The first, only, complete and definitive anthology of Nathaniel Mayer´s music, with the full story on Michael Hurtt´s massive liner notes. On this double LP (and CD) you can find all the singles Nathaniel released in the 1960s, plus a rare single from 1980. It´s all here!! From the thumping primitivism of John Lee Hooker’s trance-inducing guitar to Iggy and the Stooges’ desperate wail from the gutter, Detroit, Michigan has always been a city of musical extremes. Dead center between Boogie Chillun and TV Eye lies the musical netherworld of Fortune Records, the city’s only label with any staying power prior to Motown. Fortune was an extreme among extremes, as was its most successful artist, Nathaniel Nay Dog Mayer. Crazy, funny, irreverent and stunningly talented, Mayer scored the label its biggest hit with his 1962 blockbuster Village Of Love. His six years with the label, beginning with 1961’s impassioned My Last Dance With You and ending with 1966’s proto-funk (I Want) Love And Affection (Not The House of Correction), resulted in twenty-one slices of musical brilliance that were unique even in the fertile musical breeding ground from whence they came. Here were records that demanded immediate involvement and total immersion; music so frenetic that it was impossible to take sitting down. A Mayer disc was an instant party. The fact that he recorded for Fortune —an iconic independent label petrified to license their records for wider distribution— certainly kept him from becoming a household name. Then again, Mayer’s over-the-top approach might have been lost on another imprint. Like Andre Williams before him, in Fortune Mayer found a place where he could wreak his sonic havoc, unrestrained. Nay Dog’s hard-edged, straightforward music has influenced many of today’s up-and-coming garage, punk and soul acts. “Village Of Love” was covered by The Detroit Cobras, Leave Me Alone” was remade by The Hard Feelings, while Holly Golightly, Eve Monsees and the Exiles and the Gibson Brothers have all recorded “I Had A Dream”. Fans and collectors still seek out Mayer’s original Fortune-label 45s. As for the man himself, not even a recent stroke slowed him down much, and he remains comfortably ensconced in his home on Detroit’s eastside when he’s not performing. After almost fifty years, he’s found his place in the world, he’s claimed his legacy in the scope of Detroit’s rich musical history…and, as in 1962, a Nathaniel Mayer show is still an electric, mesmerizing experience. Michael Hurtt y S.R. Boland
Detroit, Abril de 2007