Podcasts about armed forces network

From soaring through the skies as a Marine helicopter pilot to conquering comedy stages, Mitch Burrow's life has been a wild ride. Join Deadair Dennis Maler as they chat with this Wichita, Texas native about his unconventional path to comedy, his experiences during the pandemic, and his thoughts on the future of laughter in a world of podcasts, TikToks, and social media fame. Get ready for a hilarious and insightful conversation that'll take you from the cockpit to the comedy club and back again!

In late 1993 credible threats suggested the University Compound in Mogadishu, Somalia was in danger of an attack. Our personnel at the Armed Forces Network facility were tasked with preparing to fight off any armed assault, but our resources were limited.

Kirk and Nolan are discussing Homeruns, Adam Wainright and Yadier Molina's all time MLB Battery mates record, Wild Card changes in the AL & more on this episode. Enjoy the show and thanks to all of you for being a huge part of Dirtbag Baseball Nation. You can listen & subscribe to us on Sports Byline USA (America's Sports Talk Network), the Armed Forces Network, Xirius 217, XM 203, iHeart Radio, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube (Dirtbag Baseball Nation) and more. Visit our online store at https://www.dirtbagbaseballnation.com for hats, apparel & The College Playbook E-book (Step by Step recruiting guide to College Baseball). New products coming soon!

Kirk and Nolan are discussing Wild Card chases, the Mets/Braves, ROY's and so much more on this episode. Thanks for listening, sending in your questions and thoughts Dirtbags and continue to Get Up, Get After It and Get Dirty. You can listen to us on the Sports Byline USA broadcast network (America's Sports Talk Network), Armed Forces Network, Xirius 217, XM 203 and subscribe to us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube (Dirtbag Baseball Nation), Google Podcasts and more. Be sure to check out our online store at https://www.dirtbagbaseballnation.com

Kirk and Nolan are talking Judge with Homerun 51, the Wild Card races, the Baltimore Orioles outlook for Sept. and a whole lot more. Please enjoy Dirtbags and you can find us and subscribe to us on the Sports Byline USA broadcast network, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Sirius 217, XM 203, the Armed Forces Network and more. Send us your comments and questions, so that we can cover them on upcoming episodes and check out our store at www.dirtbagbaseballnation.com for all our apparel, hats and The College Playbook (Step by Step College Recruiting Guide for High School Student Athletes and Your Parents)

We discuss the bad of Tatis Jr., the great of Albert Pujols, the confusion of the Toronto Blue Jays and more on this episode. You can subscribe and listen to us on the Sports Byline USA broadcast network, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, the Armed Forces Network, Sirius 217, XM 203 and more. Shop Dirtbag Baseball apparel and The College Playbook E-book (No BS Step by Step College Recruiting Guide) at dirtbagbaseballnation.com

Padres, Yankees, Soto, Orioles, Reds and other trades are discussed on this episode as the final push for playoffs created all kinds of maneuvers at the deadline! You can listen to us on the Sports Byline USA Broadcast Network, the Armed Forces Network, IHeart Radio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Xirius (Channel 217), XM 203, Google Podcasts and our YouTube channel at Dirtbag Baseball Nation, so be sure to subscribe to us to get notifications of our weekly show. Contact Kirk at kirk@dirtbagbaseballnation.com or DM us on Facebook or Instagram @dirtbagbaseballnation to talk training, have a product that you would like us to review for promotion, want to become a sponsor of Dirtbag Baseball Talk Podcast or if you would like us to come and be a guest speaker with your club, association or business. We do it for you Dirtbags and can't do it without you, so thank you for being a part of the Nation! dirtbagbaseballnation.com

We are talking all things from the All-Star week on this episode. MLB Draft, Home Run Derby, All-Star game, Mic'd Up and more. We can be heard on the Sports Byline USA broadcast network, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, I-Heart Radio, YouTube, Armed Forces Network, Sirius Channel 217, XM 203 and more. Please be sure to watch our latest YouTube video on the WIN Reality VR Hitting series with our guest Chris Buitron @DirtbagBaseballNation and send us your questions on anything baseball related for us to answer directly or as a part of our Curtain Call segment of the show to kirk@dirtbagbaseballnation.com or DM on Facebook or Instagram @dirtbagbaseballnation. You can shop our swag and The College Playbook (College Recruiting Step-by-Step E-book) at dirtbagbaseballnation.com.

Kirk and Nolan are getting after it with what's happening around the MLB, the All-Star Game/Draft & more on this episode. Be sure to subscribe to us on YouTube at Dirtbag Baseball Talk for all our podcasts and videos including our upcoming series with WIN Reality! You can find us on the Sports Byline USA broadcast network, Armed Forces Network, Sirius 217, XM 203, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and more. Contact Kirk at kirk@dirtbagbaseballnation.com or DM on Facebook @dirtbagbaseballnation to discuss a product you might have for us to talk about on our videos or to become a sponsor/partner with us and our 1.5 million monthly listeners.

Kirk and Nolan are discussing the latest MLB Milestones and highlights, the Art of Constructing a winning team and answering your Curtain Call questions on this episode. You can the Dirtbag Baseball Talk podcast on the Sports Byline USA broadcast network, Xiruis Channel 217, XM 203, the Armed Forces Network and all your favorite listening platforms. Be sure to subscribe to us on YouTube @dirtbagbaseballtalk to get notified about our latest videos and Instagram/Facebook @dirtbagbaseballnation. Send us your questions by DM or kirk@dirtbagbaseballnation.com and check out our online store at dirtbagbaseballnation.com to find all our Dirtbag Swag!

My guest Crystal Lee is a powerhouse of energy, light and positivity.   For over 20 years she has traveled the world serving our country in the US military. First as a Technical Sergeant with the Defense Information Systems Agency and culminating her military career in April 2020 as a Network Systems Architect with the Defense Intelligence Agency. As a child, Crystal loved acting, singing, and creating characters.  Her mother, who is Filipino and her father, who is of German/English descent, had encouraged and nurtured her creativity from an early age and so she resumed her love of performing and voice work to, in her words, “inspire people throughout the world to follow their dreams through storytelling, make-believe, visualization, and magic!” During her time in the service, Crystal utilized her voice acting talents while participating in field exercises and deployments.  Her voice's unique qualities rendered it invaluable when used to authenticate section callsigns and code-words. She also starred in multiple Armed Forces Network radio and television spots, did some modeling and Hawaiian/Tahitian/Belly dancing as creative outlets from the rigidity of military life.   After she retired, she did a short stint as a government contractor, then a government civilian and quickly realized that between the office politics and her unfulfilled feelings that it was time to leave government work altogether.  After doing so, she says her life opened up to a whirlwind of possibilities and it was time to create her own reality.   Crystal is now a voice actor specializing in voice-over for animation, commercials, and industrials, the Founder and CEO of Crystal J Productions, a service-disabled veteran, Belly Dancing nerd, and magical being, Crystal is an amalgamation of beauty, integrity, discipline, creativity, and quirkiness. Obviously the industry thinks so as well given her commercial demo was nominated for a SOVAS Award in 2021. To reach Crystal directly, you may do so via the following: Business Email Address: Crystal@CrystalJProductions.com Website(s): www.crystaljproductions.com and www.animatedvoiceovers.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/crystaljproductions Instagram: @crystaljproductions Facebook: @crystaljproductions Twitter: @CrystalMLee_VO If you liked this episode, please remember to review, share and follow.  It's grealty appreciated ; - )    

Episode Summary:Sarah Apgar – Princeton and Dartmouth alum, Iraqi war vet, volunteer fire fighter and EMT, and startup founder – wants to create a fitness and wellness movement based on the FitFighter steelhose product. In three conversations over the last year, we learn about Sarah and her company, her life as a Mom, her aspirations for her business, and how the relentless move toward growth requires constant adjustment and deep resilience.Sydney Finkelstein:Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master's degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein's research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.Sarah Apgar:Sarah Apgar is the Inventor of the Steelhose®, Founder of FitFighter® and Creator & Team Captain of the SteelSisters®. FitFighter is a strength and mobility system originally designed to help firefighters learn skills and be better prepared for their job. Sarah's signature innovation, the Steelhose®, was featured in 2020 on ABC's Shark Tank, and is now available to trainers, coaches, gyms, teams, physical therapists, and the general public, to keep us ready for our everyday mission. The SteelSisters® is a nationwide team of young women aged 13-30 who support each other, celebrate strength, share knowledge, and do what's worth fighting for. Sarah is an Iraq War Veteran, All-American Collegiate Athlete, Fitness Professional, former Volunteer Firefighter and Warby Parker Executive, and mom of 2 little girls. In addition to her primetime Shark Tank debut, Sarah and FitFighter® have been featured in Rolling Stone, Mens Health Magazine, Muscle and Fitness, Essence, ABC News, USA Sports Radio, Armed Forces Network, and Oxygen Magazine, and performed for clients the likes of ESPN, FDNY, and the United States Military. Sarah promotes and celebrates the power of teams, women leaders, and public service, contributing a portion of sales to the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Tower Foundation. Prior to launching FitFighter, Sarah was an executive at Warby Parker, overseeing the opening of the first 50 bricks and mortar retail stores in the US and Canada. Sarah has an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and a BA from Princeton University, and is a graduate of the Princeton Army ROTC Program. She lives in Port Washington NY with her husband, Ben Smith, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, her two young daughters, Emory and Arlyn, and canine Louisiana. Sarah is an avid skier, hiker, triathlete, and just about anything outdoors, and adores baking, cable reruns, and making people smile.Insights from this Episode:What is FitFighter and its purpose How Sarah got to the idea to found FitFighter The importance of the subscription model for FitFighterQualities that entrepreneurs must have How Sarah involves her children in her FitFighter lifeFitFighter's journey through Covid-19Sarah's experience on Shark Tank and the challenges she facedHow Shark Tank helped boost FitFighterHow Sarah manages her time as a mom and as an entrepreneur The challenges that partnerships have brought to FitFighterSarah's experience hiring a CEO for FitFighterFuture business plans for FitFighterQuotes from the Show: “Now we've just experienced this incredible shift in folks not being able to get out there to their gym, we've seen billions of dollars come out of the market of gym memberships…so what it's done is really explode companies that developed products that you can have in your home”- Sarah Apgar in “The Sydcast” [12:26] “I've never thought of FitFighter as just a product…I don't think I would invest my life in that, there's a lot of great companies that produce great products but ultimately this (FitFghter) is a lifestyle change and shift and rethinking the paradigms around fitness and wellness”- Sarah Apgar in “The Sydcast” [38:27] “[About life balance for Sarah and her team] We're all sort of facing mental health challenges and struggles, from isolation. I like to think that we're actually kind of living our best FitFighters life when it comes to strength and fostering a healthier, happier lifestyle that has some balance”- Sarah Apgar in “The Sydcast” [58:33] “Whether or not you're actually starting a business is not the point, is whether you're creating and seeking opportunities to experience new things and to learn along the way, is really a mindset”- Sydney Finkelstein in “The Sydcast” [01:05:21] “[About looking for a CEO] I've never had a co-founder, I've had great people at the table with me, friends, strategic advisors from the beginning and a couple of terrific early team members, but I never had that person who you can call up three, four, five times a day”- Sarah Apgar in “The Sydcast” [01:18:55] Stay Connected: Sydney FinkelsteinWebsite: http://thesydcast.comLinkedIn: Sydney FinkelsteinTwitter: @sydfinkelsteinFacebook: The SydcastInstagram: The SydcastSarah ApgarWebsite:https://www.sarahapgar.com/Instagram: Sarah ApgarLinkedIn: Sarah ApgarTwitter: Sarah ApgarDartmouth College: Sarah ApgarFitFighter:Instagram: FitFighterCompany Website: https://www.fitfighter.com/Training Platform:https://classes.fitfighter.com/catalogSizzler:Sizzler FitFighter Brand Trailer: Brand TrailerFitFighter App:FitFighter AppYouTube Channel: FitFighterSubscribe to our podcast + download each episode on Stitcher, iTunes, and Spotify.This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.

SHOW NOTES Join Code WACK! for the second of two podcasts featuring Thom Hartmann on America's healthcare fiasco and what we can do about it.  After all, how does it help the nation's health to have insurance industry executives sucking millions of dollars out of the system while Americans deny themselves healthcare because they can't afford it? And why have our political leaders abandoned us to this mess? Host Brenda Gazzar and Hartmann, America's No. 1 progressive talk radio show host and New York Times bestselling author, continue their discussion of his newest book, “The Hidden History of American Health Care: Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich.”      Click for transcript   HOW CAN WE GET THE PROFIT MOTIVE OUT OF HEALTHCARE? Thom offers a tongue-in-cheek suggestion that we simply buy out the health insurance sector: “…it's not the most serious suggestion in the book, but it's like one of these kinds of ‘in case of emergency break glass.' The problem is that every time you talk about a single-payer healthcare system or anything like it, um, you've got this industry, this almost trillion dollar a year industry that literally is spinning off five, six, $7 billion a month in profits.   HOW DO WE PAY FOR MEDICARE FOR ALL? The other problem with bringing up Medicare for All is the age-old question becomes “How do we pay for it?” Thom points out how changes in tax rates on the nation's highest earners have left us in debt, completely unnecessarily: “In fact, if Reagan had never cut taxes and then the two big subsequent ones, the George W. Bush and Donald Trump tax cuts, if those had never happened, we would have no national debt right now.” So we do have the money to bring about real change. However we decide to fix our healthcare system, it is clear that we must act, according to Thom. Our current system is not only harming Americans, it's also harming our nation's ability to innovate and compete economically.    COVID 19 - A MISSED OPPORTUNITY FOR CHANGE? COVID seemed like the opportunity for a national conversation on this, yet despite the devastation it wrought, Americans seem to believe the hassles and high costs of our healthcare system are “normal.”  They most certainly are not! "The number of people who have to declare bankruptcy because somebody in their family got sick in Canada is zero. In Germany, it's zero. In France, it's zero. In the UK, it's zero. Here it was a half a million..., well last year it was over 700,000 as best we can tell. And this year it's probably going to be over a million...I'm just astonished that Americans just assume that this is normal. This is not normal."   You can check out Tom's new book “The Hidden History of American Health Care: Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich” and subscribe to Code WACK!, your podcast about America's broken healthcare system on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen.    Thom Hartmann Biography Thom Hartmann is a progressive national and internationally syndicated talk show host whose shows are available in over a half-billion homes worldwide. He's the New York Times bestselling, four-time Project Censored Award-winning author of about 30 books in print in 17 languages on five continents. Leonardo DiCaprio was inspired by Thom's book "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight" to make the movie "The 11th Hour" (in which Thom appears), and the movie "Ice On Fire." Talkers Magazine named Thom Hartmann as the 10th most important talk show host in America in 2019 and has been in the top ten for over a decade and he is the #1 most important progressive host, in their “Heavy Hundred” ranking. His radio show is syndicated on for-profit FM and AM radio stations nationally, on nonprofit and community stations nationwide by Pacifica, across the entire North American continent on SiriusXM Satellite radio (Progress, Channel 127), on cable systems nationwide by Cable Radio Network (CRN), via subscription audio podcasts, worldwide through the U.S. Armed Forces Network, and through the Thom Hartmann iOS and Android apps. The radio show is also simulcast as TV in real-time into nearly 40 million U.S. and Canadian homes by the Free Speech TV Network on Dish Network, DirectTV, on cable TV systems nationwide, and live on both YouTube and Facebook.   HELPFUL LINKS Medical Bankruptcies Statistics 2021 Update, Balancing Everything   Medical Bankruptcies by Country 2021, World Population Review   The State of Healthcare Industry, Statistics for 2021, PolicyAdvice.net   Pandemic profits: top U.S. health insurers make billions in second quarter, The Guardian   Hidden History Series, Thom Hartmann   Find more Code WACK! episodes on ProgressiveVoices.com and on the PV App. You can also subscribe to Code WACK! wherever you find your podcasts. This podcast is powered by HEAL California, uplifting the voices of those fighting for health care reform around the country. I'm Brenda Gazzar.

Join us for a lively discussion with Thom Hartmann about how America's healthcare system got so screwed up!   You probably know Thom Hartmann as America's No. 1 progressive talk radio show host. But did you know that he's also a New York Times bestseller?  His latest book, “The Hidden History of American Health Care: Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich,” is hot off the presses and already making waves.  The book is not only easy-to-digest but super informative and part of Thom's popular Hidden History book series.   WHY DOES THOM CARE ABOUT HEALTH CARE? In this Code WACK! podcast, the first of two, Thom discusses why health care is such an important issue for him, the truly shocking impact of America's racist roots, and how he came to realize that the U.S. seriously lags behind many other countries when it comes to health care.    For example, he shared that when he and his wife Louise were heading to the jungles of Costa Rica to collaborate with Leonardo DiCaprio on their documentary “Ice on Fire” several years ago, he had a surprising conversation with a local taxi driver: “I said … ‘What do you like the most about living here?' and he's like ‘Well, I don't have any medical bills, and my son went to college, and the government paid for it.' And I'm like, ‘Wow, you know, this is freaking Costa Rica. We can't do this in the United States but they do it in Costa Rica.'”   HOW BAD IS OUR HEALTH CARE, REALLY? In fact, the United States lags behind many other countries when it comes to access and affordability, but also health outcomes. One major proof of America's healthcare fail has been the pandemic.    Taiwan, which has had a single-payer healthcare system since 1995, is faring much better than the United States when it comes to COVID-19 related cases and fatalities. “Taiwan has what is arguably, in my opinion anyway,  the world's best single-payer healthcare system,” Hartmann said. “It's clean, it's efficient, it's relatively new … and everybody is enrolled the moment you know that you're born.”   Thanks to their single-payer system, Taiwan has one of the fastest, most sophisticated and efficient contact tracing programs in the world, says Hartmann.  “Using that, they were able to isolate the people who were infected with COVID, keep them from spreading it - bend that R value all the way down to zero -- the reproduction rate for the virus -- and you know they spent most of last year with no problem.”     IS RACISM AT THE FOUNDATION OF OUR SYSTEMIC HEALTHCARE FAILURES? Meanwhile, the United States continues to struggle, not just with COVID but also with extreme inequity in healthcare access and outcomes. That's in no small part, according to Thom, because of our racist roots: “Racism is the legacy of America. It's still very much the omnipresent reality of America, but it's also the reason why we don't have a national healthcare system.”    And, he explains, it's also why Medicare still has so many coverage gaps, why 8 former slave states are among the 12 states that still have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and why Black people continue to suffer higher uninsured rates than White people.    You can check out Tom's new book “The Hidden History of American Health Care: Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich” and subscribe to Code WACK!, your podcast about America's broken healthcare system, on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen.  Also stay tuned for our next podcast, bringing you more of Thom's thought-provoking insights!   Thom Hartmann Biography Thom Hartmann is a progressive national and internationally syndicated talk show host whose shows are available in over a half-billion homes worldwide. He's the New York Times bestselling, four-time Project Censored Award-winning author of about 30 books in print in 17 languages on five continents. Leonardo DiCaprio was inspired by Thom's book "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight" to make the movie "The 11th Hour" (in which Thom appears), and the movie "Ice On Fire." Talkers Magazine named Thom Hartmann as the 10th most important talk show host in America in 2019 and has been in the top ten for over a decade and he is the #1 most important progressive host, in their “Heavy Hundred” ranking. His radio show is syndicated on for-profit FM and AM radio stations nationally, on nonprofit and community stations nationwide by Pacifica, across the entire North American continent on SiriusXM Satellite radio (Progress, Channel 127), on cable systems nationwide by Cable Radio Network (CRN), via subscription audio podcasts, worldwide through the U.S. Armed Forces Network, and through the Thom Hartmann iOS and Android apps. The radio show is also simulcast as TV in real-time into nearly 40 million U.S. and Canadian homes by the Free Speech TV Network on Dish Network, DirectTV, on cable TV systems nationwide, and live on both YouTube and Facebook.   HELPFUL LINKS Taiwan, International Healthcare System Profiles, The Commonwealth Fund   Our World In Data, Daily Number of Confirmed Deaths, U.S. & Taiwan   Health Coverage by Race and Ethnicity, 2010-2019, Kaiser Family Foundation   The Myth Of The Actuary: Life Insurance And Frederick L. Hoffman's Race Traits And Tendencies Of The American Negro, Megan J Wolff, MPH   Racial, Health Equity Leaders Call on U.S. Senate to Close Medicaid Gap for Good, Southerners for Medicaid Expansion   What are gaps in coverage with Medicare?, WebMD   Pitfalls of Medicare Advantage Plans, Investopedia   Hidden History Series, Thom Hartmann

Lane Nishikawa is a sansei (third-generation) Japanese-American who has been recognized nationwide for his work in storytelling. In this episode, he shares his experiences, as his identity and passion have intersected throughout his career. Lane Nishikawa has been in the film, television and theatrical industries for over thirty-five years. His dramatic feature film, Only The Brave, appeared in over 18 film festivals, internationally, screened in over 25 cities across the U.S., broadcast on National PBS, SHOWTIME Television, Armed Forces Network, and distributed to over 15 countries worldwide.

Episode 108 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "I Wanna Be Your Man" by the Rolling Stones and how the British blues scene of the early sixties was started by a trombone player. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have an eight-minute bonus episode available, on "The Monkey Time" by Major Lance. 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/ ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. i used a lot of resources for this episode. Information on Chris Barber comes from Jazz Me Blues: The Autobiography of Chris Barber by Barber and Alyn Shopton. Information on Alexis Korner comes from Alexis Korner: The Biography by Harry Shapiro. Two resources that I've used for this and all future Stones episodes -- The Rolling Stones: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesden is an invaluable reference book, while Old Gods Almost Dead by Stephen Davis is the least inaccurate biography. I've also used Andrew Loog Oldham's autobiography Stoned, and Keith Richards' Life, though be warned that both casually use slurs. This compilation contains Alexis Korner's pre-1963 electric blues material, while this contains the earlier skiffle and country blues music. The live performances by Chris Barber and various blues legends I've used here come from volumes one and two of a three-CD series of these recordings. And this three-CD set contains the A and B sides of all the Stones' singles up to 1971.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we're going to look at a group who, more than any other band of the sixties, sum up what "rock music" means to most people. This is all the more surprising as when they started out they were vehemently opposed to being referred to as "rock and roll". We're going to look at the London blues scene of the early sixties, and how a music scene that was made up of people who thought of themselves as scholars of obscure music, going against commercialism ended up creating some of the most popular and commercial music ever made. We're going to look at the Rolling Stones, and at "I Wanna Be Your Man": [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "I Wanna Be Your Man"] The Rolling Stones' story doesn't actually start with the Rolling Stones, and they won't be appearing until quite near the end of this episode, because to explain how they formed, I have to explain the British blues scene that they formed in. One of the things people asked me when I first started doing the podcast was why I didn't cover people like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf in the early episodes -- after all, most people now think that rock and roll started with those artists. It didn't, as I hope the last hundred or so episodes have shown. But those artists did become influential on its development, and that influence happened largely because of one man, Chris Barber. We've seen Barber before, in a couple of episodes, but this, even more than his leading the band that brought Lonnie Donegan to fame, is where his influence on popular music really changes everything. On the face of it, Chris Barber seems like the last person in the world who one would expect to be responsible, at least indirectly, for some of the most rebellious popular music ever made. He is a trombone player from a background that is about as solidly respectable as one can imagine -- his parents were introduced to each other by the economist John Maynard Keynes, and his father, another economist, was not only offered a knighthood for his war work (he turned it down but accepted a CBE), but Clement Atlee later offered him a safe seat in Parliament if he wanted to become Chancellor of the Exchequer. But when the war started, young Chris Barber started listening to the Armed Forces Network, and became hooked on jazz. By the time the war ended, when he was fifteen, he owned records by Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton and more -- records that were almost impossible to find in the Britain of the 1940s. And along with the jazz records, he was also getting hold of blues records by people like Cow Cow Davenport and Sleepy John Estes: [Excerpt: Sleepy John Estes, "Milk Cow Blues"] In his late teens and early twenties, Barber had become Britain's pre-eminent traditional jazz trombonist -- a position he held until he retired last year, aged eighty-nine -- but he wasn't just interested in trad jazz, but in all of American roots music, which is why he'd ended up accidentally kick-starting the skiffle craze when his guitarist recorded an old Lead Belly song as a track on a Barber album, as we looked at back in the episode on "Rock Island Line". If that had been Barber's only contribution to British rock and roll, he would still have been important -- after all, without "Rock Island Line", it's likely that you could have counted the number of British boys who played guitar in the fifties and sixties on a single hand. But he did far more than that. In the mid to late fifties, Barber became one of the biggest stars in British music. He didn't have a breakout chart hit until 1959, when he released "Petit Fleur", engineered by Joe Meek: [Excerpt: Chris Barber, "Petit Fleur"] And Barber didn't even play on that – it was a clarinet solo by his clarinettist Monty Sunshine. But long before this big chart success he was a huge live draw and made regular appearances on TV and radio, and he was hugely appreciated among music lovers. A parallel for his status in the music world in the more modern era might be someone like, say, Radiohead -- a band who aren't releasing number one singles, but who have a devoted fanbase and are more famous than many of those acts who do have regular hits. And that celebrity status put Barber in a position to do something that changed music forever. Because he desperately wanted to play with his American musical heroes, and he was one of the few people in Britain with the kind of built-in audience that he could bring over obscure Black musicians, some of whom had never even had a record released over here, and get them on stage with him. And he brought over, in particular, blues musicians. Now, just as there was a split in the British jazz community between those who liked traditional Dixieland jazz and those who liked modern jazz, there was a similar split in their tastes in blues and R&B. Those who liked modern jazz -- a music that was dominated by saxophones and piano -- unsurprisingly liked modern keyboard and saxophone-based R&B. Their R&B idol was Ray Charles, whose music was the closest of the great R&B stars to modern jazz, and one stream of the British R&B movement of the sixties came from this scene -- people like the Spencer Davis Group, Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, and Manfred Mann all come from this modernist scene. But the trad people, when they listened to blues, liked music that sounded primitive to them, just as they liked primitive-sounding jazz. Their tastes were very heavily influenced by Alan Lomax -- who came to the UK for a crucial period in the fifties to escape McCarthyism -- and they paralleled those of the American folk scene that Lomax was also part of, and followed the same narrative that Lomax's friend John Hammond had constructed for his Spirituals to Swing concerts, where the Delta country blues of people like Robert Johnson had been the basis for both jazz and boogie piano. This entirely false narrative became the received wisdom among the trad scene in Britain, to the extent that two of the very few people in the world who had actually heard Robert Johnson records before the release of the King of the Delta Blues Singers album were Chris Barber and his sometime guitarist and banjo player Alexis Korner. These people liked Robert Johnson, Big Bill Broonzy, Lead Belly, and Lonnie Johnson's early recordings before his later pop success. They liked solo male performers who played guitar. These two scenes were geographically close -- the Flamingo Club, a modern jazz club that later became the place where Georgie Fame and Chris Farlowe built their audiences, was literally across the road from the Marquee, a trad jazz club that became the centre of guitar-based R&B in the UK. And there wasn't a perfect hard-and-fast split, as we'll see -- but it's generally true that what is nowadays portrayed as a single British "blues scene" was, in its early days, two overlapping but distinct scenes, based in a pre-existing split in the jazz world. Barber was, of course, part of the traditional jazz wing, and indeed he was so influential a part of it that his tastes shaped the tastes of the whole scene to a large extent. But Barber was not as much of a purist as someone like his former collaborator Ken Colyer, who believed that jazz had become corrupted in 1922 by the evil innovations of people like Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson, who were too modern for his tastes. Barber had preferences, but he could appreciate -- and more importantly play -- music in a variety of styles. So Barber started by bringing over Big Bill Broonzy, who John Hammond had got to perform at the Spirituals to Swing concerts when he'd found out Robert Johnson was dead. It was because of Barber bringing Broonzy over that Broonzy got to record with Joe Meek: [Excerpt: Big Bill Broonzy, "When Do I Get to Be Called a Man?"] And it was because of Barber bringing Broonzy over that Broonzy appeared on Six-Five Special, along with Tommy Steele, the Vipers, and Mike and Bernie Winters, and thus became the first blues musician that an entire generation of British musicians saw, their template for what a blues musician is. If you watch the Beatles Anthology, for example, in the sections where they talk about the music they were listening to as teenagers, Broonzy is the only blues musician specifically named. That's because of Chris Barber. Broonzy toured with Barber several times in the fifties, before his death in 1958, but he wasn't the only one. Barber brought over many people to perform and record with him, including several we've looked at previously. Like the rock and roll stars who visited the UK at this time, these were generally people who were past their commercial peak in the US, but who were fantastic live performers. The Barber band did recording sessions with Louis Jordan: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan and the Chris Barber band, "Tain't Nobody's Business"] And we're lucky enough that many of the Barber band's shows at the Manchester Free Trade Hall (a venue that would later host two hugely important shows we'll talk about in later episodes) were recorded and have since been released. With those recordings we can hear them backing Sister Rosetta Tharpe: [Excerpt: Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the Chris Barber band, "Peace in the Valley"] Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee: [Excerpt: Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee and the Chris Barber band, "This Little Light of Mine"] And others like Champion Jack Dupree and Sonny Boy Williamson. But there was one particular blues musician that Barber brought over who changed everything for British music. Barber was a member of an organisation called the National Jazz Federation, which helped arrange transatlantic musician exchanges. You might remember that at the time there was a rule imposed by the musicians' unions in the UK and the US that the only way for an American musician to play the UK was if a British musician played the US and vice versa, and the National Jazz Federation helped set these exchanges up. Through the NJF Barber had become friendly with John Lewis, the American pianist who led the Modern Jazz Quartet, and was talking with Lewis about what other musicians he could bring over, and Lewis suggested Muddy Waters. Barber said that would be great, but he had no idea how you'd reach Muddy Waters -- did you send a postcard to the plantation he worked on or something? Lewis laughed, and said that no, Muddy Waters had a Cadillac and an agent. The reason for Barber's confusion was fairly straightfoward -- Barber was thinking of Waters' early recordings, which he knew because of the influence of Alan Lomax. Lomax had discovered Muddy Waters back in 1941. He'd travelled to Clarksdale, Mississippi hoping to record Robert Johnson for the Library of Congress -- apparently he didn't know, or had forgotten, that Johnson had died a few years earlier. When he couldn't find Johnson, he'd found another musician, who had a similar style, and recorded him instead. Waters was a working musician who would play whatever people wanted to listen to -- Gene Autry songs, Glenn Miller, whatever -- but who was particularly proficient in blues, influenced by Son House, the same person who had been Johnson's biggest influence. Lomax recorded him playing acoustic blues on a plantation, and those recordings were put out by the Library of Congress: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "I Be's Troubled"] Those Library of Congress recordings had been hugely influential among the trad and skiffle scenes -- Lonnie Donegan, in particular, had borrowed a copy from the American Embassy's record-lending library and then stolen it because he liked it so much.  But after making those recordings, Waters had travelled up to Chicago and gone electric, forming a band with guitarist Jimmie Rodgers (not the same person as the country singer of the same name, or the 50s pop star), harmonica player Little Walter, drummer Elgin Evans, and pianist Otis Spann.  Waters had signed to Chess Records, then still named Aristocrat, in 1947, and had started out by recording electric versions of the same material he'd been performing acoustically: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "I Can't Be Satisfied"] But soon he'd partnered with Chess' great bass player, songwriter, and producer Willie Dixon, who wrote a string of blues classics both for Waters and for Chess' other big star Howlin' Wolf. Throughout the early fifties, Waters had a series of hits on the R&B charts with his electric blues records, like the great "Hoochie Coochie Man", which introduced one of the most copied blues riffs ever: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "Hoochie Coochie Man"] But by the late fifties, the hits had started to dry up. Waters was still making great records, but Chess were more interested in artists like Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and the Moonglows, who were selling much more and were having big pop hits, not medium-sized R&B ones. So Waters and his pianist Otis Spann were eager to come over to the UK, and Barber was eager to perform with them. Luckily, unlike many of his trad contemporaries, Barber was comfortable with electric music, and his band quickly learned Waters' current repertoire. Waters came over and played one night at a festival with a different band, made up of modern jazz players who didn't really fit his style before joining the Barber tour, and so he and Spann were a little worried on their first night with the group when they heard these Dixieland trombones and clarinets. But as soon as the group blasted out the riff of "Hoochie Coochie Man" to introduce their guests, Waters and Spann's faces lit up -- they knew these were musicians they could play with, and they fit in with Barber's band perfectly: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, Otis Spann, and the Chris Barber band, "Hoochie Coochie Man"] Not everyone watching the tour was as happy as Barber with the electric blues though -- the audiences were often bemused by the electric guitars, which they associated with rock and roll rather than the blues. Waters, like many of his contemporaries, was perfectly willing to adapt his performance to the audience, and so the next time he came over he brought his acoustic guitar and played more in the country acoustic style they expected. The time after that he came over, though, the audiences were disappointed, because he was playing acoustic, and now they wanted and expected him to be playing electric Chicago blues. Because Muddy Waters' first UK tour had developed a fanbase for him, and that fanbase had been cultivated and grown by one man, who had started off playing in the same band as Chris Barber. Alexis Korner had started out in the Ken Colyer band, the same band that Chris Barber had started out in, as a replacement for Lonnie Donegan when Donegan was conscripted. After Donegan had rejoined the band, they'd played together for a while, and the first ever British skiffle group lineup had been Ken and Bill Colyer, Korner, Donegan, and Barber. When the Colyers had left the group and Barber had taken it over, Korner had gone with the Colyers, mostly because he didn't like the fact that Donegan was introducing country and folk elements into skiffle, while Korner liked the blues. As a result, Korner had sung and played on the very first ever British skiffle record, the Ken Colyer group's version of "Midnight Special": [Excerpt: The Ken Colyer Skiffle Group, "Midnight Special"] After that, Korner had also backed Beryl Bryden on some skiffle recordings, which also featured a harmonica player named Cyril Davies: [Excerpt: Beryl Bryden Skiffle Group, "This Train"] But Korner and Davies had soon got sick of skiffle as it developed -- they liked the blues music that formed its basis, but Korner had never been a fan of Lonnie Donegan's singing -- he'd even said as much in the liner notes to an album by the Barber band while both he and Donegan were still in the band -- and what Donegan saw as eclecticism, including Woody Guthrie songs and old English music-hall songs, Korner saw as watering down the music. Korner and Donegan had a war of words in the pages of Melody Maker, at that time the biggest jazz periodical in Britain. Korner started with an article headlined "Skiffle is Piffle", in which he said in part: "It is with shame and considerable regret that I have to admit my part as one of the originators of the movement...British skiffle is, most certainly, a commercial success. But musically it rarely exceeds the mediocre and is, in general, so abysmally low that it defies proper musical judgment". Donegan replied pointing out that Korner was playing in a skiffle group himself, and then Korner replied to that, saying that what he was doing now wasn't skiffle, it was the blues. You can judge for yourself whether the “Blues From the Roundhouse” EP, by Alexis Korner's Breakdown Group, which featured Korner, Davies on guitar and harmonica, plus teachest bass and washboard, was skiffle or blues: [Excerpt: Alexis Korner's Breakdown Group, "Skip to My Lou"] But soon Korner and Davies had changed their group's name to Blues Incorporated, and were recording something that was much closer to the Delta and Chicago blues Davies in particular liked. [Excerpt: Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated feat. Cyril Davies, "Death Letter"] But after the initial recordings, Blues Incorporated stopped being a thing for a while, as Korner got more involved with the folk scene. At a party hosted by Ramblin' Jack Elliot, he met the folk guitarist Davey Graham, who had previously lived in the same squat as Lionel Bart, Tommy Steele's lyricist, if that gives some idea of how small and interlocked the London music scene actually was at this time, for all its factional differences. Korner and Graham formed a guitar duo playing jazzy folk music for a while: [Excerpt: Alexis Korner and Davey Graham, "3/4 AD"] But in 1960, after Chris Barber had done a second tour with Muddy Waters, Barber decided that he needed to make Muddy Waters style blues a regular part of his shows. Barber had entered into a partnership with an accountant, Harold Pendleton, who was secretary of the National Jazz Federation. They co-owned a club, the Marquee, which Pendleton managed, and they were about to start up an annual jazz festival, the Richmond festival, which would eventually grow into the Reading Festival, the second-biggest rock festival in Britain. Barber had a residency at the Marquee, and he wanted to introduce a blues segment into the shows there. He had a singer -- his wife, Ottilie Patterson, who was an excellent singer in the Bessie Smith mould -- and he got a couple of members of his band to back her on some Chicago-style blues songs in the intervals of his shows. He asked Korner to be a part of this interval band, and after a little while it was decided that Korner would form the first ever British electric blues band, which would take over those interval slots, and so Blues Incorporated was reformed, with Cyril Davies rejoining Korner. The first time this group played together, in the first week of 1962, it was Korner on electric guitar, Davies on harmonica, and Chris Barber plus Barber's trumpet player Pat Halcox, but they soon lost the Barber band members. The group was called Blues Incorporated because they were meant to be semi-anonymous -- the idea was that people might join just for a show, or just for a few songs, and they never had the same lineup from one show to the next. For example, their classic album R&B From The Marquee, which wasn't actually recorded at the Marquee, and was produced by Jack Good, features Korner, Davies, sax player Dick Heckstall-Smith, Keith Scott on piano, Spike Heatley on bass, Graham Burbridge on drums, and Long John Baldry on vocals: [Excerpt: Blues Incorporated, "How Long How Long Blues"] But Burbridge wasn't their regular drummer -- that was a modern jazz player named Charlie Watts. And they had a lot of singers. Baldry was one of their regulars, as was Art Wood (who had a brother, Ronnie, who wasn't yet involved with these players). When Charlie quit the band, because it was taking up too much of his time, he was replaced with another drummer, Ginger Baker. When Spike Heatley left the band, Dick Heckstall-Smith brought in a new bass player, Jack Bruce. Sometimes a young man called Eric Clapton would get up on stage for a number or two, though he wouldn't bring his guitar, he'd just sing with them. So would a singer and harmonica player named Paul Jones, later the singer with Manfred Mann, who first travelled down to see the group with a friend of his, a guitarist named Brian Jones, no relation, who would also sit in with the band on guitar, playing Elmore James numbers under the name Elmo Lewis. A young man named Rodney Stewart would sometimes join in for a number or two. And one time Eric Burdon hitch-hiked down from Newcastle to get a chance to sing with the group. He jumped onto the stage when it got to the point in the show that Korner asked for singers from the audience, and so did a skinny young man. Korner diplomatically suggested that they sing a duet, and they agreed on a Billy Boy Arnold number. At the end of the song Korner introduced them -- "Eric Burdon from Newcastle, this is Mick Jagger". Mick Jagger was a middle-class student, studying at the London School of Economics, one of the most prestigious British universities. He soon became a regular guest vocalist with Blues Incorporated, appearing at almost every show. Soon after, Davies left the group -- he wanted to play strictly Chicago style blues, but Korner wanted to play other types of R&B. The final straw for Davies came when Korner brought in Graham Bond on Hammond organ -- it was bad enough that they had a saxophone player, but Hammond was a step too far. Sometimes Jagger would bring on a guitar-playing friend for a song or two -- they'd play a Chuck Berry song, to Davies' disapproval. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had known each other at primary school, but had fallen out of touch for years. Then one day they'd bumped into each other at a train station, and Richards had noticed two albums under Jagger's arm -- one by Muddy Waters and one by Chuck Berry, both of which he'd ordered specially from Chess Records in Chicago because they weren't out in the UK yet. They'd bonded over their love for Berry and Bo Diddley, in particular, and had soon formed a band themselves, Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, with a friend, Dick Taylor, and had made some home recordings of rock and roll and R&B music: [Excerpt: Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, "Beautiful Delilah"] Meanwhile, Brian Jones, the slide player with the Elmore James obsession, decided he wanted to create his own band, who were to be called The Rollin' Stones, named after a favourite Muddy Waters track of his. He got together with Ian Stewart, a piano player who answered an ad in Jazz News magazine. Stewart had very different musical tastes to Jones -- Jones liked Elmore James and Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf and especially Jimmy Reed, and very little else, just electric Chicago blues. Stewart was older, and liked boogie piano like Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson, and jump band R&B like Wynonie Harris and Louis Jordan, but he could see that Jones had potential. They tried to get Charlie Watts to join the band, but he refused at first, so they played with a succession of other drummers, starting with Mick Avory. And they needed a singer, and Jones thought that Mick Jagger had genuine star potential. Jagger agreed to join, but only if his mates Dick and Keith could join the band. Jones was a little hesitant -- Mick Jagger was a real blues scholar like him, but he did have a tendency to listen to this rock and roll nonsense rather than proper blues, and Keith seemed even less of a blues purist than that. He probably even listened to Elvis. Dick, meanwhile, was an unknown quantity. But eventually Jones agreed -- though Richards remembers turning up to the first rehearsal and being astonished by Stewart's piano playing, only for Stewart to then turn around to him and say sarcastically "and you must be the Chuck Berry artist". Their first gig was at the Marquee, in place of Blues Incorporated, who were doing a BBC session and couldn't make their regular gig. Taylor and Avory soon left, and they went through a succession of bass players and drummers, played several small gigs, and also recorded a demo, which had no success in getting them a deal: [Excerpt: The Rollin' Stones, "You Can't Judge a Book By its Cover"] By this point, Jones, Richards, and Jagger were all living together, in a flat which has become legendary for its squalour. Jones was managing the group (and pocketing some of the money for himself) and Jones and Richards were spending all day every day playing guitar together, developing an interlocking style in which both could switch from rhythm to lead as the song demanded. Tony Chapman, the drummer they had at the time, brought in a friend of his, Bill Wyman, as bass player -- they didn't like him very much, he was older than the rest of them and seemed to have a bad attitude, and their initial idea was just to get him to leave his equipment with them and then nick it -- he had a really good amplifier that they wanted -- but they eventually decided to keep him in the band.  They kept pressuring Charlie Watts to join and replace Chapman, and eventually, after talking it over with Alexis Korner's wife Bobbie, he decided to give it a shot, and joined in early 1963. Watts and Wyman quickly gelled as a rhythm section with a unique style -- Watts would play jazz-inspired shuffles, while Wyman would play fast, throbbing, quavers. The Rollin' Stones were now a six-person group, and they were good. They got a residency at a new club run by Giorgio Gomelsky, a trad jazz promoter who was branching out into R&B. Gomelsky named his club the Crawdaddy Club, after the Bo Diddley song that the Stones ended their sets with. Soon, as well as playing the Crawdaddy every Sunday night, they were playing Ken Colyer's club, Studio 51, on the other side of London every Sunday evening, so Ian Stewart bought a van to lug all their gear around. Gomelsky thought of himself as the group's manager, though he didn't have a formal contract, but Jones disagreed and considered himself the manager, though he never told Gomelsky this. Jones booked the group in at the IBC studios, where they cut a professional demo with Glyn Johns engineering, consisting mostly of Bo Diddley and Jimmy Reed songs: [Excerpt: The Rollin' Stones, "Diddley Daddy"] Gomelsky started getting the group noticed. He even got the Beatles to visit the club and see the group, and the two bands hit it off -- even though John Lennon had no time for Chicago blues, he liked them as people, and would sometimes pop round to the flat where most of the group lived, once finding Mick and Keith in bed together because they didn't have any money to heat the flat. The group's live performances were so good that the Record Mirror, which as its name suggested only normally talked about records, did an article on the group. And the magazine's editor, Peter Jones, raved about them to an acquaintance of his, Andrew Loog Oldham. Oldham was a young man, only nineteen, but he'd already managed to get himself a variety of jobs around and with famous people, mostly by bluffing and conning them into giving him work. He'd worked for Mary Quant, the designer who'd popularised the miniskirt, and then had become a freelance publicist, working with Bob Dylan and Phil Spector on their trips to the UK, and with a succession of minor British pop stars. Most recently, he'd taken a job working with Brian Epstein as the Beatles' London press agent. But he wanted his own Beatles, and when he visited the Crawdaddy Club, he decided he'd found them. Oldham knew nothing about R&B, didn't like it, and didn't care -- he liked pure pop music, and he wanted to be Britain's answer to Phil Spector. But he knew charisma when he saw it, and the group on stage had it. He immediately decided he was going to sign them as a manager. However, he needed a partner in order to get them bookings -- at the time in Britain you needed an agent's license to get bookings, and you needed to be twenty-one to get the license. He first offered Brian Epstein the chance to co-manage them -- even though he'd not even talked to the group about it. Epstein said he had enough on his plate already managing the Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and his other Liverpool groups. At that point Oldham quit his job with Epstein and looked for another partner. He found one in Eric Easton, an agent of the old school who had started out as a music-hall organ player before moving over to the management side and whose big clients were Bert Weedon and Mrs. Mills, and who was letting Oldham use a spare room in his office as a base. Oldham persuaded Easton to come to the Crawdaddy Club, though Easton was dubious as it meant missing Sunday Night at the London Palladium on the TV, but Easton agreed that the group had promise -- though he wanted to get rid of the singer, which Oldham talked him out of. The two talked with Brian Jones, who agreed, as the group's leader, that they would sign with Oldham and Easton. Easton brought traditional entertainment industry experience, while Oldham brought an understanding of how to market pop groups. Jones, as the group's leader, negotiated an extra five pounds a week for himself off the top in the deal. One piece of advice that Oldham had been given by Phil Spector and which he'd taken to heart was that rather than get a band signed to a record label directly, you should set up an independent production company and lease the tapes to the label, and that's what Oldham and Easton did. They formed a company called Impact, and went into the studio with the Stones and recorded the song they performed which they thought had the most commercial potential, a Chuck Berry song called "Come On" -- though they changed Berry's line about a "stupid jerk" to being about a "stupid guy", in order to make sure the radio would play it: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Come On"] During the recording, Oldham, who was acting as producer, told the engineer not to mic up the piano. His plans didn't include Ian Stewart. Neither the group nor Oldham were particularly happy with the record -- the group because they felt it was too poppy, Oldham because it wasn't poppy enough. But they took the recording to Decca Records, where Dick Rowe, the man who had turned down the Beatles, eagerly signed them. The conventional story is that Rowe signed them after being told about them by George Harrison, but the other details of the story as it's usually told -- that they were judging a talent contest in Liverpool, which is the story in most Stones biographies, or that they were appearing together on Juke Box Jury, which is what Wikipedia and articles ripped off from Wikipedia say -- are false, and so it's likely that the story is made up. Decca wanted the Stones to rerecord the track, but after going to another studio with Easton instead of Oldham producing, the general consensus was that the first version should be released. The group got new suits for their first TV appearance, and it was when they turned up to collect the suits and found there were only five of them, not six, that Ian Stewart discovered Oldham had had him kicked out of the group, thinking he was too old and too ugly, and that six people was too many for a pop group. Stewart was given the news by Brian Jones, and never really forgave either Jones or Oldham, but he remained loyal to the rest of the group. He became their road manager, and would continue to play piano with them on stage and in the studio for the next twenty-two years, until his death -- he just wasn't allowed in the photos or any TV appearances.  That wasn't the only change Oldham made -- he insisted that the group be called the Rolling Stones, with a g, not Rollin'. He also changed Keith Richards' surname, dropping the s to be more like Cliff, though Richards later changed it back again. "Come On" made number twenty-one in the charts, but the band were unsure of what to do as a follow-up single. Most of their repertoire consisted of hard blues songs, which were unlikely to have any chart success. Oldham convened the group for a rehearsal and they ran through possible songs -- nothing seemed right. Oldham got depressed and went out for a walk, and happened to bump into John Lennon and Paul McCartney. They asked him what was up, and he explained that the group needed a song. Lennon and McCartney said they thought they could help, and came back to the rehearsal studio with Oldham. They played the Stones an idea that McCartney had been working on, which they thought might be OK for the group. The group said it would work, and Lennon and McCartney retreated to a corner, finished the song, and presented it to them. The result became the Stones' second single, and another hit for them, this time reaching number twelve. The second single was produced by Easton, as Oldham, who is bipolar, was in a depressive phase and had gone off on holiday to try to get out of it: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "I Wanna Be Your Man"] The Beatles later recorded their own version of the song as an album track, giving it to Ringo to sing -- as Lennon said of the song, "We weren't going to give them anything great, were we?": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I Wanna Be Your Man"] For a B-side, the group did a song called "Stoned", which was clearly "inspired" by "Green Onions": [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Stoned"] That was credited to a group pseudonym, Nanker Phelge -- Nanker after a particular face that Jones and Richards enjoyed pulling, and Phelge after a flatmate of several of the band members, James Phelge. As it was an original, by at least some definitions of the term original, it needed publishing, and Easton got the group signed to a publishing company with whom he had a deal, without consulting Oldham about it. When Oldham got back, he was furious, and that was the beginning of the end of Easton's time with the group. But it was also the beginning of something else, because Oldham had had a realisation -- if you're going to make records you need songs, and you can't just expect to bump into Lennon and McCartney every time you need a new single. No, the Rolling Stones were going to have to have some originals, and Andrew Loog Oldham was going to make them into writers. We'll see how that went in a few weeks' time, when we pick up on their career.  

Episode 108 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Wanna Be Your Man” by the Rolling Stones and how the British blues scene of the early sixties was started by a trombone player. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have an eight-minute bonus episode available, on “The Monkey Time” by Major Lance. 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/ —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. i used a lot of resources for this episode. Information on Chris Barber comes from Jazz Me Blues: The Autobiography of Chris Barber by Barber and Alyn Shopton. Information on Alexis Korner comes from Alexis Korner: The Biography by Harry Shapiro. Two resources that I’ve used for this and all future Stones episodes — The Rolling Stones: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesden is an invaluable reference book, while Old Gods Almost Dead by Stephen Davis is the least inaccurate biography. I’ve also used Andrew Loog Oldham’s autobiography Stoned, and Keith Richards’ Life, though be warned that both casually use slurs. This compilation contains Alexis Korner’s pre-1963 electric blues material, while this contains the earlier skiffle and country blues music. The live performances by Chris Barber and various blues legends I’ve used here come from volumes one and two of a three-CD series of these recordings. And this three-CD set contains the A and B sides of all the Stones’ singles up to 1971.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we’re going to look at a group who, more than any other band of the sixties, sum up what “rock music” means to most people. This is all the more surprising as when they started out they were vehemently opposed to being referred to as “rock and roll”. We’re going to look at the London blues scene of the early sixties, and how a music scene that was made up of people who thought of themselves as scholars of obscure music, going against commercialism ended up creating some of the most popular and commercial music ever made. We’re going to look at the Rolling Stones, and at “I Wanna Be Your Man”: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, “I Wanna Be Your Man”] The Rolling Stones’ story doesn’t actually start with the Rolling Stones, and they won’t be appearing until quite near the end of this episode, because to explain how they formed, I have to explain the British blues scene that they formed in. One of the things people asked me when I first started doing the podcast was why I didn’t cover people like Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf in the early episodes — after all, most people now think that rock and roll started with those artists. It didn’t, as I hope the last hundred or so episodes have shown. But those artists did become influential on its development, and that influence happened largely because of one man, Chris Barber. We’ve seen Barber before, in a couple of episodes, but this, even more than his leading the band that brought Lonnie Donegan to fame, is where his influence on popular music really changes everything. On the face of it, Chris Barber seems like the last person in the world who one would expect to be responsible, at least indirectly, for some of the most rebellious popular music ever made. He is a trombone player from a background that is about as solidly respectable as one can imagine — his parents were introduced to each other by the economist John Maynard Keynes, and his father, another economist, was not only offered a knighthood for his war work (he turned it down but accepted a CBE), but Clement Atlee later offered him a safe seat in Parliament if he wanted to become Chancellor of the Exchequer. But when the war started, young Chris Barber started listening to the Armed Forces Network, and became hooked on jazz. By the time the war ended, when he was fifteen, he owned records by Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton and more — records that were almost impossible to find in the Britain of the 1940s. And along with the jazz records, he was also getting hold of blues records by people like Cow Cow Davenport and Sleepy John Estes: [Excerpt: Sleepy John Estes, “Milk Cow Blues”] In his late teens and early twenties, Barber had become Britain’s pre-eminent traditional jazz trombonist — a position he held until he retired last year, aged eighty-nine — but he wasn’t just interested in trad jazz, but in all of American roots music, which is why he’d ended up accidentally kick-starting the skiffle craze when his guitarist recorded an old Lead Belly song as a track on a Barber album, as we looked at back in the episode on “Rock Island Line”. If that had been Barber’s only contribution to British rock and roll, he would still have been important — after all, without “Rock Island Line”, it’s likely that you could have counted the number of British boys who played guitar in the fifties and sixties on a single hand. But he did far more than that. In the mid to late fifties, Barber became one of the biggest stars in British music. He didn’t have a breakout chart hit until 1959, when he released “Petit Fleur”, engineered by Joe Meek: [Excerpt: Chris Barber, “Petit Fleur”] And Barber didn’t even play on that – it was a clarinet solo by his clarinettist Monty Sunshine. But long before this big chart success he was a huge live draw and made regular appearances on TV and radio, and he was hugely appreciated among music lovers. A parallel for his status in the music world in the more modern era might be someone like, say, Radiohead — a band who aren’t releasing number one singles, but who have a devoted fanbase and are more famous than many of those acts who do have regular hits. And that celebrity status put Barber in a position to do something that changed music forever. Because he desperately wanted to play with his American musical heroes, and he was one of the few people in Britain with the kind of built-in audience that he could bring over obscure Black musicians, some of whom had never even had a record released over here, and get them on stage with him. And he brought over, in particular, blues musicians. Now, just as there was a split in the British jazz community between those who liked traditional Dixieland jazz and those who liked modern jazz, there was a similar split in their tastes in blues and R&B. Those who liked modern jazz — a music that was dominated by saxophones and piano — unsurprisingly liked modern keyboard and saxophone-based R&B. Their R&B idol was Ray Charles, whose music was the closest of the great R&B stars to modern jazz, and one stream of the British R&B movement of the sixties came from this scene — people like the Spencer Davis Group, Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, and Manfred Mann all come from this modernist scene. But the trad people, when they listened to blues, liked music that sounded primitive to them, just as they liked primitive-sounding jazz. Their tastes were very heavily influenced by Alan Lomax — who came to the UK for a crucial period in the fifties to escape McCarthyism — and they paralleled those of the American folk scene that Lomax was also part of, and followed the same narrative that Lomax’s friend John Hammond had constructed for his Spirituals to Swing concerts, where the Delta country blues of people like Robert Johnson had been the basis for both jazz and boogie piano. This entirely false narrative became the received wisdom among the trad scene in Britain, to the extent that two of the very few people in the world who had actually heard Robert Johnson records before the release of the King of the Delta Blues Singers album were Chris Barber and his sometime guitarist and banjo player Alexis Korner. These people liked Robert Johnson, Big Bill Broonzy, Lead Belly, and Lonnie Johnson’s early recordings before his later pop success. They liked solo male performers who played guitar. These two scenes were geographically close — the Flamingo Club, a modern jazz club that later became the place where Georgie Fame and Chris Farlowe built their audiences, was literally across the road from the Marquee, a trad jazz club that became the centre of guitar-based R&B in the UK. And there wasn’t a perfect hard-and-fast split, as we’ll see — but it’s generally true that what is nowadays portrayed as a single British “blues scene” was, in its early days, two overlapping but distinct scenes, based in a pre-existing split in the jazz world. Barber was, of course, part of the traditional jazz wing, and indeed he was so influential a part of it that his tastes shaped the tastes of the whole scene to a large extent. But Barber was not as much of a purist as someone like his former collaborator Ken Colyer, who believed that jazz had become corrupted in 1922 by the evil innovations of people like Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson, who were too modern for his tastes. Barber had preferences, but he could appreciate — and more importantly play — music in a variety of styles. So Barber started by bringing over Big Bill Broonzy, who John Hammond had got to perform at the Spirituals to Swing concerts when he’d found out Robert Johnson was dead. It was because of Barber bringing Broonzy over that Broonzy got to record with Joe Meek: [Excerpt: Big Bill Broonzy, “When Do I Get to Be Called a Man?”] And it was because of Barber bringing Broonzy over that Broonzy appeared on Six-Five Special, along with Tommy Steele, the Vipers, and Mike and Bernie Winters, and thus became the first blues musician that an entire generation of British musicians saw, their template for what a blues musician is. If you watch the Beatles Anthology, for example, in the sections where they talk about the music they were listening to as teenagers, Broonzy is the only blues musician specifically named. That’s because of Chris Barber. Broonzy toured with Barber several times in the fifties, before his death in 1958, but he wasn’t the only one. Barber brought over many people to perform and record with him, including several we’ve looked at previously. Like the rock and roll stars who visited the UK at this time, these were generally people who were past their commercial peak in the US, but who were fantastic live performers. The Barber band did recording sessions with Louis Jordan: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan and the Chris Barber band, “Tain’t Nobody’s Business”] And we’re lucky enough that many of the Barber band’s shows at the Manchester Free Trade Hall (a venue that would later host two hugely important shows we’ll talk about in later episodes) were recorded and have since been released. With those recordings we can hear them backing Sister Rosetta Tharpe: [Excerpt: Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the Chris Barber band, “Peace in the Valley”] Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee: [Excerpt: Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee and the Chris Barber band, “This Little Light of Mine”] And others like Champion Jack Dupree and Sonny Boy Williamson. But there was one particular blues musician that Barber brought over who changed everything for British music. Barber was a member of an organisation called the National Jazz Federation, which helped arrange transatlantic musician exchanges. You might remember that at the time there was a rule imposed by the musicians’ unions in the UK and the US that the only way for an American musician to play the UK was if a British musician played the US and vice versa, and the National Jazz Federation helped set these exchanges up. Through the NJF Barber had become friendly with John Lewis, the American pianist who led the Modern Jazz Quartet, and was talking with Lewis about what other musicians he could bring over, and Lewis suggested Muddy Waters. Barber said that would be great, but he had no idea how you’d reach Muddy Waters — did you send a postcard to the plantation he worked on or something? Lewis laughed, and said that no, Muddy Waters had a Cadillac and an agent. The reason for Barber’s confusion was fairly straightfoward — Barber was thinking of Waters’ early recordings, which he knew because of the influence of Alan Lomax. Lomax had discovered Muddy Waters back in 1941. He’d travelled to Clarksdale, Mississippi hoping to record Robert Johnson for the Library of Congress — apparently he didn’t know, or had forgotten, that Johnson had died a few years earlier. When he couldn’t find Johnson, he’d found another musician, who had a similar style, and recorded him instead. Waters was a working musician who would play whatever people wanted to listen to — Gene Autry songs, Glenn Miller, whatever — but who was particularly proficient in blues, influenced by Son House, the same person who had been Johnson’s biggest influence. Lomax recorded him playing acoustic blues on a plantation, and those recordings were put out by the Library of Congress: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, “I Be’s Troubled”] Those Library of Congress recordings had been hugely influential among the trad and skiffle scenes — Lonnie Donegan, in particular, had borrowed a copy from the American Embassy’s record-lending library and then stolen it because he liked it so much.  But after making those recordings, Waters had travelled up to Chicago and gone electric, forming a band with guitarist Jimmie Rodgers (not the same person as the country singer of the same name, or the 50s pop star), harmonica player Little Walter, drummer Elgin Evans, and pianist Otis Spann.  Waters had signed to Chess Records, then still named Aristocrat, in 1947, and had started out by recording electric versions of the same material he’d been performing acoustically: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, “I Can’t Be Satisfied”] But soon he’d partnered with Chess’ great bass player, songwriter, and producer Willie Dixon, who wrote a string of blues classics both for Waters and for Chess’ other big star Howlin’ Wolf. Throughout the early fifties, Waters had a series of hits on the R&B charts with his electric blues records, like the great “Hoochie Coochie Man”, which introduced one of the most copied blues riffs ever: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, “Hoochie Coochie Man”] But by the late fifties, the hits had started to dry up. Waters was still making great records, but Chess were more interested in artists like Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, and the Moonglows, who were selling much more and were having big pop hits, not medium-sized R&B ones. So Waters and his pianist Otis Spann were eager to come over to the UK, and Barber was eager to perform with them. Luckily, unlike many of his trad contemporaries, Barber was comfortable with electric music, and his band quickly learned Waters’ current repertoire. Waters came over and played one night at a festival with a different band, made up of modern jazz players who didn’t really fit his style before joining the Barber tour, and so he and Spann were a little worried on their first night with the group when they heard these Dixieland trombones and clarinets. But as soon as the group blasted out the riff of “Hoochie Coochie Man” to introduce their guests, Waters and Spann’s faces lit up — they knew these were musicians they could play with, and they fit in with Barber’s band perfectly: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, Otis Spann, and the Chris Barber band, “Hoochie Coochie Man”] Not everyone watching the tour was as happy as Barber with the electric blues though — the audiences were often bemused by the electric guitars, which they associated with rock and roll rather than the blues. Waters, like many of his contemporaries, was perfectly willing to adapt his performance to the audience, and so the next time he came over he brought his acoustic guitar and played more in the country acoustic style they expected. The time after that he came over, though, the audiences were disappointed, because he was playing acoustic, and now they wanted and expected him to be playing electric Chicago blues. Because Muddy Waters’ first UK tour had developed a fanbase for him, and that fanbase had been cultivated and grown by one man, who had started off playing in the same band as Chris Barber. Alexis Korner had started out in the Ken Colyer band, the same band that Chris Barber had started out in, as a replacement for Lonnie Donegan when Donegan was conscripted. After Donegan had rejoined the band, they’d played together for a while, and the first ever British skiffle group lineup had been Ken and Bill Colyer, Korner, Donegan, and Barber. When the Colyers had left the group and Barber had taken it over, Korner had gone with the Colyers, mostly because he didn’t like the fact that Donegan was introducing country and folk elements into skiffle, while Korner liked the blues. As a result, Korner had sung and played on the very first ever British skiffle record, the Ken Colyer group’s version of “Midnight Special”: [Excerpt: The Ken Colyer Skiffle Group, “Midnight Special”] After that, Korner had also backed Beryl Bryden on some skiffle recordings, which also featured a harmonica player named Cyril Davies: [Excerpt: Beryl Bryden Skiffle Group, “This Train”] But Korner and Davies had soon got sick of skiffle as it developed — they liked the blues music that formed its basis, but Korner had never been a fan of Lonnie Donegan’s singing — he’d even said as much in the liner notes to an album by the Barber band while both he and Donegan were still in the band — and what Donegan saw as eclecticism, including Woody Guthrie songs and old English music-hall songs, Korner saw as watering down the music. Korner and Donegan had a war of words in the pages of Melody Maker, at that time the biggest jazz periodical in Britain. Korner started with an article headlined “Skiffle is Piffle”, in which he said in part: “It is with shame and considerable regret that I have to admit my part as one of the originators of the movement…British skiffle is, most certainly, a commercial success. But musically it rarely exceeds the mediocre and is, in general, so abysmally low that it defies proper musical judgment”. Donegan replied pointing out that Korner was playing in a skiffle group himself, and then Korner replied to that, saying that what he was doing now wasn’t skiffle, it was the blues. You can judge for yourself whether the “Blues From the Roundhouse” EP, by Alexis Korner’s Breakdown Group, which featured Korner, Davies on guitar and harmonica, plus teachest bass and washboard, was skiffle or blues: [Excerpt: Alexis Korner’s Breakdown Group, “Skip to My Lou”] But soon Korner and Davies had changed their group’s name to Blues Incorporated, and were recording something that was much closer to the Delta and Chicago blues Davies in particular liked. [Excerpt: Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated feat. Cyril Davies, “Death Letter”] But after the initial recordings, Blues Incorporated stopped being a thing for a while, as Korner got more involved with the folk scene. At a party hosted by Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, he met the folk guitarist Davey Graham, who had previously lived in the same squat as Lionel Bart, Tommy Steele’s lyricist, if that gives some idea of how small and interlocked the London music scene actually was at this time, for all its factional differences. Korner and Graham formed a guitar duo playing jazzy folk music for a while: [Excerpt: Alexis Korner and Davey Graham, “3/4 AD”] But in 1960, after Chris Barber had done a second tour with Muddy Waters, Barber decided that he needed to make Muddy Waters style blues a regular part of his shows. Barber had entered into a partnership with an accountant, Harold Pendleton, who was secretary of the National Jazz Federation. They co-owned a club, the Marquee, which Pendleton managed, and they were about to start up an annual jazz festival, the Richmond festival, which would eventually grow into the Reading Festival, the second-biggest rock festival in Britain. Barber had a residency at the Marquee, and he wanted to introduce a blues segment into the shows there. He had a singer — his wife, Ottilie Patterson, who was an excellent singer in the Bessie Smith mould — and he got a couple of members of his band to back her on some Chicago-style blues songs in the intervals of his shows. He asked Korner to be a part of this interval band, and after a little while it was decided that Korner would form the first ever British electric blues band, which would take over those interval slots, and so Blues Incorporated was reformed, with Cyril Davies rejoining Korner. The first time this group played together, in the first week of 1962, it was Korner on electric guitar, Davies on harmonica, and Chris Barber plus Barber’s trumpet player Pat Halcox, but they soon lost the Barber band members. The group was called Blues Incorporated because they were meant to be semi-anonymous — the idea was that people might join just for a show, or just for a few songs, and they never had the same lineup from one show to the next. For example, their classic album R&B From The Marquee, which wasn’t actually recorded at the Marquee, and was produced by Jack Good, features Korner, Davies, sax player Dick Heckstall-Smith, Keith Scott on piano, Spike Heatley on bass, Graham Burbridge on drums, and Long John Baldry on vocals: [Excerpt: Blues Incorporated, “How Long How Long Blues”] But Burbridge wasn’t their regular drummer — that was a modern jazz player named Charlie Watts. And they had a lot of singers. Baldry was one of their regulars, as was Art Wood (who had a brother, Ronnie, who wasn’t yet involved with these players). When Charlie quit the band, because it was taking up too much of his time, he was replaced with another drummer, Ginger Baker. When Spike Heatley left the band, Dick Heckstall-Smith brought in a new bass player, Jack Bruce. Sometimes a young man called Eric Clapton would get up on stage for a number or two, though he wouldn’t bring his guitar, he’d just sing with them. So would a singer and harmonica player named Paul Jones, later the singer with Manfred Mann, who first travelled down to see the group with a friend of his, a guitarist named Brian Jones, no relation, who would also sit in with the band on guitar, playing Elmore James numbers under the name Elmo Lewis. A young man named Rodney Stewart would sometimes join in for a number or two. And one time Eric Burdon hitch-hiked down from Newcastle to get a chance to sing with the group. He jumped onto the stage when it got to the point in the show that Korner asked for singers from the audience, and so did a skinny young man. Korner diplomatically suggested that they sing a duet, and they agreed on a Billy Boy Arnold number. At the end of the song Korner introduced them — “Eric Burdon from Newcastle, this is Mick Jagger”. Mick Jagger was a middle-class student, studying at the London School of Economics, one of the most prestigious British universities. He soon became a regular guest vocalist with Blues Incorporated, appearing at almost every show. Soon after, Davies left the group — he wanted to play strictly Chicago style blues, but Korner wanted to play other types of R&B. The final straw for Davies came when Korner brought in Graham Bond on Hammond organ — it was bad enough that they had a saxophone player, but Hammond was a step too far. Sometimes Jagger would bring on a guitar-playing friend for a song or two — they’d play a Chuck Berry song, to Davies’ disapproval. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had known each other at primary school, but had fallen out of touch for years. Then one day they’d bumped into each other at a train station, and Richards had noticed two albums under Jagger’s arm — one by Muddy Waters and one by Chuck Berry, both of which he’d ordered specially from Chess Records in Chicago because they weren’t out in the UK yet. They’d bonded over their love for Berry and Bo Diddley, in particular, and had soon formed a band themselves, Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, with a friend, Dick Taylor, and had made some home recordings of rock and roll and R&B music: [Excerpt: Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, “Beautiful Delilah”] Meanwhile, Brian Jones, the slide player with the Elmore James obsession, decided he wanted to create his own band, who were to be called The Rollin’ Stones, named after a favourite Muddy Waters track of his. He got together with Ian Stewart, a piano player who answered an ad in Jazz News magazine. Stewart had very different musical tastes to Jones — Jones liked Elmore James and Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf and especially Jimmy Reed, and very little else, just electric Chicago blues. Stewart was older, and liked boogie piano like Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson, and jump band R&B like Wynonie Harris and Louis Jordan, but he could see that Jones had potential. They tried to get Charlie Watts to join the band, but he refused at first, so they played with a succession of other drummers, starting with Mick Avory. And they needed a singer, and Jones thought that Mick Jagger had genuine star potential. Jagger agreed to join, but only if his mates Dick and Keith could join the band. Jones was a little hesitant — Mick Jagger was a real blues scholar like him, but he did have a tendency to listen to this rock and roll nonsense rather than proper blues, and Keith seemed even less of a blues purist than that. He probably even listened to Elvis. Dick, meanwhile, was an unknown quantity. But eventually Jones agreed — though Richards remembers turning up to the first rehearsal and being astonished by Stewart’s piano playing, only for Stewart to then turn around to him and say sarcastically “and you must be the Chuck Berry artist”. Their first gig was at the Marquee, in place of Blues Incorporated, who were doing a BBC session and couldn’t make their regular gig. Taylor and Avory soon left, and they went through a succession of bass players and drummers, played several small gigs, and also recorded a demo, which had no success in getting them a deal: [Excerpt: The Rollin’ Stones, “You Can’t Judge a Book By its Cover”] By this point, Jones, Richards, and Jagger were all living together, in a flat which has become legendary for its squalour. Jones was managing the group (and pocketing some of the money for himself) and Jones and Richards were spending all day every day playing guitar together, developing an interlocking style in which both could switch from rhythm to lead as the song demanded. Tony Chapman, the drummer they had at the time, brought in a friend of his, Bill Wyman, as bass player — they didn’t like him very much, he was older than the rest of them and seemed to have a bad attitude, and their initial idea was just to get him to leave his equipment with them and then nick it — he had a really good amplifier that they wanted — but they eventually decided to keep him in the band.  They kept pressuring Charlie Watts to join and replace Chapman, and eventually, after talking it over with Alexis Korner’s wife Bobbie, he decided to give it a shot, and joined in early 1963. Watts and Wyman quickly gelled as a rhythm section with a unique style — Watts would play jazz-inspired shuffles, while Wyman would play fast, throbbing, quavers. The Rollin’ Stones were now a six-person group, and they were good. They got a residency at a new club run by Giorgio Gomelsky, a trad jazz promoter who was branching out into R&B. Gomelsky named his club the Crawdaddy Club, after the Bo Diddley song that the Stones ended their sets with. Soon, as well as playing the Crawdaddy every Sunday night, they were playing Ken Colyer’s club, Studio 51, on the other side of London every Sunday evening, so Ian Stewart bought a van to lug all their gear around. Gomelsky thought of himself as the group’s manager, though he didn’t have a formal contract, but Jones disagreed and considered himself the manager, though he never told Gomelsky this. Jones booked the group in at the IBC studios, where they cut a professional demo with Glyn Johns engineering, consisting mostly of Bo Diddley and Jimmy Reed songs: [Excerpt: The Rollin’ Stones, “Diddley Daddy”] Gomelsky started getting the group noticed. He even got the Beatles to visit the club and see the group, and the two bands hit it off — even though John Lennon had no time for Chicago blues, he liked them as people, and would sometimes pop round to the flat where most of the group lived, once finding Mick and Keith in bed together because they didn’t have any money to heat the flat. The group’s live performances were so good that the Record Mirror, which as its name suggested only normally talked about records, did an article on the group. And the magazine’s editor, Peter Jones, raved about them to an acquaintance of his, Andrew Loog Oldham. Oldham was a young man, only nineteen, but he’d already managed to get himself a variety of jobs around and with famous people, mostly by bluffing and conning them into giving him work. He’d worked for Mary Quant, the designer who’d popularised the miniskirt, and then had become a freelance publicist, working with Bob Dylan and Phil Spector on their trips to the UK, and with a succession of minor British pop stars. Most recently, he’d taken a job working with Brian Epstein as the Beatles’ London press agent. But he wanted his own Beatles, and when he visited the Crawdaddy Club, he decided he’d found them. Oldham knew nothing about R&B, didn’t like it, and didn’t care — he liked pure pop music, and he wanted to be Britain’s answer to Phil Spector. But he knew charisma when he saw it, and the group on stage had it. He immediately decided he was going to sign them as a manager. However, he needed a partner in order to get them bookings — at the time in Britain you needed an agent’s license to get bookings, and you needed to be twenty-one to get the license. He first offered Brian Epstein the chance to co-manage them — even though he’d not even talked to the group about it. Epstein said he had enough on his plate already managing the Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and his other Liverpool groups. At that point Oldham quit his job with Epstein and looked for another partner. He found one in Eric Easton, an agent of the old school who had started out as a music-hall organ player before moving over to the management side and whose big clients were Bert Weedon and Mrs. Mills, and who was letting Oldham use a spare room in his office as a base. Oldham persuaded Easton to come to the Crawdaddy Club, though Easton was dubious as it meant missing Sunday Night at the London Palladium on the TV, but Easton agreed that the group had promise — though he wanted to get rid of the singer, which Oldham talked him out of. The two talked with Brian Jones, who agreed, as the group’s leader, that they would sign with Oldham and Easton. Easton brought traditional entertainment industry experience, while Oldham brought an understanding of how to market pop groups. Jones, as the group’s leader, negotiated an extra five pounds a week for himself off the top in the deal. One piece of advice that Oldham had been given by Phil Spector and which he’d taken to heart was that rather than get a band signed to a record label directly, you should set up an independent production company and lease the tapes to the label, and that’s what Oldham and Easton did. They formed a company called Impact, and went into the studio with the Stones and recorded the song they performed which they thought had the most commercial potential, a Chuck Berry song called “Come On” — though they changed Berry’s line about a “stupid jerk” to being about a “stupid guy”, in order to make sure the radio would play it: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, “Come On”] During the recording, Oldham, who was acting as producer, told the engineer not to mic up the piano. His plans didn’t include Ian Stewart. Neither the group nor Oldham were particularly happy with the record — the group because they felt it was too poppy, Oldham because it wasn’t poppy enough. But they took the recording to Decca Records, where Dick Rowe, the man who had turned down the Beatles, eagerly signed them. The conventional story is that Rowe signed them after being told about them by George Harrison, but the other details of the story as it’s usually told — that they were judging a talent contest in Liverpool, which is the story in most Stones biographies, or that they were appearing together on Juke Box Jury, which is what Wikipedia and articles ripped off from Wikipedia say — are false, and so it’s likely that the story is made up. Decca wanted the Stones to rerecord the track, but after going to another studio with Easton instead of Oldham producing, the general consensus was that the first version should be released. The group got new suits for their first TV appearance, and it was when they turned up to collect the suits and found there were only five of them, not six, that Ian Stewart discovered Oldham had had him kicked out of the group, thinking he was too old and too ugly, and that six people was too many for a pop group. Stewart was given the news by Brian Jones, and never really forgave either Jones or Oldham, but he remained loyal to the rest of the group. He became their road manager, and would continue to play piano with them on stage and in the studio for the next twenty-two years, until his death — he just wasn’t allowed in the photos or any TV appearances.  That wasn’t the only change Oldham made — he insisted that the group be called the Rolling Stones, with a g, not Rollin’. He also changed Keith Richards’ surname, dropping the s to be more like Cliff, though Richards later changed it back again. “Come On” made number twenty-one in the charts, but the band were unsure of what to do as a follow-up single. Most of their repertoire consisted of hard blues songs, which were unlikely to have any chart success. Oldham convened the group for a rehearsal and they ran through possible songs — nothing seemed right. Oldham got depressed and went out for a walk, and happened to bump into John Lennon and Paul McCartney. They asked him what was up, and he explained that the group needed a song. Lennon and McCartney said they thought they could help, and came back to the rehearsal studio with Oldham. They played the Stones an idea that McCartney had been working on, which they thought might be OK for the group. The group said it would work, and Lennon and McCartney retreated to a corner, finished the song, and presented it to them. The result became the Stones’ second single, and another hit for them, this time reaching number twelve. The second single was produced by Easton, as Oldham, who is bipolar, was in a depressive phase and had gone off on holiday to try to get out of it: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, “I Wanna Be Your Man”] The Beatles later recorded their own version of the song as an album track, giving it to Ringo to sing — as Lennon said of the song, “We weren’t going to give them anything great, were we?”: [Excerpt: The Beatles, “I Wanna Be Your Man”] For a B-side, the group did a song called “Stoned”, which was clearly “inspired” by “Green Onions”: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, “Stoned”] That was credited to a group pseudonym, Nanker Phelge — Nanker after a particular face that Jones and Richards enjoyed pulling, and Phelge after a flatmate of several of the band members, James Phelge. As it was an original, by at least some definitions of the term original, it needed publishing, and Easton got the group signed to a publishing company with whom he had a deal, without consulting Oldham about it. When Oldham got back, he was furious, and that was the beginning of the end of Easton’s time with the group. But it was also the beginning of something else, because Oldham had had a realisation — if you’re going to make records you need songs, and you can’t just expect to bump into Lennon and McCartney every time you need a new single. No, the Rolling Stones were going to have to have some originals, and Andrew Loog Oldham was going to make them into writers. We’ll see how that went in a few weeks’ time, when we pick up on their career.  

The Upreneur podcast has partnered up with SCORE, hosted by Jeremy Straub, to help bring engaging conversations with today’s top leaders and business owners. In today’s episode, we spoke with Sarah Apgar, Founder of FitFighter. We spoke about how important it is to show, teach, and explain how your product works. You can't assume your customer knows how to use your product, teach them. They will appreciate it more. We also talked about how building a team of people who can complement your ideas will push you to go further. Sarah shared that building an advisory board has been vital to her success. Sarah Apgar is the Founder of FitFighter, a complete strength training system that makes you ready for your everyday mission. She is an Iraq War Veteran, All-American Athlete, Fitness Professional, Volunteer Firefighter, and mom of 2 little girls. Sarah and FitFighter have been featured on ABC News, USA Sports Radio, Armed Forces Network, and Oxygen Magazine, and performed for clients the likes of ESPN, FDNY, and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Sarah promotes and celebrates the power of teams, women leaders, and public service, contributing a portion of sales to the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Tower Foundation. Sarah has an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and a BA from Princeton University, and is a graduate of the Princeton Army ROTC Program. She lives in Port Washington NY with her husband, Ben Smith, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, and her two young daughters, Emory and Arlyn. FitFighter is a strength and conditioning system originally designed for the fire service, made with a real fire hose. Sarah is an Army veteran who after leaving the army joined her local volunteer fire department in Huntington, NY to recapture the sense of camaraderie she had experienced in the military, which helped inspire FitFighter’s creation. There is also a GREAT giveback side to this. A portion of sales sponsor the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation supporting Veterans, First Responders, frontline healthcare workers, and their families. Additionally, Sarah is providing at-cost equipment to FDNY firefighters who need to train at home AND she is also working to keep high school and college athletes in tip top shape until sports can resume safely.Websitehttps://www.fitfighter.com/Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/groups/fitfighter/Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/fitfighter/Youtubehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6DM-X5XwgnYrgsrYehftyAThank you for listening, and don’t forget to share, rate, and subscribe!If you enjoyed today's episode and want to stay up to date with new upcoming episodes, subscribe to our podcast. Please rate and comment on what your favorite moments from the podcast were, or who you would like for us to how on our show. If you found value from these podcasts, consider sharing this with your friend and family! Don't forget to Like, Subscribe and Rate our podcast!You can also follow us on our social media.Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/u_preneur/ Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/upreneurpodcast/Website:https://upreneur

Who is ready to swim with the Sharks? Check out this epic podcast episode with entrepreneur, Army veteran, Iraqi war veteran, All American Rugby player at Princeton, mom, and Mastermind member and friend Sarah Apgar who just appeared on Shark Tank on ABC a few days ago. Listen in as Sarah pitches her FitFighter brand on Shark Tank, and I ask her all the “behind-the-scenes” questions that you will love hearing about.    Hop into the Tank now with Sarah as she faces Sharks Mark Cuban, Robert Herjavec, Kevin O’Leary, Lori Greiner, and guest Shark Daniel Lubetzky. Sarah shares her feelings walking through the doors of Shark Tank, entering the doors to the stage full of light onto the set... man, I had goosebumps as she described the feeling inside of her and which Shark she was going after. Sarah also shares the inside scoop on the decision making moments and brain chaos that led her to the new FitFighter Co-Captain.     Sarah spent a ton of preparation time, over 30 days prior rehearsing every day, meditating, and making sure her formula of Preparation + a Little Fortune + Gumption + Commitment would meet in the end result!   Hop in the Tank, start swimming and choose your Sharks carefully. Be sure to share this episode on your social media, and please tag me on. IG/Twitter:  @ToddDurkin @sarah.apgar  @fitfighter  Facebook:  @ToddDurkinFQ10   TIMESTAMPS:  2:26 - Welcome Sarah Apgar...From the Shark Tank to the IMPACT Show! 4:42 - Confronting the Sharks 7:40 - The Shark Sarah Was Going After 9:55 - A Guest Shark…? 11:25 - Who is the lucky Shark...now co-captain of FitFighter? 13:00 - Sarah shares a little on what her relationship is with her new co-captain. 15:07 - Sarah shares her new Co-Captain’s Super Power. 17:05 - Lori looked like she was going to make an offer 19:50 - Sarah shares some great moments and thoughts now that the show has aired. 25:51 - Decision Making Moments 31:57 - What’s next for FitFighter?  37:00 - Gratitude and the power of the community! 41:50 - Wisdom and Motivation from Sarah - The FitFighter core values: 53:15 - Final Wrap up - Keep the crack in the door open!   ---   Like Sarah, would you like to swim with a “good” shark in your business and life? If so, check out the TD Mastermind Group or the IMPACT Coaching Certification below… If you are a Trainer, Coach, or Fitness Business Owner seeking to make a more significant IMPACT, I invite you to join the Todd Durkin Mastermind Program.   My Mastermind Program is for those seeking “best in class” content & coaching in personal development, leadership, business, marketing & coaching.   Exclusively for my podcast listeners, and for a limited time, you can receive a FREE fitness business assessment and a complimentary (60 min) coaching call.   Simply visit https://todddurkinmastermind.com/free-vna-coaching-call.   ---   Are you ready to be a Certified “Todd Durkin I.M.P.A.C.T. Coach”?  Get Certified VIRTUALLY this Saturday, Nov 21st, 2020!!   Do you dream of building your career or adding skills to your current business and personal life? Are you looking to clarify your purpose, goals, and direction within the life coaching domain and expand your coaching toolkit to increase revenues?   If you want to be a “life-coach” to help people create more IMPACT in people’s lives, please join me Saturday, November 21st, to be part of the elite first group to become a Certified “Todd Durkin I.M.P.A.C.T. Coach.”  For all information and to sign-up for my new I.M.P.A.C.T. Coaching Certification program, go to https://impactcertification.todddurkin.com/.   ---   About Sarah: Sarah Apgar is the Founder of FitFighter, a complete strength training system that makes you ready for your everyday mission. She is an Iraq War Veteran, All-American Athlete, Fitness Professional, Volunteer Firefighter, and mom of 2 little girls. Sarah and FitFighter have been featured on ABC News, USA Sports Radio, Armed Forces Network, and Oxygen Magazine, and performed for clients the likes of ESPN, FDNY, and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Sarah promotes and celebrates the power of teams, women leaders, and public service, contributing a portion of sales to the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Tower Foundation. Sarah has an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and a BA from Princeton University, and is a graduate of the Princeton Army ROTC Program. She lives in Port Washington NY with her husband, Ben Smith, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, and her two young daughters, Emory and Arlyn. Follow Sarah Apgar:  IG & Twitter @sarah.apgar  @fitfighter Website: www.sarahapagar.com & www.FitFighter.com ---   Please keep your questions coming so I can highlight you on the podcast!! If you have a burning question and want to be featured on the IMPACT show, go to www.todddurkin.com/podcast, fill out the form, and submit your questions!    ---   Follow Todd… → Instagram & Twitter: @ToddDurkin → Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ToddDurkinFQ10 → FB: @ToddDurkinFQ10   Don't forget that if you want more keys to unlock your potential and propel your success, you can order my book GET YOUR MIND RIGHT at www.todddurkin.com/getyourmindright or anywhere books are sold.   ---   ABOUT: Todd Durkin is one of the leading coaches, trainers, and motivators in the world. It’s no secret why some of the world’s top athletes have trained with him for nearly two decades. He’s a best-selling author, a motivational speaker, and owns the legendary Fitness Quest 10 in San Diego, CA, where he leads an amazing team of 42 teammates.   Todd is a coach on the Netflix show “STRONG” that is must-watch TV. He is a previous Jack LaLanne Award winner, a 2-time Trainer of the Year, and he runs his Todd Durkin Mastermind group of top trainers and fitness pros around the globe, coaching them with business, leadership, marketing, training, and personal growth mentorship.   Todd and his wife Melanie head up the Durkin IMPACT Foundation (501-c-3) that has raised over $250,000 since it started in 2013. 100% of all proceeds go back to kids and families in need. To learn more about Todd, visit www.ToddDurkin.com and www.FitnessQuest10.com.   Join his fire-breathing dragons’ community and receive regular motivational and inspirational emails. Visit www.ToddDurkin.com and opt-in to receive his value-rich content.   Connect with Todd online in the following places: You can listen to Todd’s podcast, The IMPACT Show, by going to www.todddurkin.com/podcast.

Graham is awesome. Graham is an interviewer I very much look up to and really appreciate him taking the time for this. His show, "In Depth with Graham Bensinger averages 3 million TV viewers and 2.5 million digital views weekly. The Emmy-winning show airs weekly across the U.S. on local NBC, CBS, ABC, or FOX stations and re-airs on regional and international sports stations, in-flight on Emirates, and on the Armed Forces Network. Graham and his team have traveled the globe, from Hong Kong to India, Serbia to the Congo, interviewing sports stars and celebrities such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Prince Albert II of Monaco, cricket phenom Virat Kohli, former quarterback and broadcaster Tony Romo, and tennis great Novak Djokovic." That's a loaded bio from their site and deservingly so. Enjoy :)

Bear Woznick World Champion Surfer & Adventurer Host of:• Long Ride Home w/Bear Woznick on EWTN & Armed Forces Network; 200 million, Amazon Prime & itunes• The Bear Woznick Adventure Radio Show on EWTN Radio; 500 radio stations in nearly all 50 states and Sirius FM, short wave and internet radio• Ocean Sunrise Catechism, 15 minute daily reflections on Facebook  Author:Deep in the Wave-A Surfing Guide to the Soul; Amazon best seller Website:www.deepadventure.com

Sam X Renick discusses how to educate children about money and the importance of sharing the lesson of financial responsibility with them. Sam has created the character, Sammy Rabbit, as a tool to aid parents and a fun way to connect with children as young as three to learn about finances. He will share with us how to influence healthy money habits to set children up for future financial success. Sam is an award-winning financial educator, children's author, songwriter, and entrepreneur. He is the driving force behind Sammy Rabbit and Sammy's Dream Big financial literacy education strategy. His efforts have been chronicled and quoted by a variety of media, including NPR, MSN, the New York Times, and the Armed Forces Network.

The Warrant Officer Recruiting Company conducted an interview on the Armed Forces Network with Specialist Dubose. The interview discusses the most in demand jobs that warrant officer Cohort is seeking. The interview also briefly states common terms of reference used when talking about different paths to take in the Warrant Officer Cohort.

The Warrant Officer Recruiting Team conducted an interview on Armed Forces Network with Specialist Dubose of the AFN radio broadcast team. The interview is comprised of a conversation on the basic requirements to enable someone to Commission as a Warrant Officer in the United States Army.

This is Sports Overnight America, which can be heard on SiriusXM 211, Sports ByLine USA and the Armed Forces Network. This weeks episode details what is going on between the owners and the MLBPA in negotations, how a universal DH will impact MLB and which NL Teams benefit the most from it.

Another live AEW event means one thing—another incredible night of wrestling for the Snowden family. We talk about Cody's incredible cage match against Wardlow, the latest from New Japan and DEBUT a part of Jonathan's interview with John Cena from back in 2003 for the Armed Forces Network. All this plus your questions, a discussion of the WWE Ruthless Aggression documentary series and much more!

Lou Landers and Ron McCleese host Sports Overnight America every Friday night on SiriusXm 211, Sports ByLine USA and the Armed Forces Network. On last weeks episode, they discuss a break out star in the NFL, MLB, NFL DFS, NFL previews and betting lines.

We're listening to another episode of Mystery Playhouse, a series which repurposed other shows (in this case Inner Sanctum Mystery) for the Armed Forces Network! This story, “Murder Comes at Midnight,” depicts a woman at home alone with her child when when a dangerous stranger shows up at her door, nursing a broken arm. Why […]

The American Forces Network (AFN) is the broadcast service operated by the United States Armed Forces' American Forces Radio and Television Service for its entertainment and command internal information networks worldwide. The AFN worldwide radio and television broadcast network serves American servicemembers, Department of Defense and other U.S. government civilians and their families stationed at bases overseas, as well as U.S. Navy ships at sea. AFN broadcasts popular American radio and television programs from the major U.S. networks. It is sometimes referred to as the Armed Forces Network. AFRTS, American Forces Network and AFN are registered trademarks of the U.S. Department of Defense. It is based at Fort George G. Meade in Maryland and is part of the Defense Media Activity.

In this podcast, we speak with Bear about what it means for men to venture out into the deep adventure that is living out our manhood as God intended. Bear Woznick stars in Reality TV show The Long Ride Home (Available on Amazon Prime Video, iTunes, EWTN, and Armed Forces Network); Host of The Bear Woznick Adventure Radio Show airing through EWTN, Sirius XM, shortwave radio, and can be watched via YouTube; Author of two books - Deep in the wave- A surfing guide to the soul and Deep Adventure- the way of heroic virtue; A World Champion Surfer and Adventurer. Learn more at https://deepadventureministries.com

In episode 11 Brian Lane interviews the host of the Beyond the Pole Radio Show which airs on Rochester Free Radio and the Armed Forces Network. Katrina Lee has multiple degrees in business, she owns a plethora of businesses and is extremely active with non profit organizations which attempt to help cure the Opioid crisis in Western New York and beyond. The CEO of Kat's Meow Entertainment discusses losing friends to opioids, how the adult industry has changed and being an actress. Katrina is also does sales for Alcame Hair, and is a reporter at Escape at Dannemora. As an actress she has had roles in several Lifetime Movies as well as a stand in for the new Purge prequel, 'Colebrook' .  If you are in Rochester please check out the Evergreen Memorial Garden to get a feel of how one man's battle with opioids cost him two sons.   

Kevin and Sully rounded up 3 strippers (Katrina Lee, Roxii Love & Ginger) that are local to their podcast. They all give a little bit of their backgrounds before getting into the "meat and potatoes" of the episode. Katrina (A very young looking blonde) discusses how she danced at "Sundowner" in Niagara Falls, Canada, as well as, danced/managed at "Mademoiselle's" in Buffalo, NY. She got into the retail business shortly after, selling all sorts of dancer clothing, to strippers, in multiple clubs across Western NY. She's made many appearances in "Hustler" Magazine, Barely Legal Editions and much more. Katrina currently operates a store in "Playmates" in Byron, NY and is planning to expand her business nationwide, by working with a vendor to employ vending machine type systems in dance clubs. She also has a Radio show on rochesterfreeradio.com, the Tune In App, and the Armed Forces Network called, "Beyond The Pole". Roxii Love (Kevin calls her Fun Size) is a short brunette with a great body and awesome personality. She danced for many years at local clubs, but when she got pregnant, she found a new passion in post pregnancy help for woman being a "doula". Roxii has a radio show called "Roxii Love's Radio Rebellion. Ginger is a red head (very red, but obviously dyed), and pretty tall. She currently dances at Playmates in Byron, NY and says she loves it there. She calls it a very chill atmosphere and like no other dance club she's ever belonged to. Playmates is a fully nude club, but they do not serve alcohol because they are fully nude. The boys get right into it with the girls about how strip club life is, clientele, and some of the experiences they have all had. Sully asks about the clubs atmosphere nowadays and some of the dealings with other dancers within the clubs. Kevin talks about how Sully left a buddy outside at Sundowner once, and how him and some buddies were at a bachelor party once and one of his friends made change from the money on the ground by the dancers and just about got tackled. The girls talk a bunch about Playmates and how its a very interactive club and being a fully nude cabaret, they can do sexual performances for the patrons. Katrina says there is even a shower area there where you can wash the girls in the shower. They move on to play some "Would You Rather" and have some fun talking about whether they would do one thing or another, depending on the question. We won't get into that here, as you'll just have to listen! Visit Playmates Facebook Page at - https://www.facebook.com/Playmates.ny/ They are located in Byron, NY - A FULLY NUDE Cabaret Visit Katrina Lee's Facebook Page - https://www.facebook.com/Katrina-Lee-596007290733980/ Visit Roxii Love's Facebook Page - https://www.facebook.com/RoxiiLoveFanPage/ Visit Ginger at Playmates!

A daily devotional walking through God's word together using The Bible Reading Plan at http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.html. Our website http://alittlewalkwithgod.com. The subject of today's podcast includes two terms that are mutually exclusive. Integrity and duplicity. The two can not coexist in the same person. We try awfully hard these days. We try to make things fit the way we want them to fit. We want what we think is best for us regardless what it might do to someone else. We want what we want and we want it now. But that's not how integrity works. Solomon said in Proverbs 11:3, “The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity.” So what exactly am I talking about when I talk about duplicity in the context of integrity? We've already determined that integrity is about oneness with our Creator. It's about his truth, not anyone else's. Integrity isn't defined by our norms, but by God's. We've said integrity requires accountability and how important a partner and mentor can be in helping us stay on track, keeping us from straying from the path we've set out on. Duplicity is defined as deceitfulness or double-dealing. It comes into play in this setting when we talk about integrity but then don't live up to what we say. It reminds me of a public service announcement that was aired on the Armed Forces Network when I was stationed in Germany several years ago. The camera panned on a soldier called to his home because his teenage son had been caught shoplifting. The soldier did a pretty good job of chewing out his son, telling him how wrong it was to steal. How he had learned in church that was one of the Ten Commandments God gave us. He asked how in the world he could stoop so low as to steal something that didn't belong to him. All the while the soldier carried on this conversation with his wayward son, the camera moved position and drew the lens back to focus on a handful of black skillcraft pens laying on the soldiers desk at home. Those of you who have worked in the government know what that means. No one had those black skillcraft ballpoint pens except Uncle Sam and he bought hundreds of thousands of them. And why did the government buy so many? Because people like that soldier stole them from their offices. You might think to yourself, taking a pen from my employer isn't such a big deal. And maybe one pen isn't. At that time they were about $1.50 a dozen. But this soldier along with probably 50% of the rest of the 5 million people employed by the federal government had two or three or more of those pens at home. If my math is right, that's about $625,000 of theft. That's a well organized gang conducting grand larceny. You probably never thought of it that way, but someone had to pay for that pen or pencil or notebook or pad of paper or whatever it is you might bring home for personal use. Is that duplicity? You bet. Or how about that cell phone ding to remind you of an email or a facebook message that you just have to answer at work? Or the website you need to explore for just a few minutes at the office. Or a bill you need to pay from there because your internet speeds at home are so slow? Does your employer want to pay you for being completely unproductive when you're supposed to be working for her? Stealing part of your paycheck by failing to give that time to your employer as you agreed when you were hired is called duplicity, deceitfulness, double-dealing. It certainly isn't integrity. Am I saying that I am perfect in these area? No. If you scoured my house, you'd probably find one of those long lost skillcraft pens in a box in the garage. And to be honest, once in a while I'll answer or make a personal call or see a personal email pop up on my screen and answer it while I'm supposed to be doing something else. But I try to stay very conscious of my time and what I do with the equipment and supplies entrusted to me. I learned because of those skillcraft pens that I kept having to buy out of my meager budget as a company commander in the army almost forty years ago how just one innocent pen can suddenly add up to dozens, then hundreds, the thousands. And no one really notices until someone at the top of the chain coughs because more than half a million dollars in black government pens have gone missing. It's not that big a deal. Except it's duplicious. It's no big thing. Except it breaks commandment number eight. It's nothing really. Except God says don't do it. No one cares. Except it means your integrity is at stake. Our society is trying hard to turn all these things into various shades of gray. Just a pen. Just a pad of paper. Just a box of paper clips. Just a few copies for my kid's school work. Just a few messages during the day. Just a little me time during my work hours. Just a little here and just a little there. No big deal. No harm done. The latest figure I could get comes from 2012, so this data is six years old and has only gotten worse since then. But listen to some of these facts from six years ago. 60% of workers spend at least some time on social media during work hours. The average college student in 2012 spent 3 hours on facebook and two hours studying. Which explains why college students who use facebook regularly have a GPA a full point lower than those who don't. In the US that year, collectively we spent 12,207,423,487 hours on social media. Twice as much time on social media as in any form of exercise. 10% of us spend more time on social media than we do at work and 60% of us connect with our social media at work. Workers are interrupted every 10.5 minutes by things like twitter, IM's and facebook. Then studies show it takes 23 minutes to get back on task after an interruption. No one can really multitask by the way. Your brain will only let you do one thing at a time. If you think you're multitasking, you're fooling yourself and turning out poorer quality work that you are able. So what did all that cost? When you do the 2012 math, social media cost companies almost $4500 per employee. And it cost the US economy about $650 billion. But it's just one message, right? It doesn't hurt anything? It's only a few minutes, right? No one cares. It's not like I don't get my job done, so I can do this on the sly, right? Take a look at the number once more. The social media mafia successfully stole $650 billion dollars from everyone's pocket. Why everyone's pocket and not just those C-suite executives? Because those C-suite executives didn't have the money to give employees the raises they  might have been able to give otherwise. They didn't have the money to improve health benefits. They didn't have the money to hire new employees. They didn't have the money to build new facilities or new plants. $650 billion can do a lot of stuff, and collectively in the workplace...How did Solomon put it? “... the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity.” Integrity and duplicity can not exist in the same person. But we need God's help to maintain our integrity. The world makes everything shades of gray instead of God's black and white. The problem is that the world won't be our judge when Jesus returns. God set the rules and God will judge us based on his rules. Not the world's. Not ours. His. So how is your integrity meter running today?

Our thanks to Scott for suggesting “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” from Mystery Playhouse! The series, hosted by Peter Lorre, re-purposed other radio series (in this case Molle Mystery Theater) for the Armed Forces Network. This particular episode was an adaptation of a short story by Robert Bloch about a hunt for London's notorious killer […]

In the second part of his four-part series with Len Harris of Illinois Joining Forces, your host of Military Resource Radio – Tony Gatliff – and his guest attack a variety of topics like Len’s 22 year military career, moving into teaching broadcasting to new Army recruits, Len’s experiences with the Armed Forces Network, traveling to many different countries for his career in the military, being over in Iraq during “The Surge”, the fact that Len is a master Foosball player, not to mention his experiences with former POTUS George W. Bush and John Popper of the band “Blues Traveler.” This is a tremendous episode of Military Resource Radio, and you won’t want to wait another second to listen to it!

My guest is Evan Money. Evan in a bestselling author, Global Entrepreneur and Executive Producer of the ground breaking film "Words of Art", starring Joel Osteen, Darren Hardy, Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn and more. Evan and his bride of 19 years and counting, remarry in a different state or country every year. Evan is also the co-founder of The Personal Growth Hall of Fame. His most recent book is "Money Talks, Frustration Walks." Millions have seen Evan on ABC, NBC, CBS, The CW, Lifetime and Armed Forces Network, he has also been featured in Fast Company Magazine, SUCCESS Magazine, Delta Skyways & even the British Tabloids. Special Guest: Evan Money.

The American Forces Network (AFN) is the broadcast service operated by the United States Armed Forces' American Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS) for its entertainment and command internal information networks worldwide. The AFN worldwide radio and television broadcast network serves American servicemen and women, Department of Defense and other U.S. government civilians and their families stationed at bases overseas, as well as U.S. Navy ships at sea. AFN broadcasts popular American radio and television programs from the major U.S. networks. It is sometimes referred to as the Armed Forces Network. AFRTS, American Forces Network and AFN are registered trademarks of the U.S. Department of Defense. It is based at Fort George G. Meade in Maryland. The American Forces Network can trace its origins to May 26, 1942, when the War Department established the Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS). A television service was first introduced in 1954 with a "pilot" station at Limestone Air Force Base, Maine. In 1954, the television mission of AFRS was officially recognized and AFRS (Armed Forces Radio Service) became AFRTS (Armed Forces Radio and Television Service).[6] All of the Armed Forces broadcasting affiliates worldwide merged under the AFN banner on January 1, 1998. On November 21, 2000, the American Forces Information Service directed a change of the AFRTS organizational title from Armed Forces Radio and Television Service back to American Forces Radio and Television Service. A timeline of the history of AFN is available online.

My guest is Ken Dubner, founder and CEO of Mind Training Solutions. Ken is a certified hypnotherapist, an NLP master practitioner and a certified master hypnotist and has dedicated his life to empowering people by guiding them to use their minds more effectively. As a renowned hypnotherapist, speaker and seminar leader, he has been interviewed by Extra, Armed Forces Network, Discovery Health Channel, HBO documentaries, as well as numerous radio stations throughout the nation. Listen to the podcast to find out more about Ken Dubner and how he has positively impacted the lives of thousands of individuals over the last two decades.

We revisit a time when English language radio in Taiwan all came from ICRT's predecessor, Armed Forces Network in Taiwan. Listen in to this very special episode as we bring classic moments from the AFNT era back to Taiwan's airwaves.

We revisit a time when English language radio in Taiwan all came from ICRT's predecessor, Armed Forces Network in Taiwan. Listen in to this very special episode as we bring classic moments from the AFNT era back to Taiwan's airwaves.

Ken Jennings was born just outside Seattle, Washington, but grew up overseas. His family spent fifteen years in Korea and Singapore, where his father worked as an attorney. His only lifeline to American pop culture during those years was TV on the Armed Forces Network, where he watched Jeopardy! religiously after school every afternoon. At BYU, Ken captained the university's successful quiz bowl team & began writing/editing questions for National Academic Quiz Tournaments, a company that organizes quiz competitions attended by hundreds of colleges and thousands of high schools nationwide. Ken began to notice a parade of his friends and acquaintances from the world of quiz bowl appearing on game shows where many were able to pay off their student loans and buy flashy sports cars. With this in mind, Ken began to revive his childhood dream of appearing onJeopardy! Much to his surprise, Ken's Jeopardy! appearance extended far beyond a single game: he took advantage of a recent rule change allowing returning champs to appear on the show indefinitely, and spent the next six months hogging America's TV screens. Before losing on the November 30 show because he didn't know enough trivia about H&R Block, Ken won 74 games and $2.52 million, both American game show records. Ken currently lives outside Seattle, Washington with his wife and children. http://ken-jennings.com  This show is sponsored in part by http://audibletrial.com/northwestprime 1st book is FREE, click and see if audio books are right for you!  

Today's featured guest: Brandy Mai Brandy is a born-and-raised ragin' cajun who enlisted in the Army in 1998 as a photojournalist. She spent ten years inside the world of Army journalism, followed by a stint as a federal investigator, and it left her with a passion for our nation's veterans. She lives and Works in Savannah, GA Just outside of HAAF and Fort Stewart. Today she will be talking to us about some of her veteran outreach programs in the Savannah Metro area. First is the program called "First Saturday Veteran Breakfast," which she has been spearheading with local vets. Second is the organization of "Team Red, White and Blue" where she acts as the community director for the Savannah Chapter. http://www.facebook.com/groups/TeamRWBSavannah/ http://www.facebook.com/groups/firstsaturdaysavannah http://brandymai.com/ Guest hosting today is: Brandin Lea Brandin is a veteran of the Air Force and the Army and specializes in finances, debt, job search and various other aspects of personal military development. Brandin is a professional project manager has been the host of the Uncommon Financial Hour, and several broadcasts on the Armed Forces Network. Today Brandin will be hosting to discuss financial impacts on veterans due to unemployment and the economy, with his long time friend and mentor Michael Redding, a 22 year Navy Veteran and financial specialist.

Known as “the Hypnotists Hypnotist,” Ken Dubner is a hypnotherapist, life coach, educator, and speaker. He has been involved in training hundreds of Certified Hypnotherapist in the United States. Ken is certified behavioral hypnotherapist and master hypnotist, and has been filmed by HBO documentaries, Discovery Science Channel, Discovery Health Channel, American TVs EXTRA, and the Armed Forces Network. Richard “Ribbs” Gibbs is an American film composer and music producer whose credits include the films Sweet Hearts Dance, Dr. Dolittle, Big Momma's House, The Book of Stars, Queen of the Damned and the television series Battlestar Galactica. Gibbs was the keyboard player for the New Wave band Oingo Boingo from 1980 to 1984. He was also a session player, performing on over 150 albums for artists as diverse as War, Tom Waits, Boy Meets Girl, Living in a Box, Robert Palmer, and Aretha Franklin. He also started with Michael Jochum the band Zuma II, which had an eponymously titled record released by Pasha/CBS Records. He has appeared live with Korn, The Staples, Chaka Khan, and Oingo Boingo.Growing up in a cultural Gumbo pot outside Paris, France, Evyn Charles was immersed in the sounds of the world. He played violin in a classical orchestra, bass in a Reggae band, and has never stopped singing… Right out of high-school, he played music at Club Med™ resorts, starting to refine what would turn into his trademark Soulful Beach Groove style. Following in the footsteps of Van Morrison, Bob Marley and Eva Cassidy, he combines infectious party songs with heart-tugging numbers. His prodigious repertoire covers practically every genre and era, or as he likes to explain: “I play songs that people like.”