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Fáilte ar ais chuig eagrán nua de Ar An Lá Seo ar an 9ú lá de mí Aibreán, liomsa Lauren Ní Loingsigh. I 1976 tháinig an nuacht amach go bhfuair siad rubar, scian agus cairtchlár I mairteoil EEC. I 2004 dúradh nach mbeadh leath de na daoine a raibh ina chónaí I mBaile Átha Cliath ábalta a teach féin a bheith acu I dhá bhliain agus an rud céanna le trian de na daoine ina chónaí sa tír. I 1986 bhí dlí nua ann do bhruscar d'úinéir de bhialann gasta, pictiúrlann agus siopaí. Bhí siad freagrach as a áit a coimeád glan. Bhí maor bruscar ag dul timpeall ag tabhairt fíneáil do na áit nach raibh glan. I 2010 d'oscail an chéad ionad tumadóireacht in Éirinn sa chontae. Bhí an áit ar eolas ag na daoine a raibh ina chónaí sa bhaile. Bhí na chlár ó 10 méadar go dtí 40 méadar. Sin McFly le Five Colours In Her Hair – an t-amhrán is mó ar an lá seo I 2004. Ag lean ar aghaidh le nuacht cheoil ar an lá seo I 1977 chuaigh ABBA chuig barr na cairteacha le Dancing Queen I Meiriceá. Bhí sé a seachtú singil a bhí sna cairteacha I Meiriceá agus sa Bhreatain. I 2000 tháinig an nuacht amach go raibh Craig David an t-amhránaí is óige a fuair a chéad uimhir a haon sna cairteacha sa Bhreatain. Ceithre mhí tar éis é sin chuaigh a amhrán 7 Days chuig barr na cairteacha. Agus ar deireadh breithlá daoine cáiliúla ar an lá seo rugadh amhránaí Lil Nas X I Meiriceá I 1999 agus rugadh aisteoir Kristen Stewart I Meiriceá ar an lá seo I 1990 agus seo chuid de na rudaí a rinne sí. Beidh mé ar ais libh amárach le heagrán nua de Ar An Lá Seo. Welcome back to another edition of Ar An Lá Seo on the 9th of April, with me Lauren Ní Loingsigh 1976: Rubbers, Knives and cardboard was found in EEC beef. 2004: Almost half of all those living in dublin and a third living nationally would not be able to afford a home in 2 years time. 1986 – New Litter laws were enforced on business owners of takeaways, dancehalls, cinema,s and retail outlets. They would be responsible for keeping the area of their premises tidy. A litter warden would enforce the fines which carry hefty fines. 2010 - Ireland's first inland dive center opened at one of Portroe's old quarries. The new center, known locally as the “green hole,” will allow divers of all grades to enjoy depths ranging from 10m to 40m and visibility from 3m to 15m. That was McFly with Five Colours In Her Hair – the biggest song on this day in 2004. Onto music news on this day In 1977, ABBA topped the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time with “Dancing Queen.” The song, which marked the Swedish quartet's seventh Top 40 single in the US, hit No.1 in the UK and a dozen other countries. In 2000, with “Fill Me In,” British R&B star Craig David – who was a month shy of his 19th birthday – became the youngest UK male solo artist to write and perform a No.1 hit on the UK singles chart. Four months later, he scored another chart-topper with “7 Days.” And finally celebrity birthdays on this day – singer Lil Nas X was born in 1999 and actress Kristen Stewart was born in California in 1990 – and this is some of the stuff she has done. I'll be back with you tomorrow with another edition of Ar An Lá Seo.
Co-founder of the Yardbirds, Jim McCarty, continues to lead this ground-breaking British Invasion Rock band that provides the crucial link between the Blues, British R&B, Psychedelic Rock, and Heavy Metal, while pioneering the use of innovations like fuzztone, feedback and distortion. This drummer, singer, songwriter, and producer is said to be one of the driving forces responsible for the band's haunting sound.Since the birth of the band from 1963 to 1968, to its 1992 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Yardbirds have been revered for the legendary guitarists who have contributed to the band's history including Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page all ranked in Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time (#35, #5, and #3 respectively).Originally a Blues-based band noted for their signature "rave-up" instrumental jams covering Blues classics like Howlin Wolf's "Smokestack Lighting" and Bo Diddley's "I'm a Man," the Yardbirds later broadened their range into Pop, pioneered Psychadelic Rock, early Hard Rock / Heavy Metal, and contributed to many electric guitar innovations marking those musical genres. The band had a string of hits in the mid 60s including "For Your Love", "Heart Full of Soul", "Shapes of Things", and "Over Under Sideways Down".The Yardbirds are on tour now! For more log onto their website!https://www.theyardbirds.com
Fáilte ar ais chuig eagrán nua de Ar An Lá Seo ar an 9ú lá de mí Aibreán, liomsa Lauren Ní Loingsigh. I 1976 tháinig an nuacht amach go bhfuair siad rubar, scian agus cairtchlár I mairteoil EEC. I 2004 dúradh nach mbeadh leath de na daoine a raibh ina chónaí I mBaile Átha Cliath ábalta a teach féin a bheith acu I dhá bhliain agus an rud céanna le trian de na daoine ina chónaí sa tír. I 1976 bhí na TD's, seanadóir agus ball den comhairle contae I dtrioblóid ag an gcruinniú ag an gcumann iascaireacht dá easpa imní faoin truailliú ag Lough Derg. I 2004 tháinig an droch nuacht amach go raibh níos mó daoine óga sa chontae ag déanamh dochar dóibh féin. Sin McFly le Five Colours In Her Hair – an t-amhrán is mó ar an lá seo I 2004. Ag lean ar aghaidh le nuacht cheoil ar an lá seo I 1977 chuaigh ABBA chuig barr na cairteacha le Dancing Queen I Meiriceá. Bhí sé a seachtú singil a bhí sna cairteacha I Meiriceá agus sa Bhreatain. I 2000 tháinig an nuacht amach go raibh Craig David an t-amhránaí is óige a fuair a chéad uimhir a haon sna cairteacha sa Bhreatain. Ceithre mhí tar éis é sin chuaigh a amhrán 7 Days chuig barr na cairteacha. Agus ar deireadh breithlá daoine cáiliúla ar an lá seo rugadh amhránaí Lil Nas X I Meiriceá I 1999 agus rugadh aisteoir Kristen Stewart I Meiriceá ar an lá seo I 1990 agus seo chuid de na rudaí a rinne sí. Beidh mé ar ais libh amárach le heagrán nua de Ar An Lá Seo. Welcome back to another edition of Ar An Lá Seo on the 9th of April, with me Lauren Ní Loingsigh 1976: Rubbers, Knives and cardboard was found in EEC beef. 2004: Almost half of all those living in dublin and a third living nationally would not be able to afford a home in 2 years time. 1976 : All public representetives, TDs, senators and county councillors were slammed at a meeting of the lough derg fishing association in Garrykennedy for their lack of concern at the pollution of Lough Derg. 2004: There was a significant rise in the number of clare young people engaging in acts of self harm. That was McFly with Five Colours In Her Hair – the biggest song on this day in 2004. Onto music news on this day In 1977, ABBA topped the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time with “Dancing Queen.” The song, which marked the Swedish quartet's seventh Top 40 single in the US, hit No.1 in the UK and a dozen other countries. In 2000, with “Fill Me In,” British R&B star Craig David – who was a month shy of his 19th birthday – became the youngest UK male solo artist to write and perform a No.1 hit on the UK singles chart. Four months later, he scored another chart-topper with “7 Days.” And finally celebrity birthdays on this day – singer Lil Nas X was born in 1999 and actress Kristen Stewart was born in California in 1990 – and this is some of the stuff she has done. I'll be back with you tomorrow with another edition of Ar An Lá Seo.
In today's deep dive, we'll listen to a conversation with Jane Eugene from the British R&B trio Loose Ends to learn about the group's role in soul music.
British musician, songwriter, and producer, Steve Nichol is a best known as a founding member of the R&B band Loose Ends. Born in London, Nichol trained as a trumpet player at the Royal College of Music and developed his skills in keyboards, production, and arranging.Join this channel to get access to perks:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5S9xw1B-ppDXVkAuvRRQtg/joinIn 1980, Nichol co-founded Loose Ends with Carl McIntosh and Jane Eugene. The group rose to prominence in the 1980s with hits such as “Hangin' on a String (Contemplating)”, which became the first song by a British R&B band to top the Billboard R&B chart in the US in 1985. Other notable tracks include “Magic Touch”, “Stay a Little While, Child” (later covered by Mariah Carey), and “Slow Down.” Nichol was instrumental in the group's sound, serving as a keyboardist, trumpeter, and producer.After leaving Loose Ends in the late 1980s, in an acrimonious split, Nichol continued working in the music industry as a producer, songwriter, and session musician. Today, Steve Nichol remains active, releasing an EP of new tracks, and as a teacher in school, shares insights into the industry. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In the last episode in British R&B Invasion series I'll be discussing the career of singer Des'ree. Soicial Links:n The Mix Leah B. Podcast (@inthe_mixwithleahb) on Threads:https://www.threads.net/@inthe_mixwithleahb Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/inthe_mixwithleahb Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/Inthemixwithleab TikTok:https://www.tiktok.com/@inthemixwithleahb Podcast Official Website: https://www.inthemixwithleahb.com Podcast Merch:https://www.inthemixwithleahb.com/shop Buy Me A Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/inthemix Podcast Episode Request Form: https://www.inthemixwithleahb.com/episode-request-form --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/inthemixx/support
In the 3rd episode of British R&B Invasion series, I'll be discussing the career of R&B group Soul II Soul. Social Media Links: Threads: https://www.threads.net/@inthe_mixwithleahb TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@inthemixwithleahb?_t=8kXTjwYqdVG&_r=1 Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/inthe_mixwithleahb Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/Inthemixwithleab Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/@inthemixwithleahbpodcast GoodPods:https://goodpods.app.link/8GExwJCiPNb Podcast Official Website:https://www.inthemixwithleahb.com Buy Me A Coffee:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/inthemix Podcast Merch:https://www.inthemixwithleahb.com/shop --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/inthemixx/support
In the second episode of the British R&B Invasion series, I'll be discussing the career of singer Ella Mai. Social Media Links: Threads: https://www.threads.net/@inthe_mixwithleahb Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/inthe_mixwithleahb Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/Inthemixwithleab The In the Mix With Leah B. Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@inthemixwithleahbpodcast Podcast Episode Request Form: https://www.inthemixwithleahb.com/episode-request-form Podcast Merch:https://www.inthemixwithleahb.com/shop Buy Me A Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/inthemix Podcast Official Website: https://www.inthemixwithleahb.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/inthemixx/support
In this episode, I'll be discussing how R&B exploded across the pond. Social Media links: Buy Me A Coffee:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/inthemix Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inthe_mixwithleahb Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/Inthemixwithleab Threads: www.theads.net/@inthe_mixwithleahb Podcast Episode Request Form:https://www.inthemixwithleahb.com/episode-request-form Podcast Merch:https://www.inthemixwithleahb.com/shop Podcast Official Website: https://www.inthemixwithleahb.com The In the Mix With Leah B. Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@inthemixwithleahbpodcast --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/inthemixx/support
TODAY: We address an important relationship dilemma: Is it alpha to throw a fit when your girlfriend says she wants to marry you? ALSO: We watch the sun set on the British R@pe Empire as they begin(?) telling their army soldiers not to commit sexual assault. WHEN WILL THE GASLIGHTING STOP? FINALLY: Harley Bikers are on strike as the classic motorcycle company goes woke again. Will the nation's landlords ultimately relinquish their Outlaw Biker status? Sign up at http://patreon.com/miniondeathcult for $5/month and get a bonus episode every week, plus instant access to hundreds of bonus episodes.
"In this heartfelt interview, British R&B/soul singer Terri Walker shares her journey from childhood to stardom. Discover the ups and downs of her life and career as she candidly discusses her early success in the music industry, struggles, and triumphs. Terri's story is inspiring and motivating—don't miss this exclusive conversation!" Welcome to Halftime Chat R&B Podcast with Nnamdi Okoye, where we dive deep into the soulful rhythms and timeless melodies of R&B music. Join us as we celebrate the best R&B singers and relive the iconic R&B songs from the 90s, exploring the intersection of R&B and hip hop and uncovering the magic behind the era's greatest hits. Delve into discussions about the music industry and business as we analyze the evolution of R&B and its impact on popular culture. Please tune in for insightful conversations and captivating stories as we honor the legacy of 90s R&B on this premier R&B podcast. Want to Donate or support the production of Halftime Chat?
In this episode of "Unsung," the spotlight is on Lynden David Hall, a trailblazer of British soul and a key figure in the Neo-soul movement of the late 1990s. The episode delves into Hall's turbulent childhood, his musical influences, and his journey to becoming a renowned soul singer. It explores the impact of his debut album, "Medicine 4 My Pain," and his contributions to the British R&B scene. The episode also touches on Hall's battle with Hodgkin's lymphoma and his unwavering commitment to his craft until the end.Producer: Sumit Sharma (https://www.sumitsharma.co.uk/) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
GARY WRIGHT 'THE LOST INTERVIEWS' EPISODE 4 with RAY SHASHO Gary Wright (April 26, 1943 – September 4, 2023) Gary Wright is a celestial keyboard virtuoso, idyllic songwriter, and vocalist with powerful soulful pipes. Wright is an innovator of the synthesizer and over the years has managed to condense his many synthesized melodies into a single keyboard strapped around his neck. Although born and raised in Cresskill, New Jersey, Wright founded the British rock group Spooky Tooth in 1967. Wright would later become most recognized for his two solo hit singles “Dream Weaver” in 1975 and “Love Is Alive” in 1976. Gary Wright will be joining the ‘Sail Rock 2013' tour along with Christopher Cross, Orleans, Firefall, John Ford Coley, Robbie Dupree and Player beginning August 5th in West Allis, Wisconsin. Visit Pollstar.com for all the latest concert dates. SPOOKY TOOTH: Gary Wright joined the band 'Art' in 1967. The ‘V.I.P.'S' morphed into 'Art' after several lineup changes since its inception in 1963. The British R&B music ensemble had featured various distinguished musicians including Mike Harrison, Greg Ridley, Jimmy Henshaw, Keith Emerson, Luther Grosvenor, Walter Johnstone and Mike Kellie. Keith Emerson (The Nice, ELP) left in 1967 when the name was changed to Art. The band eventually turned into Spooky Tooth with a lineup of Wright (organ, keyboards, and vocals), Harrison (vocals, keyboards) Ridley (bassist), Grosvenor (guitar, vocals) and Kellie (drums). In 1968, Spooky Tooth released their debut album entitled … It's All About. The album featured covers by Janis Ian and Bob Dylan. Most of the other tracks were either written or co-written by Gary Wright. The bands next release Spooky Two (1969) released on Island Records was hailed by critics as one of their finest recordings. The album featured many of the bands standards including “Evil Woman” and “Better by You, Better Than Me” a tune written by Wright and eventually covered by Judas Priest in 1978. Spooky Tooth quickly became a highly sought concert attraction and a mainstay on progressive rock radio. The band shared the stage with such legendary music acts as Jimi Hendrix and The Rolling Stones. Bassist Greg Ridley left in 1969 to join Humble Pie, Andy Leigh replaced him. Also in 1969, the group released Ceremony (Spooky Tooth and Pierre Henry album) a progressive collaboration with the French electronic composer. Session musician: Wright left Spooky Tooth briefly to produce albums for Traffic and Rolling Stones producer Jimmy Miller and his production company. Gary Wright became an esteemed session musician and was asked to play on George Harrison's triple- album set All Things Must Pass (1970). Wright and Harrison began a long lasting friendship and musical collaboration that included Wright playing or sharing songwriting tasks on several of Harrison's subsequent albums including … Living in the Material World (1973), Dark Horse (1974), Extra Texture (Read All About It)(1975), Thirty Three & 1/3(1976), George Harrison(1979), Cloud Nine (1987). The Last Puff album (1970) primarily featured Mike Harrison while Wright focused on other projects. The release featured an incredible cover version of The Beatles, “I Am The Walrus.” Joe Cocker Grease Band members Henry McCullough, Chris Stainton and Alan Spenner were brought into the studio to work on the album. In 1971, Gary Wright performed “Two Faced Man” with George Harrison on the Dick Cavett Show. He also played piano on Harry Nilsson's #1 hit, a Badfinger cover tune entitled, “Without You.” In 1972, Gary Wright and Mike Harrison reformed Spooky Tooth with a different lineup. The new lineup featured future Foreigner founder and guitarist Mick Jones. Subsequent Spooky Tooth albums … (You Broke My Heart So I Busted Your Jaw (1973), Witness (1973), The Mirror (1974) and Cross Purpose (1999) (Reunion album without Wright, Greg Ridley returned). Spooky Tooth disbanded in 1974. Gary Wright and George Harrison visited India in 1974 as a guest of Ravi Shankar. Wright developed a long-term relationship with Shankar after the visit. SOLO CAREER: Gary Wright released two critically acclaimed solo albums on A&M Records … Extraction in 1971 and Footprint in 1972. Wright signed a record deal with Warner Brothers Records in 1974 and achieved his biggest commercial success with the release of The Dream Weaver album (1975). The single “Dream Weaver” reached #2 on Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart and #1 on the Cash Box charts. The album also spawned the hit “Love is Alive” (1976) reaching #2 on Billboard's singles chart. The album peaked at #7 on Billboard's Hot 100 albums chart. The song “Dream Weaver” has been spotlighted on numerous television shows and motion pictures. “Love is Alive” was covered by several legendary artists including … Chaka Khan, Joe Cocker and Richie Havens. The Dream Weaver album featured guest musicians …guitarist Ronnie Montrose, drummers Jim Keltner and Andy Newmark, Hammond organist David Foster and Bobby Lyle on additional synthesizers. In 1981, Gary Wright scored again commercially with “Really Wanna Know You” (#16 Billboard Singles Hit). Gary Wright Solo albums … Extraction (1971), Footprint (1972), The Dream Weaver (1975), The Light of Smiles(1977), Touch and Gone (1978), Headin' Home (1979), The Right Place (1981), Who I Am (1988), First Signs of Life (1995), Human Love (1999), Waiting to Catch the Light (2008), The Light of a Million Suns (EP) (2008), Connected (2010). In 2004, Wright, Harrison and Kellie reunited Spooky Tooth for several concerts in Germany. As a result of their triumphant return, they released the Nomad Poets DVD in 2007. The same lineup played a series of European dates in 2008. Most recently: Gary Wright toured with Ringo Starr and His All-Star Band in 2008. In 2010, Wright released his latest studio album entitled Connected and features guest artists … Ringo Starr, Joe Walsh and Jeff “Skunk” Baxter. Gary Wright is currently writing his 'memoir' for the Penguin Group and should be available sometime near the end of 2014. I had the great pleasure of chatting with Gary Wright recently about ‘Sail Rock 2013,' Spooky Tooth, George Harrison, the music business, metaphysics and much-much more. Support us on PayPal!
Delve into the electrifying rise, captivating fall, and triumphant resurgence of Mark Morrison in this gripping podcast episode. From his humble beginnings to the dizzying heights of fame, listeners will be transported through the tumultuous journey of the British R&B sensation. There is one section where Suge Knight and Daniel O'Donnell are, for the first time in the world ever, mentioned in the same paragraph. The episode unravels Morrison's groundbreaking single, "Return of the Mack," a timeless anthem that captured the essence of '90s pop music and skyrocketed him to international acclaim. We find out what Beth thinks a Mack is. As the track climbed the charts, Morrison's magnetic stage presence and soulful voice captivated audiences worldwide, cementing his status as a musical icon. However, behind the glitz and glamour lay a tumultuous personal life plagued by legal troubles and controversy. Explore Morrison's entanglement with the law, including his well-publicised legal battles and stints in prison. From brushes with firearm charges to allegations of assault, the podcast sheds light on the darker side of Morrison's journey, revealing the challenges he faced both professionally and personally. We end with where he is now in his life - and its good! Talk2TheHand is an independent throwback podcast run by husband and wife, Jimmy and Beth. Obsessed with 90s nostalgia and 90s celebrities, we'll rewind the years and take you back to the greatest era of our lives. New episodes bursting with nostalgia of the 90s released on Tuesdays. Please subscribe to our podcast and we'll keep you gooey in 1990s love. Find us on Twitter @talk2thehandpod or email us at jimmy@talk2thehand.co.uk or beth@talk2thehand.co.uk
Loose Ends, the influential UK band, shaped the landscape of British R&B and soul. The group had three members, Steve Nichol , Jane Eugene and Carl McIntosh. They were signed to Virgin Records and released their debut album, “Little Spice,” in 1984. Their breakthrough hit, “Hanging on a String,” topped the US Billboard R&B chart, and they toured extensively in America. Tensions led to the departure of Jane and Steve, but the group continued with new members. Loose Ends' distinctive sound blended soul, funk, pop, and electronic elements, influencing artists across genres.Producer: Sumit Sharma (https://www.sumitsharma.co.uk/) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode we explore the British R&B scene of the mid-60s through the eyes of someone who experienced it first-hand, Derek Griffiths of the Artwoods. https://www.facebook.com/TheArtwoods/ Please support the podcast by joining our Patreon at patreon.com/uglythingspod, where you can enjoy special bonus content plus much more. Check out Ugly Things Magazine: https://ugly-things.com/ To listen and connect to the Discograffiti podcast: Soldiers of Sound Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1839109176272153 Patreon: www.Patreon.com/Discograffiti Podfollow: https://podfollow.com/1592182331 (https://podfollow.com/1592182331) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/discograffitipod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Discograffiti/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Discograffiti YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClyaQCdvDelj5EiKj6IRLhw Web site: http://discograffiti.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In this episode we explore the British R&B scene of the mid-60s through the eyes of someone who experienced it first-hand, Derek Griffiths of the Artwoods. https://www.facebook.com/TheArtwoods/ Please support the podcast by joining our Patreon at patreon.com/uglythingspod, where you can enjoy special bonus content plus much more. Check out Ugly Things Magazine: https://ugly-things.com/ To listen and connect to the Discograffiti podcast: Soldiers of Sound Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1839109176272153 Patreon: www.Patreon.com/Discograffiti Podfollow: https://podfollow.com/1592182331 (https://podfollow.com/1592182331) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/discograffitipod/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Discograffiti/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Discograffiti YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClyaQCdvDelj5EiKj6IRLhw Web site: http://discograffiti.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In this episode, I'll discussing the career of 80's British R&B group Loose Ends. You can find the podcast on all social media ( IG, FB Twitter @Inthe_mixwithleahb) If you wanna donate to the pod you can =D Buy me a Coffee:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/inthemix --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/inthemixx/support
In this episode I'll be discussing the career of British R&B singer Mark Morrison. Social Media links: IG https://www.instagram.com/inthe_mixwithleah Support the podcast https://www.buymeacoffee.com/inthemix Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Inthemixwithleab In the mix with Leah B. Podcast youtube channel:https://youtube.com/channel/UC1-PNeutdknmzSfiZO4nbeA Podcast website :https://www.inthemixwithleahb.com Episode Request Form:https://www.inthemixwithleahb.com/episode-request-form --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/inthemixx/support
This week Oliver celebrates the birthday of a favourite Dinosaur Jr album, 'Green Mind'. Also featured is new music from California's Sun Room. They take Californian surf-rock and combine it with energetic Kinks-esque 60s British R&B. Also, a charity album featuring some interesting covers of tracks from the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan. Follow @asonicyouthpodcast on Insta and Facebook. This show is part of the Free FM 89.0 YOUTH ZONE. Made with support of NZ on Air.
In a week where: 15 people are arrested after violence outside hotel housing asylum seekers. 1/3 of De La Soul, Trugoy dies aged 54. The US shoots down more objects floating in their airspace. The Kansas City Chiefs beat the Philadelphia Eagles in SB57. Nicola Sturgeon resigns as First Minister of Scotland. In the 1st of two Music segments: (9:32) The SuperBowl has come and gone, with Rihanna taking a majority of the headlines. It's worth critically looking at Rihanna once more as a Billionaire first, artist second.In the 2nd Music segment: (24:14) In the light of Harry Styles cleaning up the BRITS which included "Pop/R&B" act, it is worth wondering why British R&B isn't getting the shine it deserves.In Art: (37:00) We've talked a lot about the health of art in the UK and over in London, it's art sector is under threat from corporate culture. It may already be too late.Lastly, in Life: (54:08) Since it was Valentine's Day on Tuesday, I thought it'd be fun to find a piece on love. So here's a piece a decades-long quest to measure love.Thank you for listening! If you want to contribute to the show, whether it be sending me questions or voicing your opinion in any way, peep the contact links below and I'll respond accordingly. Let me know "What's Good?"Rate & ReviewE-Mail: the5thelelmentpub@gmail.comTwitter: @The5thElementUKWebsite: https://medium.com/@the5thelementIntro Music - "Too Much" By VanillaInterlude - "Charismatic" By NappyHighChillHop MusicOther Podcasts Under The 5EPN:Diggin' In The Digits5EPN RadioBlack Women Watch...In Search of SauceThe Beauty Of Independence
Georgie Fame, born Clive Powell in Leigh, Lancashire, June 1943 is one of British R&B music's founding fathers. Fame is the only British star to have scored three number one hits with his only Top 10 chart entries – ‘Yeh Yeh' in 1964, ‘Get Away' in 1966 and ‘Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde' in 1967. But it's more important to acknowledge his cultural influence. Fame popularized and educated in equal measure. The black music he championed with his band The Blue Flames brought new sounds to Swinging London and bossed venues like the Flamingo Club and the Marquee where he turned the English mod movement on to a whole bag of soul and authentic US urban and country sounds and also the ska and early reggae he heard in the Jamaican cafes and clubs in the Ladbroke Grove area of London. Like his great friend and collaborator Van Morrison, Georgie Fame found himself raised on jazz and blues with a penchant for Mose Allison and Willie Mabon and of course Ray Charles, not to overlook a grounding in the sophisticated rock and rollers like Chuck Berry who defied categorization.With Latin pop also part of his skill set, Fame can turn his hand to just about anything and since his piano and Hammond organ keyboard brilliance – he is also a fine guitarist – is matched to a gorgeously relaxed vocal style he takes audiences on a melodic journey that combines the sweetest nostalgia with the most up to date interpretations of great songs and songbooks. As a sideman, he has recorded with many artists, including Gene Vincent, Prince Buster, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, Joan Armatrading, Andy Fairweather-Low, Bill Wyman and Van Morrison. Ever on the road, Georgie Fame continues to perform his unique blend of jazz/rhythm and blues for live audiences at clubs and music festivals throughout Europe. He is revered in Scandinavia and Germany and even took a local version of the Blue Flames to Australia where he escaped the English winter and built a rapport with fellow players from another hemisphere.Having taken piano lessons at an early age the man born Clive Powell in the cotton weaving area of Leigh, Lancashire became a professional musician in the 1950s playing at holiday camps before departing to London aged 16 to seek his fortune. He touted his talents up and down the legendary Tin Pan Alley area of Denmark Street just off Soho where he was spotted by impresarios Lionel Bart and Larry Parnes who christened him Georgie Fame – somewhat against his will. Working with touring rock and rollers like Joe Brown, Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran young Fame became battle-hardened and was snapped up by Billy Fury in 1961 to lead his backing band The Blue Flames for whom he arranged and sang. The Blue Flames and Fury parted company and so Georgie took over and secured a three-year residency at the Flamingo Club. The debut Rhythm and Blues at the Flamingo came out in 1963 and was engineered by Glyn Johns and produced by Cliff Richard's console maestro Ian Samwell. After promoting himself via the offshore pirate radio stations Fame struck gold with his version of “Yeh, Yeh”, a tune first recorded by Mongo Santamaria in the Cuban style. The next significant hit, “Get Away”: was another #1 in 1966 with production from Denny Cordell and a Clive Powell writing credit. The perfect sound for the emerging summer of love
This 2000s pop podcast is super honoured to catch up with Carolyn Owlett and Tisha Monique of The 411 to celebrate the group's incredible hits - ‘On My Knees' and ‘Dumb' - which were not only UK Top 5 smashes but also did numbers internationally across Europe and as far as Australia and China! Joel and David get into the British R&B group's formation, jet-setting career highlights and heartbreaking sudden drop following the release of their brilliant album “Between The Sheets”. Fan faves like ‘China Girl' and ‘Chance' get plenty of love! And we share a heartfelt chat about their experience and their journey to their glorious comeback this year at Mighty Hoopla and the future - including the upcoming 90s Baby Pop shows! Follow The 411: https://www.instagram.com/the411__official/ https://www.instagram.com/cazzarazza411/ https://www.instagram.com/tishamoniquemusic/ Follow Right Back At Ya! https://www.instagram.com/rightbackpod/ https://twitter.com/rightbackpod https://www.facebook.com/rightbackpod Check out our Spotify playlists https://open.spotify.com/user/1c3ks5jdh2x4j7jdg1o0aglwg Follow Joel https://www.instagram.com/dr_joelb/ https://twitter.com/DR_JoelB Follow David https://www.instagram.com/lovelimmy/ https://twitter.com/lovelimmy
In the last episode of Series 2, which rounds off 1982-85, Rebekah gets to listen to Jimmy Somerville's second band, a British R&B band and a British rock band who changed direction from punk rock to gothic rock. Also stick with us to find out which of these bands musician went on to be a famous vicar!!Let us know your thought over on Twitter @dadeducates
Great Chat with Mark Brown of Hambone Relay. Mark talks about his music, move to the west coast and meeting Neal Evans. With elements of blues, jazz, funk and rock & roll, Hambone Relay redefines the modern organ trio with their unique brand of improvisational jam music. Since their founding in 2012, the band has played between 75-100 shows a year and have shared the stage with such great bands as Melvin Seals and JGB, Cris Jacobs, The James Hunter 6 and New Orleans legends Rebirth Brass Band. The band was founded in 2012 by organist Mark Brown. He began his career playing keyboards with the Baltimore-based jam band The Bridge. The band began playing a handful of shows and festivals and started to gain some recognition in the area. This would eventually lead to them recording their first album. The self-titled LP would feature 8 brand new original songs and 2 covers recorded live. This first album featured Devin Coleman on guitar and Kyle Moken on drums. On February 16, 2018, Hambone Relay played WXPN's “Free At Noon” concert to a packed house at World Cafe Live. John Udinsky had left the band and Luke Ferracone of The Groove Merchants had taken his place. The band shared the stage with British R&B singer James Hunter which would lead to a short tour in supporting The James Hunter 6 playing City Winery in New York City and MusikFest Cafe in Bethlehem, PA. Following this successful run, the band would hit the road for the rest of 2018 growing and writing new music along the way. In early 2021, the band relocated to Los Angeles and continues to record and play shows on both coasts. More dates are being released frequently and new music is currently in the works, set for release in 2021 and 2022. Their live shows are a mixture of danceable grooves, psychedelic overtones and improvisational jams. www.rocknrollfridays.com
Hey weirdos! We're back with another episode, this time we are joined by a man from across the pond. We discuss his recent trip to the United States and some of the differences. We get to ruin your childhood by telling the dark and weird history behind some of the most beloved stories. Then we get to introduce our newest segment called “SPORTS!”, where we will talk about the weirdest sports from across the planet. Don't worry, we don't leave out the great “Weirdo of the Week”. Enjoy! https://m.facebook.com/photographybyandydufton --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/isitweird/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/isitweird/support
Episode one hundred and thirty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Papa's Got a Brand New Bag” by James Brown, and at how Brown went from a minor doo-wop artist to the pioneer of funk. 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 "I'm a Fool" by Dino, Desi, and Billy. 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/ NB an early version of this was uploaded, in which I said "episode 136" rather than 137 and "flattened ninth" at one point rather than "ninth". I've fixed that in a new upload, which is otherwise unchanged. Resources As usual, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. I relied mostly on fur books for this episode. James Brown: The Godfather of Soul, by James Brown with Bruce Tucker, is a celebrity autobiography with all that that entails, but a more interesting read than many. Kill ‘Em and Leave: Searching for the Real James Brown, by James McBride is a more discursive, gonzo journalism piece, and well worth a read. Black and Proud: The Life of James Brown by Geoff Brown is a more traditional objective biography. And Douglas Wolk's 33 1/3 book on Live at the Apollo is a fascinating, detailed, look at that album. This box set is the best collection of Brown's work there is, but is out of print. This two-CD set has all the essential hits. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript [Introduction, the opening of Live at the Apollo. "So now, ladies and gentlemen, it is star time. Are you ready for star time? [Audience cheers, and gives out another cheer with each musical sting sting] Thank you, and thank you very kindly. It is indeed a great pleasure to present to you in this particular time, national and international known as the hardest working man in showbusiness, Man that sing "I'll Go Crazy"! [sting] "Try Me" [sting] "You've Got the Power" [sting] "Think" [sting], "If You Want Me" [sting] "I Don't Mind" [sting] "Bewildered" [sting] million-dollar seller "Lost Someone" [sting], the very latest release, "Night Train" [sting] Let's everybody "Shout and Shimmy" [sting] Mr. Dynamite, the amazing Mr. Please Please himself, the star of the show, James Brown and the Famous Flames"] In 1951, the composer John Cage entered an anechoic chamber at Harvard University. An anechoic chamber is a room that's been completely soundproofed, so no sound can get in from the outside world, and in which the walls, floor, and ceiling are designed to absorb any sounds that are made. It's as close as a human being can get to experiencing total silence. When Cage entered it, he expected that to be what he heard -- just total silence. Instead, he heard two noises, a high-pitched one and a low one. Cage was confused by this -- why hadn't he heard the silence? The engineer in charge of the chamber explained to him that what he was hearing was himself -- the high-pitched noise was Cage's nervous system, and the low-pitched one was his circulatory system. Cage later said about this, "Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music." The experience inspired him to write his most famous piece, 4'33, in which a performer attempts not to make any sound for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. The piece is usually described as being four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence, but it actually isn't -- the whole point is that there is no silence, and that the audience is meant to listen to the ambient noise and appreciate that noise as music. Here is where I would normally excerpt the piece, but of course for 4'33 to have its full effect, one has to listen to the whole thing. But I can excerpt another piece Cage wrote. Because on October the twenty-fourth 1962 he wrote a sequel to 4'33, a piece he titled 0'00, but which is sometimes credited as "4'33 no. 2". He later reworked the piece, but the original score, which is dedicated to two avant-garde Japanese composers, Toshi Ichiyanagi and his estranged wife Yoko Ono, reads as follows: "In a situation provided with maximum amplification (no feedback), perform a disciplined action." Now, as it happens, we have a recording of someone else performing Cage's piece, as written, on the day it was written, though neither performer nor composer were aware that that was what was happening. But I'm sure everyone can agree that this recording from October the 24th, 1962, is a disciplined action performed with maximum amplification and no feedback: [Excerpt: James Brown, "Night Train" (Live at the Apollo version)] When we left James Brown, almost a hundred episodes ago, he had just had his first R&B number one, with "Try Me", and had performed for the first time at the venue with which he would become most associated, the Harlem Apollo, and had reconnected with the mother he hadn't seen since he was a small child. But at that point, in 1958, he was still just the lead singer of a doo-wop group, one of many, and there was nothing in his shows or his records to indicate that he was going to become anything more than that, nothing to distinguish him from King Records labelmates like Hank Ballard, who made great records, put on a great live show, and are still remembered more than sixty years later, but mostly as a footnote. Today we're going to look at the process that led James Brown from being a peer of Ballard or Little Willie John to being arguably the single most influential musician of the second half of the twentieth century. Much of that influence is outside rock music, narrowly defined, but the records we're going to look at this time and in the next episode on Brown are records without which the entire sonic landscape of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries would be unimaginably different. And that process started in 1958, shortly after the release of "Try Me" in October that year, with two big changes to Brown's organisation. The first was that this was -- at least according to Brown -- when he first started working with Universal Attractions, a booking agency run by a man named Ben Bart, who before starting his own company had spent much of the 1940s working for Moe Gale, the owner of the Savoy Ballroom and manager of the Ink Spots, Louis Jordan, and many of the other acts we looked at in the very first episodes of this podcast. Bart had started his own agency in 1945, and had taken the Ink Spots with him, though they'd returned to Gale a few years later, and he'd been responsible for managing the career of the Ravens, one of the first bird groups: [Excerpt: The Ravens, "Rock Me All Night Long"] In the fifties, Bart had become closely associated with King Records, the label to which Brown and the Famous Flames were signed. A quick aside here -- Brown's early records were released on Federal Records, and later they switched to being released on King, but Federal was a subsidiary label for King, and in the same way that I don't distinguish between Checker and Chess, Tamla and Motown, or Phillips and Sun, I'll just refer to King throughout. Bart and Universal Attractions handled bookings for almost every big R&B act signed by King, including Tiny Bradshaw, Little Willie John, the "5" Royales, and Hank Ballard and the Midnighters. According to some sources, the Famous Flames signed with Universal Attractions at the same time they signed with King Records, and Bart's family even say it was Bart who discovered them and got them signed to King in the first place. Other sources say they didn't sign with Universal until after they'd proved themselves on the charts. But everyone seems agreed that 1958 was when Bart started making Brown a priority and taking an active interest in his career. Within a few years, Bart would have left Universal, handing the company over to his son and a business partner, to devote himself full-time to managing Brown, with whom he developed an almost father-son relationship. With Bart behind them, the Famous Flames started getting better gigs, and a much higher profile on the chitlin circuit. But around this time there was another change that would have an even more profound effect. Up to this point, the Famous Flames had been like almost every other vocal group playing the chitlin' circuit, in that they hadn't had their own backing musicians. There were exceptions, but in general vocal groups would perform with the same backing band as every other act on a bill -- either a single backing band playing for a whole package tour, or a house band at the venue they were playing at who would perform with every act that played that venue. There would often be a single instrumentalist with the group, usually a guitarist or piano player, who would act as musical director to make sure that the random assortment of musicians they were going to perform with knew the material. This was, for the most part, how the Famous Flames had always performed, though they had on occasion also performed their own backing in the early days. But now they got their own backing band, centred on J.C. Davis as sax player and bandleader, Bobby Roach on guitar, Nat Kendrick on drums, and Bernard Odum on bass. Musicians would come and go, but this was the core original lineup of what became the James Brown Band. Other musicians who played with them in the late fifties were horn players Alfred Corley and Roscoe Patrick, guitarist Les Buie, and bass player Hubert Perry, while keyboard duties would be taken on by Fats Gonder, although James Brown and Bobby Byrd would both sometimes play keyboards on stage. At this point, as well, the lineup of the Famous Flames became more or less stable. As we discussed in the previous episode on Brown, the original lineup of the Famous Flames had left en masse when it became clear that they were going to be promoted as James Brown and the Famous Flames, with Brown getting more money, rather than as a group. Brown had taken on another vocal group, who had previously been Little Richard's backing vocalists, but shortly after "Try Me" had come out, but before they'd seen any money from it, that group had got into an argument with Brown over money he owed them. He dropped them, and they went off to record unsuccessfully as the Fabulous Flames on a tiny label, though the records they made, like "Do You Remember", are quite good examples of their type: [Excerpt: The Fabulous Flames, "Do You Remember?"] Brown pulled together a new lineup of Famous Flames, featuring two of the originals. Johnny Terry had already returned to the group earlier, and stayed when Brown sacked the rest of the second lineup of Flames, and they added Lloyd Bennett and Bobby Stallworth. And making his second return to the group was Bobby Byrd, who had left with the other original members, joined again briefly, and then left again. Oddly, the first commercial success that Brown had after these lineup changes was not with the Famous Flames, or even under his own name. Rather, it was under the name of his drummer, Nat Kendrick. Brown had always seen himself, not primarily as a singer, but as a band leader and arranger. He was always a jazz fan first and foremost, and he'd grown up in the era of the big bands, and musicians he'd admired growing up like Lionel Hampton and Louis Jordan had always recorded instrumentals as well as vocal selections, and Brown saw himself very much in that tradition. Even though he couldn't read music, he could play several instruments, and he could communicate his arrangement ideas, and he wanted to show off the fact that he was one of the few R&B musicians with his own tight band. The story goes that Syd Nathan, the owner of King Records, didn't like the idea, because he thought that the R&B audience at this point only wanted vocal tracks, and also because Brown's band had previously released an instrumental which hadn't sold. Now, this is a definite pattern in the story of James Brown -- it seems that at every point in Brown's career for the first decade, Brown would come up with an idea that would have immense commercial value, Nathan would say it was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard, Brown would do it anyway, and Nathan would later admit that he was wrong. This is such a pattern -- it apparently happened with "Please Please Please", Brown's first hit, *and* "Try Me", Brown's first R&B number one, and we'll see it happen again later in this episode -- that one tends to suspect that maybe these stories were sometimes made up after the fact, especially since Syd Nathan somehow managed to run a successful record label for over twenty years, putting out some of the best R&B and country records from everyone from Moon Mullican to Wynonie Harris, the Stanley Brothers to Little Willie John, while if these stories are to be believed he was consistently making the most boneheaded, egregious, uncommercial decisions imaginable. But in this case, it seems to be at least mostly true, as rather than being released on King Records as by James Brown, "(Do the) Mashed Potatoes" was released on Dade Records as by Nat Kendrick and the Swans, with the DJ Carlton Coleman shouting vocals over Brown's so it wouldn't be obvious Brown was breaking his contract: [Excerpt: Nat Kendrick and the Swans, "(Do the)" Mashed Potatoes"] That made the R&B top ten, and I've seen reports that Brown and his band even toured briefly as Nat Kendrick and the Swans, before Syd Nathan realised his mistake, and started allowing instrumentals to be released under the name "James Brown presents HIS BAND", starting with a cover of Bill Doggett's "Hold It": [Excerpt: James Brown Presents HIS BAND, "Hold It"] After the Nat Kendrick record gave Brown's band an instrumental success, the Famous Flames also came back from another mini dry spell for hits, with the first top twenty R&B hit for the new lineup, "I'll Go Crazy", which was followed shortly afterwards by their first pop top forty hit, "Think!": [Excerpt: James Brown and the Famous Flames, "Think!"] The success of "Think!" is at least in part down to Bobby Byrd, who would from this point on be Brown's major collaborator and (often uncredited) co-writer and co-producer until the mid-seventies. After leaving the Flames, and before rejoining them, Byrd had toured for a while with his own group, but had then gone to work for King Records at the request of Brown. King Records' pressing plant had equipment that sometimes produced less-than-ideal pressings of records, and Brown had asked Byrd to take a job there performing quality control, making sure that Brown's records didn't skip. While working there, Byrd also worked as a song doctor. His job was to take songs that had been sent in as demos, and rework them in the style of some of the label's popular artists, to make them more suitable, changing a song so it might fit the style of the "5" Royales or Little Willie John or whoever, and Byrd had done this for "Think", which had originally been recorded by the "5" Royales, whose leader, Lowman Pauling, had written it: [Excerpt: The "5" Royales, "Think"] Byrd had reworked the song to fit Brown's style and persona. It's notable for example that the Royales sing "How much of all your happiness have I really claimed?/How many tears have you cried for which I was to blame?/Darlin', I can't remember which was my fault/I tried so hard to please you—at least that's what I thought.” But in Brown's version this becomes “How much of your happiness can I really claim?/How many tears have you shed for which you was to blame?/Darlin', I can't remember just what is wrong/I tried so hard to please you—at least that's what I thought.” [Excerpt: James Brown and the Famous Flames, "Think"] In Brown's version, nothing is his fault, he's trying to persuade an unreasonable woman who has some problem he doesn't even understand, but she needs to think about it and she'll see that he's right, while in the Royales' version they're acknowledging that they're at fault, that they've done wrong, but they didn't *only* do wrong and maybe she should think about that too. It's only a couple of words' difference, but it changes the whole tenor of the song. "Think" would become the Famous Flames' first top forty hit on the pop charts, reaching number thirty-three. It went top ten on the R&B charts, and between 1959 and 1963 Brown and the Flames would have fifteen top-thirty R&B hits, going from being a minor doo-wop group that had had a few big hits to being consistent hit-makers, who were not yet household names, but who had a consistent sound that could be guaranteed to make the R&B charts, and who put on what was regarded as the best live show of any R&B band in the world. This was partly down to the type of discipline that Brown imposed on his band. Many band-leaders in the R&B world would impose fines on their band members, and Johnny Terry suggested that Brown do the same thing. As Bobby Byrd put it, "Many band leaders do it but it was Johnny's idea to start it with us and we were all for it ‘cos we didn't want to miss nothing. We wanted to be immaculate, clothes-wise, routine-wise and everything. Originally, the fines was only between James and us, The Famous Flames, but then James carried it over into the whole troupe. It was still a good idea because anybody joining The James Brown Revue had to know that they couldn't be messing up, and anyway, all the fines went into a pot for the parties we had." But Brown went much further with these fines than any other band leader, and would also impose them arbitrarily, and it became part of his reputation that he was the strictest disciplinarian in rhythm and blues music. One thing that became legendary among musicians was the way that he would impose fines while on stage. If a band member missed a note, or a dance step, or missed a cue, or had improperly polished shoes, Brown would, while looking at them, briefly make a flashing gesture with his hand, spreading his fingers out for a fraction of a second. To the audience, it looked like just part of Brown's dance routine, but the musician knew he had just been fined five dollars. Multiple flashes meant multiples of five dollars fined. Brown also developed a whole series of other signals to the band, which they had to learn, To quote Bobby Byrd again: "James didn't want anybody else to know what we was doing, so he had numbers and certain screams and spins. There was a certain spin he'd do and if he didn't do the complete spin you'd know it was time to go over here. Certain screams would instigate chord changes, but mostly it was numbers. James would call out football numbers, that's where we got that from. Thirty-nine — Sixteen —Fourteen — Two — Five — Three — Ninety-eight, that kind of thing. Number thirty-nine was always the change into ‘Please, Please, Please'. Sixteen is into a scream and an immediate change, not bam-bam but straight into something else. If he spins around and calls thirty-six, that means we're going back to the top again. And the forty-two, OK, we're going to do this verse and then bow out, we're leaving now. It was amazing." This, or something like this, is a fairly standard technique among more autocratic band leaders, a way of allowing the band as a whole to become a live compositional or improvisational tool for their leader, and Frank Zappa, for example, had a similar system. It requires the players to subordinate themselves utterly to the whim of the band leader, but also requires a band leader who knows the precise strengths and weaknesses of every band member and how they are likely to respond to a cue. When it works well, it can be devastatingly effective, and it was for Brown's live show. The Famous Flames shows soon became a full-on revue, with other artists joining the bill and performing with Brown's band. From the late 1950s on, Brown would always include a female singer. The first of these was Sugar Pie DeSanto, a blues singer who had been discovered (and given her stage name) by Johnny Otis, but DeSanto soon left Brown's band and went on to solo success on Chess records, with hits like "Soulful Dress": [Excerpt: Sugar Pie DeSanto, "Soulful Dress"] After DeSanto left, she was replaced by Bea Ford, the former wife of the soul singer Joe Tex, with whom Brown had an aggressive rivalry and mutual loathing. Ford and Brown recorded together, cutting tracks like "You Got the Power": [Excerpt: James Brown and Bea Ford, "You Got the Power"] However, Brown and Ford soon fell out, and Brown actually wrote to Tex asking if he wanted his wife back. Tex's response was to record this: [Excerpt: Joe Tex, "You Keep Her"] Ford's replacement was Yvonne Fair, who had briefly replaced Jackie Landry in the Chantels for touring purposes when Landry had quit touring to have a baby. Fair would stay with Brown for a couple of years, and would release a number of singles written and produced for her by Brown, including one which Brown would later rerecord himself with some success: [Excerpt: Yvonne Fair, "I Found You"] Fair would eventually leave the band after getting pregnant with a child by Brown, who tended to sleep with the female singers in his band. The last shows she played with him were the shows that would catapult Brown into the next level of stardom. Brown had been convinced for a long time that his live shows had an energy that his records didn't, and that people would buy a record of one of them. Syd Nathan, as usual, disagreed. In his view the market for R&B albums was small, and only consisted of people who wanted collections of hit singles they could play in one place. Nobody would buy a James Brown live album. So Brown decided to take matters into his own hands. He decided to book a run of shows at the Apollo Theatre, and record them, paying for the recordings with his own money. This was a week-long engagement, with shows running all day every day -- Brown and his band would play five shows a day, and Brown would wear a different suit for every show. This was in October 1962, the month that we've already established as the month the sixties started -- the month the Beatles released their first single, the Beach Boys released their first record outside the US, and the first Bond film came out, all on the same day at the beginning of the month. By the end of October, when Brown appeared at the Apollo, the Cuban Missile Crisis was at its height, and there were several points during the run where it looked like the world itself might not last until November 62. Douglas Wolk has written an entire book on the live album that resulted, which claims to be a recording of the midnight performance from October the twenty-fourth, though it seems like it was actually compiled from multiple performances. The album only records the headline performance, but Wolk describes what a full show by the James Brown Revue at the Apollo was like in October 1962, and the following description is indebted to his book, which I'll link in the show notes. The show would start with the "James Brown Orchestra" -- the backing band. They would play a set of instrumentals, and a group of dancers called the Brownies would join them: [Excerpt: James Brown Presents His Band, "Night Flying"] At various points during the set, Brown himself would join the band for a song or two, playing keyboards or drums. After the band's instrumental set, the Valentinos would take the stage for a few songs. This was before they'd been taken on by Sam Cooke, who would take them under his wing very soon after these shows, but the Valentinos were already recording artists in their own right, and had recently released "Lookin' For a Love": [Excerpt: The Valentinos, "Lookin' For a Love"] Next up would be Yvonne Fair, now visibly pregnant with her boss' child, to sing her few numbers: [Excerpt: Yvonne Fair, "You Can Make it if You Try"] Freddie King was on next, another artist for the King family of labels who'd had a run of R&B hits the previous year, promoting his new single "I'm On My Way to Atlanta": [Excerpt: Freddie King, "I'm on My Way to Atlanta"] After King came Solomon Burke, who had been signed to Atlantic earlier that year and just started having hits, and was the new hot thing on the scene, but not yet the massive star he became: [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "Cry to Me"] After Burke came a change of pace -- the vaudeville comedian Pigmeat Markham would take the stage and perform a couple of comedy sketches. We actually know exactly how these went, as Brown wasn't the only one recording a live album there that week, and Markham's album "The World's Greatest Clown" was a result of these shows and released on Chess Records: [Excerpt: Pigmeat Markham, "Go Ahead and Sing"] And after Markham would come the main event. Fats Gonder, the band's organist, would give the introduction we heard at the beginning of the episode -- and backstage, Danny Ray, who had been taken on as James Brown's valet that very week (according to Wolk -- I've seen other sources saying he'd joined Brown's organisation in 1960), was listening closely. He would soon go on to take over the role of MC, and would introduce Brown in much the same way as Gonder had at every show until Brown's death forty-four years later. The live album is an astonishing tour de force, showing Brown and his band generating a level of excitement that few bands then or now could hope to equal. It's even more astonishing when you realise two things. The first is that this was *before* any of the hits that most people now associate with the name James Brown -- before "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" or "Sex Machine", or "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" or "Say it Loud I'm Black and I'm Proud" or "Funky Drummer" or "Get Up Offa That Thing". It's still an *unformed* James Brown, only six years into a fifty-year career, and still without most of what made him famous. The other thing is, as Wolk notes, if you listen to any live bootleg recordings from this time, the microphone distorts all the time, because Brown is singing so loud. Here, the vocal tone is clean, because Brown knew he was being recorded. This is the sound of James Brown restraining himself: [Excerpt: James Brown and the Famous Flames, "Night Train" (Live at the Apollo version)] The album was released a few months later, and proved Syd Nathan's judgement utterly, utterly, wrong. It became the thirty-second biggest selling album of 1963 -- an amazing achievement given that it was released on a small independent label that dealt almost exclusively in singles, and which had no real presence in the pop market. The album spent sixty-six weeks on the album charts, making number two on the charts -- the pop album charts, not R&B charts. There wasn't an R&B albums chart until 1965, and Live at the Apollo basically forced Billboard to create one, and more or less single-handedly created the R&B albums market. It was such a popular album in 1963 that DJs took to playing the whole album -- breaking for commercials as they turned the side over, but otherwise not interrupting it. It turned Brown from merely a relatively big R&B star into a megastar. But oddly, given this astonishing level of success, Brown's singles in 1963 were slightly less successful than they had been in the previous few years -- possibly partly because he decided to record a few versions of old standards, changing direction as he had for much of his career. Johnny Terry quit the Famous Flames, to join the Drifters, becoming part of the lineup that recorded "Under the Boardwalk" and "Saturday Night at the Movies". Brown also recorded a second live album, Pure Dynamite!, which is generally considered a little lacklustre in comparison to the Apollo album. There were other changes to the lineup as well as Terry leaving. Brown wanted to hire a new drummer, Melvin Parker, who agreed to join the band, but only if Brown took on his sax-playing brother, Maceo, along with him. Maceo soon became one of the most prominent musicians in Brown's band, and his distinctive saxophone playing is all over many of Brown's biggest hits. The first big hit that the Parkers played on was released as by James Brown and his Orchestra, rather than James Brown and the Famous Flames, and was a landmark in Brown's evolution as a musician: [Excerpt: James Brown and his Orchestra, "Out of Sight"] The Famous Flames did sing on the B-side of that, a song called "Maybe the Last Time", which was ripped off from the same Pops Staples song that the Rolling Stones later ripped off for their own hit single. But that would be the last time Brown would use them in the studio -- from that point on, the Famous Flames were purely a live act, although Bobby Byrd, but not the other members, would continue to sing on the records. The reason it was credited to James Brown, rather than to James Brown and the Famous Flames, is that "Out of Sight" was released on Smash Records, to which Brown -- but not the Flames -- had signed a little while earlier. Brown had become sick of what he saw as King Records' incompetence, and had found what he and his advisors thought was a loophole in his contract. Brown had been signed to King Records under a personal services contract as a singer, not under a musician contract as a musician, and so they believed that he could sign to Smash, a subsidiary of Mercury, as a musician. He did, and he made what he thought of as a fresh start on his new label by recording "Caldonia", a cover of a song by his idol Louis Jordan: [Excerpt: James Brown and his Orchestra, "Caldonia"] Understandably, King Records sued on the reasonable grounds that Brown was signed to them as a singer, and they got an injunction to stop him recording for Smash -- but by the time the injunction came through, Brown had already released two albums and three singles for the label. The injunction prevented Brown from recording any new material for the rest of 1964, though both labels continued to release stockpiled material during that time. While he was unable to record new material, October 1964 saw Brown's biggest opportunity to cross over to a white audience -- the TAMI Show: [Excerpt: James Brown, "Out of Sight (TAMI show live)"] We've mentioned the TAMI show a couple of times in previous episodes, but didn't go into it in much detail. It was a filmed concert which featured Jan and Dean, the Barbarians, Lesley Gore, Chuck Berry, the Beach Boys, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas, Marvin Gaye, the Miracles, the Supremes, and, as the two top acts, James Brown and the Rolling Stones. Rather oddly, the point of the TAMI Show wasn't the music as such. Rather it was intended as a demonstration of a technical process. Before videotape became cheap and a standard, it was difficult to record TV shows for later broadcast, for distribution to other countries, or for archive. The way they used to be recorded was a process known as telerecording in the UK and kinescoping in the US, and that was about as crude as it's possible to get -- you'd get a film camera, point it at a TV showing the programme you wanted to record, and film the TV screen. There was specialist equipment to do this, but that was all it actually did. Almost all surviving TV from the fifties and sixties -- and even some from the seventies -- was preserved by this method rather than by videotape. Even after videotape started being used to make the programmes, there were differing standards and tapes were expensive, so if you were making a programme in the UK and wanted a copy for US broadcast, or vice versa, you'd make a telerecording. But what if you wanted to make a TV show that you could also show on cinema screens? If you're filming a TV screen, and then you project that film onto a big screen, you get a blurry, low-resolution, mess -- or at least you did with the 525-line TV screens that were used in the US at the time. So a company named Electronovision came into the picture, for those rare times when you wanted to do something using video cameras that would be shown at the cinema. Rather than shoot in 525-line resolution, their cameras shot in 819-line resolution -- super high definition for the time, but capable of being recorded onto standard videotape with appropriate modifications for the equipment. But that meant that when you kinescoped the production, it was nearly twice the resolution that a standard US TV broadcast would be, and so it didn't look terrible when shown in a cinema. The owner of the Electronovision process had had a hit with a cinema release of a performance by Richard Burton as Hamlet, and he needed a follow-up, and decided that another filmed live performance would be the best way to make use of his process -- TV cameras were much more useful for capturing live performances than film cameras, for a variety of dull technical reasons, and so this was one of the few areas where Electronovision might actually be useful. And so Bill Roden, one of the heads of Electronovision, turned to a TV director named Steve Binder, who was working at the time on the Steve Allen show, one of the big variety shows, second only to Ed Sullivan, and who would soon go on to direct Hullaballoo. Roden asked Binder to make a concert film, shot on video, which would be released on the big screen by American International Pictures (the same organisation with which David Crosby's father worked so often). Binder had contacts with West Coast record labels, and particularly with Lou Adler's organisation, which managed Jan and Dean. He also had been in touch with a promoter who was putting on a package tour of British musicians. So they decided that their next demonstration of the capabilities of the equipment would be a show featuring performers from "all over the world", as the theme song put it -- by which they meant all over the continental United States plus two major British cities. For those acts who didn't have their own bands -- or whose bands needed augmenting -- there was an orchestra, centred around members of the Wrecking Crew, conducted by Jack Nitzsche, and the Blossoms were on hand to provide backing vocals where required. Jan and Dean would host the show and sing the theme song. James Brown had had less pop success than any of the other artists on the show except for the Barbarians, who are now best-known for their appearances on the Nuggets collection of relatively obscure garage rock singles, and whose biggest hit, "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl?" only went to number fifty-five on the charts: [Excerpt: The Barbarians, "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl?"] The Barbarians were being touted as the American equivalent of the Rolling Stones, but the general cultural moment of the time can be summed up by that line "You're either a girl or you come from Liverpool" -- which was where the Rolling Stones came from. Or at least, it was where Americans seemed to think they came from given both that song, and the theme song of the TAMI show, written by P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri, which sang about “the Rolling Stones from Liverpool”, and also referred to Brown as "the king of the blues": [Excerpt: Jan and Dean, "Here They Come From All Over The World"] But other than the Barbarians, the TAMI show was one of the few places in which all the major pop music movements of the late fifties and early sixties could be found in one place -- there was the Merseybeat of Gerry and the Pacemakers and the Dakotas, already past their commercial peak but not yet realising it, the fifties rock of Chuck Berry, who actually ended up performing one song with Gerry and the Pacemakers: [Excerpt: Chuck Berry and Gerry and the Pacemakers: "Maybellene"] And there was the Brill Building pop of Lesley Gore, the British R&B of the Rolling Stones right at the point of their breakthrough, the vocal surf music of the Beach Boys and Jan and Dean, and three of the most important Motown acts, with Brown the other representative of soul on the bill. But the billing was a sore point. James Brown's manager insisted that he should be the headliner of the show, and indeed by some accounts the Rolling Stones also thought that they should probably not try to follow him -- though other accounts say that the Stones were equally insistent that they *must* be the headliners. It was a difficult decision, because Brown was much less well known, but it was eventually decided that the Rolling Stones would go on last. Most people talking about the event, including most of those involved with the production, have since stated that this was a mistake, because nobody could follow James Brown, though in interviews Mick Jagger has always insisted that the Stones didn't have to follow Brown, as there was a recording break between acts and they weren't even playing to the same audience -- though others have disputed that quite vigorously. But what absolutely everyone has agreed is that Brown gave the performance of a lifetime, and that it was miraculously captured by the cameras. I say its capture was miraculous because every other act had done a full rehearsal for the TV cameras, and had had a full shot-by-shot plan worked out by Binder beforehand. But according to Steve Binder -- though all the accounts of the show are contradictory -- Brown refused to do a rehearsal -- so even though he had by far the most complex and choreographed performance of the event, Binder and his camera crew had to make decisions by pure instinct, rather than by having an actual plan they'd worked out in advance of what shots to use. This is one of the rare times when I wish this was a video series rather than a podcast, because the visuals are a huge part of this performance -- Brown is a whirlwind of activity, moving all over the stage in a similar way to Jackie Wilson, one of his big influences, and doing an astonishing gliding dance step in which he stands on one leg and moves sideways almost as if on wheels. The full performance is easily findable online, and is well worth seeking out. But still, just hearing the music and the audience's reaction can give some insight: [Excerpt: James Brown, "Out of Sight" (TAMI Show)] The Rolling Stones apparently watched the show in horror, unable to imagine following that -- though when they did, the audience response was fine: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Around and Around"] Incidentally, Chuck Berry must have been quite pleased with his payday from the TAMI Show, given that as well as his own performance the Stones did one of his songs, as did Gerry and the Pacemakers, as we heard earlier, and the Beach Boys did "Surfin' USA" for which he had won sole songwriting credit. After the TAMI Show, Mick Jagger would completely change his attitude to performing, and would spend the rest of his career trying to imitate Brown's performing style. He was unsuccessful in this, but still came close enough that he's still regarded as one of the great frontmen, nearly sixty years later. Brown kept performing, and his labels kept releasing material, but he was still not allowed to record, until in early 1965 a court reached a ruling -- yes, Brown wasn't signed as a musician to King Records, so he was perfectly within his rights to record with Smash Records. As an instrumentalist. But Brown *was* signed to King Records as a singer, so he was obliged to record vocal tracks for them, and only for them. So until his contract with Smash lapsed, he had to record twice as much material -- he had to keep recording instrumentals, playing piano or organ, for Smash, while recording vocal tracks for King Records. His first new record, released as by "James Brown" rather than the earlier billings of "James Brown and his Orchestra" or "James Brown and the Famous Flames", was for King, and was almost a remake of "Out of Sight", his hit for Smash Records. But even so, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" was a major step forward, and is often cited as the first true funk record. This is largely because of the presence of a new guitarist in Brown's band. Jimmy Nolen had started out as a violin player, but like many musicians in the 1950s he had been massively influenced by T-Bone Walker, and had switched to playing guitar. He was discovered as a guitarist by the bluesman Jimmy Wilson, who had had a minor hit with "Tin Pan Alley": [Excerpt: Jimmy Wilson, "Tin Pan Alley"] Wilson had brought Nolen to LA, where he'd soon parted from Wilson and started working with a whole variety of bandleaders. His first recording came with Monte Easter on Aladdin Records: [Excerpt: Monte Easter, "Blues in the Evening"] After working with Easter, he started recording with Chuck Higgins, and also started recording by himself. At this point, Nolen was just one of many West Coast blues guitarists with a similar style, influenced by T-Bone Walker -- he was competing with Pete "Guitar" Lewis, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, and Guitar Slim, and wasn't yet quite as good as any of them. But he was still making some influential records. His version of "After Hours", for example, released under his own name on Federal Records, was a big influence on Roy Buchanan, who would record several versions of the standard based on Nolen's arrangement: [Excerpt: Jimmy Nolen, "After Hours"] Nolen had released records on many labels, but his most important early association came from records he made but didn't release. In the mid-fifties, Johnny Otis produced a couple of tracks by Nolen, for Otis' Dig Records label, but they weren't released until decades later: [Excerpt: Jimmy Nolen, "Jimmy's Jive"] But when Otis had a falling out with his longtime guitar player Pete "Guitar" Lewis, who was one of the best players in LA but who was increasingly becoming unreliable due to his alcoholism, Otis hired Nolen to replace him. It's Nolen who's playing on most of the best-known recordings Otis made in the late fifties, like "Casting My Spell": [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, "Casting My Spell"] And of course Otis' biggest hit "Willie and the Hand Jive": [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, "Willie and the Hand Jive"] Nolen left Otis after a few years, and spent the early sixties mostly playing in scratch bands backing blues singers, and not recording. It was during this time that Nolen developed the style that would revolutionise music. The style he developed was unique in several different ways. The first was in Nolen's choice of chords. We talked last week about how Pete Townshend's guitar playing became based on simplifying chords and only playing power chords. Nolen went the other way -- while his voicings often only included two or three notes, he was also often using very complex chords with *more* notes than a standard chord. As we discussed last week, in most popular music, the chords are based around either major or minor triads -- the first, third, and fifth notes of a scale, so you have an E major chord, which is the notes E, G sharp, and B: [Excerpt: E major chord] It's also fairly common to have what are called seventh chords, which are actually a triad with an added flattened seventh, so an E7 chord would be the notes E, G sharp, B, and D: [Excerpt: E7 chord] But Nolen built his style around dominant ninth chords, often just called ninth chords. Dominant ninth chords are mostly thought of as jazz chords because they're mildly dissonant. They consist of the first, third, fifth, flattened seventh, *and* ninth of a scale, so an E9 would be the notes E, G sharp, B, D, and F sharp: [Excerpt: E9 chord] Another way of looking at that is that you're playing both a major chord *and* at the same time a minor chord that starts on the fifth note, so an E major and B minor chord at the same time: [Demonstrates Emajor, B minor, E9] It's not completely unknown for pop songs to use ninth chords, but it's very rare. Probably the most prominent example came from a couple of years after the period we're talking about, when in mid-1967 Bobby Gentry basically built the whole song "Ode to Billie Joe" around a D9 chord, barely ever moving off it: [Excerpt: Bobby Gentry, "Ode to Billie Joe"] That shows the kind of thing that ninth chords are useful for -- because they have so many notes in them, you can just keep hammering on the same chord for a long time, and the melody can go wherever it wants and will fit over it. The record we're looking at, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", actually has three chords in it -- it's basically a twelve-bar blues, like "Out of Sight" was, just with these ninth chords sometimes used instead of more conventional chords -- but as Brown's style got more experimental in future years, he would often build songs with no chord changes at all, just with Nolen playing a single ninth chord throughout. There's a possibly-apocryphal story, told in a few different ways, but the gist of which is that when auditioning Nolen's replacement many years later, Brown asked "Can you play an E ninth chord?" "Yes, of course" came the reply. "But can you play an E ninth chord *all night*?" The reason Brown asked this, if he did, is that playing like Nolen is *extremely* physically demanding. Because the other thing about Nolen's style is that he was an extremely percussive player. In his years backing blues musicians, he'd had to play with many different drummers, and knew they weren't always reliable timekeepers. So he'd started playing like a drummer himself, developing a technique called chicken-scratching, based on the Bo Diddley style he'd played with Otis, where he'd often play rapid, consistent, semiquaver chords, keeping the time himself so the drummer didn't have to. Other times he'd just play single, jagged-sounding, chords to accentuate the beat. He used guitars with single-coil pickups and turned the treble up and got rid of all the midrange, so the sound would cut through no matter what. As well as playing full-voiced chords, he'd also sometimes mute all the strings while he strummed, giving a percussive scratching sound rather than letting the strings ring. In short, the sound he got was this: [Excerpt: James Brown, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag"] And that is the sound that became funk guitar. If you listen to Jimmy Nolen's playing on "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", that guitar sound -- chicken scratched ninth chords -- is what every funk guitarist after him based their style on. It's not Nolen's guitar playing in its actual final form -- that wouldn't come until he started using wah wah pedals, which weren't mass produced until early 1967 -- but it's very clear when listening to the track that this is the birth of funk. The original studio recording of "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" actually sounds odd if you listen to it now -- it's slower than the single, and lasts almost seven minutes: [Excerpt: James Brown "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag (parts 1, 2, and 3)"] But for release as a single, it was sped up a semitone, a ton of reverb was added, and it was edited down to just a few seconds over two minutes. The result was an obvious hit single: [Excerpt: James Brown, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag"] Or at least, it was an obvious hit single to everyone except Syd Nathan, who as you'll have already predicted by now didn't like the song. Indeed according to Brown, he was so disgusted with the record that he threw his acetate copy of it onto the floor. But Brown got his way, and the single came out, and it became the biggest hit of Brown's career up to that point, not only giving him his first R&B number one since "Try Me" seven years earlier, but also crossing over to the pop charts in a way he hadn't before. He'd had the odd top thirty or even top twenty pop single in the past, but now he was in the top ten, and getting noticed by the music business establishment in a way he hadn't earlier. Brown's audience went from being medium-sized crowds of almost exclusively Black people with the occasional white face, to a much larger, more integrated, audience. Indeed, at the Grammys the next year, while the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Phil Spector and the whole Motown stable were overlooked in favour of the big winners for that year Roger Miller, Herb Alpert, and the Anita Kerr Singers, even an organisation with its finger so notoriously off the pulse of the music industry as the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which presents the Grammys, couldn't fail to find the pulse of "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", and gave Brown the Grammy for Best Rhythm and Blues record, beating out the other nominees "In the Midnight Hour", "My Girl", "Shotgun" by Junior Walker, and "Shake" by Sam Cooke. From this point on, Syd Nathan would no longer argue with James Brown as to which of his records would be released. After nine years of being the hardest working man in showbusiness, James Brown had now become the Godfather of Soul, and his real career had just begun.
Episode one hundred and thirty-one of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Hear a Symphony” by the Supremes, and is the start 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 "Rescue Me" by Fontella Bass. 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 No Mixcloud this week, as too many of the songs were by the Supremes. 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. Girl Groups by John Clemente contains potted biographies of many groups of the era. The Supremes biography I relied on most is The Supremes by Mark Ribowsky, which seems factually accurate but questionable in its judgments of people. I also used this omnibus edition of Mary Wilson's two volumes of autobiography. This box set contains everything you could want by the Supremes, but is extraordinarily expensive in physical form at the moment, though cheap as MP3s. This is a good budget substitute, though oddly doesn't contain “Stop in the Name of Love”. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Hi, this is Andrew. Between recording this episode and it going live, three great musicians, two of whom have been the subject of episodes of this podcast, sadly died. We lost Don Everly, Charlie Watts, and Tom T. Hall, and I just wanted to acknowledge them and their contributions to music before the episode starts. They'll all be missed. [theme music] Just a brief note before we start to say that this episode contains brief mentions of eating disorders, so if that might be a problem for you, check the transcript to make sure it's safe. Thanks. We've spent much of the last few months looking at the intersections of three different movements, each of which was important -- the influence of the Beatles and to a lesser extent the other Merseybeat bands, the influence of Bob Dylan and the folk and protest movement, and the British R&B guitar bands who were taking their interpretation of the sound of Chess Records back to the USA. But of course, while these guitar bands were all influencing everyone, they were also being influenced by the growth of soul, and in particular by Motown, and Motown's groups were among the few American acts who managed to keep having hits during the British Invasion. Indeed, 1965 was as much of a creative and commercial peak for the label as for the white guitar bands we've been looking at. So for the next few weeks we're going to move over to Detroit, and we're going to look at Motown. And this week and next week we're going to continue our look at the Holland-Dozier-Holland collaboration, and at the groups they were writing for. So today, we're going to look at the Supremes, at the career of the only Black act to seriously challenge the Beatles for chart dominance in the sixties and at the start of the inter-group rivalries that eventually took them down. We're going to look at "I Hear a Symphony” by the Supremes: [Excerpt: The Supremes, "I Hear a Symphony"] When we last looked at the Supremes, they had just had their second number one single. After having spent years being called "the no-hit Supremes" and recording third-rate material like "The Man With the Rock and Roll Banjo Band", they'd been taken on by Holland, Dozier, and Holland, Motown's new star songwriting team, and had recorded two songs written and produced by the team -- "Where Did Our Love Go?" and "Baby Love" -- both of which had reached number one. But there were already tensions in the group. Most notably, there was the tension between Florence Ballard and Diana Ross. Ballard had always considered herself the lead singer of the group, and almost everyone who knew the group at the time agreed that Ballard was the better singer. But Berry Gordy, the owner of Motown, thought that Ross was the member of the group who had actual star potential, and insisted that she be the lead vocalist on everything the Supremes cut. At first, this didn't matter too much -- after all, no matter who the lead singer on the records was, they were having the huge hits they'd always dreamed of -- but it inevitably led to friction within the group. But in late 1964, at least, everyone was on the same page. Berry Gordy, in particular, was delighted by the group's continued success -- they had been the *only* act other than the Beatles or Bobby Vinton to have more than one number one on the pop charts in 1964 -- and by the end of the year, they had released their third, "Come See About Me". "Come See About Me" actually got released only a month after "Baby Love", before the latter had even reached the top of the charts, and it seems like a ridiculous idea to release another single so close to that one. But it came out so early to make sure the Supremes had the hit with it. Because a soundalike had come out on Wand Records even before the Supremes' single came out. A fourteen-year-old girl called Nella Dodds had decided that she could sing quite a bit like Diana Ross, and since the Supremes were the biggest female group in the country at this point, she had a chance at being a star, too. She'd auditioned for Wand by singing along with the whole of the first Supremes album, and Wand Records had decided that she sounded enough like Ross that it was worth a shot putting out a single by her. They chose "Come See About Me", which had been released as an album track on that album, and put out this: [Excerpt: Nella Dodds, "Come See About Me"] Dodds' version of the track was cut to be a soundalike, and was so similar to the Supremes version that it's actually quite easy to cut between the two records. You can hear the joins, but they're *spookily* similar: [Excerpt: The Supremes and Nella Dodds, "Come See About Me", alternating phrases] That wasn't the only time a Holland-Dozier-Holland production would be copied wholesale -- we'll hear another, slightly less blatant, example later this episode. As Dodds' single started to rise up the charts, Berry Gordy got furious. If the record sounded good enough to be a hit single, his label was going to have the hit with it, and so the Supremes' version of "Come See About Me" was rush-released. It went to number one, and Nella Dodds vanished into obscurity. The group having three number one hits in a row focused everyone's minds, and Gordy held a meeting with Holland, Dozier, and Holland, and told them that from that point on the Supremes had to be their number one priority. They should drop everything they were doing and concentrate on making Supremes hits while the Supremes were having their moment of success. And so of course they did just that -- and in January 1965 they recorded the album which would contain the Supremes' fourth number one in a row: [Excerpt: The Supremes, "Stop! In the Name of Love"] The story of how "Stop! In the Name of Love" was conceived tells us a lot about the kind of life that the people at Motown were living, now they were all successful and making a great deal of money. The way Lamont Dozier tells the story, his marriage had fallen apart, and he was sleeping with multiple women, some of whom thought they were the only one. Dozier would regularly head to a motel near Hitsville for some of these assignations, and one day while he was there with one of his women, another one tracked him down. The woman he was with made her escape, and Dozier tried to make excuses, claiming he had just got very tired at work and booked a motel room to have a rest so he wouldn't have to go all the way home. His girlfriend didn't believe this rather transparent lie, and started throwing things at him. Dozier started yelling at her to stop it, and eventually mangled the phrase "Stop in the name of the law", shouting instead "Stop in the name of love!" Dozier immediately saw this line as the basis of a song, and his burst of inspiration amused the woman, who started laughing. It defused the situation, and led to a hit record. [Excerpt: The Supremes, "Stop! In the Name of Love"] Indeed, Dozier wasn't the only one whose experiences made up part of the lyrics for the song. All three of Holland, Dozier, and Holland were having complex love lives and going through the breakup of their first marriages. Eddie Holland has said that he used his own experiences in that regard in writing the lyrics to that song. All three men were having affairs with multiple women, but two of those affairs were important in their working lives -- Brian Holland was dating Diana Ross, while Lamont Dozier was seeing Mary Wilson. According to Eddie Holland, Florence seemed to think that this meant that the remaining members of their respective trios should also pair up, but Holland didn't think that he should get involved, given Florence's mental fragility and his own promiscuous nature. Both Lamont and Brian later split up with their respective Supremes partners, but luckily everyone was professional enough that they were all able to continue working together. After "Stop! In the Name of Love" came "Back in Your Arms Again", making five number ones in a row for the combination of the Supremes and Holland-Dozier-Holland. On top of this, Holland-Dozier-Holland were busily making hits for the Four Tops, who we'll hear more about next week, and for the Isley Brothers, as well as writing odd songs for other artists like Marvin Gaye. To put this into perspective, at this point the *only* act ever to have had five number ones in a row on the US charts was Elvis, who had done it twice. The Beatles were about to hit their fifth, and would eventually get to six number ones in a row -- they had eleven in the UK, but many more Beatles singles were released in the US than in the UK, so there were more opportunities to break the streak. That was the company the Supremes were in. It's important to stress how big the Supremes, Motown, and Holland-Dozier-Holland were in 1965. There were twenty-seven Billboard number one singles that year, and six of them were from Motown -- compared to five from the Beatles and two from the Rolling Stones. Of those six number one Motown singles, five of them were Holland-Dozier-Holland productions, and four were by the Supremes. Of course, number one records are not the only measure of success in the music industry, but they are definitely a measure. By that measure, the Supremes were bigger than anyone except the Beatles, but this led to a certain amount of dissatisfaction among the rest of the Motown acts. They were being told that a rising tide would lift all boats, but the way they saw it, everyone who wasn't a Supreme was being ignored, unless they were named Smokey Robinson or Marvin Gaye. The Vandellas, for example, thought that records like "Dancing in the Street", which made number two in the charts, could have easily made number one had they been given the same kind of promotion as the Supremes. This was, to them, particularly evident when it came to the first British tour of the Motortown Revue, in March 1965. While the various Motown acts were on tour in the UK, the opportunity came up to do a TV special for Granada TV, presented by Dusty Springfield, who was the driving force behind the special. Springfield was particularly an admirer of Martha and the Vandellas, and got Martha to duet with her on her own hit "Wishin' and Hopin'": [Excerpt: Dusty Springfield and Martha Reeves, "Wishin' and Hopin'"] Yet while all the acts on the tour -- the Vandellas, Stevie Wonder, the Miracles, and the Temptations -- got their moments in the spotlight on the show, the Supremes did seem to dominate it, with more songs than any of the other acts. This was partly just good sense -- Motown was only just starting to have a presence in the UK, and to the extent it did the Supremes were almost the only Motown artists that had made any impression on the public consciousness at all at this point -- but it was also because Berry Gordy was becoming increasingly infatuated with Diana Ross, and they finally consummated their relationship in Paris at the end of the tour. Now, it is important to note here that this is always portrayed in every book about the group or Motown as "scheming Diana Ross used her feminine wiles to seduce hapless Berry Gordy, who was helplessly under her spell.” That's certainly one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that Berry Gordy was a thirty-five-year-old married man sleeping with an employee of his who had only just turned twenty-one, and who had been his employee for several years. I wouldn't mention any of this at all -- I despise the gossiping nature of much music writing -- except that it is impossible to read anything at all about the Supremes without getting a take on the group's career from this point on that has Ross using her sexuality to manipulate Gordy in order to fulfil her own scheming ambition. I think there's no question at all that Ross was ambitious, but I think most of the narrative about her is rooted in misogyny, and a very deep misunderstanding of the power dynamics in her relationship with Gordy. But there is absolutely no question that Gordy saw the Supremes as the most important act on Motown -- and that he saw Diana Ross as the most important part of the Supremes. And decisions made for the benefit of Ross were not always decisions that would benefit her colleagues. For example, at this point in time, the fashion was for women to be very curvy, rather than thin. Ross was extremely thin, and so the group's outfits were padded. This wasn't such a problem for Mary, who had her own issues about a lack of curves, but for Florence, who was bigger than the other two, it was humiliating, because it made her look bigger than she was, and there was no question of the padding being removed from her clothes -- the decisions were being made on the basis of what made Diana look good. Of course, fashions change, and with the rise of the supermodel Twiggy, suddenly a more emaciated look became popular, so the group were able to drop the padding -- but that still left Florence as the unfashionable-looking one. She became deeply insecure about this, though she would hide it with humour -- after Twiggy became popular, there was a scripted bit of the show where Ross would say "thin is in", and Florence ad libbed "but fat is where it's at!", and her ad lib became part of the routine. After the Supremes' run of five number one singles, it might have seemed that they were invulnerable, but in September 1965, "Nothing But Heartaches" came out, and it only made number eleven: [Excerpt: The Supremes, “Nothing But Heartaches”] For any other act, this would be a major hit, but for an act that had had five number one hits in a row, it was a failure, and it was treated as such, even though it sold over a million copies. Berry Gordy actually sent out a memo to all Motown creative staff, saying "We will release nothing less than top ten product on any artist: and because the Supremes' world-wide acceptance is greater than the other artists, on them we will only release number-one records". Of course, that was easier said than done -- every songwriter and producer wanted only to be making number one records, after all, but it's a symptom of the attitudes that were showing up at Motown by this point -- a number eleven hit for a group that two years earlier had been laughed at for being the "no hit Supremes" was now regarded as a failure to be punished, while major successes were just to be considered the norm. But it's also a tribute to how successful Holland, Dozier, and Holland were by this point that the next Supremes single was, once again, another number one hit. The inspiration for "I Hear a Symphony" came from Dozier thinking about how characters in films often had musical motifs on the soundtrack, and how ridiculous it would be if people in real life walked around with their own musical accompaniments. But it might also be that the writing trio had something else in mind. In August, just over a month before the recording of "I Hear a Symphony", a girl group called The Toys had released a single called "A Lover's Concerto": [Excerpt: The Toys, "A Lover's Concerto"] That song had been based on a piece of music usually incorrectly attributed to Bach, but actually by the Baroque composer Christian Petzold, and had been written by Sandy Linzer and Denny Randell, two writers who usually wrote for the Four Seasons, whose four-on-the-floor style was very similar to that of Holland, Dozier, and Holland. Linzer and Randell had even put in a little nod to the Supremes in the song. Compare the intro of the Toys record: [Excerpt: The Toys, "A Lover's Concerto"] With the intro from "Stop! In the Name of Love!": [Excerpt: The Supremes, "Stop! In the Name of Love!"] The section from eight through sixteen seconds on the Toys record is so close to the section from eleven through nineteen seconds on the Supremes one that you can play them almost together -- I had to do a tiny splice five seconds in here because the musicians on the Toys record don't have the perfect timing of the Funk Brothers and drifted by 0.1 seconds, but I hope you can see just how close those two sections are: [Excerpt: The Supremes and The Toys together] See what I mean? The Toys' record reached number two on the charts -- not a number one, but better than the most recent Supremes record. So it might well be that Holland, Dozier, and Holland were also thinking about the Toys' record when they came to make their new one -- especially since it had contained a little nod to their own work. And the odd thing about that section is it's not integral to the Toys record at all -- it's just there, I think, as a nod and a wink to anyone listening for it. Certainly, Holland, Dozier, and Holland were aware of the Toys record -- they had the Supremes cut a cover version of it for the I Hear a Symphony album. That album also contained the Supremes' version of the Beatles' "Yesterday" -- another hit which had, of course, referenced classical music, with its string quartet backing. One hit record referencing classical music might be a fluke, but two was a pattern, and so whatever the writers' later claims about the inspiration, it's reasonable to suspect that at the very least they were paying close attention to this pattern. The lyrics to "I Hear a Symphony" were written in a rush. The original plan had been for the group to release a song called "Mother Dear" as their next single, but then Brian Holland and Lamont Dozier came up with the track and title for "I Hear a Symphony", and knew it would be a winner. There was one problem, though -- the single needed to be out relatively quickly, and the Supremes were travelling to the UK in two days' time. When the instrumental track had been cut, Brian Holland phoned his brother, waking him up, and telling him they needed a set of lyrics for the very next day. Holland was actually already a little burned out that day -- he'd just been working on "Road Runner" by Junior Walker and the All-Stars, which was intended as the follow-up to their big hit "Shotgun": [Excerpt: Junior Walker and the All-Stars, "(I'm a) Road Runner"] At least, Holland says that was what he was working on, though it came out five months later – but Motown often delayed releases by minor acts. "Road Runner" was not normal Holland-Dozier-Holland material, it had been difficult to write, and not only that they'd discovered that Walker couldn't play the saxophone part in the same keys that he could sing the song, so they'd had to varispeed the track in order to get both parts down. Holland had had a tiring day, and had just gone to sleep when the phone had rung. Brian Holland had a copy of the backing track couriered over to Eddie in the middle of the night, and Eddie stayed up all night writing the lyrics, eventually finishing them in the studio while he was teaching Diana Ross the song: [Excerpt: The Supremes, "I Hear a Symphony"] Because it had to be recorded in such a hurry, the Supremes were in London when the mixing was finalised -- as was Berry Gordy, who normally ran Motown's quality control meetings, the meetings in which the executives and producers all checked all the work that was going out to make sure it met the company's standards. Normally, if Gordy was out of town, Brian Holland would take over the meeting, but a new Supremes single was important enough to Gordy that he made an international phone call to the meeting and listened to the record over the phone. Gordy insisted that the vocal was too high in the mix, but Brian Holland pushed back, and Gordy eventually agreed to let the record go out as it was, despite his reservations. He agreed that he had been wrong when the record went to number one. It wouldn't start another streak of number ones, but the next eight singles would all go top ten, and the group would have another six number ones, including a streak of four in late 1966 and early 1967. There were other records, as well -- Christmas singles (which don't tend to get counted as "real singles", because Christmas records got put on their own special charts), and promotional efforts, like "Things Are Changing For The Better". That was a song that Brian Wilson and Mike Love of the Beach Boys had originally written for the Ronettes, under the title "Don't Hurt My Little Sister", but while Spector had cut a backing track, the song hadn't been considered worth the Ronettes adding their vocals, and the Beach Boys had cut their own version as an album track: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Don't Hurt My Little Sister"] But a year later, the Advertising Council wanted a public information song, to promote the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the subsequent Voting Rights Act of 1965, two landmark acts that between them meant that for the first time discrimination against Black people wasn't legal. They turned to Spector to come up with something, and Spector, not wanting to waste a hit on them, came up with some new lyrics for the unused backing track, using the various slogans the Advertising Council wanted. Spector got his assistant Jerry Riopelle to finish the track off, and three versions were cut with different vocals over the same backing track. Riopelle produced a version with the Blossoms on vocals, another version was performed by the white pop group Jay and the Americans, and finally Motown put out a version with the Supremes singing over Spector's track. It's not the greatest track ever recorded or anything, but it is the only collaboration between the three biggest American hit-makers of the early sixties -- the Beach Boys, Spector, and the Supremes -- even if they didn't actually work together on it, and so "Things Are Changing For The Better" is interesting as a capsule of American pop music in 1965: [Excerpt: The Supremes, "Things Are Changing For The Better"] But Gordy had plans for the Supremes that involved them moving away from being merely pop stars, and the title of “I Hear a Symphony” worked well for Gordy's plans. Like Sam Cooke before them, he wanted them to move into the more lucrative middle-class white market, and like Sam Cooke that meant playing the Copacabana. We talked a little about the Copacabana -- or the Copa as it was universally known -- in the episode on "A Change is Gonna Come", but it's hard to get across now what an important venue it was. It was a mob-controlled nightclub in New York, and while it was only a nightclub, not a huge-capacity venue, headlining there was considered a sign that an act had made it and become part of the elite. If you could headline at the Copacabana in the early sixties, you were no longer a transitory pop act who might be gone tomorrow, you were up there with Tony Bennett and Sammy Davis Jr and Martin and Lewis. Of course, that whole showbusiness world has largely gone now, and the entertainment industry was going through massive changes in the early sixties that would soon make whether an act had headlined at the Copa as irrelevant to their future prospects as where they had gone to school, but nobody at the time knew that the changes that were happening -- thanks in large part to labels like Motown -- were going to be lasting ones, rather than just fads. So Gordy decided that his flagship group were going to headline at the Copa -- even though he had to agree to a deal which meant that for their initial three-week residency the group members only made sixty dollars a show each before expenses. And they were going to do a "classy" show. Yes, they would include a few of the hits, but most of the songs would be things like "Somewhere" from West Side Story, the Barbra Streisand song "People" -- which would be Florence's one lead vocal in the show -- the Guy Lombardo song "Enjoy Yourself, It's Later Than You Think", and of all things "Rock-a-bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody": [Excerpt: The Supremes, "Rock-A-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody"] The rest of the repertoire was show tunes, a gender-swapped version of "The Girl From Ipanema" retitled "The Boy From Ipanema", a parody of Roger Miller's "King of the Road" titled "Queen of the House", and a medley of Sam Cooke's hits. Other than the Cooke material and the brief run-throughs of their own number ones, the setlist was tailored entirely for the Copa's clientele, which barely overlapped at all with the Motown audience. The Copa residency was a triumph, and led to the Supremes making regular appearances at the venue for seven years, but it came at a great cost to the group members. Ross was so stressed she lost a stone of her already low weight, the first sign of the anorexia which she would deal with for many years to come. Meanwhile, Florence had to miss a chunk of the rehearsals as she became seriously ill with the flu, though she got herself well enough to make the opening night. And while it was what Berry Gordy had been working towards for years, it couldn't have come at a worse time for him personally -- his elder sister Loucye died suddenly of a brain haemorrhage shortly before the residency, and her funeral was actually the morning of the opening night. The opening night went exactly as Gordy had planned, except for one ad-lib -- during the song "You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Loves You", after Ross sang the line “But gold won't bring you happiness,” Florence interjected a joking line -- "Now wait a minute, honey. I don't know about all that." The audience loved her ad-lib -- Sammy Davis Jr., who was in the audience, yelled out "All right, girl! You tell it like it is!" -- and the line got added as a regular part of the performance: [Excerpt: The Supremes, “You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Loves You”] along with a rather less fun bit where Florence would mention "little old me", and Ross would snarkily respond "Little?" But even though it worked, Gordy was furious, partly just because he was understandably in a bad mood after his sister's funeral, partly because it was a deviation from the carefully-scripted performance, and partly because it was a moment in the spotlight for someone other than Diana Ross. As retaliation, a couple of days later he had Harvey Fuqua tell the group that they were dropping "People" -- Florence's only lead vocal -- from the set because there were too many show tunes. Then, a week or so later, "People" was added back to the set, but with Ross singing lead. (Mary Wilson had also asked to have her own lead vocal in the set, but Gordy had just looked at her sadly and said "Mary, you know you can't sing".) Florence was devastated. She was already drinking too much, but that escalated after the Copa engagement. Even though the group had never been as close as many groups are, they had all genuinely attempted to create a bond with each other, even all moving on to the same street. But now, that physical closeness just became an opportunity for the women to note the comings and goings at each other's houses and pass snarky comment on it. Ballard was fast becoming considered a liability by the powers that be at Motown, and even the existence of the Supremes was starting to be seen as something that was merely a hindrance for Diana Ross' career, rather than them being seen for what they were -- a massively successful group, not just a lead singer and her backing vocalists. Florence wasn't very long for the group, and when we next look at them, we'll no longer be looking at the Supremes, but at Diana Ross and the Supremes...
NOTE: This episode went up before the allegations about Dylan, in a lawsuit filed on Friday, were made public on Monday night. Had I been aware of them, I would at least have commented at the beginning of the episode. Episode one hundred and thirty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan, and the controversy over Dylan going electric, 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 "Hold What You've Got" by Joe Tex. 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/ Erratum A couple of times I refer to “CBS”. Dylan's label in the US was Columbia Records, a subsidiary of CBS Inc, but in the rest of the world the label traded as “CBS Records”. I should probably have used “Columbia” throughout... Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by Dylan. Much of the information in this episode comes from Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties by Elijah Wald, which is recommended, as all Wald's books are. I've used these books for all the episodes involving Dylan: Bob Dylan: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon is a song-by-song look at every song Dylan ever wrote, as is Revolution in the Air, by Clinton Heylin. Heylin also wrote the most comprehensive and accurate biography of Dylan, Behind the Shades. I've also used Robert Shelton's No Direction Home, which is less accurate, but which is written by someone who knew Dylan. The New Yorker article by Nat Hentoff I talk about is here. And for the information about the writing of "Like a Rolling Stone", I relied on yet another book by Heylin, All the Madmen. Dylan's albums up to 1967 can all be found in their original mono mixes on this box set. And Dylan's performances at Newport from 1963 through 1965 are on this DVD. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript There's a story that everyone tells about Bob Dylan in 1965, the story that has entered into legend. It's the story that you'll see in most of the biographies of him, and in all those coffee-table histories of rock music put out by glossy music magazines. Bob Dylan, in this story, was part of the square, boring, folk scene until he plugged in an electric guitar and just blew the minds of all those squares, who immediately ostracised him forever for being a Judas and betraying their traditionalist acoustic music, but he was just too cool and too much of a rebel to be bound by their rules, man. Pete Seeger even got an axe and tried to cut his way through the cables of the amplifiers, he was so offended by the desecration of the Newport Folk Festival. And like all these stories, it's an oversimplification but there's an element of truth to it too. So today, we're going to look at what actually happened when Dylan went electric. We're going to look at what led to him going electric, and at the truth behind the legend of Seeger's axe. And we're going to look at the masterpiece at the centre of it all, a record that changed rock songwriting forever. We're going to look at Bob Dylan and "Like a Rolling Stone": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone"] While we've seen Dylan turn up in all sorts of episodes -- most recently the episode on "Mr. Tambourine Man", the last time we looked at him in detail was in the episode on "Blowin' in the Wind", and when we left him there he had just recorded his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, but it had not yet been released. As we'll see, Dylan was always an artist who moved on very quickly from what he'd been doing before, and that had started as early as that album. While his first album, produced by John Hammond, had been made up almost entirely of traditional songs and songs he'd learned from Dave van Ronk or Eric von Schmidt, with only two originals, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan had started out being produced by Hammond, but as Hammond and Dylan's manager Albert Grossman had come to find it difficult to work together, the last few tracks had been produced by Tom Wilson. We've mentioned Wilson briefly a couple of times already, but to reiterate, Wilson was a Black Harvard graduate and political conservative whose background was in jazz and who had no knowledge of or love for folk music. But Wilson saw two things in Dylan -- the undeniable power of his lyrics, and his vocals, which Wilson compared to Ray Charles. Wilson wanted to move Dylan towards working with a backing band, and this was something that Dylan was interested in doing, but his first experiment with that, with John Hammond, hadn't been a particular success. Dylan had recorded a single backed with a band -- "Mixed-Up Confusion", backed with "Corrina, Corrina", a version of an old song that had been recorded by both Bob Wills and Big Joe Turner, but had recently been brought back to the public mind by a version Phil Spector had produced for Ray Peterson. Dylan's version of that song had a country lope and occasional breaks into Jimmie Rodgers style keening that foreshadow his work of the late sixties: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Corrina, Corrina (single version)"] A different take of that track was included on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, an album that was made up almost entirely of originals. Those originals fell into roughly two types -- there were songs like "Masters of War", "Blowin' in the Wind", and "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" which dealt in some way with the political events of the time -- the fear of nuclear war, the ongoing conflict in Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement and more -- but did so in an elliptical, poetic way; and there were songs about distance in a relationship -- songs like "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright", which do a wonderful job at portraying a young man's conflicted feelings -- the girl has left him, and he wants her back, but he wants to pretend that he doesn't. While it's always a bad idea to look for a direct autobiographical interpretation of Dylan's lyrics, it seems fairly safe to say that these songs were inspired by Dylan's feelings for his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, who had gone travelling in Europe and not seen him for eight months, and who he was worried he would never see again, and he does seem to have actually had several conflicting feelings about this, ranging from desperation for her to come back through to anger and resentment. The surprising thing about The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan is that it's a relatively coherent piece of work, despite being recorded with two different producers over a period of more than a year, and that recording being interrupted by Dylan's own travels to the UK, his separation from and reconciliation with Rotolo, and a change of producers. If you listened to it, you would get an impression of exactly who Dylan was -- you'd come away from it thinking that he was an angry, talented, young man who was trying to merge elements of both traditional English folk music and Robert Johnson style Delta blues with poetic lyrics related to what was going on in the young man's life. By the next album, that opinion of Dylan would have to be reworked, and it would have to be reworked with every single album that came out. But The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan came out at the perfect time for Dylan to step into the role of "spokesman for a generation" -- a role which he didn't want, and to which he wasn't particularly suited. Because it came out in May 1963, right at the point at which folk music was both becoming hugely more mainstream, and becoming more politicised. And nothing showed both those things as well as the Hootenanny boycott: [Excerpt: The Brothers Four, “Hootenanny Saturday Night”] We've talked before about Hootenanny, the folk TV show, but what we haven't mentioned is that there was a quite substantial boycott of that show by some of the top musicians in folk music at the time. The reason for this is that Pete Seeger, the elder statesman of the folk movement, and his old band the Weavers, were both blacklisted from the show because of Seeger's Communist leanings. The Weavers were --- according to some sources -- told that they could go on if they would sign a loyalty oath, but they refused. It's hard for those of us who weren't around at the time to really comprehend both just how subversive folk music was considered, and how seriously subversion was taken in the USA of the early 1960s. To give a relevant example -- Suze Rotolo was pictured on the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Because of this, her cousin's husband, who was in the military, lost his security clearance and didn't get a promotion he was in line for. Again, someone lost his security clearance because his wife's cousin was pictured on the cover of a Bob Dylan album. So the blacklisting of Seeger and the Weavers was considered a serious matter by the folk music community, and people reacted very strongly. Joan Baez announced that she wouldn't be going on Hootenanny until they asked Seeger on, and Dylan, the Kingston Trio, Dave van Ronk, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, and Peter, Paul, and Mary, among many others, all refused to go on the show as a result. But the odd thing was, whenever anyone *actually asked* Pete Seeger what he thought they should do, he told them they should go on the TV show and use it as an opportunity to promote the music. So while the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul, and Mary, two of the biggest examples of the commercialisation of folk music that the serious purists sneered at, were refusing to go on the TV in solidarity with a Communist, that Communist's brother, Mike Seeger, happily went on Hootenanny with his band the New Lost City Ramblers, and when the Tarriers were invited on to the show but it clashed with one of their regular bookings, Pete Seeger covered their booking for them so they could appear. Dylan was on the side of the boycotters, though he was not too clear on exactly why. When he spoke about the boycott on stage, this is what he had to say: [Excerpt: Dylan talks about the boycott. Transcript: "Now a friend of mine, a friend of all yours I'm sure, Pete Seeger's been blacklisted [applause]. He and another group called the Weavers who are around New York [applause] I turned down that television show, but I got no right [applause] but . . . I feel bad turning it down, because the Weavers and Pete Seeger can't be on it. They oughta turn it down. They aren't even asked to be on it because they are blacklisted. Uh—which is, which is a bad thing. I don't know why it's bad, but it's just bad, it's bad all around."] Hootenanny started broadcasting in April 1963, just over a month before The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan came out, and so it would have been a good opportunity for publicity for him -- but turning the show down was also good publicity. Hootenanny wouldn't be the only opportunity to appear on TV that he was offered. It would also not be the only one he turned down. In May, Dylan was given the opportunity to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show, but he agreed on one condition -- that he be allowed to sing "Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues". For those who don't know, the John Birch Society is a far-right conspiratorial organisation which had a huge influence on the development of the American right-wing in the middle of the twentieth century, and is responsible for perpetuating almost every conspiracy theory that has exerted a malign influence on the country and the world since that time. They were a popular punching bag for the left and centre, and for good reason -- we heard the Chad Mitchell Trio mocking them, for example, in the episode on "Mr. Tambourine Man" a couple of weeks ago. So Dylan insisted that if he was going to go on the Ed Sullivan Show, it would only be to perform his song about them: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues"] Now, the Ed Sullivan Show was not interested in having Dylan sing a song that would upset a substantial proportion of its audience, on what was after all meant to be an entertainment show, and so Dylan didn't appear on the show -- and he got a big publicity boost from his principled refusal to make a TV appearance that would have given him a big publicity boost. It's interesting to note in this context that Dylan himself clearly didn't actually think very much of the song -- he never included it on any of his albums, and it remained unreleased for decades. By this point, Dylan had started dating Joan Baez, with whom he would have an on-again off-again relationship for the next couple of years, even though at this point he was also still seeing Suze Rotolo. Baez was one of the big stars of the folk movement, and like Rotolo she was extremely politically motivated. She was also a fan of Dylan's writing, and had started recording versions of his songs on her albums: [Excerpt: Joan Baez, "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"] The relationship between the two of them became much more public when they appeared together at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963. The Newport Folk Festival had started in 1959, as a spinoff from the successful Newport Jazz Festival, which had been going for a number of years previously. As there was a large overlap between the jazz and folk music fanbases -- both musics appealed at this point to educated, middle-class, liberals who liked to think of themselves as a little bit Bohemian -- the Jazz Festival had first started putting on an afternoon of folk music during its normal jazz programme, and then spun that off into a whole separate festival, initially with the help of Albert Grossman, who advised on which acts should be booked (and of course included several of the acts he managed on the bill). Both Newport festivals had been shut down after rioting at the 1960 Jazz Festival, as three thousand more people had turned up for the show than there was capacity for, and the Marines had had to be called in to clear the streets of angry jazz fans, but the jazz festival had returned in 1962, and in 1963 the folk festival came back as well. By this time, Albert Grossman was too busy to work for the festival, and so its organisation was taken over by a committee headed by Pete Seeger. At that 1963 festival, even though Dylan was at this point still a relative unknown compared to some of the acts on the bill, he was made the headliner of the first night, which finished with his set, and then with him bringing Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary, Pete Seeger and the Freedom Singers out to sing with him on "Blowin' in the Wind" and "We Shall Overcome". To many people, Dylan's appearance in 1963 was what launched him from being "one of the rising stars of the folk movement" to being the most important musician in the movement -- still just one of many, but the first among equals. He was now being talked of in the same terms as Joan Baez or Pete Seeger, and was also starting to behave like someone as important as them -- like he was a star. And that was partly because Baez was promoting Dylan, having him duet with her on stage on his songs -- though few would now argue that the combination of their voices did either artist any favours, Baez's pure, trained, voice, rubbing up against Dylan's more idiosyncratic phrasing in ways that made both sound less impressive: [Excerpt: Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, "With God On Our Side (live at Newport 1963)"] At the end of 1963, Dylan recorded his third album, which came out in early 1964. The Times They Are A-Changin' seems to be Dylan's least personal album to this point, and seems to have been written as a conscious attempt to write the kind of songs that people wanted and expected from him -- there were songs about particular recent news events, like "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll", the true story of the murder of a Black woman by a white man, and "Only a Pawn in Their Game", about the murder of the Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers. There were fictional dramatisations of the kind of effects that real-world social problems were having on people, like "North Country Blues", in which the callous way mining towns were treated by capital leads to a woman losing her parents, brother, husband, and children, or "The Ballad of Hollis Brown", about a farmer driven to despair by poverty who ends up killing his whole family and himself. As you can imagine, it's not a very cheery album, but it's one that impressed a lot of people, especially its title track, which was very deliberately written as an anthem for the new social movements that were coming up: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "The Times They Are A-Changin'"] But it was a bleak album, with none of the humour that had characterised Dylan's first two albums. Soon after recording the album, Dylan had a final split with Rotolo, went travelling for a while, and took LSD for the first time. He also started to distance himself from Baez at this point, though the two would remain together until mid 1965. He seems to have regarded the political material he was doing as a mistake, as something he was doing for other people, rather than because that was what he wanted to do. He toured the UK in early 1964, and then returned to the US in time to record his fourth album, Another Side of Bob Dylan. It can be argued that this is the point where Dylan really becomes himself, and starts making music that's the music he wants to make, rather than music that he thinks other people want him to make. The entire album was recorded in one session, along with a few tracks that didn't make the cut -- like the early version of "Mr. Tambourine Man" with Ramblin' Jack Elliott that we heard in the episode on that song. Elliott was in attendance, as were a number of Dylan's other friends, though the album features only Dylan performing. Also there was the journalist Nat Hentoff, who wrote a full account of the recording session for the New Yorker, which I'll link in the show notes. Dylan told Hentoff "“There aren't any finger-pointing songs in here, either. Those records I've already made, I'll stand behind them, but some of that was jumping into the scene to be heard and a lot of it was because I didn't see anybody else doing that kind of thing. Now a lot of people are doing finger-pointing songs. You know—pointing to all the things that are wrong. Me, I don't want to write for people anymore. You know—be a spokesman. Like I once wrote about Emmett Till in the first person, pretending I was him. From now on, I want to write from inside me, and to do that I'm going to have to get back to writing like I used to when I was ten—having everything come out naturally." Dylan was right to say that there were no finger-pointing songs. The songs on Another Side of Bob Dylan were entirely personal -- "Ballad in Plain D", in particular, is Dylan's take on the night he split up with Suze Rotolo, laying the blame -- unfairly, as he would later admit -- on her older sister. The songs mostly dealt with love and relationships, and as a result were ripe for cover versions. The opening track, in particular, "All I Really Want to Do", which in Dylan's version was a Jimmie Rodgers style hillbilly tune, became the subject of duelling cover versions. The Byrds' version came out as the follow-up to their version of "Mr. Tambourine Man": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "All I Really Want to Do"] But Cher also released a version -- which the Byrds claimed came about when Cher's husband Sonny Bono secretly taped a Byrds live show where they performed the song before they'd released it, and he then stole their arrangement: [Excerpt: Cher, "All I Really Want to Do"] In America, the Byrds' version only made number forty on the charts, while Cher made number fifteen. In the UK, where both artists were touring at the time to promote the single, Cher made number nine but the Byrds charted higher at number four. Both those releases came out after the album came out in late 1964, but even before it was released, Dylan was looking for other artists to cover his new songs. He found one at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, where he met Johnny Cash for the first time. Cash had been a fan of Dylan for some time -- and indeed, he's often credited as being the main reason why CBS persisted with Dylan after his first album was unsuccessful, as Cash had lobbied for him within the company -- and he'd recently started to let that influence show. His most recent hit, "Understand Your Man", owed more than a little to Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right", and Cash had also started recording protest songs. At Newport, Cash performed his own version of "Don't Think Twice": [Excerpt: Johnny Cash, "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"] Cash and Dylan met up, with June Carter and Joan Baez, in Baez's hotel room, and according to later descriptions they were both so excited to meet each other they were bouncing with excitement, jumping up and down on the beds. They played music together all night, and Dylan played some of his new songs for Cash. One of them was "It Ain't Me Babe", a song that seems at least slightly inspired by "She Loves You" -- you can sing the "yeah, yeah, yeah" and "no, no, no" together -- and which was the closing track of Another Side of Bob Dylan. Cash soon released his own version of the song, which became a top five country hit: [Excerpt: Johnny Cash, "It Ain't Me Babe"] But it wasn't long after meeting Cash that Dylan met the group who may have inspired that song -- and his meeting with the Beatles seems to have confirmed in him his decision that he needed to move away from the folk scene and towards making pop records. This was something that Tom Wilson had been pushing for for a while -- Wilson had told Dylan's manager Albert Grossman that if they could get Dylan backed by a good band, they'd have a white Ray Charles on their hands. As an experiment, Wilson took some session musicians into the studio and had them overdub an electric backing on Dylan's acoustic version of "House of the Rising Sun", basing the new backing on the Animals' hit version. The result wasn't good enough to release, but it did show that there was a potential for combining Dylan's music with the sound of electric guitars and drums: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, “House of the Rising Sun (electric version)”] Dylan was also being influenced by his friend John Hammond Jr, the blues musician son of Dylan's first producer, and a veteran of the Greenwich Village folk scene. Hammond had decided that he wanted to show the British R&B bands what proper American blues sounded like, and so he'd recruited a group of mostly-Canadian musicians to back him on an electric album. His "So Many Roads" album featured three members of a group called Levon and the Hawks -- Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, and Robbie Robertson -- who had recently quit working for the Canadian rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins -- plus harmonica player Charlie Musselwhite and Mike Bloomfield, who was normally a guitarist but who is credited on piano for the album: [Excerpt: John Hammond, Jr. "Who Do You Love?"] Dylan was inspired by Hammond's sound, and wanted to get the same sound on his next record, though he didn't consider hiring the same musicians. Instead, for his next album he brought in Bruce Langhorne, the tambourine man himself, on guitar, Bobby Gregg -- a drummer who had been the house drummer for Cameo-Parkway and played on hits by Chubby Checker, Bobby Rydell and others; the session guitarists Al Gorgoni and Kenny Rankin, piano players Frank Owens and Paul Griffin, and two bass players, Joseph Macho and William Lee, the father of the film director Spike Lee. Not all of these played on all the finished tracks -- and there were other tracks recorded during the sessions, where Dylan was accompanied by Hammond and another guitarist, John Sebastian, that weren't used at all -- but that's the lineup that played on Dylan's first electric album, Bringing it All Back Home. The first single, "Subterranean Homesick Blues" actually takes more inspiration than one might imagine from the old-school folk singers Dylan was still associating with. Its opening lines seem to be a riff on "Taking it Easy", a song that had originally been written in the forties by Woody Guthrie for the Almanac Singers, where it had been a song about air-raid sirens: [Excerpt: The Almanac Singers, "Taking it Easy"] But had then been rewritten by Pete Seeger for the Weavers, whose version had included this verse that wasn't in the original: [Excerpt: The Weavers, "Taking it Easy"] Dylan took that verse, and the basic Guthrie-esque talking blues rhythm, and connected it to Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business" with its rapid-fire joking blues lyrics: [Excerpt: Chuck Berry, "Too Much Monkey Business"] But Dylan's lyrics were a radical departure, a freeform, stream-of-consciousness proto-psychedelic lyric inspired as much by the Beat poets as by any musician -- it's no coincidence that in the promotional film Dylan made for the song, one of the earliest examples of what would become known as the rock video, the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg makes an appearance: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Subterranean Homesick Blues"] "Subterranean Homesick Blues" made the top forty in the US -- it only made number thirty-nine, but it was Dylan's first single to chart at all in the US. And it made the top ten in the UK -- but it's notable that even over here, there was still some trepidation about Dylan's new direction. To promote his UK tour, CBS put out a single of "The Times They Are A-Changin'", and that too made the top ten, and spent longer on the charts than "Subterranean Homesick Blues". Indeed, it seems like everyone was hedging their bets. The opening side of Bringing it All Back Home is all electric, but the B-side is made up entirely of acoustic performances, though sometimes with a little added electric guitar countermelody -- it's very much in the same style as Dylan's earlier albums, and seems to be a way of pulling back after testing the waters, of reassuring people who might have been upset by the change in style on the first side that this was still the same Dylan they knew. And the old Dylan certainly still had plenty of commercial life in him. Indeed, when Dylan went to the UK for a tour in spring of 1965, he found that British musicians were trying to copy his style -- a young man called Donovan seemed to be doing his best to *be* Dylan, with even the title of his debut hit single seeming to owe something to "Blowing in the Wind": [Excerpt: Donovan, "Catch the Wind (original single version)"] On that UK tour, Dylan performed solo as he always had -- though by this point he had taken to bringing along an entourage. Watching the classic documentary of that tour, Dont Look Back, it's quite painful to see Dylan's cruelty to Joan Baez, who had come along on the expectation that she would be duetting with him occasionally, as he had dueted with her, but who is sidelined, tormented, and ignored. It's even worse to see Bob Neuwirth, a hanger-on who is very obviously desperate to impress Dylan by copying all his mannerisms and affectations, doing the same. It's unsurprising that this was the end of Dylan and Baez's relationship. Dylan's solo performances on that tour went down well, but some of his fans questioned him about his choice to make an electric record. But he wasn't going to stop recording with electric musicians. Indeed, Tom Wilson also came along on the tour, and while he was in England he made an attempt to record a track with the members of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers -- Mayall, Hughie Flint, Eric Clapton, and John McVie, though it was unsuccessful and only a low-fidelity fragment of it circulates: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan and the Bluesbreakers, "If You Gotta Go, Go Now"] Also attending that session was a young wannabe singer from Germany who Dylan had taken up with, though their dalliance was very brief. During the session Dylan cut a demo of a song he planned to give her, but Nico didn't end up recording "I'll Keep it With Mine" until a couple of years later. But one other thing happened in England. After the UK tour, Dylan travelled over to Europe for a short tour, then returned to the UK to do a show for the BBC -- his first full televised concert. Unfortunately, that show never went ahead -- there was a party the night before, and Dylan was hospitalised after it with what was said to be food poisoning. It might even actually have been food poisoning, but take a listen to the episode I did on Vince Taylor, who was also at that party, and draw your own conclusions. Anyway, Dylan was laid up in bed for a while, and took the opportunity to write what he's variously described as being ten or twenty pages of stream of consciousness vomit, out of which he eventually took four pages of lyrics, a vicious attack on a woman who was originally the protagonist's social superior, but has since fallen. He's never spoken in any detail about what or who the subject of the song was, but given that it was written just days after his breakup with Baez, it's not hard to guess. The first attempt at recording the song was a false start. On June the fifteenth, Dylan and most of the same musicians who'd played on his previous album went into the studio to record it, along with Mike Bloomfield, who had played on that John Hammond album that had inspired Dylan and was now playing in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Bloomfield had been surprised when Dylan had told him that he didn't want the kind of string-bending electric blues that Bloomfield usually played, but he managed to come up with something Dylan approved of -- but the song was at this point in waltz time: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone (early version)"] The session ended, but Joe Macho, Al Gorgoni and Bobby Gregg stayed around after the session, when Tom Wilson called in another session guitarist to join them in doing the same trick he'd done on "House of the Rising Sun", overdubbing new instruments on a flop acoustic record he'd produced for a Greenwich Village folk duo who'd already split up. But we'll hear more about "The Sound of Silence" in a few weeks' time. The next day, the same musicians came back, along with one new one. Al Kooper had been invited by Wilson to come along and watch the session, but he was determined that he was going to play on whatever was recorded. He got to the session early, brought his guitar and amp in and got tuned up before Wilson arrived. But then Kooper heard Bloomfield play, realised that he simply couldn't play at anything remotely like the same standard, and decided he'd be best off staying in the control room after all. But then, before they started recording "Like a Rolling Stone", which by now was in 4/4 time, Frank Owens, who had been playing organ, switched to piano and left his organ on. Kooper saw his chance -- he played a bit of keyboards, too, and the song was in C, which is the easiest key to play in. Kooper asked Wilson if he could go and play, and Wilson didn't exactly say no, so Kooper went into the studio and sat at the organ. Kooper improvised the organ line that became the song's most notable instrumental part, but you will notice that it's mixed quite low in the track. This is because Wilson was unimpressed with Kooper's playing, which is technically pretty poor -- indeed, for much of the song, Kooper is a beat behind the rest of the band, waiting for them to change chords and then following the change on the next measure. Luckily, Kooper is also a good enough natural musician that he made this work, and it gave the song a distinctive sound: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone"] The finished record came in at around six minutes -- and here I should just mention that most books on the subject say that the single was six minutes and thirteen seconds long. That's the length of the stereo mix of the song on the stereo version of the album. The mono mix on the mono album, which we just heard, is five minutes fifty-eight, as it has a shorter fade. I haven't been able to track down a copy of the single as released in 1965, but usually the single mix would be the same as the mono album mix. Whatever the exact length, it was much, much, longer than the norm for a single -- the Animals' "House of the Rising Sun" had been regarded as ridiculously long at four and a half minutes -- and Columbia originally wanted to split the song over two sides of a single. But eventually it was released as one side, in full: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone"] That's Bruce Langhorne there playing that rather sloppy tambourine part, high in the mix. The record made the top five in the UK, and reached number two in the US, only being held off from the top spot by "Help!" by the Beatles. It would, however, be the last track that Tom Wilson produced for Dylan. Nobody knows what caused their split after three and a half albums working together -- and everything suggests that on the UK tour in the Spring, the two were very friendly. But they had some sort of disagreement, about which neither of them would ever speak, other than a comment by Wilson in an interview shortly before his death in which he said that Dylan had told him he was going to get Phil Spector to produce his records. In the event, the rest of the album Dylan was working on would be produced by Bob Johnston, who would be Dylan's regular producer until the mid-seventies. So "Like a Rolling Stone" was a major break in Dylan's career, and there was another one shortly after its release, when Dylan played the Newport Folk Festival for the third time, in what has become possibly the single most discussed and analysed performance in folk or rock music. The most important thing to note here is that there was not a backlash among the folk crowd against electric instruments. The Newport Folk Festival had *always* had electric performers -- John Lee Hooker and Johnny Cash and The Staple Singers had all performed with electric guitars and nobody had cared. What there was, was a backlash against pop music. You see, up until the Beatles hit America, the commercial side of folk music had been huge. Acts like the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul, and Mary, The Chad Mitchell Trio, and so on had been massive. Most of the fans at the Newport Folk Festival actually despised many of these acts as sell-outs, doing watered-down versions of the traditional music they loved. But at the same time, those acts *were* doing watered-down versions of the traditional music they loved, and by doing so they were exposing more people to that traditional music. They were making programmes like Hootenanny possible -- and the folkies didn't like Hootenanny, but Hootenanny existing meant that the New Lost City Ramblers got an audience they would otherwise not have got. There was a recognition, then, that the commercialised folk music that many of them despised was nonetheless important in the development of a thriving scene. And it was those acts, the Kingston Trios and Peter, Paul, and Marys, who were fast losing their commercial relevance because of the renewed popularity of rock music. If Hootenanny gets cancelled and Shindig put on in its place, that's great for fans of the Righteous Brothers and Sam Cooke, but it's not so great if you want to hear "Tom Dooley" or "If I Had a Hammer". And so many of the old guard in the folk movement weren't wary of electric guitars *as instruments*, but they were wary of anything that looked like someone taking sides with the new pop music rather than the old folk music. For Dylan's first performance at the festival in 1965, he played exactly the set that people would expect of him, and there was no problem. The faultlines opened up, not with Dylan's first performance, but with the performance by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, as part of a history of the blues, presented by Alan Lomax. Lomax had no objection to rock and roll -- indeed, earlier in the festival the Chambers Brothers, a Black electric group from Mississippi, had performed a set of rock and R&B songs, and Lomax had come on stage afterwards and said “I'm very proud tonight that we finally got onto the Newport Folk Festival our modern American folk music: rock 'n' roll!” But Lomax didn't think that the Butterfield band met his criteria of "authenticity". And he had a point. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band were an integrated group -- their rhythm section were Black musicians who had played with Howlin' Wolf -- and they'd gained experience through playing Chicago blues on the South Side of Chicago, but their leader, Butterfield, was a white man, as was Mike Bloomfield, their guitarist, and so they'd quickly moved to playing clubs on the North side, where Black musicians had generally not been able to play. Butterfield and Bloomfield were both excellent musicians, but they were closer to the British blues lovers who were making up groups like the Rolling Stones, Animals, and Manfred Mann. There was a difference -- they were from Chicago, not from the Home Counties -- but they were still scholars coming at the music from the outside, rather than people who'd grown up with the music and had it as part of their culture. The Butterfield Band were being promoted as a sort of American answer to the Stones, and they had been put on Lomax's bill rather against his will -- he wanted to have some Chicago blues to illustrate that part of the music, but why not Muddy Waters or Howlin' Wolf, rather than this new group who had never really done anything? One he'd never even heard -- but who he knew that Albert Grossman was thinking about managing. So his introduction to the Butterfield Blues Band's performance was polite but hardly rapturous. He said "Us white cats always moved in, a little bit late, but tried to catch up...I understand that this present combination has not only caught up but passed the rest. That's what I hear—I'm anxious to find out whether it's true or not." He then introduced the musicians, and they started to play an old Little Walter song: [Excerpt: The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, "Juke"] But after the set, Grossman was furious at Lomax, asking him what kind of introduction that was meant to be. Lomax responded by asking if Grossman wanted a punch in the mouth, Grossman hurled a homophobic slur at Lomax, and the two men started hitting each other and rolling round in the dirt, to the amusement of pretty much everyone around. But Lomax and Grossman were both far from amused. Lomax tried to get the Festival board to kick Grossman out, and almost succeeded, until someone explained that if they did, then that would mean that all Grossman's acts, including huge names like Dylan and Peter, Paul, and Mary, would also be out. Nobody's entirely sure whose idea it was, but it seems to have been Grossman who thought that since Bloomfield had played on Dylan's recent single, it might be an idea to get the Butterfield Blues Band to back Dylan on stage, as a snub to Lomax. But the idea seems to have cohered properly when Grossman bumped into Al Kooper, who was attending the festival just as an audience member. Grossman gave Kooper a pair of backstage passes, and told him to meet up with Dylan. And so, for Dylan's performance on the Sunday -- scheduled in the middle of the day, rather than as the headliner as most people expected, he appeared with an electric guitar, backed by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and Al Kooper. He opened with his recent single "Maggie's Farm", and followed it with the new one, "Like a Rolling Stone": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone (live at Newport)"] After those two songs, the group did one more, a song called "Phantom Engineer", which they hadn't rehearsed properly and which was an utter train wreck. And then they left the stage. And there was booing. How much booing, and what the cause was, is hard to say, but everyone agrees there was some. Some people claim that the booing was just because the set had been so short, others say that the audience was mostly happy but there were just a few people booing. And others say that the booing mostly came from the front -- that there were sound problems that meant that while the performance sounded great to people further back, there was a tremendous level of distortion near the front. That's certainly what Pete Seeger said. Seeger was visibly distraught and angry at the sounds coming from the stage. He later said, and I believe him, that it wasn't annoyance at Dylan playing with an electric band, but at the distorted sound. He said he couldn't hear the words, that the guitar was too loud compared to the vocals, and in particular that his father, who was an old man using a hearing aid, was in actual physical pain at the sound. According to Joe Boyd, later a famous record producer but at this time just helping out at the festival, Seeger, the actor Theodore Bikel, and Alan Lomax, all of whom were on the festival board, told Boyd to take a message to Paul Rothchild, who was working the sound, telling him that the festival board ordered him to lower the volume. When Boyd got there, he found Rothchild there with Albert Grossman and Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul, and Mary, who was also on the board. When Boyd gave his message, Yarrow responded that the board was "adequately represented at the sound controls", that the sound was where the musicians wanted it, and gave Boyd a message to take back to the other board members, consisting of a single raised middle finger. Whatever the cause of the anger, which was far from universal, Dylan was genuinely baffled and upset at the reaction -- while it's been portrayed since, including by Dylan himself at times, as a deliberate act of provocation on Dylan's part, it seems that at the time he was just going on stage with his new friends, to play his new songs in front of some of his old friends and a crowd that had always been supportive of him. Eventually Peter Yarrow, who was MCing, managed to persuade Dylan to go back on stage and do a couple more numbers, alone this time as the band hadn't rehearsed any more songs. He scrounged up an acoustic guitar, went back on, spent a couple of minutes fiddling around with the guitar, got a different guitar because something was wrong with that one, played "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue", spent another couple of minutes tuning up, and then finally played "Mr. Tambourine Man": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Mr. Tambourine Man (live at Newport)"] But that pause while Dylan was off stage scrounging an acoustic guitar from somewhere led to a rumour that has still got currency fifty-six years later. Because Peter Yarrow, trying to keep the crowd calm, said "He's gone to get his axe" -- using musicians' slang for a guitar. But many of the crowd didn't know that slang. But they had seen Pete Seeger furious, and they'd also seen, earlier in the festival, a demonstration of work-songs, sung by people who kept time by chopping wood, and according to some people Seeger had joined in with that demonstration, swinging an axe as he sang. So the audience put two and two together, and soon the rumour was going round the festival -- Pete Seeger had been so annoyed by Dylan going electric he'd tried to chop the cables with an axe, and had had to be held back from doing so. Paul Rothchild even later claimed to have seen Seeger brandishing it. The rumour became so pervasive that in later years, even as he denied doing it, Seeger tried to explain it away by saying that he might have said something like "I wish I had an axe so I could cut those cables". In fact, Seeger wasn't angry at Dylan, as much as he was concerned -- shortly afterwards he wrote a private note to himself trying to sort out his own feelings, which said in part "I like some rock and roll a great deal. Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters. I confess that, like blues and like flamenco music, I can't listen to it for a long time at a stretch. I just don't feel that aggressive, personally. But I have a question. Was the sound at Newport from Bob's aggregation good rock and roll? I once had a vision of a beast with hollow fangs. I first saw it when my mother-in-law, who I loved very much, died of cancer... Who knows, but I am one of the fangs that has sucked Bob dry. It is in the hope that I can learn that I write these words, asking questions I need help to answer, using language I never intended. Hoping that perhaps I'm wrong—but if I am right, hoping that it won't happen again." Seeger would later make his own electric albums, and he would always continue to be complimentary towards Dylan in public. He even repeatedly said that while he still wished he'd been able to hear the words and that the guitar had been mixed quieter, he knew he'd been on the wrong side, and that if he had the time over he'd have gone on stage and asked the audience to stop booing Dylan. But the end result was the same -- Dylan was now no longer part of the Newport Folk Festival crowd. He'd moved on and was now a pop star, and nothing was going to change that. He'd split with Suze, he'd split with Joan Baez, he'd split with Tom Wilson, and now he'd split with his peer group. From now on Dylan wasn't a spokesman for his generation, or the leader of a movement. He was a young man with a leather jacket and a Stratocaster, and he was going to make rock music. And we'll see the results of that in future episodes.
Episode one hundred and twenty-eight of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Mr. Tambourine Man" by the Byrds, and the start of LA folk-rock. 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 "I Got You Babe" by Sonny and Cher. 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/ Erratum The version of this originally uploaded got the date of the Dylan tour filmed for Don't Look Back wrong. I edited out the half-sentence in question when this was pointed out to me very shortly after uploading. Resources As usual, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode (with the exception of the early Gene Clark demo snippet, which I've not been able to find a longer version of). For information on Dylan and the song, I've mostly used these books: Bob Dylan: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon is a song-by-song look at every song Dylan ever wrote, as is Revolution in the Air, by Clinton Heylin. Heylin also wrote the most comprehensive and accurate biography of Dylan, Behind the Shades. I've also used Robert Shelton's No Direction Home, which is less accurate, but which is written by someone who knew Dylan. While for the Byrds, I relied mostly on Timeless Flight Revisited by Johnny Rogan, with some information from Chris Hillman's autobiography. This three-CD set is a reasonable way of getting most of the Byrds' important recordings, while this contains the pre-Byrds recordings the group members did with Jim Dickson. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we're going to take a look at one of the pivotal recordings in folk-rock music, a track which, though it was not by any means the first folk-rock record, came to define the subgenre in the minds of the listening public, and which by bringing together the disparate threads of influence from Bob Dylan, the Searchers, the Beatles, and the Beach Boys, manages to be arguably the record that defines early 1965. We're going to look at "Mr. Tambourine Man" by the Byrds: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Mr. Tambourine Man"] Folk-rock as a genre was something that was bound to happen sooner rather than later. We've already seen how many of the British R&B bands that were becoming popular in the US were influenced by folk music, with records like "House of the Rising Sun" taking traditional folk songs and repurposing them for a rock idiom. And as soon as British bands started to have a big influence on American music, that would have to inspire a reassessment by American musicians of their own folk music. Because of course, while the British bands were inspired by rock and roll, they were all also coming from a skiffle tradition which saw Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Big Bill Broonzy, and the rest as being the people to emulate, and that would show up in their music. Most of the British bands came from the bluesier end of the folk tradition -- with the exception of the Liverpool bands, who pretty much all liked their Black music on the poppy side and their roots music to be more in a country vein -- but they were still all playing music which showed the clear influence of country and folk as well as blues. And that influence was particularly obvious to those American musicians who were suddenly interested in becoming rock and roll stars, but who had previously been folkies. Musicians like Gene Clark. Gene Clark was born in Missouri, and had formed a rock and roll group in his teens called Joe Meyers and the Sharks. According to many biographies, the Sharks put out a record of Clark's song "Blue Ribbons", but as far as I've been able to tell, this was Clark embellishing things a great deal -- the only evidence of this song that anyone has been able to find is a home recording from this time, of which a few seconds were used in a documentary on Clark: [Excerpt: Gene Clark, "Blue Ribbons"] After his period in the Sharks, Clark became a folk singer, starting out in a group called the Surf Riders. But in August 1963 he was spotted by the New Christy Minstrels, a fourteen-piece ultra-commercial folk group who had just released a big hit single, "Green Green", with a lead sung by one of their members, Barry McGuire: [Excerpt: The New Christy Minstrels, "Green Green"] Clark was hired to replace a departing member, and joined the group, who as well as McGuire at that time also included Larry Ramos, who would later go on to join The Association and sing joint lead on their big hit "Never My Love": [Excerpt: The Association, "Never My Love"] Clark was only in the New Christy Minstrels for a few months, but he appeared on several of their albums -- they recorded four albums during the months he was with the group, but there's some debate as to whether he appeared on all of them, as he may have missed some recording sessions when he had a cold. Clark didn't get much opportunity to sing lead on the records, but he was more prominent in live performances, and can be seen and heard in the many TV appearances the group did in late 1963: [Excerpt: The New Christy Minstrels, "Julianne"] But Clark was not a good fit for the group -- he didn't put himself forward very much, which meant he didn't get many lead vocals, which meant in turn that he seemed not to be pulling his weight. But the thing that really changed his mind came in late 1963, on tour in Canada, when he heard this: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "She Loves You"] Clark knew instantly that that was the kind of music he wanted to be making, and when "I Want to Hold Your Hand" came out in the US soon afterwards, it was the impetus that Clark needed in order to quit the group and move to California. There he visited the Troubadour club in Los Angeles, and saw another performer who had been in an ultra-commercial folk group until he had been bitten by the Beatle bug -- Roger McGuinn. One note here -- Roger McGuinn at this point used his birth name, but he changed it for religious reasons in 1967. I've been unable to find out his views on his old name -- whether he considers it closer to a trans person's deadname which would be disrespectful to mention, or to something like Reg Dwight becoming Elton John or David Jones becoming David Bowie. As I presume everyone listening to this has access to a search engine and can find out his birth name if at all interested, I'll be using "Roger McGuinn" throughout this episode, and any other episodes that deal with him, at least until I find out for certain how he feels about the use of that name. McGuinn had grown up in Chicago, and become obsessed with the guitar after seeing Elvis on TV in 1956, but as rockabilly had waned in popularity he had moved into folk music, taking lessons from Frank Hamilton, a musician who had played in a group with Ramblin' Jack Elliot, and who would later go on to join a 1960s lineup of the Weavers. Hamilton taught McGuinn Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie songs, and taught him how to play the banjo. Hamilton also gave McGuinn an enthusiasm for the twelve-string guitar, an instrument that had been popular among folk musicians like Lead Belly, but which had largely fallen out of fashion. McGuinn became a regular in the audience at the Gate of Horn, a folk club owned by Albert Grossman, who would later become Bob Dylan's manager, and watched performers like Odetta and Josh White. He also built up his own small repertoire of songs by people like Ewan MacColl, which he would perform at coffee shops. At one of those coffee shops he was seen by a member of the Limeliters, one of the many Kingston Trio-alike groups that had come up during the folk boom. The Limeliters were after a guitarist to back them, and offered McGuinn the job. He turned it down at first, as he was still in school, but as it turned out the job was still open when he graduated, and so young McGuinn found himself straight out of school playing the Hollywood Bowl on a bill including Eartha Kitt. McGuinn only played with the Limeliters for six weeks, but in that short time he ended up playing on a top five album, as he was with them at the Ash Grove when they recorded their live album Tonight in Person: [Excerpt: The Limeliters, "Madeira, M'Dear"] After being sacked by the Limeliters, McGuinn spent a short while playing the clubs around LA, before being hired by another commercial folk group, the Chad Mitchell Trio, who like the Limeliters before them needed an accompanist. McGuinn wasn't particularly happy working with the trio, who in his telling regarded themselves as the stars and McGuinn very much as the hired help. He also didn't respect them as musicians, and thought they were little to do with folk music as he understood the term. Despite this, McGuinn stayed with the Chad Mitchell Trio for two and a half years, and played on two albums with them -- Mighty Day on Campus, and Live at the Bitter End: [Excerpt: The Chad Mitchell Trio, "The John Birch Society" ] McGuinn stuck it out with the Chad Mitchell trio until his twentieth birthday, and he was just about to accept an offer to join the New Christy Minstrels himself when he got a better one. Bobby Darin was in the audience at a Chad Mitchell Trio show, and approached McGuinn afterwards. Darin had started out in the music business as a songwriter, working with his friend Don Kirshner, but had had some success in the late fifties and early sixties as one of the interchangeable teen idol Bobbies who would appear on American Bandstand, with records like "Dream Lover" and "Splish Splash": [Excerpt: Bobby Darin, "Splish Splash"] But Darin had always been more musically adventurous than most of his contemporaries, and with his hit version of "Mack the Knife" he had successfully moved into the adult cabaret market. And like other singers breaking into that market, like Sam Cooke, he had decided to incorporate folk music into his act. He would do his big-band set, then there would be a fifteen-minute set of folk songs, backed just by guitar and stand-up bass. Darin wanted McGuinn to be his guitarist and backing vocalist for these folk sets, and offered to double what the Chad Mitchell Trio was paying him. Darin wasn't just impressed with McGuinn's musicianship -- he also liked his showmanship, which came mostly from McGuinn being bored and mildly disgusted with the music he was playing on stage. He would pull faces behind the Chad Mitchell Trio's back, the audience would laugh, and the trio would think the laughter was for them. For a while, McGuinn was happy playing with Darin, who he later talked about as being a mentor. But then Darin had some vocal problems and had to take some time off the road. However, he didn't drop McGuinn altogether -- rather, he gave him a job in the Brill Building, writing songs for Darin's publishing company. One of the songs he wrote there was "Beach Ball", co-written with Frank Gari. A knock-off of "Da Doo Ron Ron", retooled as a beach party song, the recording released as by the City Surfers apparently features McGuinn, Gari, Darin on drums and Terry Melcher on piano: [Excerpt: The City Surfers, "Beach Ball"] That wasn't a hit, but a cover version by Jimmy Hannan was a local hit in Melbourne, Australia: [Excerpt: Jimmy Hannan “Beach Ball”] That record is mostly notable for its backing vocalists, three brothers who would soon go on to become famous as the Bee Gees. Darin soon advised McGuinn that if he really wanted to become successful, he should become a rock and roll singer, and so McGuinn left Darin's employ and struck out as a solo performer, playing folk songs with a rock backbeat around Greenwich Village, before joining a Beatles tribute act playing clubs around New York. He was given further encouragement by Dion DiMucci, another late-fifties singer who like Darin was trying to make the transition to playing for adult crowds. DiMucci had been lead singer of Dion and the Belmonts, but had had more success as a solo act with records like "The Wanderer": [Excerpt: Dion, "The Wanderer"] Dion was insistent that McGuinn had something -- that he wasn't just imitating the Beatles, as he thought, but that he was doing something a little more original. Encouraged by Dion, McGuinn made his way west to LA, where he was playing the Troubadour supporting Roger Miller, when Gene Clark walked in. Clark saw McGuinn as a kindred spirit -- another folkie who'd had his musical world revolutionised by the Beatles -- and suggested that the two become a duo, performing in the style of Peter and Gordon, the British duo who'd recently had a big hit with "World Without Love", a song written for them by Paul McCartney: [Excerpt: Peter and Gordon, "World Without Love"] The duo act didn't last long though, because they were soon joined by a third singer, David Crosby. Crosby had grown up in LA -- his father, Floyd Crosby, was an award-winning cinematographer, who had won an Oscar for his work on Tabu: A Story of the South Seas, and a Golden Globe for High Noon, but is now best known for his wonderfully lurid work on a whole series of films starring Vincent Price, including The Pit and the Pendulum, House of Usher, Tales of Terror, and Comedy of Terrors. Like many children of privilege, David had been a spoiled child, and he had taken to burglary for kicks, and had impregnated a schoolfriend and then run off rather than take responsibility for the child. Travelling across the US as a way to escape the consequences of his actions, he had spent some time hanging out with musicians like Fred Neil, Paul Kantner, and Travis Edmondson, the latter of whom had recorded a version of Crosby's first song, "Cross the Plains": [Excerpt: Travis Edmondson, "Cross the Plains"] Edmondson had also introduced Crosby to cannabis, and Crosby soon took to smoking everything he could, even once smoking aspirin to see if he could get high from that. When he'd run out of money, Crosby, like Clark and McGuinn, had joined an ultra-commercial folk group. In Crosby's case it was Les Baxter's Balladeers, put together by the bandleader who was better known for his exotica recordings. While Crosby was in the Balladeers, they were recorded for an album called "Jack Linkletter Presents A Folk Festival", a compilation of live recordings hosted by the host of Hootenanny: [Excerpt: Les Baxter's Balladeers, "Ride Up"] It's possible that Crosby got the job with Baxter through his father's connections -- Baxter did the music for many films made by Roger Corman, the producer and director of those Vincent Price films. Either way, Crosby didn't last long in the Balladeers. After he left the group, he started performing solo sets, playing folk music but with a jazz tinge to it -- Crosby was already interested in pushing the boundaries of what chords and melodies could be used in folk. Crosby didn't go down particularly well with the folk-club crowds, but he did impress one man. Jim Dickson had got into the music industry more or less by accident -- he had seen the comedian Lord Buckley, a white man who did satirical routines in a hipsterish argot that owed more than a little to Black slang, and had been impressed by him. He had recorded Buckley with his own money, and had put out Buckley's first album Hipsters, Flipsters and Finger Poppin' Daddies, Knock Me Your Lobes on his own label, before selling the rights of the album to Elektra records: [Excerpt: Lord Buckley, "Friends, Romans, Countrymen"] Dickson had gone on to become a freelance producer, often getting his records put out by Elektra, making both jazz records with people like Red Mitchell: [Excerpt: Red Mitchell, "Jim's Blues"] And country, folk, and bluegrass records, with people like the Dillards, whose first few albums he produced: [Excerpt: The Dillards, "Duelling Banjos"] Dickson had also recently started up a publishing company, Tickson Music, with a partner, and the first song they had published had been written by a friend of Crosby's, Dino Valenti, with whom at one point Crosby had shared a houseboat: [Excerpt: Dino Valenti, "Get Together"] Unfortunately for Dickson, before that song became a big hit for the Youngbloods, he had had to sell the rights to it, to the Kingston Trio's managers, as Valenti had been arrested and needed bail money, and it was the only way to raise the funds required. Dickson liked Crosby's performance, and became his manager. Dickson had access to a recording studio, and started recording Crosby singing traditional songs and songs to which Dickson owned the copyright -- at this point Crosby wasn't writing much, and so Dickson got him to record material like "Get Together": [Excerpt: David Crosby, "Get Together"] Unfortunately for Crosby, Dickson's initial idea, to get him signed to Warner Brothers records as a solo artist using those recordings, didn't work out. But Gene Clark had seen Crosby perform live and thought he was impressive. He told McGuinn about him, and the three men soon hit it off -- they were able to sing three-part harmony together as soon as they met. ( This is one characteristic of Crosby that acquaintances often note -- he's a natural harmony singer, and is able to fit his voice into pre-existing groups of other singers very easily, and make it sound natural). Crosby introduced the pair to Dickson, who had a brainwave. These were folkies, but they didn't really sing like folkies -- they'd grown up on rock and roll, and they were all listening to the Beatles now. There was a gap in the market, between the Beatles and Peter, Paul, and Mary, for something with harmonies, a soft sound, and a social conscience, but a rock and roll beat. Something that was intelligent, but still fun, and which could appeal to the screaming teenage girls and to the college kids who were listening to Dylan. In Crosby, McGuinn, and Clark, Dickson thought he had found the people who could do just that. The group named themselves The Jet Set -- a name thought up by McGuinn, who loved flying and everything about the air, and which they also thought gave them a certain sophistication -- and their first demo recording, with all three of them on twelve-string guitars, shows the direction they were going in. "The Only Girl I Adore", written by McGuinn and Clark, has what I can only assume is the group trying for Liverpool accents and failing miserably, and call and response and "yeah yeah" vocals that are clearly meant to evoke the Beatles. It actually does a remarkably good job of evoking some of Paul McCartney's melodic style -- but the rhythm guitar is pure Don Everly: [Excerpt: The Jet Set, "The Only Girl I Adore"] The Jet Set jettisoned their folk instruments for good after watching A Hard Day's Night -- Roger McGuinn traded in his banjo and got an electric twelve-string Rickenbacker just like the one that George Harrison played, and they went all-in on the British Invasion sound, copying the Beatles but also the Searchers, whose jangly sound was perfect for the Rickenbacker, and who had the same kind of solid harmony sound the Jet Set were going for. Of course, if you're going to try to sound like the Beatles and the Searchers, you need a drummer, and McGuinn and Crosby were both acquainted with a young man who had been born Michael Dick, but who had understandably changed his name to Michael Clarke. He was only eighteen, and wasn't a particularly good drummer, but he did have one huge advantage, which is that he looked exactly like Brian Jones. So the Jet Set now had a full lineup -- Roger McGuinn on lead guitar, Gene Clark on rhythm guitar, David Crosby was learning bass, and Michael Clarke on drums. But that wasn't the lineup on their first recordings. Crosby was finding it difficult to learn the bass, and Michael Clarke wasn't yet very proficient on drums, so for what became their first record Dickson decided to bring in a professional rhythm section, hiring two of the Wrecking Crew, bass player Ray Pohlman and drummer Earl Palmer, to back the three singers, with McGuinn and Gene Clark on guitars: [Excerpt: The Beefeaters, "Please Let Me Love You"] That was put out on a one-single deal with Elektra Records, and Jim Dickson made the deal under the condition that it couldn't be released under the group's real name -- he wanted to test what kind of potential they had without spoiling their reputation. So instead of being put out as by the Jet Set, it was put out as by the Beefeaters -- the kind of fake British name that a lot of American bands were using at the time, to try and make themselves seem like they might be British. The record did nothing, but nobody was expecting it to do much, so they weren't particularly bothered. And anyway, there was another problem to deal with. David Crosby had been finding it difficult to play bass and sing -- this was one reason that he only sang, and didn't play, on the Beefeaters single. His bass playing was wooden and rigid, and he wasn't getting better. So it was decided that Crosby would just sing, and not play anything at all. As a result, the group needed a new bass player, and Dickson knew someone who he thought would fit the bill, despite him not being a bass player. Chris Hillman had become a professional musician in his teens, playing mandolin in a bluegrass group called the Scottsville Squirrel Barkers, who made one album of bluegrass standards for sale through supermarkets: [Excerpt: The Scottsville Squirrel Barkers, "Shady Grove"] Hillman had moved on to a group called the Golden State Boys, which featured two brothers, Vern and Rex Gosdin. The Golden State Boys had been signed to a management contract by Dickson, who had renamed the group the Hillmen after their mandolin player -- Hillman was very much in the background in the group, and Dickson believed that he would be given a little more confidence if he was pushed to the front. The Hillmen had recorded one album, which wasn't released until many years later, and which had featured Hillman singing lead on the Bob Dylan song "When the Ship Comes In": [Excerpt: The Hillmen, "When the Ship Comes In"] Hillman had gone on from there to join a bluegrass group managed by Randy Sparks, the same person who was in charge of the New Christy Minstrels, and who specialised in putting out ultra-commercialised versions of roots music for pop audiences. But Dickson knew that Hillman didn't like playing with that group, and would be interested in doing something very different, so even though Hillman didn't play bass, Dickson invited him to join the group. There was almost another lineup change at this point, as well. McGuinn and Gene Clark were getting sick of David Crosby's attitude -- Crosby was the most technically knowledgeable musician in the group, but was at this point not much of a songwriter. He was not at all shy about pointing out what he considered flaws in the songs that McGuinn and Clark were writing, but he wasn't producing anything better himself. Eventually McGuinn and Clark decided to kick Crosby out of the group altogether, but they reconsidered when Dickson told them that if Crosby went he was going too. As far as Dickson was concerned, the group needed Crosby's vocals, and that was an end of the matter. Crosby was back in the group, and all was forgotten. But there was another problem related to Crosby, as the Jet Set found out when they played their first gig, an unannounced spot at the Troubadour. The group had perfected their image, with their Beatles suits and pose of studied cool, but Crosby had never performed without an instrument before. He spent the gig prancing around the stage, trying to act like a rock star, wiggling his bottom in what he thought was a suggestive manner. It wasn't, and the audience found it hilarious. Crosby, who took himself very seriously at this point in time, felt humiliated, and decided that he needed to get an instrument to play. Obviously he couldn't go back to playing bass, so he did the only thing that seemed possible -- he started undermining Gene Clark's confidence as a player, telling him he was playing behind the beat. Clark -- who was actually a perfectly reasonable rhythm player -- was non-confrontational by nature and believed Crosby's criticisms. Soon he *was* playing behind the beat, because his confidence had been shaken. Crosby took over the rhythm guitar role, and from that point on it would be Gene Clark, not David Crosby, who would have to go on stage without an instrument. The Jet Set were still not getting very many gigs, but they were constantly in the studio, working on material. The most notable song they recorded in this period is "You Showed Me", a song written by Gene Clark and McGuinn, which would not see release at the time but which would later become a hit for both the Turtles and the Lightning Seeds: [Excerpt: The Jet Set, "You Showed Me"] Clark in particular was flourishing as a songwriter, and becoming a genuine talent. But Jim Dickson thought that the song that had the best chance of being the Jet Set's breakout hit wasn't one that they were writing themselves, but one that he'd heard Bob Dylan perform in concert, but which Dylan had not yet released himself. In 1964, Dylan was writing far more material than he could reasonably record, even given the fact that his albums at this point often took little more time to record than to listen to. One song he'd written but not yet put out on an album was "Mr. Tambourine Man". Dylan had written the song in April 1964, and started performing it live as early as May, when he was on a UK tour that would later be memorialised in D.A. Pennebaker's film Don't Look Back. That performance was later released in 2014 for copyright extension purposes on vinyl, in a limited run of a hundred copies. I *believe* this recording is from that: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Mr. Tambourine Man (live Royal Festival Hall 1964)"] Jim Dickson remembered the song after seeing Dylan perform it live, and started pushing Witmark Music, Dylan's publishers, to send him a demo of the song. Dylan had recorded several demos, and the one that Witmark sent over was a version that was recorded with Ramblin' Jack Elliot singing harmony, recorded for Dylan's album Another Side of Bob Dylan, but left off the album as Elliot had been off key at points: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan and Ramblin' Jack Elliot, "Mr. Tambourine Man" (from Bootleg Series vol 7)] There have been all sorts of hypotheses about what "Mr. Tambourine Man" is really about. Robert Shelton, for example, suspects the song is inspired by Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an Opium Eater. de Quincey uses a term for opium, "the dark idol", which is supposedly a translation of the Latin phrase "mater tenebrarum", which actually means "mother of darkness" (or mother of death or mother of gloom). Shelton believes that Dylan probably liked the sound of "mater tenebrarum" and turned it into "Mister Tambourine Man". Others have tried to find links to the Pied Piper of Hamelin, or claimed that Mr. Tambourine Man is actually Jesus. Dylan, on the other hand, had a much more prosaic explanation -- that Mr. Tambourine Man was a friend of his named Bruce Langhorne, who was prominent in the Greenwich Village folk scene. As well as being a guitarist, Langhorne was also a percussionist, and played a large Turkish frame drum, several feet in diameter, which looked and sounded quite like a massively oversized tambourine. Dylan got that image in his head and wrote a song about it. Sometimes a tambourine is just a tambourine. (Also, in a neat little coincidence, Dylan has acknowledged that he took the phrase “jingle jangle” from a routine by Jim Dickson's old client, Lord Buckley.) Dickson was convinced that "Mr. Tambourine Man" would be a massive hit, but the group didn't like it. Gene Clark, who was at this point the group's only lead singer, didn't think it fit his voice or had anything in common with the songs he was writing. Roger McGuinn was nervous about doing a Dylan song, because he'd played at the same Greenwich Village clubs as Dylan when both were starting out -- he had felt a rivalry with Dylan then, and wasn't entirely comfortable with inviting comparisons with someone who had grown so much as an artist while McGuinn was still very much at the beginning of his career. And David Crosby simply didn't think that such a long, wordy, song had a chance of being a hit. So Dickson started to manipulate the group. First, since Clark didn't like singing the song, he gave the lead to McGuinn. The song now had one champion in the band, and McGuinn was also a good choice as he had a hypothesis that there was a space for a vocal sound that split the difference between John Lennon and Bob Dylan, and was trying to make himself sound like that -- not realising that Lennon himself was busily working on making his voice more Dylanesque at the same time. But that still wasn't enough -- even after Dickson worked with the group to cut the song down so it was only two choruses and one verse, and so came in under two minutes, rather than the five minutes that Dylan's original version lasted, Crosby in particular was still agitating that the group should just drop the song. So Dickson decided to bring in Dylan himself. Dickson was acquainted with Dylan, and told him that he was managing a Beatles-style group who were doing one of Dylan's songs, and invited him to come along to a rehearsal. Dylan came, partly out of politeness, but also because Dylan was as aware as anyone of the commercial realities of the music business. Dylan was making most of his money at this point as a songwriter, from having other people perform his songs, and he was well aware that the Beatles had changed what hit records sounded like. If the kids were listening to beat groups instead of to Peter, Paul, and Mary, then Dylan's continued commercial success relied on him getting beat groups to perform his songs. So he agreed to come and hear Jim Dickson's beat group, and see what he thought of what they were doing with his song. Of course, once the group realised that Dylan was going to be coming to listen to them, they decided that they had better actually work on their arrangement of the song. They came up with something that featured McGuinn's Searchers-style twelve-string playing, the group's trademark harmonies, and a rather incongruous-sounding marching beat: [Excerpt: The Jet Set, "Mr. Tambourine Man (early version)"] Dylan heard their performance, and was impressed, telling them "You can DANCE to it!" Dylan went on a charm offensive with the group, winning all of them round except Crosby -- but even Crosby stopped arguing the point, realising he'd lost. "Mr. Tambourine Man" was now a regular part of their repertoire. But they still didn't have a record deal, until one came from an unexpected direction. The group were playing their demos to a local promoter, Benny Shapiro, when Shapiro's teenage daughter came in to the room, excited because the music sounded so much like the Beatles. Shapiro later joked about this to the great jazz trumpet player Miles Davis, and Davis told his record label about this new group, and suddenly they were being signed to Columbia Records. "Mr. Tambourine Man" was going to be their first single, but before that they had to do something about the group's name, as Columbia pointed out that there was already a British group called the Jet Set. The group discussed this over Thanksgiving turkey, and the fact that they were eating a bird reminded Gene Clark of a song by the group's friend Dino Valenti, "Birdses": [Excerpt: Dino Valenti, "Birdses"] Clark suggested "The Birdses", but the group agreed it wasn't quite right -- though McGuinn, who was obsessed with aviation, did like the idea of a name that was associated with flight. Dickson's business partner Eddie Tickner suggested that they just call themselves "The Birds", but the group saw a problem with that, too -- "bird" being English slang for "girl", they worried that if they called themselves that people might think they were gay. So how about messing with the vowels, the same way the Beatles had changed the spelling of their name? They thought about Burds with a "u" and Berds with an "e", before McGuinn hit on Byrds with a y, which appealed to him because of Admiral Byrd, an explorer and pioneering aviator. They all agreed that the name was perfect -- it began with a "b", just like Beatles and Beach Boys, it was a pun like the Beatles, and it signified flight, which was important to McGuinn. As the group entered 1965, another major event happened in McGuinn's life -- the one that would lead to him changing his name. A while earlier, McGuinn had met a friend in Greenwich Village and had offered him a joint. The friend had refused, saying that he had something better than dope. McGuinn was intrigued to try this "something better" and went along with his friend to what turned out to be a religious meeting, of the new religious movement Subud, a group which believes, among other things, that there are seven levels of existence from gross matter to pure spirit, and which often encourages members to change their names. McGuinn was someone who was very much looking for meaning in his life -- around this time he also became a devotee of the self-help writer Norman Vincent Peale thanks to his mother sending him a copy of Peale's book on positive thinking -- and so he agreed to give the organisation a go. Subud involves a form of meditation called the laithan, and on his third attempt at doing this meditation, McGuinn had experienced what he believed was contact with God -- an intense hallucinatory experience which changed his life forever. McGuinn was initiated into Subud ten days before going into the studio to record "Mr. Tambourine Man", and according to his self-description, whatever Bob Dylan thought the song was about, he was singing to God when he sang it -- in earlier interviews he said he was singing to Allah, but now he's a born-again Christian he tends to use "God". The group had been assigned by CBS to Terry Melcher, mostly because he was the only staff producer they had on the West Coast who had any idea at all about rock and roll music, and Melcher immediately started to mould the group into his idea of what a pop group should be. For their first single, Melcher decided that he wasn't going to use the group, other than McGuinn, for anything other than vocals. Michael Clarke in particular was still a very shaky drummer (and would never be the best on his instrument) while Hillman and Crosby were adequate but not anything special on bass and guitar. Melcher knew that the group's sound depended on McGuinn's electric twelve-string sound, so he kept that, but other than that the Byrds' only contribution to the A-side was McGuinn, Crosby, and Clark on vocals. Everything else was supplied by members of the Wrecking Crew -- Jerry Cole on guitar, Larry Knechtel on bass, Leon Russell on electric piano, and Hal Blaine on drums: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Mr. Tambourine Man"] Indeed, not everyone who performed at the session is even clearly audible on the recording. Both Gene Clark and Leon Russell were actually mixed out by Melcher -- both of them are audible, Clark more than Russell, but only because of leakage onto other people's microphones. The final arrangement was a mix of influences. McGuinn's twelve-string sound was clearly inspired by the Searchers, and the part he's playing is allegedly influenced by Bach, though I've never seen any noticeable resemblance to anything Bach ever wrote. The overall sound was an attempt to sound like the Beatles, while Melcher always said that the arrangement and feel of the track was inspired by "Don't Worry Baby" by the Beach Boys. This is particularly noticeable in the bass part -- compare the part on the Beach Boys record: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Don't Worry Baby (instrumental mix with backing vocals)"] to the tag on the Byrds record: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Mr. Tambourine Man"] Five days before the Byrds recorded their single, Bob Dylan had finally recorded his own version of the song, with the tambourine man himself, Bruce Langhorne, playing guitar, and it was released three weeks before the Byrds' version, as an album track on Dylan's Bringing it All Back Home: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Mr. Tambourine Man"] Dylan's album would become one of the most important of his career, as we'll discuss in a couple of weeks, when we next look at Dylan. But it also provided an additional publicity boost for the Byrds, and as a result their record quickly went to number one in both the UK and America, becoming the first record of a Dylan song to go to number one on any chart. Dylan's place in the new pop order was now secured; the Byrds had shown that American artists could compete with the British Invasion on its own terms -- that the new wave of guitar bands still had a place for Americans; and folk-rock was soon identified as the next big commercial trend. And over the next few weeks we'll see how all those things played out throughout the mid sixties.
Episode 126 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “For Your Love", the Yardbirds, and the beginnings of heavy rock and the guitar hero. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-minute bonus episode available, on "A Lover's Concerto" by the Toys. 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 created a Mixcloud playlist, with full versions of all the songs excerpted in this episode. The Yardbirds have one of the most mishandled catalogues of all the sixties groups, possibly the most mishandled. Their recordings with Giorgio Gomelsky, Simon Napier-Bell and Mickie Most are all owned by different people, and all get compiled separately, usually with poor-quality live recordings, demos, and other odds and sods to fill up a CD's running time. The only actual authoritative compilation is the long out-of-print Ultimate! . Information came from a variety of sources. Most of the general Yardbirds information came from The Yardbirds by Alan Clayson and Heart Full of Soul: Keith Relf of the Yardbirds by David French. Simon Napier-Bell's You Don't Have to Say You Love Me is one of the most entertaining books about the sixties music scene, and contains several anecdotes about his time working with the Yardbirds, some of which may even be true. Some information about Immediate Records came from Immediate Records by Simon Spence, which I'll be using more in future episodes. Information about Clapton came from Motherless Child by Paul Scott, while information on Jeff Beck came from Hot Wired Guitar: The Life of Jeff Beck by Martin Power. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today, we're going to take a look at the early career of the band that, more than any other band, was responsible for the position of lead guitarist becoming as prestigious as that of lead singer. We're going to look at how a blues band launched the careers of several of the most successful guitarists of all time, and also one of the most successful pop songwriters of the sixties and seventies. We're going to look at "For Your Love" by the Yardbirds: [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "For Your Love"] The roots of the Yardbirds lie in a group of schoolfriends in Richmond, a leafy suburb of London. Keith Relf, Laurie Gane, Paul Samwell-Smith and Jim McCarty were art-school kids who were obsessed with Sonny Terry and Jimmy Reed, and who would hang around the burgeoning London R&B scene, going to see the Rolling Stones and Alexis Korner in Twickenham and at Eel Pie Island, and starting up their own blues band, the Metropolis Blues Quartet. However, Gane soon left the group to go off to university, and he was replaced by two younger guitarists, Top Topham and Chris Dreja, with Samwell-Smith moving from guitar to bass. As they were no longer a quartet, they renamed themselves the Yardbirds, after a term Relf had found on the back of an album cover, meaning a tramp or hobo. The newly-named Yardbirds quickly developed their own unique style -- their repertoire was the same mix of Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley, Jimmy Reed and Chuck Berry as every other band on the London scene, but they included long extended improvisatory instrumental sequences with Relf's harmonica playing off Topham's lead guitar. The group developed a way of extending songs, which they described as a “rave-up” and would become the signature of their live act – in the middle of a song they would go into a long instrumental solo in double-time, taking the song twice as fast and improvising heavily, before dropping back to the original tempo to finish the song off. These “rave-up” sections would often be much longer than the main song, and were a chance for everyone to show off their instrumental skills, with Topham and Relf trading phrases on guitar and harmonica. They were mentored by Cyril Davies, who gave them the interval spots at some of his shows -- and then one day asked them to fill in for him in a gig he couldn't make -- a residency at a club in Harrow, where the Yardbirds went down so well that they were asked to permanently take over the residency from Davies, much to his disgust. But the group's big break came when the Rolling Stones signed with Andrew Oldham, leaving Giorgio Gomelsky with no band to play the Crawdaddy Club every Sunday. Gomelsky was out of the country at his father's funeral when the Stones quit on him, and so it was up to Gomelsky's assistant Hamish Grimes to find a replacement. Grimes looked at the R&B scene and the choice came down to two bands -- the Yardbirds and Them. Grimes said it was a toss-up, but he eventually went for the Yardbirds, who eagerly agreed. When Gomelsky got back, the group were packing audiences in at the Crawdaddy and doing even better than the Stones had been. Soon Gomelsky wanted to become the Yardbirds' manager and turn the group into full-time musicians, but there was a problem -- the new school term was starting, Top Topham was only fifteen, and his parents didn't want him to quit school. Topham had to leave the group. Luckily, there was someone waiting in the wings. Eric Clapton was well known on the local scene as someone who was quite good on guitar, and he and Topham had played together for a long time as an informal duo, so he knew the parts -- and he was also acquainted with Dreja. Everyone on the London blues scene knew everyone else, although the thing that stuck in most of the Yardbirds' minds about Clapton was the time he'd seen the Metropolis Blues Quartet play and gone up to Samwell-Smith and said "Could you do me a favour?" When Samwell-Smith had nodded his assent, Clapton had said "Don't play any more guitar solos". Clapton was someone who worshipped the romantic image of the Delta bluesman, solitary and rootless, without friends or companions, surviving only on his wits and weighed down by troubles, and he would imagine himself that way as he took guitar lessons from Dave Brock, later of Hawkwind, or as he hung out with Top Topham and Chris Dreja in Richmond on weekends, complaining about the burdens he had to bear, such as the expensive electric guitar his grandmother had bought him not being as good as he'd hoped. Clapton had hung around with Topham and Dreja, but they'd never been really close, and he hadn't been considered for a spot in the Yardbirds when the group had formed. Instead he had joined the Roosters with Tom McGuinness, who had introduced Clapton to the music of Freddie King, especially a B-side called "I Love the Woman", which showed Clapton for the first time how the guitar could be more than just an accompaniment to vocals, but a featured instrument in its own right: [Excerpt: Freddie King, "I Love the Woman"] The Roosters had been blues purists, dedicated to a scholarly attitude to American Black music and contemptuous of pop music -- when Clapton met the Beatles for the first time, when they came along to an early Rolling Stones gig Clapton was also at, he had thought of them as "a bunch of wankers" and despised them as sellouts. After the Roosters had broken up, Clapton and McGuinness had joined the gimmicky Merseybeat group Casey Jones and his Engineers, who had a band uniform of black suits and cardboard Confederate army caps, before leaving that as well. McGuinness had gone on to join Manfred Mann, and Clapton was left without a group, until the Yardbirds called on him. The new lineup quickly gelled as musicians -- though the band did become frustrated with one quirk of Clapton's. He liked to bend strings, and so he used very light gauge strings on his guitar, which often broke, meaning that a big chunk of time would be taken up each show with Clapton restringing his guitar, while the audience gave a slow hand clap -- leading to his nickname, "Slowhand" Clap-ton. Two months after Clapton joined the group, Gomelsky got them to back Sonny Boy Williamson II on a UK tour, recording a show at the Crawdaddy Club which was released as a live album three years later: [Excerpt: The Yardbirds and Sonny Boy Williamson II, "Twenty-three Hours Too Long"] Williamson and the Yardbirds didn't get along though, either as people or as musicians. Williamson's birth name was Rice Miller, and he'd originally taken the name "Sonny Boy Williamson" to cash in on the fame of another musician who used that name, though he'd gone on to much greater success than the original, who'd died not long after the former Miller started using the name. Clapton, wanting to show off, had gone up to Williamson when they were introduced and said "Isn't your real name Rice Miller?" Williamson had pulled a knife on Clapton, and his relationship with the group didn't get much better from that point on. The group were annoyed that Williamson was drunk on stage and would call out songs they hadn't rehearsed, while Williamson later summed up his view of the Yardbirds to Robbie Robertson, saying "Those English boys want to play the blues so bad -- and they play the blues *so bad*!" Shortly after this, the group cut some demos on their own, which were used to get them a deal with Columbia, a subsidiary of EMI. Their first single was a version of Billy Boy Arnold's "I Wish You Would": [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "I Wish You Would"] This was as pure R&B as a British group would get at this point, but Clapton was unhappy with the record -- partly because hearing the group in the studio made him realise how comparatively thin they sounded as players, and partly just because he was worried that even going into a recording studio at all was selling out and not something that any of the Delta bluesmen whose records he loved would do. He was happier with the group's first album, a live recording called Five Live Yardbirds that captured the sound of the group at the Marquee Club. The repertoire on that album was precisely the same as any of the other British R&B bands of the time -- songs by Howlin' Wolf, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, John Lee Hooker, Slim Harpo, Sonny Boy Williamson and the Isley Brothers -- but they were often heavily extended versions, with a lot of interplay between Samwell-Smith's bass, Clapton's guitar, and Relf's harmonica, like their five-and-a-half-minute version of Howlin' Wolf's "Smokestack Lightning": [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "Smokestack Lightning"] "I Wish You Would" made number twenty-six on the NME chart, but it didn't make the Record Retailer chart which is the basis of modern chart compilations. The group were just about to go into the studio to cut their second single, a version of "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl", when Keith Relf collapsed. Relf had severe asthma and was also a heavy smoker, and his lung collapsed and he had to be hospitalised for several weeks, and it looked for a while as if he might never be able to sing or play harmonica again. In his absence, various friends and hangers-on from the R&B scene deputised for him -- Ronnie Wood has recalled being at a gig and the audience being asked "Can anyone play harmonica?", leading to Wood getting on stage with them, and other people who played a gig or two, or sometimes just a song or two, with them include Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, and Rod Stewart. Stewart was apparently a big fan, and would keep trying to get on stage with them -- according to Keith Relf's wife, "Rod Stewart would be sitting in the backroom begging to go on—‘Oh give us a turn, give us a turn.'” Luckily, Relf's lung was successfully reinflated, and he returned to singing, harmonica playing... and smoking. In the early months back with the group, he would sometimes have to pull out his inhaler in the middle of a word to be able to continue singing, and he would start seeing stars on stage. Relf's health would never be good, but he was able to carry on performing, and the future of the group was secured. What wasn't secure was the group's relationship with their guitarist. While Relf and Dreja had for a time shared a flat with Eric Clapton, he was becoming increasingly distant from the other members. Partly this was because Relf felt somewhat jealous of the fact that the audiences seemed more impressed with the group's guitarist than with him, the lead singer; partly it was because Giorgio Gomelsky had made Paul Samwell-Smith the group's musical director, and Clapton had never got on with Samwell-Smith and distrusted his musical instincts; but mostly it was just that the rest of the group found Clapton rather petty, cold, and humourless, and never felt any real connection to him. Their records still weren't selling, but they were popular enough on the local scene that they were invited to be one of the support acts for the Beatles' run of Christmas shows at the end of 1964, and hung out with the group backstage. Paul McCartney played them a new song he was working on, which didn't have lyrics yet, but which would soon become "Yesterday", but it was another song they heard that would change the group's career. A music publisher named Ronnie Beck turned up backstage with a demo he wanted the Beatles to hear. Obviously, the Beatles weren't interested in hearing any demos -- they were writing so many hits they were giving half of them away to other artists, why would they need someone else's song? But the Yardbirds were looking for a hit, and after listening to the demo, Samwell-Smith was convinced that a hit was what this demo was. The demo was by a Manchester-based songwriter named Graham Gouldman. Gouldman had started his career in a group called the Whirlwinds, who had released one single -- a version of Buddy Holly's "Look at Me" backed with a song called "Baby Not Like You", written by Gouldman's friend Lol Creme: [Excerpt: The Whirlwinds, "Baby Not Like You"] The Whirlwinds had split up by this point, and Gouldman was in the process of forming a new band, the Mockingbirds, which included drummer Kevin Godley. The song on the demo had been intended as the Mockingbirds' first single, but their label had decided instead to go with "That's How (It's Gonna Stay)": [Excerpt: The Mockingbirds, "That's How (It's Gonna Stay)"] So the song, "For Your Love", was free, and Samwell-Smith was insistent -- this was going to be the group's first big hit. The record was a total departure from their blues sound. Gouldman's version had been backed by bongos and acoustic guitar, and Samwell-Smith decided that he would keep the bongo part, and add, not the normal rock band instruments, but harpsichord and bowed double bass: [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "For Your Love"] The only part of the song where the group's normal electric instrumentation is used is the brief middle-eight, which feels nothing like the rest of the record: [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "For Your Love"] But on the rest of the record, none of the Yardbirds other than Jim McCarty play -- the verses have Relf on vocals, McCarty on drums, Brian Auger on harpsichord, Ron Prentice on double bass and Denny Piercy on bongos, with Samwell-Smith in the control room producing. Clapton and Dreja only played on the middle eight. The record went to number three, and became the group's first real hit, and it led to an odd experience for Gouldman, as the Mockingbirds were by this time employed as the warm-up act on the BBC's Top of the Pops, which was recorded in Manchester, so Gouldman got to see mobs of excited fans applauding the Yardbirds for performing a song he'd written, while he was completely ignored. Most of the group were excited about their newfound success, but Clapton was not happy. He hadn't signed up to be a member of a pop group -- he wanted to be in a blues band. He made his displeasure about playing on material like "For Your Love" very clear, and right after the recording session he resigned from the group. He was convinced that they would be nothing without him -- after all, wasn't he the undisputed star of the group? -- and he immediately found work with a group that was more suited to his talents, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. The Bluesbreakers at this point consisted of Mayall on keyboards and vocals, Clapton on guitar, John McVie on bass, and Hughie Flint on drums. For their first single with this lineup, they signed a one-record deal with Immediate Records, a new independent label started by the Rolling Stones' manager Andrew Oldham. That single was produced by Immediate's young staff producer, the session guitarist Jimmy Page: [Excerpt: John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, "I'm Your Witch Doctor"] The Bluesbreakers had something of a fluid lineup -- shortly after that recording, Clapton left the group to join another group, and was replaced by a guitarist named Peter Green. Then Clapton came back, for the recording of what became known as the "Beano album", because Clapton was in a mood when they took the cover photo, and so read the children's comic the Beano rather than looking at the camera: [Excerpt: John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, "Bernard Jenkins"] Shortly after that, Mayall fired John McVie, who was replaced by Jack Bruce, formerly of the Graham Bond Organisation, but then Bruce left to join Manfred Mann and McVie was rehired. While Clapton was in the Bluesbreakers, he gained a reputation for being the best guitarist in London -- a popular graffito at the time was "Clapton is God" -- and he was at first convinced that without him the Yardbirds would soon collapse. But Clapton had enough self-awareness to know that even though he was very good, there were a handful of guitarists in London who were better than him. One he always acknowledged was Albert Lee, who at the time was playing in Chris Farlowe's backing band but would later become known as arguably the greatest country guitarist of his generation. But another was the man that the Yardbirds got in to replace him. The Yardbirds had originally asked Jimmy Page if he wanted to join the group, and he'd briefly been tempted, but he'd decided that his talents were better used in the studio, especially since he'd just been given the staff job at Immediate. Instead he recommended his friend Jeff Beck. The two had known each other since their teens, and had grown up playing guitar together, and sharing influences as they delved deeper into music. While both men admired the same blues musicians that Clapton did, people like Hubert Sumlin and Buddy Guy, they both had much more eclectic tastes than Clapton -- both loved rockabilly, and admired Scotty Moore and James Burton, and Beck was a huge devotee of Cliff Gallup, the original guitarist from Gene Vincent's Blue Caps. Beck also loved Les Paul and the jazz guitarist Barney Kessel, while Page was trying to incorporate some of the musical ideas of the sitar player Ravi Shankar into his playing. While Page was primarily a session player, Beck was a gigging musician, playing with a group called the Tridents, but as Page rapidly became one of the two first-call session guitarists along with Big Jim Sullivan, he would often recommend his friend for sessions he couldn't make, leading to Beck playing on records like "Dracula's Daughter", which Joe Meek produced for Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages: [Excerpt: Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages, "Dracula's Daughter"] While Clapton had a very straightforward tone, Beck was already experimenting with the few effects that were available at the time, like echoes and fuzztone. While there would always be arguments about who was the first to use feedback as a controlled musical sound, Beck is one of those who often gets the credit, and Keith Relf would describe Beck's guitar playing as being almost musique concrete. You can hear the difference on the group's next single. "Heart Full of Soul" was again written by Gouldman, and was originally recorded with a sitar, which would have made it one of the first pop singles to use the instrument. However, they decided to replace the sitar part with Beck playing the same Indian-sounding riff on a heavily-distorted guitar: [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "Heart Full of Soul"] That made number two in the UK and the top ten in the US, and suddenly the world had a new guitar god, one who was doing things on records that nobody else had been doing. The group's next single was a double A-side, a third song written by Gouldman, "Evil Hearted You", coupled with an original by the group, "Still I'm Sad". Neither track was quite up to the standard of their previous couple of singles, but it still went to number three on the charts. From this point on, the group stopped using Gouldman's songs as singles, preferring to write their own material, but Gouldman had already started providing hits for other groups like the Hollies, for whom he wrote songs like “Bus Stop”: [Excerpt: The Hollies, “Bus Stop”] His group The Mockingbirds had also signed to Immediate Records, who put out their classic pop-psych single “You Stole My Love”: [Excerpt: The Mockingbirds, “You Stole My Love”] We will hear more of Gouldman later. In the Yardbirds, meanwhile, the pressure was starting to tell on Keith. He was a deeply introverted person who didn't have the temperament for stardom, and he was uncomfortable with being recognised on the street. It also didn't help that his dad was also the band's driver and tour manager, which meant he always ended up feeling somewhat inhibited, and he started drinking heavily to try to lose some of those inhibitions. Shortly after the recording of "Evil Hearted You", the group went on their first American tour, though on some dates they were unable to play as Gomelsky had messed up their work permits -- one of several things about Gomelsky's management of the group that irritated them. But they were surprised to find that they were much bigger in the US than in the UK. While the group had only released singles, EPs, and the one live album in the UK, and would only ever put out one UK studio album, they'd recorded enough that they'd already had an album out in the US, a compilation of singles, B-sides, and even a couple of demos, and that had been picked up on by almost every garage band in the country. On one of the US gigs, their opening act, a teenage group called the Spiders, were in trouble. They'd learned every song on that Yardbirds album, and their entire set was made up of covers of that material. They'd gone down well supporting every other major band that came to town, but they had a problem when it came to the Yardbirds. Their singer described what happened next: "We thought about it and we said, 'Look, we're paying tribute to them—let's just do our set.' And so, we opened for the Yardbirds and did all of their songs. We could see them in the back and they were smiling and giving us the thumbs up. And then they got up and just blew us off the stage—because they were the Yardbirds! And we just stood there going, 'Oh…. That's how it's done.' The Yardbirds were one of the best live bands I ever heard and we learned a lot that night." That band, and later that lead singer, both later changed their name to Alice Cooper. The trip to the US also saw a couple of recording sessions. Gomelsky had been annoyed at the bad drum sound the group had got in UK studios, and had loved Sam Phillips' drum sound on the old Sun records, so had decided to get in touch with Phillips and ask him to produce the group. He hadn't had a reply, but the group turned up at Phillips' new studio anyway, knowing that he lived in a flat above the studio. Phillips wasn't in, but eventually turned up at midnight, after a fishing trip, drunk. He wasn't interested in producing some group of British kids, but Gomelsky waved six hundred dollars at him, and he agreed. He produced two tracks for the group. One of those, "Mr. You're a Better Man Than I", was written by Mike Hugg of Manfred Mann and his brother: [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "Mister, You're a Better Man Than I"] The backing track there was produced by Phillips, but the lead vocal was redone in New York, as Relf was also drunk and wasn't singing well -- something Phillips pointed out, and which devastated Relf, who had grown up on records Phillips produced. Phillips' dismissal of Relf also grated on Beck -- even though Beck wasn't close to Relf, as the two competed for prominence on stage while the rest of the band kept to the backline, Beck had enormous respect for Relf's talents as a frontman, and thought Phillips horribly unprofessional for his dismissive attitude, though the other Yardbirds had happier memories of the session, not least because Phillips caught their live sound better than anyone had. You can hear Relf's drunken incompetence on the other track they recorded at the session, their version of "Train Kept A-Rollin'", the song we covered way back in episode forty-four. Rearranged by Samwell-Smith and Beck, the Yardbirds' version built on the Johnny Burnette recording and turned it into one of the hardest rock tracks ever recorded to that point -- but Relf's drunk, sloppy, vocal was caught on the backing track. He later recut the vocal more competently, with Roy Halee engineering in New York, but the combination of the two vocals gives the track an unusual feel which inspired many future garage bands: [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "Train Kept A-Rollin'"] On that first US tour, they also recorded a version of Bo Diddley's "I'm a Man" at Chess Studios, where Diddley had recorded his original. Only a few weeks after the end of that tour they were back for a second tour, in support of their second US album, and they returned to Chess to record what many consider their finest original. "Shapes of Things" had been inspired by the bass part on Dave Brubeck's "Pick Up Sticks": [Excerpt: Dave Brubeck Quartet, "Pick Up Sticks"] Samwell-Smith and McCarty had written the music for the song, Relf and Samwell-Smith added lyrics, and Beck experimented with feedback, leading to one of the first psychedelic records to become a big hit, making number three in the UK and number eleven in the US: [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "Shapes of Things"] That would be the group's last record with Giorgio Gomelsky as credited producer -- although Samwell-Smith had been doing all the actual production work -- as the group were becoming increasingly annoyed at Gomelsky's ideas for promoting them, which included things like making them record songs in Italian so they could take part in an Italian song contest. Gomelsky was also working them so hard that Beck ended up being hospitalised with what has been variously described as meningitis and exhaustion. By the time he was out of the hospital, Gomelsky was fired. His replacement as manager and co-producer was Simon Napier-Bell, a young dilettante and scenester who was best known for co-writing the English language lyrics for Dusty Springfield's "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me": [Excerpt: Dusty Springfield, "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me"] The way Napier-Bell tells the story -- and Napier-Bell is an amusing raconteur, and his volumes of autobiography are enjoyable reads, but one gets the feeling that he will not tell the truth if a lie seems more entertaining -- is that the group chose him because of his promotion of a record he'd produced for a duo called Diane Ferraz and Nicky Scott: [Excerpt: Diane Ferraz and Nicky Scott, "Me and You"] According to Napier-Bell, both Ferraz and Scott were lovers of his, who were causing him problems, and he decided to get rid of the problem by making them both pop stars. As Ferraz was Black and Scott white, Napier-Bell sent photos of them to every DJ and producer in the country, and then when they weren't booked on TV shows or playlisted on the radio, he would accuse the DJs and producers of racism and threaten to go to the newspapers about it. As a result, they ended up on almost every TV show and getting regular radio exposure, though it wasn't enough to make the record a hit. The Yardbirds had been impressed by how much publicity Ferraz and Scott had got, and asked Napier-Bell to manage them. He immediately set about renegotiating their record contract and getting them a twenty-thousand-pound advance -- a fortune in the sixties. He also moved forward with a plan Gomelsky had had of the group putting out solo records, though only Relf ended up doing so. Relf's first solo single was a baroque pop song, "Mr. Zero", written by Bob Lind, who had been a one-hit wonder with "Elusive Butterfly", and produced by Samwell-Smith: [Excerpt: Keith Relf, "Mr. Zero"] Beck, meanwhile, recorded a solo instrumental, intended for his first solo single but not released until nearly a year later. "Beck's Bolero" has Jimmy Page as its credited writer, though Beck claims to be a co-writer, and features Beck and Page on guitars, session pianist Nicky Hopkins, and Keith Moon of the Who on drums. John Entwistle of the Who was meant to play bass, but when he didn't show to the session, Page's friend, session bass player John Paul Jones, was called up: [Excerpt: Jeff Beck, "Beck's Bolero"] The five players were so happy with that recording that they briefly discussed forming a group together, with Moon saying of the idea "That will go down like a lead zeppelin". They all agreed that it wouldn't work and carried on with their respective careers. The group's next single was their first to come from a studio album -- their only UK studio album, variously known as Yardbirds or Roger the Engineer. "Over Under Sideways Down" was largely written in the studio and is credited to all five group members, though Napier-Bell has suggested he came up with the chorus lyrics: [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "Over Under Sideways Down"] That became the group's fifth top ten single in a row, but it would be their last, because they were about to lose the man who, more than anyone else, had been responsible for their musical direction. The group had been booked to play an upper-class black-tie event, and Relf had turned up drunk. They played three sets, and for the first, Relf started to get freaked out by the fact that the audience were just standing there, not dancing, and started blowing raspberries at them. He got more drunk in the interval, and in the second set he spent an entire song just screaming at the audience that they could copulate with themselves, using a word I'm not allowed to use without this podcast losing its clean rating. They got him offstage and played the rest of the set just doing instrumentals. For the third set, Relf was even more drunk. He came onstage and immediately fell backwards into the drum kit. Only one person in the audience was at all impressed -- Beck's friend Jimmy Page had come along to see the show, and had thought it great anarchic fun. He went backstage to tell them so, and found Samwell-Smith in the middle of quitting the group, having finally had enough. Page, who had turned down the offer to join the group two years earlier, was getting bored of just being a session player and decided that being a pop star seemed more fun. He immediately volunteered himself as the group's new bass player, and we'll see how that played out in a future episode...
Episode 125 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Here Comes the Night", Them, the early career of Van Morrison, and the continuing success of Bert Berns. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-minute bonus episode available, on "Dirty Water" by the Standells. 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 created a Mixcloud playlist, with full versions of all the songs excerpted in this episode. The information about Bert Berns comes from Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues by Joel Selvin. I've used two biographies of Van Morrison. Van Morrison: Into the Music by Ritchie Yorke is so sycophantic towards Morrison that the word "hagiography" would be, if anything, an understatement. Van Morrison: No Surrender by Johnny Rogan, on the other hand, is the kind of book that talks in the introduction about how the author has had to avoid discussing certain topics because of legal threats from the subject. I also used information from the liner notes to The Complete Them 1964-1967, which as the title suggests is a collection of all the recordings the group made while Van Morrison was in the band. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we're going to take a look at a band whose lead singer, sadly, is more controversial now than he was at the period we're looking at. I would normally not want to explicitly talk about current events upfront at the start of an episode, but Van Morrison has been in the headlines in the last few weeks for promoting dangerous conspiracy theories about covid, and has also been accused of perpetuating antisemitic stereotypes with a recent single. So I would like to take this opportunity just to say that no positive comments I make about the Van Morrison of 1965 in this episode should be taken as any kind of approval of the Van Morrison of 2021 -- and this should also be taken as read for one of the similarly-controversial subjects of next week's episode... Anyway, that aside, today we're going to take a look at the first classic rock and roll records made by a band from Northern Ireland, and at the links between the British R&B scene and the American Brill Building. We're going to look at Van Morrison, Bert Berns, and "Here Comes the Night" by Them: [Excerpt: Them, "Here Comes the Night"] When we last looked at Bert Berns, he was just starting to gain some prominence in the East Coast recording scene with his productions for artists like Solomon Burke and the Isley Brothers. We've also, though it wasn't always made explicit, come across several of his productions when talking about other artists -- when Leiber and Stoller stopped working for Atlantic, Berns took over production of their artists, as well as all the other recordings he was making, and so many of the mid-sixties Drifters records we looked at in the episode on "Stand By Me" were Berns productions. But while he was producing soul classics in New York, Berns was also becoming aware of the new music coming from the United Kingdom -- in early 1963 he started receiving large royalty cheques for a cover version of his song "Twist and Shout" by some English band he'd never heard of. He decided that there was a market here for his songs, and made a trip to the UK, where he linked up with Dick Rowe at Decca. While most of the money Berns had been making from "Twist and Shout" had been from the Beatles' version, a big chunk of it had also come from Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, the band that Rowe had signed to Decca instead of the Beatles. After the Beatles became big, the Tremeloes used the Beatles' arrangement of "Twist and Shout", which had been released on an album and an EP but not a single, and had a top ten hit with their own version of it: [Excerpt: Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, "Twist and Shout"] Rowe was someone who kept an eye on the American market, and saw that Berns was a great source of potential hits. He brought Berns over to the UK, and linked him up with Larry Page, the manager who gave Rowe an endless supply of teen idols, and with Phil Solomon, an Irish manager who had been the publicist for the crooner Ruby Murray, and had recently brought Rowe the group The Bachelors, who had had a string of hits like "Charmaine": [Excerpt: The Bachelors, "Charmaine"] Page, Solomon, and Rowe were currently trying to promote something called "Brum Beat", as a Birmingham rival to Mersey beat, and so all the acts Berns worked with were from Birmingham. The most notable of these acts was one called Gerry Levene and the Avengers. Berns wrote and produced the B-side of that group's only single, with Levene backed by session musicians, but I've been unable to find a copy of that B-side anywhere in the digital domain. However, the A-side, which does exist and wasn't produced by Berns, is of some interest: [Excerpt: Gerry Levene and the Avengers, "Dr. Feelgood"] The lineup of the band playing on that included guitarist Roy Wood, who would go on to be one of the most important and interesting British musicians of the later sixties and early seventies, and drummer Graeme Edge, who went on to join the Moody Blues. Apparently at another point, their drummer was John Bonham. None of the tracks Berns recorded for Decca in 1963 had any real success, but Berns had made some useful contacts with Rowe and Solomon, and most importantly had met a British arranger, Mike Leander, who came over to the US to continue working with Berns, including providing the string arrangements for Berns' production of "Under the Boardwalk" for the Drifters: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Under the Boardwalk"] In May 1964, the month when that track was recorded, Berns was about the only person keeping Atlantic Records afloat -- we've already seen that they were having little success in the mid sixties, but in mid-May, even given the British Invasion taking over the charts, Berns had five records in the Hot One Hundred as either writer or producer -- the Beatles' version of "Twist and Shout" was the highest charting, but he also had hits with "One Way Love" by the Drifters: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "One Way Love"] "That's When it Hurts" by Ben E. King: [Excerpt: Ben E. King, "That's When it Hurts"] "Goodbye Baby (Baby Goodbye)" by Solomon Burke: [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "Goodbye Baby (Baby Goodbye)"] And "My Girl Sloopy" by the Vibrations: [Excerpt: The Vibrations, "My Girl Sloopy"] And a week after the production of "Under the Boardwalk", Berns was back in the studio with Solomon Burke, producing Burke's classic "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love", though that track would lead to a major falling-out with Burke, as Berns and Atlantic executive Jerry Wexler took co-writing credit they hadn't earned on Burke's song -- Berns was finally at the point in his career where he was big enough that he could start stealing Black men's credits rather than having to earn them for himself: [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love"] Not everything was a hit, of course -- he wrote a dance track with Mike Leander, "Show Me Your Monkey", which was definitely not a big hit -- but he had a strike rate that most other producers and writers would have killed for. And he was also having hits in the UK with the new British Invasion bands -- the Animals had made a big hit from "Baby Let Me Take You Home", the old folk tune that Berns had rewritten for Hoagy Lands. And he was still in touch with Phil Solomon and Dick Rowe, both of whom came over to New York for Berns' wedding in July. It might have been while they were at the wedding that they first suggested to Berns that he might be interested in producing a new band that Solomon was managing, named Them, and in particular their lead singer, Van Morrison. Van Morrison was always a misfit, from his earliest days. He grew up in Belfast, a city that is notoriously divided along sectarian lines between a Catholic minority who (for the most part) want a united Ireland, and a Presbyterian majority who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK. But in a city where the joke goes that a Jewish person would be asked "but are you a Catholic Jew or a Protestant Jew?", Morrison was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, and for the rest of his life he would be resistant to fitting into any of the categories anyone tried to put him in, both for good and ill. While most of the musicians from the UK we've looked at so far have been from middle-class backgrounds, and generally attended art school, Morrison had gone to a secondary modern school, and left at fourteen to become a window cleaner. But he had an advantage that many of his contemporaries didn't -- he had relatives living in America and Canada, and his father had once spent a big chunk of time working in Detroit, where at one point the Morrison family planned to move. This exposed Morrison senior to all sorts of music that would not normally be heard in the UK, and he returned with a fascination for country and blues music, and built up a huge record collection. Young Van Morrison was brought up listening to Hank Williams, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Jimmie Rodgers, Louis Jordan, Jelly Roll Morton, and his particular favourite, Lead Belly. The first record he bought with his own money was "Hootin' Blues" by the Sonny Terry Trio: [Excerpt: The Sonny Terry Trio, "Hootin' Blues"] Like everyone, Van Morrison joined a skiffle group, but he became vastly more ambitious in 1959 when he visited a relative in Canada. His aunt smuggled him into a nightclub where an actual American rock and roll group were playing -- Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks: [Excerpt: Ronnie Hawkins, "Mary Lou"] Hawkins had been inspired to get into the music business by his uncle Delmar, a fiddle player whose son, Dale Hawkins, we looked at back in episode sixty-three. His band, the Hawks, had a reputation as the hottest band in Canada -- at this point they were still all Americans, but other than their drummer Levon Helm they would soon be replaced one by one with Canadian musicians, starting with bass player Robbie Robertson. Morrison was enthused and decided he was going to become a professional musician. He already played a bit of guitar, but started playing the saxophone too, as that was an instrument that would be more likely to get him work at this point. He joined a showband called the Monarchs, as saxophone player and occasional vocalist. Showbands were a uniquely Irish phenomenon -- they were eight- or nine-piece groups, rhythm sections with a small horn section and usually a couple of different singers, who would play every kind of music for dancing, ranging from traditional pop to country and western to rock and roll, and would also perform choreographed dance routines and comedy sketches. The Monarchs were never a successful band, but they managed to scrape a living playing the Irish showband circuit, and in the early sixties they travelled to Germany, where audiences of Black American servicemen wanted them to play more soulful music like songs by Ray Charles, an opportunity Morrison eagerly grabbed. It was also a Black American soldier who introduced Morrison to the music of Bobby Bland, whose "Turn on Your Love Light" was soon introduced to the band's set: [Excerpt Bobby "Blue" Bland, "Turn on Your Love Light"] But they were still mostly having to play chart hits by Billy J Kramer or Gerry and the Pacemakers, and Morrison was getting frustrated. The Monarchs did get a chance to record a single in Germany, as Georgie and the Monarchs, with another member, George Jones (not the famous country singer) singing lead, but the results were not impressive: [Excerpt: Georgie and the Monarchs, "O Twingy Baby"] Morrison moved between several different showbands, but became increasingly dissatisfied with what he was doing. Then another showband he was in, the Manhattan Showband, briefly visited London, and Morrison and several of his bandmates went to a club called Studio 51, run by Ken Colyer. There they saw a band called The Downliners Sect, who had hair so long that the Manhattan members at first thought they were a girl group, until their lead singer came on stage wearing a deerstalker hat. The Downliners Sect played exactly the kind of aggressive R&B that Morrison thought he should be playing: [Excerpt: The Downliners Sect, "Be a Sect Maniac"] Morrison asked if he could sit in with the group on harmonica, but was refused -- and this was rather a pattern with the Downliners Sect, who had a habit of attracting harmonica players who wanted to be frontmen. Both Rod Stewart and Steve Marriott did play harmonica with the group for a while, and wanted to join full-time, but were refused as they clearly wanted to be lead singers and the group didn't need another one of them. On returning to Belfast, Morrison decided that he needed to start his own R&B band, and his own R&B club night. At first he tried to put together a sort of supergroup of showband regulars, but most of the musicians he approached weren't interested in leaving their steady gigs. Eventually, he joined a band called the Gamblers, led by guitarist and vocalist Billy Harrison. The Gamblers had started out as an instrumental group, playing rock and roll in the style of Johnny and the Hurricanes, but they'd slowly been moving in a more R&B direction, and playing Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley material. Morrison joined the group on saxophone and vocals -- trading off leads with Harrison -- and the group renamed themselves after a monster movie from a few years before: [Excerpt: THEM! trailer] The newly renamed Them took up a regular gig at the Maritime Hotel, a venue which had previously attracted a trad jazz crowd, and quickly grew a substantial local following. Van Morrison later often said that their residency at the Maritime was the only time Them were any good, but that period was remarkably short -- three months after their first gig, the group had been signed to a management, publishing, and production deal with Philip Solomon, who called in Dick Rowe to see them in Belfast. Rowe agreed to the same kind of licensing deal with Solomon that Andrew Oldham had already got from him for the Stones -- Them would record for Solomon's company, and Decca would license the recordings. This also led to the first of the many, many, lineup changes that would bedevil the group for its short existence -- between 1964 and 1966 there were eighteen different members of the group. Eric Wrixon, the keyboard player, was still at school, and his parents didn't think he should become a musician, so while he came along to the first recording session, he didn't sign the contract because he wasn't allowed to stay with the group once his next term at school started. However, he wasn't needed -- while Them's guitarist and bass player were allowed to play on the records, Dick Rowe brought in session keyboard player Arthur Greenslade and drummer Bobby Graham -- the same musicians who had augmented the Kinks on their early singles -- to play with them. The first single, a cover version of Slim Harpo's "Don't Start Crying Now", did precisely nothing commercially: [Excerpt: Them, "Don't Start Crying Now"] The group started touring the UK, now as Decca recording artistes, but they almost immediately started to have clashes with their management. Phil Solomon was not used to aggressive teenage R&B musicians, and didn't appreciate things like them just not turning up for one gig they were booked for, saying to them "The Bachelors never missed a date in their lives. One of them even had an accident on their way to do a pantomime in Bristol and went on with his leg in plaster and twenty-one stitches in his head." Them were not particularly interested in performing in pantomimes in Bristol, or anywhere else, but the British music scene was still intimately tied in with the older showbiz tradition, and Solomon had connections throughout that industry -- as well as owning a publishing and production company he was also a major shareholder in Radio Caroline, one of the pirate radio stations that broadcast from ships anchored just outside British territorial waters to avoid broadcasting regulations, and his father was a major shareholder in Decca itself. Given Solomon's connections, it wasn't surprising that Them were chosen to be one of the Decca acts produced by Bert Berns on his next UK trip in August 1964. The track earmarked for their next single was their rearrangement of "Baby Please Don't Go", a Delta blues song that had originally been recorded in 1935 by Big Joe Williams and included on the Harry Smith Anthology: [Excerpt: Big Joe Williams' Washboard Blues Singers , "Baby Please Don't Go"] though it's likely that Them had learned it from Muddy Waters' version, which is much closer to theirs: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "Baby Please Don't Go"] Bert Berns helped the group tighten up their arrangement, which featured a new riff thought up by Billy Harrison, and he also brought in a session guitarist, Jimmy Page, to play rhythm guitar. Again he used a session drummer, this time Andy White who had played on "Love Me Do". Everyone agreed that the result was a surefire hit: [Excerpt: Them, "Baby Please Don't Go"] At the session with Berns, Them cut several other songs, including some written by Berns, but it was eventually decided that the B-side should be a song of Morrison's, written in tribute to his dead cousin Gloria, which they'd recorded at their first session with Dick Rowe: [Excerpt: Them, "Gloria"] "Baby Please Don't Go" backed with "Gloria" was one of the great double-sided singles of the sixties, but it initially did nothing on the charts, and the group were getting depressed at their lack of success, Morrison and Harrison were constantly arguing as each thought of himself as the leader of the group, and the group's drummer quit in frustration. Pat McAuley, the group's new keyboard player, switched to drums, and brought in his brother Jackie to replace him on keyboards. To make matters worse, while "Baby Please Don't Go" had flopped, the group had hoped that their next single would be one of the songs they'd recorded with Berns, a Berns song called "Here Comes the Night". Unfortunately for them, Berns had also recorded another version of it for Decca, this one with Lulu, a Scottish singer who had recently had a hit with a cover of the Isley Brothers' "Shout!", and her version was released as a single: [Excerpt: Lulu, "Here Comes the Night"] Luckily for Them, though unluckily for Lulu, her record didn't make the top forty, so there was still the potential for Them to release their version of it. Phil Solomon hadn't given up on "Baby Please Don't Go", though, and he began a media campaign for the record. He moved the group into the same London hotel where Jimmy Savile was staying -- Savile is now best known for his monstrous crimes, which I won't go into here except to say that you shouldn't google him if you don't know about them, but at the time he was Britain's most popular DJ, the presenter of Top of the Pops, the BBC's major TV pop show, and a columnist in a major newspaper. Savile started promoting Them, and they would later credit him with a big part of their success. But Solomon was doing a lot of other things to promote the group as well. He part-owned Radio Caroline, and so "Baby Please Don't Go" went into regular rotation on the station. He called in a favour with the makers of Ready Steady Go! and got "Baby Please Don't Go" made into the show's new theme tune for two months, and soon the record, which had been a flop on its first release, crawled its way up into the top ten. For the group's next single, Decca put out their version of "Here Comes the Night", and that was even more successful, making it all the way to number two on the charts, and making the American top thirty: [Excerpt: Them, "Here Comes the Night"] As that was at its chart peak, the group also performed at the NME Poll-Winners' Party at Wembley Stadium, a show hosted by Savile and featuring The Moody Blues, Freddie and the Dreamers, Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, Herman's Hermits, Cilla Black, Donovan, The Searchers, Dusty Springfield, The Animals,The Kinks, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles, among others. Even on that bill, reviewers singled out Them's seven-minute performance of Bobby Bland's "Turn on Your Love Light" for special praise, though watching the video of it it seems a relatively sloppy performance. But the group were already starting to fall apart. Jackie McAuley was sacked from the group shortly after that Wembley show -- according to some of the group, because of his use of amphetamines, but it's telling that when the Protestant bass player Alan Henderson told the Catholic McAuley he was out of the group, he felt the need to emphasise that "I've got nothing against" -- and then use a term that's often regarded as an anti-Catholic slur... On top of this, the group were also starting to get a bad reputation among the press -- they would simply refuse to answer questions, or answer them in monosyllables, or just swear at journalists. Where groups like the Rolling Stones carefully cultivated a "bad boy" image, but were doing so knowingly and within carefully delineated limits, Them were just unpleasant and rude because that's who they were. Bert Berns came back to the UK to produce a couple of tracks for the group's first album, but he soon had to go back to America, as he had work to do there -- he'd just started up his own label, a rival to Red Bird, called BANG, which stood for Bert, Ahmet, Neshui, Gerald -- Berns had co-founded it with the Ertegun brothers and Jerry Wexler, though he soon took total control over it. BANG had just scored a big hit with "I Want Candy" by the Strangeloves, a song Berns had co-written: [Excerpt: The Strangeloves, "I Want Candy"] And the Strangeloves in turn had discovered a singer called Rick Derringer, and Bang put out a single by him under the name "The McCoys", using a backing track Berns had produced as a Strangeloves album track, their version of his earlier hit "My Girl Sloopy". The retitled "Hang on Sloopy" went to number one: [Excerpt: The McCoys, "Hang on Sloopy"] Berns was also getting interested in signing a young Brill Building songwriter named Neil Diamond... The upshot was that rather than continuing to work with Berns, Them were instead handed over to Tommy Scott, an associate of Solomon's who'd sung backing vocals on "Here Comes the Night", but who was best known for having produced "Terry" by Twinkle: [Excerpt: Twinkle, "Terry"] The group were not impressed with Scott's productions, and their next two singles flopped badly, not making the charts at all. Billy Harrison and Morrison were becoming less and less able to tolerate each other, and eventually Morrison and Henderson forced Harrison out. Pat McAuley quit two weeks later, The McAuley brothers formed their own rival lineup of Them, which initially also featured Billy Harrison, though he soon left, and they got signed to a management contract with Reg Calvert, a rival of Solomon's who as well as managing several pop groups also owned Radio City, a pirate station that was in competition with Radio Caroline. Calvert registered the trademark in the name Them, something that Solomon had never done for the group, and suddenly there was a legal dispute over the name. Solomon retaliated by registering trademarks for the names "The Fortunes" and "Pinkerton's Assorted Colours" -- two groups Calvert managed -- and putting together rival versions of those groups. However the problem soon resolved itself, albeit tragically -- Calvert got into a huge row with Major Oliver Smedley, a failed right-libertarian politician who, when not co-founding the Institute for Economic Affairs and quitting the Liberal Party for their pro-European stance and left-wing economics, was one of Solomon's co-directors of Radio Caroline. Smedley shot Calvert, killing him, and successfully pled self-defence at his subsequent trial. The jury let Smedley off after only a minute of deliberation, and awarded Smedley two hundred and fifty guineas to pay for his costs. The McAuley brothers' group renamed themselves to Them Belfast -- and the word beginning with g that some Romany people regard as a slur for their ethnic group -- and made some records, mostly only released in Sweden, produced by Kim Fowley, who would always look for any way to cash in on a hit record, and wrote "Gloria's Dream" for them: [Excerpt: Them Belfast G***ies, "Gloria's Dream"] Morrison and Henderson continued their group, and had a surprise hit in the US when Decca issued "Mystic Eyes", an album track they'd recorded for their first album, as a single in the US, and it made the top forty: [Excerpt: Them, "Mystic Eyes"] On the back of that, Them toured the US, and got a long residency at the Whisky a Go-Go in LA, where they were supported by a whole string of the Sunset Strip's most exciting new bands -- Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, The Association, Buffalo Springfield, and the Doors. The group became particularly friendly with the Doors, with the group's new guitarist getting thrown out of clubs with Jim Morrison for shouting "Johnny Rivers is a wanker!" at Rivers while Rivers was on stage, and Jim Morrison joining them on stage for duets, though the Doors were staggered at how much the Belfast group could drink -- their drink bill for their first week at the Whisky A Go-Go was $5400. And those expenses caused problems, because Van Morrison agreed before the tour started that he would be on a fixed salary, paid by Phil Solomon, and Solomon would get all the money from the promoters. But then Morrison found out how much Solomon was making, and decided that it wasn't fair that Solomon would get all that money when Morrison was only getting the comparatively small amount he'd agreed to. When Tommy Scott, who Solomon had sent over to look after the group on tour, tried to collect the takings from the promoters, he was told "Van Morrison's already taken the money". Solomon naturally dropped the group, who continued touring the US without any management, and sued them. Various Mafia types offered to take up the group's management contract, and even to have Solomon murdered, but the group ended up just falling apart. Van Morrison quit the group, and Alan Henderson struggled on for another five years with various different lineups of session men, recording albums as Them which nobody bought. He finally stopped performing as Them in 1972. He reunited with Billy Harrison and Eric Wrixon, the group's original keyboardist, in 1979, and they recorded another album and toured briefly. Wrixon later formed another lineup of Them, which for a while included Billy Harrison, and toured with that group, billed as Them The Belfast Blues Band, until Wrixon's death in 2015. Morrison, meanwhile, had other plans. Now that Them's two-year contract with Solomon was over, he wanted to have the solo career people had been telling him he deserved. And he knew how he was going to do it. All along, he'd thought that Bert Berns had been the only person in the music industry who understood him as an artist, and now of course Berns had his own record label. Van Morrison was going to sign to BANG Records, and he was going to work again with Bert Berns, the man who was making hits for everyone he worked with. But the story of "Brown-Eyed Girl", and Van Morrison going solo, and the death of Bert Berns, is a story for another time...
Nothing but emerging talent and eclectic sounds for the next two hours. I'm bringing you some British R&B and soul talent you really need to be supporting, as well as alt Hip Hop and club sounds from Amapiano to UK funky and even some funk infused footwork. @Papaoul takes us on a tour of underground global dancefloors with a big and energetic So Future Sounds guest mix. Enjoy! Let me know what you're feeling (k2rah_ on IG and Twitter) and don't forget to hit follow/subscribe for the next show
Dave and Pat discuss the planned WarnerMedia x Discovery merger and what it means for HBO in the streaming wars (1:45). We review British R&B singer Jorja Smith's comeback EP 'Be Right Back' (10:42), St. Vincent's 6th album 'Daddy's Home' (16:23), and J. Cole's 6th album 'The Off-Season' (23:52). We review Netflix's disastrous thriller film 'The Woman in the Window' starring Amy Adams (34:27) and the return of Angelina Jolie in HBO Max's action thriller 'Those Who Wish Me Dead' from Taylor Sheridan (43:48). Follow our Best of 2021 Spotify playlist: open.spotify.com/playlist/5L7qTzU83QDT7zuZszwWdK Follow Nowstalgia on Twitter: twitter.com/NowstalgiaPod
ABOUT JIM McCARTY: Jim McCarty is the legendary leader/drummer/singer/co-founder for The Yardbirds (a band who was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992), Renaissance and other bands. Since the Yardbirds' birth from 1963 to 1968, and then its 2003 reformation, the group has been heavily influential and over the years has had many household names serve as a member of the group including the likes of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and more. Jim McCarty continues to lead this innovative British rock band that provides the crucial link between British R&B, Psychedelic Rock, and Heavy Metal, while pioneering the use of innovations like fuzztone, feedback and distortion. The drummer/singer/songwriter is responsible for its haunting sound. ABOUT THE PODCAST: Candid discussions with and about those behind the scenes in the music business including industry veterans representing the segments of: Musician, Design & Live ABOUT THE HOSTS: All three Music Buzzz Podcast hosts (Dane Clark, Hugh Syme and Andy Wilson) have spent their careers working with the biggest names in entertainment and have been, and still are, a fly on the wall.
ABOUT JIM McCARTY: Jim McCarty is the legendary leader/drummer/singer/co-founder for The Yardbirds (a band who was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992), Renaissance and other bands. Since the Yardbirds' birth from 1963 to 1968, and then its 2003 reformation, the group has been heavily influential and over the years has had many household names serve as a member of the group including the likes of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and more. Jim McCarty continues to lead this innovative British rock band that provides the crucial link between British R&B, Psychedelic Rock, and Heavy Metal, while pioneering the use of innovations like fuzztone, feedback and distortion. The drummer/singer/songwriter is responsible for its haunting sound. ABOUT THE PODCAST: Candid discussions with and about those behind the scenes in the music business including industry veterans representing the segments of: Musician, Design & Live ABOUT THE HOSTS: All three Music Buzzz Podcast hosts (Dane Clark, Hugh Syme and Andy Wilson) have spent their careers working with the biggest names in entertainment and have been, and still are, a fly on the wall. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
ABOUT JIM McCARTY: Jim McCarty is the legendary leader/drummer/singer/co-founder for The Yardbirds (a band who was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1992), Renaissance and other bands. Since the Yardbirds' birth from 1963 to 1968, and then its 2003 reformation, the group has been heavily influential and over the years has had many household names serve as a member of the group including the likes of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and more. Jim McCarty continues to lead this innovative British rock band that provides the crucial link between British R&B, Psychedelic Rock, and Heavy Metal, while pioneering the use of innovations like fuzztone, feedback and distortion. The drummer/singer/songwriter is responsible for its haunting sound. ABOUT THE PODCAST: Candid discussions with and about those behind the scenes in the music business including industry veterans representing the segments of: Musician, Design & Live ABOUT THE HOSTS: All three Music Buzzz Podcast hosts (Dane Clark, Hugh Syme and Andy Wilson) have spent their careers working with the biggest names in entertainment and have been, and still are, a fly on the wall. This show is part of Pantheon Podcasts
Norman Washington "Junior" Giscombe (born 6 June 1957) is an English singer-songwriter (frequently known simply by the mononym, Junior) who was one of the first British R&B artists to be successful in the United States. He is best known for his 1982 hit single, "Mama Used to Say". CAREERGiscombe was born in Wandsworth, London, and was a backing vocalist with Linx between 1980 and 1982. When turning towards a solo career, he was first billed simply as Junior and he scored a #7 hit in the UK Singles Chart in 1982, with "Mama Used to Say". His follow-up single, "Too Late" also made the Top 20 in the UK. "Mama Used to Say" was also a Top 40 Pop hit and Top 5 R&B in the United States, earning him a "Best Newcomer" award from Billboard magazine. Sometime (most likely) around 1984 and 1985, Junior Giscombe recorded (and very possibly co-wrote) an unknown number of songs with Phil Lynott, the former leader, vocalist and bass player of hard rock band Thin Lizzy. Lynott died in January 1986 and the songs were never officially released. Most remain as demos, but one of the songs, "Lady Loves to Dance", was mastered and nearly released before being pulled by the record company. Some of the songs are available on YouTube, including "What's the Matter Baby" (Giscombe provides backing vocals) and "Time (and Again)" (Giscombe shares vocals with Lynott). After a period outside the charts, he made a brief return to the Top 10 in 1987 when he sang a duet with Kim Wilde on "Another Step (Closer to You)". He also became involved with the formation of Red Wedge in 1986 with Billy Bragg, Jimmy Somerville and Paul Weller, and had been a part of The Council Collective with The Style Council, Jimmy Ruffin and others for the 1984 fundraising single, "Soul Deep" and in 1992 appeared on stage at the 1992 Labour rally in SheffieldSheffield_Rally singing Curtis Mayfield's[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Mayfield ([1])] 'Move on Up'. Later Giscombe became better known as a songwriter for various artists, including Sheena Easton. He is currently a DJ with internet radio station Solarradio.com, although he is not listed on their website. Giscombe is the uncle of British comedian Richard Blackwood, who sampled "Mama Used to Say" on his single "Mama – Who Da Man" in June 2000. www.juniorgiscombe.co.uk www.joekelleyradio.com Originally aired February 23rd, 2006
We explore one of those band you either love them to death or have no idea they existed. Join us as we wax semi-poetic on one of the leanest and meanest bands to come out of the British R&B scene of the '60s that create some of the most stunning music to grace our ears. Don't forget to check out the equally winsome Pretty Things playlist on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/60hpXj1T3wDbJdgcb69Qca
On this weeks episode, i'm joined by R&B Singer Cilla Raie. We discuss benefits of being an independent artist, juggling being a mother and having a successful music career, treatment of females within the industry....and more! Cilla Raie, is a British R&B and Pop singer-songwriter from Hornsey, North London. She released her self-titled debut EP ‘Cilla Raie' on 07 November 2014 through independent label R.O.A.D Entertainment/So Far Removed. Releasing her first single Masterpiece, gaining support from BBC Introducing, MOBO Awards, Urban Development and Link Up TV. ”Ain't No One” produced by Joey Dyer (Iggy Azalea, Katy B, Conor Maynard) was released on the 19th June 2020, Cilla is back with another R&B classic, combining her love for R&B and soul music and delivering soft and sultry vocals with heartfelt lyrics. Throughout the year Cilla is planning on releasing more singles, with an EP set to be released early 2021. The project will pay's homage to R&B and embodies the growing pains of love and life as a young black British woman. The EP will feature productions from Jay Jay Musika (Ms Banks), Joey Dyer (Iggy Azalea, Katy B), Delirious (Paigey Cakey, Big Tobz). You can stream more of Cilla Raie via the links below Apple Music - https://itunes.apple.com/az/artist/cilla-raie/929181940 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/artist/4yKOZR4NFIQDJa4q9AFWNf YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTnZGTvCK6uGerOWsxceI7w Cilla Raie Social Media Twitter - https://twitter.com/CillaRaie Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/itsCillaRaie/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cillaraie/?hl=en
Episode eighty-four of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Shakin’ All Over” by Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, and how the first great British R&B band interacted with the entertainment industry. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifteen-minute bonus episode, on “Under Your Spell Again” by Buck Owens. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ (more…)
To download the practice sheet click here: https://hadarshemesh.com/the-r-in-english-podcast-freebie/ Many non-native speakers of English struggle with the R in English. Not only that this sound is challenging to pronounce (put the tongue where?!?) and makes us feel like pirates, but it also keeps changing depending on where it's positioned. So even though it might be easy to pronounce in some words, it could be impossible to pronounce in other words and that makes us feel like the R is impossible! To understand the R we need to do three things: Understand how to pronounce it Understand the different types of R sounds and what might be the challenge of each Practice, practice and then practice some more. In this episode I'm going to walk you through each and every one of those steps, and at the end, even offer you the perfect way to practice with my practice sheet and audio: https://hadarshemesh.com/the-r-in-english-podcast-freebie/ I'm also going to talk about the difference between the American R and the British R! But most importantly I'll give you tips and hacks on where and how to CHEAT, so you invest less effort, pronounce less R's and sound BETTER! Whether you're struggling with pronouncing it or you know how to pronounce it but you don't use it consistently, or sometimes you become too self-conscious about it, in this episode you'll find things you can do that'll help you use it naturally and easily. For more about the R in English, check out these episodes: The American R: https://hadarshemesh.com/magazine/the-american-r/ American Accent in 5 steps: https://hadarshemesh.com/magazine/improve-your-accent/ And remember #ClearIsBetterThanAccurate If you want to improve your accent and understand spoken English better, download my free American Accent audio crash course. You can also download an interactive list of 50 of the most mispronounced words in English and master the pronunciation of those tricky words.
To download the practice sheet click here: https://theaccentsway.com/the-r-in-english-podcast-freebie/ Many non-native speakers of English struggle with the R in English. Not only that this sound is challenging to pronounce (put the tongue where?!?) and makes us feel like pirates, but it also keeps changing depending on where it's positioned. So even though it might be easy to pronounce in some words, it could be impossible to pronounce in other words and that makes us feel like the R is impossible! To understand the R we need to do three things: Understand how to pronounce it Understand the different types of R sounds and what might be the challenge of each Practice, practice and then practice some more. In this episode I'm going to walk you through each and every one of those steps, and at the end, even offer you the perfect way to practice with my practice sheet and audio: https://theaccentsway.com/the-r-in-english-podcast-freebie/ I'm also going to talk about the difference between the American R and the British R! But most importantly I'll give you tips and hacks on where and how to CHEAT, so you invest less effort, pronounce less R's and sound BETTER! Whether you're struggling with pronouncing it or you know how to pronounce it but you don't use it consistently, or sometimes you become too self-conscious about it, in this episode you'll find things you can do that'll help you use it naturally and easily. For more about the R in English, watch: The American R: https://youtu.be/DCNjahCAMOU American Accent in 5 steps: https://youtu.be/cnVJQt-GlHE And remember #ClearIsBetterThanAccurate Sign up to be notified when registration opens for Accent Makeover: https://theaccentsway.com/join-2/ Are you a teacher? Learn more about English Teachers Academy and join the WAITLIST: theaccentsway.com/english-teachers-academy-announcement/ If you want to improve your accent and understand spoken English better, download my free American Accent audio crash course. You can also download an interactive list of 50 of the most mispronounced words in English and master the pronunciation of those tricky words.
Many black, UK-based, female R&B performers, especially those from the early 2000s, have found it hard to establish a career at home. Acts such as Estelle, Jamelia, Sade, Ms Dynamite, Cleopatra and Misteeq have either left the music industry completely, diversified into presenting and acting or have re-established a base in the US in an attempt to continue their careers. Meanwhile American performers such as Beyonce, Rihanna and Alicia Keys who started their careers at a similar time, continue to dominate the music world. British acts, despite early chart recognition, awards and fan devotion, struggled to make an impact in the same way. And in the modern era, performers such as Laura Mvula, despite enormous talent and massive critical acclaim, have encountered problems dealing with the music industry. Why do the women involved in British R&B fail to find lasting success at home? Why can't British artists maintain the same trajectory as their American counterparts? Why do they feel it necessary to relocate abroad or work in other parts of the entertainment industry? And will the R&B artists of the future face the same problems? With Yomi Adegoke and Tara Joshi. Presenter: Hayley Campbell Producer: Dale Shaw
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