Vinyl Vault — Ray Manzarek, “The Whole Thing Started With Rock and Roll, Now It’s Out of Control”

The Vinyl Vault returns to the progressive rock realm with an album from former Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek entitled “The Whole Thing Started With Rock and Roll, Now It’s Out of Control.” The album was released 50 years ago in 1974 on Mercury Records.

Despite the title, rock and roll was only one of many influences on this album. Most notably, Manzarek incorporated heavy doses of jazz and blues and a bit of world music. Some cuts sound like Frank Zappa’s work from the same time period. In fact, the album features Flo & Eddie on background vocals. They had worked with Zappa not long before this album and before that, they were known as The Turtles and had a couple of pop hits.

This was Manzarek’s second solo album after the demise of the Doors. Musicians on the album included jazz players such as John Klemmer and Mike Melvoin. On the other side of the coin, Joe Walsh made an appearance. Manzarek composed all the songs on the album and included “The Bicentennial Blues,” about the then-upcoming 200th birthday of the United States.

Join Geoff Anderson for the next Vinyl Vault, on Tuesday, September 3 at 8:30 p.m. on KUVO JAZZ.

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