- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- Well, somebody had to title their greatest hits album “The Worst”, and Jefferson Airplane is the band that did it with The Worst of Jefferson Airplane.
Jefferson Airplane – The Worst of Jefferson Airplane (1970): Well, somebody had to title their greatest hits album “The Worst”, and Jefferson Airplane is the band that did it. Jefferson Airplane is one of the leading psychedelic rock bands that helped define the San Francisco Sound, and their music evolved significantly over the years. The Airplane also featured one of only a handful of female lead singers in rock music during the 1960’s, Grace Slick. She was not an original bandmember, however, having been in another Bay Area band called the Great Society, along with her brother-in-law Darby Slick. When Grace Slick joined Jefferson Airplane, she brought over two of the Great Society songs, her own song “White Rabbit” and the Darby Slick-penned “Somebody to Love”; they became the only two Top 40 hits by Jefferson Airplane, although the band maintained their high profile through album sales.
I was familiar with most of these tracks when I ran across The Worst of Jefferson Airplane (yet another album on a South Korean record label), but not “Good Shepherd”, one of my favorite Jefferson Airplane songs that illustrates well the folk-rock roots of the band. Adapted by guitarist Jorma Kaukonen from a hymn dating from the 19th Century, “Good Shepherd” is included on Jefferson Airplane’s most political and combative album Volunteers (1969) – for instance, the title song “Volunteers” includes the oft-repeated tag line, “Got a revolution / Got to revolution”. While not the first spiritual song made by a rock band, there hadn’t been very many at that point in time; and no one was expecting a song like “Good Shepherd” from a band like Jefferson Airplane. One surprise was the old-fashioned album design; from Wikipedia: “Original copies of the LP contained an inner sleeve that was a reproduction of a 1918 vintage Victor Talking Machine Company sleeve, and the record featured late 1920’s vintage Victor labels. The interior of the gatefold cover featured a large color reproduction of the painting ‘His Master’s Voice’, the famous RCA Victor trademark.” By late 1970, when The Worst of Jefferson Airplane came out, Jefferson Airplane was on the verge of breaking up for several reasons, among them the formation of the spinoff band Hot Tuna, solo projects by at least two key bandmembers, and Grace Slick’s pregnancy (her daughter, China Kantner would become a longtime VJ on MTV). A few years after the release of The Worst of Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Airplane was reborn as Jefferson Starship, and later on as Starship, with each band being more commercially successful than the last.