Some people rise to a position of importance in the music industry through hard work and business savvy.
Earl McGrath was not one of those people. Instead,
McGrath was a man of great charm and wit who had a gift for making friends with important and interesting people, and his circle of familiars included
Andy Warhol,
Steve Martin,
David Hockney,
Jack Nicholson,
Mick Jagger, and
Joan Didion. (He even attracted people who hadn't become famous just yet --
Harrison Ford served as his fix-it man and marijuana dealer in his pre-Han Solo days, and described
Earl as "the last of a breed, one of the last great gentlemen and bohemians.")
Ahmet Ertegun, the legendary founder of
Atlantic Records, was so taken with
McGrath's charisma and taste that in 1971 he staked him to his own
Atlantic-distributed label,
Clean Records. While
Clean failed to score any hits, in 1977
McGrath was named president of
Rolling Stones Records, in large part just because
Mick and
Keith liked him.
McGrath did have an ear for worthwhile music, even if he had little talent for marketing, and after his death in 2016, a large cache of reel to reel tapes was discovered in his closet. 2022's
Earl's Closet: The Lost Archive of Earl McGrath, 1970-1980 brings together 22 previously unreleased performances from
McGrath's informal archive, and it reveals he was a musical omnivore who appreciated outlaw country, rhythm & blues, well-crafted pop, proto-punk, urban folk, and upbeat funk, among many other things. The set includes early recordings from Texas roots rock legend
Delbert McClinton when he was half of
Delbert & Glen, one of
Clean's signings, as well as a pair of rough and ready numbers from legendary Lone Star eccentric
Terry Allen.
McGrath discovered
Daryl Hall & John Oates when they were still calling themselves Whole Oats, and "Baby Come Closer" and "Dry in the Sun" captured them as they were slipping away from Americana in favor of more soulful sounds.
Jim Carroll's "Tension," written for but not included on his debut album, is a gloriously nervy slice of almost-punk wordplay, and the rough but playful rehearsal tape of
David Johansen working out "Funky but Chic" captures the
New York Dolls frontman in a swaggering mood. Just as intriguing are the unknown commodities: two demos from
Shadow, a cool, melodic rock band featuring former members of
the Amboy Dukes; a slow, emotive cover of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" from an otherwise unknown R&B vocal group called
Blood Brothers Six; some upbeat country-folk material from a band whose name is lost to history (they're billed as
Kazoo Singers here); and smooth, soulful from
Johnny Angel, a Detroiter who worked with
Jesse Ed Davis before drugs stalled his career. As the diversity of this set demonstrates,
Earl McGrath may not have known how to sell things, but he knew what he liked, and
Earl's Closet shows he was a tastemaker for the right reasons. ~ Mark Deming
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