Juicy Lucy

This blues-based hard rock band took its name from a character found in a novel by Leslie Thomas called The Virgin Soldiers. I haven’t read Thomas’s book, but I’m fairly confident its storyline doesn’t involve a naked woman covered in fruit. Juicy Lucy, first released in 1969 on Vertigo Records, vaulted this British sextet onto the UK singles chart with a raucous cover of Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love?” It’s a trashy, garage-like take on an old school classic and ultimately proved to be the band’s defining moment. The remaining seven tracks are a respectable combination of original compositions and well-chosen cover songs. Buddy Miles’s “Train” and Chuck Berry’s “Nadine” are the album’s highlights, two songs best demonstrating the group’s effective mix of blues-flavored guitar riffs, pulsating saxophone breaks and the unusual, slightly affected vocals of lead singer Ray Owen. The band released three more albums, including Get a Whiff a This, a record whose artwork surpasses even the band’s self-titled debut in stomach-churning repulsion. None came close to Juicy Lucy’s success and the band called it a day in 1972. Incidentally, the woman on the front cover is named Zelda Plum. There has to be a fruit-related joke in there somewhere.

Notes: Here are a couple of great clips of Juicy Lucy performing live in a movie called Bread: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piy5ckyO_Ks and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXkmuUoUyT0&feature=related.