Ten Years After – Hear Me Calling (1968-69), paired with Red River Valley (1941) *NEW VIDEO

Fringe of memory time. The other morning I woke up and vaguely recalled a Ten Years After song I used to hear on … get this … AM RADIO, NOT FM … during the winter of 1968-69. Almost daily it appeared on the same playlist with artists like Marvin Gaye „Heard It Through The Gravevine,“ Tommy James and the Shondells „Crimson and Clover,“ Dusty Springfield „Son Of A Preacher Man,“ Classics IV „Stormy,“ YOung-Holt Unlimited „Soulful Strut,“ and many other favorites which were brand new at the time.

The song: „Hear Me Calling“ … which always threw me off guard because it sounded like an old Western sing-a-long except for the heavy blues guitar and bass that also made up the song in places. This particular winter (and previous autumn) marked the dawn of my serious collecting of rock albums and recording rock and folk songs off both AM and FM radio on a reel-to-reel recorder player I had gotten for my birthday. Great sound quality for a portable, better than the crap sound portable cassette players made when they took over in 1970. Little did I know it, but this song was my introduction to the music of Ten Years After. Only recently did I find out that the song apparently had been released as the B side of a live version (not the Woodstock one obviously) of „I’m Going Home“ in November 1968. THE SINGLE FAILED TO CHART. A few months later it appeared in the US on the album Stonedhenge in January 1969 (February 1969 in the UK).

What has always confused me is why it got so much airplay on two AM stations I listened to all the time … and yet never managed to chart! Even more perplexing was that when I started listening to FM radio in February 1969, „Hear Me Calling“ was never played. Not then, not later, not ever! Strange to hear such a fabulous rock song, apparently unworthy of Billboard and Cash Box, played on AM. Most AM stations would not touch a song unless it made the charts. This was one of the few exceptions apparently.

Anyway, it was nice to hear again after all these years and the sound is excellent. It sounds better today than it did back in 1969.

As I mentioned, it always surprised me when the song came on because the vocals sounded like a Country Western sing-a-long the Sons of the Pioneers might have sang in a Roy Rogers film … until the bass really kicks in and Alvin Lee goes off on a lead guitar solo. So in memory of that original connection I have featured the song in a remix of the Roy Rogers classic, Red River Valley (1941), co-starring Gail Storm (who appeared in three consecutive Roy Rogers films).