harmonica and usually Felix Pappalardi (who later produced Cream's classics) on bass. And it's enough to blister the paint off your walls.

BLEECKER & MacDOUGAL (1964) is a well rounded album. It contains less of the ethereal reverb mix so prevalent on later NEIL albums and more of a flat matter-of-fact mix that gives it a more present tense. The songs are glorious American themes with unusual rhythm patterns for folk music. That is why it really isn't folk music. It's a sort of transition of styles that has always been definitive of the period, yet always grounded in the soil by Fred's rich throat and verbal/emotional articulation. You hear a fine craftsman who has found something singular and different and it doesn't seem that he ever wanted anything more than that in his career. It is American music at it's finest and moodiest. Beat and ephemeral. It dissipates into the spiritual world and then comes back down to your ears at it's own whim.

Whoever had the brilliant stroke of genius to record Fred Neil's old LPs onto CDs, deserves some sort of Nobel Prize. This is the most evocative old style talking blues that one could ever imagine. As blue as you can get and be on this side of life - tender, painful, sad, and whatever other real emotion you can evoke. Fred Neil did it all, and all of his limited genre is worth getting.

Sorry to say it's true, Mr. Fred Neil passed on July 7, 2001. Heart attack. He didn't leave us a huge musical legacy, but this album is one of the finest of the Sixties folk boom. "The Other Side of This Life", "Blues on the Ceiling", "Bleecker & McDougall" are undisputed classics, the latter a dark, cynical look at the then-current scene, very rare for the time. Great album.

Every bit as good as I remember the mono album I bought as an undergraduate student and folkie in the early 60's.

Fred Neil's voice had an unmistakable quality and sound, and I loved his 12-string. The slow style had a bit in common with jazz singer/pianist Mose Allison -an 'I'm so cool, I haven't decided whether or not to take my next breath' quality.

Over the years, I've listened to many singers, and many, while very good, became easy to confuse with many others. Fred Neil was, and always will be, Fred Neil. An original.