Brian Auger Get Auger-nized! The Mod Years 2004

Brian Auger is a British organ player that has focused much of his career on jazz and jazz/rock with the Trinity and later with the Oblivion Express. His sixties sides with the Trinity were marketed to the pop/rock audience as well. He and the Trinity had a working relationship with Julie Driscoll (later Tippetts) that would seem unique even by the anything goes sixties standard. Between 1965-1970, Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger and the Trinity made a series of singles and two LPs (Open 1967 and Streetnoise 1969). During the same time, Auger and the Trinity made two records without Driscoll (Definitely What 1968 and Befour 1970). This very fine compilation on 2 vinyl records was the first half of the two-CD set Get Auger-nized The Anthology (The Mod Years and The Jazz Years) and includes tracks from those four records as well as singles. The second CD (The Jazz Years), not being discussed here, was from his work with both The Trinity (three tracks) and Brian Auger's Oblivion Express post 1970.

The tracks with the Trinity include Mose Allison's Fool Killer, Booker T and the MG's Green Onions and Red Beans and Rice, Lennon and McCartney's A Day In The Life, Wes Montgomery's Bumpin' On Sunset, and five Auger originals. The Trinity were a talented group, and Auger's B3 organ is always front and center. 

With Driscoll, they play another set of interesting covers including Otis Redding's Tramp, Donovan's Season of the Witch, Danko and Dylan's This Wheel's On Fire, the Doors Light My Fire, Richie Havens' Indian Rope Man and Flesh Failures (Let The Sunshine In) from Hair. There are several other nice choices and Auger originals as well as the Auger/Driscoll composition A Kind Of Love In, a rocking frenzy of a song. Driscoll is a unique talent, and the cover songs are all transformed by Auger's organ and Driscoll's idiosyncratic voice and delivery.

The Trinity's organ-led jazz/rock is solid stuff, but for me the draw of this compilation is the work featuring Julie Driscoll. Driscoll has a powerful voice and a decidedly different approach that is unlike almost any other female singer. She makes bold choices that usually work, and in the organ trio setting she cuts loose. After this work in the sixties, she made two almost pop solo records, but since then she has made a career of avant-garde and free jazz vocalizing, frequently with her husband, jazz piano player Keith Tippett, but also with other collaborators. 

In 1978 Auger and Tippetts (nee Driscoll) made Encore, a great reunion that improves on their work in the sixties. It is essential listening in my book. Streetnoise is an excellent double LP to find used, and I can think of nothing that sounds quite like it. The good news is that all of this is available for streaming. There is a baffling array of compilations of both Auger and Driscoll's work, many of them covering the same material. Go ahead, Get Auger-nized!