Listening to the Guess Who

I've always been a Guess Who fan and I was listening to No Sugar Tonight on Sirius in the car. It sure sounded to me like The Wrecking Crew doing the instrumentation esp Hal Blaine and Joe Osborn. I've never read anything about the group using other musicians on their records.
Am I off-base here? Or off-bass(lol)?

 

Way off base.

 

Garry Peterson and Jim Kale would be proud. The band was only augmented my producer Jack Richardson doing some additional percussion, and some occasional session brass and percussion in the later years (Follow Your Daughter Home has a session percussionist for example). And Bob Ezrin contributed Moog to Pain Train.

 

Every Canada Day (01 July), I play some Guess Who, as a kind of ritual I suppose.

Has anyone heard the expanded "Live at the Paramount" CD, issued on Buddha Records in 2000? It's 30 minutes longer than the original 1972 LP, and totally re-sequenced. This makes it one of the best-ever concert albums by any rock artist IMO. I value it as much as the expanded "Live at Leeds".

Garry Peterson is a great, great, under-rated drummer, a real powerhouse. The same could be said of guitarist Kurt Winter (RIP). In some ways he was more interesting than Randy Bachman, with some startlingly original ideas from far away in left field. In a 1990s reunion concert video, I was surprised and touched to hear Bachman play a Kurt Winter solo precisely note-for-note, in tribute. So cool.

 

I was in a Guess Who mood and pulled out a couple records today. Normally I spin the 3-cd anthology but I decided to give my vinyl a spin. They were copies I picked up because they were cheap and clean but I haven't played them much. Music aside, I was really surprised how great these records sound. The sound on my copy of Canned Wheat just leaps out of the speakers (my copy is the ANL1 repress version). Somebody else in a closed thread said they preferred the repress to the originals for this album. Anyway, I concur the sound is great.

Also Rockin' sounded really good too.

 

They were on RCA for the bulk of their career. Well recorded and the records sound great. One of their underrated LPs: Artificial Paradise.

 

Same here. Great sound on all of 'em.

 

Also,their early career Albums,3 of them,was on Scepter/Wand, first billed as "Guess Who?" a joke at first,appearing on the "Shakin' All Over" single in 1965 (Their name at the time was still Chad Allen & the Expressions,btw.) but then,the joke became serious,and when Chad left,and Burton Cummings joined,they took the name professionally,adding "The" to it (and dropping the Question Mark) when they'd signed to RCA,in Late 1968.

 

"Canned Wheat" also had an Camden Issue,too,Re-Issued in 1977 on Pickwick Records.

 

"Shakin' All Over" (Billed as both "Chad Allen & the Expressions" and "Guess Who?"),"Could This Be Love" and "It's Time" all predate RCA's first Guess Who Lp "Wheatfield Soul",by 1-2 Years or more.

 

And The occasional arrangement from Ben McPeek and Allan Macmillan...otherwise it's all played by The Guess Who

 

When Friends Fall Out and Of a Dropping Pin must have been released as singles in 1967, because they both got airplay up here, but didn't do much chart-wise. It wasn't until These Eyes in 1969 that they became big.

I have a couple of CDs titled It's Time and This Time Long Ago that contain some of their early material. I'm wondering if they got the Staccatos to name the comps, because that band seemed to use time as a song theme, as in their singles Half Past Midnight and Didn't Know the Time (both excellent, by the way). The two bands were jointly featured on an LP circa 1966 and got one side each.

 

Love The Guess Who. What a great band.

 

I regard the Guess Who as one of rock's great underrated bands. People know 3-4 of their hits, but their many albums are all well-recorded, well-played, fun, and varied. Lots of treasures abound in that catalog, yet they seem to have largely been forgotten. Maybe people regard them as a poor man's Who or something.

 

That's why the Alice Cooper group wanted to sign with Jack Richardsons company Nimbus 9 in Toronto.
The reason being is they liked the sound of those Guess Who records. They said the sound just jumped out
at you when played on the radio.

 

Heard them live at Glenn Island Casino in New Rochelle NY around 1968. Great live band.

 

Downfall of many great Canadian bands coming out in the 60’s & 70’s. Couldn’t break into the US market.

April Wine, Tragically Hip, Triumph etc.. should have also been huge, but didn’t. Only Rush seemed to get that lucky break!

 

The GW definitely broke in the US being one of the top draws of 1970. Constant instability plus greed, drugs, poor management and ego, not to mention a quest to be perceived as an FM band cooked their goose.

 

Definitely loved in Chicago then, I was 12, and loving all the attention radio gave them, and buying their 45s left, and right.
.

 

I saw them live at the CNE in 1971. Burton Cummings wore a Boston Bruins jersey, for some reason. I was with four friends; can't believe that was 45 years ago.

 

Absolutely. They got played a lot on WLS/WCFL, and those records still hold up. Even "Clap For The Wolfman"

 

Well said.

A lot of ego in that band, no doubt...especially from the lead singer.

 

slightly off topic,
but what passes as "the guess who" is playing live right here in stinkville usa this week...
i think only the original drummer remains?

 

It's Jim and Garry, and the two of them sound fantastic no matter what Mr. Cummings says. The singer I can take or leave.

 

They had a few albums that were consistent all the way through, but they put out a lot of filler doing two albums a year until they quit in 1975. Had they put their best stuff on one LP a year, they would have had better sales.