Today’s classic song of the day is “The Snake” by soul singer Al Wilson. This hot little number was released in August of 1968, a time of strife and violence, and it went all the way to #27 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #32 on Billboard’s R&B chart. It has since faded somewhat into obscurity—except in England, where it got adopted by the Northern Soul scene and has since become a Northern Soul staple.
“The Snake” is notable because it’s the first recording that features drummer Hal Blaine’s famous monster tom kit. Hal was the legendary studio drummer, a member of the L.A. Wrecking Crew, that played on hundreds of top 40 hits in the 1960s and 1970s. Previous to Hal and his monster kit, most drummers had 2, 3, or at most 4 toms—typically one or two up and one down. Hal himself most often played a Ludwig Super Classic blue sparkle one-up, one-down kit in the studio. In 1968, Hal wanted to expand his tonal horizons and he and his drum tech Rick Faucher conceived and ordered up a set of 7 single-headed Blaemire spun fiberglass toms from custom drum builder Howie Oliver. The drums were sized 6″, 8″, 10″, 12″, 13″, 14″, and 15,” and featured Ludwig lugs and mounting hardware. The toms were mounted on two wheeled racks (the 4 small ones on one rack, the 3 larger on another) that could be rolled right up to Hal’s standard kit. With his regular floor tom this gave Hal 8 toms (9 if he continued to use his normal small tom, which he sometimes but not always did) on which to do some monster rolling fills, as you hear on this song.
The first recording session on which Hal used these toms was for “The Snake,” and he had to be coaxed into doing that long two-bar fill with four 16th notes on each tom down the line. It’s classic, and just the start of a long recording history with the monster kit. You can hear Hal’s kit featured prominently on later hits like “Indian Reservation” (Paul Revere & the Raiders), “Don’t Pull Your Love” (Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds), “Drummer Man” (Nancy Sinatra), “Cracklin’ Rosie” (Neil Diamond), “Lizzie and the Rainman” (Tanya Tucker), and “(They Long to Be) Close to You” (Carpenters).
Interestingly, Hal actually had two of these monster kits made so he could play them on alternating back-to-back sessions, of which there were many in those days. (It wasn’t unusual for Hal and other session players to book three or four three-hour sessions a day.) Because all the producers wanted his #1 kit (a superstitious lot they were when it came to concocting hit singles), Hal had both kits labeled as “Set 1.”
BTW, Ludwig later appropriated Hal’s monster kit concept for its Octaplus kit, which itself was copied by Slingerland and other drum manufacturers at the time. Ludwig, unfortunately, gave Hal no recognition (or royalties) for his groundbreaking idea.
Back to our classic song of the day. “The Snake” gained some notoriety when Donald J. Trump quoted from it (loosely) during campaign rallies during his first run for president. Trump would read the lyrics and compare it to his position on illegal immigration, with the illegal immigrants apparently taking on the role of the snake. Trump claimed that the decision to let illegal immigrants (the snake) into the U.S. would “come back to bite us.”
In contrast, many Blacks view the lyrics as a repudiation of racism, with the snake representing white people. Since “The Snake” was written in 1963 by civil rights activist Oscar Brown, I’m going to go with the Black interpretation of the lyrics.
Al Wilson released his recording of “The Snake” on Johnny Rivers’ Soul City Records, the same label of the 5th Dimension (and Rivers himself). Rivers released his own version of the song in 1966, and Wilson’s version has a little of that Johnny Rivers sound to it, especially in the rhythm guitar part. Wilson went on to have several other minor hits and, in 1973, a #1 record with “Show and Tell,” which is a bona fide classic. He passed away of kidney failure in 2008, aged 68.
For today’s daily bonus video of the day, here’s Donn Bennett of Donn’s Drum Vault talking about and showing off Hal Blaine’s original monster kit. My drummer friends will love it.
