Saturday, October 13, 2007

Afterhours

The last Lou related song I'm gonna is not a Lou Reed song.

The Carol Lou Trio released a 7" EP of 3 jazz piano instrumentals in 1970. The B-side of the record is a song called "Afterhours". According to the label, the song was written by Lou Reed and published by Virpi Music. That's the Velvet Underground's publishing company. So this song has been showing up on Velvet's bootlegs for years.

But the song is not Lou Reed's "Afterhours" and everybody in the band has always denied any involvment. In 2006, somebody finally got around to asking Carol Lou about the song. She says that she has never heard of The Velvet Underground or Lou Reed. I believe her.

2 Comments:

Blogger Nicolas Martin said...

I'm the person who asked Carol Lou Woodward, former leader of the Carol Lou Trio and a life-long friend, if she had ever heard of Lou Reed or the Velvets. She is a sweet 76-year-old lady from Richmond, Indiana, so it didn't surprise me when she said she had not.

The uninteresting truth is that the version of After Hours recorded by The Carol Lou Trio is a song composed by Erskine Hawkins and Avery Parrish, and it has been recorded by numerous bands. (Look it up at allmusic.com.) Someone at the tiny jukebox label that released it probably just looked up the song title at ASCAP and didn't notice that there was more than one song by the same name. I imagine that Lou Reed got a few undeserved royalty dollars from it. It's funny that this fable still has legs because Carol Lou is about as much like Lou Reed as Courtney Love is like Wayne Newton.

21/12/07 11:23 PM  
Blogger Nicolas Martin said...

By the way, if you are ever in Richmond, Indiana on a Friday night, stop by Joe's Pizza to hear Carol Lou play. (The Trio is remote history.) She's happy to take requests, so I'm sure she would hammer out "After Hours" for you. She's a talented jazz pianist. Lou Reed fans can meet their mysterious heroine.

21/12/07 11:29 PM  

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