http://www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/article-20108-john-hiatt-robert-pollard-rogue-wave-brian-jonestown-massacre-and-more.html



By Brian Baker

Essra Mohawk is one of those astonishing artists with a compelling back story and a pretty decent catalog that should have made a much bigger impression within the encyclopedic context of Rock music’s history and instead became inexplicably lost in its tangled table of contents. Thankfully, Collector’s Choice is reissuing Mohawk’s first three albums in an effort to illuminate the obscure singer/songwriter whose work has been heard in some high-profile circumstances. Ever heard “Interjections!” on Schoolhouse Rock? That was Mohawk.

Born Sandy Hurvitz, the Philadelphia native recorded her first single at 16, wrote songs that were covered by the Shangri-Las and Vanilla Fudge and turned down a staff songwriting position at the Brill Building at 17. She met Frank Zappa at 19, becoming a de facto member of the Mothers of Invention when she replaced an ailing Don Preston on keyboards during the Mothers’ residency at New York’s Garrick Theater. Zappa signed Hurvitz to a production deal and started work on her 1969 debut, Sandy’s Album Is Here at Last!, but peevishly turned the project over to Mother keyboardist Ian Underwood after Hurvitz suggested looser, less charted musical accompaniment.

The resultant recording, barely touched by Underwood and ultimately abandoned by Zappa, was almost completely stripped of anything beyond Hurvitz’s voice and piano (a handful of tracks featured saxophonist Jim Pepper, flautist Jeremy Steig, bassist Eddie Gomez and drummer Donald McDonald) and had the stark emotional impact of Laura Nyro’s early work (not to mention a precursor to the kind of raw empowerment that would define Alanis Morrissette’s work almost three decades later). A highlight is “Archgodliness of Purplefull Magic,” a gorgeous hippie ballad and one of only two non-Zappa compositions that the Mothers performed at the Garrick shows. The album sank with little notice.

Mohawk’s next album was momentous even though it didn’t fare much better commercially. Reprise head Mo Ostin saw Mohawk in a New York club and signed her for her sophomore album, 1970’s Primordial Lovers, which was produced by her soon-to-be husband, Frazier Mohawk (her Zappa-era nickname Essie had evolved into Essra; she had also been dubbed Uncle Meat by Zappa during the Garrick shows), a pairing that provided her eventual performing name. With Primordial Lovers, Mohawk found a sympathetic producer and a better platform for her Rock/Soul/Jazz direction. And while the album garnered decent notices and a lot of FM airplay (particularly on “Thunder in the Morning,” Mohawk’s ode to Stephen Stills, written on a baby grand owned by Little Feat frontman Lowell George), Reprise did almost no promotion and gave Mohawk no tour support on an album that Rolling Stone called one of the Top 25 albums of all time in a 1977 feature. Once again, Mohawk’s soulful Nyro-like explorations piqued critical interest but not sales.

For her 1974 eponymous album, Mohawk signed with Paramount, a label that was actively interested in her work. By this time, Mohawk had taken her sound in a more Blues/Rock direction, although she was never far from her love of Soul and Jazz, giving her new songs a sound that suggested everyone from Carole King (“New Skins for Old”) to Lydia Pense (“You Make Me Come to Pieces”) to Janis Joplin (“Back in the Spirit”). The album also featured a fun and funky take on the Gershwin classic “Summertime” and the song that would become Mohawk’s signature, the soaring “Magic Pen.”

But at the 11th hour, Paramount was sold to ABC and Mohawk’s manager, thinking the sale would be detrimental for the album, optioned out of the contract. He resold it to Elektra/Asylum, who had no emotional attachment to the album and released it in 1974 with a lack of enthusiasm that equalled or surpassed her previous two labels.

Mohawk has continued to release records — she’s put out eight studio albums and a live recording since 1976 — and a variety of artists have had hits with her songs, most notably Cyndi Lauper with “Change of Heart” and Tina Turner with “Stronger Than the Wind.” Still in all, it’s heartening to see Mohawk’s first three albums, criminally ignored in their time, find some validation nearly 40 years after the fact.

In Collector’s Choice, Essra Mohawk has finally aligned with a label that believes in her and her work wholeheartedly. They’ve added a few nice complementary bonus tracks from each album’s session to round out the sets, as cool and strong as they were four decades ago, proving it’s never too late to revisit great music.