POPULARITY
Hosted by Andre Williams
Hosted by Andre Williams
5 episodes with Andre Williams
9 episodes with Andre Williams
6 episodes with Andre Williams
6 episodes with Andre Williams
3 episodes with Andre Williams
3 episodes with Andre Williams
2 episodes with Andre Williams
In this episode of the Healthy Reasonings Podcast, Dr. Andre Williams, an integrative oncologist, delves into the surprising health complications associated with tattoos. Despite his affection for body art, Dr. Williams explains why tattoos have become his biggest pet peeve, highlighting two major concerns: electrical interference and irritation caused by heavy metal-based inks. Using real-life patient stories, Dr. Williams illustrates how tattoos can trigger immune responses and cause unexplained health issues. He also discusses the emotional connections tied to getting tattoos. Don't miss this insightful episode to better understand the potential impacts of body art on your well-being. Available on YouTube and podcast streaming platforms.SPONSORS:Teshuva Wellness is our sponsor for this episode. Visit them atwww.teshuvawellnessja.com. If you want to become a sponsor please email forpodcast.y8rf3@passmail.netCONTACT DR. ANDRE:Send me a WhatsApp message or voice note at +1 (876) 405-7831 or send an email to forpodcast.y8rf3@passmail.netBOOK A VIDEO CONSULTATION with Dr. Andre:www.teshuvawellnessja.com/consultationSOCIAL MEDIA:@wellnessdocjamaica
In this engaging episode of the Healthy Reasonings podcast, Dr. Andre Williams dives deep into the fascinating connections between dental health and overall well-being. Despite not being a dentist, Dr. Andre, an integrative oncologist, explores how dental issues can impact various aspects of health, including chronic diseases and autoimmune disorders. He shares compelling stories from his practice, demonstrating the profound health improvements seen by addressing dental concerns. This episode also introduces the concept of vital reflex scans, a technique Dr. Andre uses to identify health issues through reflex responses. Join Dr. Andre for this enlightening discussion and discover why maintaining good dental health is crucial for your overall wellness.SPONSORS:Teshuva Wellness is our sponsor for this episode. Visit them atwww.teshuvawellnessja.com. If you want to become a sponsor please email forpodcast.y8rf3@passmail.netCONTACT DR. ANDRE:Send me a WhatsApp message or voice note at +1 (876) 405-7831 or send an email to forpodcast.y8rf3@passmail.netBOOK A VIDEO CONSULTATION with Dr. Andre:www.teshuvawellnessja.com/consultationSOCIAL MEDIA:@wellnessdocjamaica
Selección de Rock’n’Roll con aderezo soulero. Play it loud!!Playlist;(sintonía) THE SATANS PILGRIMS “Soul pilgrim”THE RAUNCH HANDS “Chicken scratch”THE LOST CRUSADERS “Downward road”THE MEOWS “Sugar woman”LOS CHICOS “Treat her right”KING KHAN and THE SHRINES “Land of the freak”THE FUZZTONES “99th floor”MITCH RYDER and THE DETROIT WHEELS “I’d rather go to jail”GENTLEMEN’S AGREEMENTS “Sock it to me baby”IGGY POP “Pleasure”THE SAINTS “Know your product”THE WOGGLES “Big bird”THE FLESHTONES “I surrender”ANDRE WILLIAMS “I ain’t guilty”HEAVY TRASH “Lover street”THE SOLUTION “Get on back”SCOTT MORGAN “Mom, Scott’s smoking”SOUTHERN CULTURE ON THE SKIDS “Soulfull garage”RAMONES “Time has come today”Escuchar audio
In this episode of the Healthy Reasonings Podcast, Dr. Andre Williams, an integrative oncologist, shares invaluable insights on how to support a loved one, friend, or family member diagnosed with cancer. With nearly 19 years of experience in cancer care, Dr. Andre discusses the emotional, financial, and practical aspects of providing support. He emphasizes the importance of managing one's own emotions, offering appropriate help, and avoiding the common mistake of imposing personal preferences on the patient. Tune in for success stories, educational topics, and a deep dive into the often overlooked part of the cancer journey.SPONSORS:Teshuva Wellness is our sponsor for this episode. Visit them atwww.teshuvawellnessja.com. If you want to become a sponsor please email forpodcast.y8rf3@passmail.netCONTACT DR. ANDRE:Send me a WhatsApp message or voice note at +1 (876) 405-7831 or send an email to forpodcast.y8rf3@passmail.netBOOK A VIDEO CONSULTATION with Dr. Andre:www.teshuvawellnessja.com/consultationSOCIAL MEDIA:@wellnessdocjamaicaRECOMMENDED READING:• Holistic Cancer Medicine by Dr. Henning Saupe (please note that some of these are Amazon affiliate links, so we make a few cents from every purchase.)The Healthy Reasonings Podcast is a production of Lot 390 Publishing(JACAP).Copyright©2025. All Rights Reserved.
In this episode of the Healthy Reasonings Podcast, Dr. Andre Williams, an integrative oncologist, delves into a comprehensive discussion on breast cancer. He emphasizes the importance of a holistic approach to cancer treatment, which includes destroying cancer cells, providing nutrition and repair, detoxifying the body, and addressing emotional and spiritual health. Dr. Andre shares powerful patient stories, highlighting the impact of emotional healing on cancer recovery. He also discusses the limitations of conventional treatments and the necessity of a balanced approach for effective cancer care.SPONSORS:Teshuva Wellness is our sponsor for this episode. Visit them atwww.teshuvawellnessja.com. If you want to become a sponsor please email forpodcast.y8rf3@passmail.netCONTACT DR. ANDRE:Send me a WhatsApp message or voice note at +1 (876) 405-7831 or send an email to forpodcast.y8rf3@passmail.netBOOK A VIDEO CONSULTATION with Dr. Andre:www.teshuvawellnessja.com/consultationSOCIAL MEDIA:@wellnessdocjamaicaRECOMMENDED READING:• Holistic Cancer Medicine by Dr. Henning Saupe (please note that some of these are Amazon affiliate links, so we make a few cents from every purchase.)The Healthy Reasonings Podcast is a production of Lot 390 Publishing(JACAP).Copyright©2025. All Rights Reserved.
Join Larry this week for a spotlight on Andre Williams, a set of jazz funk and a whole lot of classic soul!For more info and tracklisting, visit: https://thefaceradio.com/funky-16-corners/Tune into new broadcasts of Funky 16 Corners, LIVE, Mondays from 8 - 9 PM EST / 1 - 2 AM GMT (Tuesday).//Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Join the family at https://plus.acast.com/s/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
You can follow 'The Perfectionist' Andre Williams on Instagram @andrewilliamswrestling. YouTube video link: https://youtu.be/R2xy-RfJgNQ YouTube: youtube.com/c/GeorgeBukaWDYCIPodcast Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/5z2U45OagymjgUsQE2Jbrw Instagram: whatdoyoucallitpodcast
In this episode, Steve chats with former NFL running back Andre Williams.
Send us a textBob and Lisa the driving force behind The BellRays stop by to talk about their musical journey, touring, and their latest album, Heavy Steady Go.***Bob and Lisa Kekaula made The BellRays happen in 1990 in Riverside, California but they weren't really thinking about any of this then. They wanted to play music and they wanted it to feel good. They wanted people to WANT to get up, to NEED to get up and check out what was going on. Form an opinion. React.So they took everything they knew about; the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, the Who, the Ramones Billie Holiday, Lou Rawls, Hank Williams, the DB's, Jimmy Reed, and Led Zeppelin (to name a very few to whom “BLUES IS THE TEACHER”) and pressed it into service.Those bands and artists have since become “buzz words”, things to imitate and sound like. That was never The BellRays intention. The BellRays were never about coming up with a “sound”, or fitting in with a scene. It was about the energy that made all that music so irresistible. The BellRays' influences learned from the Blues and then learned how to make it their own. The Beatles wanted to play R&B, converted that energy, and invented “Rubber Soul”. The Ramones were trying to be Del Shannon or Neil Sedaka and out came “Rocket to Russia”.It's an organic trail that flows through Bob and Lisa and the current rhythm section of Pablo Rodas (Lisa and the Lips, Alber Solo) on bass and Craig Waters (Countdowns, Andre Williams, Cody Chestnut) on drums, and comes out honest and urgent. You will learn and you will feel. Blues is always teaching and Punk is always preaching.For more information go to their website: https://thebellrays.com/****If you would like to contact the show about being a guest please email us at Dauna@bettertopodcast.comThis episode is on YouTube:https://youtu.be/19BYiRDY42E Follow us on Social MediaInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/author_d.m.needom/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bettertopodcastwithdmneedomHave a question or want to be a guest on the podcast email: dauna@bettertopodcast.comAudio production by Rich Zei of Third Ear AudioIntro and Outro music compliments of Fast SuziUpcoming guests: https://www.dmneedom.com/better-topodcast©2024 Better To...Podcast with D. M.NeedomSupport the showSupport the show
Hey Girlies! OMG we have a very special guest on the pod this week! We are so excited to have our friend Andre Williams chat with us about his time touring as a standby in Come From Away and what has changed for him now since he's been (spoiler alert!) promoted to full-time playing company. Before we jump in with Andre, the girls recap their last week on tour including a little race recap from their run in Calgary. Be sure to follow Andre at @andreewilliamss on both Instagram and Tik Tok! Instagram: @girlsontourpod Email: girlsontourpod@gmail.com
Today on Integrative Cancer Solution Dr. Karlfeldt is joined by Dr. Andre Williams as he shares his journey from when he started in medical oncology and hematology, fields he seemed destined to succeed given his academic achievements and early recognition, including an award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology. However, despite the accolades and opportunities, he grew increasingly disillusioned with the impact he was making, particularly in his home country of Jamaica. Many patients could not afford or trust the chemotherapy treatments they prescribed, leaving Dr. Williams feeling like he was offering a solution that was both financially and emotionally taxing for patients, with questionable outcomes. This realization made him question the conventional path he was on, sparking an internal conflict about whether they were truly helping people in the best way.The doctor faced a challenging decision early in their career, choosing to stop administering chemotherapy directly in order to focus on supporting patients who had either refused chemotherapy or were not eligible for it. To maintain transparency, they sent letters to their oncology colleagues asking to only refer patients in such situations, though the response was limited. This decision led to difficult conversations with patients who presented with conditions that urgently required chemotherapy or surgery, despite their reluctance, as the doctor felt a responsibility to direct them toward the best possible treatment options.Dr. Williams also shared a poignant experience about a patient with a large breast tumor who initially resisted chemotherapy due to personal turmoil. After advising the patient to leave her abusive relationship, she returned a changed person, ready to undergo treatment, which underscored the importance of addressing underlying life stressors for effective healing. The story highlighted his belief that true healing requires a holistic approach, one that not only treats the body but also brings the patient's life into balance to support recovery.The shift in treatment strategy involved halting the automatic administration of chemotherapy, allowing for more personalized patient care where only those who either opted out or were ineligible for the treatment would be considered. Despite facing opposition, the focus remained on providing tailored recommendations that balanced patient preferences with medical responsibility, ensuring the best course of action for each individual.The transition from a traditional oncology career to alternative therapies was driven by the desire to make a more meaningful impact on patients' lives, particularly in underserved communities.After discovering the Gerson Therapy, shifted focus to holistic cancer treatments, emphasizing the importance of nutrition, detoxification, and emotional well-being in patient care.The decision to stop administering chemotherapy allowed for a more transparent and personalized approach to patient care, ensuring that only those who opted out or were ineligible for chemotherapy would be treated.Despite opposition from both sides, the focus remained on recommending the best course of action for each patient, balancing individual preferences with medical integrity and responsibility.Check out Teshuva Wellness https://www.teshuvawellnessja.com/----Grab my book A Better Way to Treat Cancer: A Comprehensive Guide to Understanding, Preventing and Most Effectively Treating Our Biggest Health Threat - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CM1KKD9X?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860 ----Integrative Cancer Solutions was created to instill hope and empowerment. Other people have been where you are right now and have already done the research for you. Listen to their stories and journeys and apply what they learned to achieve similar outcomes as they have, cancer remission and an even more fullness of life than before the diagnosis. Guests will discuss what therapies, supplements, and practitioners they relied on to beat cancer. Once diagnosed, time is of the essence. This podcast will dramatically reduce your learning curve as you search for your own solution to cancer. To learn more about the cutting-edge integrative cancer therapies Dr. Karlfeldt offer at his center, please visit www.TheKarlfeldtCenter.com
De las valijas del sello Norton Records extraemos el material para esta sesión e rocknroll y R&B de espíritu alocado y cavernario. La última sesión quitapenas de la temporada. A disfrutar. Playlist; THE READYMEN “Shortnin’ bread” BUNKER HILL “The girl can’t dance” SCREAMIN’ JOE NEAL “Rock and Roll deacon” DON COVAY “Switchin’ in the kitchen” KID THOMAS “Rockin’ this joint to-nite” ESQUERITA “Rockin’ the joint” DOUG SHAM “Slow down” THE 5678’S “Harlem shuffle” THE LIMP “Incredible kings” TRIUMPHS “Surfside date” THE SABRES “My hot mama” HERBIE DUNCAN “Hot lips baby” DALE HAWKINS “Number nine train” DARYL BRITT and THE BLUE JEANS “Lover lover” JOHNNY POWERS and THE A-BONES “New spark” DANNY ZELLA “Sapphire” ANDRE WILLIAMS “The monkey speaks his mind” JOHNNY CLARK “Jungle stomp” SHADES OF KNIGHT “Fluctuation” MONACLES “I can’t win” QUESTION MARK AND THE MYSTERIANS “Are you for real” THE ALARM CLOCKS “Marie” SCREAMIN’ JAY HAWKINS “I hear voices” LINK WRAY “Vendetta”Escuchar audio
Send us a Text Message.Singles Going Around- Forever ChangesThe Raconteurs- "A House Is Not A Motel"The Go- "Summer Sun Blues"Jack White- "Ice Station Zebra"The Henchmen- "Psycho Daises"The 5.6.7.8's- "Great Balls Of Fire"The Dead Weather- "A Child Of A Few Hours Is Burning To Death"Jack White- "Don't Hurt Yourself/Ball & Biscuit/Jesus Is Coming Soon"Two Star Tabernacle- "Itchy"The Raconteurs- "Sunday Driver" (Vault 45)Jack White & The Bricks- "I Can't Wait"The White Stripes- "Cannon/John The Revelator/Grinnin In Your Face" (Gold Dollar III)Jack White- "What's The Trick"The Go- "Meet Me At The Movies" (Demo)Two Star Tabernacle & Andre Williams- "The Big Three Killed My Baby"The Henchmen- "Some Other Guy"Jack White- "Hi-De-Ho"The Go- "But You Don't Know"
Preparamos esta ensalada de RnR con unas cuantas canciones inspiradas o vinculadas a Detroit. La Ciudad del Motor fue durante décadas uno de los puntos más calientes en el rocknroll estadounidense, una ciudad que posee en su ADN un extra de energía, con un sonido y una actitud alimentados por un combustible de alto octanaje que hizo que muchos grupos y artistas quedasen marcados por su esencia. Suenan grupos locales, pero también bandas y artistas de otros lugares que dedicaron canciones a esa ciudad.Playlist;(sintonía) DAVIE ALLAN and THE ARROWS “Another cycle in Detroit”ANDRE WILLIAMS “Detroit Michigan”SOUNDS INCORPORATED “Detroit”NIKKI CORVETTE and THE STINGRAYS “Back to Detroit”BLONDIE “Detroit 442”FATS DOMINO “Detroit City Blues”JOHN LEE HOOKER “The motor city is burning”DETROIT featuring MITCH RYDER “Rock’n’Roll”THE ROCKETS “Born in Detroit”THE GORIES “Detroit breakdown”THE DIRTBOMBS “Broke in Detroit again”KISS “Detroit Rock City”RADIO BIRDMAN “Murder City nights”DAVID BOWIE “Panic in Detroit”PRIMAL SCREAM “Detroit”TOM JONES “Detroit City”WAYNE KRAMER “Back to Detroit”Escuchar audio
A GOOD FIT: Two women visit a coffee shop. One is there for a job interview. The other for a blind date. Unfortunately, they accidentally sit at the wrong tables. Romantic comedy. Written by Jaclyn Stiller Directed by Jonathan Cook Performed by Marian Thibodeau as "Tessa", Amy Thorne as "Shannon", Sol Baird as "Jon", & Andre Williams as "John". Intro/Outro music: JK/47 About the writer: Jaclyn Stiller is an actor, director, and playwright based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her plays have been performed in festivals including Gather by the Ghost Light's Off-Broad Street Play Festival, Lakeshore Players 10-Minute Play Festival, and the Minnesota Shorts Festival. In addition to writing, she has performed throughout the Midwest for several years. When not working on her next theatrical project, she works professionally as a medical device engineer. You can watch the full video of this episode at https://www.youtube.com/@GatherbytheGhostLight Gather by the Ghost Light merch is available at www.ghostlightpubs.com (Ghost Light Publications) If you would like to further support this podcast, please visit Gather by the Ghost Light is increasing public knowledge of emerging writers and actors (buymeacoffee.com) If you enjoy this podcast, please please please leave a rating on your preferred podcast app! For more info or if you wish to contact us, please visit www.gatherbytheghostlight.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Round 1 (12th): Odell Beckham Jr., WR, LSUOdell Beckham Jr. quickly established himself as the second-best wide receiver in Giants history and the most explosive. Named Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2014, he averaged 108.8 yards per game. Over five seasons with the Giants, Beckham played in 56 games, catching 390 passes for 5,476 yards and 44 touchdowns. He earned three Pro Bowl selections and two Second-Team All-Pro honors. Since leaving the Giants, Beckham has played 51 games with the Browns, Rams, and Ravens, totaling 176 catches, 2,456 yards, and 15 touchdowns. He recently signed with the Dolphins.Round 2 (43rd): Weston Richburg, C, Colorado StateRichburg played 51 games, including 50 starts, in four seasons with the Giants. He later signed with the 49ers but retired in 2019 at 28 years old after hip surgery. He now resides on a ranch outside of Bowie with his wife and son.Round 3 (74th): Jay Bromley, DT, SyracuseHailing from Queens, Bromley overcame significant personal challenges, including a troubled family background. During his four seasons with the Giants, he played 55 games, starting 4, and recorded 80 tackles, 2 sacks, 8 tackles for loss, and 14 quarterback hits. Bromley had a brief stint with the Saints in 2018 and the DC Defenders in 2019. He now runs the Bromley Football Academy in the New Jersey/New York area, focusing on training defensive linemen and linebackers.Round 4 (113th): Andre Williams, RB, Boston CollegeBorn in Poughkeepsie, NY, Williams played 32 games in two seasons with the Giants, rushing for 978 yards and 8 touchdowns. He later played with the Chargers and the Houston Roughnecks of the XFL. Williams is now a self-described serial entrepreneur, living in the Lehigh Valley area of PA, and owns two denim companies, AW Selvedge and DKShin.Round 5 (152nd): Nat Berhe, S, San Diego StateBerhe played 38 games over four seasons with the Giants, though he missed the 2015 season due to a blood clot in his calf. He later joined the Steelers in 2018. Berhe, the first NFL player of Eritrean descent, is now an investor and painter, selling his work through the Nat Berhe Gallery and seeking acting roles on Backstage.Round 5 (174th, compensatory): Devon Kennard, LB, USCKennard played 52 games with the Giants, recording 203 tackles and 9.5 sacks. He later played for the Lions, Cardinals, and Ravens, retiring in 2023. Kennard is also a published author, real estate investor, speaker, and owner of the lending company 42 Solutions.Round 6 (187th): Bennett Jackson, CB, Notre DameFrom Hazlet, NJ, Jackson was initially placed on the practice squad and later converted to safety. He suffered an ACL tear in 2015 and was eventually released by the Giants. Jackson had stints with the Ravens and Jets, ending his career with 10 games played. He now works as a manager for Momentum Solar and is involved in youth camps and training high school athletes.Support the Show.All Episodes are shot LIVE with fan interactions on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, & TwitchSponsor the show at: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/2giantgoofballsInterested in starting a podcast. We recommend using buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/?referrer_id=2012368
Picoteamos en las compilaciones Born Bad, recopilatorios piratas lanzados a mediados de los 80 y construídos con muchas de las canciones que inspiraron e influenciaron al grupo The Cramps y a las emergentes bandas del psychobilly. Grupos y artistas que por sonido, temática o actitud eran mal vistos según los cánones de su tiempo. Chicos y chicas malas, ya sabes.Playlist;(sintonía) LINK WRAY and HIS RAY MEN “Fat back”DWIGHT PULLEN “Sunglasses after dark”WARREN SMITH “Uranium rock”ROY ORBISON “Domino”MEL ROBBINS “Save it”RONNIE DAWSON “Rockin’ bones”GLEN GLENN “Everybody’s movin’”WANDA JACKSON “Funnel of love”RONNIE COCK and THE GAYLADS “Goo goo muck”THE PHANTOM “Love me”JIMMY LLOYD “Rocket in my pocket”JIMMY STEWART “Rock on the moon”HASIL ADKINS “She said”DALE HAWKINS “Tornado”CHARLIE FEATHERS “I can’t hardly stand it”JODY REYNOLDS “Fire of love”LITTLE WILLIE JOHN “Fever”ANDRE WILLIAMS “Jail bait”ANDY STARR “Give me a woman”JACK SCOTT “The way I walk”DAVE “DIDDLEY” DAY “Blue moon baby”RICKY NELSON “Lonesome town”Escuchar audio
Menudo rollazo de programa nos ha quedado. Si no sabes qué hacer aquí te dejamos este tedioso episodio lleno de punk rockers aburridos.Playlist;(sintonía) IGGY POP “I’m bored”KAKA DE LUXE “Pero me aburro”THE MR T EXPERIENCE “I wanna be sedated”THE DICTATORS “I just wanna have something to do”RAMONES “Sittin’ in my room”BUZZCOCKS “Boredom”THE ADVERTS “Bored teenagers”THE CUTE LEPERS “Terminal boredom”CYANIDE PILLS “Still bored”LE LULLIES “Bored, sick, done”GG ALLIN and THE JABBERS “Bored to death”ZERO BOYS “I’m bored”GREEN DAY “Longview”OUTTACONTROLLER “I wanna be bored”THE DAMNED “I’m so bored”DEAD BOYS “Ain’t nothing to do”ANDRE WILLIAMS and THE SADIES “Bored”MOTORHEAD “Don’t waste your time”MING CITY ROCKERS “All I wanna do is waste my time do”UNDERTONES “Teenage kicks”THE BARRACUDAS “What you want is what you get”WHALE “Now I wanna sniff some glue”TELEVISION PERSONALITIES “Diary of a young man”Escuchar audio
Christopher & Jobst im Gespräch mit Sévérine. Wir reden über Erogene Zone, Toy Parties, Mini-Vibrator in Lippenstift, Ronja Räubertochter, 1980 war Punk in Berlin allgegenwärtig, gechlorte Hose & Doc Martens, Festivals im Tempodrom, Friedensdemos, im Herzen Skinhead, mit den Hammerhead-Typen unter einer New Wave-Decke stecken können, zwei Mal Togo, der größte Fetischmarkt in Lomé, Schnaps & Blut, prächtige Perlenverkäuferin, potentielle Voodo-Erlebnisse im Kongo, Psychobilly & Ska, ein Ticket fürs Demented Are Go-Konzert, ein Festival mit Ärzte, Jingo & Biohazard, endlich keine Schule mehr, das Crash in Freiburg, Sven Väths Omen, entspannte Wave-Abende vs. aufgepeitsche Hardcore-Shows, Ausbildung zur Damenschneiderin, ein Maßanzug aus Nord-Korea, zu viele Klamotten auf der Welt, mit Lack & Leder experimentieren, Nähkurs in der VHS, eine Praktikum bei einer Modedesignerin in Südafrika, arbeitslos & Spaß dabei, erstmal ausschlafen, der Slow Club Freiburg, ein Verein für notwendige kulturelle Maßnahmen, Andre Williams, Vereinsgedöns, die Freiburger Musiklandschaft diverser gestalten, der Salon Riot, abstruse Argumente gegen Flinta-Bands, die Arbeit vom Here and Black Freiburg, wie ein Fisch im Wasser, professionelle Fotografie, zwei Videos für Das Blanke Extrem, Tutorials wälzen, großer Fan der VHS, die eigene Handschrift, Bling Bling Mode, Portraits von Friedrich Merz, Unwissenheit über Packer, der Abbau von Scham, endlich mal ein Werbeblock, im Mittelmeer unterwegs mit Mission Lifeline & r42, in die SAR Zone fahren, Emotionen während der Seenotrettung, Lords of Altamont, eine kurze Karriere bei Wör, uvm. Neu auf der Empfehlungsplaylist: 1) Lieblingssong aus der Schulzeit: Madonna - Into The Groove 2) Liebster Punk-Song: Hans-A-Plast - Lederhosentyp 3) Liebster französischsprachiger Song: Decibelles - Qu'est-ce t'as
Sesión de baile ininterrumpida con material procedente de la colección de discos favoritos de Lux Interior y Poison Ivy, la pareja que lideró el grupo The Cramps, auténticos devoradores de música de los años 50 y 60, siempre en busca de lo más salvaje, lo más bizarro, lo más sorprendente y rompedor. A disfrutar. Playlist;MARVIN and JOHNNY “Vip Vop”CHARLIE FEATHERS “The certain female”THE ORIGINAL STARFIRES “Fender bender”JOE CLAY “Did you mean Jelly Bean”BETTY McQUADE “Blue train”YOUNG JESSE “Lonesome desert”ANDRE WILLIAMS with THE DON JUANS “Pulling time”SPARKLE MOORE “Tiger”THE VOCALEERS “Cootie snap”THE TOKENS “Bwanina (pretty girl)”ANDRE WILLIAMS “The greasy chicken”KAY MARTIN “Swamp girl”THE GREY STOKES “The legend of Tarzan”AMERICAN TEENS “Shake baby shake”RICK McGUIRE “Space craze”THE STRIKES “If you can’t rock me”BUDDY MILLER “Teen twist”THE TIDES “Midnight limbo”HOMER DENNISON Jr “March slav boogie”CHAINO “The pigmy song (tikky tikky boom boom)”RUDY THACKER and THE STRING BUSTERS “Black train”STACY BENGAL “I come to demolish Cleveland”JACK CONSTANZO “Catwalk”THE VISCOUNTS “Harlem nocturne”KAY MARTIN “The heel”Escuchar audio
Sintonía: "My Girlfriend" - Guttermouth"Olympia, WA" - NOFX; "Addicts of Communication" - Randy; "Hooray For Me" - Pulley; "God Knows" - Beatsteaks; "The Defense" - Bad Religion; "Bob" - Rancid; "Up For Sale" - The (International) Noise Conspiracy y "Heroes From Our Past" - Dropkick Murphys, extraídas de la recopilación "Punk-O-Rama Vol. 7" (Epitaph Records -Amsterdam-, 2002)"I Can´t Stop Thinking About It" - The Dirtbombs; "Trails Fears" - Lost Sounds; "Shapes of Venus" - Clone Defects; "Do You Wanna Scratch It?" - Speedball Baby; "I Wanna Be Your Favourite Pair Of Pajamas" - Andre Williams; "Shirt Jac Train #3" - The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion; "That´s Alright With Me" - Knoxville Girls y "Drag Pow Wow Drag" - The Necessary Evils, extraídas de la recopilación "Static Disaster: The U.K. In The Red Records Sampler" (In The Red Records, UK 2005)Escuchar audio
Sesión ininterrumpida desde nuestro club de baile del subsuelo, confeccionada con discos -más o menos- recientes. Playlist;MFC CHICKEN “Spy wail”BARRENCE WHITFIELD and THE SAVAGES “Rock and Roll baby”LOS TSUNAMIS “Sabadaba”THE MAHARAJAS “Bad boy”BLOODSHOT BILL “I’m a Ding Dong”DAN SARTAIN “Moonlight swim”BLACK LIPS “Rumbler”DOCTOR EXPLOSION “Paleto”ROB HERON and THE TEA PAD ORCHESTRA “She hypnotised me”ANDRE WILLIAMS and THE SADIES “One-eyed Jack”HEAVY TRASH “Lover street”MARCEL BONTEMPI “Cat man”REVEREND BEAT MAN and THE NEW WAVE “If I knew”JONATHAN TYLER “Magic Sam’s boogie”DADDY LONG LEGS “Ding Dong Dang”LOS CHICOS “How you like it”KATE CLOVER “Love you to death”MOTOR GIRL “Oh Jacky take a ride”THE LEN PRICE 3 “Swing like a monkey”THE FLESHTONES “Mi engañaste bien”THE WOGGLES “Big bird”Escuchar audio
On this week;s edition od Vinyl Fridays Bandon is left alone in the studio. This is never a good idea becuase he gets ideas that never translate into a cohesive set of music. On this episode you will hear The Grateful Dead, Neu, Cluster, Kraftwerk, Giorgio Moroder, Los Wakamonos, Andre Williams, Kool and The Gang, Dominitrix Sleeps Tonight, Art of Noise and more. Main Theme song: Apache by Jorgan Ingmann Instagram: @birp60406 Facebook: @blueislandradio Twitter: @birp60406 Patreon: patreon.com/blueislandradio
Glen Matlock tiene nuevo álbum. Excusa perfecta para picotear en el legado del bajista fundador de Sex Pistols tras su breve andadura con la legendaria banda del punk británico. En el Proyecto Sonny Vincent and Spite coincidió con Steve Mackay. Este saxofonista, recordado especialmente por su aportación al álbum “Fun house” de The Stooges, es el segundo protagonista del episodio de hoy. Playlist; (sintonía) SEX PISTOLS “No feelings” (instrumental, 1976) SEX PISTOLS “Pretty vacant” (Nevermind the bollocks, 1977) RICH KIDS “Bullet proof lovers” (Ghosts of Princes in Towers, 1978) IGGY POP “Ambition” (Soldier, 1980) GLEN MATLOCK “Apparently” (Who's He Think He Is When He's At Home?, 1996) GLEN MATLOCK “Head on a stick” (Consequences Coming', 2023) SONNY VINCENT and SPITE “Wait” (Spiteful, 2014) SONNY VINCENT and SPITE “Disinterested” (Spiteful, 2014) THE STOOGES “Fun House” (Fun House, 1970) COMMANDER CODY featuring STEVE MACKAY “Go to hell” (Lose It Tonight, 1980) VIOLENT FEMMES featuring STEVE MACKAY “I held her in my arms” (The Blind Leading The Naked, 1986) ANDRE WILLIAMS “Shake a tailfeather” (The black godfather, 2000) BLUE PROSTITUTES and STEVE MACKAY “Song for Bagdhad” (The Blue Prostitutes with Steve Mackay, 2013) SPEEDBALL JR featuring STEVE MACKAY “Loose” (7’’, 2014) Escuchar audio
Sad Boys For Real! Atlanta artist, Trub, comes through & discusses his recent single with Project Pat hitting 3 million views, working with Juicy J, his struggles with anxiety, and the fear of the things he'll be missing being 100 percent locked in on music. In the song, "Rich," August Alsina sings, "Am I wrong for wanting better / Should I just settle forever? / Ooh, I swear it feels like / This is as good as it gets." These are questions we all ask as not only creatives, but as people. We strive to have the things we've never had; however, in the midst of it all we lose sight of what's important. Unfortunately, we forget to cherish what we do have in our families & current living situations... TRUB reflects on this by discussing how he can potentially miss out on having a family. However, the reverse being possibly missing out on sharign his story with the world by stopping music early. Leading us to reflect on, "the things we'll never have..." Also discussed, building relationship with Andre Williams (grammy award winning A&R), where his anxiety stems from, how Project Pat has taught him to be a better man.
Singles Going Around- Summer Volume TwoChan Romero- "The Hippy Hippy Shake"Johnny Otis- "Willie and the Hand Jive"Elvis Presley- "Good Rockin' Tonight"Roy Orbison- "Ooby Dooby"Dale Hawkins- "Tornado"Tommy James and the Shondells- "Hanky Panky"Jerry Lee Lewis- "Jambalaya"Cruisers- "Betty Ann"Carl Newman- "Tom Tom"Link Wray-"Slinky"Johnny Cash & The Tennessee Two- "Luther Played The Boogie"Carl Perkins- "Matchbox"Billy Riley- "Flying Saucers Rock and Roll"Andre Williams- "Bacon Fat"Del Raney's Umbrellas- "Can Your Hassie Do The Dog"Jack Scott- "The Way I Walk"Eddie Cochran- "Twenty Flight Rock"The Champs- Midnighter"Johnny Burnette Trio- "Train Kept A- Rolling"Warren Smith- "Ubangi Stomp"Ronnie Lyn- "Who Doed It?Gene Vincent & His Blue Caps- "Who Slapped John"Sonny Burgess- "Red Headed Woman"Link Wray- "Fat Back"Roy Orbison- "Domino"Dick Dale- "Jessie Pearl"* All selections taken from vinyl, no MP3's or streaming crap.
Nicholas Gonzalez, M.D. treated patients with amazing success for all types of cancers as well as patients with degenerative diseases with his nutritional enzyme treatment based on metabolic typing. Many patients follow The Gonzalez Protocol for general health and wellbeing. Each treatment is individualized for each patient, regardless of the underlying health problem. “The Gonzalez Protocol” consists of three components: diet, supplements (with pancreas product for cancer patients), and detoxification routines. While he has sadly passed away his work Lives On! Mary Beth, his wife and one of the doctors he trained, Andre Williams, M.D. will discuss these components and explain how they can help overcome cancer and disease.
Nicholas Gonzalez, M.D. treated patients with amazing success for all types of cancers as well as patients with degenerative diseases with his nutritional enzyme treatment based on metabolic typing. Many patients follow The Gonzalez Protocol for general health and wellbeing. Each treatment is individualized for each patient, regardless of the underlying health problem. “The Gonzalez Protocol” consists of three components: diet, supplements (with pancreas product for cancer patients), and detoxification routines. While he has sadly passed away his work Lives On! Mary Beth, his wife and one of the doctors he trained, Andre Williams, M.D. will discuss these components and explain how they can help overcome cancer and disease.
Nicholas Gonzalez, M.D. treated patients with amazing success for all types of cancers as well as patients with degenerative diseases with his nutritional enzyme treatment based on metabolic typing. Many patients follow The Gonzalez Protocol for general health and wellbeing. Each treatment is individualized for each patient, regardless of the underlying health problem. “The Gonzalez Protocol” consists of three components: diet, supplements (with pancreas product for cancer patients), and detoxification routines. While he has sadly passed away his work Lives On! Mary Beth, his wife and one of the doctors he trained, Andre Williams, M.D. will discuss these components and explain how they can help overcome cancer and disease.
Esta va por los que no sabían en que se metían y ahí siguen
In this College Deep Dive, Timothy and Charlie discuss: The different degree paths of Cornish College The reason for varying class sizes How are the additional and supplemental videos are used in their admission process If you would like to hear more about Cornish, check out the following places: @cornishtheater https://www.cornish.edu/cornish-programs/theater/ Albert Rubio: arubio@cornish.edu Andre Williams: awilliams@cornish.edu If you have any questions about the college audition process, feel free to reach out at mailbag@mappingthecollegeaudition.com. If you're interested in working with MTCA for help with your individualized preparation for your College Audition journey, please check us out at mtcollegeauditions.com, or on Instagram or Facebook. Follow Us! Instagram: @mappingthecollegeaudition YouTube: @MTCA (Musical Theater College Auditions) TikTok: @mtcollegeauditions Charlie Murphy:@charmur7 Meghan Cordier:@meghanmarie2014 About MTCA: Musical Theater College Auditions (MTCA) is the leader in coaching acting and musical theater students through the college audition process and beyond with superlative results. MTCA has assembled a roster of expert artist-educators who can guide students artistically, organizationally, strategically, and psychologically through the competitive college audition process. MTCA provides the tools, resources, and expertise along with a vast and strong support system. They train the unique individual, empowering the artist to bring their true, authentic self to their work. MTCA believes that by helping students reveal their potential it allows each school to connect with those who are truly right for their programs, which in turn guides each student toward their best college fit. About Charlie Murphy: Charlie is a proud graduate of Carnegie Mellon University's BFA program. As an Actor he has performed with theaters such as: NY Public Theatre's “Shakespeare in the Park”, The Pearl Theatre Company, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Chautauqua Theatre Company, Kinetic Theatre Company, and the Shakespeare Theatre of DC. With MTCA [Musical Theater College Auditions -- mtca.nyc], he has been helping prospective theatre students through the college process for over 15 years. As a Teacher and Director, he is able to do a few of his favorite things in life: help students to find their authentic selves as artists, and then help them find their best fit for their collegiate journey. Through this podcast, he hopes to continue that work as well as help demystify this intricate process. This episode was produced by Meghan Cordier and Charlie Murphy. Episode theme music is created by Will Reynolds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The gift of stepping inside the lives of this season's guests gave me unexpected insight for my own challenges, struggles, and failures. Answers are there when we allow ourselves to listen.·This world is full of landmines for those who have suffered from sexual abuse. Victims No Longer author, Mike Lew and the community of survivors prove that recovery is possible, providing much-needed hope. ·Architect and designer Eve Picker transformed her adopted city of Pittsburgh after bankers refused funding. Clear in her resolve, she went ahead and built the first lofts downtown guided by her commitment to impact investing, restoration, and historic preservation. ·Master woodworker Cecilia Schiller has had to face many unknowns; she reminds us to lean into these dangerously vulnerable places.· Stephanie Slocum, author of She Engineers, inspires us to take advantage of small windows of time. She encourages us to spend time looking inward and reminds us of the value of self-exploration. ·Everything has limitations—even self-reliance. Andre Williams experienced failure for the first time during his transition from high school to collegiate athletics. Having the courage to ask for help moved Andre forward, beyond his own expectations. ·Mary Sullivan realized that fun should be at the cornerstone of creating a sustainable business. This former boutique Hollywood entertainment attorney left her practice - inspired by an obvious need - to co-create the MikeRoweWORKS Foundation.· Life's detours are often the richest part of our journey. Kate Erickson leveraged early career struggles - missed promotions, devastating disappointments, and failures - experiences she now sees as paramount to the success of her world-leading Entrepreneurs On Fire daily business podcast. ·Makoto Fujimura welcomes us into his studio where he practices Nihonga, “slow art” crafted using precious handmade minerals. Mako wrote his book Art & Faith; A Theology of Making, during moments of meditation and prayer—waiting for his paint to dry. ·As we learned from DeeDee Trotter, a three-time Olympic medalist, our gifts and passions are not always aligned. After embracing her gift, this “glitter-faced warrior” turned a career-ending injury into a blueprint for her remarkable success. ·Beatrice Welles, animal rights activist and sole heir of the Orson Welles Estate, reminds us of the alchemy of adversity, the potential building blocks to actualization. Thanks for listening and your support. Continued gratitude to our sound engineer Andy Hollingworth, who gives precious time from his acting and filmmaking. This show would not be possible without the brilliant inspiration and creative insight from producer Ellen Strickler. We are back in the studio. Drop us a note, let us know what stories you would like to hear on the next season of Intrinsic Drive™.
For most of us when we are diagnosed with cancer your stomach turns and a wave of fear and depression comes over you. The oncologist then offers you chemotherapy, radiation and sometimes surgery. But there are other choices, natural medicine choices that have proven safe and effective. Dr Andre Williams an expert in oncology and natural medicine for the treatment of cancer will discuss these methods of cancer treatment.
For most of us when we are diagnosed with cancer your stomach turns and a wave of fear and depression comes over you. The oncologist then offers you chemotherapy, radiation and sometimes surgery. But there are other choices, natural medicine choices that have proven safe and effective. Dr Andre Williams an expert in oncology and natural medicine for the treatment of cancer will discuss these methods of cancer treatment.
For most of us when we are diagnosed with cancer your stomach turns and a wave of fear and depression comes over you. The oncologist then offers you chemotherapy, radiation and sometimes surgery. But there are other choices, natural medicine choices that have proven safe and effective. Dr Andre Williams an expert in oncology and natural medicine for the treatment of cancer will discuss these methods of cancer treatment.
Teshuva Wellness offers top class service to its customers to help them live their best selves. It's boss oncologist Dr. Andre Williams emphasizes that his business is about “a return to the best possible version of yourself…and that's what we seek to do for every person who comes through the door at Teshuva Wellness”.He said too that Jamaica “has the best chance…to influence the cancer landscape in a positive way” with the over 2,000 compounds derived from natural herbs in the country.The oncologist is of the view that Jamaica needs to invest in research and development to maximize its potential “to change the landscape for [cancer treatment] for generations to come”. Dr Williams shares more in this episode of Impacting Jamaica with host Tameka Gordon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
As Andre Williams saw it, there were only two options for men in his family - join the military or become a drug dealer on the streets of his hometown Richmond, Virginia. But sports presented another option – basketball was his first choice – and he wanted to use cross country as conditioning for it. However, he quickly fell in love with his newly adopted sport and showed promise: skyrocketing into national prominence, winning the Virginia State cross country title, setting the course record, and winning the Kinney southeast region cross country championships. This rising star earned a trip on his first-ever flight to San Diego for the National Championships, where he finished 19th—earning All-American honors. He received an athletic scholarship to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill – where he initially struggled academically due to gaps in his earlier education. But Andre began absorbing information - a habit that was reinforced by his daily newspaper reading. This daily literary habit transferred into a curiosity that he maintains to this day. During his collegiate career, he earned All-American honors, was a three-time ACC conference champion, and was team Captain of the two-time ACC Champion Tar Heels track teams. Feeling he had more to give in his sport, he accepted an invitation to join the prestigious Enclave Track Club, a professional running club sponsored by Reebok. After two years of hard work, countless grueling high mileage days and intense track workouts, and finally watching his teammates board their flight to the 1996 Olympic Trials---he considered hanging up his spikes. Andre's coach, former American Record holder Matt Centrowitz urged him to stick with it for one more year. This paid huge dividends; he committed to staying the course and adopted a strength regimen to stabilize his trunk imbalances and began placing more emphasis on flexibility, recovery, and rest. This hard-working warrior from river city was ranked in the top ten in the country from 1997-2001 in the 5,000-meter run, with a personal best of 13:28*. Today this tireless life learner has risen to the top of his field in Information Technology and Mobility for the AT & T corporation. We warmly welcome my longtime friend Andre to this episode of Intrinsic Drive™. *PBST (Pre-Bionic/Boingo Shoe Time)
Her tenure dates back to the earliest days of the Circle Bar. In fact, she likes to say that she came with the building. The former tennis pro and dentist-turned-bartender encountered everyone from Lee Circle winos and touring hipsters to counterculture royalty like Keith Richards and Hunter Thompson. After her time in Austin hanging out with Stevie Ray Vaughn, Bill Hicks, and Sam Kinison and her years as den mother for the circular clubhouse for wayward adults, Caroline is well acquainted with barfly foolishness. It’s just like old times as Caroline joins the Troubled Men. Topics include a hiatus, celebrity spectators, a mayoral recall, Noonie Man, juvenile crime solutions, failing school zones, the Mission District, 2 dominatrices and a priest, Austin in the 1970s, common interests, an Antone’s jam session, Rank & File, a moveable feast, special catering, babysitting Roky Erickson, the Fleur de Lis restaurant, Ben Ellman, a Hank Williams III gig, Kelly Keller, absinthe parties, Jim “the Hound” Marshall, heavy pours, celebrity bartenders, Andre Williams, a close call, Michael Ward’s nighttime circuit, Mike Hurtt, barkeep discretion, and much more. Intro music: "Just Keeps Raining" by Styler/Coman Break Music: "The Analyst" from "Loose Strings" by Carlo Nuccio Outro music: "Sensible Shoes" from "Little Houses in Space" by the Geraniums Support the podcast: Paypal or Venmo Join the Patreon page here. Shop for Troubled Men’s Shirts here. Subscribe, review, and rate (5 stars) on Apple Podcasts or any podcast source. Follow on social media, share with friends, and spread the Troubled Word. Troubled Men Podcast Facebook Troubled Men Podcast Instagram Iguanas Tour Dates René Coman Facebook Caroline Valencia Facebook
Singles Going Around- Red Beans and RiceLink Wray- "Fat Back"Roy Orbison- "Domino"Booker T & The MG's- "Hip Hug- Her"The Rolling Stones- "Carol"Flying Burrito Brothers- "Christine's Tune"SugarBoy Crawford- "Jockomo"Leon Redbone- "Step It Up and Go"Andre Williams- "Bacon Fat"The Muff's- "I'm Here, I'm Not"Cookie & His Cupcakes- "All My Lovin"Johnny Cash- "Nobody"Irma Thomas- "You Ain't Hittin' On Nothin'"Jimmy Liggins- "Drunk"Elvis Presley- "Thats When Your Heartaches Begin"The Rolling Stones- "You Gotta Move"The Third Bardo- "I'm 5 Years Ahead Of My Time"John Lee Hooker- "Let's Talk It Over"Rod Bernard- "New Orleans Jail"Ernie K-Doe- "Taint It The Truth"Booker T & The MG's- "Red Beans & Rice"Woody Guthrie- "Ain't Got No Home In This World Anymore"*All selections taken from vinyl Lp's and 45's.Link Wray- "Fat Back"Roy Orbison- "Domino"Booker T & The MG's- "Hip Hug- Her"The Rolling Stones- "Carol"Flying Burrito Brothers- "Christine's Tune"SugarBoy Crawford- "Jockomo"Leon Redbone- "Step It Up and Go"Andre Williams- "Bacon Fat"The Muff's- "I'm Here, I'm Not"Cookie & His Cupcakes- "All My Lovin"Johnny Cash- "Nobody"Irma Thomas- "You Ain't Hittin' On Nothin'"Jimmy Liggins- "Drunk"Elvis Presley- "Thats When Your Heartaches Begin"The Rolling Stones- "You Gotta Move"The Third Bardo- "I'm 5 Years Ahead Of My Time"John Lee Hooker- "Let's Talk It Over"Rod Bernard- "New Orleans Jail"Ernie K-Doe- "Taint It The Truth"Booker T & The MG's- "Red Beans & Rice"Woody Guthrie- "Ain't Got No Home In This World Anymore"*All selections taken from vinyl Lp's and 45's.
Cocinamos una cuarta y última entrega de estos repasos a la discografía de The Sadies. Sobrevolamos aquí varias curiosidades en el legado de los canadienses, centrándonos en los trabajos que sacaron como banda de acompañamiento de otros insignes artistas. (Foto del podcast por Heather Pollock) Playlist; (sintonía) THE SADIES “The Horseshoe” (Stories of the Rat Fink, 2006) ANDRE WILLIAMS and THE SADIES “Pardon me (I’ve got someone to kill)” (Red dirt, 1999) ANDRE WILLIAMS and THE SADIES “Psycho” (Red dirt, 1999) JON LANGFORD and HIS SADIES “Drugstore” (Mayors of the moon 2003) JON LANGFORD and HIS SADIES “Up to my neck in this” (Mayors of the moon 2003) NEKO CASE and THE SADIES “Wayfaring stranger” (The tigers have spoken, 2004) NEKO CASE and THE SADIES “Make your bed” (The murder ballads EP, 1998) THE SADIES with NEKO CASE “Hold on hold on” (In Concert: Volume One, 2006) JOHN DOE and THE SADIES “It just dawned on me” (Country club, 2009) JOHN DOE and THE SADIES “I still miss someone” (Country club, 2009) ANDRE WILLIAMS and THE SADIES “I gotta get shorty out of jail” (Night and day, 2012) ANDRE WILLIAMS and THE SADIES “One eyed Jack” (Night and day, 2012) GORD DOWNIE and THE SADIES “Budget shoes” (And the conquering Sun, 2014) GORD DOWNIE and THE SADIES “Crater” (And the conquering Sun, 2014) ANDRE WILLIAMS and THE SADIES “I can tell” (Red dirt, 1999) THE GOOD FAMILY “Life passes (and old fires died” (The Good Family álbum, 2013) Escuchar audio
In this episode, we're talking to Mary Knoblock. Mary is a Producer and DJ signed to Andre Williams. She uses the stage name Produced by a Girl as a producer and has created a platform for women in music to share their voice and be heard showcasing their talent and journey as a musician, producer and DJ on her IG page and Podcast show, Produced by a Girl. She has been producing music for a couple of years now and has over 100 songs that she composed in 9 albums composing a discography that combines multiple genres of music into an avant garde soundscape of electronic, ambient, techno, jazz, and classical fugatos. Her sound is universal and has an ear for all genres of music, composing across multiple genres. She also runs her own music management company called Produced By a Girl. She is in the start up phase for her label Produced By a Girl Records and is the CEO and Founder of the Produced by a Girl franchise. She's currently building her company, elevating women in the music industry via her Podcast and working on building a comprehensive set of electronic music. www.simplyhealthyglobalmedia.com --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/simplyreal/message
“For truly great music”, rezaba su slogan. A mediados de los años 50 el sello Fortune Records era ya una institución en la ciudad de Detroit. La disquera fundada por el matrimonio formado por Devora y Jack Brown atraía a decenas de músicos locales, blancos y negros, aportando sonidos de country, rockabilly, R&B, doo wop o early soul. En un edificio de hormigón, ubicado en el 3942 de la Tercera Avenida, tenían su tienda de discos, y en la trastienda un minúsculo estudio de grabación en donde con apenas unos pocos micrófonos dieron forma a un catálogo discográfico marcado por un sonido tan sucio y encrudecido como auténtico y adictivo. Playlist; (sintonía) THE NITE SOUNDS “Cheese cake” ROY HALL “Dirty boogie” ANDRE WILLIAMS with THE DON JUANS “Goin' Down To Tia Juana” ANDRE WILLIAMS “Bacon fat” NOLAN STRONG and THE DIABLOS “If I could be with you tonight” NOLAN STRONG and THE DIABLOS “Mind over matter” PETE DE BREE and THE WANDERERS “Long tall you (from Louisville)” THE HUNT SISTERS “Elvis is rocking again” DELL VAUGHN and THE FORTUNE AIRES “Rock the universe” JIM MYERS and HIS GEMS “Oh baby baby” JIM MYERS and TEX REGAN “Pretty baby rock” JIMMY LEE “You ain’t no good for me” JOHNNY BUCKETT “Let me play with your poodle” ARLANDO KING and THE EARTHQUAKES “Baby only you” DON RADAR and ROY HALL “She sure can rock me” THE PREMIERS “The trap of love” NATHANIEL MAYER “Well I’ve got news (for you)” NATHANIEL MAYER “Work it out” Escuchar audio
Jon Spencer talks about the rise of the HITmakers and their outspoken, noisy, and reflective new album, Spencer Gets It Lit, recalling the sound of Pussy Galore, the end of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, remembering Dallas Good, working with the Sadies, and chaotic studio sessions they shared with Andre Williams, encountering James Brown, future plans, and more! Supported by you on Patreon, Blackbyrd Myoozik, Pizza Trokadero, the Bookshelf, Planet Bean Coffee, and Grandad's Donuts. Support Y.E.S.S. and Black Women United YEG. Follow vish online.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/kreative-kontrol. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Former NFL running back and my friend, Andre Williams, started his own clothing brand after his time playing professional sports. AW Selvedge Denim brings the jeans that are perfect for anyone looking for an athletic fit. - Check out their website: https://donandswagger.com/ - Follow Andre and his brand on Instagram @drewill44 & @awselvedge - Check out my Linktree with all of my social media accounts and articles: https://linktr.ee/andrewkorpan
We have a returning guest, Andre Williams, who you may remember from 4 years ago on an episode called “Alaska n Atlanta”. This time Dre is back without his Alaskan counterpart to talk about his specific experience growing up as a black boy in Decatur and as a black man in the world. We touch on the school to prison pipeline, supportive parents, our changing city, bonnets, traveling while black and so much more!It really has been a pleasure digging deeper with our guests this month and we really appreciate them opening up and sharing some vulnerable shit! Artists Mentioned IG Handles: Miya Bailey @miyabailey Corey Davis @whoiscoreydavis Tuki Carter @tukicarter Paper Frank @paperfrank TALK TO US!! Dre's IG: @happybelateddreChristina's IG: @cdotandrewsBethany's IG: @bethanethedrug IG: @lemonpepperwetpod Twitter & FB: @lemonpepperwetEmail: lemonpepperwetpod@gmail.com
Episode 134 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “In the Midnight Hour", the links between Stax, Atlantic, and Detroit, and the career of Wilson Pickett. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifteen-minute bonus episode available, on "Mercy Mercy" by Don Covay. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Errata I say “After Arthur Alexander had moved on to Monument Records” – I meant to say “Dot Records” here, the label that Alexander moved to *before* Monument. I also misspeak at one point and say "keyboard player Chips Moman", when I mean to say "keyboard player Spooner Oldham". This is correct in the transcript/script, I just misread it. Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by Pickett. The main resource I used for the biographical details of Wilson Pickett was In the Midnight Hour: The Life and Soul of Wilson Pickett. Information about Stax comes primarily from two books: Soulsville USA: The Story of Stax by Rob Bowman, and Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion by Robert Gordon. Country Soul by Charles L Hughes is a great overview of the soul music made in Muscle Shoals, Memphis, and Nashville in the sixties. The episodes of Cocaine and Rhinestones I reference are the ones on Owen Bradley and the Nashville A-Team. And information on the Falcons comes from Marv Goldberg. Pickett's complete Atlantic albums can be found in this excellent ten-CD set. For those who just want the hits, this single-CD compilation is significantly cheaper. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A quick note before I start, just to say that this episode contains some discussion of domestic abuse, drug use, and abuse of employees by their employer, and one mention of an eating disorder. Also, this episode is much longer than normal, because we've got a lot to fit in. Today we're going to move away from Motown, and have a look at a record recorded in the studios of their great rival Stax records, though not released on that label. But the record we're going to look at is from an artist who was a bridge between the Detroit soul of Motown and the southern soul of Stax, an artist who had a foot in both camps, and whose music helped to define soul while also being closer than that of any other soul man to the music made by the white rock musicians of the period. We're going to look at Stax, and Muscle Shoals, and Atlantic Records, and at Wilson Pickett and "In the Midnight Hour" [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett: "In the Midnight Hour"] Wilson Pickett never really had a chance. His father, Wilson senior, was known in Alabama for making moonshine whisky, and spent time in prison for doing just that -- and his young son was the only person he told the location of his still. Eventually, Wilson senior moved to Detroit to start earning more money, leaving his family at home at first. Wilson junior and his mother moved up to Detroit to be with his father, but they had to leave his older siblings in Alabama, and his mother would shuttle between Michigan and Alabama, trying vainly to look after all her children. Eventually, Wilson's mother got pregnant while she was down in Alabama, which broke up his parents' marriage, and Wilson moved back down to Alabama permanently, to live on a farm with his mother. But he never got on with his mother, who was physically abusive to him -- as he himself would later be to his children, and to his partners, and to his bandmates. The one thing that Wilson did enjoy about his life in Alabama was the gospel music, and he became particularly enamoured of two gospel singers, Archie Brownlee of the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi: [Excerpt: The Mississippi Blind Boys, "Will My Jesus Be Waiting?"] And Julius Cheeks of the Sensational Nightingales: [Excerpt: The Sensational Nightingales, "God's World Will Never Pass Away"] Wilson determined to become a gospel singer himself, but he couldn't stand living with his mother in rural Alabama, and decided to move up to be with his father and his father's new girlfriend in Detroit. Once he moved to Detroit, he started attending Northwestern High School, which at the time was also being attended by Norman Whitfield, Florence Ballard, and Melvin Franklin. Pickett also became friendly with Aretha Franklin, though she didn't attend the same school -- she went to school at Northern, with Smokey Robinson -- and he started attending services at New Bethel Church, the church where her father preached. This was partly because Rev. Franklin was one of the most dynamic preachers around, but also because New Bethel Church would regularly feature performances by the most important gospel performers of the time -- Pickett saw the Soul Stirrers perform there, with Sam Cooke singing lead, and of course also saw Aretha singing there. He joined a few gospel groups, first joining one called the Sons of Zion, but he was soon poached by a more successful group, the Violinaires. It was with the Violinaires that he made what is almost certainly his first recording -- a track that was released as a promo single, but never got a wide release at the time: [Excerpt: The Violinaires, "Sign of the Judgement"] The Violinaires were only moderately successful on the gospel circuit, but Pickett was already sure he was destined for bigger things. He had a rivalry with David Ruffin, in particular, constantly mocking Ruffin and saying that he would never amount to anything, while Wilson Pickett was the greatest. But after a while, he realised that gospel wasn't where he was going to make his mark. Partly his change in direction was motivated by financial concern -- he'd physically attacked his father and been kicked out of his home, and he was also married while still a teenager, and had a kid who needed feeding. But also, he was aware of a certain level of hypocrisy among his more religious acquaintances. Aretha Franklin had two kids, aged only sixteen, and her father, the Reverend Franklin, had fathered a child with a twelve-year-old, was having an affair with the gospel singer Clara Ward, and was hanging around blues clubs all the time. Most importantly, he realised that the audiences he was singing to in church on Sunday morning were mostly still drunk from Saturday night. As he later put it "I might as well be singing rock 'n' roll as singing to a drunken audience. I might as well make me some money." And this is where the Falcons came in. The Falcons were a doo-wop group that had been formed by a Black singer, Eddie Floyd, and a white singer, Bob Manardo. They'd both recruited friends, including bass singer Willie Schofield, and after performing locally they'd decided to travel to Chicago to audition for Mercury Records. When they got there, they found that you couldn't audition for Mercury in Chicago, you had to go to New York, but they somehow persuaded the label to sign them anyway -- in part because an integrated group was an unusual thing. They recorded one single for Mercury, produced by Willie Dixon who was moonlighting from Chess: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "Baby That's It"] But then Manardo was drafted, and the group's other white member, Tom Shetler, decided to join up along with him. The group went through some other lineup changes, and ended up as Eddie Floyd, Willie Schofield, Mack Rice, guitarist Lance Finnie, and lead singer Joe Stubbs, brother of Levi. The group released several singles on small labels owned by their manager, before having a big hit with "You're So Fine", the record we heard about them recording last episode: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "You're So Fine"] That made number two on the R&B charts and number seventeen on the pop charts. They recorded several follow-ups, including "Just For Your Love", which made number 26 on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "Just For Your Love"] To give you some idea of just how interrelated all the different small R&B labels were at this point, that was originally recorded and released on Chess records. But as Roquel Davis was at that point working for Chess, he managed to get the rights to reissue it on Anna Records, the label he co-owned with the Gordy sisters -- and the re-released record was distributed by Gone Records, one of George Goldner's labels. The group also started to tour supporting Marv Johnson. But Willie Schofield was becoming dissatisfied. He'd written "You're So Fine", but he'd only made $500 from what he was told was a million-selling record. He realised that in the music business, the real money was on the business side, not the music side, so while staying in the Falcons he decided he was going to go into management too. He found the artist he was going to manage while he was walking to his car, and heard somebody in one of the buildings he passed singing Elmore James' then-current blues hit "The Sky is Crying": [Excerpt: Elmore James, "The Sky is Crying"] The person he heard singing that song, and accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, was of course Wilson Pickett, and Schofield signed him up to a management contract -- and Pickett was eager to sign, knowing that Schofield was a successful performer himself. The intention was at first that Schofield would manage Pickett as a solo performer, but then Joe Stubbs got ideas above his station, and started insisting that the group be called "Joe Stubbs and the Falcons", which put the others' backs up, and soon Stubbs was out of the group. This experience may have been something that his brother later had in mind -- in the late sixties, when Motown started trying to promote groups as Lead Singer and The Group, Levi Stubbs always refused to allow his name to go in front of the Four Tops. So the Falcons were without a lead singer. They tried a few other singers in their circle, including Marvin Gaye, but were turned down. So in desperation, they turned to Pickett. This wasn't a great fit -- the group, other than Schofield, thought that Pickett was "too Black", both in that he had too much gospel in his voice, and literally in that he was darker-skinned than the rest of the group (something that Schofield, as someone who was darker than the rest of the group but less dark than Pickett, took offence at). Pickett, in turn, thought that the Falcons were too poppy, and not really the kind of thing he was at all interested in doing. But they were stuck with each other, and had to make the most of it, even though Pickett's early performances were by all accounts fairly dreadful. He apparently came in in the wrong key on at least one occasion, and another time froze up altogether and couldn't sing. Even when he did sing, and in tune, he had no stage presence, and he later said “I would trip up, fall on the stage and the group would rehearse me in the dressing room after every show. I would get mad, ‘cos I wanted to go out and look at the girls as well! They said, ‘No, you got to rehearse, Oscar.' They called me Oscar. I don't know why they called me Oscar, I didn't like that very much.” Soon, Joe Stubbs was back in the group, and there was talk of the group getting rid of Pickett altogether. But then they went into the studio to record a song that Sam Cooke had written for the group, "Pow! You're in Love". The song had been written for Stubbs to sing, but at the last minute they decided to give Pickett the lead instead: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "Pow! You're in Love"] Pickett was now secure as the group's lead singer, but the group weren't having any success with records. They were, though, becoming a phenomenal live act -- so much so that on one tour, where James Brown was the headliner, Brown tried to have the group kicked off the bill, because he felt that Pickett was stealing his thunder. Eventually, the group's manager set up his own record label, Lu Pine Records, which would become best known as the label that released the first record by the Primettes, who later became the Supremes. Lu Pine released the Falcons' single "I Found a Love", after the group's management had first shopped it round to other labels to try to get them to put it out: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "I Found a Love"] That song, based on the old Pentecostal hymn "Yes Lord", was written by Pickett and Schofield, but the group's manager, Robert West, also managed to get his name on the credits. The backing group, the Ohio Untouchables, would later go on to become better known as The Ohio Players. One of the labels that had turned that record down was Atlantic Records, because Jerry Wexler hadn't heard any hit potential in the song. But then the record started to become successful locally, and Wexler realised his mistake. He got Lu Pine to do a distribution deal with Atlantic, giving Atlantic full rights to the record, and it became a top ten R&B hit. But by this point, Pickett was sick of working with the Falcons, and he'd decided to start trying for a solo career. His first solo single was on the small label Correc-Tone, and was co-produced by Robert Bateman, and featured the Funk Brothers as instrumental backing, and the Primettes on vocals. I've seen some claims that the Andantes are on there too, but I can't make them out -- but I can certainly make out the future Supremes: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Let Me Be Your Boy"] That didn't do anything, and Pickett kept recording with the Falcons for a while, as well as putting out his solo records. But then Willie Schofield got drafted, and the group split up. Their manager hired another group, The Fabulous Playboys, to be a new Falcons group, but in 1964 he got shot in a dispute over the management of Mary Wells, and had to give up working in the music industry. Pickett's next single, which he co-wrote with Robert Bateman and Sonny Schofield, was to be the record that changed his career forever. "If You Need Me" once again featured the Funk Brothers and the Andantes, and was recorded for Correc-Tone: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "If You Need Me"] Jerry Wexler was again given the opportunity to put the record out on Atlantic, and once again decided against it. Instead, he offered to buy the song's publishing, and he got Solomon Burke to record it, in a version produced by Bert Berns: [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "If You Need Me"] Burke wasn't fully aware, when he cut that version, that Wilson Pickett, who was his friend, had recorded his own version. He became aware, though, when Double-L Records, a label co-owned by Lloyd Price, bought the Correc-Tone master and released Pickett's version nationally, at the same time as Burke's version came out. The two men were annoyed that they'd been put into unwitting competition, and so started an unofficial nonaggression pact -- every time Burke was brought into a radio station to promote his record, he'd tell the listeners that he was there to promote Wilson Pickett's new single. Meanwhile, when Pickett went to radio stations, he'd take the opportunity to promote the new record he'd written for his good friend Solomon Burke, which the listeners should definitely check out. The result was that both records became hits -- Pickett's scraped the lower reaches of the R&B top thirty, while Burke, as he was the bigger star, made number two on the R&B chart and got into the pop top forty. Pickett followed it up with a soundalike, "It's Too Late", which managed to make the R&B top ten as there was no competition from Burke. At this point, Jerry Wexler realised that he'd twice had the opportunity to release a record with Wilson Pickett singing, twice he'd turned the chance down, and twice the record had become a hit. He realised that it was probably a good idea to sign Pickett directly to Atlantic and avoid missing out. He did check with Pickett if Pickett was annoyed about the Solomon Burke record -- Pickett's response was "I need the bread", and Wilson Pickett was now an Atlantic artist. This was at the point when Atlantic was in something of a commercial slump -- other than the records Bert Berns was producing for the Drifters and Solomon Burke, they were having no hits, and they were regarded as somewhat old-fashioned, rooted in a version of R&B that still showed its roots in jazz, rather than the new sounds that were taking over the industry in the early sixties. But they were still a bigger label than anything else Pickett had recorded for, and he seized the opportunity to move into the big time. To start with, Atlantic teamed Pickett up with someone who seemed like the perfect collaborator -- Don Covay, a soul singer and songwriter who had his roots in hard R&B and gospel music but had written hits for people like Chubby Checker. The two got together and recorded a song they wrote together, "I'm Gonna Cry (Cry Baby)": [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "I'm Gonna Cry (Cry Baby)"] That did nothing commercially -- and gallingly for Pickett, on the same day, Atlantic released a single Covay had written for himself, "Mercy Mercy", and that ended up going to number one on the R&B chart and making the pop top forty. As "I'm Gonna Cry" didn't work out, Atlantic decided to try to change tack, and paired Pickett with their established hitmaker Bert Berns, and a duet partner, Tami Lyn, for what Pickett would later describe as "one of the weirdest sessions on me I ever heard in my life", a duet on a Mann and Weil song, "Come Home Baby": [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett and Tami Lyn, "Come Home Baby"] Pickett later said of that track, "it didn't sell two records", but while it wasn't a hit, it was very popular among musicians -- a few months later Mick Jagger would produce a cover version of it on Immediate Records, with Ronnie Wood, Keith Richards, and the Georgie Fame brass section backing a couple of unknown singers: [Excerpt: Rod Stewart and P.P. Arnold, "Come Home Baby"] Sadly for Rod Stewart and P.P. Arnold, that didn't get past being issued as a promotional record, and never made it to the shops. Meanwhile, Pickett went out on tour again, substituting on a package tour for Clyde McPhatter, who had to drop out when his sister died. Also on the tour was Pickett's old bandmate from the Falcons, Mack Rice, now performing as Sir Mack Rice, who was promoting a single he'd just released on a small label, which had been produced by Andre Williams. The song had originally been called "Mustang Mama", but Aretha Franklin had suggested he call it "Mustang Sally" instead: [Excerpt: Sir Mack Rice, "Mustang Sally"] Pickett took note of the song, though he didn't record it just yet -- and in the meantime, the song was picked up by the white rock group The Young Rascals, who released their version as the B-side of their number one hit, "Good Lovin'": [Excerpt: The Young Rascals, "Mustang Sally"] Atlantic's problems with having hits weren't only problems with records they made themselves -- they were also having trouble getting any big hits with Stax records. As we discussed in the episode on "Green Onions", Stax were being distributed by Atlantic, and in 1963 they'd had a minor hit with "These Arms of Mine" by Otis Redding: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "These Arms of Mine"] But throughout 1964, while the label had some R&B success with its established stars, it had no real major breakout hits, and it seemed to be floundering a bit -- it wasn't doing as badly as Atlantic itself, but it wasn't doing wonderfully. It wasn't until the end of the year when the label hit on what would become its defining sound, when for the first time Redding collaborated with Stax studio guitarist and producer Steve Cropper on a song: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Mr. Pitiful"] That record would point the way towards Redding's great artistic triumphs of the next couple of years, which we'll look at in a future episode. But it also pointed the way towards a possible future sound for Atlantic. Atlantic had signed a soul duo, Sam & Dave, who were wonderful live performers but who had so far not managed to translate those live performances to record. Jerry Wexler thought that perhaps Steve Cropper could help them do that, and made a suggestion to Jim Stewart at Stax -- Atlantic would loan out Sam & Dave to the label. They'd remain signed to Atlantic, but make their records at Stax studios, and they'd be released as Stax records. Their first single for Stax, "A Place Nobody Can Find", was produced by Cropper, and was written by Stax songwriter Dave Porter: [Excerpt: Sam and Dave, "A Place Nobody Can Find"] That wasn't a hit, but soon Porter would start collaborating with another songwriter, Isaac Hayes, and would write a string of hits for the duo. But in order to formalise the loan-out of Sam and Dave, Atlantic also wanted to formalise their arrangement with Stax. Previously they'd operated on a handshake basis -- Wexler and Stewart had a mutual respect, and they simply agreed that Stax would give Atlantic the option to distribute their stuff. But now they entered into a formal, long-term contract, and for a nominal sum of one dollar, Jim Stewart gave Atlantic the distribution rights to all past Stax records and to all future records they released for the next few years. Or at least, Stewart *thought* that the agreement he was making was formalising the distribution agreement. What the contract actually said -- and Stewart never bothered to have this checked over by an entertainment lawyer, because he trusted Wexler -- was that Stax would, for the sum of one dollar, give Atlantic *permanent ownership* of all their records, in return. The precise wording was "You hereby sell, assign and transfer to us, our successors or assigns, absolutely and forever and without any limitations or restrictions whatever, not specifically set forth herein, the entire right, title and interest in and to each of such masters and to each of the performances embodied thereon." Jerry Wexler would later insist that he had no idea that particular clause was in the contract, and that it had been slipped in there by the lawyers. Jim Stewart still thought of himself as the owner of an independent record label, but without realising it he'd effectively become an employee of Atlantic. Atlantic started to take advantage of this new arrangement by sending other artists down to Memphis to record with the Stax musicians. Unlike Sam and Dave, these would still be released as Atlantic records rather than Stax ones, and Jerry Wexler and Atlantic's engineer Tom Dowd would be involved in the production, but the records would be made by the Stax team. The first artist to benefit from this new arrangement was Wilson Pickett, who had been wanting to work at Stax for a while, being a big fan of Otis Redding in particular. Pickett was teamed up with Steve Cropper, and together they wrote the song that would define Pickett's career. The seeds of "In the Midnight Hour" come from two earlier recordings. One is a line from his record with the Falcons, "I Found a Love": [Excerpt: The Falcons, "I Found a Love"] The other is a line from a record that Clyde McPhatter had made with Billy Ward and the Dominoes back in 1951: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes, "Do Something For Me"] Those lines about a "midnight hour" and "love come tumbling down" were turned into the song that would make Pickett's name, but exactly who did what has been the cause of some disagreement. The official story is that Steve Cropper took those lines and worked with Pickett to write the song, as a straight collaboration. Most of the time, though, Pickett would claim that he'd written the song entirely by himself, and that Cropper had stolen the credit for that and their other credited collaborations. But other times he would admit "He worked with me quite a bit on that one". Floyd Newman, a regular horn player at Stax, would back up Pickett, saying "Every artist that came in here, they'd have their songs all together, but when they leave they had to give up a piece of it, to a certain person. But this person, you couldn't be mad at him, because he didn't own Stax, Jim Stewart owned Stax. And this guy was doing what Jim Stewart told him to do, so you can't be mad at him." But on the other hand, Willie Schofield, who collaborated with Pickett on "I Found a Love", said of writing that "Pickett didn't have any chord pattern. He had a couple of lyrics. I'm working with him, giving him the chord change, the feel of it. Then we're going in the studio and I've gotta show the band how to play it because we didn't have arrangers. That's part of the songwriting. But he didn't understand. He felt he wrote the lyrics so that's it." Given that Cropper didn't take the writing credit on several other records he participated in, that he did have a consistent pattern of making classic hit records, that "In the Midnight Hour" is stylistically utterly different from Pickett's earlier work but very similar to songs like "Mr. Pitiful" cowritten by Cropper, and Pickett's longstanding habit of being dismissive of anyone else's contributions to his success, I think the most likely version of events is that Cropper did have a lot to do with how the song came together, and probably deserves his credit, but we'll never know for sure exactly what went on in their collaboration. Whoever wrote it, "In the Midnight Hour" became one of the all-time classics of soul: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "In the Midnight Hour"] But another factor in making the record a success -- and in helping reinvent the Stax sound -- was actually Jerry Wexler. Wexler had started attending sessions at the Stax studios, and was astonished by how different the recording process was in the South. And Wexler had his own input into the session that produced "In the Midnight Hour". His main suggestion was that rather than play the complicated part that Cropper had come up with, the guitarist should simplify, and just play chords along with Al Jackson's snare drum. Wexler was enthusing about a new dance craze called the Jerk, which had recently been the subject of a hit record by a group called the Larks: [Excerpt: The Larks, "The Jerk"] The Jerk, as Wexler demonstrated it to the bemused musicians, involved accenting the second and fourth beats of the bar, and delaying them very slightly. And this happened to fit very well with the Stax studio sound. The Stax studio was a large room, with quite a lot of reverb, and the musicians played together without using headphones, listening to the room sound. Because of this, to stay in time, Steve Cropper had started taking his cue not just from the sound, but from watching Al Jackson's left hand going to the snare drum. This had led to him playing when he saw Jackson's hand go down on the two and four, rather than when the sound of the snare drum reached his ears -- a tiny, fraction-of-a-second, anticipation of the beat, before everyone would get back in sync on the one of the next bar, as Jackson hit the kick drum. This had in turn evolved into the whole group playing the backbeat with a fractional delay, hitting it a tiny bit late -- as if you're listening to the echo of those beats rather than to the beat itself. If anyone other than utterly exceptional musicians had tried this, it would have ended up as a car crash, but Jackson was one of the best timekeepers in the business, and many musicians would say that at this point in time Steve Cropper was *the* best rhythm guitarist in the world, so instead it gave the performances just enough sense of looseness to make them exciting. This slight delayed backbeat was something the musicians had naturally fallen into doing, but it fit so well with Wexler's conception of the Jerk that they started deliberately exaggerating it -- still only delaying the backbeat minutely, but enough to give the record a very different sound from anything that was out there: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "In the Midnight Hour"] That delayed backbeat sound would become the signature sound of Stax for the next several years, and you will hear it on the run of classic singles they would put out for the next few years by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, Booker T. and the MGs, Eddie Floyd and others. The sound of that beat is given extra emphasis by the utter simplicity of Al Jackson's playing. Jackson had a minimalist drum kit, but played it even more minimally -- other than the occasional fill, he never hit his tom at all, just using the kick drum, snare, and hi-hat -- and the hi-hat was not even miced, with any hi-hat on the actual records just being the result of leakage from the other mics. But that simplicity gave the Stax records a power that almost no other records from the period had: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "In the Midnight Hour"] "In the Midnight Hour" made number one on the R&B charts, and made number twenty-one on the pop charts, instantly turning Pickett from an also-ran into one of the major stars of soul music. The follow-up, a soundalike called "Don't Fight It", also made the top five on the R&B charts. At his next session, Pickett was reunited with his old bandmate Eddie Floyd. Floyd would soon go on to have his own hits at Stax, most notably with "Knock on Wood", but at this point he was working as a staff songwriter at Stax, coming up with songs like "Comfort Me" for Carla Thomas: [Excerpt: Carla Thomas, "Comfort Me"] Floyd had teamed up with Steve Cropper, and they'd been... shall we say, "inspired"... by a hit for the Marvelettes, "Beechwood 45789", written by Marvin Gaye, Gwen Gordy and Mickey Stevenson: [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, "Beechwood 45789"] Cropper and Floyd had come up with their own song, "634-5789", which Pickett recorded, and which became an even bigger hit than "In the Midnight Hour", making number thirteen on the pop charts as well as being Pickett's second R&B number one: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "634-5789"] At the same session, they cut another single. This one was inspired by an old gospel song, "Ninety-Nine and One Half Won't Do", recorded by Sister Rosetta Tharpe among others: [Excerpt: Sister Rosetta Tharpe, "Ninety-Nine and One Half Won't Do"] The song was rewritten by Floyd, Cropper, and Pickett, and was also a moderate R&B hit, though nowhere as big as "634-5789": [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Ninety-Nine and One Half Won't Do"] That would be the last single that Pickett recorded at Stax, though -- though the reasoning has never been quite clear. Pickett was, to put it as mildly as possible, a difficult man to work with, and he seems to have had some kind of falling out with Jim Stewart -- though Stewart always said that the problem was actually that Pickett didn't get on with the musicians. But the musicians disagree, saying they had a good working relationship -- Pickett was often an awful person, but only when drunk, and he was always sober in the studio. It seems likely, actually, that Pickett's move away from the Stax studios was more to do with someone else -- Pickett's friend Don Covay was another Atlantic artist recording at Stax, and Pickett had travelled down with him when Covay had recorded "See Saw" there: [Excerpt: Don Covay, "See Saw"] Everyone involved agreed that Covay was an eccentric personality, and that he rubbed Jim Stewart up the wrong way. There is also a feeling among some that Stewart started to resent the way Stax's sound was being used for Atlantic artists, like he was "giving away" hits, even though Stax's company got the publishing on the songs Cropper was co-writing, and he was being paid for the studio time. Either way, after that session, Atlantic didn't send any of its artists down to Stax, other than Sam & Dave, who Stax regarded as their own artists. Pickett would never again record at Stax, and possibly coincidentally once he stopped writing songs with Steve Cropper he would also never again have a major hit record with a self-penned song. But Jerry Wexler still wanted to keep working in Southern studios, and with Southern musicians, and so he took Pickett to FAME studios, in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. We looked, back in the episode on Arthur Alexander, at the start of FAME studios, but after Arthur Alexander had moved on to Monument Records, Rick Hall had turned FAME into a home for R&B singers looking for crossover success. While Stax employed both Black and white musicians, FAME studios had an all-white rhythm section, with a background in country music, but that had turned out to be absolutely perfect for performers like the soul singer Joe Tex, who had himself started out in country before switching to soul, and who recorded classics like "Hold What You Got" at the studio: [Excerpt: Joe Tex, "Hold What You Got"] That had been released on FAME's record label, and Jerry Wexler had been impressed and had told Rick Hall to call him the next time he thought he had a hit. When Hall did call Wexler, Wexler was annoyed -- Hall phoned him in the middle of a party. But Hall was insistent. "You said to call you next time I've got a hit, and this is a number one". Wexler relented and listened to the record down the phone. This is what he heard: [Excerpt: Percy Sledge, "When a Man Loves a Woman"] Atlantic snapped up "When a Man Loves a Woman" by Percy Sledge, and it went to number one on the pop charts -- the first record from any of the Southern soul studios to do so. In Wexler's eyes, FAME was now the new Stax. Wexler had a bit of culture shock when working at FAME, as it was totally unlike anything he'd experienced before. The records he'd been involved with in New York had been mostly recorded by slumming jazz musicians, very technical players who would read the music from charts, and Stax had had Steve Cropper as de facto musical director, leading the musicians and working out their parts with them. By contrast, the process used at FAME, and at most of the other studios in what Charles Hughes describes as the "country-soul triangle" of Memphis, Muscle Shoals, and Nashville, was the process that had been developed by Owen Bradley and the Nashville A-Team in Nashville (and for a fuller description of this, see the excellent episodes on Bradley and the A-Team in the great country music podcast Cocaine and Rhinestones). The musicians would hear a play through of the song by its writer, or a demo, would note down the chord sequences using the Nashville number system rather than a more detailed score, do a single run-through to get the balance right, and then record. Very few songs required a second take. For Pickett's first session at FAME, and most subsequent ones, the FAME rhythm section of keyboard player Spooner Oldham, guitarist Jimmy Johnson, bass player Junior Lowe and drummer Roger Hawkins was augmented with a few other players -- Memphis guitarists Chips Moman and Tommy Cogbill, and the horn section who'd played on Pickett's Stax records, moonlighting. And for the first track they recorded there, Wexler wanted them to do something that would become a signature trick for Pickett over the next couple of years -- record a soul cover version of a rock cover version of a soul record. Wexler's thinking was that the best way for Pickett to cross over to a white audience was to do songs that were familiar to them from white pop cover versions, but songs that had originated in Pickett's soul style. At the time, as well, the hard backbeat sound on Pickett's hits was one that was more associated with white rock music than with soul, as was the emphasis on rhythm guitar. To modern ears, Pickett's records are almost the definition of soul music, but at the time they were absolutely considered crossover records. And so in the coming months Pickett would record cover versions of Don Covay's "Mercy Mercy", Solomon Burke's "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love", and Irma Thomas' "Time is on My Side", all of which had been previously covered by the Rolling Stones -- and two of which had their publishing owned by Atlantic's publishing subsidiary. For this single, though, he was recording a song which had started out as a gospel-inspired dance song by the R&B singer Chris Kenner: [Excerpt: Chris Kenner, "Land of a Thousand Dances"] That had been a minor hit towards the bottom end of the Hot One Hundred, but it had been taken up by a lot of other musicians, and become one of those songs everyone did as album filler -- Rufus Thomas had done a version at Stax, for example. But then a Chicano garage band called Cannibal and the Headhunters started performing it live, and their singer forgot the lyrics and just started singing "na na na na", giving the song a chorus it hadn't had in its original version. Their version, a fake-live studio recording, made the top thirty: [Excerpt: Cannibal and the Headhunters, "Land of a Thousand Dances"] Pickett's version was drastically rearranged, and included a guitar riff that Chips Moman had come up with, some new lyrics that Pickett introduced, and a bass intro that Jerry Wexler came up with, a run of semiquavers that Junior Lowe found very difficult to play. The musicians spent so long working on that intro that Pickett got annoyed and decided to take charge. He yelled "Come on! One-two-three!" and the horn players, with the kind of intuition that comes from working together for years, hit a chord in unison. He yelled "One-two-three!" again, and they hit another chord, and Lowe went into the bass part. They'd found their intro. They ran through that opening one more time, then recorded a take: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Land of a Thousand Dances"] At this time, FAME was still recording live onto a single-track tape, and so all the mistakes were caught on tape with no opportunity to fix anything, like when all but one of the horn players forget to come in on the first line of one verse: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Land of a Thousand Dances"] But that kind of mistake only added to the feel of the track, which became Pickett's biggest hit yet -- his third number one on the R&B chart, and his first pop top ten. As the formula of recording a soul cover version of a rock cover version of a soul song had clearly worked, the next single Pickett recorded was "Mustang Sally", which as we saw had originally been an R&B record by Pickett's friend Mack Rice, before being covered by the Young Rascals. Pickett's version, though, became the definitive version: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Mustang Sally"] But it very nearly wasn't. That was recorded in a single take, and the musicians went into the control room to listen to it -- and the metal capstan on the tape machine flew off while it was rewinding. The tape was cut into dozens of tiny fragments, which the machine threw all over the room in all directions. Everyone was horrified, and Pickett, who was already known for his horrific temper, looked as if he might actually kill someone. Tom Dowd, Atlantic's genius engineer who had been a physicist on the Manhattan Project while still a teenager, wasn't going to let something as minor as that stop him. He told everyone to take a break for half an hour, gathered up all the randomly-thrown bits of tape, and spliced them back together. The completed recording apparently has forty splices in it, which would mean an average of a splice every four seconds. Have a listen to this thirty-second segment and see if you can hear any at all: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Mustang Sally"] That segment has the one part where I *think* I can hear one splice in the whole track, a place where the rhythm hiccups very slightly -- and that might well just be the drummer trying a fill that didn't quite come off. "Mustang Sally" was another pop top thirty hit, and Wexler's crossover strategy seemed to have been proved right -- so much so that Pickett was now playing pretty much all-white bills. He played, for example, at Murray the K's last ever revue at the Brooklyn Paramount, where the other artists on the bill were Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, the Young Rascals, Al Kooper's Blues Project, Cream, and the Who. Pickett found the Who extremely unprofessional, with their use of smoke bombs and smashing their instruments, but they eventually became friendly. Pickett's next single was his version of "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love", the Solomon Burke song that the Rolling Stones had also covered, and that was a minor hit, but his next few records after that didn't do particularly well. He did though have a big hit with his cover version of a song by a group called Dyke and the Blazers. Pickett's version of "Funky Broadway" took him to the pop top ten: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Funky Broadway"] It did something else, as well. You may have noticed that two of the bands on that Paramount bill were groups that get called "blue-eyed soul". "Soul" had originally been a term used for music made by Black people, but increasingly the term was being used by white people for their music, just as rock and roll and rhythm and blues before it had been picked up on by white musicians. And so as in those cases, Black musicians were moving away from the term -- though it would never be abandoned completely -- and towards a new slang term, "funk". And Pickett was the first person to get a song with "funk" in the title onto the pop charts. But that would be the last recording Pickett would do at FAME for a couple of years. As with Stax, Pickett was moved away by Atlantic because of problems with another artist, this time to do with a session with Aretha Franklin that went horribly wrong, which we'll look at in a future episode. From this point on, Pickett would record at American Sound Studios in Memphis, a studio owned and run by Chips Moman, who had played on many of Pickett's records. Again, Pickett was playing with an all-white house band, but brought in a couple of Black musicians -- the saxophone player King Curtis, and Pickett's new touring guitarist, Bobby Womack, who had had a rough few years, being largely ostracised from the music community because of his relationship with Sam Cooke's widow. Womack wrote what might be Pickett's finest song, a song called "I'm in Love" which is a masterpiece of metrical simplicity disguised as complexity -- you could write it all down as being in straight four-four, but the pulse shifts and implies alternating bars of five and three at points: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "I'm In Love"] Womack's playing on those sessions had two effects, one on music history and one on Pickett. The effect on music history was that he developed a strong working relationship with Reggie Young, the guitarist in the American Sound studio band, and Young and Womack learned each other's styles. Young would later go on to be one of the top country session guitarists, playing on records by Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers, Waylon Jennings and more, and he was using Womack's style of playing -- he said later "I didn't change a thing. I was playing that Womack style on country records, instead of the hillbilly stuff—it changed the whole bed of country music." The other effect, though, was a much more damaging one. Womack introduced Pickett to cocaine, and Pickett -- who was already an aggressive, violent, abusive, man, became much more so. "I'm in Love" went to number four on the R&B charts, but didn't make the pop top forty. The follow-up, a remake of "Stagger Lee", did decently on the pop charts but less well on the R&B charts. Pickett's audiences were diverging, and he was finding it more difficult to make the two come together. But he would still manage it, sporadically, throughout the sixties. One time when he did was in 1968, when he returned to Muscle Shoals and to FAME studios. In a session there, the guitarist was very insistent that Pickett should cut a version of the Beatles' most recent hit. Now obviously, this is a record that's ahead in our timeline, and which will be covered in a future episode, but I imagine that most of you won't find it too much of a spoiler when I tell you that "Hey Jude" by the Beatles was quite a big hit: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hey Jude"] What that guitarist had realised was that the tag of the song gave the perfect opportunity for ad-libbing. You all know the tag: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hey Jude"] And so on. That would be perfect for a guitar solo, and for Pickett to do some good soul shouting over. Neither Pickett nor Rick Hall were at all keen -- the Beatles record had only just dropped off number one, and it seemed like a ridiculous idea to both of them. But the guitarist kept pressing to do it, and by the time the other musicians returned from their lunch break, he'd convinced Pickett and Hall. The record starts out fairly straightforward: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Hey Jude"] But it's on the tag when it comes to life. Pickett later described recording that part -- “He stood right in front of me, as though he was playing every note I was singing. And he was watching me as I sang, and as I screamed, he was screaming with his guitar.”: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Hey Jude"] That was not Pickett's biggest hit, but it was one of the most influential. It made the career of the guitarist, Duane Allman, who Jerry Wexler insisted on signing to his own contract after that, and as Jimmy Johnson, the rhythm guitarist on the session said, "We realised then that Duane had created southern rock, in that vamp." It was big enough that Wexler pushed Pickett to record a whole series of cover versions of rock songs -- he put out versions of "Hey Joe", "Born to be Wild" and "You Keep Me Hangin' On" -- the latter going back to his old technique of covering a white cover version of a Black record, as his version copied the Vanilla Fudge's arrangement rather than the Supremes' original. But these only had very minor successes -- the most successful of them was his version of "Sugar Sugar" by the Archies. As the sixties turned into the seventies, Pickett continued having some success, but it was more erratic and less consistent. The worlds of Black and white music were drifting apart, and Pickett, who more than most had straddled both worlds, now found himself having success in neither. It didn't help that his cocaine dependency had made him into an egomaniac. At one point in the early seventies, Pickett got a residency in Las Vegas, and was making what by most standards was a great income from it. But he would complain bitterly that he was only playing the small room, not the big one in the same hotel, and that the artist playing the big room was getting better billing than him on the posters. Of course, the artist playing the big room was Elvis Presley, but that didn't matter to Pickett -- he thought he deserved to be at least that big. He was also having regular fights with his record label. Ahmet Ertegun used to tell a story -- and I'm going to repeat it here with one expletive cut out in order to get past Apple's ratings system. In Ertegun's words “Jerry Wexler never liked Crosby, Stills & Nash because they wanted so much freaking artistic autonomy. While we were arguing about this, Wilson Pickett walks in the room and comes up to Jerry and says, ‘Jerry,' and he goes, ‘Wham!' And he puts a pistol on the table. He says, ‘If that [Expletive] Tom Dowd walks into where I'm recording, I'm going to shoot him. And if you walk in, I'm going to shoot you. ‘Oh,' Jerry said. ‘That's okay, Wilson.' Then he walked out. So I said, ‘You want to argue about artistic autonomy?' ” As you can imagine, Atlantic were quite glad to get rid of Pickett when he decided he wanted to move to RCA records, who were finally trying to break into the R&B market. Unfortunately for Pickett, the executive who'd made the decision to sign him soon left the company, and as so often happens when an executive leaves, his pet project becomes the one that everyone's desperate to get rid of. RCA didn't know how to market records to Black audiences, and didn't really try, and Pickett's voice was becoming damaged from all the cocaine use. He spent the seventies, and eighties going from label to label, trying things like going disco, with no success. He also went from woman to woman, beating them up, and went through band members more and more quickly as he attacked them, too. The guitarist Marc Ribot was in Pickett's band for a short time and said, (and here again I'm cutting out an expletive) " You can write about all the extenuating circumstances, and maybe it needs to be put in historical context, but … You know why guys beat women? Because they can. And it's abuse. That's why employers beat employees, when they can. I've worked with black bandleaders and white bandleaders who are respectful, courteous and generous human beings—and then I've worked with Wilson Pickett." He was becoming more and more paranoid. He didn't turn up for his induction in the rock and roll hall of fame, where he was scheduled to perform -- instead he hid in his house, scared to leave. Pickett was repeatedly arrested throughout this time, and into the nineties, spending some time in prison, and then eventually going into rehab in 1997 after being arrested for beating up his latest partner. She dropped the charges, but the police found the cocaine in his possession and charged him with that. After getting out, he apparently mellowed out somewhat and became much easier to get along with -- still often unpleasant, especially after he'd had a drink, which he never gave up, but far less violent and more easy-going than he had been. He also had something of a comeback, sparked by an appearance in the flop film Blues Brothers 2000. He recorded a blues album, It's Harder Now, and also guested on Adlib, the comeback duets album by his old friend Don Covay, singing with him and cowriting on several songs, including "Nine Times a Man": [Excerpt: Don Covay and Wilson Pickett, "Nine Times a Man"] It's Harder Now was a solid blues-based album, in the vein of similar albums from around that time by people like Solomon Burke, and could have led to Pickett having the same kind of late-career resurgence as Johnny Cash. It was nominated for a Grammy, but lost in the category for which it was nominated to Barry White. Pickett was depressed by the loss and just decided to give up making new music, and just played the oldies circuit until 2004, at which point he became too ill to continue. The duet with Covay would be the last time he went into the studio. The story of Pickett's last year or so is a painful one, with squabbles between his partner and his children over his power of attorney while he spent long periods in hospital, suffering from kidney problems caused by his alcoholism, and also at this point from bulimia, diabetes, and more. He was ill enough that he tried to make amends with his children and his ex-wife, and succeeded as well as anyone can in that situation. On the eighteenth of January 2006, two months before his sixty-fifth birthday, his partner took him to get his hair cut and his moustache shaped, so he'd look the way he wanted to look, they ate together at his assisted living facility, and prayed together, and she left around eleven o'clock that night. Shortly thereafter, Pickett had a heart attack and died, alone, some time close to the midnight hour.
Episode one hundred and thirty-three of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "My Girl" by the Temptations, and is part three of a three-episode look at Motown in 1965. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Yeh Yeh" by Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, I've put together a Mixcloud playlist of all the recordings excerpted in this episode. This box set is the definitive collection of the Temptations' work, but is a bit pricey. For those on a budget, this two-CD set contains all the hits. As well as the general Motown information listed below, I've also referred to Ain't Too Proud to Beg: The Troubled Lives and Enduring Soul of the Temptations by Mark Ribowsky, and to Smokey Robinson's autobiography. For Motown-related information in this and other Motown episodes, I've used the following resources: Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound by Nelson George is an excellent popular history of the various companies that became Motown. To Be Loved by Berry Gordy is Gordy's own, understandably one-sided, but relatively well-written, autobiography. Women of Motown: An Oral History by Susan Whitall is a collection of interviews with women involved in Motown. I Hear a Symphony: Motown and Crossover R&B by J. Andrew Flory is an academic look at Motown. The Motown Encyclopaedia by Graham Betts is an exhaustive look at the people and records involved in Motown's thirty-year history. How Sweet It Is by Lamont Dozier and Scott B. Bomar is Dozier's autobiography, while Come and Get These Memories by Brian and Eddie Holland and Dave Thompson is the Holland brothers'. And Motown Junkies is an infrequently-updated blog looking at (so far) the first 694 tracks released on Motown singles. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript For the last few weeks we've been looking at Motown in 1965, but now we're moving away from Holland, Dozier, and Holland, we're also going to move back in time a little, and look at a record that was released in December 1964. I normally try to keep this series in more or less chronological order, but to tell this story I had to first show the new status quo of the American music industry after the British Invasion, and some of what had to be covered there was covered in songs from early 1965. And the reason I wanted to show that status quo before doing this series of Motown records is that we're now entering into a new era of musical segregation, and really into the second phase of this story. In 1963, Billboard had actually stopped having an R&B chart -- Cashbox magazine still had one, but Billboard had got rid of theirs. The reasoning was simple -- by that point there was so much overlap between the R&B charts and the pop charts that it didn't seem necessary to have both. The stuff that was charting on the R&B charts was also charting pop -- people like Ray Charles or Chubby Checker or the Ronettes or Sam Cooke. The term "rock and roll" had originally been essentially a marketing campaign to get white people to listen to music made by Black people, and it had worked. There didn't seem to be a need for a separate category for music listened to by Black people, because that was now the music listened to by *everybody*. Or it had been, until the Beatles turned up. At that point, the American charts were flooded by groups with guitars, mostly British, mostly male, and mostly white. The story of rock and roll from 1954 through 1964 had been one of integration, of music made by Black people becoming the new mainstream of music in the USA. The story for the next decade or more would be one of segregation, of white people retaking the pop charts, and rebranding "rock and roll" so thoroughly that by the early 1970s nobody would think of the Supremes or the Shirelles or Sam Cooke as having been rock and roll performers at all. And so today we're going to look at the record that was number one the week that Billboard reinstated its R&B chart, and which remains one of the most beloved classics of the time period. We're going to look at the careers of two different groups at Motown, both of whom managed to continue having hits, and even become bigger, after the British Invasion, and at the songwriter and producer who was responsible for those hits -- and who was also an inspiration for the Beatles, who inadvertently caused that invasion. We're going to look at Smokey Robinson, and at "My Girl" by the Temptations: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl"] The story of the Temptations both starts and ends with Otis Williams. As I write this, Williams is the only living member of the classic Temptations lineup, and is the leader of the current group. And Williams also started the group that, after many lineup changes and mergers, became the Temptations, and was always the group's leader, even though he has never been its principal lead singer. The group that eventually became the Temptations started out when Williams formed a group with a friend, Al Bryant, in the late 1950s. They were inspired by a doo-wop group called the Turbans, who had had a hit in 1956 with a song called "When You Dance": [Excerpt: The Turbans, "When You Dance"] The Turbans, appropriately enough, used to wear turbans on their heads when they performed, and Williams and Bryant's new group wanted to use the same gimmick, so they decided to come up with a Middle-Eastern sounding group name that would justify them wearing Arabic style costumes. Unfortunately, they didn't have the greatest grasp of geography in the world, and so this turban-wearing group named themselves the Siberians. The Siberians recorded one single under that name -- a single that has been variously reported as being called "The Pecos Kid" and "Have Gun Will Travel", but which sold so poorly that now no copies are known to exist anywhere -- before being taken on by a manager called Milton Jenkins, who was as much a pimp as he was a manager, but who definitely had an eye for talent. Jenkins was the manager of two other groups -- the Primes, a trio from Alabama who he'd met in Cleveland when they'd travelled there to see if they could get discovered, and who had moved with him to Detroit, and a group he put together, called the Primettes, who later became the Supremes. The Primes consisted of three singers -- Eddie Kendricks, Paul Williams (no relation to Otis, or to the soft-pop singer and actor of the same name), and Kell Osborne, who sang lead. The Primes became known around Detroit as some of the best performers in the city -- no mean feat considering that Jackie Wilson, Aretha Franklin, the Miracles and the Four Tops, just for a start, were performing regularly on the same circuit. Jenkins had big plans for his groups, and he sent them all to dance school to learn to perform choreographed routines. But then Jenkins became ill and disappeared from the scene, and the Primes split up. Kendricks and Paul Williams went back to Alabama, while Osborne moved on to California, where he made several unsuccessful records, including "The Bells of St. Mary", produced by Lester Sill and Lee Hazelwood and arranged by Phil Spector: [Excerpt: Kell Osborne, "The Bells of St. Mary"] But while the Primes had split up, the Siberians hadn't. Instead, they decided to get new management, which came in the person of a woman named Johnnie Mae Matthews. Matthews was the lead singer of a group called the Five Dapps, who'd had a local hit with a track called "Do Whap A Do", one of the few Dapps songs she didn't sing lead on: [Excerpt: The Five Dapps, "Do Whap A Do"] After that had become successful, Matthews had started up her own label, Northern -- which was apparently named after a brand of toilet paper -- to put out records of her group, often backed by the same musicians who would later become the core of the Funk Brothers. Her group, renamed Johnnie Mae Matthews and the Dapps, put out two more singles on her label, with her singing lead: [Excerpt: Johnnie Mae Matthews and the Dapps, "Mr. Fine"] Matthews had become something of an entrepreneur, managing other local acts like Mary Wells and Popcorn Wylie, and she wanted to record the Siberians, but two of the group had dropped out after Jenkins had disappeared, and so they needed some new members. In particular they needed a bass singer -- and Otis Williams knew of a good one. Melvin Franklin had been singing with various groups around Detroit, but Williams was thinking in particular of Franklin's bass vocal on "Needed" by the Voice Masters. We've mentioned the Voice Masters before, but they were a group with a rotating membership that included David Ruffin and Lamont Dozier. Franklin hadn't been a member of the group, but he had been roped in to sing bass on "Needed", which was written and produced by Gwen Gordy and Roquel Davis, and was a clear attempt at sounding like Jackie Wilson: [Excerpt: The Voice Masters, "Needed"] Williams asked Franklin to join the group, and Franklin agreed, but felt bad about leaving his current group. However, the Siberians also needed a new lead singer, and so Franklin brought in Richard Street from his group. Matthews renamed the group the Distants and took them into the studio. They actually got there early, and got to see another group, the Falcons, record what would become a million-selling hit: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "You're So Fine"] The Falcons, whose lead vocalist Joe Stubbs was Levi Stubbs' brother, were an important group in their own right, and we'll be picking up on them next week, when we look at a single by Joe Stubbs' replacement in the group. The Distants' single wouldn't be quite as successful as the Falcons', but it featured several people who would go on to become important in Motown. As well as several of the Funk Brothers in the backing band, the record also featured additional vocals by the Andantes, and on tambourine a local pool-hall hustler the group knew named Norman Whitfield. The song itself was written by Williams, and was essentially a rewrite of "Shout!" by the Isley Brothers: [Excerpt: The Distants, "Come On"] The Distants recorded a second single for Northern, but then Williams made the mistake of asking Matthews if they might possibly receive any royalties for their records. Matthews said that the records had been made with her money, that she owned the Distants' name, and she was just going to get five new singers. Matthews did actually get several new singers to put out a single under the Distants name, with Richard Street still singing lead -- Street left the group when they split from Matthews, as did another member, leaving the group as a core of Otis Williams, Melvin Franklin, and Al Bryant. But before the split with Matthews, Berry Gordy had seen the group and suggested they come in to Motown for an audition. Otis, Melvin, and Al, now renamed the Elgins, wanted to do just that. But they needed a new lead singer. And happily, they had one. Eddie Kendricks phoned up Otis Williams and said that he and Paul Williams were back in town, and did Otis know of any gigs that were going? Otis did indeed know of such a gig, and Paul and Eddie joined the Elgins, Paul as lead singer and Eddie as falsetto singer. This new lineup of the group were auditioned by Mickey Stevenson, Motown's head of A&R, and he liked them enough that he signed them up. But he insisted that the name had to change -- there was another group already called the Elgins (though that group never had a hit, and Motown would soon sign up yet another group and change their name to the Elgins, leading to much confusion). The group decided on a new name -- The Temptations. Their first record was co-produced by Stevenson and Andre Williams. Williams, who was no relation to either Otis or Paul (and as a sidenote I do wish there weren't so many people with the surname Williams in this story, as it means I can't write it in my usual manner of referring to people by their surname) was a minor R&B star who co-wrote "Shake a Tail Feather", and who had had a solo hit with his record "Bacon Fat": [Excerpt: Andre Williams, "Bacon Fat"] Andre Williams, who at this point in time was signed to Motown though not having much success, was brought in because the perception at Motown was that the Temptations would be one of their harder-edged R&B groups, rather than going for the softer pop market, and he would be able to steer the recording in that direction. The song they chose to record was one that Otis Williams had written, though Mickey Stevenson gets a co-writing credit and may have helped polish it: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "Oh Mother of Mine"] The new group lineup became very close, and started thinking of each other like family and giving each other nicknames -- though they also definitely split into two camps. Otis Williams and Melvin Franklin were always a pair, and Eddie Kendricks and Paul Williams had come up together and thought of themselves as a team. Al Bryant, even though he had been with Otis from the beginning, was a bit of an outlier in this respect. He wasn't really part of either camp, and he was the only one who didn't get a nickname from the other band members. He was also the only one who kept his day job -- while the other four were all determined that they were going to make it as professional singers, he was hesitant and kept working at the dairy. As a result, whenever there were fights in the group -- and the fights would sometimes turn physical -- the fighting would tend to be between Eddie Kendricks and Melvin Franklin. Otis was the undisputed leader, and nobody wanted to challenge him, but from the beginning Kendricks and Paul Williams thought of Otis as a bit too much of a company man. They also thought of Melvin as Otis' sidekick and rubber stamp, so rather than challenge Otis they'd have a go at Melvin. But, for the most part, they were extremely close at this point. The Temptations' first single didn't have any great success, but Berry Gordy had faith in the group, and produced their next single himself, a song that he cowrote with Otis, Melvin, and Al, and which Brian Holland also chipped in some ideas for. That was also unsuccessful, but the next single, written by Gordy alone, was slightly more successful. For "(You're My) Dream Come True", Gordy decided to give the lead to Kendricks, the falsetto singer, and the track also featured a prominent instrumental line by Gordy's wife Raynoma -- what sounds like strings on the record is actually a primitive synthesiser called an ondioline: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "(You're My) Dream Come True"] That made number twenty-two on the R&B chart, and was the first sign of any commercial potential for the group -- and so Motown went in a totally different direction and put out a cover version, of a record by a group called the Diablos, whose lead singer was Barrett Strong's cousin Nolan. The Temptations' version of "Mind Over Matter" wasn't released as by the Temptations, but as by the Pirates: [Excerpt: The Pirates, "Mind Over Matter"] That was a flop, and at the same time as they released it, they also released another Gordy song under their own name, a song called "Paradise" which seems to have been an attempt at making a Four Seasons soundalike, which made number 122 on the pop charts and didn't even do that well on the R&B charts. Annoyingly, the Temptations had missed out on a much bigger hit. Gordy had written "Do You Love Me?" for the group, but had been hit with a burst of inspiration and wanted to do the record *NOW*. He'd tried phoning the various group members, but got no answer -- they were all in the audience at a gospel music show at the time, and had no idea he was trying to get in touch with them. So he'd pulled in another group, The Contours, and their version of the song went to number three on the pop charts: [Excerpt: The Contours, "Do You Love Me?"] According to the biography of the Temptations I'm using as a major source for this episode, that was even released on the same day as both "Paradise" and "Mind Over Matter", though other sources I've consulted have it coming out a few months earlier. Despite "Paradise"'s lack of commercial success, though, it did introduce an element that would become crucial for the group's future -- the B-side was the first song for the group written by Smokey Robinson. We've mentioned Robinson briefly in previous episodes on Motown, but he's worth looking at in a lot more detail, because he is in some ways the most important figure in Motown's history, though also someone who has revealed much less of himself than many other Motown artists. Both of these facts stem from the same thing, which is that Robinson is the ultimate Motown company man. He was a vice president of the company, and he was Berry Gordy's best friend from before the company even started. While almost every other artist, writer, or producer signed to Motown has stories to tell of perceived injustices in the way that Motown treated them, Robinson has always positioned himself on the side of the company executives rather than as one of the other artists. He was the only person outside the Gordy family who had a place at the very centre of the organisation -- and he was also one of a very small number of people during Motown's golden age who would write, produce, *and* perform. Now, there were other people who worked both as artists and on the backroom side of things -- we've seen that Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder would sometimes write songs for other artists, and that Eddie Holland and Lamont Dozier had started out as performers before moving into songwriting. But these were mostly little dalliances -- in general, in Motown in the sixties, you were either a performer or you were a writer-producer. But Smokey Robinson was both -- and he was *good* at both, someone who was responsible for creating many of the signature hits of Motown. At this point in his career, Robinson had, as we've heard previously, been responsible for Motown's second big hit, after "Money", when he'd written "Shop Around" for his own group The Miracles: [Excerpt: The Miracles, "Shop Around"] The Miracles had continued to have hits, though none as big as "Shop Around", with records like "What's So Good About Goodbye?": [Excerpt: The Miracles, "What's So Good About Goodbye?"] But Robinson had also been writing regularly for other artists. He'd written some stuff that the Supremes had recorded, though like all the Supremes material at this point it had been unsuccessful, and he'd also started a collaboration with the label's biggest star at this point, Mary Wells, for whom he'd written top ten hits like "The One Who Really Loves You": [Excerpt: Mary Wells, "The One Who Really Loves You"] and "You Beat Me To The Punch", co-written with fellow Miracle Ronnie White, which as well as going top ten pop made number one on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: Mary Wells, "You Beat Me to The Punch"] Between 1962 and 1964, Robinson would consistently write huge hits for Wells, as well as continuing to have hits with the Miracles, and his writing was growing in leaps and bounds. He was regarded by almost everyone at Motown as the best writer the company had, both for his unique melodic sensibility and for the literacy of his lyrics. When he'd first met Berry Gordy, he'd been a writer with a lot of potential, but he hadn't understood how to structure a lyric -- he'd thrown in a lot of unrelated ideas. Gordy had taken him under his wing and shown him how to create a song with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and Robinson had immediately understood what he needed to do. His lyrics, with their clever conceits and internal rhymes, became the ones that everyone else studied -- when Eddie Holland decided to become a songwriter rather than a singer, he'd spent months just studying Robinson's lyrics to see how they worked. Robinson was even admired by the Beatles, especially John Lennon -- one can hear his melismatic phrases all over Lennon's songwriting in this period, most notably in songs like "Ask Me Why", and the Beatles covered one of Robinson's songs on their second album, With the Beatles: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "You Really Got a Hold On Me"] After writing the B-side to "Paradise", Robinson was given control of the Temptations' next single. His "I Want a Love I Can See" didn't do any better than "Paradise", and is in some ways more interesting for the B-side, "The Further You Look, The Less You See": [Excerpt: The Temptations, "The Further You Look, The Less You See"] That track's interesting because it's a collaboration between Robinson and Norman Whitfield, that pool-hall hustler who'd played tambourine on the Distants' first single. Whitfield had produced the records by the later Distants, led by Richard Street, and had then gone to work for a small label owned by Berry Gordy's ex-mother-in-law. Gordy had bought out that label, and with it Whitfield's contract, and at this point Whitfield was very much an apprentice to Robinson. Both men were huge admirers of the Temptations, and for the next few years both would want to be the group's main producer and songwriter, competing for the right to record their next single -- though for a good chunk of time this would not really be a competition, as Whitfield was minor league compared to Robinson. "I Want a Love I Can See" was a flop, and the Temptations' next single was another Berry Gordy song. When that flopped too, Gordy seriously started considering dropping the group altogether. While this was happening, though, Robinson was busily writing more great songs for his own group and for Mary Wells, songs like "What Love Has Joined Together", co-written with his bandmate Bobby Rogers: [Excerpt: Mary Wells, "What Love Has Joined Together"] And the Temptations were going through their own changes. Al was becoming more and more of an outsider in the group, while also thinking of himself as the real star. He thought this even though he was the weak link -- Paul and Eddie were the lead singers, Otis was the band's leader, Melvin had a hugely distinctive bass voice, and Al was... just "the other one". Things came to a head at a gig in October 1963, when a friend of the group showed up. David Ruffin was so friendly with Melvin Franklin that Franklin called him his cousin, and he was also a neighbour of Otis'. He had been a performer from an early age -- he'd been in a gospel group with his older brother Jimmy and their abusive father. Once he'd escaped his father, he'd gone on to perform in a duo with his brother, and then in a series of gospel groups, including stints in the Dixie Nightingales and the Soul Stirrers. Ruffin had been taken on by a manager called Eddie Bush, who adopted him -- whether legally or just in their minds is an open question -- and had released his first single as Little David Bush when he was seventeen, in 1958: [Excerpt: Little David Bush, "You and I"] Ruffin and Bush had eventually parted ways, and Ruffin had taken up with the Gordy family, helping Berry Gordy Sr out in his construction business -- he'd actually helped build the studio that Berry Jr owned and where most of the Motown hits were recorded -- and singing on records produced by Gwen Gordy. He'd been in the Voice Masters, who we heard earlier this episode, and had also recorded solo singles with the Voice Masters backing, like "I'm In Love": [Excerpt: David Ruffin, "I'm In Love"] When Gwen Gordy's labels had been absorbed into Motown, so had Ruffin, who had also got his brother Jimmy signed to the label. They'd planned to record as the Ruffin Brothers, but then Jimmy had been drafted, and Ruffin was at a loose end -- he technically had a Motown contract, but wasn't recording anything. But then in October 1963 he turned up to a Temptations gig. For the encore, the group always did the Isley Brothers song "Shout!", and Ruffin got up on stage with them and started joining in, dancing more frantically than the rest of the group. Al started trying to match him, feeling threatened by this interloper. They got wilder and wilder, and the audience loved it so much that the group were called back for another encore, and Ruffin joined them again. They did the same song again, and got an even better reaction. They came back for a third time, and did it again, and got an even better reaction. Ruffin then disappeared into the crowd. The group decided that enough was enough -- except for Al, who was convinced that they should do a fourth encore without Ruffin. The rest of the group were tired, and didn't want to do the same song for a fourth time, and thought they should leave the audience wanting more. Al, who had been drinking, got aggressive, and smashed a bottle in Paul Williams' face, hospitalising him. Indeed, it was only pure luck that kept Williams from losing his vision, and he was left with a scar but no worse damage. Otis, Eddie, and Melvin decided that they needed to sack Al, but Paul, who was the peacemaker in the group, insisted that they shouldn't, and also refused to press charges. Out of respect for Paul, the rest of the group agreed to give Al one more chance. But Otis in particular was getting sick of Al and thought that the group should just try to get David Ruffin in. Everyone agreed that if Al did anything to give Otis the slightest reason, he could be sacked. Two months later, he did just that. The group were on stage at the annual Motown Christmas show, which was viewed by all the acts as a competition, and Paul had worked out a particularly effective dance routine for the group, to try to get the crowd going. But while they were performing, Al came over to Otis and suggested that the two of them, as the "pretty boys" should let the other three do all the hard work while they just stood back and looked good for the women. Otis ignored him and carried on with the routine they'd rehearsed, and Al was out as soon as they came offstage. And David Ruffin was in. But for now, Ruffin was just the missing element in the harmony stack, not a lead vocalist in his own right. For the next single, both Smokey Robinson and Berry Gordy came up with songs for the new lineup of the group, and they argued about which song should be the A-side -- one of the rare occasions where the two disagreed on anything. They took the two tracks to Motown's quality control meeting, and after a vote it was agreed that the single should be the song that Robinson had written for Eddie Kendricks to sing, "The Way You Do the Things You Do": [Excerpt: The Temptations, "The Way You Do the Things You Do"] At first, the group hadn't liked that song, and it wasn't until they rehearsed it a few times that they realised that Robinson was being cleverer than they'd credited him for with the lyrics. Otis Williams would later talk about how lines like "You've got a smile so bright, you know you could have been a candle" had seemed ridiculous to them at first, but then they'd realised that the lyric was parodying the kinds of things that men say when they don't know what to say to a woman, and that it's only towards the end of the song that the singer stops trying bad lines and just starts speaking honestly -- "you really swept me off my feet, you make my life complete, you make my life so bright, you make me feel all right": [Excerpt: The Temptations, "The Way You Do the Things You Do"] That track was also the first one that the group cut to a prerecorded backing track, Motown having upgraded to a four-track system. That allowed the group to be more subtle with their backing vocal arrangements, and "The Way You Do the Things You Do" is the point at which the Temptations become fully themselves. But the group didn't realise that at first. They spent the few weeks after the record's release away from Detroit, playing at the Michigan state fair, and weren't aware that it was starting to do things. It was only when Otis and David popped in to the Motown offices and people started talking to them about them having a hit that they realised the record had made the pop charts. Both men had been trying for years to get a big hit, with no success, and they started crying in each other's arms, Ruffin saying ‘Otis, this is the first time in my life I feel like I've been accepted, that I've done something.'” The record eventually made number eleven on the pop charts, and number one on the Cashbox R&B chart -- Billboard, as we discussed earlier, having discontinued theirs, but Otis Williams still thinks that given the amount of airplay that the record was getting it should have charted higher, and that something fishy was going on with the chart compilation at that point. Perhaps, but given that the record reached the peak of its chart success in April 1964, the high point of Beatlemania, when the Beatles had five records in the top ten, it's also just possible that it was a victim of bad timing. But either way, number eleven on the pop charts was a significant hit. Shortly after that, though, Smokey Robinson came up with an even bigger hit. "My Guy", written for Mary Wells, had actually only been intended as a bit of album filler. Motown were putting together a Mary Wells album, and as with most albums at the time it was just a collection of tracks that had already been released as singles and stuff that hadn't been considered good enough to release. But they were a track short, and Smokey was asked to knock together something quickly. He recorded a backing track at the end of a day cutting tracks for a *Temptations* album -- The Temptations Sing Smokey -- and everyone was tired by the time they got round to recording it, but you'd never guess that from the track itself, which is as lively as anything Motown put out. "My Guy" was a collaborative creation, with an arrangement that was worked on by the band -- it was apparently the Funk Brothers who came up with the intro, which was lifted from a 1956 record, "Canadian Sunset" by Hugo Winterhalter. Compare that: [Excerpt: Hugo Winterhalter, "Canadian Sunset"] to “My Guy”: [Excerpt: Mary Wells, "My Guy"] The record became one of the biggest hits of the sixties -- Motown's third pop number one, and a million-seller. It made Mary Wells into a superstar, and the Beatles invited her to be their support act on their UK summer tour. So of course Wells immediately decided to get a better deal at another record label, and never had another hit again. Meanwhile, Smokey kept plugging away, both at his own records -- though the Miracles went through a bit of a dry patch at this point, as far as the charts go -- and at the Temptations. The group's follow-up, "I'll Be in Trouble", was very much a remake of "The Way You Do the Things You Do", and while it was good it didn't quite make the top thirty. This meant that Norman Whitfield got another go. He teamed up with Eddie Holland to write "Girl (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue)", which did only slightly better than "I'll Be in Trouble": [Excerpt: The Temptations, "Girl (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue)"] The competition between Robinson and Whitfield for who got to make the Temptations' records was heating up -- both men were capable of giving the group hits, but neither had given them the truly massive record that they were clearly capable of having. So Smokey did the obvious thing. He wrote a sequel to his biggest song ever, and he gave it to the new guy to sing. Up until this point, David Ruffin hadn't taken a lead vocal on a Temptations record -- Paul Williams was the group's official "lead singer", while all the hits had ended up having Eddie's falsetto as the most prominent vocal. But Smokey had seen David singing "Shout" with the group, and knew that he had lead singer potential. With his fellow Miracle Ronald White, Smokey crafted a song that was the perfect vehicle for Ruffin's vocal, an answer song to "My Guy", which replaced that song's bouncy exuberance with a laid-back carefree feeling: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl"] But it's not just Ruffin's record -- everyone talking about the track talks about Ruffin's vocal, or the steady pulse of James Jamerson's bass playing, and both those things are definitely worthy of praise, as of course are Robinson's production and Robinson and White's song, but this is a *Temptations* record, and the whole group are doing far more here than the casual listener might realise. It's only when you listen to the a capella version released on the group's Emperors of Soul box set that you notice all the subtleties of the backing vocal parts. On the first verse, the group don't come in until half way through the verse, with Melvin Franklin's great doo-wop bass introducing the backing vocalists, who sing just straight chords: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl (a capella)"] It's not until the chorus that the other group members stretch out a little, taking solo lines and singing actual words rather than just oohs: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl (a capella)"] They then drop back until the same point in the next verse, but this time rather than singing just the plain chords, they're embellishing a little, playing with the rhythm slightly, and Eddie Kendricks' falsetto is moving far more freely than at the same point in the first verse. [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl (a capella)"] The backing vocals slowly increase in complexity until you get the complex parts on the tag. Note that on the first chorus they sang the words "My Girl" absolutely straight with no stresses, but by the end of the song they're all emphasising every word. They've gone from Jordanaires style precise straight harmony to a strong Black gospel feel in their voices, and you've not even noticed the transition: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl (a capella)"] The track went to number one on the pop charts, knocking off "This Diamond Ring" by Gary Lewis and the Playboys, before itself being knocked off by "Eight Days a Week" by the Beatles. But it also went to number one on the newly reestablished R&B charts, and stayed there for six weeks: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl"] Smokey Robinson was now firmly established as the Temptations' producer, and David Ruffin as the group's lead singer. In 1965 Robinson and Pete Moore of the Miracles would write three more top-twenty pop hits for the group, all with Ruffin on lead -- and also manage to get a B-side sung by Paul Williams, "Don't Look Back", to the top twenty on the R&B chart. Not only that, but the Miracles were also on a roll, producing two of the biggest hits of their career. Pete Moore and Marv Tarplin had been messing around with a variant of the melody for "The Banana Boat Song", and came up with an intro for a song: [Excerpt: The Miracles, "The Tracks of My Tears"] Robinson took that as a jumping-off point and turned it into the song that would define their career: [Excerpt: The Miracles, "The Tracks of My Tears"] And later that year they came up with yet another million-seller for the Miracles with "Going to a Go-Go": [Excerpt: The Miracles, "Going to a Go-Go"] Robinson and his collaborators were being rather overshadowed in the public perception at this point by the success of Holland-Dozier-Holland with the Supremes and the Four Tops, but by any standards the records the Temptations and the Miracles were putting out were massive successes, both commercially and artistically. But there were two things that were going to upset this balance. The first was David Ruffin. When he'd joined the group, he'd been the new boy and just eager to get any kind of success at all. Now he was the lead singer, and his ego was starting to get the better of him. The other thing that was going to change things was Norman Whitfield. Whitfield hadn't given up on the Temptations just because of Smokey's string of hits with them. Whitfield knew, of course, that Smokey was the group's producer while he was having hits with them, but he also knew that sooner or later everybody slips up. He kept saying, in every meeting, that he had the perfect next hit for the Temptations, and every time he was told "No, they're Smokey's group". He knew this would be the reaction, but he also knew that if he kept doing this he would make sure that he was the next in line -- that nobody else could jump the queue and get a shot at them if Smokey failed. He badgered Gordy, and wore him down, to the point that Gordy finally agreed that if Smokey's next single for the group didn't make the top twenty on the pop charts like his last four had, Whitfield would get his turn. The next single Smokey produced for the group had Eddie Kendricks on lead, and became the group's first R&B number one since "My Girl": [Excerpt: The Temptations, "Get Ready"] But the R&B and pop charts were diverging, as we saw at the start. While that was their biggest R&B hit in a year, "Get Ready" was a comparative failure on the pop charts, only reaching number twenty-nine -- still a hit, but not the top twenty that Gordy had bet on. So Norman Whitfield got a chance. His record featured David Ruffin on lead, as all the group's previous run of hits from "My Girl" on had, and was co-written with Eddie Holland. Whitfield decided to play up the Temptations' R&B edge, rather than continue in the softer pop style that had brought them success with Robinson, and came up with something that owed as much to the music coming out of Stax and Atlantic at the time as it did to Motown's pop sensibilities: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "Ain't Too Proud to Beg"] Whitfield's instinct to lean harder into the R&B sound paid off. "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" returned the group to the pop top twenty, as well as going to number one on the R&B charts. From this point on, the Temptations were no longer Smokey's group, they were Norman Whitfield's, and he would produce all their hits for the next eight years. And the group were also now definitively David Ruffin's group -- or so it seemed. When we pick up on the story of the Temptations, we'll discover how Ruffin's plans for solo stardom worked out, and what happened to the rest of the Temptations under Whitfield's guidance.
Chicago, IL native V.I. the Boss gets connected with Kool Kel discussing that sometimes you have to "do what you dont wanna do". Keeping the consistency V.I the Boss talks about understanding how to multiply and divide between industries for different streams of income. V.I. touches on inking a new deal with Sony Orchard through Andre Williams and releasing his new EP "Root of All Evil". V.I believes entrepreneurship being in his DNA while premiering his new single "Issues" Follow V.I The Boss https://www.instagram.com/vitheboss/ Follow TPLG Via Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/TPLGMedia/?modal=admin_todo_tour Via Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/tplguncut/ Follow Kool Kel Via Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/thekoolkel/
My great friend Andre Williams shares his powerful story of how overcoming Stage 4 cancer drove home what he believes is a leader's greatest asset, humility. In this episode, we talk about the power of humility, authenticity, respect, and the reality check that we all as leaders must face. This episode dives deep into key components of 21st Century Leadership.To view the transcript, click here. Follow Danny Langloss on LinkedIn as he breaks down leadership tools, strategies, and concepts throughout the week.To sign up for our mailing list click here.About Andre:Andre is a businessman, entrepreneur, and philanthropist who is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Nimbulis - a high- growth software company transforming the way organizations work together to enable workforce agility and engagement. Andre publishes insightful leadership articles weekly through LinkedIn. Most recently, he has published articles titled “Reality Check”, “People, Profit, Purpose”, and “Respect, Small Word, Big Impact”.Click here to connect with Andre on LinkedIn.
Andre Williams pulled no punches when he joined 40,000 Steps Radio to discuss mental health and the challenges of getting help to people in minority communities. Andre has done time in prison. He's struggled with mental illness. But he's since conducted street ministry, worked on early invention programs, and he's in the process of becoming a preacher. His question to anyone addicted to drugs, alcohol, or a lifestyle, or anyone who's resisting getting help: Is today going to be day one, or one day? ************************************ This episode was presented by Gateway Foundation. If drugs and alcohol are taking over your life, or the life of someone you love, it's time to be honest and enlist some help. Gateway offers life-saving inpatient services, as well as virtual treatment. Call 877-505-HOPE to schedule a consultation, or visit gatewayfoundation.org for more info. ************************************ Catch me on IGTV (@40000_Steps) and Facebook Live at 11 a.m. CST every Tuesday and Thursday. Join the discussion. Bring your own snacks. ************************************ If you or someone you know would like to star on the podcast, or be interviewed on IGTV, email us at 40000steps@gmail.com. ************************************ Sign up for our free newsletter and read my regular musings in The Big Blog at 40000steps.com, where you can also read about and listen to every episode of 40,000 Steps Radio. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/christopher-heimerman/message
© 2020-2025 Ivy Podcast Discovery LLC
