Jake Holmes

One of many journeyman New York folk-rock singer/songwriters of the late '60s, Jake Holmes, if he's remembered at all, is known as the author and original performer of "Dazed and Confused." It is still not widely recognized that he wrote and recorded the first version of this song on his 1967 solo debut album, prior to it being covered (in concert) by the Yardbirds, and then becoming one of the most famous numbers in Led Zeppelin's repertoire. A big part of why is that Holmes, for murky reasons, was not credited as a writer on Led Zeppelin's recording, which gave sole author credits to Jimmy Page. For that accomplishment alone, Holmes is worthy of a footnote, even if nothing else he wrote or released lived up to the level of that song.

Holmes earliest success came as a comedy duo with then-wife Kate. The pair performed under the alias Allen & Grier and released a popular collection of folk revival parodies called Better to Be Rich Than Ethnic in the early '60s. He had also worked in a group with fellow folk-rock singer/songwriter Tim Rose before going solo. "Dazed and Confused" was on Holmes' 1967 debut LP The Above Ground Sound of Jake Holmes, which had an odd, edgy folk-rock sound built around a drumless trio, featuring Holmes' rapid rhythm guitar strums and Ted Irwin's spidery acid folk-jazz-lead guitar lines. As heard in this folk-rock context, "Dazed and Confused" was given a much more spare arrangement than it would be given by Led Zeppelin. The rest of the album was an erratic cluster of songs that explored similar anxious moods with less power, sometimes changing gears into light comedy or melodramatic sentiment.

The Yardbirds, with Jimmy Page on lead guitar, heard "Dazed and Confused" in August 1967 when Holmes opened for the band in New York. The group took a pretty radical rearrangement of it into their live set. Although they didn't release a studio version of it before their breakup in 1968, their live rearrangement can be heard on the Epic LP Live Yardbirds Featuring Jimmy Page, a 1968 recording that was briefly available in 1971 before being withdrawn (a superior live version from a March 1968 French TV broadcast subsequently circulated on the Cumular Limit compilation). When Led Zeppelin did it on their first album, with different lyrics but similar melodic and rhythmic ideas as the Holmes prototype, the songwriting credit was given to Jimmy Page.

Holmes' second LP, 1968's Letter to Katherine December, expanded into orchestral backgrounds, though he and Irwin still supplied their distinctive guitar work. An even more erratic work than its predecessor, it still supplied some interesting acid folk-pop, particularly on "Leaves That Break," with its ferocious fuzz guitar. His subsequent albums for Polydor, however, were far more ordinary, even sub-ordinary, singer/songwriter music with country influences, sometimes painfully exposing the limits of his vocal range and timbre. Holmes never profited from the worldwide success of Led Zeppelin's "Dazed and Confused," but he did strike gold as a writer of commercials with one of his jingles, the famous U.S. Army ad with the "be all that you can be" refrain. Holmes' LPs (especially the first two, on Tower) are now hard to find, though "Dazed and Confused" was reissued legitimately at least once, on Rhino's Nuggets, Vol. 10: Folk Rock LP.

from Wikipedia:

Jake Holmes (born December 28, 1939 in San Francisco, California) is an American singer-songwriter and jingle writer who began a recording career in the 1960s. Holmes, who has a particular talent for writing clever, perceptive lyrics, is perhaps best known as the original author of the song "Dazed and Confused", later popularized by Led Zeppelin, and for composing the US Army recruitment jingle "Be All That You Can Be" in the late 1970s. The jingle and subsequent advertising campaign was used extensively by the US government throughout the 1980s. Holmes also co-wrote the famous "Be a Pepper" for soft drink multinational corporation Dr Pepper Snapple Group.

Career

Holmes' first musical foray was with his wife Katherine in the folk pop parody duo, Allen & Grier. Following military service, he resumed his music career. Among the highlights: Holmes put lyrics to Bob Gaudio's music on The Four Seasons' 1969 Genuine Imitation Life Gazette album, after which the pair went on to compose Frank Sinatra's 1970 Watertown album. Coming during a relative low point in Sinatra's career, Watertown was his least successful album, but the song "I Would Be in Love (Anyway)" reached No. 4 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. The song "What's Now is Now" reached No. 31 on that chart and was later included in Frank Sinatra's Greatest Hits Volume 2. Sinatra's recording of the Gaudio-Holmes composition "Lady Day" was left off the Watertown album, but was released as a single, and Don Costa later rearranged "Lady Day" for inclusion in Sinatra's Sinatra & Company album. In 1985 Nina Simone recorded a cover version of "For a While," from the Watertown album, for her Nina's Back album. That same year Simone recorded a live version of "For a While" for her Live And Kickin' album.

On his own, Holmes recorded during the 1960s two well-regarded albums for independent Tower Records: A Letter to Katherine December and The Above Ground Sound of Jake Holmes, which contained the aforementioned "Dazed and Confused" and "Genuine Imitation Life." The Four Seasons' Bob Gaudio heard Holmes sing "Genuine Imitation Life" at The Bitter End in New York's City's Greenwich Village, which led to their collaborations on the The Four Seasons and Sinatra albums.

Between those projects, Holmes, who had landed a recording contract with Polydor, went to Nashville to record an album called Jake Holmes. That was followed by the most successful solo album of his career, So Close, So Very Far to Go. Released by Polydor, it reached No. 135 on the Billboard album chart, and the single "So Close" rose to No. 49 on Billboard's Hot 100. In 1977, "So Close" became the title song of an album by Helen Schneider, a popular New York night club singer. Holmes's modest success with Polydor led to a contract with Columbia Records and the album How Much Time. It was as accomplished as all his work, but yielded no hits in a pop era that was about to be swamped by disco music.

Later in the 1970s, with his music career stalling, Holmes moved into writing advertising jingles for HEA Productions, which provided music for advertising agencies. His first jingle for HEA was for an anti-drug campaign, "What Do You Do When the Music Stops". Besides the US Army slogan and Dr. Pepper jingle, he is also the composer of the "Aren't You Hungry for Burger King Now?" campaign (1981), "Come see the softer side of Sears", and many other commercials, earning him the nickname "Jingle Jake". His voice can also be heard on commercials for Philip Morris, General Motors, Union Carbide, Gillette, DeBeers, Winn-Dixie, and British Petroleum. In the 1990s, Holmes set up in partnership a jingle and [music] production company called 3 Tree Productions.

Even as his jingle career flourished, Holmes never gave up songwriting. He co-wrote every song on Harry Belafonte's 1988 album Paradise in Gazankulu. And as the new century dawned, Holmes released a new solo album called Dangerous Times and jumped into the political fray with such downloadable anti-Bush songs as "Mission Accomplished" and "I Hear Texas."

Jingles composed

"Building a better way .... to see the U.S.A." for Chevrolet (General Motors) (1972)"Be a Pepper" for Dr Pepper (with Randy Newman, 1977)"Be all that you can be" for the U.S. Army (1979)"We fly the world" for Pan American World Airways (DATE)"Raise your hand if you're Sure" for Sure deodorant (197X)"Aren't You Hungry for Burger King Now?" for Burger King (1981)"America's Getting Into Training" for Amtrak corporation (1981)"Come to Metropolitan and simplify your life" for Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (1981)"Great Moments for You on CBS" for CBS (1982)"Ah ha, we're sitting pretty, altogether in Schaeffer City" for Schaeffer Beer (198X)"NBC, Let's All Be There!" for NBC (1985)"Best a Man Can Get" for The Gillette Company (1988)"Come see the softer side of Sears, Roebuck and Company" for Sears (19XX)"With Charmin Ultra, Less Is More" (Cha-cha-cha!!!) for Charmin (200X)

Dazed and Confused

Holmes is also known for writing "Dazed and Confused," which was later adapted and popularized by Jimmy Page of The Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin. The song appeared on Holmes' debut, "The Above Ground Sound" of Jake Holmes. Led Zeppelin does not credit Holmes with authorship of their song. A Yardbirds live recording from French TV series "Bouton Rouge" (recorded on 9 March 1968) was released on Cumular Limit in 2000, credited as "Dazed and Confused" by Jake Holmes arr. Yardbirds.. Another live performance (recorded 30 March 1968, New York City) is included on the album Live Yardbirds: Featuring Jimmy Page under the alternate title "I'm Confused". Notably, it is the only track that has no songwriter credits on the release.

It is still not widely recognized that Holmes was the author of the classic song. Page, while on tour with the Yardbirds in 1967, saw Holmes perform the song in Greenwich Village. Within months, he had adapted the song for that group, and later, for Led Zeppelin. For reasons that are not entirely clear, Page claimed sole songwriting credit for the song when it appeared on Led Zeppelin's debut album. Holmes later sent Page a letter about the songwriting credits but received no reply.

In June 2010, Holmes filed a lawsuit against Jimmy Page for copyright infringement in United States District Court, claiming Page knowingly copied his work.