Podcasts about banana boat song

Send us a textRemember Beetlejuice from the 80s? You know, the one we all saw like a hundred times. Now, with the release of the Beetlejuice sequel (Beetlejuice Beetlejuice) all these decades later, we're wondering if the original Beetlejuice is as good as we remember. It almost has to be right? Tim Burton's insane story with stop motion & macabre visuals, Micheal Keaton in an iconic performance, Winona Ryder, Catherine O'Hara, Alec Baldwin, and Geena Davis! To be honest, if this movie isn't half as good as we remember, we are going to be crushed.Do You Remember Liking This Movie?

durée : 00:04:52 - La chronique de Djubaka - par : Julien Deflisque - Quand on entend ce titre, on se dit que tout va bien, on fait risette à la vie... Que nenni ! Vous avez cru au paradis alors que c'est l'enfer. Djubaka casse un mythe et remet tout ça à l'endroit : "The Banana Boat Song", c'est d'abord une chanson de dockers pour des gens qui galèrent...

A light night of recording means we're feeling a little rambly and a little punchy as we talk about a comedy with an all-star cast and way too few laughs. Join Tom and Ryan as they talk about dry humor, punching down, and, of course, The Banana Boat Song. Hijinks ensure during our review of Chu Chu and the Philly Flash!   Time stamps: 0:04:10 - Background 0:42:50 - Summary 0:55:30 - Notable Scenes 1:02:45 - The Good 1:07:40 - The Bad 1:25:45 - The Ugly

  The end of this week reminds us of the old adventure game Monkey Island. US Analyst Charles Ortel will walk you through the Sea of Thieves in Washington DC. A few Clintons and a few Bidens are on top of the list. Geir Furuseth will try to keep tally! Harry Belafonte's «The Banana Boat Song» could've been the tune of this week's show, but neither of the two will sing it. Rather they will try to show you some of the madness going on in the US Monkey Island. A few of today's stories may be found here: Comer issues subpoenas for Hunter and James Biden's bank records amid impeachment inquiry (NY Post) Investigation Into Biden, Classified Docs Is Reportedly Far Wider Than Previously Believed (Daily Caller) Biden Bombshell: President's brother told FBI family tried to help Chinese firm buy US energy assets Biden Inc. (Politico on Paradigm Global Advisors, 2019) Explaining The $18 Million Mar-a-Lago Valuation By NY Trump Case Judge (ZeroHedge) Hillary Clinton Gets Bad News From Judge Fraud Investigator Warns Clinton Foundation's ‘Rebuild Ukraine' Project Is ‘Fleecing The Public' Black Lives Matter Activist Pleads Guilty to Fraud for Missing Donations (Breitbart)   Subscribe to Charles Ortel and Jason Goodman's platforms: Become a sponsor & enjoy exclusive content on SubscribeStar, Odysee, Substack & Patreon: http://www.subscribestar.com/crowdsou… https://odysee.com/@Crowdsourcethetruth https://crowdsourcethetruth.substack…. http://www.patreon.com/crowdsourcethe… Subscribe to Doc-TV News kanal – it's free and it helps us to rise to broaden our outreach! Hvis du setter pris på sendingene: Vipps oss på 638941. Alle bidrag hjelper. Hva med å møte likesinnede ved å bli med i et av våre lokallag? Lag en konto på Odysee her! – Odysee vil da gi oss poeng som hjelper oss å klatre i algoritmene! Følg oss på Rumble. Følg oss også på PodBean, iTunes og alle steder der podcasts finnes. Husk å rate oss med 5 stjerner, så flere likesinnede sannhetssøkere finner oss der!  

Harry Belafonte, singer, actor and activist, has died at age 96.

GGACP celebrates the life and career of legendary Oscar-winning actor Alan Arkin with this ENCORE of a 2020 interview with Alan and his son, Emmy-winning actor-director Adam Arkin. In this memorable episode, Adam and Alan talk about portraying villains, directing dark comedies, working with children, the precision of the Coen brothers and the Cold War politics of "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming." Also, Pat McCormick hits the hard stuff, Groucho drops in on Second City, Stephen King praises "Wait Until Dark" and Alan (almost) directs "Blazing Saddles." PLUS: Captain Kangaroo! "Northern Exposure"! The brilliance of "The In-Laws"! Adam "reps" Chuck McCann! Alan records "The Banana Boat Song"! And Adam and Alan choose their favorite Arkin performances! (Special thanks to Marsha McManus, Estelle Lasher, Gino Salomone, Sherman Allen and John Murray) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Among the tunes we've got on tap to share at Sal's Speakeasy this weekend is one with a curious history. A monster AM radio hit in the early 1960s, it actually was originally a jug band tune recorded many decades earlier.Back in the 1920s, a remarkable roots musician named Gus Cannon co-wrote “Walk Right In” for his hot new band, Cannon's Jug Stompers, to record for Victor Records.Already an established entertainer in the first years of commercial recording, Gus Cannon had a life story that reads like a novel. Born in the early 1880s on a plantation in Red Banks, Mississippi, he was 12 years old when his family moved a hundred miles southwest to what was to become the world capitol of all things blues, Clarksdale, Mississippi.Cannon's musical skills developed with little training, but with much innovation. For instance, he is said to have made his own first banjo, crafting it from a frying pan and a raccoon skin. At 15, he ran away from home to begin his career entertaining at sawmills, at levees and at railroad camps throughout the turn-of-the-century Mississippi Delta. Along the way, he taught himself fiddle. And a local musician named Alec Lee showed him how to use a knife blade as a guitar slide, a technique that Cannon adapted to his banjo playing.About 1907 Gus left Clarksdale for the big city of Memphis, where he played in a jug band led by Jim Guffin as well as with established blue and hokum artist Jim Jackson.It also was in Memphis that he met two other up-and-coming musicians — harmonica player Noah Lewis and guitarist Ashley Thompson — with whom he formed Cannon's Jug Stompers. Together they played parties, dances and medicine shows.Soon after that, inspired by the success of the Memphis Jug Band's first records, Cannon took his group to Victor Records to start putting out some discs.Enter The Song By then, the Jug Stompers were joined by Hosea Woods, who could chime in with guitar, banjo and kazoo and provide some vocals. It was with Woods that Cannon wrote and recorded “Walk Right In”.The tune offered great promise for the Stompers. Unfortunately, time wasn't on their side. The recording date was ominous — Oct. 1, 1929 — that is, less than a month before the collapse of the stock market and the beginning of the Great Depression.The Stompers' last recordings were made in 1930 and by the end of that decade, Cannon had effective retired, although he occasionally performed as a solo musician.Folk RevivalNow fast forward to 1962. The folk music revival was in full swing. Erik Darling was an important influence in the early days of the movement. (He had already formed The Tarriers with actor/singer Alan Arkin, hit the Billboard charts with their version of “Banana Boat Song,” and had replaced Pete Seeger in the last days of The Weavers.)In June 1962, Darling formed The Rooftop Singers with two friends with the specific goal of recording an updated version of “Walk Right In.” Darling had a bright new idea for the song. Unlike its juggy 1929 original, his arrangement got its distinctive sound by pairing twin 12-string guitars played in a pounding, percussive style. Their version — released six months later — became a No. 1 hit (and created a fad among folkies for the then-little known 12-string).Initially, writing credits on the record label were allocated solely to Darling and his band mate Bill Svanoe. However, eventually everyone did the right thing: the copyrights were corrected to add Gus Cannon and Hosea Woods' names.The success of The Rooftop Singers' recording — it became an international hit — was a big lift for Cannon, who by then was in his late 70s and fallen on hard times. In fact, the previous winter he'd had to pawn his banjo just to pay his heating bill. For the rest of his life, Cannon now received regular royalties checks as a songwriter.He also saw renewed interest in his music among newly minted folk fans. In 1963 Cannon recorded an album fo Stax Records with fellow Memphis musicians Will Shade (the former leader of the legendary Memphis Jug Band) on jug and Milton Roby on washboard. On the disc, Cannon performed traditional songs and his jug band era compositions and told stories between the tunes.Our Take on the TuneIn Flood years, we came to this song a little late in the game. We started playing it about a dozen years ago — our first recording of it was in the winter of 2010, at the beginning of the second year of our weekly podcasts — and it quickly became such a favorite for Michelle and Charlie that we brought it as the opening track of the band's next studio album, Cleanup & Recovery.Since Michelle will be back with us tomorrow night as the guest artist when we do our monthly show at Sal's Italian Eatery & Speakeasy in Ashland, Ky., we thought it would be fun to bring “Walk Right In” to the mix too. Here, from last week's rehearsal, is the 2023 take on the tune.If you're tooling around this weekend, be sure to walk right in and sit right down at Sal's this Saturday night. We play from 6 to 9 at 1624 Carter Avenue in beautiful downtown Ashland. The video below gives a taste of what's in store: This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

We take it for granted that entertainers can—and probably should—advocate for the causes they believe in, political and otherwise. That wasn't always the case: at one time, entertainers were supposed to entertain, and little else. Harry Belafonte, who died on April 25th at the age of ninety-six, pioneered the artist-activist approach. One of the most celebrated singers of his era, he had a string of huge hits—“The Banana Boat Song,” “Mama Look a Boo Boo,” “Jamaica Farewell”—while appearing as the rare Black leading man in the movies. At the same time, Belafonte used his platform to influence public opinion. He was a key figure in the civil-rights movement, a confidant of Martin Luther King's; a generation later, he worked with Nelson Mandela to help bring down apartheid in South Africa. Belafonte joined The New Yorker Radio Hour in 2016, when the staff writer Jelani Cobb visited him at his office in Manhattan. This segment originally aired September 30, 2016. 

IT'S SHOWTIME! Evil laugh! Welcome to the 2022 Halloween special of That Song From That Movie. This year we are trying to avoid repeating ourselves when whilst we break down Beetlejuice. Not spooky enough for you? Well, what about a ghostly possession to the calypso vibes of Harry Belafonte's "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)"? Alex's knowledge of the Baldwins is pushed to its limits, Ben rejects the news and Dietrich peels back the layers of the Glass Onion. Follow us on Twitter: @TSFTMpod Like, share and subscribe. Boo! Please consider leaving us a 5 star review wherever you listen to your podcasts (Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify etc). It means a great deal to us and makes it easier for other potential listeners to find us. Want to support us further? You can do this on Patreon from £1 ($1.50) a month: https://Patreon.com/TSFTM or via our merch store: https://TeePublic.com/user/TSFTM Thank you! Timestamps: 00:01:40 - What Have We Been Watching 00:06:42 - History 00:09:19 - Movie Discussion 00:17:28 - Is There a Point? 00:21:01 - "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)" Discussion 00:31:39 - Top 5 00:35:50 - Movie or Song?

We start season four of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs with an extra-long look at "San Francisco" by Scott McKenzie, and at the Monterey Pop Festival, and the careers of the Mamas and the Papas and P.F. Sloan. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Up, Up, and Away" by the 5th Dimension. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, all the songs excerpted in the podcast can be heard in full at Mixcloud. Scott McKenzie's first album is available here. There are many compilations of the Mamas and the Papas' music, but sadly none that are in print in the UK have the original mono mixes. This set is about as good as you're going to find, though, for the stereo versions. Information on the Mamas and the Papas came from Go Where You Wanna Go: The Oral History of The Mamas and the Papas by Matthew Greenwald, California Dreamin': The True Story Of The Mamas and Papas by Michelle Phillips, and Papa John by John Phillips and Jim Jerome. Information on P.F. Sloan came from PF - TRAVELLING BAREFOOT ON A ROCKY ROAD by Stephen McParland and What's Exactly the Matter With Me? by P.F. Sloan and S.E. Feinberg. The film of the Monterey Pop Festival is available on this Criterion Blu-Ray set. Sadly the CD of the performances seems to be deleted. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Welcome to season four of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. It's good to be back. Before we start this episode, I just want to say one thing. I get a lot of credit at times for the way I don't shy away from dealing with the more unsavoury elements of the people being covered in my podcast -- particularly the more awful men. But as I said very early on, I only cover those aspects of their life when they're relevant to the music, because this is a music podcast and not a true crime podcast. But also I worry that in some cases this might mean I'm giving a false impression of some people. In the case of this episode, one of the central figures is John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas. Now, Phillips has posthumously been accused of some truly monstrous acts, the kind of thing that is truly unforgivable, and I believe those accusations. But those acts didn't take place during the time period covered by most of this episode, so I won't be covering them here -- but they're easily googlable if you want to know. I thought it best to get that out of the way at the start, so no-one's either anxiously waiting for the penny to drop or upset that I didn't acknowledge the elephant in the room. Separately, this episode will have some discussion of fatphobia and diet culture, and of a death that is at least in part attributable to those things. Those of you affected by that may want to skip this one or read the transcript. There are also some mentions of drug addiction and alcoholism. Anyway, on with the show. One of the things that causes problems with rock history is the tendency of people to have selective memories, and that's never more true than when it comes to the Summer of Love, summer of 1967. In the mythology that's built up around it, that was a golden time, the greatest time ever, a period of peace and love where everything was possible, and the world looked like it was going to just keep on getting better. But what that means, of course, is that the people remembering it that way do so because it was the best time of their lives. And what happens when the best time of your life is over in one summer? When you have one hit and never have a second, or when your band splits up after only eighteen months, and you have to cope with the reality that your best years are not only behind you, but they weren't even best years, but just best months? What stories would you tell about that time? Would you remember it as the eve of destruction, the last great moment before everything went to hell, or would you remember it as a golden summer, full of people with flowers in their hair? And would either really be true? [Excerpt: Scott McKenzie, "San Francisco"] Other than the city in which they worked, there are a few things that seem to characterise almost all the important figures on the LA music scene in the middle part of the 1960s. They almost all seem to be incredibly ambitious, as one might imagine. There seem to be a huge number of fantasists among them -- people who will not only choose the legend over reality when it suits them, but who will choose the legend over reality even when it doesn't suit them. And they almost all seem to have a story about being turned down in a rude and arrogant manner by Lou Adler, usually more or less the same story. To give an example, I'm going to read out a bit of Ray Manzarek's autobiography here. Now, Manzarek uses a few words that I can't use on this podcast and keep a clean rating, so I'm just going to do slight pauses when I get to them, but I'll leave the words in the transcript for those who aren't offended by them: "Sometimes Jim and Dorothy and I went alone. The three of us tried Dunhill Records. Lou Adler was the head man. He was shrewd and he was hip. He had the Mamas and the Papas and a big single with Barry McGuire's 'Eve of Destruction.' He was flush. We were ushered into his office. He looked cool. He was California casually disheveled and had the look of a stoner, but his eyes were as cold as a shark's. He took the twelve-inch acetate demo from me and we all sat down. He put the disc on his turntable and played each cut…for ten seconds. Ten seconds! You can't tell jack [shit] from ten seconds. At least listen to one of the songs all the way through. I wanted to rage at him. 'How dare you! We're the Doors! This is [fucking] Jim Morrison! He's going to be a [fucking] star! Can't you see that? Can't you see how [fucking] handsome he is? Can't you hear how groovy the music is? Don't you [fucking] get it? Listen to the words, man!' My brain was a boiling, lava-filled Jell-O mold of rage. I wanted to eviscerate that shark. The songs he so casually dismissed were 'Moonlight Drive,' 'Hello, I Love You,' 'Summer's Almost Gone,' 'End of the Night,' 'I Looked at You,' 'Go Insane.' He rejected the whole demo. Ten seconds on each song—maybe twenty seconds on 'Hello, I Love You' (I took that as an omen of potential airplay)—and we were dismissed out of hand. Just like that. He took the demo off the turntable and handed it back to me with an obsequious smile and said, 'Nothing here I can use.' We were shocked. We stood up, the three of us, and Jim, with a wry and knowing smile on his lips, cuttingly and coolly shot back at him, 'That's okay, man. We don't want to be *used*, anyway.'" Now, as you may have gathered from the episode on the Doors, Ray Manzarek was one of those print-the-legend types, and that's true of everyone who tells similar stories about Lou Alder. But... there are a *lot* of people who tell similar stories about Lou Adler. One of those was Phil Sloan. You can get an idea of Sloan's attitude to storytelling from a story he always used to tell. Shortly after he and his family moved to LA from New York, he got a job selling newspapers on a street corner on Hollywood Boulevard, just across from Schwab's Drug Store. One day James Dean drove up in his Porsche and made an unusual request. He wanted to buy every copy of the newspaper that Sloan had -- around a hundred and fifty copies in total. But he only wanted one article, something in the entertainment section. Sloan didn't remember what the article was, but he did remember that one of the headlines was on the final illness of Oliver Hardy, who died shortly afterwards, and thought it might have been something to do with that. Dean was going to just clip that article from every copy he bought, and then he was going to give all the newspapers back to Sloan to sell again, so Sloan ended up making a lot of extra money that day. There is one rather big problem with that story. Oliver Hardy died in August 1957, just after the Sloan family moved to LA. But James Dean died in September 1955, two years earlier. Sloan admitted that, and said he couldn't explain it, but he was insistent. He sold a hundred and fifty newspapers to James Dean two years after Dean's death. When not selling newspapers to dead celebrities, Sloan went to Fairfax High School, and developed an interest in music which was mostly oriented around the kind of white pop vocal groups that were popular at the time, groups like the Kingston Trio, the Four Lads, and the Four Aces. But the record that made Sloan decide he wanted to make music himself was "Just Goofed" by the Teen Queens: [Excerpt: The Teen Queens, "Just Goofed"] In 1959, when he was fourteen, he saw an advert for an open audition with Aladdin Records, a label he liked because of Thurston Harris. He went along to the audition, and was successful. His first single, released as by Flip Sloan -- Flip was a nickname, a corruption of "Philip" -- was produced by Bumps Blackwell and featured several of the musicians who played with Sam Cooke, plus Larry Knechtel on piano and Mike Deasey on guitar, but Aladdin shut down shortly after releasing it, and it may not even have had a general release, just promo copies. I've not been able to find a copy online anywhere. After that, he tried Arwin Records, the label that Jan and Arnie recorded for, which was owned by Marty Melcher (Doris Day's husband and Terry Melcher's stepfather). Melcher signed him, and put out a single, "She's My Girl", on Mart Records, a subsidiary of Arwin, on which Sloan was backed by a group of session players including Sandy Nelson and Bruce Johnston: [Excerpt: Philip Sloan, "She's My Girl"] That record didn't have any success, and Sloan was soon dropped by Mart Records. He went on to sign with Blue Bird Records, which was as far as can be ascertained essentially a scam organisation that would record demos for songwriters, but tell the performers that they were making a real record, so that they would record it for the royalties they would never get, rather than for a decent fee as a professional demo singer would get. But Steve Venet -- the brother of Nik Venet, and occasional songwriting collaborator with Tommy Boyce -- happened to come to Blue Bird one day, and hear one of Sloan's original songs. He thought Sloan would make a good songwriter, and took him to see Lou Adler at Columbia-Screen Gems music publishing. This was shortly after the merger between Columbia-Screen Gems and Aldon Music, and Adler was at this point the West Coast head of operations, subservient to Don Kirshner and Al Nevins, but largely left to do what he wanted. The way Sloan always told the story, Venet tried to get Adler to sign Sloan, but Adler said his songs stunk and had no commercial potential. But Sloan persisted in trying to get a contract there, and eventually Al Nevins happened to be in the office and overruled Adler, much to Adler's disgust. Sloan was signed to Columbia-Screen Gems as a songwriter, though he wasn't put on a salary like the Brill Building songwriters, just told that he could bring in songs and they would publish them. Shortly after this, Adler suggested to Sloan that he might want to form a writing team with another songwriter, Steve Barri, who had had a similar non-career non-trajectory, but was very slightly further ahead in his career, having done some work with Carol Connors, the former lead singer of the Teddy Bears. Barri had co-written a couple of flop singles for Connors, before the two of them had formed a vocal group, the Storytellers, with Connors' sister. The Storytellers had released a single, "When Two People (Are in Love)" , which was put out on a local independent label and which Adler had licensed to be released on Dimension Records, the label associated with Aldon Music: [Excerpt: The Storytellers "When Two People (Are in Love)"] That record didn't sell, but it was enough to get Barri into the Columbia-Screen Gems circle, and Adler set him and Sloan up as a songwriting team -- although the way Sloan told it, it wasn't so much a songwriting team as Sloan writing songs while Barri was also there. Sloan would later claim "it was mostly a collaboration of spirit, and it seemed that I was writing most of the music and the lyric, but it couldn't possibly have ever happened unless both of us were present at the same time". One suspects that Barri might have a different recollection of how it went... Sloan and Barri's first collaboration was a song that Sloan had half-written before they met, called "Kick That Little Foot Sally Ann", which was recorded by a West Coast Chubby Checker knockoff who went under the name Round Robin, and who had his own dance craze, the Slauson, which was much less successful than the Twist: [Excerpt: Round Robin, "Kick that Little Foot Sally Ann"] That track was produced and arranged by Jack Nitzsche, and Nitzsche asked Sloan to be one of the rhythm guitarists on the track, apparently liking Sloan's feel. Sloan would end up playing rhythm guitar or singing backing vocals on many of the records made of songs he and Barri wrote together. "Kick That Little Foot Sally Ann" only made number sixty-one nationally, but it was a regional hit, and it meant that Sloan and Barri soon became what Sloan later described as "the Goffin and King of the West Coast follow-ups." According to Sloan "We'd be given a list on Monday morning by Lou Adler with thirty names on it of the groups who needed follow-ups to their hit." They'd then write the songs to order, and they started to specialise in dance craze songs. For example, when the Swim looked like it might be the next big dance, they wrote "Swim Swim Swim", "She Only Wants to Swim", "Let's Swim Baby", "Big Boss Swimmer", "Swim Party" and "My Swimmin' Girl" (the last a collaboration with Jan Berry and Roger Christian). These songs were exactly as good as they needed to be, in order to provide album filler for mid-tier artists, and while Sloan and Barri weren't writing any massive hits, they were doing very well as mid-tier writers. According to Sloan's biographer Stephen McParland, there was a three-year period in the mid-sixties where at least one song written or co-written by Sloan was on the national charts at any given time. Most of these songs weren't for Columbia-Screen Gems though. In early 1964 Lou Adler had a falling out with Don Kirshner, and decided to start up his own company, Dunhill, which was equal parts production company, music publishers, and management -- doing for West Coast pop singers what Motown was doing for Detroit soul singers, and putting everything into one basket. Dunhill's early clients included Jan and Dean and the rockabilly singer Johnny Rivers, and Dunhill also signed Sloan and Barri as songwriters. Because of this connection, Sloan and Barri soon became an important part of Jan and Dean's hit-making process. The Matadors, the vocal group that had provided most of the backing vocals on the duo's hits, had started asking for more money than Jan Berry was willing to pay, and Jan and Dean couldn't do the vocals themselves -- as Bones Howe put it "As a singer, Dean is a wonderful graphic artist" -- and so Sloan and Barri stepped in, doing session vocals without payment in the hope that Jan and Dean would record a few of their songs. For example, on the big hit "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena", Dean Torrence is not present at all on the record -- Jan Berry sings the lead vocal, with Sloan doubling him for much of it, Sloan sings "Dean"'s falsetto, with the engineer Bones Howe helping out, and the rest of the backing vocals are sung by Sloan, Barri, and Howe: [Excerpt: Jan and Dean, "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena"] For these recordings, Sloan and Barri were known as The Fantastic Baggys, a name which came from the Rolling Stones' manager Andrew Oldham and Mick Jagger, when the two were visiting California. Oldham had been commenting on baggys, the kind of shorts worn by surfers, and had asked Jagger what he thought of The Baggys as a group name. Jagger had replied "Fantastic!" and so the Fantastic Baggys had been born. As part of this, Sloan and Barri moved hard into surf and hot-rod music from the dance songs they had been writing previously. The Fantastic Baggys recorded their own album, Tell 'Em I'm Surfin', as a quickie album suggested by Adler: [Excerpt: The Fantastic Baggys, "Tell 'Em I'm Surfin'"] And under the name The Rally Packs they recorded a version of Jan and Dean's "Move Out Little Mustang" which featured Berry's girlfriend Jill Gibson doing a spoken section: [Excerpt: The Rally Packs, "Move Out Little Mustang"] They also wrote several album tracks for Jan and Dean, and wrote "Summer Means Fun" for Bruce and Terry -- Bruce Johnston, later of the Beach Boys, and Terry Melcher: [Excerpt: Bruce and Terry, "Summer Means Fun"] And they wrote the very surf-flavoured "Secret Agent Man" for fellow Dunhill artist Johnny Rivers: [Excerpt: Johnny Rivers, "Secret Agent Man"] But of course, when you're chasing trends, you're chasing trends, and soon the craze for twangy guitars and falsetto harmonies had ended, replaced by a craze for jangly twelve-string guitars and closer harmonies. According to Sloan, he was in at the very beginning of the folk-rock trend -- the way he told the story, he was involved in the mastering of the Byrds' version of "Mr. Tambourine Man". He later talked about Terry Melcher getting him to help out, saying "He had produced a record called 'Mr. Tambourine Man', and had sent it into the head office, and it had been rejected. He called me up and said 'I've got three more hours in the studio before I'm being kicked out of Columbia. Can you come over and help me with this new record?' I did. I went over there. It was under lock and key. There were two guards outside the door. Terry asked me something about 'Summer Means Fun'. "He said 'Do you remember the guitar that we worked on with that? How we put in that double reverb?' "And I said 'yes' "And he said 'What do you think if we did something like that with the Byrds?' "And I said 'That sounds good. Let's see what it sounds like.' So we patched into all the reverb centres in Columbia Music, and mastered the record in three hours." Whether Sloan really was there at the birth of folk rock, he and Barri jumped on the folk-rock craze just as they had the surf and hot-rod craze, and wrote a string of jangly hits including "You Baby" for the Turtles: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "You Baby"] and "I Found a Girl" for Jan and Dean: [Excerpt: Jan and Dean, "I Found a Girl"] That song was later included on Jan and Dean's Folk 'n' Roll album, which also included... a song I'm not even going to name, but long-time listeners will know the one I mean. It was also notable in that "I Found a Girl" was the first song on which Sloan was credited not as Phil Sloan, but as P.F. Sloan -- he didn't have a middle name beginning with F, but rather the F stood for his nickname "Flip". Sloan would later talk of Phil Sloan and P.F. Sloan as almost being two different people, with P.F. being a far more serious, intense, songwriter. Folk 'n' Roll also contained another Sloan song, this one credited solely to Sloan. And that song is the one for which he became best known. There are two very different stories about how "Eve of Destruction" came to be written. To tell Sloan's version, I'm going to read a few paragraphs from his autobiography: "By late 1964, I had already written ‘Eve Of Destruction,' ‘The Sins Of A Family,' ‘This Mornin',' ‘Ain't No Way I'm Gonna Change My Mind,' and ‘What's Exactly The Matter With Me?' They all arrived on one cataclysmic evening, and nearly at the same time, as I worked on the lyrics almost simultaneously. ‘Eve Of Destruction' came about from hearing a voice, perhaps an angel's. The voice instructed me to place five pieces of paper and spread them out on my bed. I obeyed the voice. The voice told me that the first song would be called ‘Eve Of Destruction,' so I wrote the title at the top of the page. For the next few hours, the voice came and went as I was writing the lyric, as if this spirit—or whatever it was—stood over me like a teacher: ‘No, no … not think of all the hate there is in Red Russia … Red China!' I didn't understand. I thought the Soviet Union was the mortal threat to America, but the voice went on to reveal to me the future of the world until 2024. I was told the Soviet Union would fall, and that Red China would continue to be communist far into the future, but that communism was not going to be allowed to take over this Divine Planet—therefore, think of all the hate there is in Red China. I argued and wrestled with the voice for hours, until I was exhausted but satisfied inside with my plea to God to either take me out of the world, as I could not live in such a hypocritical society, or to show me a way to make things better. When I was writing ‘Eve,' I was on my hands and knees, pleading for an answer." Lou Adler's story is that he gave Phil Sloan a copy of Bob Dylan's Bringing it All Back Home album and told him to write a bunch of songs that sounded like that, and Sloan came back a week later as instructed with ten Dylan knock-offs. Adler said "It was a natural feel for him. He's a great mimic." As one other data point, both Steve Barri and Bones Howe, the engineer who worked on most of the sessions we're looking at today, have often talked in interviews about "Eve of Destruction" as being a Sloan/Barri collaboration, as if to them it's common knowledge that it wasn't written alone, although Sloan's is the only name on the credits. The song was given to a new signing to Dunhill Records, Barry McGuire. McGuire was someone who had been part of the folk scene for years, He'd been playing folk clubs in LA while also acting in a TV show from 1961. When the TV show had finished, he'd formed a duo, Barry and Barry, with Barry Kane, and they performed much the same repertoire as all the other early-sixties folkies: [Excerpt: Barry and Barry, "If I Had a Hammer"] After recording their one album, both Barrys joined the New Christy Minstrels. We've talked about the Christys before, but they were -- and are to this day -- an ultra-commercial folk group, led by Randy Sparks, with a revolving membership of usually eight or nine singers which included several other people who've come up in this podcast, like Gene Clark and Jerry Yester. McGuire became one of the principal lead singers of the Christys, singing lead on their version of the novelty cowboy song "Three Wheels on My Wagon", which was later released as a single in the UK and became a perennial children's favourite (though it has a problematic attitude towards Native Americans): [Excerpt: The New Christy Minstrels, "Three Wheels on My Wagon"] And he also sang lead on their big hit "Green Green", which he co-wrote with Randy Sparks: [Excerpt: The New Christy Minstrels, "Green Green"] But by 1965 McGuire had left the New Christy Minstrels. As he said later "I'd sung 'Green Green' a thousand times and I didn't want to sing it again. This is January of 1965. I went back to LA to meet some producers, and I was broke. Nobody had the time of day for me. I was walking down street one time to see Dr. Strangelove and I walked by the music store, and I heard "Green Green" comin' out of the store, ya know, on Hollywood Boulevard. And I heard my voice, and I thought, 'I got four dollars in my pocket!' I couldn't believe it, my voice is comin' out on Hollywood Boulevard, and I'm broke. And right at that moment, a car pulls up, and the radio is playing 'Chim Chim Cherie" also by the Minstrels. So I got my voice comin' at me in stereo, standin' on the sidewalk there, and I'm broke, and I can't get anyone to sign me!" But McGuire had a lot of friends who he'd met on the folk scene, some of whom were now in the new folk-rock scene that was just starting to spring up. One of them was Roger McGuinn, who told him that his band, the Byrds, were just about to put out a new single, "Mr. Tambourine Man", and that they were about to start a residency at Ciro's on Sunset Strip. McGuinn invited McGuire to the opening night of that residency, where a lot of other people from the scene were there to see the new group. Bob Dylan was there, as was Phil Sloan, and the actor Jack Nicholson, who was still at the time a minor bit-part player in low-budget films made by people like American International Pictures (the cinematographer on many of Nicholson's early films was Floyd Crosby, David Crosby's father, which may be why he was there). Someone else who was there was Lou Adler, who according to McGuire recognised him instantly. According to Adler, he actually asked Terry Melcher who the long-haired dancer wearing furs was, because "he looked like the leader of a movement", and Melcher told him that he was the former lead singer of the New Christy Minstrels. Either way, Adler approached McGuire and asked if he was currently signed -- Dunhill Records was just starting up, and getting someone like McGuire, who had a proven ability to sing lead on hit records, would be a good start for the label. As McGuire didn't have a contract, he was signed to Dunhill, and he was given some of Sloan's new songs to pick from, and chose "What's Exactly the Matter With Me?" as his single: [Excerpt: Barry McGuire, "What's Exactly the Matter With Me?"] McGuire described what happened next: "It was like, a three-hour session. We did two songs, and then the third one wasn't turning out. We only had about a half hour left in the session, so I said 'Let's do this tune', and I pulled 'Eve of Destruction' out of my pocket, and it just had Phil's words scrawled on a piece of paper, all wrinkled up. Phil worked the chords out with the musicians, who were Hal Blaine on drums and Larry Knechtel on bass." There were actually more musicians than that at the session -- apparently both Knechtel and Joe Osborn were there, so I'm not entirely sure who's playing bass -- Knechtel was a keyboard player as well as a bass player, but I don't hear any keyboards on the track. And Tommy Tedesco was playing lead guitar, and Steve Barri added percussion, along with Sloan on rhythm guitar and harmonica. The chords were apparently scribbled down for the musicians on bits of greasy paper that had been used to wrap some takeaway chicken, and they got through the track in a single take. According to McGuire "I'm reading the words off this piece of wrinkled paper, and I'm singing 'My blood's so mad, feels like coagulatin'", that part that goes 'Ahhh you can't twist the truth', and the reason I'm going 'Ahhh' is because I lost my place on the page. People said 'Man, you really sounded frustrated when you were singing.' I was. I couldn't see the words!" [Excerpt: Barry McGuire, "Eve of Destruction"] With a few overdubs -- the female backing singers in the chorus, and possibly the kettledrums, which I've seen differing claims about, with some saying that Hal Blaine played them during the basic track and others saying that Lou Adler suggested them as an overdub, the track was complete. McGuire wasn't happy with his vocal, and a session was scheduled for him to redo it, but then a record promoter working with Adler was DJing a birthday party for the head of programming at KFWB, the big top forty radio station in LA at the time, and he played a few acetates he'd picked up from Adler. Most went down OK with the crowd, but when he played "Eve of Destruction", the crowd went wild and insisted he play it three times in a row. The head of programming called Adler up and told him that "Eve of Destruction" was going to be put into rotation on the station from Monday, so he'd better get the record out. As McGuire was away for the weekend, Adler just released the track as it was, and what had been intended to be a B-side became Barry McGuire's first and only number one record: [Excerpt: Barry McGuire, "Eve of Destruction"] Sloan would later claim that that song was a major reason why the twenty-sixth amendment to the US Constitution was passed six years later, because the line "you're old enough to kill but not for votin'" shamed Congress into changing the constitution to allow eighteen-year-olds to vote. If so, that would make "Eve of Destruction" arguably the single most impactful rock record in history, though Sloan is the only person I've ever seen saying that As well as going to number one in McGuire's version, the song was also covered by the other artists who regularly performed Sloan and Barri songs, like the Turtles: [Excerpt: The Turtles, "Eve of Destruction"] And Jan and Dean, whose version on Folk & Roll used the same backing track as McGuire, but had a few lyrical changes to make it fit with Jan Berry's right-wing politics, most notably changing "Selma, Alabama" to "Watts, California", thus changing a reference to peaceful civil rights protestors being brutally attacked and murdered by white supremacist state troopers to a reference to what was seen, in the popular imaginary, as Black people rioting for no reason: [Excerpt: Jan and Dean, "Eve of Destruction"] According to Sloan, he worked on the Folk & Roll album as a favour to Berry, even though he thought Berry was being cynical and exploitative in making the record, but those changes caused a rift in their friendship. Sloan said in his autobiography "Where I was completely wrong was in helping him capitalize on something in which he didn't believe. Jan wanted the public to perceive him as a person who was deeply concerned and who embraced the values of the progressive politics of the day. But he wasn't that person. That's how I was being pulled. It was when he recorded my actual song ‘Eve Of Destruction' and changed a number of lines to reflect his own ideals that my principles demanded that I leave Folk City and never return." It's true that Sloan gave no more songs to Jan and Dean after that point -- but it's also true that the duo would record only one more album, the comedy concept album Jan and Dean Meet Batman, before Jan's accident. Incidentally, the reference to Selma, Alabama in the lyric might help people decide on which story about the writing of "Eve of Destruction" they think is more plausible. Remember that Lou Adler said that it was written after Adler gave Sloan a copy of Bringing it All Back Home and told him to write a bunch of knock-offs, while Sloan said it was written after a supernatural force gave him access to all the events that would happen in the world for the next sixty years. Sloan claimed the song was written in late 1964. Selma, Alabama, became national news in late February and early March 1965. Bringing it All Back Home was released in late March 1965. So either Adler was telling the truth, or Sloan really *was* given a supernatural insight into the events of the future. Now, as it turned out, while "Eve of Destruction" went to number one, that would be McGuire's only hit as a solo artist. His next couple of singles would reach the very low end of the Hot One Hundred, and that would be it -- he'd release several more albums, before appearing in the Broadway musical Hair, most famous for its nude scenes, and getting a small part in the cinematic masterpiece Werewolves on Wheels: [Excerpt: Werewolves on Wheels trailer] P.F. Sloan would later tell various stories about why McGuire never had another hit. Sometimes he would say that Dunhill Records had received death threats because of "Eve of Destruction" and so deliberately tried to bury McGuire's career, other times he would say that Lou Adler had told him that Billboard had said they were never going to put McGuire's records on the charts no matter how well they sold, because "Eve of Destruction" had just been too powerful and upset the advertisers. But of course at this time Dunhill were still trying for a follow-up to "Eve of Destruction", and they thought they might have one when Barry McGuire brought in a few friends of his to sing backing vocals on his second album. Now, we've covered some of the history of the Mamas and the Papas already, because they were intimately tied up with other groups like the Byrds and the Lovin' Spoonful, and with the folk scene that led to songs like "Hey Joe", so some of this will be more like a recap than a totally new story, but I'm going to recap those parts of the story anyway, so it's fresh in everyone's heads. John Phillips, Scott McKenzie, and Cass Elliot all grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, just a few miles south of Washington DC. Elliot was a few years younger than Phillips and McKenzie, and so as is the way with young men they never really noticed her, and as McKenzie later said "She lived like a quarter of a mile from me and I never met her until New York". While they didn't know who Elliot was, though, she was aware who they were, as Phillips and McKenzie sang together in a vocal group called The Smoothies. The Smoothies were a modern jazz harmony group, influenced by groups like the Modernaires, the Hi-Los, and the Four Freshmen. John Phillips later said "We were drawn to jazz, because we were sort of beatniks, really, rather than hippies, or whatever, flower children. So we used to sing modern harmonies, like Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross. Dave Lambert did a lot of our arrangements for us as a matter of fact." Now, I've not seen any evidence other than Phillips' claim that Dave Lambert ever arranged for the Smoothies, but that does tell you a lot about the kind of music that they were doing. Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross were a vocalese trio whose main star was Annie Ross, who had a career worthy of an episode in itself -- she sang with Paul Whiteman, appeared in a Little Rascals film when she was seven, had an affair with Lenny Bruce, dubbed Britt Ekland's voice in The Wicker Man, played the villain's sister in Superman III, and much more. Vocalese, you'll remember, was a style of jazz vocal where a singer would take a jazz instrumental, often an improvised one, and add lyrics which they would sing, like Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross' version of "Cloudburst": [Excerpt: Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, "Cloudburst"] Whether Dave Lambert ever really did arrange for the Smoothies or not, it's very clear that the trio had a huge influence on John Phillips' ideas about vocal arrangement, as you can hear on Mamas and Papas records like "Once Was a Time I Thought": [Excerpt: The Mamas and the Papas, "Once Was a Time I Thought"] While the Smoothies thought of themselves as a jazz group, when they signed to Decca they started out making the standard teen pop of the era, with songs like "Softly": [Excerpt, The Smoothies, "Softly"] When the folk boom started, Phillips realised that this was music that he could do easily, because the level of musicianship among the pop-folk musicians was so much lower than in the jazz world. The Smoothies made some recordings in the style of the Kingston Trio, like "Ride Ride Ride": [Excerpt: The Smoothies, "Ride Ride Ride"] Then when the Smoothies split, Phillips and McKenzie formed a trio with a banjo player, Dick Weissman, who they met through Izzy Young's Folklore Centre in Greenwich Village after Phillips asked Young to name some musicians who could make a folk record with him. Weissman was often considered the best banjo player on the scene, and was a friend of Pete Seeger's, to whom Seeger sometimes turned for banjo tips. The trio, who called themselves the Journeymen, quickly established themselves on the folk scene. Weissman later said "we had this interesting balance. John had all of this charisma -- they didn't know about the writing thing yet -- John had the personality, Scott had the voice, and I could play. If you think about it, all of those bands like the Kingston Trio, the Brothers Four, nobody could really *sing* and nobody could really *play*, relatively speaking." This is the take that most people seemed to have about John Phillips, in any band he was ever in. Nobody thought he was a particularly good singer or instrumentalist -- he could sing on key and play adequate rhythm guitar, but nobody would actually pay money to listen to him do those things. Mark Volman of the Turtles, for example, said of him "John wasn't the kind of guy who was going to be able to go up on stage and sing his songs as a singer-songwriter. He had to put himself in the context of a group." But he was charismatic, he had presence, and he also had a great musical mind. He would surround himself with the best players and best singers he could, and then he would organise and arrange them in ways that made the most of their talents. He would work out the arrangements, in a manner that was far more professional than the quick head arrangements that other folk groups used, and he instigated a level of professionalism in his groups that was not at all common on the scene. Phillips' friend Jim Mason talked about the first time he saw the Journeymen -- "They were warming up backstage, and John had all of them doing vocal exercises; one thing in particular that's pretty famous called 'Seiber Syllables' -- it's a series of vocal exercises where you enunciate different vowel and consonant sounds. It had the effect of clearing your head, and it's something that really good operetta singers do." The group were soon signed by Frank Werber, the manager of the Kingston Trio, who signed them as an insurance policy. Dave Guard, the Kingston Trio's banjo player, was increasingly having trouble with the other members, and Werber knew it was only a matter of time before he left the group. Werber wanted the Journeymen as a sort of farm team -- he had the idea that when Guard left, Phillips would join the Kingston Trio in his place as the third singer. Weissman would become the Trio's accompanist on banjo, and Scott McKenzie, who everyone agreed had a remarkable voice, would be spun off as a solo artist. But until that happened, they might as well make records by themselves. The Journeymen signed to MGM records, but were dropped before they recorded anything. They instead signed to Capitol, for whom they recorded their first album: [Excerpt: The Journeymen, "500 Miles"] After recording that album, the Journeymen moved out to California, with Phillips' wife and children. But soon Phillips' marriage was to collapse, as he met and fell in love with Michelle Gilliam. Gilliam was nine years younger than him -- he was twenty-six and she was seventeen -- and she had the kind of appearance which meant that in every interview with an older heterosexual man who knew her, that man will spend half the interview talking about how attractive he found her. Phillips soon left his wife and children, but before he did, the group had a turntable hit with "River Come Down", the B-side to "500 Miles": [Excerpt: The Journeymen, "River Come Down"] Around the same time, Dave Guard *did* leave the Kingston Trio, but the plan to split the Journeymen never happened. Instead Phillips' friend John Stewart replaced Guard -- and this soon became a new source of income for Phillips. Both Phillips and Stewart were aspiring songwriters, and they collaborated together on several songs for the Trio, including "Chilly Winds": [Excerpt: The Kingston Trio, "Chilly Winds"] Phillips became particularly good at writing songs that sounded like they could be old traditional folk songs, sometimes taking odd lines from older songs to jump-start new ones, as in "Oh Miss Mary", which he and Stewart wrote after hearing someone sing the first line of a song she couldn't remember the rest of: [Excerpt: The Kingston Trio, "Oh Miss Mary"] Phillips and Stewart became so close that Phillips actually suggested to Stewart that he quit the Kingston Trio and replace Dick Weissman in the Journeymen. Stewart did quit the Trio -- but then the next day Phillips suggested that maybe it was a bad idea and he should stay where he was. Stewart went back to the Trio, claimed he had only pretended to quit because he wanted a pay-rise, and got his raise, so everyone ended up happy. The Journeymen moved back to New York with Michelle in place of Phillips' first wife (and Michelle's sister Russell also coming along, as she was dating Scott McKenzie) and on New Year's Eve 1962 John and Michelle married -- so from this point on I will refer to them by their first names, because they both had the surname Phillips. The group continued having success through 1963, including making appearances on "Hootenanny": [Excerpt: The Journeymen, "Stack O'Lee (live on Hootenanny)"] By the time of the Journeymen's third album, though, John and Scott McKenzie were on bad terms. Weissman said "They had been the closest of friends and now they were the worst of enemies. They talked through me like I was a medium. It got to the point where we'd be standing in the dressing room and John would say to me 'Tell Scott that his right sock doesn't match his left sock...' Things like that, when they were standing five feet away from each other." Eventually, the group split up. Weissman was always going to be able to find employment given his banjo ability, and he was about to get married and didn't need the hassle of dealing with the other two. McKenzie was planning on a solo career -- everyone was agreed that he had the vocal ability. But John was another matter. He needed to be in a group. And not only that, the Journeymen had bookings they needed to complete. He quickly pulled together a group he called the New Journeymen. The core of the lineup was himself, Michelle on vocals, and banjo player Marshall Brickman. Brickman had previously been a member of a folk group called the Tarriers, who had had a revolving lineup, and had played on most of their early-sixties recordings: [Excerpt: The Tarriers, "Quinto (My Little Pony)"] We've met the Tarriers before in the podcast -- they had been formed by Erik Darling, who later replaced Pete Seeger in the Weavers after Seeger's socialist principles wouldn't let him do advertising, and Alan Arkin, later to go on to be a film star, and had had hits with "Cindy, O Cindy", with lead vocals from Vince Martin, who would later go on to be a major performer in the Greenwich Village scene, and with "The Banana Boat Song". By the time Brickman had joined, though, Darling, Arkin, and Martin had all left the group to go on to bigger things, and while he played with them for several years, it was after their commercial peak. Brickman would, though, also go on to a surprising amount of success, but as a writer rather than a musician -- he had a successful collaboration with Woody Allen in the 1970s, co-writing four of Allen's most highly regarded films -- Sleeper, Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Manhattan Murder Mystery -- and with another collaborator he later co-wrote the books for the stage musicals Jersey Boys and The Addams Family. Both John and Michelle were decent singers, and both have their admirers as vocalists -- P.F. Sloan always said that Michelle was the best singer in the group they eventually formed, and that it was her voice that gave the group its sound -- but for the most part they were not considered as particularly astonishing lead vocalists. Certainly, neither had a voice that stood out the way that Scott McKenzie's had. They needed a strong lead singer, and they found one in Denny Doherty. Now, we covered Denny Doherty's early career in the episode on the Lovin' Spoonful, because he was intimately involved in the formation of that group, so I won't go into too much detail here, but I'll give a very abbreviated version of what I said there. Doherty was a Canadian performer who had been a member of the Halifax Three with Zal Yanovsky: [Excerpt: The Halifax Three, "When I First Came to This Land"] After the Halifax Three had split up, Doherty and Yanovsky had performed as a duo for a while, before joining up with Cass Elliot and her husband Jim Hendricks, who both had previously been in the Big Three with Tim Rose: [Excerpt: Cass Elliot and the Big 3, "The Banjo Song"] Elliot, Hendricks, Yanovsky, and Doherty had formed The Mugwumps, sometimes joined by John Sebastian, and had tried to go in more of a rock direction after seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. They recorded one album together before splitting up: [Excerpt: The Mugwumps, "Searchin'"] Part of the reason they split up was that interpersonal relationships within the group were put under some strain -- Elliot and Hendricks split up, though they would remain friends and remain married for several years even though they were living apart, and Elliot had an unrequited crush on Doherty. But since they'd split up, and Yanovsky and Sebastian had gone off to form the Lovin' Spoonful, that meant that Doherty was free, and he was regarded as possibly the best male lead vocalist on the circuit, so the group snapped him up. The only problem was that the Journeymen still had gigs booked that needed to be played, one of them was in just three days, and Doherty didn't know the repertoire. This was a problem with an easy solution for people in their twenties though -- they took a huge amount of amphetamines, and stayed awake for three days straight rehearsing. They made the gig, and Doherty was now the lead singer of the New Journeymen: [Excerpt: The New Journeymen, "The Last Thing on My Mind"] But the New Journeymen didn't last in that form for very long, because even before joining the group, Denny Doherty had been going in a more folk-rock direction with the Mugwumps. At the time, John Phillips thought rock and roll was kids' music, and he was far more interested in folk and jazz, but he was also very interested in making money, and he soon decided it was an idea to start listening to the Beatles. There's some dispute as to who first played the Beatles for John in early 1965 -- some claim it was Doherty, others claim it was Cass Elliot, but everyone agrees it was after Denny Doherty had introduced Phillips to something else -- he brought round some LSD for John and Michelle, and Michelle's sister Rusty, to try. And then he told them he'd invited round a friend. Michelle Phillips later remembered, "I remember saying to the guys "I don't know about you guys, but this drug does nothing for me." At that point there was a knock on the door, and as I opened the door and saw Cass, the acid hit me *over the head*. I saw her standing there in a pleated skirt, a pink Angora sweater with great big eyelashes on and her hair in a flip. And all of a sudden I thought 'This is really *quite* a drug!' It was an image I will have securely fixed in my brain for the rest of my life. I said 'Hi, I'm Michelle. We just took some LSD-25, do you wanna join us?' And she said 'Sure...'" Rusty Gilliam's description matches this -- "It was mind-boggling. She had on a white pleated skirt, false eyelashes. These were the kind of eyelashes that when you put them on you were supposed to trim them to an appropriate length, which she didn't, and when she blinked she looked like a cow, or those dolls you get when you're little and the eyes open and close. And we're on acid. Oh my God! It was a sight! And everything she was wearing were things that you weren't supposed to be wearing if you were heavy -- white pleated skirt, mohair sweater. You know, until she became famous, she suffered so much, and was poked fun at." This gets to an important point about Elliot, and one which sadly affected everything about her life. Elliot was *very* fat -- I've seen her weight listed at about three hundred pounds, and she was only five foot five tall -- and she also didn't have the kind of face that gets thought of as conventionally attractive. Her appearance would be cruelly mocked by pretty much everyone for the rest of her life, in ways that it's genuinely hurtful to read about, and which I will avoid discussing in detail in order to avoid hurting fat listeners. But the two *other* things that defined Elliot in the minds of those who knew her were her voice -- every single person who knew her talks about what a wonderful singer she was -- and her personality. I've read a lot of things about Cass Elliot, and I have never read a single negative word about her as a person, but have read many people going into raptures about what a charming, loving, friendly, understanding person she was. Michelle later said of her "From the time I left Los Angeles, I hadn't had a friend, a buddy. I was married, and John and I did not hang out with women, we just hung out with men, and especially not with women my age. John was nine years older than I was. And here was a fun-loving, intelligent woman. She captivated me. I was as close to in love with Cass as I could be to any woman in my life at that point. She also represented something to me: freedom. Everything she did was because she wanted to do it. She was completely independent and I admired her and was in awe of her. And later on, Cass would be the one to tell me not to let John run my life. And John hated her for that." Either Elliot had brought round Meet The Beatles, the Beatles' first Capitol album, for everyone to listen to, or Denny Doherty already had it, but either way Elliot and Doherty were by this time already Beatles fans. Michelle, being younger than the rest and not part of the folk scene until she met John, was much more interested in rock and roll than any of them, but because she'd been married to John for a couple of years and been part of his musical world she hadn't really encountered the Beatles music, though she had a vague memory that she might have heard a track or two on the radio. John was hesitant -- he didn't want to listen to any rock and roll, but eventually he was persuaded, and the record was put on while he was on his first acid trip: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I Want to Hold Your Hand"] Within a month, John Phillips had written thirty songs that he thought of as inspired by the Beatles. The New Journeymen were going to go rock and roll. By this time Marshall Brickman was out of the band, and instead John, Michelle, and Denny recruited a new lead guitarist, Eric Hord. Denny started playing bass, with John on rhythm guitar, and a violinist friend of theirs, Peter Pilafian, knew a bit of drums and took on that role. The new lineup of the group used the Journeymen's credit card, which hadn't been stopped even though the Journeymen were no more, to go down to St. Thomas in the Caribbean, along with Michelle's sister, John's daughter Mackenzie (from whose name Scott McKenzie had taken his stage name, as he was born Philip Blondheim), a pet dog, and sundry band members' girlfriends. They stayed there for several months, living in tents on the beach, taking acid, and rehearsing. While they were there, Michelle and Denny started an affair which would have important ramifications for the group later. They got a gig playing at a club called Duffy's, whose address was on Creeque Alley, and soon after they started playing there Cass Elliot travelled down as well -- she was in love with Denny, and wanted to be around him. She wasn't in the group, but she got a job working at Duffy's as a waitress, and she would often sing harmony with the group while waiting at tables. Depending on who was telling the story, either she didn't want to be in the group because she didn't want her appearance to be compared to Michelle's, or John wouldn't *let* her be in the group because she was so fat. Later a story would be made up to cover for this, saying that she hadn't been in the group at first because she couldn't sing the highest notes that were needed, until she got hit on the head with a metal pipe and discovered that it had increased her range by three notes, but that seems to be a lie. One of the songs the New Journeymen were performing at this time was "Mr. Tambourine Man". They'd heard that their old friend Roger McGuinn had recorded it with his new band, but they hadn't yet heard his version, and they'd come up with their own arrangement: [Excerpt: The New Journeymen, "Mr. Tambourine Man"] Denny later said "We were doing three-part harmony on 'Mr Tambourine Man', but a lot slower... like a polka or something! And I tell John, 'No John, we gotta slow it down and give it a backbeat.' Finally we get the Byrds 45 down here, and we put it on and turn it up to ten, and John says 'Oh, like that?' Well, as you can tell, it had already been done. So John goes 'Oh, ah... that's it...' a light went on. So we started doing Beatles stuff. We dropped 'Mr Tambourine Man' after hearing the Byrds version, because there was no point." Eventually they had to leave the island -- they had completely run out of money, and were down to fifty dollars. The credit card had been cut up, and the governor of the island had a personal vendetta against them because they gave his son acid, and they were likely to get arrested if they didn't leave the island. Elliot and her then-partner had round-trip tickets, so they just left, but the rest of them were in trouble. By this point they were unwashed, they were homeless, and they'd spent their last money on stage costumes. They got to the airport, and John Phillips tried to write a cheque for eight air fares back to the mainland, which the person at the check-in desk just laughed at. So they took their last fifty dollars and went to a casino. There Michelle played craps, and she rolled seventeen straight passes, something which should be statistically impossible. She turned their fifty dollars into six thousand dollars, which they scooped up, took to the airport, and paid for their flights out in cash. The New Journeymen arrived back in New York, but quickly decided that they were going to try their luck in California. They rented a car, using Scott McKenzie's credit card, and drove out to LA. There they met up with Hoyt Axton, who you may remember as the son of Mae Axton, the writer of "Heartbreak Hotel", and as the performer who had inspired Michael Nesmith to go into folk music: [Excerpt: Hoyt Axton, "Greenback Dollar"] Axton knew the group, and fed them and put them up for a night, but they needed somewhere else to stay. They went to stay with one of Michelle's friends, but after one night their rented car was stolen, with all their possessions in it. They needed somewhere else to stay, so they went to ask Jim Hendricks if they could crash at his place -- and they were surprised to find that Cass Elliot was there already. Hendricks had another partner -- though he and Elliot wouldn't have their marriage annulled until 1968 and were still technically married -- but he'd happily invited her to stay with them. And now all her friends had turned up, he invited them to stay as well, taking apart the beds in his one-bedroom apartment so he could put down a load of mattresses in the space for everyone to sleep on. The next part becomes difficult, because pretty much everyone in the LA music scene of the sixties was a liar who liked to embellish their own roles in things, so it's quite difficult to unpick what actually happened. What seems to have happened though is that first this new rock-oriented version of the New Journeymen went to see Frank Werber, on the recommendation of John Stewart. Werber was the manager of the Kingston Trio, and had also managed the Journeymen. He, however, was not interested -- not because he didn't think they had talent, but because he had experience of working with John Phillips previously. When Phillips came into his office Werber picked up a tape that he'd been given of the group, and said "I have not had a chance to listen to this tape. I believe that you are a most talented individual, and that's why we took you on in the first place. But I also believe that you're also a drag to work with. A pain in the ass. So I'll tell you what, before whatever you have on here sways me, I'm gonna give it back to you and say that we're not interested." Meanwhile -- and this part of the story comes from Kim Fowley, who was never one to let the truth get in the way of him taking claim for everything, but parts of it at least are corroborated by other people -- Cass Elliot had called Fowley, and told him that her friends' new group sounded pretty good and he should sign them. Fowley was at that time working as a talent scout for a label, but according to him the label wouldn't give the group the money they wanted. So instead, Fowley got in touch with Nik Venet, who had just produced the Leaves' hit version of "Hey Joe" on Mira Records: [Excerpt: The Leaves, "Hey Joe"] Fowley suggested to Venet that Venet should sign the group to Mira Records, and Fowley would sign them to a publishing contract, and they could both get rich. The trio went to audition for Venet, and Elliot drove them over -- and Venet thought the group had a great look as a quartet. He wanted to sign them to a record contract, but only if Elliot was in the group as well. They agreed, he gave them a one hundred and fifty dollar advance, and told them to come back the next day to see his boss at Mira. But Barry McGuire was also hanging round with Elliot and Hendricks, and decided that he wanted to have Lou Adler hear the four of them. He thought they might be useful both as backing vocalists on his second album and as a source of new songs. He got them to go and see Lou Adler, and according to McGuire Phillips didn't want Elliot to go with them, but as Elliot was the one who was friends with McGuire, Phillips worried that they'd lose the chance with Adler if she didn't. Adler was amazed, and decided to sign the group right then and there -- both Bones Howe and P.F. Sloan claimed to have been there when the group auditioned for him and have said "if you won't sign them, I will", though exactly what Sloan would have signed them to I'm not sure. Adler paid them three thousand dollars in cash and told them not to bother with Nik Venet, so they just didn't turn up for the Mira Records audition the next day. Instead, they went into the studio with McGuire and cut backing vocals on about half of his new album: [Excerpt: Barry McGuire with the Mamas and the Papas, "Hide Your Love Away"] While the group were excellent vocalists, there were two main reasons that Adler wanted to sign them. The first was that he found Michelle Phillips extremely attractive, and the second is a song that John and Michelle had written which he thought might be very suitable for McGuire's album. Most people who knew John Phillips think of "California Dreamin'" as a solo composition, and he would later claim that he gave Michelle fifty percent just for transcribing his lyric, saying he got inspired in the middle of the night, woke her up, and got her to write the song down as he came up with it. But Michelle, who is a credited co-writer on the song, has been very insistent that she wrote the lyrics to the second verse, and that it's about her own real experiences, saying that she would often go into churches and light candles even though she was "at best an agnostic, and possibly an atheist" in her words, and this would annoy John, who had also been raised Catholic, but who had become aggressively opposed to expressions of religion, rather than still having nostalgia for the aesthetics of the church as Michelle did. They were out walking on a particularly cold winter's day in 1963, and Michelle wanted to go into St Patrick's Cathedral and John very much did not want to. A couple of nights later, John woke her up, having written the first verse of the song, starting "All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey/I went for a walk on a winter's day", and insisting she collaborate with him. She liked the song, and came up with the lines "Stopped into a church, I passed along the way/I got down on my knees and I pretend to pray/The preacher likes the cold, he knows I'm going to stay", which John would later apparently dislike, but which stayed in the song. Most sources I've seen for the recording of "California Dreamin'" say that the lineup of musicians was the standard set of players who had played on McGuire's other records, with the addition of John Phillips on twelve-string guitar -- P.F. Sloan on guitar and harmonica, Joe Osborn on bass, Larry Knechtel on keyboards, and Hal Blaine on drums, but for some reason Stephen McParland's book on Sloan has Bones Howe down as playing drums on the track while engineering -- a detail so weird, and from such a respectable researcher, that I have to wonder if it might be true. In his autobiography, Sloan claims to have rewritten the chord sequence to "California Dreamin'". He says "Barry Mann had unintentionally showed me a suspended chord back at Screen Gems. I was so impressed by this beautiful, simple chord that I called Brian Wilson and played it for him over the phone. The next thing I knew, Brian had written ‘Don't Worry Baby,' which had within it a number suspended chords. And then the chord heard 'round the world, two months later, was the opening suspended chord of ‘A Hard Day's Night.' I used these chords throughout ‘California Dreamin',' and more specifically as a bridge to get back and forth from the verse to the chorus." Now, nobody else corroborates this story, and both Brian Wilson and John Phillips had the kind of background in modern harmony that means they would have been very aware of suspended chords before either ever encountered Sloan, but I thought I should mention it. Rather more plausible is Sloan's other claim, that he came up with the intro to the song. According to Sloan, he was inspired by "Walk Don't Run" by the Ventures: [Excerpt: The Ventures, "Walk Don't Run"] And you can easily see how this: [plays "Walk Don't Run"] Can lead to this: [plays "California Dreamin'"] And I'm fairly certain that if that was the inspiration, it was Sloan who was the one who thought it up. John Phillips had been paying no attention to the world of surf music when "Walk Don't Run" had been a hit -- that had been at the point when he was very firmly in the folk world, while Sloan of course had been recording "Tell 'Em I'm Surfin'", and it had been his job to know surf music intimately. So Sloan's intro became the start of what was intended to be Barry McGuire's next single: [Excerpt: Barry McGuire, "California Dreamin'"] Sloan also provided the harmonica solo on the track: [Excerpt: Barry McGuire, "California Dreamin'"] The Mamas and the Papas -- the new name that was now given to the former New Journeymen, now they were a quartet -- were also signed to Dunhill as an act on their own, and recorded their own first single, "Go Where You Wanna Go", a song apparently written by John about Michelle, in late 1963, after she had briefly left him to have an affair with Russ Titelman, the record producer and songwriter, before coming back to him: [Excerpt: The Mamas and the Papas, "Go Where You Wanna Go"] But while that was put out, they quickly decided to scrap it and go with another song. The "Go Where You Wanna Go" single was pulled after only selling a handful of copies, though its commercial potential was later proved when in 1967 a new vocal group, the 5th Dimension, released a soundalike version as their second single. The track was produced by Lou Adler's client Johnny Rivers, and used the exact same musicians as the Mamas and the Papas version, with the exception of Phillips. It became their first hit, reaching number sixteen on the charts: [Excerpt: The 5th Dimension, "Go Where You Wanna Go"] The reason the Mamas and the Papas version of "Go Where You Wanna Go" was pulled was because everyone became convinced that their first single should instead be their own version of "California Dreamin'". This is the exact same track as McGuire's track, with just two changes. The first is that McGuire's lead vocal was replaced with Denny Doherty: [Excerpt: The Mamas and the Papas, "California Dreamin'"] Though if you listen to the stereo mix of the song and isolate the left channel, you can hear McGuire singing the lead on the first line, and occasional leakage from him elsewhere on the backing vocal track: [Excerpt: The Mamas and the Papas, "California Dreamin'"] The other change made was to replace Sloan's harmonica solo with an alto flute solo by Bud Shank, a jazz musician who we heard about in the episode on "Light My Fire", when he collaborated with Ravi Shankar on "Improvisations on the Theme From Pather Panchali": [Excerpt: Ravi Shankar, "Improvisation on the Theme From Pather Panchali"] Shank was working on another session in Western Studios, where they were recording the Mamas and Papas track, and Bones Howe approached him while he was packing his instrument and asked if he'd be interested in doing another session. Shank agreed, though the track caused problems for him. According to Shank "What had happened was that whe

GGACP celebrates Father's Day with this classic interview from 2020, featuring Emmy-winning actor-director Adam Arkin and Oscar-winning actor-director Alan Arkin. In this episode, Adam and Alan talk about portraying villains, directing dark comedies, working with children, the precision of the Coen brothers and the Cold War politics of "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming." Also, Pat McCormick hits the hard stuff, Groucho drops in on Second City, Stephen King praises "Wait Until Dark" and Alan (almost) directs "Blazing Saddles." PLUS: Captain Kangaroo! "Northern Exposure"! The brilliance of "The In-Laws"! Adam "reps" Chuck McCann! Alan records "The Banana Boat Song"! And Adam and Alan choose their favorite Arkin performances! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 490, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: Going Bananas 1: Recipes for this cake-like loaf call for 2 or 3 ripe bananas, mashed. Banana bread. 2: This term for the leading comedian in a show originated in a burlesque routine involving bananas. Top banana. 3: A traditional banana daiquiri contains the light type of this liquor. Rum. 4: While singing with The Tarriers, Alan Arkin had a hit with this song one month before Harry Belafonte. "The Banana-Boat Song". 5: The documentary film subtitled "Bananas Is My Business" profiles this movie star of the '30s and '40s. Carmen Miranda. Round 2. Category: Old Hickory 1: With no $7 bill, seventh president Andrew Jackson is honored on this currency denomination. $20 bill. 2: In 1787 Jackson set up his office to practice this in McLeansville, North Carolina. Law. 3: On June 6, 1833 Jackson became the first sitting president to take a ride on one of these. Train. 4: Waightstill Avery in 1787 and Charles Dickinson in 1806 are 2 of about 100 men Jackson faced in these. Duels. 5: This 6th president wouldn't attend Jackson's inauguration or his honorary degree ceremony at Harvard. John Quincy Adams. Round 3. Category: 2-Word Capitals 1: This Asian capital was built between 1912 and '29 and designed by the British architect Lutyens. New Delhi. 2: The name of this capital of El Salvador is similar to the name of the country. San Salvador. 3: Of the capitals of South Africa, it's the only one that fits the category. Cape Town. 4: Do you know the way to this capital of Costa Rica?. San José. 5: This Ethiopian capital whose name means "new flower" was founded by Emperor Menelik II in 1887. Addis Ababa. Round 4. Category: Warner Bros. 1: In May 1999 her Warners talk show was hit with a $2.5 million judgment after one guest killed another. Jenny Jones. 2: You can tour the Warner Bros. lot online, or in person in this San Fernando Valley city. Burbank. 3: Former mortuary entrepreneur Steve Ross negotiated Warners' 1989 merger with this publisher. Time. 4: Movies found their voice in this 1927 Warner Bros. film. The Jazz Singer. 5: He outlasted his brothers Sam, Albert and Harry in the company, finally selling out in 1967. Jack Warner. Round 5. Category: Famous Joes And Josephs 1: 1 of the 3 heavyweight boxing champs to fit this category. Joe Frazier, Joe Louis and "Jersey Joe" Walcott. 2: This Delaware senator chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. Joseph Biden. 3: This world leader's real name was Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. Joseph Stalin. 4: In 1982 this British singer paired with Jennifer Warnes in the No. 1 hit "Up Where We Belong". Joe Cocker. 5: Late charismatic scholar seen on a PBS series in 1988 conversing with Bill Moyers on "The Power Of Myth". Joseph Campbell. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia!

No es lo mismo "ser de provincias", que padecer complejo de provincianismo victimista. Aunque, en realidad, esto último se suele utilizar como mecanismo de defensa para desviar la atención de los problemas. Si le echo la culpa al malvado mesetario centralista, seguro que me compran el discurso de pobre víctima de un tirano todopoderoso, cruel y ancestral. Y yo me voy de rositas... Becario: @marioaz76 Min. 01 Seg. 42 - Intro Min. 07 Seg. 22 - La previsibilidad de algunos seres Min. 13 Seg. 21 - Un apaño lamentable Min. 17 Seg. 55 - El dinero lo justifica Min. 26 Seg. 01 - Cabreado y autárquico Min. 31 Seg. 07 - El protegido y los protectores Min. 35 Seg. 09 - Autosuficiente, sí, pero reclamo cariño Min. 41 Seg. 01 - El típico truco de la provincia maltratada Min. 46 Seg. 57 - No te metas en mi terreno... Min. 56 Seg. 02 - Despedida The Kinks (Milwaukee 12/06/1978) Hay Fever Misfits Celluloid Heroes Mr. Big Man Slum Kids Sunny Afternoon Alcohol Lola > Banana Boat Song > Lola Rock And Roll Fantasy Live Life Sés - Non son fada (Madrid 08/07/2014)

"Banana Boat (Day-O)" was radio humorist Stan Freberg's take on Harry Belafonte's hit single with the same title. Freberg's 1957 tale of a picky bongo player.

IN THE NEWS Jeff and Ashley discuss the unacceptable living conditions for the junior enlisted barracks at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. THIS WEEK'S GUEST Jeff and Ashley sit down with former Green Beret and Seattle Seahawk Nate Boyer to talk about Merging Vets and Players, a nonprofit organization that brings together combat veterans and professional athletes for workouts and therapy RAPID FIRE DARPA tests Autonomous Black Hawk Helicopter Honoring the military service of Harry Belafonte Air Force ordered to pay restitution for Sutherland Spring shooting Special Guest: Nate Boyer.

On this episode of The Chris and Amanda Show, we're celebrating the spookiest time of the year....HALLOWEEN! In part 1 of our terrifying holiday series, we each share 3 songs taken from horror films for each other to react to and rate! To find out, listen to this episode now! Amanda's List: Ray Parker Jr. "Ghostbusters" (from Ghostbusters) Vince Guaraldi "The Great Pumpkin Waltz" (from It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" Harry Belafonte "Day O, The Banana Boat Song (from Beetlejuice) Chris's List: Dokken "Dream Warriors" (from A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors) Megadeth "No Mr. Nice Guy" (from Shocker) The Ramones "Pet Semetary" (from Pet Semetary) *This show was originally recorded on Fireside Listen to The Chris and Amanda Show 2021 Playlist -https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6nU1z0TmP4o9jKrlonfSCu?si=08add8dcdd794d1c To watch the video version of this episode go to https://youtu.be/XgbVt8TflGE *Connect with us at -https://campsite.bio/thechrisandamandashow *Listen to the show LIVE on Monday's at 2:15 pm Support the show over at Buy Me A Coffee and join our membership group for exclusive content! Join our Mailing List to stay updated on all things TC&AS Follow us on Instagram  Honorable Mentions - https://www.songfacts.com/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/songswapshowdown/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/songswapshowdown/support

Erica goes euphemistic and Jerry goes literal for this easy peasy topic this week - songs about food!  Also, fun facts about Harry Belafonte and Tim Burton!

Episode one hundred and thirty-three of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "My Girl" by the Temptations, and is part three of a three-episode look at Motown in 1965. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Yeh Yeh" by Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, I've put together a Mixcloud playlist of all the recordings excerpted in this episode. This box set is the definitive collection of the Temptations' work, but is a bit pricey. For those on a budget, this two-CD set contains all the hits. As well as the general Motown information listed below, I've also referred to Ain't Too Proud to Beg: The Troubled Lives and Enduring Soul of the Temptations by Mark Ribowsky, and to Smokey Robinson's autobiography. For Motown-related information in this and other Motown episodes, I've used the following resources: Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound by Nelson George is an excellent popular history of the various companies that became Motown. To Be Loved by Berry Gordy is Gordy's own, understandably one-sided, but relatively well-written, autobiography. Women of Motown: An Oral History by Susan Whitall is a collection of interviews with women involved in Motown. I Hear a Symphony: Motown and Crossover R&B by J. Andrew Flory is an academic look at Motown. The Motown Encyclopaedia by Graham Betts is an exhaustive look at the people and records involved in Motown's thirty-year history. How Sweet It Is by Lamont Dozier and Scott B. Bomar is Dozier's autobiography, while Come and Get These Memories by Brian and Eddie Holland and Dave Thompson is the Holland brothers'. And Motown Junkies is an infrequently-updated blog looking at (so far) the first 694 tracks released on Motown singles. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript For the last few weeks we've been looking at Motown in 1965, but now we're moving away from Holland, Dozier, and Holland, we're also going to move back in time a little, and look at a record that was released in December 1964. I normally try to keep this series in more or less chronological order, but to tell this story I had to first show the new status quo of the American music industry after the British Invasion, and some of what had to be covered there was covered in songs from early 1965. And the reason I wanted to show that status quo before doing this series of Motown records is that we're now entering into a new era of musical segregation, and really into the second phase of this story. In 1963, Billboard had actually stopped having an R&B chart -- Cashbox magazine still had one, but Billboard had got rid of theirs. The reasoning was simple -- by that point there was so much overlap between the R&B charts and the pop charts that it didn't seem necessary to have both. The stuff that was charting on the R&B charts was also charting pop -- people like Ray Charles or Chubby Checker or the Ronettes or Sam Cooke. The term "rock and roll" had originally been essentially a marketing campaign to get white people to listen to music made by Black people, and it had worked. There didn't seem to be a need for a separate category for music listened to by Black people, because that was now the music listened to by *everybody*. Or it had been, until the Beatles turned up. At that point, the American charts were flooded by groups with guitars, mostly British, mostly male, and mostly white. The story of rock and roll from 1954 through 1964 had been one of integration, of music made by Black people becoming the new mainstream of music in the USA. The story for the next decade or more would be one of segregation, of white people retaking the pop charts, and rebranding "rock and roll" so thoroughly that by the early 1970s nobody would think of the Supremes or the Shirelles or Sam Cooke as having been rock and roll performers at all. And so today we're going to look at the record that was number one the week that Billboard reinstated its R&B chart, and which remains one of the most beloved classics of the time period. We're going to look at the careers of two different groups at Motown, both of whom managed to continue having hits, and even become bigger, after the British Invasion, and at the songwriter and producer who was responsible for those hits -- and who was also an inspiration for the Beatles, who inadvertently caused that invasion. We're going to look at Smokey Robinson, and at "My Girl" by the Temptations: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl"] The story of the Temptations both starts and ends with Otis Williams. As I write this, Williams is the only living member of the classic Temptations lineup, and is the leader of the current group. And Williams also started the group that, after many lineup changes and mergers, became the Temptations, and was always the group's leader, even though he has never been its principal lead singer. The group that eventually became the Temptations started out when Williams formed a group with a friend, Al Bryant, in the late 1950s. They were inspired by a doo-wop group called the Turbans, who had had a hit in 1956 with a song called "When You Dance": [Excerpt: The Turbans, "When You Dance"] The Turbans, appropriately enough, used to wear turbans on their heads when they performed, and Williams and Bryant's new group wanted to use the same gimmick, so they decided to come up with a Middle-Eastern sounding group name that would justify them wearing Arabic style costumes. Unfortunately, they didn't have the greatest grasp of geography in the world, and so this turban-wearing group named themselves the Siberians. The Siberians recorded one single under that name -- a single that has been variously reported as being called "The Pecos Kid" and "Have Gun Will Travel", but which sold so poorly that now no copies are known to exist anywhere -- before being taken on by a manager called Milton Jenkins, who was as much a pimp as he was a manager, but who definitely had an eye for talent. Jenkins was the manager of two other groups -- the Primes, a trio from Alabama who he'd met in Cleveland when they'd travelled there to see if they could get discovered, and who had moved with him to Detroit, and a group he put together, called the Primettes, who later became the Supremes. The Primes consisted of three singers -- Eddie Kendricks, Paul Williams (no relation to Otis, or to the soft-pop singer and actor of the same name), and Kell Osborne, who sang lead. The Primes became known around Detroit as some of the best performers in the city -- no mean feat considering that Jackie Wilson, Aretha Franklin, the Miracles and the Four Tops, just for a start, were performing regularly on the same circuit. Jenkins had big plans for his groups, and he sent them all to dance school to learn to perform choreographed routines. But then Jenkins became ill and disappeared from the scene, and the Primes split up. Kendricks and Paul Williams went back to Alabama, while Osborne moved on to California, where he made several unsuccessful records, including "The Bells of St. Mary", produced by Lester Sill and Lee Hazelwood and arranged by Phil Spector: [Excerpt: Kell Osborne, "The Bells of St. Mary"] But while the Primes had split up, the Siberians hadn't. Instead, they decided to get new management, which came in the person of a woman named Johnnie Mae Matthews. Matthews was the lead singer of a group called the Five Dapps, who'd had a local hit with a track called "Do Whap A Do", one of the few Dapps songs she didn't sing lead on: [Excerpt: The Five Dapps, "Do Whap A Do"] After that had become successful, Matthews had started up her own label, Northern -- which was apparently named after a brand of toilet paper -- to put out records of her group, often backed by the same musicians who would later become the core of the Funk Brothers. Her group, renamed Johnnie Mae Matthews and the Dapps, put out two more singles on her label, with her singing lead: [Excerpt: Johnnie Mae Matthews and the Dapps, "Mr. Fine"] Matthews had become something of an entrepreneur, managing other local acts like Mary Wells and Popcorn Wylie, and she wanted to record the Siberians, but two of the group had dropped out after Jenkins had disappeared, and so they needed some new members. In particular they needed a bass singer -- and Otis Williams knew of a good one. Melvin Franklin had been singing with various groups around Detroit, but Williams was thinking in particular of Franklin's bass vocal on "Needed" by the Voice Masters. We've mentioned the Voice Masters before, but they were a group with a rotating membership that included David Ruffin and Lamont Dozier. Franklin hadn't been a member of the group, but he had been roped in to sing bass on "Needed", which was written and produced by Gwen Gordy and Roquel Davis, and was a clear attempt at sounding like Jackie Wilson: [Excerpt: The Voice Masters, "Needed"] Williams asked Franklin to join the group, and Franklin agreed, but felt bad about leaving his current group. However, the Siberians also needed a new lead singer, and so Franklin brought in Richard Street from his group. Matthews renamed the group the Distants and took them into the studio. They actually got there early, and got to see another group, the Falcons, record what would become a million-selling hit: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "You're So Fine"] The Falcons, whose lead vocalist Joe Stubbs was Levi Stubbs' brother, were an important group in their own right, and we'll be picking up on them next week, when we look at a single by Joe Stubbs' replacement in the group. The Distants' single wouldn't be quite as successful as the Falcons', but it featured several people who would go on to become important in Motown. As well as several of the Funk Brothers in the backing band, the record also featured additional vocals by the Andantes, and on tambourine a local pool-hall hustler the group knew named Norman Whitfield. The song itself was written by Williams, and was essentially a rewrite of "Shout!" by the Isley Brothers: [Excerpt: The Distants, "Come On"] The Distants recorded a second single for Northern, but then Williams made the mistake of asking Matthews if they might possibly receive any royalties for their records. Matthews said that the records had been made with her money, that she owned the Distants' name, and she was just going to get five new singers. Matthews did actually get several new singers to put out a single under the Distants name, with Richard Street still singing lead -- Street left the group when they split from Matthews, as did another member, leaving the group as a core of Otis Williams, Melvin Franklin, and Al Bryant. But before the split with Matthews, Berry Gordy had seen the group and suggested they come in to Motown for an audition. Otis, Melvin, and Al, now renamed the Elgins, wanted to do just that. But they needed a new lead singer. And happily, they had one. Eddie Kendricks phoned up Otis Williams and said that he and Paul Williams were back in town, and did Otis know of any gigs that were going? Otis did indeed know of such a gig, and Paul and Eddie joined the Elgins, Paul as lead singer and Eddie as falsetto singer. This new lineup of the group were auditioned by Mickey Stevenson, Motown's head of A&R, and he liked them enough that he signed them up. But he insisted that the name had to change -- there was another group already called the Elgins (though that group never had a hit, and Motown would soon sign up yet another group and change their name to the Elgins, leading to much confusion). The group decided on a new name -- The Temptations. Their first record was co-produced by Stevenson and Andre Williams. Williams, who was no relation to either Otis or Paul (and as a sidenote I do wish there weren't so many people with the surname Williams in this story, as it means I can't write it in my usual manner of referring to people by their surname) was a minor R&B star who co-wrote "Shake a Tail Feather", and who had had a solo hit with his record "Bacon Fat": [Excerpt: Andre Williams, "Bacon Fat"] Andre Williams, who at this point in time was signed to Motown though not having much success, was brought in because the perception at Motown was that the Temptations would be one of their harder-edged R&B groups, rather than going for the softer pop market, and he would be able to steer the recording in that direction. The song they chose to record was one that Otis Williams had written, though Mickey Stevenson gets a co-writing credit and may have helped polish it: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "Oh Mother of Mine"] The new group lineup became very close, and started thinking of each other like family and giving each other nicknames -- though they also definitely split into two camps. Otis Williams and Melvin Franklin were always a pair, and Eddie Kendricks and Paul Williams had come up together and thought of themselves as a team. Al Bryant, even though he had been with Otis from the beginning, was a bit of an outlier in this respect. He wasn't really part of either camp, and he was the only one who didn't get a nickname from the other band members. He was also the only one who kept his day job -- while the other four were all determined that they were going to make it as professional singers, he was hesitant and kept working at the dairy. As a result, whenever there were fights in the group -- and the fights would sometimes turn physical -- the fighting would tend to be between Eddie Kendricks and Melvin Franklin. Otis was the undisputed leader, and nobody wanted to challenge him, but from the beginning Kendricks and Paul Williams thought of Otis as a bit too much of a company man. They also thought of Melvin as Otis' sidekick and rubber stamp, so rather than challenge Otis they'd have a go at Melvin. But, for the most part, they were extremely close at this point. The Temptations' first single didn't have any great success, but Berry Gordy had faith in the group, and produced their next single himself, a song that he cowrote with Otis, Melvin, and Al, and which Brian Holland also chipped in some ideas for. That was also unsuccessful, but the next single, written by Gordy alone, was slightly more successful. For "(You're My) Dream Come True", Gordy decided to give the lead to Kendricks, the falsetto singer, and the track also featured a prominent instrumental line by Gordy's wife Raynoma -- what sounds like strings on the record is actually a primitive synthesiser called an ondioline: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "(You're My) Dream Come True"] That made number twenty-two on the R&B chart, and was the first sign of any commercial potential for the group -- and so Motown went in a totally different direction and put out a cover version, of a record by a group called the Diablos, whose lead singer was Barrett Strong's cousin Nolan. The Temptations' version of "Mind Over Matter" wasn't released as by the Temptations, but as by the Pirates: [Excerpt: The Pirates, "Mind Over Matter"] That was a flop, and at the same time as they released it, they also released another Gordy song under their own name, a song called "Paradise" which seems to have been an attempt at making a Four Seasons soundalike, which made number 122 on the pop charts and didn't even do that well on the R&B charts. Annoyingly, the Temptations had missed out on a much bigger hit. Gordy had written "Do You Love Me?" for the group, but had been hit with a burst of inspiration and wanted to do the record *NOW*. He'd tried phoning the various group members, but got no answer -- they were all in the audience at a gospel music show at the time, and had no idea he was trying to get in touch with them. So he'd pulled in another group, The Contours, and their version of the song went to number three on the pop charts: [Excerpt: The Contours, "Do You Love Me?"] According to the biography of the Temptations I'm using as a major source for this episode, that was even released on the same day as both "Paradise" and "Mind Over Matter", though  other sources I've consulted have it coming out a few months earlier. Despite "Paradise"'s lack of commercial success, though, it did introduce an element that would become crucial for the group's future -- the B-side was the first song for the group written by Smokey Robinson. We've mentioned Robinson briefly in previous episodes on Motown, but he's worth looking at in a lot more detail, because he is in some ways the most important figure in Motown's history, though also someone who has revealed much less of himself than many other Motown artists. Both of these facts stem from the same thing, which is that Robinson is the ultimate Motown company man. He was a vice president of the company, and he was Berry Gordy's best friend from before the company even started. While almost every other artist, writer, or producer signed to Motown has stories to tell of perceived injustices in the way that Motown treated them, Robinson has always positioned himself on the side of the company executives rather than as one of the other artists. He was the only person outside the Gordy family who had a place at the very centre of the organisation -- and he was also one of a very small number of people during Motown's golden age who would write, produce, *and* perform. Now, there were other people who worked both as artists and on the backroom side of things -- we've seen that Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder would sometimes write songs for other artists, and that Eddie Holland and Lamont Dozier had started out as performers before moving into songwriting. But these were mostly little dalliances -- in general, in Motown in the sixties, you were either a performer or you were a writer-producer. But Smokey Robinson was both -- and he was *good* at both, someone who was responsible for creating many of the signature hits of Motown. At this point in his career, Robinson had, as we've heard previously, been responsible for Motown's second big hit, after "Money", when he'd written "Shop Around" for his own group The Miracles: [Excerpt: The Miracles, "Shop Around"] The Miracles had continued to have hits, though none as big as "Shop Around", with records like "What's So Good About Goodbye?": [Excerpt: The Miracles, "What's So Good About Goodbye?"] But Robinson had also been writing regularly for other artists. He'd written some stuff that the Supremes had recorded, though like all the Supremes material at this point it had been unsuccessful, and he'd also started a collaboration with the label's biggest star at this point, Mary Wells, for whom he'd written top ten hits like "The One Who Really Loves You": [Excerpt: Mary Wells, "The One Who Really Loves You"] and "You Beat Me To The Punch", co-written with fellow Miracle Ronnie White, which as well as going top ten pop made number one on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: Mary Wells, "You Beat Me to The Punch"] Between 1962 and 1964, Robinson would consistently write huge hits for Wells, as well as continuing to have hits with the Miracles, and his writing was growing in leaps and bounds. He was regarded by almost everyone at Motown as the best writer the company had, both for his unique melodic sensibility and for the literacy of his lyrics. When he'd first met Berry Gordy, he'd been a writer with a lot of potential, but he hadn't understood how to structure a lyric -- he'd thrown in a lot of unrelated ideas. Gordy had taken him under his wing and shown him how to create a song with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and Robinson had immediately understood what he needed to do. His lyrics, with their clever conceits and internal rhymes, became the ones that everyone else studied -- when Eddie Holland decided to become a songwriter rather than a singer, he'd spent months just studying Robinson's lyrics to see how they worked. Robinson was even admired by the Beatles, especially John Lennon -- one can hear his melismatic phrases all over Lennon's songwriting in this period, most notably in songs like "Ask Me Why", and the Beatles covered one of Robinson's songs on their second album, With the Beatles: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "You Really Got a Hold On Me"] After writing the B-side to "Paradise", Robinson was given control of the Temptations' next single. His "I Want a Love I Can See" didn't do any better than "Paradise", and is in some ways more interesting for the B-side, "The Further You Look, The Less You See": [Excerpt: The Temptations, "The Further You Look, The Less You See"] That track's interesting because it's a collaboration between Robinson and Norman Whitfield, that pool-hall hustler who'd played tambourine on the Distants' first single. Whitfield had produced the records by the later Distants, led by Richard Street, and had then gone to work for a small label owned by Berry Gordy's ex-mother-in-law. Gordy had bought out that label, and with it Whitfield's contract, and at this point Whitfield was very much an apprentice to Robinson. Both men were huge admirers of the Temptations, and for the next few years both would want to be the group's main producer and songwriter, competing for the right to record their next single -- though for a good chunk of time this would not really be a competition, as Whitfield was minor league compared to Robinson. "I Want a Love I Can See" was a flop, and the Temptations' next single was another Berry Gordy song. When that flopped too, Gordy seriously started considering dropping the group altogether. While this was happening, though, Robinson was busily writing more great songs for his own group and for Mary Wells, songs like "What Love Has Joined Together", co-written with his bandmate Bobby Rogers: [Excerpt: Mary Wells, "What Love Has Joined Together"] And the Temptations were going through their own changes. Al was becoming more and more of an outsider in the group, while also thinking of himself as the real star. He thought this even though he was the weak link -- Paul and Eddie were the lead singers, Otis was the band's leader, Melvin had a hugely distinctive bass voice, and Al was... just "the other one". Things came to a head at a gig in October 1963, when a friend of the group showed up. David Ruffin was so friendly with Melvin Franklin that Franklin called him his cousin, and he was also a neighbour of Otis'. He had been a performer from an early age -- he'd been in a gospel group with his older brother Jimmy and their abusive father. Once he'd escaped his father, he'd gone on to perform in a duo with his brother, and then in a series of gospel groups, including stints in the Dixie Nightingales and the Soul Stirrers. Ruffin had been taken on by a manager called Eddie Bush, who adopted him -- whether legally or just in their minds is an open question -- and had released his first single as Little David Bush when he was seventeen, in 1958: [Excerpt: Little David Bush, "You and I"] Ruffin and Bush had eventually parted ways, and Ruffin had taken up with the Gordy family, helping Berry Gordy Sr out in his construction business -- he'd actually helped build the studio that Berry Jr owned and where most of the Motown hits were recorded -- and singing on records produced by Gwen Gordy. He'd been in the Voice Masters, who we heard earlier this episode, and had also recorded solo singles with the Voice Masters backing, like "I'm In Love": [Excerpt: David Ruffin, "I'm In Love"] When Gwen Gordy's labels had been absorbed into Motown, so had Ruffin, who had also got his brother Jimmy signed to the label. They'd planned to record as the Ruffin Brothers, but then Jimmy had been drafted, and Ruffin was at a loose end -- he technically had a Motown contract, but wasn't recording anything. But then in October 1963 he turned up to a Temptations gig. For the encore, the group always did the Isley Brothers song "Shout!", and Ruffin got up on stage with them and started joining in, dancing more frantically than the rest of the group. Al started trying to match him, feeling threatened by this interloper. They got wilder and wilder, and the audience loved it so much that the group were called back for another encore, and Ruffin joined them again. They did the same song again, and got an even better reaction. They came back for a third time, and did it again, and got an even better reaction. Ruffin then disappeared into the crowd. The group decided that enough was enough -- except for Al, who was convinced that they should do a fourth encore without Ruffin. The rest of the group were tired, and didn't want to do the same song for a fourth time, and thought they should leave the audience wanting more. Al, who had been drinking, got aggressive, and smashed a bottle in Paul Williams' face, hospitalising him. Indeed, it was only pure luck that kept Williams from losing his vision, and he was left with a scar but no worse damage. Otis, Eddie, and Melvin decided that they needed to sack Al, but Paul, who was the peacemaker in the group, insisted that they shouldn't, and also refused to press charges. Out of respect for Paul, the rest of the group agreed to give Al one more chance. But Otis in particular was getting sick of Al and thought that the group should just try to get David Ruffin in. Everyone agreed that if Al did anything to give Otis the slightest reason, he could be sacked. Two months later, he did just that. The group were on stage at the annual Motown Christmas show, which was viewed by all the acts as a competition, and Paul had worked out a particularly effective dance routine for the group, to try to get the crowd going. But while they were performing, Al came over to Otis and suggested that the two of them, as the "pretty boys" should let the other three do all the hard work while they just stood back and looked good for the women. Otis ignored him and carried on with the routine they'd rehearsed, and Al was out as soon as they came offstage. And David Ruffin was in. But for now, Ruffin was just the missing element in the harmony stack, not a lead vocalist in his own right. For the next single, both Smokey Robinson and Berry Gordy came up with songs for the new lineup of the group, and they argued about which song should be the A-side -- one of the rare occasions where the two disagreed on anything. They took the two tracks to Motown's quality control meeting, and after a vote it was agreed that the single should be the song that Robinson had written for Eddie Kendricks to sing, "The Way You Do the Things You Do": [Excerpt: The Temptations, "The Way You Do the Things You Do"] At first, the group hadn't liked that song, and it wasn't until they rehearsed it a few times that they realised that Robinson was being cleverer than they'd credited him for with the lyrics. Otis Williams would later talk about how lines like "You've got a smile so bright, you know you could have been a candle" had seemed ridiculous to them at first, but then they'd realised that the lyric was parodying the kinds of things that men say when they don't know what to say to a woman, and that it's only towards the end of the song that the singer stops trying bad lines and just starts speaking honestly -- "you really swept me off my feet, you make my life complete, you make my life so bright, you make me feel all right": [Excerpt: The Temptations, "The Way You Do the Things You Do"] That track was also the first one that the group cut to a prerecorded backing track, Motown having upgraded to a four-track system. That allowed the group to be more subtle with their backing vocal arrangements, and "The Way You Do the Things You Do" is the point at which the Temptations become fully themselves. But the group didn't realise that at first. They spent the few weeks after the record's release away from Detroit, playing at the Michigan state fair, and weren't aware that it was starting to do things. It was only when Otis and David popped in to the Motown offices and people started talking to them about them having a hit that they realised the record had made the pop charts. Both men had been trying for years to get a big hit, with no success, and they started crying in each other's arms, Ruffin saying ‘Otis, this is the first time in my life I feel like I've been accepted, that I've done something.'” The record eventually made number eleven on the pop charts, and number one on the Cashbox R&B chart -- Billboard, as we discussed earlier, having discontinued theirs, but Otis Williams still thinks that given the amount of airplay that the record was getting it should have charted higher, and that something fishy was going on with the chart compilation at that point. Perhaps, but given that the record reached the peak of its chart success in April 1964, the high point of Beatlemania, when the Beatles had five records in the top ten, it's also just possible that it was a victim of bad timing. But either way, number eleven on the pop charts was a significant hit. Shortly after that, though, Smokey Robinson came up with an even bigger hit. "My Guy", written for Mary Wells, had actually only been intended as a bit of album filler. Motown were putting together a Mary Wells album, and as with most albums at the time it was just a collection of tracks that had already been released as singles and stuff that hadn't been considered good enough to release. But they were a track short, and Smokey was asked to knock together something quickly. He recorded a backing track at the end of a day cutting tracks for a *Temptations* album -- The Temptations Sing Smokey -- and everyone was tired by the time they got round to recording it, but you'd never guess that from the track itself, which is as lively as anything Motown put out. "My Guy" was a collaborative creation, with an arrangement that was worked on by the band -- it was apparently the Funk Brothers who came up with the intro, which was lifted from a 1956 record, "Canadian Sunset" by Hugo Winterhalter. Compare that: [Excerpt: Hugo Winterhalter, "Canadian Sunset"] to “My Guy”: [Excerpt: Mary Wells, "My Guy"] The record became one of the biggest hits of the sixties -- Motown's third pop number one, and a million-seller. It made Mary Wells into a superstar, and the Beatles invited her to be their support act on their UK summer tour. So of course Wells immediately decided to get a better deal at another record label, and never had another hit again. Meanwhile, Smokey kept plugging away, both at his own records -- though the Miracles went through a bit of a dry patch at this point, as far as the charts go -- and at the Temptations. The group's follow-up, "I'll Be in Trouble", was very much a remake of "The Way You Do the Things You Do", and while it was good it didn't quite make the top thirty. This meant that Norman Whitfield got another go. He teamed up with Eddie Holland to write "Girl (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue)", which did only slightly better than "I'll Be in Trouble": [Excerpt: The Temptations, "Girl (Why You Wanna Make Me Blue)"] The competition between Robinson and Whitfield for who got to make the Temptations' records was heating up -- both men were capable of giving the group hits, but neither had given them the truly massive record that they were clearly capable of having. So Smokey did the obvious thing. He wrote a sequel to his biggest song ever, and he gave it to the new guy to sing. Up until this point, David Ruffin hadn't taken a lead vocal on a Temptations record -- Paul Williams was the group's official "lead singer", while all the hits had ended up having Eddie's falsetto as the most prominent vocal. But Smokey had seen David singing "Shout" with the group, and knew that he had lead singer potential. With his fellow Miracle Ronald White, Smokey crafted a song that was the perfect vehicle for Ruffin's vocal, an answer song to "My Guy", which replaced that song's bouncy exuberance with a laid-back carefree feeling: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl"] But it's not just Ruffin's record -- everyone talking about the track talks about Ruffin's vocal, or the steady pulse of James Jamerson's bass playing, and both those things are definitely worthy of praise, as of course are Robinson's production and Robinson and White's song, but this is a *Temptations* record, and the whole group are doing far more here than the casual listener might realise. It's only when you listen to the a capella version released on the group's Emperors of Soul box set that you notice all the subtleties of the backing vocal parts. On the first verse, the group don't come in until half way through the verse, with Melvin Franklin's great doo-wop bass introducing the backing vocalists, who sing just straight chords: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl (a capella)"] It's not until the chorus that the other group members stretch out a little, taking solo lines and singing actual words rather than just oohs: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl (a capella)"] They then drop back until the same point in the next verse, but this time rather than singing just the plain chords, they're embellishing a little, playing with the rhythm slightly, and Eddie Kendricks' falsetto is moving far more freely than at the same point in the first verse. [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl (a capella)"] The backing vocals slowly increase in complexity until you get the complex parts on the tag. Note that on the first chorus they sang the words "My Girl" absolutely straight with no stresses, but by the end of the song they're all emphasising every word. They've gone from Jordanaires style precise straight harmony to a strong Black gospel feel in their voices, and you've not even noticed the transition: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl (a capella)"] The track went to number one on the pop charts, knocking off "This Diamond Ring" by Gary Lewis and the Playboys, before itself being knocked off by "Eight Days a Week" by the Beatles. But it also went to number one on the newly reestablished R&B charts, and stayed there for six weeks: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "My Girl"] Smokey Robinson was now firmly established as the Temptations' producer, and David Ruffin as the group's lead singer. In 1965 Robinson and Pete Moore of the Miracles would write three more top-twenty pop hits for the group, all with Ruffin on lead -- and also manage to get a B-side sung by Paul Williams, "Don't Look Back", to the top twenty on the R&B chart. Not only that, but the Miracles were also on a roll, producing two of the biggest hits of their career. Pete Moore and Marv Tarplin had been messing around with a variant of the melody for "The Banana Boat Song", and came up with an intro for a song: [Excerpt: The Miracles, "The Tracks of My Tears"] Robinson took that as a jumping-off point and turned it into the song that would define their career: [Excerpt: The Miracles, "The Tracks of My Tears"] And later that year they came up with yet another million-seller for the Miracles with "Going to a Go-Go": [Excerpt: The Miracles, "Going to a Go-Go"] Robinson and his collaborators were being rather overshadowed in the public perception at this point by the success of Holland-Dozier-Holland with the Supremes and the Four Tops, but by any standards the records the Temptations and the Miracles were putting out were massive successes, both commercially and artistically. But there were two things that were going to upset this balance. The first was David Ruffin. When he'd joined the group, he'd been the new boy and just eager to get any kind of success at all. Now he was the lead singer, and his ego was starting to get the better of him. The other thing that was going to change things was Norman Whitfield. Whitfield hadn't given up on the Temptations just because of Smokey's string of hits with them. Whitfield knew, of course, that Smokey was the group's producer while he was having hits with them, but he also knew that sooner or later everybody slips up. He kept saying, in every meeting, that he had the perfect next hit for the Temptations, and every time he was told "No, they're Smokey's group". He knew this would be the reaction, but he also knew that if he kept doing this he would make sure that he was the next in line -- that nobody else could jump the queue and get a shot at them if Smokey failed. He badgered Gordy, and wore him down, to the point that Gordy finally agreed that if Smokey's next single for the group didn't make the top twenty on the pop charts like his last four had, Whitfield would get his turn. The next single Smokey produced for the group had Eddie Kendricks on lead, and became the group's first R&B number one since "My Girl": [Excerpt: The Temptations, "Get Ready"] But the R&B and pop charts were diverging, as we saw at the start. While that was their biggest R&B hit in a year, "Get Ready" was a comparative failure on the pop charts, only reaching number twenty-nine -- still a hit, but not the top twenty that Gordy had bet on. So Norman Whitfield got a chance. His record featured David Ruffin on lead, as all the group's previous run of hits from "My Girl" on had, and was co-written with Eddie Holland. Whitfield decided to play up the Temptations' R&B edge, rather than continue in the softer pop style that had brought them success with Robinson, and came up with something that owed as much to the music coming out of Stax and Atlantic at the time as it did to Motown's pop sensibilities: [Excerpt: The Temptations, "Ain't Too Proud to Beg"] Whitfield's instinct to lean harder into the R&B sound paid off. "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" returned the group to the pop top twenty, as well as going to number one on the R&B charts. From this point on, the Temptations were no longer Smokey's group, they were Norman Whitfield's, and he would produce all their hits for the next eight years. And the group were also now definitively David Ruffin's group -- or so it seemed. When we pick up on the story of the Temptations, we'll discover how Ruffin's plans for solo stardom worked out, and what happened to the rest of the Temptations under Whitfield's guidance.

This week's guest on Meet the Music embodies many of the reasons we created this podcast.  Dr. Timothy Dodge, the author of Rhythm and Blues Goes Calypso, which is considered a textbook,  and shares the history of Calypso music.   Listen as he draws the musical and cultural connections.  You can listen to Dr. Dodge or Dr. HepCat on his radio show weglfm.com or WEGL - Auburn, FM 91.1https://www.weglfm.com/page/show-dr-hepcat-golden-oldieshttps://www.amazon.com/Timothy-Dodge/e/B001KI3PSU%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_sharehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH_EIRKmIkHx1a0D_wA7TOw/playlists

PODCAST: 25 Apr 2021 01 The Rosewood Jig / Tripping Upstairs – Diatonics – Diatonics 02 Arrogance, Ignorance And Greed  – Show Of Hands – Arrogance, Ignorance And Greed 03 Follow The Heron Home – Nóirinn Lynch – In Her Own Time 04 Bold Riley – Peter Knight’s Gigspanner – From Poets To Wives 05 Cod Liver Oil And The Orange Juice – The Mary Wallopers – A Mouthful Of The Mary Wallopers 06 Bell Book & Candle – Nóirinn Lynch – In Her Own Time 07 Baking Bread – Nóirinn Lynch – In Her Own Time 08 Joe Bowers – Martin Simpson – Live Before Lockdown 09 Palaces Of Gold – Martin Simpson – Live Before Lockdown 10 Heartbreak Hotel – Martin Simpson – Live Before Lockdown 11 Lullabyes For Strangers – Peggy Seeger – First Farewell 12 Gotta Get Home By Midnight – Peggy Seeger – First Farewell 13 Blackbirds & Thrushes – Banter – Three 14 Corrina Corrina – Kenneth “Jethro” Burns – Swing Low, Sweet Mandolin 15 The Doffing Mistress – Varo – Varo 16 Hangman´s Reel – Mary Z Cox – Carolina Banjo 17 St Helena – Dermot Byrne, Eamonn Coyne, John Doyle – Liag 18 Blow The Candle Out – Jumbo Brightwell – Songs From The Eel’s Foot 19 As I Roved Out – Varo – Varo 20 River Of Gold – Track Dogs – Single 21 Peoples’ Palace Kitty Sheain’s Jig- Dermot Byrne, Eamonn Coyne, John Doyle – Liag 22 Banana Boat Song – Edward II – Dancing Tunes 23 John Willie’s Ferret – The Oldham Tinkers – Sit Thee Down 24 The Hard Times Of Old England – Peter Knight’s Gigspanner – From Poets To Wives 25 The Sun’s Coming Over The Hill – Karine Polwart – Faultlines 26 The Rosewood Jig / Tripping Upstairs – Diatonics – Diatonics

Ben & Woods start off the 7am hour with another game of "Take On Woods" which sparks Woodsy to tell an amazing story about the Banana Boat Song... Listen here! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Muzun liflerinden, kabuğundan, yaprağından, çiçeğinden yararlanılıyor. Yaprağı tabak olarak kullanıldığı gibi, pirince çok yakıştığı için tencerenin dibine de seriliyor. Güzel koku verdiği, tencerenin dibinin tutmasını engellediği için. Ayrıca sarma yapılıyor; muz yaprağına sarılan yiyecekler közde ya da buharda pişiriliyor. Bir de şarkıları, dansları var. Josephine Baker'ın 1927'deki muzlu etekle yaptığı dansı, "Miss Çikita" ve 1944'te "muz cumhuriyeti" sözünün kaynağı olan reklam, Harry Belafonte'nin "Banana Boat Song" şarkısı... Aylin Öney Tan'dan dinleyin.

Muzun liflerinden, kabuğundan, yaprağından, çiçeğinden yararlanılıyor. Yaprağı tabak olarak kullanıldığı gibi, pirince çok yakıştığı için tencerenin dibine de seriliyor. Güzel koku verdiği, tencerenin dibinin tutmasını engellediği için. Ayrıca sarma yapılıyor; muz yaprağına sarılan yiyecekler közde ya da buharda pişiriliyor. Bir de şarkıları, dansları var. Josephine Baker'ın 1927'deki muzlu etekle yaptığı dansı, "Miss Çikita" ve 1944'te "muz cumhuriyeti" sözünün kaynağı olan reklam, Harry Belafonte'nin "Banana Boat Song" şarkısı... Aylin Öney Tan'dan dinleyin.

"Basin Street Blues", "Born To Sing The Blues", "There´s Never Been a Night", "The Gipsy in My Soul", "Blues In The Night", "The Wayward Wind" y "Puh-Leeze Mister Brown", extraídas del álbum "Born To Sing The Blues" ´S Wonderful" y "They Can´t Take That Away From Me", extraídas del álbum "The Fabulous Shirley Bassey "Burn My Candle", "Night and Day", "Crazy Rhythm", "The Wall", "The Banana Boat Song", "The Gypsy In My Soul", "From This Moment On", "Kiss Me, Honey Honey, Kiss Me" y "How About You?", extraídas del álbum "The Bewitching Miss Bassey" Escuchar audio

Gilbert and Frank are joined by Emmy-winning actor-director Adam Arkin and Oscar-winning actor-director Alan Arkin for a funny and fascinating conversation about portraying villains, directing dark comedies, working with children, the precision of the Coen brothers and the Cold War politics of "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming." Also, Pat McCormick hits the hard stuff, Groucho drops in on Second City, Stephen King praises "Wait Until Dark" and Alan (almost) directs "Blazing Saddles." PLUS: Captain Kangaroo! "Northern Exposure"! The brilliance of "The In-Laws"! Adam "reps" Chuck McCann! Alan records "The Banana Boat Song"! And Adam and Alan choose their favorite Arkin performances! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Los sábados y domingos seguimos con las botas puestas a las 13:00 horas y nos unimos a la programación especial de Radio 3. El pasado fin de semana programamos un par de sesiones que puedes encontrar en nuestro blog y en nuestros podcasts, pero vamos a procurar que todo suene como siempre Queremos que te quedes en casa con nosotros y que el aperitivo sonoro del sábado y domingo sea como siempre… o mejor. El pasado viernes, día 20, sabíamos de la muerte del tejano de Houston Kenny Rogers por causas naturales. Había empezado haciendo doo-wop antes de un primer intento como solista con el nombre de Kenneth Ray Rogers The First. También tocó jazz y después de algunos otros intentos ingresó en los New Christy Minstrels, uno de los grupos vocales de folk más brillantes. Con algunos de sus miembros capitaneó The First Edition. En su cuarto álbum, que titularon Ruby (Don't Take Your Love To Town), encontramos una canción de cierre como “Reuben James", que hoy abre nuestro espacio. La compusieron Alex Harvey y Barry Etris y los aficionados más cercanos al country clásico recordarán por la versión de Conway Twitty un año más tarde. Diez años después de aquel disco, en 1979, un álbum de Kenny Rogers se convertiría en uno de los más influyentes del country. Su nombre era tan simple como Kenny, pero en aquel trabajo se incluyó "The Gambler" y fue el gran álbum de aquella temporada, aunque apareció al final del año anterior. Su tema central, “The Gambler”, daría origen a una película de televisión protagonizada también por Kenny Rogers y significó su primer acercamiento al cine. Consiguió dos Grammy y también fue su gran éxito en España. Incluso son muchos los que consideran esta canción como la más representativa en la historia de la country music. The First Edition antepuso el nombre de Kenny Rogers tras el éxito de una canción que seguro que recuerdas: "Ruby (Don't Take Your Love To Town)". En un principio cerró el álbum The First Edition ’69 pero tras su éxito en Estados Unidos, Canadá y Gran Bretaña fue la apertura y el tema central de su cuarto registro en aquel mismo año, además de convertirse en su canción de enganche, contando la historia de un veterano de la guerra del Vietnam que ve indefenso en su silla de ruedas como su mujer sale por la noche sin él. Tras siete años de trabajo conjunto, se separaron en el 74 y un año más tarde Kenny Rogers firmó con United Artists como cantante solista comenzando una carrera legendaria. Después de un par de intentos con otros tantos singles, Kenny Rogers editó "Lucille", la historia de un encuentro fugaz en un bar de Toledo, Ohio, con una mujer infiel. Con aquella canción logró su primer No.1 en la primavera de 1977, vendiendo un millón de copias y siendo declarado mejor single de country de la temporada por la CMA y la ACM además de ganar su primer premio Grammy, previos a la edición del álbum Kenny Rogers. Curiosamente, la madre de Kenny también se llamaba Lucille. “Coward Of The County” fue el tema estrella de Kenny, el álbum que continuó a The Gambler. Aquella canción habla de Tommy, un joven que inspirado por su padre, que murió en prisión y le pidió que no cometiera sus errores, era apodado en el condado “Yellow” por su actitud siempre pacífica. Pero cuando Becky, su pareja, es violada por los hermanos Gatlin entiende que no puede ignorarlo, va al bar que estos frecuentan y no deja a ninguno de los tres en pie. Tommy espera que su padre comprenda que hizo todo lo posible para evitarlo, pero que, a veces, tienes que pelear. Trístemente, las malas noticias no desaparecieron de la escena campera y el pasado domingo moría el neoyorquino Eric Weissberg a consecuencia del Alzheimer. Tenía 80 años y fue uno de los más apreciados banjistas de la historia. Esta versión junto a Steve Mandell del clásico de Arthur "Guitar Boogie" Smith "Feudin' Banjos", se convirtió en "Dueling Banjos" para la banda sonora de la película Deliverance, que puso en el mapa de las grandes audiencias un estilo tan enraizado como bluegrass en aquel año. El cine y un estilo musical tan enraizado como el bluegrass han estado muy unidos a lo largo de varias décadas, aunque es muy posible que a nosotros nos haya pasado bastante inadvertido. Si recordamos la película de 1972 Deliverance, que aquí llegó a titularse Defensa, con Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty y Ronny Cox, nos vendrá a la memoria una escena inolvidable con un duelo improvisado de guitarra y banjo entre el personaje que encarnaba este último actor y un chaval retrasado. Eric Weissberg se había iniciado en la escena del folk de Greenwich Village y fue un reputado músico de sesión. Una canción folclórica como "Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill" dio el nombre a los Tarriers, fundados en 1956 por Erik Darling, Alan Arkin y Bob Carey, (en un principio se llamaban los Tunetellers), que obtuvieron dos grandes éxitos en los años 56 y 57. Dieron a conocer el tema "The Banana Boat Song” y grabaron "Cindy, Oh Cindy" con Vince Martin en 1956. Un álbum como Gather ‘Round, grabado para Decca en 1964, el mismo año en que se separaron, nos permitió escuchar, con Eric Weissberg como banjista y vocalista, esta versión de "Pick a Bale of Cotton", una canción de trabajo que fue grabada por primera en los años 30 y después popularizó Leadbelly. Eric Weissberg tocó como músico de sesiones en un buen número de álbumes de Judy Collins y John Denver, además de en Piano Man (Billy Joel, 1973), Blood on the Tracks (Bob Dylan, 1974), Heroes (Tom Paxton, 1992) o Other Voices Too (Nanci Griffith, 1998). La historia de un militar que lucha contra su trastorno de estrés postraumático convierte “I’m Still Hanging On” en uno de los cortes más conmovedores de Years, el disco de regreso de John Anderson, arropado por Dan Auerbach, que le ha acogido en su propia discográfica, ha producido el álbum y ha colaborado en la composición de cortes como este, que sirve a apertura. Eso tinte de supervivencia también tiene que ver con el propio artista de Florida, que ha tenido distintos altibajos a lo largo de su carrera y que a nivel personal superó una grave crisis de salud mientras conformaba este registro. A pesar de las circunstancias, Willie Nelson sigue especialmente activo. Debido a la pandemia que nos azota, tuvo que variar la concepción de su encuentro anual Luck Reunion, un festival que celebra en su rancho de Luck, en Texas, previsto para la semana pasada. Lo convirtió en un concierto sin público en el que los artistas actuaban desde diferentes lugares con una mínima producción, consiguiendo un impacto muy superior al previsto. Ray Benson se convirtió en el anfitrión desde los Arlyn Studios de Austin, dando entrada, por ejemplo, a Tami Neilson desde una tienda de discos en Nueva Zelanda o a Paul Simon, Edie Brickell y su hija desde Hawai. Lucinda Williams tocó desde su casa, al igual que Margo Price y su marido, Jeremy Ivey, Neil Young hizo una aparición sorpresa… y Nikki Lane llegó tarde. Pero allí estaba Willie con sus hijos, Lukas y Micah Nelson. El tejano ha tenido que retrasar hasta julio la publicación de su nuevo álbum, First Rose Of Spring, pero nosotros seguimos anticipando canciones de ese registro como es el caso de "Our Song", firmada por su amigo Chris Stapleton, que le tiene enmarcado entre sus héroes. El tema reflexiona sobre su vida, sus experiencias y los seres queridos que ha encontrado que ha encontrado en el camino. Neon Cross es el álbum de regreso de Jaime Wyatt y el primero para el sello New West, auspiciado por la producción de Shooter Jennings, un tipo en el que siempre se puede confiar. Saldrá al mercado a finales de mayo y supone la continuación a Felony Blues que hace tres años la trajo por primera vez a España. El trabajo conjunto ha dado como resultado un álbum de gran angular, de letras incisivas y una expresión vocal sin cortapisas. La artista nacida en el estado de Washington ha tenido a su lado a Jessi Colter, madre de Shooter y viuda de Waylon, en un himno de tintes feministas como "Just A Woman", para dar voz a esa gran mayoría de mujeres que no han sido escuchadas y a las que se pide que sean guapas, despreocupadas y, sobre todo, mansas. Desde que hace unas semanas se llevara un Grammy por su trabajo junto a Sara Watkins y Aoife O’Donovan como I’m With Her, Sarah Jarosz ha sido la primera de ese trío que nos ha regalado un nuevo álbum en solitario, en este caso el primero en cuatro años. Previsto para primeros de junio, World on the Ground, ha sido producido por John Leventhal, marido de Rosanne Cash, Elvis Costello) y grabado en su estudio casero de Manhattan. La primera muestra sonora de este trabajo nos parece mucho menos oscura que grabaciones anteriores, aunque “Johnny” trata sobre las peleas internas entre la libertad y la estabilidad. Nativa de Wimberley, en Texas, Sarah Jarosz, ahora residente en Nueva York, nos ha venido regalando su sensibilidad y su habilidad como mandolinista desde los 9 años, realizando su debut discográfico con tan solo 18. World on the Ground es su quinto proyecto en solitario. Hoy queremos despedir el programa, citándonos para tomar nuestro aperitivo sonoro mañana desde casa con la neozelandesa Nadia Reid, que se fue hasta Richmond, en Virginia, para grabar su nuevo álbum, Out of My Province, el tercero de su carrera, saliendo de la familiaridad de su zona de confort habitual. Ahora parece que ha encontrado los espacios abiertos que necesitaba en todos los sentidos de su personalidad artística. De entre las 10 canciones que lo conforman nos encanta “Oh Canada”, que nos permite invitarte a quedarte en casa y escuchar Radio 3. Escuchar audio

Voiceover Actor, Singer, Actor, Coach and Author Rodney Saulsberry narrates this short bio feature on Harry Belafonte (born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr.; March 1, 1927). He is an American singer, songwriter, actor, and social activist. One of the most successful Jamaican-American pop stars in history, he was dubbed the "King of Calypso" making the Caribbean musical style very popular with international audiences in the 1950s. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) is the first million-selling LP by a single artist. Belafonte is perhaps best known for singing "The Banana Boat Song", with its signature lyric "Day-O". Belafonte has won three Grammy Awards, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, an Emmy Award and a Tony Award. In 1989, he received the Kennedy Center Honors.

So I was going to actually write something about todays episode, but we reference "The Banana Boat Song" early on and that got me YouTubing old Harry Belafonte clips, and that led me to whatever this is, and now I just honestly have no words.Today's strip:

Would you look at that, a fourth episode of The Red Thread in English! In this one Kee-kay Bertell takes you on a ride from The West Indies to Buccaneers, a trip that generally stays in the same geographical area, with some exceptions. Mirka Kettunen is along for the ride to sound interested and add his own bits of trivia. There are bits of music used in this episode and these are: The United States national anthem, "Kokomo" by The Beach Boys, "Rally ‘Round the West Indies" by David Rudder, "Let Dem Go" by The WCK Band, "Nous Travail Pou Ayen" by Exile One, "Calypso Queen" by Calypso Rose, "Mango Vert" by Lovey’s String Band, "The Banana Boat Song" by Harry Belafonte, "Buffalo Soldier" by Bob Marley, "Chezidon" by Don Chezina, "Money Eh No Problem" by Lord Shorty, "Hymns My Parents Sang" by Chalkdust, "Feeling Hot Hot Hot" by The Merrymen, "Sye Bwa" by Kassav' and "Better Days" from Bensound.com.

The Banana Boat Song continues in this minute and we discuss everything you ever wanted to know about the Day-O song and MORE! (Guest commentator, screenwriter Chris Taylor.) Here's a link to the entire dance scene. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

The Black Star podcast continues with the story of a civil rights campaigner, who also happened to be one of the 1950s' biggest movie stars: Harry Belafonte. Tracing Belafonte's political awakening back to Paul Robeson – and that star's unlikely political awakening thanks to a group of striking Welsh miners – we see how Belafonte's activism has inspired a whole new generation of political black stars. The Black Star podcast is a six-week series celebrating some of the most influential black film stars across the ages. This episode of Black Star contains short clips of the following: -The Banana Boat Song, performed by Harry Belafonte and released by RCA Victor in 1956-Jesse Williams's speech at the 2016 BET awards, held on June 26th of this year and presented by BET Networks-Amandla Stenberg's video essay, Don't Cash Crop My Cornrows, produced by Quinn Masterson and Amandla StenbergAND-Harry Belafonte's address to the 2016 #MKNOW event, footage directed by Paul Fant See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

La canción habla de unos trabajadores de un barco de plátanos que ha sido cargado durante la noche, esperan el pago para regresar a casa.Usada en el Film, "Beetlejuice" de 1988.

La canción habla de unos trabajadores de un barco de plátanos que ha sido cargado durante la noche, esperan el pago para regresar a casa.Usada en el Film, "Beetlejuice" de 1988.

TOPICS: Segment #1: "Superbowl XXXVII is News Ten Years Later?" Tim Brown has been giving out his opinion that Bill Callahan, Raiders head coach for their 2003 Superbowl XXXVII appearance, actually "sabotaged" the game for the Raiders - to let his "friend" and Superbowl opponent Jon Gruden win the game for the Tampa Bay Bucs. Raider Greg gives him feelings on the story, plus we hear from several Raiders players from that team on radio 95.7 "The Game". Segment #2: "Manti Te'o Story" The bizarre story of Notre Dame's linebacker Manti Te'o, who is projected to be a top draft pick in this year's draft. Raider Greg tells the story, gives his opinion, then we hear from Greg Papa and co-host John Lund on 95.7 "The Game", as they hear Manti's true story via their "truth machine". Segment #3: "Raiders Asst. Coaching Search Nearly Complete" The Raiders have hired new Offensive Coordinator Greg Olson, Special Teams Coach Bobby April, and today there are reports that they have hired Tony Sparano as Offensive Line Coach/Asst. Head Coach. Segment #4: "Our Toll-Free Boneline Voicemail Segment" This week's callers: 01. Anthony in Bellingham Washington 02. Raider Joe in Rochester New York 03. Loudog in Riverside California 04. Barkevious Mingo fan 05. HD Raider 06. Raider Mystic 07. Raider Maniac 08. Raider Tony in Monterey California 09. Raider Steve in Vegas 10. Raider Rob from Maryland 11. Houston Raider Steve 12. Nebraska Raider You can call in to the Boneline and get on the podcast yourself. Toll-Free 1-800-620-7181. Try to keep your call around 2-3 minutes long. If we get a lot of calls we may not be able to air all of them, so make them good. Preference may be given to first time callers. Sorry if your call is not aired. Please call back to get on another show. - Join our forum at: http://www.raidernationpodcast.com/forum - Subscribe free in iTunes - Visit our YouTube page at: http://www.youtube.com/raidernationpodcast Music credit: Back in Black by AC-DC, Imaginary Lover by Atlanta Rhythm Section, Banana Boat Song by Harry Belafonte. Available in the iTunes store. Running time - 1:39:19