How’s The Family video clip of Elliott Murphy cover by Brad Spurgeon
After several months of searching, I finally found the film footage that I wanted to use to make a video clip for my cover of Elliott Murphy’s haunting song, “How’s The Family,” from his debut album, Aquashow, 1973. Two years ago I wrote major profile of Murphy that was published in the Village Voice newspaper. Many months later, having scoured his oeuvre to see if there was any song that I might be capable of singing and playing myself, I felt most at ease with “How’s The Family.” Well, all except for perhaps the most vital, essential, and haunting part: The chorus.
So one day, as is my wont, I recorded my guitar and vocal effort on my iPhone in my living room. I pumped up my courage and sent Elliott Murphy this rendition, thinking he might like the homage. But I also told him when sending it that I was not entirely comfortable with my execution of the chorus – and I here choose that word “execution” specifically and with care and with double intention. To my great surprise and eternal gratitude, Elliott responded that if I ever thought of releasing the song, he’d help me with some vocals on the chorus. I took that as my incentive to get in a studio as fast as I could.
“How’s The Family” cover of Elliott Murphy song by Brad Spurgeon
I suppose it took many more months before I got in the studio, but let me just compress the tale at this point: I recorded the vocals and guitar at the Basement Studios in Paris, with my friend Nick Buxton on the console engineering it. Then I sent that off to my lifelong friend, Danny Colomby, a spectacular bass player and all round musician and composer now based in Callander, Ontario – up near the frozen tundra – and he added two different bass guitar parts – one fretless, the other not – as well as some keyboard additions, and some percussion.
I then sent that to Elliott, and he added not only those promised backing vocals on the chorus but his astoundingly beautiful harmonica melodies floating behind the whole. (Actually, he also added some guitar and other keys, but I’m not sure how much of all of our stuff remains in the final mix – done so gracefully by Danny back in Canada again.) I had the whole mastered by Ron Boustead at Resolution Mastering in Sherman Oaks, California, and then released the track to all the usual places last year.
“Crazy Lady” song by Brad Spurgeon video clip
All that remained then was to do a video clip, as I had said I would when I released the track. But I had a specific image in mind and I could not find the footage. I had first used the idea of finding old, public domain, movie footage from the internet to tell a song’s story with my own composition, “Crazy Lady,” about a decade ago. There I had found a load of out of copyright sci-fi and other such B-film footage that worked beautifully. A couple of months ago, I made a second such clip with my cover of Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up In Blue” and based on some more black and white footage that I found from a single collection from Archive.org.
But for “How’s The Family” I had been searching for months and found nothing that really spoke to me … until last week when I stumbled upon another collection of black and white film footage in the public domain and again from Archive.org. But this time, it was amateur, home movie reels from 1938 – 1939, all shot by the same guy in a town, Britton, South Dakota. The home movies were shot by a guy named Ivan Besse, who ran the local cinema, and wanted to make a record of life in the town at that time, during the Great Depression.
“Tangled Up In Blue” cover by Brad Spurgeon
It felt evocative of the kind of story I visualize when I hear Elliott Murphy’s song, or when I play it myself and see the story unfold. There were some five or six reels of footage to use and find the cuts from that I wanted for the song, and I also added another bit of old footage, that of the film “Jennifer,” a film starring Ida Lupino, which seemed to fit well visually and emotionally with the Besse collection and, above all, with the song.
So now I have a trilogy of songs I have performed put to old, black and white, public domain, footage. I might stop that approach to music videos right now – or then again, I might not – but I wanted to put them all up on this post to keep them together. And in addition to these three songs, I add the remastered version of Elliott Murphy’s original “How’s The Family” so that you can hear the original, legendary, and ethereal, chorus sung by Elliott. (Not to mention all the rest of it!)
Remastered version of Elliott Murphy’s original “How’s The Family”
