Podcasts about Brook Benton

Andy kicks off this week with a cheeky one from Led Zeppelin before taking you on his two hour journey.There's some rare ones from the Motown label, some soulful takes on Dylan tracks from Esther Phillips, Nina Simone and Brook Benton and the three Northern Soul Stonkers got their spins at Blackpool Mecca plus he pays tribute to Marianne Faithfull who passed away this week.For more info and tracklisting, visit :https://thefaceradio.com/groovy-soulTune into new broadcasts of Groovy Soul, LIVE, Sundays 12 - 2 PM EST / 5 - 7 PM GMT.https://thefaceradio.com/archives/groovy-soul//Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Join the family at https://plus.acast.com/s/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

#180 Broadcast 180 - Episode 173 - The Crooners - 20250201 - 3 in 1 = Brook Benton by Jim Reeves

Viajamos 60 años atrás en el tiempo en busca de singles que alcanzaron su puesto más alto en el Billboard Hot 100 en enero de 1965.(Foto del podcast por R. McPhedran; Petula Clark con el disco de oro por “Downtown”, 1965)Playlist;(sintonía) LEE MORGAN “The sidewinder part 1” (top 81)PETULA CLARK “Downtown” (top 1)SHIRLEY ELLIS “The name game” (top 3)MARTHA and THE VANDELLAS “Wild one” (top 3)THE MARVELETTES “Too many fish in the sea” (top 25)MARVIN GAYE “How sweet it is to be loved by you” (top 6)MARY WELLS “Use your head” (top 34)THE LARKS “The jerk” (top 7)THE CONTOURS “Can you jerk like me” (top 47)JAMES BROWN and THE FAMOUS FLAMES “Have mercy baby” (top 92)BROOK BENTON “Do it right” (top 67)JOE TEX “Hold what you got” (top 5)THE IMPRESSIONS “Amen” (top 7)RAY CHARLES “Makin’ whoope” (top 46)WILLIE MITCHELL “Percolatin’” (top 85)CANDY and THE KISSES “The 81” (top 51)THE EXCITERS “I want you to be my boy” (top 98)CHAD and JEREMY “Willow weep for me” (top 15)Escuchar audio

Desempolvamos el baúl de los discos navideños para ofrecerte una sesión de animadas tonadas y curiosas historias vinculadas a estas fechas. ¡Felices fiestas!Playlist;(sintonía) LOS STRAITJACKETS “Here comes Santa Claus”BRIAN SETZER ORCHESTRA “Boogie Woogie Santa Claus”BIG BAD VOODOO DADDY “Last night I went out with Santa Claus”JD McPHERSON “Bad kid”JD McPHERSON “Santa’s got a mean machine”REVEREND HORTON HEAT “Santa on the roof”SOUTHERN CULTURE ON THE SKIDS “Merry Christmas baby”JAMES BROWN “Tit for tat (ain’t no taking back)”TT SYNDICATE “Hip shakin Santa”MARCEL BONTEMPI “Don’t you Merry Christmas me”THE SONICS “Don’t believe in Christmas”THE HEADCOATEES “Santa Claus”HOLLY GOLIGHTLY “The Christmas tree is on fire”HELEN LOVE “Merry Christmas (I don’t want to fight tonight)”THE CONNECTION “Christmas rock’n’roll”THE FLESHTONES “Super rock Santa”THE FLESHTONES “Champagne Christmas”NATHANIEL MAYER and THE SHANKS “Mr Santa Claus”CHRIS ISAAK “Gotta be good”BROOK BENTON “You’re all I want for Christmas”Escuchar audio

2020年，71岁的村上春树忽然决定闭关。4年之后，他带来了自己的全新长篇小说《小城与不确定性的墙》。对于村上春树自己来说，这是一部回到原点的作品。他决定重新书写自己出道时一直不太满意，从未正式出版的旧作。如今村上春树已经有了一个堪称完美的职业生涯。他有非常长的创作生涯，有数量庞大的作品集，没人能够比肩的影响力，以及多到溢出的商业成功和海量的读者。他已经远远不是一个作家那么简单，而是代表一种品位，一种生活方式。村上春树当然还在坚持写作，只是这种写作已经完全变成了纯粹的自我表达。正如同这本《小城与不确定性的墙》，只是村上为了完成自己的心愿。本期节目我们从村上春树的新书《小城与不确定性的墙》出发，聊一聊这位改变我们很多人的日本国民级作家。嘉宾：渡边编辑,B站读书UP主黄哲成有趣而无用的人做着有趣而无用的事豆瓣 @hzcneo时间轴：00:03:45 《小城与不确定性的墙》国内版权的变化00:07:11 村上创作《小城与不确定性的墙》的背景与初衷00:13:40 《小城与不确定性的墙》与村上之前作品的对照与不同00:23:31 贯穿村上创作生涯的模式化写作00:27:31 村上对自己创作模式的辩解00:32:47 如何理解村上作品的反复出现的“异世界”设定00:46:12 年轻时的经历与村上本人性格和创作的影响00:50:30 村上小说中的人物个性00:56:22 村上小说中文版中出现的翻译问题01:04:58 究竟什么样的译者适合翻译村上的小说01:07:23 村上能够成为一个现象级作家的原因01:13:11 村上的热潮为什么在慢慢消退上世纪60年代村上春树选择远离学生运动涉及作品：村上春树 《且听风吟》《一九七三年的弹子球》《寻羊冒险记》《世界尽头与冷酷仙境》《挪威的森林》《舞！舞！舞！》《奇鸟行状录》《海边的卡夫卡》《1Q84》《小城与不确定性的墙》詹姆斯·伍德 《小说机杼》60年代在听摇滚乐的日本人本期使用音乐：开场： Brook Benton&Essential Classics- Rainy Night in Georgia中插： The Beatles - Norwegian Wood结尾： The Brothers Four - Greenfields制作团队监制：Peter Cat统筹：黄哲成策划：黄哲成剪辑：黄哲成编辑：黄哲成

Clyde Otis nació el 11 de septiembre de 1924. Con motivo de su cien cumpleaños dedicamos nuestro tiempo de radio a picotear en el inabarcable legado de uno de los grandes compositores del siglo XX. Más de 800 canciones registradas a su nombre que han sido interpretadas por muchas de las grandes voces del jazz, el soul o el R&B. Esto es tan solo una pequeña porción de la punta del iceberg de la obra que nos dejó.Playlist;(sintonía) CLYDE OTIS and HIS ORCHESTRA “Jungle drums” (1961)NAT “KING” COLE and THE FOUR KNIGHTS “That’s all there is to that” (1956)ELVIS PRESLEY “Dontcha think it’s time” (1958)THE DIAMONDS “The stroll” (1957)JACK SCOTT “Patsy” (1960)EDDIE RIFF “Ain’t that lovin’ you baby” (1956)THE DEL VIKINS “Flat tire” (1958)THE ELLIS BROTHERS “Sneaky alligator” (1958)LAVERN BAKER “Substitute” (1958)IVORY JOE HUNTER “I just want to love you” (1959)BROOK BENTON “Kiddio” (1960)BROOK BENTON and DINAH WASHINGTON “Baby (You've got what it takes)” (1960)PRISCILLA BOWMAN feat THE SPANIELS “A rockin' good way (to mess around and fall in love)” (1958)ROOSEVELT GRIER “Lover set me free” (1963)SARAH VAUGHAN “Smooth operator” (1959)TIMI YURO “What’s a matter baby (Is it hurtin’ you)” (1962)ARETHA FRANKLIN “A change” (1968)TOM JONES “Endlessly” (1965)CONWAY TWITTY “Looking back” (1963)Escuchar audio

1960. Dans la revue Billboard on peut lire que Dinah Washington a le vent en poupe. Cela fait un an qu'elle surfe sur le succès de son album avec orchestre à cordes, What A Difference a Day Made. Son nouveau single en duo avec le chanteur Brook Benton lui a offert son premier n°1. Pourtant en privé c'est la débandade. A partir de ce moment-là, son nom apparaît de plus en plus souvent dans la rubrique faits-divers, et de moins en moins dans les pages musicales. Hébergé par Ausha. Visitez ausha.co/politique-de-confidentialite pour plus d'informations.

We can't bottle Brook Benten's energy, but speaking to her sure comes close! This was a high-octane episode that combines Barbara's favorite topics: running (and exercise writ large), and storytelling. Just like with writing, you've got to earn your sweat. Brook Benten, author of Sweat, discusses her professional and personal experiences that led to this book. Part memoir and part exercise guide, Sweat targets women and moms who are looking to reclaim a more authentic life balance. Brook Benten is a GIANT in the fitness industry: since trading in her twirling batons for step boxes, Benten has been inspiring exercisers for over twenty years. You may know Benten for her dozens of workout DVDs. She has represented brands including Livestrong, Hyperwear, Prevention, Power Music, and Lebert Fitness. Johnny Goldberg (“Johnny G,” the inventor of Spinning) asked Benten to represent his brand as one of six international ⁠Johnny G Spirit Bike Master Trainers⁠. After graduating from Texas State University with a B.S. in Exercise and Sport Science and a minor in Business Administration, she earned an M.Ed. in Physical Education with an emphasis in Sport and Fitness Administration from The University of Houston. Her gold-standard certifications include ACE Personal Trainer, ACSM Exercise Physiologist, and Physical Mind Institute Pilates. Benten is among the world's top 1% of kettlebell instructors to train under Pavel Tsatsouline, having earned RKC (Russian Kettlebell Challenge), SFG (StrongFirst Girya), and SFG II (StrongFirst Girya Level II) kettlebell certifications.  Benten has lectured at universities, led presentations at national fitness conferences, and served as an adjunct faculty member. Her 9-hour kettlebell curriculum is used to teach personal trainers and fitness instructors how to safely and effectively train with kettlebells. In 2023, she published her first book, “Lift Light, Get Lean,” and completed her Professional Life Coach certification through Baylor University. Benten is the wellness travel writer for Texas Lifestyle Magazine, hosts a podcast honoring self-sovereignty by building emotional and relational boundaries, and continues to inspire women to get moving. In this episode, Benten emphasizes the importance of self-care and finding balance as a mother and encourages women to prioritize their own well-being. She also opens up about her experiences with trauma, sobriety, and the challenges of facing uncomfortable emotions. Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Brook Benten and 'Sweat' 01:54 The Journey of Writing 'Sweat' 04:16 The Structure of the Book and Target Audience 07:00 Finding Balance and Including Children in Workouts 10:17 The Importance of Short, Effective Workouts 12:37 Brook Benton's Background in Fitness 15:55 Becoming Known for Kettlebell Workouts 22:26 Navigating Trauma and Sobriety 28:56 Overcoming Alcohol Addiction and Finding Wellness 30:25 The Power of a Morning Routine and Quality Sleep 36:40 The Importance of Social Connections in Well-Being 38:36 Seeking Evidence-Based Information in the Fitness Industry 49:21 Introducing 'Heavy 100': A Holistic Approach to Wellness 56:33 Wellness as a Journey: Consistency and Commitment Where to find Brook: Website: https://www.brookbenten.com Insta: https://www.instagram.com/brookbenten YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmI7X5SgSPIRNbAHY5bfTxg/about?view_as=subscriber Trying to quit drinking? You don't have to do it alone. Here are links where you can find help: NIAAA How To Quit Drinking? Tips From Rethinking Drinking https://www.rethinkingdrinking.niaaa.nih.gov/Thinking-about-a-change/Support-for-quitting/Support-Strategies-For-Quitting.aspx Treatment navigator https://alcoholtreatment.niaaa.nih.gov/

#136 Broadcast 136 - Episode 129 - The Crooners - 20240330 - 3 in 1 = Brook Benton by Jim Reeves

Sunny "Sweet Daddy Fonk" Wong & DJZigZag Present: WAGRadio's Groovin' Blue Xmas Show with Blu Mankuma SHOW TWO Sleigh In . . . Tune Up . . . . . Slide Out . . . . . . . (1:23) WAGRadio Xmas 2023 Show Two Intro – Produced by WAGRadio Vinyl Librarian William “Fats Is Back” Reiter (formerly Bill Reiter – the all-niter) (3:22) “This Christmas” – CEE LO GREEN [Elektra Cd No. 531749-2 “CeeLo's Magic Moment”] 2012 Prod. Adam Anders & Peer Astro ( :12) JOLLY JOHN TANNER WAGRadio Xmas Greeting https://vancouversun.com/news/this-week-in-history-1943-2023-legendary-psychedelic-dj-jolly-john-tanner-looks-back-at-a-life-on-the-left-of-the-dial (2:59) “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting By An Open Fire) – LOVE RENAISSANCE (LVRN), DRAM [LVRN Records Cd “Home For The Holidays Vol 1] 2022 (3:54) “Might As Well Be Coal” – LOVE RENAISSANCE (LVRN), BABY TATE [LVRN Records Cd “Home For The Holidays Vol. 2”] (2:10) “Merry Christmas, Happy New Year) – BROOK BENTON [Mercury Records 45rpm No. 71730] 1960 Arr./Cond. Belford Hendricks * note - Brook Benton is WAGRadio's Tony Bennett ( :05) BLU MANKUMA – WAGRadio Xmas Id https://vancouversun.com/news/this-week-in-history-1943-2023-legendary-psychedelic-dj-jolly-john-tanner-looks-back-at-a-life-on-the-left-of-the-dial (4:35) “Oh Christmas Tree” – Joey DeFrancesco [JD Music/Alma Records Cd No. BOONBB9YJ8 “Home For The Holidays”] 2014 Jeff Parker (gtr), George Fludas (dm), John Webber (bs), Jerry Weldon & George Coleman (tn sx), George Coleman Jr. (dm) ( :12) RICH LIUKKO - FREECLOUD RECORDS, EDMONTON, AB. - WAGRadio Xmas Greeting https://www.cbc.ca/news/vinyl-lovers-spur-new-boom-for-old-medium-1.680550 10.(2:51) “Wonderful Christmastime” – WALK OFF THE EARTH [Amazon Music Original] Canada 11.( :15) GABRIEL MARK HASSELBACH WAGRadio Xmas Greeting  http://gabrieljazz.com/ 12.(3:15) “Let It Snow” – GABRIEL MARK HASSELBACH [Wind Tunnel Records Cd “Gabriel's Holiday Notes (Remastered)”] 2000 https://windtunnelrecords.posthaven.com/gabriels-new-compilation-the-vocalists 13.(3:06) “Christmas Day” – AMERIGO GAZAWAY [Amerigo Music] * samples “Christmas Will Really Be Christmas” by Lou Rawls [Capitol Records Lp No. ST2790 “Merry Christmas. Ho! Ho! Ho!”] 1967 Prod. David Axelrod Arr./Cond. H.B. Barnum 14.( :11) BEN FRITH - NEPTOON RECORD STORE, VANCOUVER, B.C. – WAGRadio Xmas Greeting https://vancouversun.com/entertainment/music/vinyl-vault-neptoon-records-ben-frith-claims-eclectic-group-devos-are-we-not-men-album-one-of-the-best-with-video 15.(4:37) “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” – MARY J. BLIGE [Verve/Interscope] 2013 16.( :12) ROB FRITH – NEPTOON RECORD STORE, VANCOUVER, B.C. – WAGRadio Xmas Greeting https://earofnewt.com/2022/11/16/rob-friths-neptoon-records-marks-40-years-of-bringing-vinyl-joy-to-vancouver/ 17.(5:31) “Winter Moon” [Remastered – Galaxy Cd GXY-5140] – ART PEPPER 1991 Stanley Cowell (pn), Howard Roberts (gtr), Cecil McBee (bs), Carl Burnett (dm), Art Pepper (alt sx) Prod. Ed Michel 18.( :27) WAGRadio Id 19.( :27) NARDWUAR – UBC RADIO – WAGRadio Xmas Greeting https://www.youtube.com/user/NardwuarServiette 20.(1:10) “Santa Claus and his Old Lady (Segment)” – CHEECH & CHONG [Ode Records No. 66021] 1971 21.(3:59) “Come On Its Christmas” – THE HAMILTONES [Ghetto AllStars] 22.( :05) BLU MANKUMA – WAGRadio Id 23.(3:54) “Be Kind To Old People” – JOE TEX [Epic 45rpm No. 8-50494] 1977 Prod. Buddy Killen 24.(4:01) “Home For Christmas” – MARVIN SAPP ft. JOE [RCA Inspiration Cd No. 88883-74252-2] 2013 25.( :10) BOBBY GARRISON (Bill & Bob's Record Store Co-Owner) – WAGRadio Xmas Greeting 26.(4:27) “The Christmas Song [Verve Records Lp No. V6-8666 “Christmas Cookin'”] 1964 Kenny Burrell (gtr), Grady Tate (dm), Jimmy Smith (org) Prod. Creed Taylor Arr./Cond. Billy Byers 27.(1:19) “Santa Claus and his Old Lady (Segment)” – CHEECH & CHONG [Ode Records No. 66021] 1971 28.(3:50) “Jingle Bells (Robbie Hardkiss Remix)” – DUKE ELLINGTON [Six Degrees] 29.( 56) “Santa Clause and his Old Lady (Segment)” – CHEECH & CHONG [Ode Records No. 66021] 1971 30.(2:27) “Feliz Navidad” – LOVE RENAISSANCE (LVRN), YOUNG ROG, DRAM [LVRN Cd “Home For The Holidays Vol. 1”] 2022 31.( :27) SUNNY ‘SWEET DADDY FONK' WAGRadio ID 32.(3:02) “Merry Christmas To You” – THE SALEM TRAVELERS [Checker Lp No. CH-25210 “Have A Merry Chess Christmas” – Various Artists] 1988 33.( :20) RON SIMMONDS – VANCOUVER, B.C. CO-OP RADIO ‘BLUES IN THE DARK' RADIO SHOW HOST - WAGRadio Xmas Greeting https://coopradio.org/shows/blues-in-the-dark/ 34.(4:06) “Baby It's Cold Outside” – JOEY DeFRANCESCO [JD Music/Alma Records Cd No. BOONBB9YJ8 “Home For The Holidays”] 2014 Jeff Parker (gtr), George Fludas (dm), John Webber (bs), Jerry Weldon & George Coleman (tn sx), George Coleman Jr. (dm) 35.( :18) HENRY YOUNG (Guitarist Extraordinaire) – WAGRadio Xmas Greeting https://ricepapermagazine.ca/2017/05/henryyoung_installment_1/ 36.(2:20) “Deep Feeling” – CHUCK BERRY [Chess 45rpm No. 1653] 1957 37.( :11) AL FOREMAN WAGRadio Xmas Greeting Two https://www.facebook.com/people/Al-Foreman-and-the-Soulmates/100063455173750/ 38.(3:08) “Merry Christmas Baby” – CHUCK BERRY [Quality Records Ltd. 45rpm No. K1824] 1958 39.(1:15) (THE LEGENDARY) DJ JAY SWING - WAGRadio Xmas Greeting https://www.straight.com/article/jay-swing-takes-hip-hop-to-prime-time https://nardwuar.com/vancouver-hip-hop-history/

Sunny "Sweet Daddy Fonk" Wong & DJZigZag Present: WAGRadio's Groovin' Blue Xmas Show with Blu Mankuma Sleigh In . . . Tune Up . . . . . Slide Out . . . . . . . ( :49) WAGRadio Xmas 2023 Open – Produced by William “Fats Is Back” Reiter featuring BROOK BENTON (3:17) “What Christmas Means To Me” – CEE LO GREEN [Elektra Cd No. 531749-2“CeeLo's Magic Moment”] 2012 Prod. Adam Anders, Peer Astrom ( :11) NEPTOON RECORDS ROB FRITH (Vancouver, B.C.) Xmas greeting http://neptoon.com/ (3:21) “Santa Baby” – CHER [Warner Cd No. 093624849261 “Christmas”] (3:11) “O, Tannenbaum” – GARY BURTON [GRP Records Inc. Cd No. GRD-9574 “GRP Christmas Collection] 1988 (4:42) “O Holy Night” – B.G.O.T.I. [Death Row Records/gamma Cd No. INTD-90108 “Christmas On Death Row”] 1996 Prod/Arr Kevyn Lewis ( :06) BLU MANKUMA WAGRadio Xmas Id https://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/Blu-Mankuma/ (3:11) “Jingle Bells” – JIMMY SMITH [Verve Vinyl Lp No. V6-8666 “Christmas Cookin'”] 1966 ( :13) DB CHESSA (Victoria B.C.) Xmas greeting https://livevictoria.com/dbchessa (4:19) “(A Postcard In) Winter [DJZigZag EdiT]” – PHIL PERRY [Private Music Cd No. 01005-82181-2 “My Book Of Love”] 2000 ( :13) CARL GRAVES (Skylark) [Vancouver / Los Angeles] Xmas greeting https://www.allmusic.com/artist/carl-graves-mn0001244495 (4:31) “Sugar Rum Cherry Mix” – JOHN BEASLEY [digital platforms release] – Christian Euman (dm), Edwin Livingstone (bs), John Beasley (pn) Arr. John Beasley ( :11) MIKE CHERRY (Sky Valley Radio – Salt Spring Island, B.C. / KYAC - AM/FM– Seattle) Xmas greeting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3bMzb8xTEg  (3:04) “Snowbound” – CARMEN McRAE [Roulette Records Vinyl Lp No. 52091] 1963 Prod. Teddy Reig Arr. Don Costa * full name – Carmen Mercedes McRae (3:35) “Snowbound” –THE RAMSEY LEWIS TRIO [Argo Vinyl Lp No. LPS-745 “More Sounds Of Christmas”] 1964 Eldee Young / Cleveland Eaton (bs), Red Holt / Steve McCall (dm), John Avant (tbn), Ramsey Lewis (pn) Arr. King Fleming ( :05) BLU MANKUMA WAGRadio Xmas Id (3:59) “Merry Christmas Baby” – JAMES BROWN AND THE FAMOUS FLAMES [King Records Vinyl Lp No. 1010 “James Brown Sings Christmas Songs”] 1966 ( :16) CAMERON HUGHES (Keynote speaker) https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/king-of-cheer-cameron-hughes/1138021864 (3:10) “Soulful Christmas” – JAMES BROWN [King Records Vinyl Lp No. KS 1040 “A Soulful Christmas”] 1968 (1:12) DJZigZag Xmas Jangle Id with SUNNY “S.D.F.” WONG (3:54) “One Wish” – THE HAMILTONES [Ghetto Allstars] (4:11) “Let It Snow” – BOYS II MEN, BRIAN McKNIGHT [Warner Music Benelux Cd No.505419686395 "The Christmas Feeling"] 2015 (2:36) “Ghetto Christmas” – LOVE RENAISSANCE (LVRN), 6LACK, SUMMER WALKER [LVRN/Interscope Records Ep “Home For The Holidays Vol 1”] 2020 Prod. Lisa McCall & Slimwav (4:20) “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” – LOREN SCHOENBERG [MusicMasters Jazz Cd No. 01612-65089-2 "Hot Jazz For A Cool Night" (Various Artists)] 1992 (4:33) “Give Love On Christmas Day” – JOHNNY GILL [Motown Cd No. MOT-6292 "Motown Christmas Album - Christmas Cheers From Motown"] 1989 Prod. Paul Lawrence ( :47)   “Silver Bells (segment)” – THE RAMSAY FAMILY [gift from Miles Ramsay] (2:59) “Christmas Time For Everyone Else But Me“ – HANK BALLARD & THE MIDNIGHTERS [King Records 45rpm No. 45-5729] 1963 ( :04) WAGRadio Id (3:17) “This Christmas” – CORINNE BAILEY RAE [Universal Music Canada] 2011 ( :30) NARDWUAR (UBC Radio – Vancouver, B.C.) Xmas greeting https://nardwuar.com/ (3:59) “Silent Night mix” – JOHN BEASLEY [digital platforms release] Christian Euman [dm], Edwin Livingstone [bs], John Beasley [pn] Arr. John Beasley ( :20) WAGRadio Id (2:15) “Boogie Woogie Santa Claus” – MABEL SCOTT [Excellsior 78rpm No. EXC-1336-C] 1948 * written by Leon Rene (3:49) “Dear Mrs Claus” – THE BARR BROTHERS [Secret City Records Inc.] 2011 (1:52) AL FOREMAN (The SoulMates) Xmas greeting . . . . . .

1. Peter Green Splinter Group 2. Elvin Bishop 3. Arcade Fire 4. The Eastern 5. Scattered Ashes 6. Kincade 7. Thea Gilmore 8. Mel Parsons 9. Corinne Bailey Rae 10. Ther Mountain Goats 11. Mary Coughlan 12. Brook Benton 13. Pixies 14. Elvis Costello 15. The Great Unwashed 16. Spoon

Episode 168 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Say a Little Prayer”, and the interaction of the sacred, political, and secular in Aretha Franklin's life and work. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-five-minute bonus episode available, on "Abraham, Martin, and John" by Dion. 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 there are too many songs by Aretha Franklin. Even splitting it into multiple parts would have required six or seven mixes. My main biographical source for Aretha Franklin is Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin by David Ritz, and this is where most of the quotes from musicians come from. Information on C.L. Franklin came from Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America by Nick Salvatore. Country Soul by Charles L Hughes is a great overview of the soul music made in Muscle Shoals, Memphis, and Nashville in the sixties. Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The Southern Dream Of Freedom is possibly less essential, but still definitely worth reading. Information about Martin Luther King came from Martin Luther King: A Religious Life by Paul Harvey. I also referred to Burt Bacharach's autobiography Anyone Who Had a Heart, Carole King's autobiography A Natural Woman, and Soul Serenade: King Curtis and his Immortal Saxophone by Timothy R. Hoover. For information about Amazing Grace I also used Aaron Cohen's 33 1/3 book on the album. The film of the concerts is also definitely worth watching. And the Aretha Now album is available in this five-album box set for a ludicrously cheap price. But it's actually worth getting this nineteen-CD set with her first sixteen Atlantic albums and a couple of bonus discs of demos and outtakes. There's barely a duff track in the whole nineteen discs. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A quick warning before I begin. This episode contains some moderate references to domestic abuse, death by cancer, racial violence, police violence, and political assassination. Anyone who might be upset by those subjects might want to check the transcript rather than listening to the episode. Also, as with the previous episode on Aretha Franklin, this episode presents something of a problem. Like many people in this narrative, Franklin's career was affected by personal troubles, which shaped many of her decisions. But where most of the subjects of the podcast have chosen to live their lives in public and share intimate details of every aspect of their personal lives, Franklin was an extremely private person, who chose to share only carefully sanitised versions of her life, and tried as far as possible to keep things to herself. This of course presents a dilemma for anyone who wants to tell her story -- because even though the information is out there in biographies, and even though she's dead, it's not right to disrespect someone's wish for a private life. I have therefore tried, wherever possible, to stay away from talk of her personal life except where it *absolutely* affects the work, or where other people involved have publicly shared their own stories, and even there I've tried to keep it to a minimum. This will occasionally lead to me saying less about some topics than other people might, even though the information is easily findable, because I don't think we have an absolute right to invade someone else's privacy for entertainment. When we left Aretha Franklin, she had just finally broken through into the mainstream after a decade of performing, with a version of Otis Redding's song "Respect" on which she had been backed by her sisters, Erma and Carolyn. "Respect", in Franklin's interpretation, had been turned from a rather chauvinist song about a man demanding respect from his woman into an anthem of feminism, of Black power, and of a new political awakening. For white people of a certain generation, the summer of 1967 was "the summer of love". For many Black people, it was rather different. There's a quote that goes around (I've seen it credited in reliable sources to both Ebony and Jet magazine, but not ever seen an issue cited, so I can't say for sure where it came from) saying that the summer of 67 was the summer of "'retha, Rap, and revolt", referring to the trifecta of Aretha Franklin, the Black power leader Jamil Abdullah al-Amin (who was at the time known as H. Rap Brown, a name he later disclaimed) and the rioting that broke out in several major cities, particularly in Detroit: [Excerpt: John Lee Hooker, "The Motor City is Burning"] The mid sixties were, in many ways, the high point not of Black rights in the US -- for the most part there has been a lot of progress in civil rights in the intervening decades, though not without inevitable setbacks and attacks from the far right, and as movements like the Black Lives Matter movement have shown there is still a long way to go -- but of *hope* for Black rights. The moral force of the arguments made by the civil rights movement were starting to cause real change to happen for Black people in the US for the first time since the Reconstruction nearly a century before. But those changes weren't happening fast enough, and as we heard in the episode on "I Was Made to Love Her", there was not only a growing unrest among Black people, but a recognition that it was actually possible for things to change. A combination of hope and frustration can be a powerful catalyst, and whether Franklin wanted it or not, she was at the centre of things, both because of her newfound prominence as a star with a hit single that couldn't be interpreted as anything other than a political statement and because of her intimate family connections to the struggle. Even the most racist of white people these days pays lip service to the memory of Dr Martin Luther King, and when they do they quote just a handful of sentences from one speech King made in 1963, as if that sums up the full theological and political philosophy of that most complex of men. And as we discussed the last time we looked at Aretha Franklin, King gave versions of that speech, the "I Have a Dream" speech, twice. The most famous version was at the March on Washington, but the first time was a few weeks earlier, at what was at the time the largest civil rights demonstration in American history, in Detroit. Aretha's family connection to that event is made clear by the very opening of King's speech: [Excerpt: Martin Luther King, "Original 'I Have a Dream' Speech"] So as summer 1967 got into swing, and white rock music was going to San Francisco to wear flowers in its hair, Aretha Franklin was at the centre of a very different kind of youth revolution. Franklin's second Atlantic album, Aretha Arrives, brought in some new personnel to the team that had recorded Aretha's first album for Atlantic. Along with the core Muscle Shoals players Jimmy Johnson, Spooner Oldham, Tommy Cogbill and Roger Hawkins, and a horn section led by King Curtis, Wexler and Dowd also brought in guitarist Joe South. South was a white session player from Georgia, who had had a few minor hits himself in the fifties -- he'd got his start recording a cover version of "The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor", the Big Bopper's B-side to "Chantilly Lace": [Excerpt: Joe South, "The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor"] He'd also written a few songs that had been recorded by people like Gene Vincent, but he'd mostly become a session player. He'd become a favourite musician of Bob Johnston's, and so he'd played guitar on Simon and Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme albums: [Excerpt: Simon and Garfunkel, "I am a Rock"] and bass on Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, with Al Kooper particularly praising his playing on "Visions of Johanna": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Visions of Johanna"] South would be the principal guitarist on this and Franklin's next album, before his own career took off in 1968 with "Games People Play": [Excerpt: Joe South, "Games People Play"] At this point, he had already written the other song he's best known for, "Hush", which later became a hit for Deep Purple: [Excerpt: Deep Purple, "Hush"] But he wasn't very well known, and was surprised to get the call for the Aretha Franklin session, especially because, as he put it "I was white and I was about to play behind the blackest genius since Ray Charles" But Jerry Wexler had told him that Franklin didn't care about the race of the musicians she played with, and South settled in as soon as Franklin smiled at him when he played a good guitar lick on her version of the blues standard "Going Down Slow": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Going Down Slow"] That was one of the few times Franklin smiled in those sessions though. Becoming an overnight success after years of trying and failing to make a name for herself had been a disorienting experience, and on top of that things weren't going well in her personal life. Her marriage to her manager Ted White was falling apart, and she was performing erratically thanks to the stress. In particular, at a gig in Georgia she had fallen off the stage and broken her arm. She soon returned to performing, but it meant she had problems with her right arm during the recording of the album, and didn't play as much piano as she would have previously -- on some of the faster songs she played only with her left hand. But the recording sessions had to go on, whether or not Aretha was physically capable of playing piano. As we discussed in the episode on Otis Redding, the owners of Atlantic Records were busily negotiating its sale to Warner Brothers in mid-1967. As Wexler said later “Everything in me said, Keep rolling, keep recording, keep the hits coming. She was red hot and I had no reason to believe that the streak wouldn't continue. I knew that it would be foolish—and even irresponsible—not to strike when the iron was hot. I also had personal motivation. A Wall Street financier had agreed to see what we could get for Atlantic Records. While Ahmet and Neshui had not agreed on a selling price, they had gone along with my plan to let the financier test our worth on the open market. I was always eager to pump out hits, but at this moment I was on overdrive. In this instance, I had a good partner in Ted White, who felt the same. He wanted as much product out there as possible." In truth, you can tell from Aretha Arrives that it's a record that was being thought of as "product" rather than one being made out of any kind of artistic impulse. It's a fine album -- in her ten-album run from I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You through Amazing Grace there's not a bad album and barely a bad track -- but there's a lack of focus. There are only two originals on the album, neither of them written by Franklin herself, and the rest is an incoherent set of songs that show the tension between Franklin and her producers at Atlantic. Several songs are the kind of standards that Franklin had recorded for her old label Columbia, things like "You Are My Sunshine", or her version of "That's Life", which had been a hit for Frank Sinatra the previous year: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "That's Life"] But mixed in with that are songs that are clearly the choice of Wexler. As we've discussed previously in episodes on Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett, at this point Atlantic had the idea that it was possible for soul artists to cross over into the white market by doing cover versions of white rock hits -- and indeed they'd had some success with that tactic. So while Franklin was suggesting Sinatra covers, Atlantic's hand is visible in the choices of songs like "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and "96 Tears": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "96 Tears'] Of the two originals on the album, one, the hit single "Baby I Love You" was written by Ronnie Shannon, the Detroit songwriter who had previously written "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Baby I Love You"] As with the previous album, and several other songs on this one, that had backing vocals by Aretha's sisters, Erma and Carolyn. But the other original on the album, "Ain't Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around)", didn't, even though it was written by Carolyn: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Ain't Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around)"] To explain why, let's take a little detour and look at the co-writer of the song this episode is about, though we're not going to get to that for a little while yet. We've not talked much about Burt Bacharach in this series so far, but he's one of those figures who has come up a few times in the periphery and will come up again, so here is as good a time as any to discuss him, and bring everyone up to speed about his career up to 1967. Bacharach was one of the more privileged figures in the sixties pop music field. His father, Bert Bacharach (pronounced the same as his son, but spelled with an e rather than a u) had been a famous newspaper columnist, and his parents had bought him a Steinway grand piano to practice on -- they pushed him to learn the piano even though as a kid he wasn't interested in finger exercises and Debussy. What he was interested in, though, was jazz, and as a teenager he would often go into Manhattan and use a fake ID to see people like Dizzy Gillespie, who he idolised, and in his autobiography he talks rapturously of seeing Gillespie playing his bent trumpet -- he once saw Gillespie standing on a street corner with a pet monkey on his shoulder, and went home and tried to persuade his parents to buy him a monkey too. In particular, he talks about seeing the Count Basie band with Sonny Payne on drums as a teenager: [Excerpt: Count Basie, "Kid From Red Bank"] He saw them at Birdland, the club owned by Morris Levy where they would regularly play, and said of the performance "they were just so incredibly exciting that all of a sudden, I got into music in a way I never had before. What I heard in those clubs really turned my head around— it was like a big breath of fresh air when somebody throws open a window. That was when I knew for the first time how much I loved music and wanted to be connected to it in some way." Of course, there's a rather major problem with this story, as there is so often with narratives that musicians tell about their early career. In this case, Birdland didn't open until 1949, when Bacharach was twenty-one and stationed in Germany for his military service, while Sonny Payne didn't join Basie's band until 1954, when Bacharach had been a professional musician for many years. Also Dizzy Gillespie's trumpet bell only got bent on January 6, 1953. But presumably while Bacharach was conflating several memories, he did have some experience in some New York jazz club that led him to want to become a musician. Certainly there were enough great jazz musicians playing the clubs in those days. He went to McGill University to study music for two years, then went to study with Darius Milhaud, a hugely respected modernist composer. Milhaud was also one of the most important music teachers of the time -- among others he'd taught Stockhausen and Xenakkis, and would go on to teach Philip Glass and Steve Reich. This suited Bacharach, who by this point was a big fan of Schoenberg and Webern, and was trying to write atonal, difficult music. But Milhaud had also taught Dave Brubeck, and when Bacharach rather shamefacedly presented him with a composition which had an actual tune, he told Bacharach "Never be ashamed of writing a tune you can whistle". He dropped out of university and, like most men of his generation, had to serve in the armed forces. When he got out of the army, he continued his musical studies, still trying to learn to be an avant-garde composer, this time with Bohuslav Martinů and later with Henry Cowell, the experimental composer we've heard about quite a bit in previous episodes: [Excerpt: Henry Cowell, "Aeolian Harp and Sinister Resonance"] He was still listening to a lot of avant garde music, and would continue doing so throughout the fifties, going to see people like John Cage. But he spent much of that time working in music that was very different from the avant-garde. He got a job as the band leader for the crooner Vic Damone: [Excerpt: Vic Damone. "Ebb Tide"] He also played for the vocal group the Ames Brothers. He decided while he was working with the Ames Brothers that he could write better material than they were getting from their publishers, and that it would be better to have a job where he didn't have to travel, so he got himself a job as a staff songwriter in the Brill Building. He wrote a string of flops and nearly hits, starting with "Keep Me In Mind" for Patti Page: [Excerpt: Patti Page, "Keep Me In Mind"] From early in his career he worked with the lyricist Hal David, and the two of them together wrote two big hits, "Magic Moments" for Perry Como: [Excerpt: Perry Como, "Magic Moments"] and "The Story of My Life" for Marty Robbins: [Excerpt: "The Story of My Life"] But at that point Bacharach was still also writing with other writers, notably Hal David's brother Mack, with whom he wrote the theme tune to the film The Blob, as performed by The Five Blobs: [Excerpt: The Five Blobs, "The Blob"] But Bacharach's songwriting career wasn't taking off, and he got himself a job as musical director for Marlene Dietrich -- a job he kept even after it did start to take off.  Part of the problem was that he intuitively wrote music that didn't quite fit into standard structures -- there would be odd bars of unusual time signatures thrown in, unusual harmonies, and structural irregularities -- but then he'd take feedback from publishers and producers who would tell him the song could only be recorded if he straightened it out. He said later "The truth is that I ruined a lot of songs by not believing in myself enough to tell these guys they were wrong." He started writing songs for Scepter Records, usually with Hal David, but also with Bob Hilliard and Mack David, and started having R&B hits. One song he wrote with Mack David, "I'll Cherish You", had the lyrics rewritten by Luther Dixon to make them more harsh-sounding for a Shirelles single -- but the single was otherwise just Bacharach's demo with the vocals replaced, and you can even hear his voice briefly at the beginning: [Excerpt: The Shirelles, "Baby, It's You"] But he'd also started becoming interested in the production side of records more generally. He'd iced that some producers, when recording his songs, would change the sound for the worse -- he thought Gene McDaniels' version of "Tower of Strength", for example, was too fast. But on the other hand, other producers got a better sound than he'd heard in his head. He and Hilliard had written a song called "Please Stay", which they'd given to Leiber and Stoller to record with the Drifters, and he thought that their arrangement of the song was much better than the one he'd originally thought up: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Please Stay"] He asked Leiber and Stoller if he could attend all their New York sessions and learn about record production from them. He started doing so, and eventually they started asking him to assist them on records. He and Hilliard wrote a song called "Mexican Divorce" for the Drifters, which Leiber and Stoller were going to produce, and as he put it "they were so busy running Redbird Records that they asked me to rehearse the background singers for them in my office." [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Mexican Divorce"] The backing singers who had been brought in to augment the Drifters on that record were a group of vocalists who had started out as members of a gospel group called the Drinkard singers: [Excerpt: The Drinkard Singers, "Singing in My Soul"] The Drinkard Singers had originally been a family group, whose members included Cissy Drinkard, who joined the group aged five (and who on her marriage would become known as Cissy Houston -- her daughter Whitney would later join the family business), her aunt Lee Warrick, and Warrick's adopted daughter Judy Clay. That group were discovered by the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, and spent much of the fifties performing with gospel greats including Jackson herself, Clara Ward, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. But Houston was also the musical director of a group at her church, the Gospelaires, which featured Lee Warrick's two daughters Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick (for those who don't know, the Warwick sisters' birth name was Warrick, spelled with two rs. A printing error led to it being misspelled the same way as the British city on a record label, and from that point on Dionne at least pronounced the w in her misspelled name). And slowly, the Gospelaires rather than the Drinkard Singers became the focus, with a lineup of Houston, the Warwick sisters, the Warwick sisters' cousin Doris Troy, and Clay's sister Sylvia Shemwell. The real change in the group's fortunes came when, as we talked about a while back in the episode on "The Loco-Motion", the original lineup of the Cookies largely stopped working as session singers to become Ray Charles' Raelettes. As we discussed in that episode, a new lineup of Cookies formed in 1961, but it took a while for them to get started, and in the meantime the producers who had been relying on them for backing vocals were looking elsewhere, and they looked to the Gospelaires. "Mexican Divorce" was the first record to feature the group as backing vocalists -- though reports vary as to how many of them are on the record, with some saying it's only Troy and the Warwicks, others saying Houston was there, and yet others saying it was all five of them. Some of these discrepancies were because these singers were so good that many of them left to become solo singers in fairly short order. Troy was the first to do so, with her hit "Just One Look", on which the other Gospelaires sang backing vocals: [Excerpt: Doris Troy, "Just One Look"] But the next one to go solo was Dionne Warwick, and that was because she'd started working with Bacharach and Hal David as their principal demo singer. She started singing lead on their demos, and hoping that she'd get to release them on her own. One early one was "Make it Easy On Yourself", which was recorded by Jerry Butler, formerly of the Impressions. That record was produced by Bacharach, one of the first records he produced without outside supervision: [Excerpt: Jerry Butler, "Make it Easy On Yourself"] Warwick was very jealous that a song she'd sung the demo of had become a massive hit for someone else, and blamed Bacharach and David. The way she tells the story -- Bacharach always claimed this never happened, but as we've already seen he was himself not always the most reliable of narrators of his own life -- she got so angry she complained to them, and said "Don't make me over, man!" And so Bacharach and David wrote her this: [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "Don't Make Me Over"] Incidentally, in the UK, the hit version of that was a cover by the Swinging Blue Jeans: [Excerpt: The Swinging Blue Jeans, "Don't Make Me Over"] who also had a huge hit with "You're No Good": [Excerpt: The Swinging Blue Jeans, "You're No Good"] And *that* was originally recorded by *Dee Dee* Warwick: [Excerpt: Dee Dee Warwick, "You're No Good"] Dee Dee also had a successful solo career, but Dionne's was the real success, making the names of herself, and of Bacharach and David. The team had more than twenty top forty hits together, before Bacharach and David had a falling out in 1971 and stopped working together, and Warwick sued both of them for breach of contract as a result. But prior to that they had hit after hit, with classic records like "Anyone Who Had a Heart": [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "Anyone Who Had a Heart"] And "Walk On By": [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "Walk On By"] With Doris, Dionne, and Dee Dee all going solo, the group's membership was naturally in flux -- though the departed members would occasionally join their former bandmates for sessions, and the remaining members would sing backing vocals on their ex-members' records. By 1965 the group consisted of Cissy Houston, Sylvia Shemwell, the Warwick sisters' cousin Myrna Smith, and Estelle Brown. The group became *the* go-to singers for soul and R&B records made in New York. They were regularly hired by Leiber and Stoller to sing on their records, and they were also the particular favourites of Bert Berns. They sang backing vocals on almost every record he produced. It's them doing the gospel wails on "Cry Baby" by Garnet Mimms: [Excerpt: Garnet Mimms, "Cry Baby"] And they sang backing vocals on both versions of "If You Need Me" -- Wilson Pickett's original and Solomon Burke's more successful cover version, produced by Berns: [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "If You Need Me"] They're on such Berns records as "Show Me Your Monkey", by Kenny Hamber: [Excerpt: Kenny Hamber, "Show Me Your Monkey"] And it was a Berns production that ended up getting them to be Aretha Franklin's backing group. The group were becoming such an important part of the records that Atlantic and BANG Records, in particular, were putting out, that Jerry Wexler said "it was only a matter of common decency to put them under contract as a featured group". He signed them to Atlantic and renamed them from the Gospelaires to The Sweet Inspirations.  Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham wrote a song for the group which became their only hit under their own name: [Excerpt: The Sweet Inspirations, "Sweet Inspiration"] But to start with, they released a cover of Pops Staples' civil rights song "Why (Am I treated So Bad)": [Excerpt: The Sweet Inspirations, "Why (Am I Treated So Bad?)"] That hadn't charted, and meanwhile, they'd all kept doing session work. Cissy had joined Erma and Carolyn Franklin on the backing vocals for Aretha's "I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You"] Shortly after that, the whole group recorded backing vocals for Erma's single "Piece of My Heart", co-written and produced by Berns: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] That became a top ten record on the R&B charts, but that caused problems. Aretha Franklin had a few character flaws, and one of these was an extreme level of jealousy for any other female singer who had any level of success and came up in the business after her. She could be incredibly graceful towards anyone who had been successful before her -- she once gave one of her Grammies away to Esther Phillips, who had been up for the same award and had lost to her -- but she was terribly insecure, and saw any contemporary as a threat. She'd spent her time at Columbia Records fuming (with some justification) that Barbra Streisand was being given a much bigger marketing budget than her, and she saw Diana Ross, Gladys Knight, and Dionne Warwick as rivals rather than friends. And that went doubly for her sisters, who she was convinced should be supporting her because of family loyalty. She had been infuriated at John Hammond when Columbia had signed Erma, thinking he'd gone behind her back to create competition for her. And now Erma was recording with Bert Berns. Bert Berns who had for years been a colleague of Jerry Wexler and the Ertegun brothers at Atlantic. Aretha was convinced that Wexler had put Berns up to signing Erma as some kind of power play. There was only one problem with this -- it simply wasn't true. As Wexler later explained “Bert and I had suffered a bad falling-out, even though I had enormous respect for him. After all, he was the guy who brought over guitarist Jimmy Page from England to play on our sessions. Bert, Ahmet, Nesuhi, and I had started a label together—Bang!—where Bert produced Van Morrison's first album. But Bert also had a penchant for trouble. He courted the wise guys. He wanted total control over every last aspect of our business dealings. Finally it was too much, and the Erteguns and I let him go. He sued us for breach of contract and suddenly we were enemies. I felt that he signed Erma, an excellent singer, not merely for her talent but as a way to get back at me. If I could make a hit with Aretha, he'd show me up by making an even bigger hit on Erma. Because there was always an undercurrent of rivalry between the sisters, this only added to the tension.” There were two things that resulted from this paranoia on Aretha's part. The first was that she and Wexler, who had been on first-name terms up to that point, temporarily went back to being "Mr. Wexler" and "Miss Franklin" to each other. And the second was that Aretha no longer wanted Carolyn and Erma to be her main backing vocalists, though they would continue to appear on her future records on occasion. From this point on, the Sweet Inspirations would be the main backing vocalists for Aretha in the studio throughout her golden era [xxcut line (and when the Sweet Inspirations themselves weren't on the record, often it would be former members of the group taking their place)]: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Ain't Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around)"] The last day of sessions for Aretha Arrives was July the twenty-third, 1967. And as we heard in the episode on "I Was Made to Love Her", that was the day that the Detroit riots started. To recap briefly, that was four days of rioting started because of a history of racist policing, made worse by those same racist police overreacting to the initial protests. By the end of those four days, the National Guard, 82nd Airborne Division, and the 101st Airborne from Clarksville were all called in to deal with the violence, which left forty-three dead (of whom thirty-three were Black and only one was a police officer), 1,189 people were injured, and over 7,200 arrested, almost all of them Black. Those days in July would be a turning point for almost every musician based in Detroit. In particular, the police had murdered three members of the soul group the Dramatics, in a massacre of which the author John Hersey, who had been asked by President Johnson to be part of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders but had decided that would compromise his impartiality and did an independent journalistic investigation, said "The episode contained all the mythic themes of racial strife in the United States: the arm of the law taking the law into its own hands; interracial sex; the subtle poison of racist thinking by “decent” men who deny they are racists; the societal limbo into which, ever since slavery, so many young black men have been driven by our country; ambiguous justice in the courts; and the devastation in both black and white human lives that follows in the wake of violence as surely as ruinous and indiscriminate flood after torrents" But these were also the events that radicalised the MC5 -- the group had been playing a gig as Tim Buckley's support act when the rioting started, and guitarist Wayne Kramer decided afterwards to get stoned and watch the fires burning down the city through a telescope -- which police mistook for a rifle, leading to the National Guard knocking down Kramer's door. The MC5 would later cover "The Motor City is Burning", John Lee Hooker's song about the events: [Excerpt: The MC5, "The Motor City is Burning"] It would also be a turning point for Motown, too, in ways we'll talk about in a few future episodes.  And it was a political turning point too -- Michigan Governor George Romney, a liberal Republican (at a time when such people existed) had been the favourite for the Republican Presidential candidacy when he'd entered the race in December 1966, but as racial tensions ramped up in Detroit during the early months of 1967 he'd started trailing Richard Nixon, a man who was consciously stoking racists' fears. President Johnson, the incumbent Democrat, who was at that point still considering standing for re-election, made sure to make it clear to everyone during the riots that the decision to call in the National Guard had been made at the State level, by Romney, rather than at the Federal level.  That wasn't the only thing that removed the possibility of a Romney presidency, but it was a big part of the collapse of his campaign, and the, as it turned out, irrevocable turn towards right-authoritarianism that the party took with Nixon's Southern Strategy. Of course, Aretha Franklin had little way of knowing what was to come and how the riots would change the city and the country over the following decades. What she was primarily concerned about was the safety of her father, and to a lesser extent that of her sister-in-law Earline who was staying with him. Aretha, Carolyn, and Erma all tried to keep in constant touch with their father while they were out of town, and Aretha even talked about hiring private detectives to travel to Detroit, find her father, and get him out of the city to safety. But as her brother Cecil pointed out, he was probably the single most loved man among Black people in Detroit, and was unlikely to be harmed by the rioters, while he was too famous for the police to kill with impunity. Reverend Franklin had been having a stressful time anyway -- he had recently been fined for tax evasion, an action he was convinced the IRS had taken because of his friendship with Dr King and his role in the civil rights movement -- and according to Cecil "Aretha begged Daddy to move out of the city entirely. She wanted him to find another congregation in California, where he was especially popular—or at least move out to the suburbs. But he wouldn't budge. He said that, more than ever, he was needed to point out the root causes of the riots—the economic inequality, the pervasive racism in civic institutions, the woefully inadequate schools in inner-city Detroit, and the wholesale destruction of our neighborhoods by urban renewal. Some ministers fled the city, but not our father. The horror of what happened only recommitted him. He would not abandon his political agenda." To make things worse, Aretha was worried about her father in other ways -- as her marriage to Ted White was starting to disintegrate, she was looking to her father for guidance, and actually wanted him to take over her management. Eventually, Ruth Bowen, her booking agent, persuaded her brother Cecil that this was a job he could do, and that she would teach him everything he needed to know about the music business. She started training him up while Aretha was still married to White, in the expectation that that marriage couldn't last. Jerry Wexler, who only a few months earlier had been seeing Ted White as an ally in getting "product" from Franklin, had now changed his tune -- partly because the sale of Atlantic had gone through in the meantime. He later said “Sometimes she'd call me at night, and, in that barely audible little-girl voice of hers, she'd tell me that she wasn't sure she could go on. She always spoke in generalities. She never mentioned her husband, never gave me specifics of who was doing what to whom. And of course I knew better than to ask. She just said that she was tired of dealing with so much. My heart went out to her. She was a woman who suffered silently. She held so much in. I'd tell her to take as much time off as she needed. We had a lot of songs in the can that we could release without new material. ‘Oh, no, Jerry,' she'd say. ‘I can't stop recording. I've written some new songs, Carolyn's written some new songs. We gotta get in there and cut 'em.' ‘Are you sure?' I'd ask. ‘Positive,' she'd say. I'd set up the dates and typically she wouldn't show up for the first or second sessions. Carolyn or Erma would call me to say, ‘Ree's under the weather.' That was tough because we'd have asked people like Joe South and Bobby Womack to play on the sessions. Then I'd reschedule in the hopes she'd show." That third album she recorded in 1967, Lady Soul, was possibly her greatest achievement. The opening track, and second single, "Chain of Fools", released in November, was written by Don Covay -- or at least it's credited as having been written by Covay. There's a gospel record that came out around the same time on a very small label based in Houston -- "Pains of Life" by Rev. E. Fair And The Sensational Gladys Davis Trio: [Excerpt: Rev. E. Fair And The Sensational Gladys Davis Trio, "Pains of Life"] I've seen various claims online that that record came out shortly *before* "Chain of Fools", but I can't find any definitive evidence one way or the other -- it was on such a small label that release dates aren't available anywhere. Given that the B-side, which I haven't been able to track down online, is called "Wait Until the Midnight Hour", my guess is that rather than this being a case of Don Covay stealing the melody from an obscure gospel record he'd have had little chance to hear, it's the gospel record rewriting a then-current hit to be about religion, but I thought it worth mentioning. The song was actually written by Covay after Jerry Wexler asked him to come up with some songs for Otis Redding, but Wexler, after hearing it, decided it was better suited to Franklin, who gave an astonishing performance: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Chain of Fools"] Arif Mardin, the arranger of the album, said of that track “I was listed as the arranger of ‘Chain of Fools,' but I can't take credit. Aretha walked into the studio with the chart fully formed inside her head. The arrangement is based around the harmony vocals provided by Carolyn and Erma. To add heft, the Sweet Inspirations joined in. The vision of the song is entirely Aretha's.” According to Wexler, that's not *quite* true -- according to him, Joe South came up with the guitar part that makes up the intro, and he also said that when he played what he thought was the finished track to Ellie Greenwich, she came up with another vocal line for the backing vocals, which she overdubbed. But the core of the record's sound is definitely pure Aretha -- and Carolyn Franklin said that there was a reason for that. As she said later “Aretha didn't write ‘Chain,' but she might as well have. It was her story. When we were in the studio putting on the backgrounds with Ree doing lead, I knew she was singing about Ted. Listen to the lyrics talking about how for five long years she thought he was her man. Then she found out she was nothing but a link in the chain. Then she sings that her father told her to come on home. Well, he did. She sings about how her doctor said to take it easy. Well, he did too. She was drinking so much we thought she was on the verge of a breakdown. The line that slew me, though, was the one that said how one of these mornings the chain is gonna break but until then she'll take all she can take. That summed it up. Ree knew damn well that this man had been doggin' her since Jump Street. But somehow she held on and pushed it to the breaking point." [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Chain of Fools"] That made number one on the R&B charts, and number two on the hot one hundred, kept from the top by "Judy In Disguise (With Glasses)" by John Fred and his Playboy Band -- a record that very few people would say has stood the test of time as well. The other most memorable track on the album was the one chosen as the first single, released in September. As Carole King told the story, she and Gerry Goffin were feeling like their career was in a slump. While they had had a huge run of hits in the early sixties through 1965, they had only had two new hits in 1966 -- "Goin' Back" for Dusty Springfield and "Don't Bring Me Down" for the Animals, and neither of those were anything like as massive as their previous hits. And up to that point in 1967, they'd only had one -- "Pleasant Valley Sunday" for the Monkees. They had managed to place several songs on Monkees albums and the TV show as well, so they weren't going to starve, but the rise of self-contained bands that were starting to dominate the charts, and Phil Spector's temporary retirement, meant there simply wasn't the opportunity for them to place material that there had been. They were also getting sick of travelling to the West Coast all the time, because as their children were growing slightly older they didn't want to disrupt their lives in New York, and were thinking of approaching some of the New York based labels and seeing if they needed songs. They were particularly considering Atlantic, because soul was more open to outside songwriters than other genres. As it happened, though, they didn't have to approach Atlantic, because Atlantic approached them. They were walking down Broadway when a limousine pulled up, and Jerry Wexler stuck his head out of the window. He'd come up with a good title that he wanted to use for a song for Aretha, would they be interested in writing a song called "Natural Woman"? They said of course they would, and Wexler drove off. They wrote the song that night, and King recorded a demo the next morning: [Excerpt: Carole King, "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman (demo)"] They gave Wexler a co-writing credit because he had suggested the title.  King later wrote in her autobiography "Hearing Aretha's performance of “Natural Woman” for the first time, I experienced a rare speechless moment. To this day I can't convey how I felt in mere words. Anyone who had written a song in 1967 hoping it would be performed by a singer who could take it to the highest level of excellence, emotional connection, and public exposure would surely have wanted that singer to be Aretha Franklin." She went on to say "But a recording that moves people is never just about the artist and the songwriters. It's about people like Jerry and Ahmet, who matched the songwriters with a great title and a gifted artist; Arif Mardin, whose magnificent orchestral arrangement deserves the place it will forever occupy in popular music history; Tom Dowd, whose engineering skills captured the magic of this memorable musical moment for posterity; and the musicians in the rhythm section, the orchestral players, and the vocal contributions of the background singers—among them the unforgettable “Ah-oo!” after the first line of the verse. And the promotion and marketing people helped this song reach more people than it might have without them." And that's correct -- unlike "Chain of Fools", this time Franklin did let Arif Mardin do most of the arrangement work -- though she came up with the piano part that Spooner Oldham plays on the record. Mardin said that because of the song's hymn-like feel they wanted to go for a more traditional written arrangement. He said "She loved the song to the point where she said she wanted to concentrate on the vocal and vocal alone. I had written a string chart and horn chart to augment the chorus and hired Ralph Burns to conduct. After just a couple of takes, we had it. That's when Ralph turned to me with wonder in his eyes. Ralph was one of the most celebrated arrangers of the modern era. He had done ‘Early Autumn' for Woody Herman and Stan Getz, and ‘Georgia on My Mind' for Ray Charles. He'd worked with everyone. ‘This woman comes from another planet' was all Ralph said. ‘She's just here visiting.'” [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman"] By this point there was a well-functioning team making Franklin's records -- while the production credits would vary over the years, they were all essentially co-productions by the team of Franklin, Wexler, Mardin and Dowd, all collaborating and working together with a more-or-less unified purpose, and the backing was always by the same handful of session musicians and some combination of the Sweet Inspirations and Aretha's sisters. That didn't mean that occasional guests couldn't get involved -- as we discussed in the Cream episode, Eric Clapton played guitar on "Good to Me as I am to You": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Good to Me as I am to You"] Though that was one of the rare occasions on one of these records where something was overdubbed. Clapton apparently messed up the guitar part when playing behind Franklin, because he was too intimidated by playing with her, and came back the next day to redo his part without her in the studio. At this point, Aretha was at the height of her fame. Just before the final batch of album sessions began she appeared in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, and she was making regular TV appearances, like one on the Mike Douglas Show where she duetted with Frankie Valli on "That's Life": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin and Frankie Valli, "That's Life"] But also, as Wexler said “Her career was kicking into high gear. Contending and resolving both the professional and personal challenges were too much. She didn't think she could do both, and I didn't blame her. Few people could. So she let the personal slide and concentrated on the professional. " Her concert promoter Ruth Bowen said of this time "Her father and Dr. King were putting pressure on her to sing everywhere, and she felt obligated. The record company was also screaming for more product. And I had a mountain of offers on my desk that kept getting higher with every passing hour. They wanted her in Europe. They wanted her in Latin America. They wanted her in every major venue in the U.S. TV was calling. She was being asked to do guest appearances on every show from Carol Burnett to Andy Williams to the Hollywood Palace. She wanted to do them all and she wanted to do none of them. She wanted to do them all because she's an entertainer who burns with ambition. She wanted to do none of them because she was emotionally drained. She needed to go away and renew her strength. I told her that at least a dozen times. She said she would, but she didn't listen to me." The pressures from her father and Dr King are a recurring motif in interviews with people about this period. Franklin was always a very political person, and would throughout her life volunteer time and money to liberal political causes and to the Democratic Party, but this was the height of her activism -- the Civil Rights movement was trying to capitalise on the gains it had made in the previous couple of years, and celebrity fundraisers and performances at rallies were an important way to do that. And at this point there were few bigger celebrities in America than Aretha Franklin. At a concert in her home town of Detroit on February the sixteenth, 1968, the Mayor declared the day Aretha Franklin Day. At the same show, Billboard, Record World *and* Cash Box magazines all presented her with plaques for being Female Vocalist of the Year. And Dr. King travelled up to be at the show and congratulate her publicly for all her work with his organisation, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Backstage at that show, Dr. King talked to Aretha's father, Reverend Franklin, about what he believed would be the next big battle -- a strike in Memphis: [Excerpt, Martin Luther King, "Mountaintop Speech" -- "And so, as a result of this, we are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy—what is the other bread?—Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart's bread. As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain. We are choosing these companies because they haven't been fair in their hiring policies; and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying, they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men who are on strike. And then they can move on downtown and tell Mayor Loeb to do what is right."] The strike in question was the Memphis Sanitation Workers' strike which had started a few days before.  The struggle for Black labour rights was an integral part of the civil rights movement, and while it's not told that way in the sanitised version of the story that's made it into popular culture, the movement led by King was as much about economic justice as social justice -- King was a democratic socialist, and believed that economic oppression was both an effect of and cause of other forms of racial oppression, and that the rights of Black workers needed to be fought for. In 1967 he had set up a new organisation, the Poor People's Campaign, which was set to march on Washington to demand a program that included full employment, a guaranteed income -- King was strongly influenced in his later years by the ideas of Henry George, the proponent of a universal basic income based on land value tax -- the annual building of half a million affordable homes, and an end to the war in Vietnam. This was King's main focus in early 1968, and he saw the sanitation workers' strike as a major part of this campaign. Memphis was one of the most oppressive cities in the country, and its largely Black workforce of sanitation workers had been trying for most of the 1960s to unionise, and strike-breakers had been called in to stop them, and many of them had been fired by their white supervisors with no notice. They were working in unsafe conditions, for utterly inadequate wages, and the city government were ardent segregationists. After two workers had died on the first of February from using unsafe equipment, the union demanded changes -- safer working conditions, better wages, and recognition of the union. The city council refused, and almost all the sanitation workers stayed home and stopped work. After a few days, the council relented and agreed to their terms, but the Mayor, Henry Loeb, an ardent white supremacist who had stood on a platform of opposing desegregation, and who had previously been the Public Works Commissioner who had put these unsafe conditions in place, refused to listen. As far as he was concerned, he was the only one who could recognise the union, and he wouldn't. The workers continued their strike, marching holding signs that simply read "I am a Man": [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "Blowing in the Wind"] The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the NAACP had been involved in organising support for the strikes from an early stage, and King visited Memphis many times. Much of the time he spent visiting there was spent negotiating with a group of more militant activists, who called themselves The Invaders and weren't completely convinced by King's nonviolent approach -- they believed that violence and rioting got more attention than non-violent protests. King explained to them that while he had been persuaded by Gandhi's writings of the moral case for nonviolent protest, he was also persuaded that it was pragmatically necessary -- asking the young men "how many guns do we have and how many guns do they have?", and pointing out as he often did that when it comes to violence a minority can't win against an armed majority. Rev Franklin went down to Memphis on the twenty-eighth of March to speak at a rally Dr. King was holding, but as it turned out the rally was cancelled -- the pre-rally march had got out of hand, with some people smashing windows, and Memphis police had, like the police in Detroit the previous year, violently overreacted, clubbing and gassing protestors and shooting and killing one unarmed teenage boy, Larry Payne. The day after Payne's funeral, Dr King was back in Memphis, though this time Rev Franklin was not with him. On April the third, he gave a speech which became known as the "Mountaintop Speech", in which he talked about the threats that had been made to his life: [Excerpt: Martin Luther King, "Mountaintop Speech": “And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."] The next day, Martin Luther King was shot dead. James Earl Ray, a white supremacist, pled guilty to the murder, and the evidence against him seems overwhelming from what I've read, but the King family have always claimed that the murder was part of a larger conspiracy and that Ray was not the gunman. Aretha was obviously distraught, and she attended the funeral, as did almost every other prominent Black public figure. James Baldwin wrote of the funeral: "In the pew directly before me sat Marlon Brando, Sammy Davis, Eartha Kitt—covered in black, looking like a lost, ten-year-old girl—and Sidney Poitier, in the same pew, or nearby. Marlon saw me, and nodded. The atmosphere was black, with a tension indescribable—as though something, perhaps the heavens, perhaps the earth, might crack. Everyone sat very still. The actual service sort of washed over me, in waves. It wasn't that it seemed unreal; it was the most real church service I've ever sat through in my life, or ever hope to sit through; but I have a childhood hangover thing about not weeping in public, and I was concentrating on holding myself together. I did not want to weep for Martin, tears seemed futile. But I may also have been afraid, and I could not have been the only one, that if I began to weep I would not be able to stop. There was more than enough to weep for, if one was to weep—so many of us, cut down, so soon. Medgar, Malcolm, Martin: and their widows, and their children. Reverend Ralph David Abernathy asked a certain sister to sing a song which Martin had loved—“Once more,” said Ralph David, “for Martin and for me,” and he sat down." Many articles and books on Aretha Franklin say that she sang at King's funeral. In fact she didn't, but there's a simple reason for the confusion. King's favourite song was the Thomas Dorsey gospel song "Take My Hand, Precious Lord", and indeed almost his last words were to ask a trumpet player, Ben Branch, if he would play the song at the rally he was going to be speaking at on the day of his death. At his request, Mahalia Jackson, his old friend, sang the song at his private funeral, which was not filmed, unlike the public part of the funeral that Baldwin described. Four months later, though, there was another public memorial for King, and Franklin did sing "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" at that service, in front of King's weeping widow and children, and that performance *was* filmed, and gets conflated in people's memories with Jackson's unfilmed earlier performance: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord (at Martin Luther King Memorial)"] Four years later, she would sing that at Mahalia Jackson's funeral. Through all this, Franklin had been working on her next album, Aretha Now, the sessions for which started more or less as soon as the sessions for Lady Soul had finished. The album was, in fact, bookended by deaths that affected Aretha. Just as King died at the end of the sessions, the beginning came around the time of the death of Otis Redding -- the sessions were cancelled for a day while Wexler travelled to Georgia for Redding's funeral, which Franklin was too devastated to attend, and Wexler would later say that the extra emotion in her performances on the album came from her emotional pain at Redding's death. The lead single on the album, "Think", was written by Franklin and -- according to the credits anyway -- her husband Ted White, and is very much in the same style as "Respect", and became another of her most-loved hits: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Think"] But probably the song on Aretha Now that now resonates the most is one that Jerry Wexler tried to persuade her not to record, and was only released as a B-side. Indeed, "I Say a Little Prayer" was a song that had already once been a hit after being a reject.  Hal David, unlike Burt Bacharach, was a fairly political person and inspired by the protest song movement, and had been starting to incorporate his concerns about the political situation and the Vietnam War into his lyrics -- though as with many such writers, he did it in much less specific ways than a Phil Ochs or a Bob Dylan. This had started with "What the World Needs Now is Love", a song Bacharach and David had written for Jackie DeShannon in 1965: [Excerpt: Jackie DeShannon, "What the "World Needs Now is Love"] But he'd become much more overtly political for "The Windows of the World", a song they wrote for Dionne Warwick. Warwick has often said it's her favourite of her singles, but it wasn't a big hit -- Bacharach blamed himself for that, saying "Dionne recorded it as a single and I really blew it. I wrote a bad arrangement and the tempo was too fast, and I really regret making it the way I did because it's a good song." [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "The Windows of the World"] For that album, Bacharach and David had written another track, "I Say a Little Prayer", which was not as explicitly political, but was intended by David to have an implicit anti-war message, much like other songs of the period like "Last Train to Clarksville". David had sons who were the right age to be drafted, and while it's never stated, "I Say a Little Prayer" was written from the perspective of a woman whose partner is away fighting in the war, but is still in her thoughts: [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "I Say a Little Prayer"] The recording of Dionne Warwick's version was marked by stress. Bacharach had a particular way of writing music to tell the musicians the kind of feel he wanted for the part -- he'd write nonsense words above the stave, and tell the musicians to play the parts as if they were singing those words. The trumpet player hired for the session, Ernie Royal, got into a row with Bacharach about this unorthodox way of communicating musical feeling, and the track ended up taking ten takes (as opposed to the normal three for a Bacharach session), with Royal being replaced half-way through the session. Bacharach was never happy with the track even after all the work it had taken, and he fought to keep it from being released at all, saying the track was taken at too fast a tempo. It eventually came out as an album track nearly eighteen months after it was recorded -- an eternity in 1960s musical timescales -- and DJs started playing it almost as soon as it came out. Scepter records rushed out a single, over Bacharach's objections, but as he later said "One thing I love about the record business is how wrong I was. Disc jockeys all across the country started playing the track, and the song went to number four on the charts and then became the biggest hit Hal and I had ever written for Dionne." [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "I Say a Little Prayer"] Oddly, the B-side for Warwick's single, "Theme From the Valley of the Dolls" did even better, reaching number two. Almost as soon as the song was released as a single, Franklin started playing around with the song backstage, and in April 1968, right around the time of Dr. King's death, she recorded a version. Much as Burt Bacharach had been against releasing Dionne Warwick's version, Jerry Wexler was against Aretha even recording the song, saying later “I advised Aretha not to record it. I opposed it for two reasons. First, to cover a song only twelve weeks after the original reached the top of the charts was not smart business. You revisit such a hit eight months to a year later. That's standard practice. But more than that, Bacharach's melody, though lovely, was peculiarly suited to a lithe instrument like Dionne Warwick's—a light voice without the dark corners or emotional depths that define Aretha. Also, Hal David's lyric was also somewhat girlish and lacked the gravitas that Aretha required. “Aretha usually listened to me in the studio, but not this time. She had written a vocal arrangement for the Sweet Inspirations that was undoubtedly strong. Cissy Houston, Dionne's cousin, told me that Aretha was on the right track—she was seeing this song in a new way and had come up with a new groove. Cissy was on Aretha's side. Tommy Dowd and Arif were on Aretha's side. So I had no choice but to cave." It's quite possible that Wexler's objections made Franklin more, rather than less, determined to record the song. She regarded Warwick as a hated rival, as she did almost every prominent female singer of her generation and younger ones, and would undoubtedly have taken the implication that there was something that Warwick was simply better at than her to heart. [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer"] Wexler realised as soon as he heard it in the studio that Franklin's version was great, and Bacharach agreed, telling Franklin's biographer David Ritz “As much as I like the original recording by Dionne, there's no doubt that Aretha's is a better record. She imbued the song with heavy soul and took it to a far deeper place. Hers is the definitive version.” -- which is surprising because Franklin's version simplifies some of Bacharach's more unusual chord voicings, something he often found extremely upsetting. Wexler still though thought there was no way the song would be a hit, and it's understandable that he thought that way. Not only had it only just been on the charts a few months earlier, but it was the kind of song that wouldn't normally be a hit at all, and certainly not in the kind of rhythmic soul music for which Franklin was known. Almost everything she ever recorded is in simple time signatures -- 4/4, waltz time, or 6/8 -- but this is a Bacharach song so it's staggeringly metrically irregular. Normally even with semi-complex things I'm usually good at figuring out how to break it down into bars, but here I actually had to purchase a copy of the sheet music in order to be sure I was right about what's going on. I'm going to count beats along with the record here so you can see what I mean. The verse has three bars of 4/4, one bar of 2/4, and three more bars of 4/4, all repeated: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer" with me counting bars over verse] While the chorus has a bar of 4/4, a bar of 3/4 but with a chord change half way through so it sounds like it's in two if you're paying attention to the harmonic changes, two bars of 4/4, another waltz-time bar sounding like it's in two, two bars of four, another bar of three sounding in two, a bar of four, then three more bars of four but the first of those is *written* as four but played as if it's in six-eight time (but you can keep the four/four pulse going if you're counting): [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer" with me counting bars over verse] I don't expect you to have necessarily followed that in great detail, but the point should be clear -- this was not some straightforward dance song. Incidentally, that bar played as if it's six/eight was something Aretha introduced to make the song even more irregular than how Bacharach wrote it. And on top of *that* of course the lyrics mixed the secular and the sacred, something that was still taboo in popular music at that time -- this is only a couple of years after Capitol records had been genuinely unsure about putting out the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows", and Franklin's gospel-inflected vocals made the religious connection even more obvious. But Franklin was insistent that the record go out as a single, and eventually it was released as the B-side to the far less impressive "The House That Jack Built". It became a double-sided hit, with the A-side making number two on the R&B chart and number seven on the Hot One Hundred, while "I Say a Little Prayer" made number three on the R&B chart and number ten overall. In the UK, "I Say a Little Prayer" made number four and became her biggest ever solo UK hit. It's now one of her most-remembered songs, while the A-side is largely forgotten: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer"] For much of the

#106 Broadcast 106 - Episode 100 - The Crooners - 20230909 - 3 in 1 = Brook Benton by Jim Reeves

Reabrimos las puertas de ese club subterráneo para ofrecerte una sesión sin palabras ni interrupciones. Todo el material que escucharás procede de los recopilatorios Big Balls que cada año compila el DJ Francho para regalarlos en cada edición del festival Rockin Race Jamboree. Playlist; (sintonía) LOS SIETE DE JOHN BARRY "La amenaza" FATS DOMINO "Estoy viviendo bien" ROSCO GORDON "Seguramente te amo" LLOYD PRICE "El pollo y el bop" BROOK BENTON "Hurtin' inside" PAUL ANKA "Uh Uh" JOHNNY RIVERS "Foolkiller" LOS TOKENS "A-B-C- 1-2-3" DELL MACK "No se puede juzgar un libro por la portada PEREZ PRADO "El giro de hava nagila" LOS CHICOS DE PELUCHE "Jezabel" KIP TYLER "Jungle hop" LOS SEIS PASTEL "No puedo bailar" JIMMY FAUTHEREE "No puedo encontrar el pomo de la puerta" COLLAY y LOS SATÉLITES "Chica de al lado" WALLY DEANE y HIS FLIPS "Drag on" BIG SUNNY y HIS FURYS "Fail" EDDIE KANE "Un nuevo tipo de amor" TOMMY ROE "Oh Carol" LOS CASUALS "Mustang 2+2" DON y DEWEY "Just a little lovin'" RAY y LINDY "Big Betty" THE AVENGERS "Tema de Batman" EDDIE BOND "Aquí viene el tren" SONIDOS INCORPORADOS "Rinky dink" RICHARD BERRY "Rock rock rock" Escuchar audio

Hey Guys! So I"m back with another episode for this podcast. expect one more new episode for this podcast for this month before the next month starts. but anyways, I have some very exciting news for you guys. I'm writing new songs right now & I just got word that the reshoot for the music video for Turquoise Apricot will happen very soon. probably next month, I"m currently waiting for a hard date for the music video reshoot but we are currently looking at sometime in the second week of July. I'm VERY excited to reshoot the music video for this song, & probably as soon as we have that date scheduled, I will submit the full EP for a release date after we pencil in that date for the music video reshoot for that song. also I have a very cool interview episode coming out for the premium version of this podcast this month, to celebrate black music month, it's gonna be with a African American artist from the 60's who had a pretty recognizable hit from the early 60's, but anyways, here's the link to last week's song just in case you wanted to listen to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDRbF80NKDU You can also follow me & reach out to me on Instagram & Tik Tok right here: https://www.instagram.com/iheartoldies/ https://www.tiktok.com/@iheartoldies don't forget to also sign up for the premium version of this podcast. here you'll be able to find all of the new interview episodes for this podcast. the link to that is right here: https://themillennialthrowbackmachine.supercast.com/ please do also check out my latest song too. I really love this song it's one of my favorite original songs I have written. please do take a listen to it the link to it is right here: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/samlwilliams/too-much-to-drink don't forget to also check out the official Spotify & Youtube playlists for this podcast. here you'll be able to find all of the songs I have talked about on my podcast so far including some of the ones that I have mentioned in interview episodes of this podcast (the old ones before they went premium) please send me any suggestions for songs I should talk about next on my podcast at samltwilli@icloud.com: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/21f3uBS6kU4hUF6QAC5JMj?si=3e573fe5b1514c7b https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS1sYR7xky8&list=PL66sgq_GAmRcXy8yKZJfVmAD14HUYj7Nf don't forget to also check out the official Redubble Merch store for this podcast. here you'll be able to find all of these super cool merch items with my own custom logo attached to it, if you like this logo & would like to suggest to me new logo ideas for this podcast, please feel free to reach out to me at samltwilli@icloud.com, you can also follow me & reach out to me on Instagram & Tik Tok @iheartoldies: https://www.redbubble.com/people/60ssam95/works/36806158-keep-things-groovy?asc=u&ref=recent-owner if you found out some REALLY cool facts about last week's song & artist & you were completely blown away & amazed by the song's connections to some big late 70's hits, definitely email me at samltwilli@icloud.com, you can also follow me & reach out to me on Instagram & Tik Tok @iheartoldies. Guys I'm VERY excited to finally get to reshoot the music video for Turquoise Apricot. been waiting to do this for a LONG TIME & i'm very excited to finally get to do this. then you'll hear the new version of the song in all of it's psychedelic glory. can't wait to release it. & shoot the music video again to the new version of the song. also please check out the premium version of this podcast, where you'll hear my interview with a very cool 60's African American Artist. I hope you guys are well & I will talk to you all soon.

Hey Guys! So I think some of you probably know this by now, but I recently decided to stick with a three episodes a month release schedule with this podcast. it has become harder and harder for me to try to put out 4 a month these days, between my school classes & the internship I'm doing for my school and on top of that, doing interviews for the premium version of my podcast, I definitely have my hands full at the moment, so more then likely, I won't have a new episode the first week of the month, but the remaining three weeks of the month, I will have a new episode. if that changes I'll let you know, or you'll get notified with an extra episode being released in the month, but anyways, I'm very excited to dive into this week's song. June is now technically Black Music Month, so I"m celebrating that with covering some great songs by some black artists, & this week's episode I'm gonna be covering an absolutely FANTASTIC song from a REALLY good black artist. I had fun breaking down this song for you & here's the link to it just in case you wanted to listen to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDRbF80NKDU you can also follow me & reach out to me on Instagram & Tik Tok right here: https://www.instagram.com/iheartoldies/ https://www.tiktok.com/@iheartoldies please do also sign up for the premium subscription version of my podcast. I really don't want you guys to miss out on all of these great guests I have been having on. these really cool interview episodes that I"m doing. here's the link to where you can do that right here: https://themillennialthrowbackmachine.supercast.com/ also would absolutely LOVE IT if you guys could listen to my latest song. I'm definitely a fan of it, and my friends think it's great too. I could use the help with getting it more streams, so please do listen to it. the link to it is right here: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/samlwilliams/too-much-to-drink also please do check out the official Spotify & Youtube playlists for this podcast. here you'll be able to find all of the songs I have talked about on my show so far minus the songs discussed in the premium interview episodes of this podcast. this is how you keep track of all of the songs that I talk about on my show. please send me suggestions for songs I should talk about next on my podcast that I haven't yet, you can do that by emailing me at samltwilli@icloud.com: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/21f3uBS6kU4hUF6QAC5JMj?si=ad249feaf9a04bcb https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS1sYR7xky8&list=PL66sgq_GAmRcXy8yKZJfVmAD14HUYj7Nf please do also check out the official Redbubble Merch store for this podcast. here you'll be able to find all of these really cool merch items with a logo that was specifically designed for this podcast. I hope you enjoy it, here's the link to it right here: https://www.redbubble.com/people/60ssam95/works/36806158-keep-things-groovy?asc=u&ref=recent-owner if you REALLY liked my analysis on this week's song & you have NEVER heard it before & you absolutely LOVE this song & you thought it was great & your a millennial/Gen Z, definitely email me at samltwilli@icloud.com, you can also follow me & reach out to me on Instagram & Tik Tok @iheartoldies. I appreciate you guys for sticking around & still listening to this podcast even if I"m unable to release one episode a month because of how hectic my current schedule is. Please sign up for the premium version of this podcast, I have been very busy conducting interviews for that & creating content for that feed. I hope you'll do that soon cause I definitely don't want you to have to miss out on all of the interview episodes I have been doing lately. as they will be exclusively posted on to this feed so the only way you'll get to hear them is if you sign up for the premium version of this podcast. be well guys & I will talk to you all soon.

In this Roots Radio episode, co-hosts Lisa Bonta Sumii and Richie Nuñez feature musician, singer, songwriter, and creator, Mara Hruby.About Mara Hruby: Mara Hruby doesn't just play music—she lives it. Since the onset of her career, the Oakland, CA native has poured her soul into her velvet confections, drawing inspiration from lessons that she's gleaned in her personal life and funneling them into rich, organic compositions. In just a few years, the singer-songwriter has become one of acoustic soul's fastest-rising up-and-comers, gaining a loyal following.With influences such as Julie London and Patsy Cline to The Moonglows, Curtis Mayfield and Brook Benton, singer/songwriter Mara Hruby personifies the sound and soul of an alternative jazz legend. Her debut EP released in 2010 conceptually titled From Her Eyes featured Ms. Hruby soulfully covering classics originally performed by men. Ranging from the likes of Jamiroquai, Bob Marley, and D'Angelo, she would re-interpret their work while adding her own feminine touch. Marking over 80K+ downloads the project propelled Ms. Hruby into her own lane, scoring thousands of loyal fans and supporters. A captivating performer, Ms. Hruby has notably sold out shows at Yoshi's Oakland and Blue Note Jazz Club in NYC. She has also performed in venues stretching from Philadelphia, DC, to Grammy Weekend (2012 & 2016) in Los Angeles, the 28th Annual Long Beach Jazz Festival (2015), The Clift Hotel's Centennial Celebration (2015) in San Francisco, and the 75th Annual Stern Grove Festival in San Francisco (2012).Ms. Hruby's most recent work, titled Archaic Rapture released in 2014 and received a nod of approval from Billboard. Billboard premiered her first single “Cry Me A River” by way of a live studio performance. Filled with her power, emotion, and depth shine vividly, the video gives the audience a small glimpse into the full EP. Ms. Hruby's Archaic Rapture may be briefly defined by her heartbreak, but it bleeds deeper down into the details. Her Sophomore EP overflows with pure emotion not to convey weakness, but to show strength in being honest with oneself. Within the first week of its release, Archaic Rapture reached the coveted #1 spot on the iTunes Jazz charts.You will come to understand, fairly quickly, that Ms. Hruby exudes pure creative power and sentimental care through her body of work. It's only a matter of time before her art receives international acclaim on a large scale. (source)Lisa Bonta Sumii, LCSW, CSW | Athlete Mindset podcast host:Lisa is a psychotherapist and mental performance consultant to high-performing athletes at the youth, collegiate, Olympic-hopeful, and professional levels. She is the first-ever Mental Health & Performance Coach for the Oakland Roots SC, a men's professional soccer team, in the USL. Lisa is the Founder & CEO of AthMindset, a diverse team of licensed mental health clinicians and mental performance consultants, who serve alongside her.Wrapping up:Athlete Mindset is part of the KazSource Podcast NetworkPresented by SportsEpreneur: a digital sports media brand for entrepreneurs engaged in sportscontent brings people together: KazCMSocial media and more:Lisa Bonta Sumii: LinkedIn | Twitter | AthMindset websiteRichie Nuñez: LinkedInSportsEpreneur:  TikTok | Instagram | TwitterRelated episodes to Play Music, Live Music with Mara Hruby:Sports As An Outlet | Oakland “Roots Radio”The Fictional UniverseTwo current projects:We published a book! Check it out on Amazon: Altered State of AffairsShort-form video production: KazCMCredits:This podcast was produced by the team at KazCMBeat Provided By freebeats.io | Produced By White HotSportsEpreneurThe post Play Music, Live Music with Mara Hruby | Oakland “Roots Radio” appeared first on SportsEpreneur.

CNN, HBO Max, Amazon Prime She's BACK!!  In 2023, we saw the debut of her Documentary that aired on CNN New Year's Day featuring Legendary Music Icons like the late Burt Bachrach, Jerry Blavat, Chuck Jackson, as well as Berry Gordy, Quincy Jones, & Smokey Robinson. You can see it now on HBO Max, & Amazon Prime. She is making stops in Hawaii and Vancouver on her One Last Time tour — she won't say whether it's truly her last — tweeting (or “twoting,” as she calls it) to her more than half a million followers,On a Saturday Night LIVE's spoof "The Dionne Warwick Show", with  NEW Compilations of Music. It includes collaborations with Kenny Lattimore & Musiq SoulChild along with new versions of her classics & some original classics. She's also touring again Worldwide!! On November 26, 2021, Warwick released the single "Nothing's Impossible" a duet featuring Chance the Rapper. Two charities are being supported by the duet: SocialWorks, a Chicago-based nonprofit that Chance founded to empower the youth through the arts, education and civic engagement, and Hunger: Not Impossible, a text-based service connecting kids and their families in need with prepaid, nutritious, to-go meals from local restaurants.Dionne was also named Smithsonian Ambassador of Music!!Additionally, Warwick  began a highly anticipated concert residency in Las Vegas on April 4, 2019Scintillating, soothing and sensual best describe the familiar and legendary voice of five-time GRAMMY® Award winning music legend, DIONNE WARWICK, who has become a cornerstone of American pop music and culture. Warwick's career, which currently celebrates over 50 years, has established her as an international music icon and concert act. Over that time, she has earned 75 charted hit songs and sold over 100 million records.Marie Dionne Warwick, an American singer, actress, and television show host who became a United Nations Global Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization and a United States Ambassador of Health.She began singing professionally in 1961 after being discovered by a young songwriting team, Burt Bacharach and Hal David. She had her first hit in 1962 with “Don't Make Me Over.” Less than a decade later, she had released more than 18 consecutive Top 100 singles, including her classic Bacharach/David recordings, “Walk on By,” “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” “Message to Michael,” "Promises Promises,” “A House is Not a Home,” “Alfie,” “Say a Little Prayer,” “This Girl's in Love With You,” “I'll Never Fall in Love Again,” “Reach Out For Me,” and the theme from “Valley of the Dolls. ”Together, Warwick and her songwriting team of Burt Bacharach & Hal David, accumulated more than 30 hit singles, and close to 20 best-selling albums, during their first decade together.Warwick received her first GRAMMY® Award in 1968 for her mega-hit, “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” and a second GRAMMY® in 1970 for the best-selling album, “I'll Never Fall in Love Again.” She became the first African-American solo female artist of her generation to win the prestigious award for Best Contemporary Female Vocalist Performance. This award was only presented to one other legend, Miss Ella Fitzgerald.Other African-American female recording artists certainly earned their share of crossover pop and R&B hits during the 1960′s, however, Warwick preceded the mainstream success of her musical peers by becoming the first such artist to rack up a dozen consecutive Top 100 hit singles from 1963-1966.Warwick's performance at the Olympia Theater in Paris, during a 1963 concert starring the legendary Marlene Dietrich, skyrocketed her to international stardom. As Warwick established herself as a major force in American contemporary music, she gained popularity among European audiences as well. In 1968, she became the first solo African-American artist among her peers to sing before the Queen of England at a Royal Command Performance. Since then, Warwick has performed before numerous kings, queens, presidents and heads of state.Warwick's recordings of songs such as “A House is not a Home,” “Alfie,” ”Valley of the Dolls,” and “The April Fools,” made her a pioneer as one of the first female artists to popularize classic movie themes.Warwick began singing during her childhood years in East Orange, New Jersey, initially in church. Occasionally, she sang as a soloist and fill-in voice for the renowned Drinkard Singers, a group comprised of her mother Lee, along with her aunts, including Aunt Cissy, Whitney Houston's mom, and her uncles. During her teens, Warwick and her sister Dee Dee started their own gospel group, The Gospelaires.Warwick attended The Hartt College of Music in Hartford, Connecticut, and during that time, began making trips to New York to do regular session work. She sang behind many of the biggest recording stars of the 1960′s including Dinah Washington, Sam Taylor, Brook Benton, Chuck Jackson, and Solomon Burke, among many others. It was at this time that a young composer named Burt Bacharach heard her sing during a session for The Drifters and asked her to sing on demos of some new songs he was writing with his new lyricist Hal David. In 1962, one such demo was presented to Scepter Records, which launched a hit-filled 12 -year association with the label.Known as the artist who “bridged the gap,” Warwick's soulful blend of pop, gospel and R&B music transcended race, culture, and musical boundaries. In 1970, Warwick received her second GRAMMY® Award for the best-selling album, “I'll Never Fall In Love Again,” and began her second decade of hits with Warner Bros. Records. She recorded half a dozen albums, with top producers such as Thom Bell, Holland-Dozier-Holland, Jerry Ragavoy, Steve Barri, and Michael Omartian. In 1974, she hit the top of the charts with “Then Came You,” a million-selling duet with The Spinners. She then teamed up with Isaac Hayes for a highly successful world tour, “A Man and a Woman.”In 1976, Warwick signed with Arista Records, beginning a third decade of hit-making. Arista Records label-mate Barry Manilow produced her first Platinum-selling album, “Dionne,” which included back-to-back hits “I'll Never Love This Way Again,” and “Déjà vu.” Both recordings earned GRAMMY® Awards, making Warwick the first female artist to win the Best Female Pop and Best Female R&B Performance Awards.Warwick's 1982 album, “Heartbreaker,” co-produced by Barry Gibb and the Bee Gees, became an international chart-topper. In 1985, she reunited with composer Burt Bacharach and longtime friends Gladys Knight, Elton John and Stevie Wonder to record the landmark song “That's What Friends Are For,” which became a number one hit record around the world and the first recording dedicated to raising awareness and major funds (over $3 Million) for the AIDS cause in support of AMFAR, which Warwick continues to support.Throughout the 1980′s and 1990′s, Warwick collaborated with many of her musical peers, including Johnny Mathis, Smokey Robinson, Luther Vandross, Jeffrey Osborne, Kashif and Stevie Wonder. Warwick was also host of the hit television music show, “Solid Gold.” In addition, she recorded several theme songs, including “Champagne Wishes & Caviar Dreams,” for the popular television series “Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous,” and “The Love Boat,” for the hit series from Aaron Spelling. In November, 2006 Warwick recorded an album of duets, “My Friends & Me,” for Concord Records, a critically acclaimed Gospel album, “Why We Sing,” for Rhino/Warner Records, and a new jazz album, ”Only Trust Your Heart,” a collection of standards, celebrating the music of legendary composer Sammy Cahn for Sony Red/MPCA Records. Additionally, in September 2008, Warwick added “author” to her list of credits with two best-selling children's books, “Say A Little Prayer,” and “Little Man,” and her first best-selling autobiography, “My Life As I See It” for Simon & Schuster.Always one to give back, Warwick has supported and campaigned for many causes and charities close to her heart, including AIDS, The Starlight Foundation, children's hospitals, world hunger, disaster relief and music education for which she has been recognized and honored and has raised millions of dollars. In 1987, she was appointed the first United States Ambassador of Health by President Ronald Reagan and in 2002, served as Global Ambassador for Health and Ambassador for the United Nations' Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO), and she continues to serve as Ambassador today. In recognition of her accomplishments and support of education, a New Jersey school was named in her honor, the Dionne Warwick Institute for Economics and Entrepreneurship. Warwick was also a key participating artist in the all-star charity single, “We Are the World,” and in 1984, performed at “Live Aid.”Celebrating 50 years in entertainment, and the 25th Anniversary of “That's What Friends Are For,” Warwick hosted and headlined an all-star benefit concert for World Hunger Day in London. In addition, she was honored by AMFAR in a special reunion performance of “That's What Friends are For,” alongside Elton John, Gladys Knight and Stevie Wonder at AMFAR's Anniversary Gala in New York City. Warwick also received the prestigious 2011 Steve Chase Humanitarian Arts & Activism Award by the Desert Aids Project and was recognized for her stellar career by Clive Davis at his legendary Pre-GRAMMY® Party in Los Angeles. Adding to her list of landmark honors, Warwick was a 2013 recipient of the coveted Ellis Island Medal of Honor in New York and was inducted into the 2013 New Jersey Hall of Fame.On March 26, 2012, Warwick was inducted into the GRAMMY® Museum in Los Angeles, where a special 50th Anniversary exhibit was unveiled and a historic program and performance was held in the Clive Davis Theater. Additionally, a panel discussion with Clive Davis and Burt Bacharach was hosted by GRAMMY® Museum Executive Director, Bob Santelli.Commemorating her 50th Anniversary, Warwick released a much-anticipated studio album in 2013, entitled “NOW.” Produced by the legendary Phil Ramone, the anniversary album was nominated for a 2014 GRAMMY® Award for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album. “NOW” featured special never-before-released material written by her longtime friends and musical collaborators, Burt Bacharach and Hal David.Most recently, Warwick released a much anticipated star-studded duets album titled “Feels So Good,” featuring collaborations with some of today's greatest artists including Alicia Keys, Jamie Foxx, Billy Ray Cyrus, Ne-Yo, Gladys Knight, Cee Lo Green, Cyndi Lauper and many more. “Feels So Good” was released through Bright Music Records, Caroline and Capitol.Warwick's pride and joy are her two sons, singer/recording artist David Elliott and award-winning music producer Damon Elliott, and her family. ~ DionneWarwickonLine.com© 2023 Building Abundant Success!!2023 All Rights ReservedJoin Me on ~ iHeart Radio @ https://tinyurl.com/iHeartBASSpot Me on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/yxuy23baAmazon ~ https://tinyurl.com/AmzBASAudacy:  https://tinyurl.com/BASAud

Randy Crawford - Give me the night - Fred de la House Central Park Chillacapella mix ( not commercial ) Mr. Mister - broken wings Brook Benton - rainy night in Georgia Glady's knight & the pips - neither one of us Sneaker - more than just the two of us Scorpions - wind of change Randy Crawford - Captain of her heart Michael Jackson - music and me Il etait une fois - j'ai encore révé d'elle - Fred de la House once upon the time Chillacapella mix ( not commercial ) Neil Diamond - sleep with me tonight Tasmin Archer - sleeping satellite Kenny Nolan - connect the dots Bar-Kays - deliver us Michael Johnson - this night won't last forever

1. The La's 2. Bonnie Raitt 3. The Head And The Heart 4. TV Priest 5. Mary Coughlan 6. Delaney And Bonnie 7. Nick Cave/P J Harvey 8. Bap Kennedy 9. Unknown Mortal Orchestra 10. Keb' Mo 11. Juicy Lucy 12. Bludgers 13. Brook Benton 14. Buddy Miles 15. Joy Division

#082 Broadcast 082 - Episode 075 - The Crooners - 20230318 - 3 in 1 = Brook Benton by Jim Reeves

Време е да отворим вратите към историята на един от най-популярните хитове на 60-те години, който се слуша и до днес. Това е „Stand By Me“ на американския R&B певец Ben E. King. През 1960 година Benjamin Earl Nelson (Бенджамин Ърл Нелсън) е на 22 години. Роденият в Северна Каролина певец вече две години пробива на американските музикални сцени, изпълнявайки госпъл и соул музика с колегите си от групата „The Drifters“. Голям хит в САЩ става тяхната песен „There Goes My Baby“ от 1959 г. През май 1960 година Бен напуска групата заради несъгласия на мениджъра му с условията, при които е нает, и започва солова кариера. Първият му сингъл с новото му сценично име Ben E. King е добилата по-късно популярност песен „Spanish Harlem“. Малко след записването на парчето, се ражда и „Stand By Me“. Но преди да разкажем за нея, ще се върнем малко назад. От деветата си година Бенджамин живее в Харлем, Ню Йорк, и пее в множество църковни хорове. Той е познавал добре госпъл традициите. Както и сам ще признае по-късно, по онова време се е влияел доста от певци като Brook Benton (Брук Бентън), Roy Hamilton (Рой Хамилтън) и Sam Cooke (Сам Кук). Още през 1905 година методисткият свещеник от Филаделфия - Charles Albert Tindley (Чарлс Албърт Тиндли) написва песен със заглавие „Stand By Me Lord“, която става много популярна по църквите в целия американски Юг и през 50-те години е записвана от различни цветнокожи госпъл музиканти. Най-известен е вариантът на групата „Staple Singers“ от 1955 година и дори някои погрешно го сочат за първо вдъхновение на Бен. Този текстов мотив се завърта в госпъл средите и не е случайно, че през 1959 година един от любимците на Бен, Сам Кук, съвместно с J. W. Alexander (Дж. У. Александър), написва песен със заглавие „Stand By Me Father“. Песента е записана от „The Soul Stirrers“ и вокалиста Johnnie Taylor (Джони Тейлър). Бен не харесва старата църковна песен, но е впечатлен от новата версия на Кук и започва да пише своята „Stand By Me“ (в превод „Застани до мен“) в спалнята си с помощта на евтина китара. Според документалния филм „History of rock 'n' roll“, в началото Бен не е искал да я записва като солов изпълнител. Планирал е да я изпълни с мъжки хор, като е имал идея да я предложи на колегите си от „The Drifters“. Други източници твърдят, че им я е предлагал, но мениджърът на групата не е одобрил идеята за песен и затова не се е стигнало до запис. На места ще прочетете, че Бен пише песента, вдъхновен от тогавашната си приятелка и по-късно съпруга Betty Nelson (Бети Нелсън), но това са по-скоро таблоидни измислици.

Beware .... O.T.R. Dab + present : ((( FREE & EASY ))) live Radio rock show 8Pm Sunday the 05th 2023 Le Havre FR. / Wyldcliff playlist : .....intro .... Buzzcocks , Neon Boys , Hasel Adkins , Underground Youth , Leopards , Kinks , Jackets , Deep Purple , Soft Machine , Komintern , Gong , Dashiel Hedayat , Swamps , Cramps , Brook Benton , Raymond & the Circle ......

In this episode, Lou shares a conversation with author Ed Maliskas, a musician, clergyman, and researcher, the author of John Brown to James Brown: The Little Farm Where Liberty Budded, Blossomed, and Boogied (2016).  In this fascinating discussion, Ed talks about coming to learn about the old Kennedy Farm in Maryland where John Brown and his raiders lived prior to the Harper's Ferry raid in the summer and early fall of 1859.  However, as Ed learned, the farm, often referred to as the "John Brown farm" (not to be confused with John Brown's own home and farm in Lake Placid, N.Y.) has unfolding importance to black history--a site considered precious to the influential black fraternal order of  Elks in the 20th century, and later a popular R&B dance venue where many memorable black artists performed from the late 1950s until the mid-1960s, the last performer being the Godfather of Soul, James Brown.  Who would think that a humble little farm in Maryland would have such a historical pedigree--indeed, Ed Maliskas argues it was essentially the birthplace of the southern Civil Rights movement! Musical wallpaper for this episode:American Frontiers by Aaron Kenny (YouTube)New World A'Comin and Harlem by Duke Ellington (performed by the Cincinnati    Symphony Orchestra)And from some of the artists who performed at the Kennedy Farm:Sadie Mae by Sammy Fitzhugh & His MoroccansFeel Alright by Jimmy DotsonHurt Me to My Heart by Faye AdamsMoney Honey by Clyde McPhatter & the DriftersParty Lights by Claudine ClarkMystery Train by Junior ParkerShow Me Your Monkey by Kenny HamberIt's Just a Matter of Time by Brook Benton

Fan Loyalty: A tribute to the late Brook Benton by Carol Wilson MackFan Loyalty chronicles the journey of a young woman as she said "I am going to meet him." She did not know it at the time, but the man she was speaking about was the singer Brook Benton. She did get to meet he, and his entire family. She shares with us that amazing journey. Fan loyalty reminds us how important words are and lets us know that the words we choose create our world. It challenges us to embrace and learn from the things that unfold in our lives. The naiveté of the young person, the loyalty to the sound, the love that she showed and the friendships that developed is heartfelt throughout this moving and inspirational piece. Here's what the fans have to say...."Mr. magic, Mr. Wonderful, they don't sing like that anymore." -Michael B."I love his singing!" -Dorothy G."The smoothest singer, great songwriter, the best baritone ever!"-Carol M."Brook Benton, a legend" -Alma W."I love his music, his singing." -Irene T."I love it's just a matter of time and the boll weevil." -Lenis G.Carol W. Mack holds a Master's degree in Communication Arts, from New York Institute of Technology, and is a graduate of the Long ridge writers group, and is a Doctoral candidate with the Open Bible institute and theology seminary.She is also a registered professional nurse, and works as an Educator in the Health Care industry, focusing on Staff Education.She is the author of several stage scripts, and they have been in production in Baldwin, NY. Newark,N.J., New York City, and the Bronx. She has written a movie script, with plans for production in 2013.She has produced several CD's, one of gospel music featuring Ms. Stella Bobian, and one poetry where she reads the words of Poet/Writer Mr. George Edward Tait.She was the writer and artistic director for the television show “Woman of the week” which highlighted ordinary women doing extraordinary things. The show aired on cable for more than ten years. It was Best show by Cablevision in 1994 by CAPE.(Cable Award For Programming Excellence).https://www.amazon.com/Fan-Loyalty-tribute-Brook-Benton/dp/1648959245/ref=monarch_sidesheetwww.CarolWilsonAccomplished.com   www.CWMackBooks.net  https://www.stratton-press.com/#/http://www.bluefunkbroadcasting.com/root/twia/112322sp2.mp3   

Barry, Abigail, and special guest Jon Carroll (The Starland Vocal Band) discuss Jon's musical past, present, and future and review three of his recent singles: Today (Not Tomorrow), (You Gotta) Stand Up!, and Rich Man's Daughter. Jon and Barry met in the wonderful Patreon community of Stand Up! with Pete Dominick. Jon recalled some of his favorite tracks from his youth: Mahalia Jackson's If I Can Help Somebody and The Chimes' Let Your Hair Down, and the track that made his mother appreciate soul music: Brook Benton's Rainy Night in Georgia. Jon also remembers where he was the first time he ever heard Dire Straits' Money For Nothing. Jon suggested we listen to Harry Nilsson's Nilsson Sings Newman… so we added it to our Virtual Jukebox! Jon listened to our episode on The Black Crowes! He thought we should have compared the Crowes to Faces or Humble Pie instead of to The Rolling Stones (no one is safe!). Follow Jon on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube for information about his upcoming album! We closed with Jon Carroll's Tight Connection to My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love), a Bob Dylan cover. Jingles are by our friend Pete Coe. Follow Barry or Abigail on Untappd to see what we're drinking when we're not on mic! Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube | Website | Email us | Virtual Jukebox --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pops-on-hops-podcast/message

Old 97's "I Don't Wanna Die In This Town"Valerie June "Workin' Woman Blues"Mary Wells "The One Who Really Loves You"The Replacements "Alex Chilton"The Hold Steady "Entitlement Crew"Joe Tex "Hold What You Got"Fiona Apple "Sleep to Dream"Mavis Staples "If All I Was Was Black"Esther Phillips "Release Me"Lucero "That Much Further West"Shaver "Live Forever"Gillian Welch "Caleb Meyer"Ray Charles "I've Got A Woman"Nicole Atkins "Brokedown Luck"James Brown "Please Please Please"Will Johnson "A Solitary Slip"Slobberbone "Pinball Song"Will Johnson "Cornelius"The O "Candy"Eilen Jewell "I'm Gonna Dress In Black"Willie Nelson/Waylon Jennings "Good Hearted Woman"Charlie Parr "Empty Out Your Pockets"Aretha Franklin "Dr. Feelgood (Love Is Serious Business)"Mississippi John Hurt "Monday Morning Blues"JD McPherson "Bridgebuilder"Little Richard "The Girl Can't Help It"Johnny Cash "Sea of Heartbreak"Etta James "At Last"R.E.M. "So. Central Rain"Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers "Learning To Fly"Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers "Room At The Top"Bobby Bland "I Pity The Fool"Ruth Brown "Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean"Two Cow Garage "My Concern"Patterson Hood "Better Off Without"Ramones "Do You Remember Rock And Roll Radio"Ike & Tina Turner "Proud Mary"Sierra Ferrell "Jeremiah"James Carr "The Dark End of the Street"New Moon Jelly Roll Freedom Rockers feat. Alvin Youngblood Hart "She's About a Mover"Wilson Pickett "634-5789"Willie Mae 'Big Mama' Thornton "Hound Dog"Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit "The Blue"Magnolia Electric Co. "Northstar Blues"Brook Benton "Rainy Night in Georgia"The Devil Makes Three "Car Wreck"

#054 Broadcast 054 - Episode 050 - The Crooners - 20220903 - 3 in 1 = Brook Benton by Jim Reeves

Hot weather this week and we'll be sweatin' out the oldies in the KOWS Studio this coming Friday. Summer may be just around the corner but we're running hot already here in Sonoma County. Today's show features a ‘double play' collection of traditions and covers, focusing primarily on gospel tradition and contemporary covers. Brook Benton, Josh White, Wilson Pickett, Neko Case, and Hank Williams are among the performers we'll be featuring this week. Covers of the Gambler's Blues, Stormy Weather, Denomination Blues, and more coming your way from the studios located in the Cherry Street Historic District of Santa Rosa, California. Streaming at kowsfm.com/listen.

Episode 149 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Respect", and the journey of Aretha Franklin from teenage gospel singer to the Queen of Soul. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifteen-minute bonus episode available, on "I'm Just a Mops" by the Mops. 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/ Also, people may be interested in a Facebook discussion group for the podcast, run by a friend of mine (I'm not on FB myself) which can be found at https://www.facebook.com/groups/293630102611672/ Errata I say "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby to a Dixie Melody" instead of "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody". Also I say Spooner Oldham co-wrote "Do Right Woman". I meant Chips Moman. Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by Aretha Franklin. My main biographical source for Aretha Franklin is Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin by David Ritz, and this is where most of the quotes from musicians come from. I also relied heavily on I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You by Matt Dobkin. Information on C.L. Franklin came from Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America by Nick Salvatore. Rick Hall's The Man From Muscle Shoals: My Journey from Shame to Fame contains his side of the story. Country Soul by Charles L Hughes is a great overview of the soul music made in Muscle Shoals, Memphis, and Nashville in the sixties. Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The Southern Dream Of Freedom is possibly less essential, but still definitely worth reading. And the I Never Loved a Man album is available in this five-album box set for a ludicrously cheap price. But it's actually worth getting this nineteen-CD set with her first sixteen Atlantic albums and a couple of bonus discs of demos and outtakes. There's barely a duff track in the whole nineteen discs. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start this episode,  I have to say that there are some things people may want to be aware of before listening to this. This episode has to deal, at least in passing, with subjects including child sexual abuse, intimate partner abuse, racism, and misogyny. I will of course try to deal with those subjects as tactfully as possible, but those of you who may be upset by those topics may want to check the episode transcript before or instead of listening. Those of you who leave comments or send me messages saying "why can't you just talk about the music instead of all this woke virtue-signalling?" may also want to skip this episode. You can go ahead and skip all the future ones as well, I won't mind. And one more thing to say before I get into the meat of the episode -- this episode puts me in a more difficult position than most other episodes of the podcast have. When I've talked about awful things that have happened in the course of this podcast previously, I have either been talking about perpetrators -- people like Phil Spector or Jerry Lee Lewis who did truly reprehensible things -- or about victims who have talked very publicly about the abuse they've suffered, people like Ronnie Spector or Tina Turner, who said very clearly "this is what happened to me and I want it on the public record". In the case of Aretha Franklin, she has been portrayed as a victim *by others*, and there are things that have been said about her life and her relationships which suggest that she suffered in some very terrible ways. But she herself apparently never saw herself as a victim, and didn't want some aspects of her private life talking about. At the start of David Ritz's biography of her, which is one of my main sources here, he recounts a conversation he had with her: "When I mentioned the possibility of my writing an independent biography, she said, “As long as I can approve it before it's published.” “Then it wouldn't be independent,” I said. “Why should it be independent?” “So I can tell the story from my point of view.” “But it's not your story, it's mine.” “You're an important historical figure, Aretha. Others will inevitably come along to tell your story. That's the blessing and burden of being a public figure.” “More burden than blessing,” she said." Now, Aretha Franklin is sadly dead, but I think that she still deserves the basic respect of being allowed privacy. So I will talk here about public matters, things she acknowledged in her own autobiography, and things that she and the people around her did in public situations like recording studios and concert venues. But there are aspects to the story of Aretha Franklin as that story is commonly told, which may well be true, but are of mostly prurient interest, don't add much to the story of how the music came to be made, and which she herself didn't want people talking about. So there will be things people might expect me to talk about in this episode, incidents where people in her life, usually men, treated her badly, that I'm going to leave out. That information is out there if people want to look for it, but I don't see myself as under any obligation to share it. That's not me making excuses for people who did inexcusable things, that's me showing some respect to one of the towering artistic figures of the latter half of the twentieth century. Because, of course, respect is what this is all about: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Respect"] One name that's come up a few times in this podcast, but who we haven't really talked about that much, is Bobby "Blue" Bland. We mentioned him as the single biggest influence on the style of Van Morrison, but Bland was an important figure in the Memphis music scene of the early fifties, which we talked about in several early episodes. He was one of the Beale Streeters, the loose aggregation of musicians that also included B.B. King and Johnny Ace, he worked with Ike Turner, and was one of the key links between blues and soul in the fifties and early sixties, with records like "Turn on Your Love Light": [Excerpt: Bobby "Blue" Bland, "Turn on Your Love Light"] But while Bland was influenced by many musicians we've talked about, his biggest influence wasn't a singer at all. It was a preacher he saw give a sermon in the early 1940s. As he said decades later: "Wasn't his words that got me—I couldn't tell you what he talked on that day, couldn't tell you what any of it meant, but it was the way he talked. He talked like he was singing. He talked music. The thing that really got me, though, was this squall-like sound he made to emphasize a certain word. He'd catch the word in his mouth, let it roll around and squeeze it with his tongue. When it popped on out, it exploded, and the ladies started waving and shouting. I liked all that. I started popping and shouting too. That next week I asked Mama when we were going back to Memphis to church. “‘Since when you so keen on church?' Mama asked. “‘I like that preacher,' I said. “‘Reverend Franklin?' she asked. “‘Well, if he's the one who sings when he preaches, that's the one I like.'" Bland was impressed by C.L. Franklin, and so were other Memphis musicians. Long after Franklin had moved to Detroit, they remembered him, and Bland and B.B. King would go to Franklin's church to see him preach whenever they were in the city. And Bland studied Franklin's records. He said later "I liked whatever was on the radio, especially those first things Nat Cole did with his trio. Naturally I liked the blues singers like Roy Brown, the jump singers like Louis Jordan, and the ballad singers like Billy Eckstine, but, brother, the man who really shaped me was Reverend Franklin." Bland would study Franklin's records, and would take the style that Franklin used in recorded sermons like "The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest": [Excerpt: C.L. Franklin, "The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest"] And you can definitely hear that preaching style on records like Bland's "I Pity the Fool": [Excerpt: Bobby "Blue" Bland, "I Pity the Fool"] But of course, that wasn't the only influence the Reverend C.L. Franklin had on the course of soul music. C.L. Franklin had grown up poor, on a Mississippi farm, and had not even finished grade school because he was needed to work behind the mule, ploughing the farm for his stepfather. But he had a fierce intelligence and became an autodidact, travelling regularly to the nearest library, thirty miles away, on a horse-drawn wagon, and reading everything he could get his hands on. At the age of sixteen he received what he believed to be a message from God, and decided to become an itinerant preacher. He would travel between many small country churches and build up audiences there -- and he would also study everyone else preaching there, analysing their sermons, seeing if he could anticipate their line of argument and get ahead of them, figuring out the structure. But unlike many people in the conservative Black Baptist churches of the time, he never saw the spiritual and secular worlds as incompatible. He saw blues music and Black church sermons as both being part of the same thing -- a Black culture and folklore that was worthy of respect in both its spiritual and secular aspects. He soon built up a small circuit of local churches where he would preach occasionally, but wasn't the main pastor at any of them. He got married aged twenty, though that marriage didn't last, and he seems to have been ambitious for a greater respectability. When that marriage failed, in June 1936, he married Barbara Siggers, a very intelligent, cultured, young single mother who had attended Booker T Washington High School, the best Black school in Memphis, and he adopted her son Vaughn. While he was mostly still doing churches in Mississippi, he took on one in Memphis as well, in an extremely poor area, but it gave him a foot in the door to the biggest Black city in the US. Barbara would later be called "one of the really great gospel singers" by no less than Mahalia Jackson. We don't have any recordings of Barbara singing, but Mahalia Jackson certainly knew what she was talking about when it came to great gospel singers: [Excerpt: Mahalia Jackson, "Precious Lord, Take My Hand"] Rev. Franklin was hugely personally ambitious, and he also wanted to get out of rural Mississippi, where the Klan were very active at this time, especially after his daughter Erma was born in 1938. They moved to Memphis in 1939, where he got a full-time position at New Salem Baptist Church, where for the first time he was able to earn a steady living from just one church and not have to tour round multiple churches. He soon became so popular that if you wanted to get a seat for the service at noon, you had to turn up for the 8AM Sunday School or you'd be forced to stand. He also enrolled for college courses at LeMoyne College. He didn't get a degree, but spent three years as a part-time student studying theology, literature, and sociology, and soon developed a liberal theology that was very different from the conservative fundamentalism he'd grown up in, though still very much part of the Baptist church. Where he'd grown up with a literalism that said the Bible was literally true, he started to accept things like evolution, and to see much of the Bible as metaphor. Now, we talked in the last episode about how impossible it is to get an accurate picture of the lives of religious leaders, because their life stories are told by those who admire them, and that's very much the case for C.L. Franklin. Franklin was a man who had many, many, admirable qualities -- he was fiercely intelligent, well-read, a superb public speaker, a man who was by all accounts genuinely compassionate towards those in need, and he became one of the leaders of the civil rights movement and inspired tens of thousands, maybe even millions, of people, directly and indirectly, to change the world for the better. He also raised several children who loved and admired him and were protective of his memory. And as such, there is an inevitable bias in the sources on Franklin's life. And so there's a tendency to soften the very worst things he did, some of which were very, very bad. For example in Nick Salvatore's biography of him, he talks about Franklin, in 1940, fathering a daughter with someone who is described as "a teenager" and "quite young". No details of her age other than that are given, and a few paragraphs later the age of a girl who was then sixteen *is* given, talking about having known the girl in question, and so the impression is given that the girl he impregnated was also probably in her late teens. Which would still be bad, but a man in his early twenties fathering a child with a girl in her late teens is something that can perhaps be forgiven as being a different time. But while the girl in question may have been a teenager when she gave birth, she was *twelve years old* when she became pregnant, by C.L. Franklin, the pastor of her church, who was in a position of power over her in multiple ways. Twelve years old. And this is not the only awful thing that Franklin did -- he was also known to regularly beat up women he was having affairs with, in public. I mention this now because everything else I say about him in this episode is filtered through sources who saw these things as forgivable character flaws in an otherwise admirable human being, and I can't correct for those biases because I don't know the truth. So it's going to sound like he was a truly great man. But bear those facts in mind. Barbara stayed with Franklin for the present, after discovering what he had done, but their marriage was a difficult one, and they split up and reconciled a handful of times. They had three more children together -- Cecil, Aretha, and Carolyn -- and remained together as Franklin moved on first to a church in Buffalo, New York, and then to New Bethel Church, in Detroit, on Hastings Street, a street which was the centre of Black nightlife in the city, as immortalised in John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillun": [Excerpt: John Lee Hooker, "Boogie Chillen"] Before moving to Detroit, Franklin had already started to get more political, as his congregation in Buffalo had largely been union members, and being free from the worst excesses of segregation allowed him to talk more openly about civil rights, but that only accelerated when he moved to Detroit, which had been torn apart just a couple of years earlier by police violence against Black protestors. Franklin had started building a reputation when in Memphis using radio broadcasts, and by the time he moved to Detroit he was able to command a very high salary, and not only that, his family were given a mansion by the church, in a rich part of town far away from most of his congregation. Smokey Robinson, who was Cecil Franklin's best friend and a frequent visitor to the mansion through most of his childhood, described it later, saying "Once inside, I'm awestruck -- oil paintings, velvet tapestries, silk curtains, mahogany cabinets filled with ornate objects of silver and gold. Man, I've never seen nothing like that before!" He made a lot of money, but he also increased church attendance so much that he earned that money. He had already been broadcasting on the radio, but when he started his Sunday night broadcasts in Detroit, he came up with a trick of having his sermons run long, so the show would end before the climax. People listening decided that they would have to start turning up in person to hear the end of the sermons, and soon he became so popular that the church would be so full that crowds would have to form on the street outside to listen. Other churches rescheduled their services so they wouldn't clash with Franklin's, and most of the other Black Baptist ministers in the city would go along to watch him preach. In 1948 though, a couple of years after moving to Detroit, Barbara finally left her husband. She took Vaughn with her and moved back to Buffalo, leaving the four biological children she'd had with C.L. with their father.  But it's important to note that she didn't leave her children -- they would visit her on a regular basis, and stay with her over school holidays. Aretha later said "Despite the fact that it has been written innumerable times, it is an absolute lie that my mother abandoned us. In no way, shape, form, or fashion did our mother desert us." Barbara's place in the home was filled by many women -- C.L. Franklin's mother moved up from Mississippi to help him take care of the children, the ladies from the church would often help out, and even stars like Mahalia Jackson would turn up and cook meals for the children. There were also the women with whom Franklin carried on affairs, including Anna Gordy, Ruth Brown, and Dinah Washington, the most important female jazz and blues singer of the fifties, who had major R&B hits with records like her version of "Cold Cold Heart": [Excerpt: Dinah Washington, "Cold Cold Heart"] Although my own favourite record of hers is "Big Long Slidin' Thing", which she made with arranger Quincy Jones: [Excerpt: Dinah Washington, "Big Long Slidin' Thing"] It's about a trombone. Get your minds out of the gutter. Washington was one of the biggest vocal influences on young Aretha, but the single biggest influence was Clara Ward, another of C.L. Franklin's many girlfriends. Ward was the longest-lasting of these, and there seems to have been a lot of hope on both her part and Aretha's that she and Rev. Franklin would marry, though Franklin always made it very clear that monogamy wouldn't suit him. Ward was one of the three major female gospel singers of the middle part of the century, and possibly even more technically impressive as a vocalist than the other two, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Mahalia Jackson. Where Jackson was an austere performer, who refused to perform in secular contexts at all for most of her life, and took herself and her music very seriously, and Tharpe was a raunchier, funnier, more down-to-earth performer who was happy to play for blues audiences and even to play secular music on occasion, Ward was a *glamorous* performer, who wore sequined dresses and piled her hair high on her head. Ward had become a singer in 1931 when her mother had what she later talked about as a religious epiphany, and decided she wasn't going to be a labourer any more, she was going to devote her life to gospel music. Ward's mother had formed a vocal group with her two daughters, and Clara quickly became the star and her mother's meal ticket -- and her mother was very possessive of that ticket, to the extent that Ward, who was a bisexual woman who mostly preferred men, had more relationships with women, because her mother wouldn't let her be alone with the men she was attracted to. But Ward did manage to keep a relationship going with C.L. Franklin, and Aretha Franklin talked about the moment she decided to become a singer, when she saw Ward singing "Peace in the Valley" at a funeral: [Excerpt: Clara Ward, "Peace in the Valley"] As well as looking towards Ward as a vocal influence, Aretha was also influenced by her as a person -- she became a mother figure to Aretha, who would talk later about watching Ward eat, and noting her taking little delicate bites, and getting an idea of what it meant to be ladylike from her. After Ward's death in 1973, a notebook was found in which she had written her opinions of other singers. For Aretha she wrote “My baby Aretha, she doesn't know how good she is. Doubts self. Some day—to the moon. I love that girl.” Ward's influence became especially important to Aretha and her siblings after their mother died of a heart attack a few years after leaving her husband, when Aretha was ten, and Aretha, already a very introverted child, became even more so. Everyone who knew Aretha said that her later diva-ish reputation came out of a deep sense of insecurity and introversion -- that she was a desperately private, closed-off, person who would rarely express her emotions at all, and who would look away from you rather than make eye contact. The only time she let herself express emotions was when she performed music. And music was hugely important in the Franklin household. Most preachers in the Black church at that time were a bit dismissive of gospel music, because they thought the music took away from their prestige -- they saw it as a necessary evil, and resented it taking up space when their congregations could have been listening to them. But Rev. Franklin was himself a rather good singer, and even made a few gospel records himself in 1950, recording for Joe Von Battle, who owned a record shop on Hastings Street and also put out records by blues singers: [Excerpt: C.L. Franklin, "I Am Climbing Higher Mountains" ] The church's musical director was James Cleveland, one of the most important gospel artists of the fifties and sixties, who sang with groups like the Caravans: [Excerpt: The Caravans, "What Kind of Man is This?" ] Cleveland, who had started out in the choir run by Thomas Dorsey, the writer of “Take My Hand Precious Lord” and “Peace in the Valley”, moved in with the Franklin family for a while, and he gave the girls tips on playing the piano -- much later he would play piano on Aretha's album Amazing Grace, and she said of him “He showed me some real nice chords, and I liked his deep, deep sound”. Other than Clara Ward, he was probably the single biggest musical influence on Aretha. And all the touring gospel musicians would make appearances at New Bethel Church, not least of them Sam Cooke, who first appeared there with the Highway QCs and would continue to do so after joining the Soul Stirrers: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers, "Touch the Hem of his Garment"] Young Aretha and her older sister Erma both had massive crushes on Cooke, and there were rumours that he had an affair with one or both of them when they were in their teens, though both denied it. Aretha later said "When I first saw him, all I could do was sigh... Sam was love on first hearing, love at first sight." But it wasn't just gospel music that filled the house. One of the major ways that C.L. Franklin's liberalism showed was in his love of secular music, especially jazz and blues, which he regarded as just as important in Black cultural life as gospel music. We already talked about Dinah Washington being a regular visitor to the house, but every major Black entertainer would visit the Franklin residence when they were in Detroit. Both Aretha and Cecil Franklin vividly remembered visits from Art Tatum, who would sit at the piano and play for the family and their guests: [Excerpt: Art Tatum, "Tiger Rag"] Tatum was such a spectacular pianist that there's now a musicological term, the tatum, named after him, for the smallest possible discernible rhythmic interval between two notes. Young Aretha was thrilled by his technique, and by that of Oscar Peterson, who also regularly came to the Franklin home, sometimes along with Ella Fitzgerald. Nat "King" Cole was another regular visitor. The Franklin children all absorbed the music these people -- the most important musicians of the time -- were playing in their home, and young Aretha in particular became an astonishing singer and also an accomplished pianist. Smokey Robinson later said: “The other thing that knocked us out about Aretha was her piano playing. There was a grand piano in the Franklin living room, and we all liked to mess around. We'd pick out little melodies with one finger. But when Aretha sat down, even as a seven-year-old, she started playing chords—big chords. Later I'd recognize them as complex church chords, the kind used to accompany the preacher and the solo singer. At the time, though, all I could do was view Aretha as a wonder child. Mind you, this was Detroit, where musical talent ran strong and free. Everyone was singing and harmonizing; everyone was playing piano and guitar. Aretha came out of this world, but she also came out of another far-off magical world none of us really understood. She came from a distant musical planet where children are born with their gifts fully formed.” C.L. Franklin became more involved in the music business still when Joe Von Battle started releasing records of his sermons, which had become steadily more politically aware: [Excerpt: C.L. Franklin, "Dry Bones in the Valley"] Franklin was not a Marxist -- he was a liberal, but like many liberals was willing to stand with Marxists where they had shared interests, even when it was dangerous. For example in 1954, at the height of McCarthyism, he had James and Grace Lee Boggs, two Marxist revolutionaries, come to the pulpit and talk about their support for the anti-colonial revolution in Kenya, and they sold four hundred copies of their pamphlet after their talk, because he saw that the struggle of Black Africans to get out from white colonial rule was the same struggle as that of Black Americans. And Franklin's powerful sermons started getting broadcast on the radio in areas further out from Detroit, as Chess Records picked up the distribution for them and people started playing the records on other stations. People like future Congressman John Lewis and the Reverend Jesse Jackson would later talk about listening to C.L. Franklin's records on the radio and being inspired -- a whole generation of Black Civil Rights leaders took their cues from him, and as the 1950s and 60s went on he became closer and closer to Martin Luther King in particular. But C.L. Franklin was always as much an ambitious showman as an activist, and he started putting together gospel tours, consisting mostly of music but with himself giving a sermon as the headline act. And he became very, very wealthy from these tours. On one trip in the south, his car broke down, and he couldn't find a mechanic willing to work on it. A group of white men started mocking him with racist terms, trying to provoke him, as he was dressed well and driving a nice car (albeit one that had broken down). Rather than arguing with them, he walked to a car dealership, and bought a new car with the cash that he had on him. By 1956 he was getting around $4000 per appearance, roughly equivalent to $43,000 today, and he was making a *lot* of appearances. He also sold half a million records that year. Various gospel singers, including the Clara Ward Singers, would perform on the tours he organised, and one of those performers was Franklin's middle daughter Aretha. Aretha had become pregnant when she was twelve, and after giving birth to the child she dropped out of school, but her grandmother did most of the child-rearing for her, while she accompanied her father on tour. Aretha's first recordings, made when she was just fourteen, show what an astonishing talent she already was at that young age. She would grow as an artist, of course, as she aged and gained experience, but those early gospel records already show an astounding maturity and ability. It's jaw-dropping to listen to these records of a fourteen-year-old, and immediately recognise them as a fully-formed Aretha Franklin. [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "There is a Fountain Filled With Blood"] Smokey Robinson's assessment that she was born with her gifts fully formed doesn't seem like an exaggeration when you hear that. For the latter half of the fifties, Aretha toured with her father, performing on the gospel circuit and becoming known there. But the Franklin sisters were starting to get ideas about moving into secular music. This was largely because their family friend Sam Cooke had done just that, with "You Send Me": [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "You Send Me"] Aretha and Erma still worshipped Cooke, and Aretha would later talk about getting dressed up just to watch Cooke appear on the TV. Their brother Cecil later said "I remember the night Sam came to sing at the Flame Show Bar in Detroit. Erma and Ree said they weren't going because they were so heartbroken that Sam had recently married. I didn't believe them. And I knew I was right when they started getting dressed about noon for the nine o'clock show. Because they were underage, they put on a ton of makeup to look older. It didn't matter 'cause Berry Gordy's sisters, Anna and Gwen, worked the photo concession down there, taking pictures of the party people. Anna was tight with Daddy and was sure to let my sisters in. She did, and they came home with stars in their eyes.” Moving from gospel to secular music still had a stigma against it in the gospel world, but Rev. Franklin had never seen secular music as sinful, and he encouraged his daughters in their ambitions. Erma was the first to go secular, forming a girl group, the Cleo-Patrettes, at the suggestion of the Four Tops, who were family friends, and recording a single for Joe Von Battle's J-V-B label, "No Other Love": [Excerpt: The Cleo-Patrettes, "No Other Love"] But the group didn't go any further, as Rev. Franklin insisted that his eldest daughter had to finish school and go to university before she could become a professional singer. Erma missed other opportunities for different reasons, though -- Berry Gordy, at this time still a jobbing songwriter, offered her a song he'd written with his sister and Roquel Davis, but Erma thought of herself as a jazz singer and didn't want to do R&B, and so "All I Could Do Was Cry" was given to Etta James instead, who had a top forty pop hit with it: [Excerpt: Etta James, "All I Could Do Was Cry"] While Erma's move into secular music was slowed by her father wanting her to have an education, there was no such pressure on Aretha, as she had already dropped out. But Aretha had a different problem -- she was very insecure, and said that church audiences "weren't critics, but worshippers", but she was worried that nightclub audiences in particular were just the kind of people who would just be looking for flaws, rather than wanting to support the performer as church audiences did. But eventually she got up the nerve to make the move. There was the possibility of her getting signed to Motown -- her brother was still best friends with Smokey Robinson, while the Gordy family were close to her father -- but Rev. Franklin had his eye on bigger things. He wanted her to be signed to Columbia, which in 1960 was the most prestigious of all the major labels. As Aretha's brother Cecil later said "He wanted Ree on Columbia, the label that recorded Mahalia Jackson, Duke Ellington, Johnny Mathis, Tony Bennett, Percy Faith, and Doris Day. Daddy said that Columbia was the biggest and best record company in the world. Leonard Bernstein recorded for Columbia." They went out to New York to see Phil Moore, a legendary vocal coach and arranger who had helped make Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge into stars, but Moore actually refused to take her on as a client, saying "She does not require my services. Her style has already been developed. Her style is in place. It is a unique style that, in my professional opinion, requires no alteration. It simply requires the right material. Her stage presentation is not of immediate concern. All that will come later. The immediate concern is the material that will suit her best. And the reason that concern will not be easily addressed is because I can't imagine any material that will not suit her." That last would become a problem for the next few years, but the immediate issue was to get someone at Columbia to listen to her, and Moore could help with that -- he was friends with John Hammond. Hammond is a name that's come up several times in the podcast already -- we mentioned him in the very earliest episodes, and also in episode ninety-eight, where we looked at his signing of Bob Dylan. But Hammond was a legend in the music business. He had produced sessions for Bessie Smith, had discovered Count Basie and Billie Holiday, had convinced Benny Goodman to hire Charlie Christian and Lionel Hampton, had signed Pete Seeger and the Weavers to Columbia, had organised the Spirituals to Swing concerts which we talked about in the first few episodes of this podcast, and was about to put out the first album of Robert Johnson's recordings. Of all the executives at Columbia, he was the one who had the greatest eye for talent, and the greatest understanding of Black musical culture. Moore suggested that the Franklins get Major Holley to produce a demo recording that he could get Hammond to listen to. Major Holley was a family friend, and a jazz bassist who had played with Oscar Peterson and Coleman Hawkins among others, and he put together a set of songs for Aretha that would emphasise the jazz side of her abilities, pitching her as a Dinah Washington style bluesy jazz singer. The highlight of the demo was a version of "Today I Sing the Blues", a song that had originally been recorded by Helen Humes, the singer who we last heard of recording “Be Baba Leba” with Bill Doggett: [Excerpt: Helen Humes, "Today I Sing the Blues"] That original version had been produced by Hammond, but the song had also recently been covered by Aretha's idol, Sam Cooke: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "Today I Sing the Blues"] Hammond was hugely impressed by the demo, and signed Aretha straight away, and got to work producing her first album. But he and Rev. Franklin had different ideas about what Aretha should do. Hammond wanted to make a fairly raw-sounding bluesy jazz album, the kind of recording he had produced with Bessie Smith or Billie Holiday, but Rev. Franklin wanted his daughter to make music that would cross over to the white pop market -- he was aiming for the same kind of audience that Nat "King" Cole or Harry Belafonte had, and he wanted her recording standards like "Over the Rainbow". This showed a lack of understanding on Rev. Franklin's part of how such crossovers actually worked at this point. As Etta James later said, "If you wanna have Black hits, you gotta understand the Black streets, you gotta work those streets and work those DJs to get airplay on Black stations... Or looking at it another way, in those days you had to get the Black audience to love the hell outta you and then hope the love would cross over to the white side. Columbia didn't know nothing 'bout crossing over.” But Hammond knew they had to make a record quickly, because Sam Cooke had been working on RCA Records, trying to get them to sign Aretha, and Rev. Franklin wanted an album out so they could start booking club dates for her, and was saying that if they didn't get one done quickly he'd take up that offer, and so they came up with a compromise set of songs which satisfied nobody, but did produce two R&B top ten hits, "Won't Be Long" and Aretha's version of "Today I Sing the Blues": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Today I Sing the Blues"] This is not to say that Aretha herself saw this as a compromise -- she later said "I have never compromised my material. Even then, I knew a good song from a bad one. And if Hammond, one of the legends of the business, didn't know how to produce a record, who does? No, the fault was with promotion." And this is something important to bear in mind as we talk about her Columbia records. Many, *many* people have presented those records as Aretha being told what to do by producers who didn't understand her art and were making her record songs that didn't fit her style. That's not what's happening with the Columbia records. Everyone actually involved said that Aretha was very involved in the choices made -- and there are some genuinely great tracks on those albums. The problem is that they're *unfocused*. Aretha was only eighteen when she signed to the label, and she loved all sorts of music -- blues, jazz, soul, standards, gospel, middle-of-the-road pop music -- and wanted to sing all those kinds of music. And she *could* sing all those kinds of music, and sing them well. But it meant the records weren't coherent. You didn't know what you were getting, and there was no artistic personality that dominated them, it was just what Aretha felt like recording. Around this time, Aretha started to think that maybe her father didn't know what he was talking about when it came to popular music success, even though she idolised him in most areas, and she turned to another figure, who would soon become both her husband and manager. Ted White. Her sister Erma, who was at that time touring with Lloyd Price, had introduced them, but in fact Aretha had first seen White years earlier, in her own house -- he had been Dinah Washington's boyfriend in the fifties, and her first sight of him had been carrying a drunk Washington out of the house after a party. In interviews with David Ritz, who wrote biographies of many major soul stars including both Aretha Franklin and Etta James, James had a lot to say about White, saying “Ted White was famous even before he got with Aretha. My boyfriend at the time, Harvey Fuqua, used to talk about him. Ted was supposed to be the slickest pimp in Detroit. When I learned that Aretha married him, I wasn't surprised. A lot of the big-time singers who we idolized as girls—like Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan—had pimps for boyfriends and managers. That was standard operating procedure. My own mother had made a living turning tricks. When we were getting started, that way of life was part of the music business. It was in our genes. Part of the lure of pimps was that they got us paid." She compared White to Ike Turner, saying "Ike made Tina, no doubt about it. He developed her talent. He showed her what it meant to be a performer. He got her famous. Of course, Ted White was not a performer, but he was savvy about the world. When Harvey Fuqua introduced me to him—this was the fifties, before he was with Aretha—I saw him as a super-hip extra-smooth cat. I liked him. He knew music. He knew songwriters who were writing hit songs. He had manners. Later, when I ran into him and Aretha—this was the sixties—I saw that she wasn't as shy as she used to be." White was a pimp, but he was also someone with music business experience -- he owned an unsuccessful publishing company, and also ran a chain of jukeboxes. He was also thirty, while Aretha was only eighteen. But White didn't like the people in Aretha's life at the time -- he didn't get on well with her father, and he also clashed with John Hammond. And Aretha was also annoyed at Hammond, because her sister Erma had signed to Epic, a Columbia subsidiary, and was releasing her own singles: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Hello Again"] Aretha was certain that Hammond had signed Erma, even though Hammond had nothing to do with Epic Records, and Erma had actually been recommended by Lloyd Price. And Aretha, while for much of her career she would support her sister, was also terrified that her sister might have a big hit before her and leave Aretha in her shadow. Hammond was still the credited producer on Aretha's second album, The Electrifying Aretha Franklin, but his lack of say in the sessions can be shown in the choice of lead-off single. "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody" was originally recorded by Al Jolson in 1918: [Excerpt: Al Jolson, "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody"] Rev. Franklin pushed for the song, as he was a fan of Jolson -- Jolson, oddly, had a large Black fanbase, despite his having been a blackface performer, because he had *also* been a strong advocate of Black musicians like Cab Calloway, and the level of racism in the media of the twenties through forties was so astonishingly high that even a blackface performer could seem comparatively OK. Aretha's performance was good, but it was hardly the kind of thing that audiences were clamouring for in 1961: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody"] That single came out the month after _Down Beat_ magazine gave Aretha the "new-star female vocalist award", and it oddly made the pop top forty, her first record to do so, and the B-side made the R&B top ten, but for the next few years both chart success and critical acclaim eluded her. None of her next nine singles would make higher than number eighty-six on the Hot One Hundred, and none would make the R&B charts at all. After that transitional second album, she was paired with producer Bob Mersey, who was precisely the kind of white pop producer that one would expect for someone who hoped for crossover success. Mersey was the producer for many of Columbia's biggest stars at the time -- people like Barbra Streisand, Andy Williams, Julie Andrews, Patti Page, and Mel Tormé -- and it was that kind of audience that Aretha wanted to go for at this point. To give an example of the kind of thing that Mersey was doing, just the month before he started work on his first collaboration with Aretha, _The Tender, the Moving, the Swinging Aretha Franklin_, his production of Andy Williams singing "Moon River" was released: [Excerpt: Andy Williams, "Moon River"] This was the kind of audience Aretha was going for when it came to record sales – the person she compared herself to most frequently at this point was Barbra Streisand – though in live performances she was playing with a small jazz group in jazz venues, and going for the same kind of jazz-soul crossover audience as Dinah Washington or Ray Charles. The strategy seems to have been to get something like the success of her idol Sam Cooke, who could play to soul audiences but also play the Copacabana, but the problem was that Cooke had built an audience before doing that -- she hadn't. But even though she hadn't built up an audience, musicians were starting to pay attention. Ted White, who was still in touch with Dinah Washington, later said “Women are very catty. They'll see a girl who's dressed very well and they'll say, Yeah, but look at those shoes, or look at that hairdo. Aretha was the only singer I've ever known that Dinah had no negative comments about. She just stood with her mouth open when she heard Aretha sing.” The great jazz vocalist Carmen McRea went to see Aretha at the Village Vanguard in New York around this time, having heard the comparisons to Dinah Washington, and met her afterwards. She later said "Given how emotionally she sang, I expected her to have a supercharged emotional personality like Dinah. Instead, she was the shyest thing I've ever met. Would hardly look me in the eye. Didn't say more than two words. I mean, this bitch gave bashful a new meaning. Anyway, I didn't give her any advice because she didn't ask for any, but I knew goddamn well that, no matter how good she was—and she was absolutely wonderful—she'd have to make up her mind whether she wanted to be Della Reese, Dinah Washington, or Sarah Vaughan. I also had a feeling she wouldn't have minded being Leslie Uggams or Diahann Carroll. I remember thinking that if she didn't figure out who she was—and quick—she was gonna get lost in the weeds of the music biz." So musicians were listening to Aretha, even if everyone else wasn't. The Tender, the Moving, the Swinging Aretha Franklin, for example, was full of old standards like "Try a Little Tenderness": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Try a Little Tenderness"] That performance inspired Otis Redding to cut his own version of that song a few years later: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Try a Little Tenderness"] And it might also have inspired Aretha's friend and idol Sam Cooke to include the song in his own lounge sets. The Tender, the Moving, the Swinging Aretha Franklin also included Aretha's first original composition, but in general it wasn't a very well-received album. In 1963, the first cracks started to develop in Aretha's relationship with Ted White. According to her siblings, part of the strain was because Aretha's increasing commitment to the civil rights movement was costing her professional opportunities. Her brother Cecil later said "Ted White had complete sway over her when it came to what engagements to accept and what songs to sing. But if Daddy called and said, ‘Ree, I want you to sing for Dr. King,' she'd drop everything and do just that. I don't think Ted had objections to her support of Dr. King's cause, and he realized it would raise her visibility. But I do remember the time that there was a conflict between a big club gig and doing a benefit for Dr. King. Ted said, ‘Take the club gig. We need the money.' But Ree said, ‘Dr. King needs me more.' She defied her husband. Maybe that was the start of their marital trouble. Their thing was always troubled because it was based on each of them using the other. Whatever the case, my sister proved to be a strong soldier in the civil rights fight. That made me proud of her and it kept her relationship with Daddy from collapsing entirely." In part her increasing activism was because of her father's own increase in activity. The benefit that Cecil is talking about there is probably one in Chicago organised by Mahalia Jackson, where Aretha headlined on a bill that also included Jackson, Eartha Kitt, and the comedian Dick Gregory. That was less than a month before her father organised the Detroit Walk to Freedom, a trial run for the more famous March on Washington a few weeks later. The Detroit Walk to Freedom was run by the Detroit Council for Human Rights, which was formed by Rev. Franklin and Rev. Albert Cleage, a much more radical Black nationalist who often differed with Franklin's more moderate integrationist stance. They both worked together to organise the Walk to Freedom, but Franklin's stance predominated, as several white liberal politicians, like the Mayor of Detroit, Jerome Cavanagh, were included in the largely-Black March. It drew crowds of 125,000 people, and Dr. King called it "one of the most wonderful things that has happened in America", and it was the largest civil rights demonstration in American history up to that point. King's speech in Detroit was recorded and released on Motown Records: [Excerpt: Martin Luther King, "Original 'I Have a Dream' Speech”] He later returned to the same ideas in his more famous speech in Washington. During that civil rights spring and summer of 1963, Aretha also recorded what many think of as the best of her Columbia albums, a collection of jazz standards  called Laughing on the Outside, which included songs like "Solitude", "Ol' Man River" and "I Wanna Be Around": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Wanna Be Around"] The opening track, "Skylark", was Etta James' favourite ever Aretha Franklin performance, and is regarded by many as the definitive take on the song: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Skylark"] Etta James later talked about discussing the track with the great jazz singer Sarah Vaughan, one of Aretha's early influences, who had recorded her own version of the song: "Sarah said, ‘Have you heard of this Aretha Franklin girl?' I said, ‘You heard her do “Skylark,” didn't you?' Sarah said, ‘Yes, I did, and I'm never singing that song again.” But while the album got noticed by other musicians, it didn't get much attention from the wider public. Mersey decided that a change in direction was needed, and they needed to get in someone with more of a jazz background to work with Aretha. He brought in pianist and arranger Bobby Scott, who had previously worked with people like Lester Young, and Scott said of their first meeting “My first memory of Aretha is that she wouldn't look at me when I spoke. She withdrew from the encounter in a way that intrigued me. At first I thought she was just shy—and she was—but I also felt her reading me...For all her deference to my experience and her reluctance to speak up, when she did look me in the eye, she did so with a quiet intensity before saying, ‘I like all your ideas, Mr. Scott, but please remember I do want hits.'” They started recording together, but the sides they cut wouldn't be released for a few years. Instead, Aretha and Mersey went in yet another direction. Dinah Washington died suddenly in December 1963, and given that Aretha was already being compared to Washington by almost everyone, and that Washington had been a huge influence on her, as well as having been close to both her father and her husband/manager, it made sense to go into the studio and quickly cut a tribute album, with Aretha singing Washington's hits: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Cold Cold Heart"] Unfortunately, while Washington had been wildly popular, and one of the most important figures in jazz and R&B in the forties and fifties, her style was out of date. The tribute album, titled Unforgettable, came out in February 1964, the same month that Beatlemania hit the US. Dinah Washington was the past, and trying to position Aretha as "the new Dinah Washington" would doom her to obscurity. John Hammond later said "I remember thinking that if Aretha never does another album she will be remembered for this one. No, the problem was timing. Dinah had died, and, outside the black community, interest in her had waned dramatically. Popular music was in a radical and revolutionary moment, and that moment had nothing to do with Dinah Washington, great as she was and will always be.” At this point, Columbia brought in Clyde Otis, an independent producer and songwriter who had worked with artists like Washington and Sarah Vaughan, and indeed had written one of the songs on Unforgettable, but had also worked with people like Brook Benton, who had a much more R&B audience. For example, he'd written "Baby, You Got What It Takes" for Benton and Washington to do as a duet: [Excerpt: Brook Benton and Dinah Washington, "Baby, You Got What it Takes"] In 1962, when he was working at Mercury Records before going independent, Otis had produced thirty-three of the fifty-one singles the label put out that year that had charted. Columbia had decided that they were going to position Aretha firmly in the R&B market, and assigned Otis to do just that. At first, though, Otis had no more luck with getting Aretha to sing R&B than anyone else had. He later said "Aretha, though, couldn't be deterred from her determination to beat Barbra Streisand at Barbra's own game. I kept saying, ‘Ree, you can outsing Streisand any day of the week. That's not the point. The point is to find a hit.' But that summer she just wanted straight-up ballads. She insisted that she do ‘People,' Streisand's smash. Aretha sang the hell out of it, but no one's gonna beat Barbra at her own game." But after several months of this, eventually Aretha and White came round to the idea of making an R&B record. Otis produced an album of contemporary R&B, with covers of music from the more sophisticated end of the soul market, songs like "My Guy", "Every Little Bit Hurts", and "Walk on By", along with a few new originals brought in by Otis. The title track, "Runnin' Out of Fools", became her biggest hit in three years, making number fifty-seven on the pop charts and number thirty on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Runnin' Out of Fools"] After that album, they recorded another album with Otis producing, a live-in-the-studio jazz album, but again nobody involved could agree on a style for her. By this time it was obvious that she was unhappy with Columbia and would be leaving the label soon, and they wanted to get as much material in the can as they could, so they could continue releasing material after she left. But her working relationship with Otis was deteriorating -- Otis and Ted White did not get on, Aretha and White were having their own problems, and Aretha had started just not showing up for some sessions, with nobody knowing where she was. Columbia passed her on to yet another producer, this time Bob Johnston, who had just had a hit with Patti Page, "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte": [Excerpt: Patti Page, "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte"] Johnston was just about to hit an incredible hot streak as a producer. At the same time as his sessions with Aretha, he was also producing Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, and just after the sessions finished he'd go on to produce Simon & Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence album. In the next few years he would produce a run of classic Dylan albums like Blonde on Blonde, John Wesley Harding, and New Morning, Simon & Garfunkel's follow up Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme, Leonard Cohen's first three albums, and Johnny Cash's comeback with the Live at Folsom Prison album and its follow up At San Quentin. He also produced records for Marty Robbins, Flatt & Scruggs, the Byrds, and Burl Ives during that time period. But you may notice that while that's as great a run of records as any producer was putting out at the time, it has little to do with the kind of music that Aretha Franklin was making then, or would become famous with. Johnston produced a string-heavy session in which Aretha once again tried to sing old standards by people like Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern. She then just didn't turn up for some more sessions, until one final session in August, when she recorded songs like "Swanee" and "You Made Me Love You". For more than a year, she didn't go into a studio. She also missed many gigs and disappeared from her family's life for periods of time. Columbia kept putting out records of things she'd already recorded, but none of them had any success at all. Many of the records she'd made for Columbia had been genuinely great -- there's a popular perception that she was being held back by a record company that forced her to sing material she didn't like, but in fact she *loved* old standards, and jazz tunes, and contemporary pop at least as much as any other kind of music. Truly great musicians tend to have extremely eclectic tastes, and Aretha Franklin was a truly great musician if anyone was. Her Columbia albums are as good as any albums in those genres put out in that time period, and she remained proud of them for the rest of her life. But that very eclecticism had meant that she hadn't established a strong identity as a performer -- everyone who heard her records knew she was a great singer, but nobody knew what "an Aretha Franklin record" really meant -- and she hadn't had a single real hit, which was the thing she wanted more than anything. All that changed when in the early hours of the morning, Jerry Wexler was at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals recording a Wilson Pickett track -- from the timeline, it was probably the session for "Mustang Sally", which coincidentally was published by Ted White's publishing company, as Sir Mack Rice, the writer, was a neighbour of White and Franklin, and to which Aretha had made an uncredited songwriting contribution: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Mustang Sally"] Whatever the session, it wasn't going well. Percy Sledge, another Atlantic artist who recorded at Muscle Shoals, had turned up and had started winding Pickett up, telling him he sounded just like James Brown. Pickett *hated* Brown -- it seems like almost every male soul singer of the sixties hated James Brown -- and went to physically attack Sledge. Wexler got between the two men to protect his investments in them -- both were the kind of men who could easily cause some serious damage to anyone they hit -- and Pickett threw him to one side and charged at Sledge. At that moment the phone went, and Wexler yelled at the two of them to calm down so he could talk on the phone. The call was telling him that Aretha Franklin was interested in recording for Atlantic. Rev. Louise Bishop, later a Democratic politician in Pennsylvania, was at this time a broadcaster, presenting a radio gospel programme, and she knew Aretha. She'd been to see her perform, and had been astonished by Aretha's performance of a recent Otis Redding single, "Respect": [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Respect"] Redding will, by the way, be getting his own episode in a few months' time, which is why I've not covered the making of that record here. Bishop thought that Aretha did the song even better than Redding -- something Bishop hadn't thought possible. When she got talking to Aretha after the show, she discovered that her contract with Columbia was up, and Aretha didn't really know what she was going to do -- maybe she'd start her own label or something. She hadn't been into the studio in more than a year, but she did have some songs she'd been working on. Bishop was good friends with Jerry Wexler, and she knew that he was a big fan of Aretha's, and had been saying for a while that when her contract was up he'd like to sign her. Bishop offered to make the connection, and then went back home and phoned Wexler's wife, waking her up -- it was one in the morning by this point, but Bishop was accustomed to phoning Wexler late at night when it was something important. Wexler's wife then phoned him in Muscle Shoals, and he phoned Bishop back and made the arrangements to meet up. Initially, Wexler wasn't thinking about producing Aretha himself -- this was still the period when he and the Ertegun brothers were thinking of selling Atlantic and getting out of the music business, and so while he signed her to the label he was originally going to hand her over to Jim Stewart at Stax to record, as he had with Sam and Dave. But in a baffling turn of events, Jim Stewart didn't actually want to record her, and so Wexler determined that he had better do it himself. And he didn't want to do it with slick New York musicians -- he wanted to bring out the gospel sound in her voice, and he thought the best way to do that was with musicians from what Charles Hughes refers to as "the country-soul triangle" of Nashville, Memphis, and Muscle Shoals. So he booked a week's worth of sessions at FAME studios, and got in FAME's regular rhythm section, plus a couple of musicians from American Recordings in Memphis -- Chips Moman and Spooner Oldham. Oldham's friend and songwriting partner Dan Penn came along as well -- he wasn't officially part of the session, but he was a fan of Aretha's and wasn't going to miss this. Penn had been the first person that Rick Hall, the owner of FAME, had called when Wexler had booked the studio, because Hall hadn't actually heard of Aretha Franklin up to that point, but didn't want to let Wexler know that. Penn had assured him that Aretha was one of the all-time great talents, and that she just needed the right production to become massive. As Hall put it in his autobiography, "Dan tended in those days to hate anything he didn't write, so I figured if he felt that strongly about her, then she was probably going to be a big star." Charlie Chalmers, a horn player who regularly played with these musicians, was tasked with putting together a horn section. The first song they recorded that day was one that the musicians weren't that impressed with at first. "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)" was written by a songwriter named Ronnie Shannon, who had driven from Georgia to Detroit hoping to sell his songs to Motown. He'd popped into a barber's shop where Ted White was having his hair cut to ask for directions to Motown, and White had signed him to his own publishing company and got him to write songs for Aretha. On hearing the demo, the musicians thought that the song was mediocre and a bit shapeless: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You) (demo)"] But everyone there was agreed that Aretha herself was spectacular. She didn't speak much to the musicians, just went to the piano and sat down and started playing, and Jerry Wexler later compared her playing to Thelonius Monk (who was indeed one of the jazz musicians who had influenced her). While Spooner Oldham had been booked to play piano, it was quickly decided to switch him to electric piano and organ, leaving the acoustic piano for Aretha to play, and she would play piano on all the sessions Wexler produced for her in future. Although while Wexler is the credited producer (and on this initial session Rick Hall at FAME is a credited co-producer), everyone involved, including Wexler, said that the musicians were taking their cues from Aretha rather than anyone else. She would outline the arrangements at the piano, and everyone else would fit in with what she was doing, coming up with head arrangements directed by her. But Wexler played a vital role in mediating between her and the musicians and engineering staff, all of whom he knew and she didn't. As Rick Hall said "After her brief introduction by Wexler, she said very little to me or anyone else in the studio other than Jerry or her husband for the rest of the day. I don't think Aretha and I ever made eye contact after our introduction, simply because we were both so totally focused on our music and consumed by what we were doing." The musicians started working on "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)", and at first found it difficult to get the groove, but then Oldham came up with an electric piano lick which everyone involved thought of as the key that unlocked the song for them: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)"] After that, they took a break. Most of them were pleased with the track, though Rick Hall wasn't especially happy. But then Rick Hall wasn't especially happy about anything at that point. He'd always used mono for his recordings until then, but had been basically forced to install at least a two-track system by Tom Dowd, Atlantic's chief engineer, and was resentful of this imposition. During the break, Dan Penn went off to finish a song he and Spooner Oldham had been writing, which he hoped Aretha would record at the session: [Excerpt: Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham, "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man"] They had the basic structure of the song down, but hadn't quite finished the middle eight, and both Jerry Wexler and Aretha Franklin chipped in uncredited lyrical contributions -- Aretha's line was "as long as we're together baby, you'd better show some respect to me". Penn, Oldham, Chips Moman, Roger Hawkins, and Tommy Cogbill started cutting a backing track for the song, with Penn singing lead initially with the idea that Aretha would overdub her vocal. But while they were doing this, things had been going wrong with the other participants. All the FAME and American rhythm section players were white, as were Wexler, Hall, and Dowd, and Wexler had been very aware of this, and of the fact that they were recording in Alabama, where Aretha and her husband might not feel totally safe, so he'd specifically requested that the horn section at least contain some Black musicians. But Charlie Chalmers hadn't been able to get any of the Black musicians he would normally call when putting together a horn section, and had ended up with an all-white horn section as well, including one player, a trumpet player called Ken Laxton, who had a reputation as a good player but had never worked with any of the other musicians there -- he was an outsider in a group of people who regularly worked together and had a pre-existing relationship. As the two outsiders, Laxton and Ted White had, at first, bonded, and indeed had started drinking vodka together, passing a bottle between themselves, in a way that Rick Hall would normally not allow in a session -- at the time, the county the studio was in was still a dry county. But as Wexler said, “A redneck patronizing a Black man is a dangerous camaraderie,” and White and Laxton soon had a major falling out. Everyone involved tells a different story about what it was that caused them to start rowing, though it seems to have been to do with Laxton not showing the proper respect for Aretha, or even actually sexually assaulting her -- Dan Penn later said “I always heard he patted her on the butt or somethin', and what would have been wrong with that anyway?”, which says an awful lot about the attitudes of these white Southern men who thought of themselves as very progressive, and were -- for white Southern men in early 1967. Either way, White got very, very annoyed, and insisted that Laxton get fired from the session, which he was, but that still didn't satisfy White, and he stormed off to the motel, drunk and angry. The rest of them finished cutting a basic track for "Do Right Woman", but nobody was very happy with it. Oldham said later “She liked the song but hadn't had time to practice it or settle into it I remember there was Roger playing the drums and Cogbill playing the bass. And I'm on these little simplistic chords on organ, just holding chords so the song would be understood. And that was sort of where it was left. Dan had to sing the vocal, because she didn't know the song, in the wrong key for him. That's what they left with—Dan singing the wrong-key vocal and this little simplistic organ and a bass and a drum. We had a whole week to do everything—we had plenty of time—so there was no hurry to do anything in particular.” Penn was less optimistic, saying "But as I rem

She's BACK!!  On Saturday Night LIVE's spoof "The Dionne Warwick Show", with  NEW Compilations of Music. It includes collaborations with Kenny Lattimore & Musiq SoulChild along with new versions of her classics & some original classics. She's also touring again Worldwide!! On November 26, 2021, Warwick released the single "Nothing's Impossible" a duet featuring Chance the Rapper. Two charities are being supported by the duet: SocialWorks, a Chicago-based nonprofit that Chance founded to empower the youth through the arts, education and civic engagement, and Hunger: Not Impossible, a text-based service connecting kids and their families in need with prepaid, nutritious, to-go meals from local restaurants.Dionne was also named Smithsonian Ambassador of Music!!Additionally, Warwick  began a highly anticipated concert residency in Las Vegas on April 4, 2019Scintillating, soothing and sensual best describe the familiar and legendary voice of five-time GRAMMY® Award winning music legend, DIONNE WARWICK, who has become a cornerstone of American pop music and culture. Warwick's career, which currently celebrates over 50 years, has established her as an international music icon and concert act. Over that time, she has earned 75 charted hit songs and sold over 100 million records.Marie Dionne Warwick, an American singer, actress, and television show host who became a United Nations Global Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization and a United States Ambassador of Health.She began singing professionally in 1961 after being discovered by a young songwriting team, Burt Bacharach and Hal David. She had her first hit in 1962 with “Don't Make Me Over.” Less than a decade later, she had released more than 18 consecutive Top 100 singles, including her classic Bacharach/David recordings, “Walk on By,” “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” “Message to Michael,” "Promises Promises,” “A House is Not a Home,” “Alfie,” “Say a Little Prayer,” “This Girl's in Love With You,” “I'll Never Fall in Love Again,” “Reach Out For Me,” and the theme from “Valley of the Dolls. ”Together, Warwick and her songwriting team of Burt Bacharach & Hal David, accumulated more than 30 hit singles, and close to 20 best-selling albums, during their first decade together.Warwick received her first GRAMMY® Award in 1968 for her mega-hit, “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” and a second GRAMMY® in 1970 for the best-selling album, “I'll Never Fall in Love Again.” She became the first African-American solo female artist of her generation to win the prestigious award for Best Contemporary Female Vocalist Performance. This award was only presented to one other legend, Miss Ella Fitzgerald.Other African-American female recording artists certainly earned their share of crossover pop and R&B hits during the 1960′s, however, Warwick preceded the mainstream success of her musical peers by becoming the first such artist to rack up a dozen consecutive Top 100 hit singles from 1963-1966.Warwick's performance at the Olympia Theater in Paris, during a 1963 concert starring the legendary Marlene Dietrich, skyrocketed her to international stardom. As Warwick established herself as a major force in American contemporary music, she gained popularity among European audiences as well. In 1968, she became the first solo African-American artist among her peers to sing before the Queen of England at a Royal Command Performance. Since then, Warwick has performed before numerous kings, queens, presidents and heads of state.Warwick's recordings of songs such as “A House is not a Home,” “Alfie,” ”Valley of the Dolls,” and “The April Fools,” made her a pioneer as one of the first female artists to popularize classic movie themes.Warwick began singing during her childhood years in East Orange, New Jersey, initially in church. Occasionally, she sang as a soloist and fill-in voice for the renowned Drinkard Singers, a group comprised of her mother Lee, along with her aunts, including Aunt Cissy, Whitney Houston's mom, and her uncles. During her teens, Warwick and her sister Dee Dee started their own gospel group, The Gospelaires.Warwick attended The Hartt College of Music in Hartford, Connecticut, and during that time, began making trips to New York to do regular session work. She sang behind many of the biggest recording stars of the 1960′s including Dinah Washington, Sam Taylor, Brook Benton, Chuck Jackson, and Solomon Burke, among many others. It was at this time that a young composer named Burt Bacharach heard her sing during a session for The Drifters and asked her to sing on demos of some new songs he was writing with his new lyricist Hal David. In 1962, one such demo was presented to Scepter Records, which launched a hit-filled 12 -year association with the label.Known as the artist who “bridged the gap,” Warwick's soulful blend of pop, gospel and R&B music transcended race, culture, and musical boundaries. In 1970, Warwick received her second GRAMMY® Award for the best-selling album, “I'll Never Fall In Love Again,” and began her second decade of hits with Warner Bros. Records. She recorded half a dozen albums, with top producers such as Thom Bell, Holland-Dozier-Holland, Jerry Ragavoy, Steve Barri, and Michael Omartian. In 1974, she hit the top of the charts with “Then Came You,” a million-selling duet with The Spinners. She then teamed up with Isaac Hayes for a highly successful world tour, “A Man and a Woman.”In 1976, Warwick signed with Arista Records, beginning a third decade of hit-making. Arista Records label-mate Barry Manilow produced her first Platinum-selling album, “Dionne,” which included back-to-back hits “I'll Never Love This Way Again,” and “Déjà vu.” Both recordings earned GRAMMY® Awards, making Warwick the first female artist to win the Best Female Pop and Best Female R&B Performance Awards.Warwick's 1982 album, “Heartbreaker,” co-produced by Barry Gibb and the Bee Gees, became an international chart-topper. In 1985, she reunited with composer Burt Bacharach and longtime friends Gladys Knight, Elton John and Stevie Wonder to record the landmark song “That's What Friends Are For,” which became a number one hit record around the world and the first recording dedicated to raising awareness and major funds (over $3 Million) for the AIDS cause in support of AMFAR, which Warwick continues to support.Throughout the 1980′s and 1990′s, Warwick collaborated with many of her musical peers, including Johnny Mathis, Smokey Robinson, Luther Vandross, Jeffrey Osborne, Kashif and Stevie Wonder. Warwick was also host of the hit television music show, “Solid Gold.” In addition, she recorded several theme songs, including “Champagne Wishes & Caviar Dreams,” for the popular television series “Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous,” and “The Love Boat,” for the hit series from Aaron Spelling. In November, 2006 Warwick recorded an album of duets, “My Friends & Me,” for Concord Records, a critically acclaimed Gospel album, “Why We Sing,” for Rhino/Warner Records, and a new jazz album, ”Only Trust Your Heart,” a collection of standards, celebrating the music of legendary composer Sammy Cahn for Sony Red/MPCA Records. Additionally, in September 2008, Warwick added “author” to her list of credits with two best-selling children's books, “Say A Little Prayer,” and “Little Man,” and her first best-selling autobiography, “My Life As I See It” for Simon & Schuster.Always one to give back, Warwick has supported and campaigned for many causes and charities close to her heart, including AIDS, The Starlight Foundation, children's hospitals, world hunger, disaster relief and music education for which she has been recognized and honored and has raised millions of dollars. In 1987, she was appointed the first United States Ambassador of Health by President Ronald Reagan and in 2002, served as Global Ambassador for Health and Ambassador for the United Nations' Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO), and she continues to serve as Ambassador today. In recognition of her accomplishments and support of education, a New Jersey school was named in her honor, the Dionne Warwick Institute for Economics and Entrepreneurship. Warwick was also a key participating artist in the all-star charity single, “We Are the World,” and in 1984, performed at “Live Aid.”Celebrating 50 years in entertainment, and the 25th Anniversary of “That's What Friends Are For,” Warwick hosted and headlined an all-star benefit concert for World Hunger Day in London. In addition, she was honored by AMFAR in a special reunion performance of “That's What Friends are For,” alongside Elton John, Gladys Knight and Stevie Wonder at AMFAR's Anniversary Gala in New York City. Warwick also received the prestigious 2011 Steve Chase Humanitarian Arts & Activism Award by the Desert Aids Project and was recognized for her stellar career by Clive Davis at his legendary Pre-GRAMMY® Party in Los Angeles. Adding to her list of landmark honors, Warwick was a 2013 recipient of the coveted Ellis Island Medal of Honor in New York and was inducted into the 2013 New Jersey Hall of Fame.On March 26, 2012, Warwick was inducted into the GRAMMY® Museum in Los Angeles, where a special 50th Anniversary exhibit was unveiled and a historic program and performance was held in the Clive Davis Theater. Additionally, a panel discussion with Clive Davis and Burt Bacharach was hosted by GRAMMY® Museum Executive Director, Bob Santelli.Commemorating her 50th Anniversary, Warwick released a much-anticipated studio album in 2013, entitled “NOW.” Produced by the legendary Phil Ramone, the anniversary album was nominated for a 2014 GRAMMY® Award for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album. “NOW” featured special never-before-released material written by her longtime friends and musical collaborators, Burt Bacharach and Hal David.Most recently, Warwick released a much anticipated star-studded duets album titled “Feels So Good,” featuring collaborations with some of today's greatest artists including Alicia Keys, Jamie Foxx, Billy Ray Cyrus, Ne-Yo, Gladys Knight, Cee Lo Green, Cyndi Lauper and many more. “Feels So Good” was released through Bright Music Records, Caroline and Capitol.Warwick's pride and joy are her two sons, singer/recording artist David Elliott and award-winning music producer Damon Elliott, and her family. ~ DionneWarwickonLine.com© 2022 Building Abundant Success!!2022 All Rights ReservedJoin Me on ~ iHeart Radio @ https://tinyurl.com/iHeartBASSpot Me on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/yxuy23baAmazon ~ https://tinyurl.com/AmzBAS

#035 Broadcast 035 - Episode 032 - The Crooners - 20220423 - 3 in 1 = Brook Benton by Jim Reeves

Top Christmas SongsWith Performing Artists Like...Bing Crosby...Gene Autry...Rosemary Clooney...Brook Benton and more.From White Christmas to Auld Lang Syne

Season Three of Countermelody begins with a potpourri episode of some of my favorite crooners of color. I begin with an example of Bert Williams, the first African-American superstar, and offer a few other examples of important precursors, but I focus on the heyday of the crooner, from the 1940s through the early 1960s, including such honey-voiced singers as Billy Eckstine, Johnny Mathis, Nat King Cole, Ray Charles, Sammy Davis, Jr., Johnny Hartman, Lou Rawls, Brook Benton, and Arthur Prysock. Since I apply the term “crooner” fairly loosely, I am also able to present singers from outside the traditional repertoire of the standard crooner, including Josh White, Leslie “Hutch” Hutchinson, Harry Belafonte, Barry White, Bobby Short, and Lamont Dozier. The episode concludes with a tribute to Broadway baritones of color and with a stunning live performance of Jackie Wilson singing “Danny Boy” in honor of my birthday. Vocal guest stars include Miriam Makeba, Linda Ronstadt, and Mabel Mercer. Countermelody is a podcast devoted to the glory and the power of the human voice raised in song. Singer and vocal aficionado Daniel Gundlach explores great singers of the past and present focusing in particular on those who are less well-remembered today than they should be. Daniel's lifetime in music as a professional countertenor, pianist, vocal coach, voice teacher, and journalist yields an exciting array of anecdotes, impressions, and “inside stories.” At Countermelody's core is the celebration of great singers of all stripes, their instruments, and the connection they make to the words they sing. By clicking on the following link (https://linktr.ee/CountermelodyPodcast) you can find the dedicated Countermelody website which contains additional content including artist photos and episode setlists. The link will also take you to Countermelody's Patreon page, where you can pledge your monthly support at whatever level you can afford. Bonus episodes available exclusively to Patreon supporters are currently available and further bonus content including interviews and livestreams is planned for the upcoming season.

#002 Broadcast 002 - Episode 002 - The Crooners - 20210911 - 3 in 1 = Brook Benton by Jim Reeves

Generational gas and grease runs through the veins of Matsubara's, whether it be on the race track or project cars built to cruise with car clubs. I have the honor of holding a friend hostage and having him share a little family car history in Southern California and his thoughts on the future of custom cars/music. As always, the guest picks the playlist.  Find Dane Matsubara IG under @Danematsubara and possibly take the Studebaker project off his hands And while you're at it, find useless and terrible mechanic advice on The Shack's Instagram  -Dinah Washington and Brook Benton. A Rockin' Good Way -Gene Chandler. Duke of Earl -Chuck Berry. Johnny B Goode -Little Richard. Tutti Frutti  -J.D. McPherson. Dimes for Nickles -Marty Robbins. El Paso -Misfits. Hollywood Babylon -Stray Cats. Rock This Town Background: Dave Allen and The Arrows. Cycle Delic 

Episode 171, “Easy Listening 1957-1959,” features 17 popular recordings from the late 1950s performed by Dean Martin, Jane Morgan, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Brook Benton, Della Reese, Paul Anka, Nat King Cole, The Platters and... Read More The post Episode 171, “Easy Listening 1957-1959,” appeared first on Sam Waldron.

So many singles that were released in the 60's had one GREAT side and one "meh" side but there were ones that had two great sides. This week we celebrate those magical 45s that shine on both sides. Along with some classic spins and stand alone gems this hour is sprinkled with flip sides that could just as well be top sides. ----------------------------------------------- The Playlist Is: "Hully Gully Now" Big Bo & The Arrows - Duchess "I'm Fallin' In Love" Ella Fitzgerald - Verve "Gimme Some" Nina Simone - Philips "Everything I Do" The Jets - Port "I Don't Want To Share Your Love" Tommy & Cleve - Checker "Get It! Get It" Ike & Tina Turner - Cenco "Come Down To Earth" Force Five - United Artisits "It's All Over Now" The Uniques - Paula "Twinkie-Lee" Gary Walker - CBS "Make Your Move" The Volcanos - Arctic "This Thing Called Love" The Webs - Popside "You've Been Cheatin" The Impressions - ABC-Paramount "Never The Less" Lee Andrews & The Hearts - Crimson "Ain't Nothing But A House Party" The Show Stoppers - Heritage "Looking For A Fox" Clarence Carter - Atlantic "Jamaica Ska" The Ska Kings - Atlantic "Pheonix City" Roland Alfonso - Trojan "Six And Seventh Books" The Maytals - Coxone "Let Me Fix It" Brook Benton & The Dixie Flyers - Cotillion "Make Me Yours" Bobby Mongomery - Generation "Horsin' Around" The Soul Brothers - Newmiss

This episode includes music from the Angelic Gospel Singers, Sounds of Soul, Brook Benton, Washington Temple Camp Meeting Choir, Blind Boys of Alabama, Marie Knight (pictured), and others.

Just imagine every hit record from the 1960s in one gigantic playlist. OK, now press “SHUFFLE” Here we go: 1) Wipe Out by The Surfaris 2) Monday, Monday by The Mamas & The Papas 3) The Fly by Chubby Checker 4) Bend Me, Shape Me by The American Breed 5) Traces by Classics IV (with Dennis Yost, lead vocal) 6) Baby (You've Got What It Takes) by Brook Benton & Dinah Washington 7) Gimme Little Sign by Brenton Wood 8) Expressway To Your Heart by The Soul Survivors 9) Red Rubber Ball by The Cyrkle 10) Just One Look by Doris Troy 11) The Jolly Green Giant by The Kingsmen 12) Who Put the Bomp by Barry Mann 13) Denise by Randy & The Rainbows 14) Wild One by Bobby Rydell 15) The Horse by Cliff Nobles & Co. 16) 1-2-3 Red Light by The 1910 Fruitgum Company 17) I Get Around by The Beach Boys 18) Da Doo Ron Ron by The Crystals (with Hal Blaine, drums) 19) Summer In The City by The Lovin' Spoonful 20) Finger Poppin' Time by Hank Ballard & The Midnighters 21) I Can't Stay Mad at You by Skeeter Davis 22) Quarter To Three by Gary U.S. Bonds 23) The Girl From Ipanema by Stan Getz & Astrud Gilberto 24) Speedy Gonzales by Pat Boone 25) Bits And Pieces by The Dave Clark Five 26) I Love How You Love Me by The Paris Sisters (Pricilla Paris, lead vocals) 27) Hurt So Bad by The Lettermen 28) Time Has Come Today by The Chambers Brothers 29) You'll Lose a Good Thing by Barbara Lynn 30) Grazing In The Grass by Hugh Masekela 31) The Locomotion by Little Eva 32) Dream Baby by Roy Orbison 33) It Keeps Right On A' Hurtin' by Johnny Tillotson 34) Needles And Pins by The Searchers 35) Good Time Baby by Bobby Rydell 36) You Can't Sit Down by The Dovells 37) I Love the Way You Love by Marv Johnson 38) Good Lovin' by The Young Rascals 39) The One Who Really Loves You by Mary Wells 40) This Magic Moment by Jay & The Americans 41) Dear One by Larry Finnegan 42) Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival 43) Love Letters by Ketty Lester 44) Twist And Shout by The Beatles 45) Daddy's Home by Shep & The Limelights 46) It's Gonna Work Out Fine by Ike & Tina Turner 47) Baby, I Love You by Aretha Franklin 48) Get Back by The Beatles (with Billy Preston, keyboards)

Dancefloor Memories with Patrick Hawkins, 60 Minutes of Classic Soul Podcast. Classic tracks, from, Wilson Pickett, Betty Wright, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Lou Rawls, Teddy Pendergrass, Timmy Thomas, Clarence Carter, OC Smith, Marvin Gaye, The Four Tops, Smokey Robinson and the Miricles, The Temptations, Brook Benton, The Chi-Lites and Al Green. Just settle down with a long drink and chill or boogie around your kitchen to tracks others would never dream of playing! Spread the word, give me a like and follow my Podcasts. Much Love Pat

Okay...I'm somewhat settled into the new digs when we get a Nor'Easter which brought over 2 feet of snow! So you know it's always back aching time. My snowblower decided to go on strike by starting and pulling in the white s**t but not tossin' any of it...Not to worry. After an extensive search, I found some ratchets, open-end wrenches and fixed the culprit! Back to the show!Opening Salvo for tonight is Mickey Most & the Gear with a killer, guitar-driven ditty titled "It's Alright" with a young Jimmy Page providing the 6 string bending. 1963 on Columbia Records.Set 1 Soulful Kats- Johnny Littlejohn & Guitar- Kitty-O on Margaret Records 1966 / cover of a Brook Benton tune...- Django Reinhardt & the Quintet du Hot Club de France - Minor Swing [Swing 1937] 78 rpm- Buffalo Springfield - Mr. Soul [Atco 1966] The 45 rpm MIX! Different guitar solo from Mr. Young.- Concrete Blonde - god is a bullet [IRS 1989] LP - Free* Bed - TrafficSet 2 NO More Abba!- The Paragons - Abba [Bobbi 1967] 45 rpm- Captain Beefheart & the Magic Band - Abba Zaba [Buddah 1967] 45 rpm- Fusion - Goin' up to Clarksdale [Atco 1969] LP - Fusion- Peanut Butter Conspiracy - Living dream [Columbia 1967] LP - The Great Conspiracy* Bed - TrafficSet 3 Don't Lose This!- The Nightriders - Looking for my baby [Sue 1959] 45 rpm- Pops Staples - Nobody's fault but my own [DBpm 2015] LP - Don't Lose This***Onion Radio News- Flies - I'm not your stepping stone [Decca 1966] 45 rpm** BB King on Letterman- Ike Turner Orchestra - Cubano Jump [Flair 1954] 45 rpm- Peter Dunton - Taking time [RCA 1972] 45 rpmMusic out......

El año 2020 sigue sin dar tregua y ahora nos ha tocado perder a Charley Pride debido a complicaciones relacionadas con el Covid-19. Un artista que creció escuchando a algunos de los grandes maestros como Ernest Tubb, Eddy Arnold, Hank Williams y George Jones. Desarrolló un estilo propio partiendo de ellos e incluyó también a otros de sus favoritos como Sam Cooke, B.B. King o Brook Benton. Y es que Charley Pride siempre entendió que la música americana se construye desde el country, el gospel y el blues. “All I Have to Offer You (Is Me)” es canción de Dallas Frazier y "Doodle" Owens sobre cómo un hombre le cuenta a su novia que no es un hombre rico pero que quiere casarse con ella refleja a la perfección lo que fue el llamado Nashville Sound gracias a la producción de Jack Clement y Chet Atkins. Charley Pride hizo historia con ella al convenirse en 1969 en el primer artista negro que lograba el No.1 de las listas de música country desde que Louis Jordan lo hubiera conseguido en el 44. Es muy posible que la canción más recordada de Charley Pride sea "Is Anybody Goin' To San Antone?", que alcanzó la cima de las listas de country en Abril de 1970. A costa de un malentendido entre la editorial y los compositores -Glenn Martin y Dave Kirby-, el tema había sido grabado y publicado por Bake Turner, jugador del equipo de fútbol americano de los Jets de New York. Pride intento encontrar otros singles para sustituirlo, pero la grabación había quedado tan perfecta como acabamos de escuchar y decidieron editarla.  Nacido en Sledge, en el estado de Mississippi, en 1934, nada fue fácil para él y su nombre estuvo en el centro que muchas polémicas que no buscó. Por ejemplo, dos días después del asesinato de Martin Luther King, el Grand Ole Opry canceló por primera vez en su historia un show -precisamente en el que iba a intervenir Charley Pride- alegando tensiones raciales. Casi siempre tenía que enfrentarse a los prejuicios y es que era negro. Recogió algodón, tuvo que jugar en las Negro leagues de béisbol pero no tuvo ningún problema para servir en el ejército. La calidez de la voz de Charley Pride era perfecta para las emisoras de radio de Onda Media de los 70 y RCA, el sello por el que firmó gracias a Jack D. Johnson, relaciones públicas de la editorial Cedarwood, supo aprovecharlo con creces. Incluso sus envíos promocionales no incluían la habitual biografía y mucho menos fotos. También nació en Mississippi Ben Peters, el compositor de “Kiss An Angel Good Mornin’”, una canción que se convirtió en un emblema de lo acogedor de su fraseo y de su sentido del humor.  El mes pasado, Charley Pride fue galardonado con el Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award y actuó en aquella gala de la CMA junto a Jimmie Allen. Con él y Darius Rucker había grabado por última vez "Why Things Happen", un tema que se publicó un mes y medio después de la muerte de George Floyd, que provocó el movimiento Black Lives Matter. Era la fusión de tres generaciones de músicos negros de la escena de la country music compartiendo un sentimiento de angustia con estrofas como "Intentas no cuestionar a Dios ni a su juicio/Pero, maldita sea, no lo entiendo". Nunca olvidamos a Willie Nelson, y la leyenda viviente del Lone Star Stage vuelve a la actualidad cuando acaban de cumplirse 105 años del nacimiento de Frank Sinatra. El artista tejano tiene prevista la edición de un nuevo álbum dedicado a su figura y su música para finales del próximo mes de febrero del esperado 2021. Será su segundo proyecto con el “viejo de los ojos azules” como protagonista tras la publicación de My Way hace dos años y con el que consiguió un Grammy. Esta vez su título será That’s Life y ha sido grabado fundamentalmente en los Capitol Studios, los mismos que utilizó el legendario artista de Hoboken, en Nueva Jersey, para dar vida a buena parte de sus piezas maestras. Una de las 11 canciones que conformarán ese disco es “Cottage For Sale”, que utiliza la metáfora de una cabaña vacía para contar el final de una relación fallida. Sinatra la incluyó en su LP No One Cares del 59, posiblemente uno de los más oscuros de su discografía, llena de melancolía y soledad.  La semana pasada escuchábamos el homenaje que se rindió a Willie y que ahora se edita en CD y DVD. Uno de sus grandes amigos, Merle Haggard, fue homenajeado con motivo del que hubiera sido su cumpleaños número 80 y era, triste coincidencia, el primer aniversario de su muerte. En el Bridgestone Arena de Nashville estuvieron el propio Willie, Keith Richards, John Mellencamp, Sheryl Crow, Loretta Lynn, Billy Gibbons, Lucinda Williams, Lynyrd Skynyrd, entre otros muchos. Dierks Bentley eligió “If We Make It Through December”, que hace ya 47 años formó parte de Merle Haggard's Christmas Present (Something Old, Something New). La mitad estaba grabada con los Strangers y el resto con Billy Walker And His Orchestra. Extraída como single de aquel trabajo, "If We Make It Through December" ha pasado a formar parte de los clásicos navideños de siempre. El respeto infinito de los Avett Brothers a Merle Haggard se hace patente en su versión de “Mama Tried”, uno de los grandes clásicos del inigualable músico californiano, que junto a Buck Owens representó la más clara alternativa al monopolio de Nashville mediante el llamado Backersfield Sound. "Mama Tried" se incluyó en la banda sonora de la película Killers Three que protagonizaron Broderick Crawford, Robert Wagner, Diana Varsi y el propio Merle Haggard. En aquellas canciones había mucho de folk, pero con una exquisita elaboración y una acusada sección rítmica. Los Strangers, la formación que respaldaba a Haggard, era uno de los grupos de referencia del momento y dejaron su impronta de cara al futuro. Merle Haggard y Sturgill Simpson se hicieron buenos amigos en los últimos años de vida de la leyenda californiana y hablaban mucho por teléfono. La letra de “Hobo Cartoon” la compuso Merle estando ya en el hospital y se la envió con una nota que decía “de un ferroviario a otro”, recordando que él había crecido en un vagón convertido en casa por un padre que trabajaba para el ferrocarril y saltaba de uno a otro tren de carga siendo niño. Sturgill, que trabajó en la Union Pacific, completó la música durante las sesiones de Cuttin Grass y se la enseñó a la viuda Theresa y a su hijo Ben. Por fin, “Hobo Cartoon” se ha convertido en el tema de cierre de este nuevo álbum, el segundo de los que ha publicado en 2020. Sturgill Simpson ha guardado sus canciones más personales para Cuttin' Grass - Vol. 2 (Cowboy Arms Sessions) que ha grabado en el mítico Cowboy Arms Hotel and Recording Spa, el estudio de “Cowboy” Jack Clement en Nashville, que ha sobrevivido a la muerte de su propio mentor y al terrible incendio de hace unos años, junto al productor David Ferguson y los Hillbilly Avengers, el mismo grupo de instrumentistas del primer volumen. El disco se editará en vinilo en abril y a diferencia del anterior, el músico de Kentucky ha incluido dos canciones inéditas. Una de ellas es “Tennessee”, llena de melancolía y grabada por primera vez, aunque se conociera de algunas apariciones con Sunday Valley hace ocho años. En 1988, Guy Clark publicó en el sello Sugar Hill su álbum Old Friends, al que abría y daba título una extraordinaria composición junto a su mujer Susanna y a Richard Dobson. Steve Earle hizo una gran versión el año pasado en Guy, el disco que dedicó a su mentor, y ahora ha sido Chris Stapleton quien se ha recreado junto a su mujer Morgane en esta pieza maestra, una de las dos elegidas para formar parte de su último proyecto, Startin’ Over. Si hablamos del Dirty Old One-Man Band estamos hablando de Scott H. Biram, uno de los más apabullantes músicos tejanos, inquieto hasta límites insospechados y con una capacidad extrema para sorprendernos a cada paso. Es una especie de predicador que hace magia con sus historias, como ahora ocurre en Fever Dreams, el álbum que cumple la docena de discos publicados y que ha grabado entre 2017 y 2019 en su estudio de Austin. Como no podía ser de otra forma, el Reverendo Biram ofrece el más amplio muestrario de su visión del mundo, desnudando sus impresiones de un mundo cargado de nostalgia, amores perdidos o almas solitarias. Todo ello está envuelto en sonidos enraizados que les llevan hasta el truckin’ country de “Can’t Stay Long”.  Otro de los ejemplos de la supervivencia en la escena de la country music es el de Aaron Watson, también tejano y que ha seguido trabajando en nuevos proyectos en plena pandemia. Así ha llegado "Silverado Saturday Night", donde se añoran las fiestas al aire libre y los espacios abiertos y compartidos. Será una de las canciones que formarán parte de su próximo álbum, previsto para 2021. Lo que sabemos es que, sin perder el sonido tradicional de sus grabaciones, el artista de Amarillo tiene previsto que su nuevo trabajo sea accesible a una audiencia más amplia. La última apuesta de John Prine fue Arlo McKinley y él mismo decidió que debía pasar a formar parte de su sello discográfico, Oh Boy Records. El músico de Ohio ha debutado con Die Midwestern y para ello se fue hasta Memphis y se dejó acompañar por músicos como Ken Coomer , Rick Steff y Reba Russell. El resultado es un registro equilibrado entre el country y folk para contar historias como las que siempre cantaron los grandes clásicos, aunque el arrope sonoro es mucho más cercano en el tiempo. Así ocurre con “She’s Always Been Around”, un tema de honky tonk de carretera con la jukebox encendida que hubiera interpretado George Jones con sumo gusto. Hace tres años, en su octavo álbum, Kids in the Street, Justin Townes Earle parecía dispuesto a poner al día las esencias de la música folk para que fueran más atractivas a las nuevas generaciones. Para ello trabajó con Mike Mogis e incorporando un sonido más moderno a unos textos clarividentes e imaginativos. Incluso salió de Nashville, su ciudad natal y donde había grabado hasta entonces. Abriendo aquel registro que cerraba la trilogía que anticiparon Single Mothers y Absent Fathers estaba “Champagne Corolla”, una canción enérgica que ahora, cuando su padre, Steve Earle, la ha incluido en J.T., el álbum que ha dedicado a la memoria de su hijo fallecido, goza de un ambiente más pantanoso que el original. Escuchar audio

Hoy queremos volver a señalar que el tema instrumental que abre y cierre cada uno de nuestros programas fue un regalo exclusivo de un gran amigo como Tony Luz, pionero del rock ‘n’ roll en España. Él fue autor e intérprete único de la sintonía de TOMA UNO. Y Tony Luz murió hace exactamente tres años, por lo que queremos compartir con vosotros lo mucho que le echamos de menos desde entonces. El 29 de noviembre de 1975, hace exactamente 45 años, Neil Young grabó "Like a Hurricane" en el Broken Arrow Ranch in Woodside, California, aunque no saldría a la luz hasta dos años más tarde, cuando se editó en single y formó parte del álbum American Stars 'n Bars. El noveno de los 10 discos que componen el segundo volumen de sus Neil Young Archives recién publicado, se abre con aquella canción que el canadiense compuso en la parte trasera de un DeSoto Suburban, el coche de finales de los años 40 que pertenecía a su vecino Taylor Phelps en La Honda, un pequeño pueblo del condado de San Mateo, en California. Por entonces se estaba recuperando de una operación en las cuerdas vocales que le impedían cantar y toda su energía la expresaba a través de la guitarra. Cubriendo tan solo cuatro años de su carrera, de 1972 a 1976, en el segundo volumen de su entrega de archivos personales, Neil Young se fija en la que todos consideramos su etapa más prolífica, e incluye 12 canciones nunca lanzadas en ningún formato, mientras que 50 son versiones inéditas de canciones conocidas. Entre los temas no publicados hasta ahora encontramos esta grabación junto a su paisana Joni Mitchell, que el 26 de agosto de 1973, llegó al Studio Instrument Rentals de Los Ángeles, donde Neil Young estaba sacando adelante Tonight’s the Night junto a los guitarristas Ben Keith y Nils Lofgren, el batería Ralph Molina y el bajista Billy Talbot. Es decir los Santa Monica Flyers. En aquel estudio surgió una versión desconocida hasta ahora de “Raised on Robbery”, la conversación de una prostituta que intenta ligar con un hombre solitario en un hotel, sin éxito. Al año siguiente sería el single de anticipo del álbum Court and Spark de la también artista canadiense. Kindred Spirits es uno de los discos de versiones más interesantes que hemos escuchado en mucho tiempo. Larkin Poe, sus protagonistas, han utilizado la variedad de estilos elegidos para moverse por una variedad de amplios espacios sonoros que abarca desde Robert Johnson a Post Malone, pasando por Lenny Kravitz, Allman Brothers, Elvis Presley, Elton John, los Moody Blues, Derek And The Dominos y Neil Young. En este último caso, las hermanas Lovell han elegido “Rockin’ In The Free World”, una canción que partió de una frase de Frank Sampedro cuando pensaban hacer un concierto en la Unión Soviética en 1989 y que formó parte en su álbum Freedom, con dos versiones, una eléctrica y otra acústica al estilo de “Hey Hey My My” en Rust Never Sleep. Hablaba de George Bush padre, del Ayatollah Khomeini y de Jesse Jackson. Cuando Trump se presentó a las elecciones en 2016 utilizó la canción contra la voluntad del canadiense. Kelsey Waldon fue el único fichaje en vida de John Prine de su sello Oh Boy!, por deseo expreso de su dueño, el fallecido músico de Illinois a causa del COVID-19. Nativa de Monkey’s Eyebrow, en Kentucky, tiene una extraordinaria capacidad para componer canciones muy personales que abarcan las más distintas facetas de la condición humana desde su visión como sureña de un país como el suyo. Es por eso que los derechos humanos se han convertido en uno de los focos de su último EP, They’ll Never Keep Us Down, donde canta sobre la injusticia racial o las condiciones laborales de los mineros del carbón de su tierra natal. Para ello se ha acogido a siete canciones de músicos tan dispares como Nina Simone, Hazel Dickens, Bob Dylan, Neil Young o Kristofferson. Su versión de "I Wish I Knew How It would Feel to Be Free", un tema que se convirtió en himno en pro de los derechos civiles en Estados Unidos durante los años 60 y que Nina Simone hizo muy popular en el 67, ha contado con Devon Gilfillian en el apoyo vocal. El pasado jueves 12, Lucinda Williams hizo público el segundo de los seis conciertos temáticos que ha grabado con el título de Lu's Jukebox en apoyo de promotores y salas de conciertos y que irá distribuyendo hasta finales de año. Esta vez se trataba de Southern Soul From Memphis To Muscle Shoals And More, con una selección de 10 versiones e canciones de rhythm and blues y una de cierre que suponía recordar su álbum Car Wheels on a Gravel Road gracias a “Still I Long for Your Kiss”. Lucinda recordó a Brook Benton, Ann Pebbles, Etta James, Al Green, Otis Redding, Bobby Gentry o Joe South entre otros y, por supuesto, no olvidó a Barbara Lynn, cuyo “You’ll Lose a Good Thing” de 1962 también cantó Aretha Franklin e incluso fue versionada por Freddy Fender en el 1976, llevándola al No.1 de las listas de country. La canción que anticipó el último álbum de Lucinda Williams, Good Souls Better Angels, fue "Man Without A Soul", tres años después de que revisara aquel Sweet Old World de 1992. En ese registro se dedicó a abordar los problemas que les son más cercanos y, por supuesto, no ha podido obviar las cuestiones políticas, un terreno en el que, además, entró en profundidad. Hablamos de un disco con evidentes tintes de blues, elementos de rock y un poderoso protagonismo de la guitarra de Stuart Mathis. Ahora esa canción ha obtenido una nominación al premio Grammy a la mejor canción de raíz Americana, compartido con su marido, Tom Overby, que compuso el tema con ella. Desde Carolina del Sur, el guitarrista Marcus King se ha convertido en una de las grandes realidades de la música Americana con acento sureño. Ahora al lado del productor Dan Auerbach, ha conseguido precisamente la nominación al mejor álbum de Americana con El Dorado, el primero de sus álbumes como solista tras su etapa como cabeza visible de la Marcus King Band. Un disco que incluye piezas tan rotundas como “The Well”, compuesta por él, Auerbach y Ronnie Bowman, que sirvió en su momento como primera escucha del trabajo con un impactante trabajo a la guitarra. Acaba de cumplir 28 años y Billy Strings, que recibió el apodo de su tía, se ha convertido en un instrumentista con una envidiable habilidad para interpretar las distintas formas en que se manifiesta el bluegrass. Este joven músico de Lansing, en el estado de Michigan, es la gran realidad de un género muy revitalizado en este siglo XXI. Home, su último álbum, aspira a llevarse un Grammy como mejor álbum de bluegrass, un regalo sonoro impregnado de miradas al pasado que recuerdan a las jam bands, y también a los grandes del jazz o del bluegrass. Son los sonidos puros que, como en “Hollow Heart”, memorizan de dónde viene y le activan a encontrar nuevos horizontes. Si la Country Music Association se olvidó mencionar a John Prine en su última gala de entrega de premios, la Academia de la Música no lo ha hecho y ha nominado al Grammy al artista como mejor interpretación de Americana del año por “I Remember Everything”, la última canción grabada por el mítico artista que nos arrebató el Covid-19 el pasado mes de abril. Competirá también con Lucinda Williams y su marido para lograr ser la mejor canción de raíz Americana. "I Remember Everything" está compuesta por Prine y su buen amigo Pat McLaughlin, contando recuerdos del pasado que dejan una marca indeleble.  En enero de 2018, la USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative publicó un estudio sobre la industria musical, señalando que la mujer necesitaba un mínimo de seis años para situarse al mismo nivel del hombre. She Is The Music, es una organización que busca cerrar esa brecha, apoyando a las mujeres en todos los aspectos de la industria de la música, aumentando sus oportunidades y su visibilidad, procurando que la próxima generación de mujeres consiga roles de liderazgo en esa industria. The Highwomen han tomado la iniciativa junto a She Is The Music para organizar campus de composición femeninos y ayudar a financiar programas de tutoría. “Crowded Table”, una canción que Natalie Hemby y Brandi Carlile han compuesto con Lori McKenna y que se ha convertido en todo un himno desde que las escucharon estrenarlo en el Newport Folk Festival del año pasado. Ahora, sus tres compositoras aspiran a llevarse el Grammy como mejor canción country. A lo largo de su carrera, Linda Ronstadt ha cantado temas de todos los estilos musicales imaginables, desde country a ópera y comedia musical, pasando por folk, rhythm'n'blues, rock'n'roll, pop o música latina. En todos los casos, su voz ha brillado tanto que se ha convertido en una de las vocalistas femeninas de mayor prestigio. Su segundo álbum en solitario, Silk Purse, cumplió esta primavera medio siglo desde su publicación, siendo recordado por canciones como “Long Long Time”, una balada exquisita que llegó a ser nominada a los premios Grammy y en el que hablaba de haber hecho todo lo posible por retener a su pareja. Ahora, 50 años después, la legendaria artista de Arizona ve como su documental Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice está nominada para llevarse el fonógrafo dorado como mejor película musical.   Escuchar audio

Here Serene and Steve run down side 2 of Serene's figurative double album, the 24 Originals Happening Now album, which was modeled after a 1967 TV record album offer called 24 Original Happening Hits. This miracle of science crammed 24 songs onto two sides of vinyl by severely editing and prematurely fading out all your favorites (at least Australians saw the sense in deleting four tracks to accommodate 20 Original Happening Hits with the proper song lengths in future reiterations). Musical genres covered on side 2 include Motown ("My Secret Life" is presented here for the first time in its 2020 supermix), Bakersfield country, disco, Merseybeat, electro clash and charity records. Conversational tangents include Cyndi Lauper's jewelry, the danceability of Brook Benton records, Yankees bat day swag and the 1964 World's Fair.Songs include "My Secret Life," "What Are You In For?" "Mutha Earth," "Agony," "Maintenance" and "Let's See Other People."Click here to watch all 24 Original Happening Now Videos and subscribe to the Serene Dominic YouTube channel!Click here to stream the entire 24 Originals Happening Now! album.Click here to stream a Spotify playlist of the 24 Original Happening Hits! collection that inspired this album (only one song had to be substituted).Catch Serene Dominic's weekly livecast "The Human Torch Floor Show" every Thursday at 8:30 MST on facebook.com/serenedominic

Professor Ladhar's class returns after a long summer vacation for a look at the chart where Elvis' last Top 10 R&B hit peaked. The Beatles haven't quiet yet came to the US, Motown is beginning to take hold, and things are about the change... but for the moment, Elvis is in good company alongside all-time great female vocalists like Doris Troy and Martha & the Vandellas, as well as icons such as Brook Benton and Marvin Gaye. Then, for Song of the Week, Gurdip continues his R&B kick with the 1960 blues number "Like A Baby," while Justin highlights "And The Grass Won't Pay No Mind", the only studio cut Elvis made written by the "Jewish Elvis" himself, Neil Diamond! Featured Songs of the Week: Gurdip: Like A Baby Justin: And The Grass Won't Pay No Mind

Episode ninety-five of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “You Better Move On”, and the sad story of Arthur Alexander. 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 “Mother-In-Law” by Ernie K-Doe. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created Mixcloud playlists with full versions of all the songs in the episode. This week it’s been split into two parts because of the number of songs by Arthur Alexander. Part one. Part two. This compilation collects the best of Alexander’s Dot work. Much of the information in this episode comes from Richard Younger’s biography of Alexander. It’s unfortunately not in print in the UK, and goes for silly money, though I believe it can be bought cheaply in the US. And a lot of the background on Muscle Shoals comes from Country Soul by Charles L. Hughes.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript   Before we start, a warning for those who need it. This is one of the sadder episodes we’re going to be doing, and it deals with substance abuse, schizophrenia, and miscarriage. One of the things we’re going to see a lot of in the next few weeks and months is the growing integration of the studios that produced much of the hit music to come out of the Southern USA in the sixties — studios in what the writer Charles L. Hughes calls the country-soul triangle: Nashville, Memphis, and Muscle Shoals. That integration produced some of the greatest music of the era, but it’s also the case that with few exceptions, narratives about that have tended to centre the white people involved at the expense of the Black people. The Black musicians tend to be regarded as people who allowed the white musicians to cast off their racism and become better people, rather than as colleagues who in many cases somewhat resented the white musicians — there were jobs that weren’t open to Black musicians in the segregated South, and now here were a bunch of white people taking some of the smaller number of jobs that *were* available to them.  This is not to say that those white musicians were, individually, racist — many were very vocally opposed to racism — but they were still beneficiaries of a racist system. These white musicians who loved Black music slowly, over a decade or so, took over the older Black styles of music, and made them into white music. Up to this point, when we’ve looked at R&B, blues, or soul recordings, all the musicians involved have been Black people, almost without exception. And for most of the fifties, rock and roll was a predominantly Black genre, before the influx of the rockabillies made it seem, briefly, like it could lead to a truly post-racial style of music. But over the 1960s, we’re going to see white people slowly colonise those musics, and push Black musicians to the margins. And this episode marks a crucial turning point in the story, as we see the establishment of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, as a centre of white people making music in previously Black genres. But the start of that story comes with a Black man making music that most people at the time saw as coded as white. Today we’re going to look at someone whose music is often considered the epitome of deep soul, but who worked with many of the musicians who made the Nashville Sound what it was, and who was as influenced by Gene Autry as he was by many of the more obvious singers who might influence a soul legend. Today, we’re going to look at Arthur Alexander, and at “You Better Move On”: [Excerpt: Arthur Alexander, “You’d Better Move On”] Arthur Alexander’s is one of the most tragic stories we’ll be looking at. He was a huge influence on every musician who came up in the sixties, but he never got the recognition for it. He was largely responsible for the rise of Muscle Shoals studios, and he wrote songs that were later covered by the Beatles, and Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones, as well as many, many more. The musician Norbert Putnam told the story of visiting George Harrison in the seventies, and seeing his copy of Alexander’s hit single “You Better Move On”. He said to Harrison, “Did you know I played bass on that?” and Harrison replied, “If I phoned Paul up now, he’d come over and kiss your feet”. That’s how important Arthur Alexander was to the Beatles, and to the history of rock music. But he never got to reap the rewards his talent entitled him to. He spent most of his life in poverty, and is now mostly known only to fans of the subgenre known as deep soul. Part of this is because his music is difficult to categorise. While most listeners would now consider it soul music, it’s hard to escape the fact that Alexander’s music has an awful lot of elements of country music in it. This is something that Alexander would point out himself — in interviews, he would talk about how he loved singing cowboys in films — people like Roy Rogers and Gene Autry — and about how when he was growing up the radio stations he would listen to would “play a Drifters record and maybe an Eddy Arnold record, and they didn’t make no distinction. That’s the way it was until much later”. The first record he truly loved was Eddy Arnold’s 1946 country hit “That’s How Much I Love You”: [Excerpt: Eddy Arnold, “That’s How Much I Love You”] Alexander grew up in Alabama, but in what gets described as a relatively integrated area for the time and place — by his own account, the part of East Florence he grew up in had only one other Black family, and all the other children he played with were white, and he wasn’t even aware of segregation until he was eight or nine. Florence is itself part of a quad-city area with three other nearby towns – Muscle Shoals, Sheffield, and Tuscumbia. This area as a whole is often known as either “the Shoals”, or “Muscle Shoals”, and when people talk about music, it’s almost always the latter, so from this point on, I’ll be using “Muscle Shoals” to refer to all four towns. The consensus among people from the area seems to have been that while Alabama itself was one of the most horribly racist parts of the country, Muscle Shoals was much better than the rest of Alabama. Some have suggested that this comparative integration was part of the reason for the country influence in Alexander’s music, but as we’ve seen in many previous episodes, there were a lot more Black fans of country music than popular myth would suggest, and musicians like Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, and Bo Diddley were very obviously influenced by country singers. Alexander’s father was also called Arthur, and so for all his life the younger Arthur Alexander was known to family and friends as “June”, for Junior. Arthur senior had been a blues guitarist in his youth, and according to his son was also an excellent singer, but he got very angry the one time June picked up his guitar and tried to play it — he forbade him from ever playing the guitar, saying that he’d never made a nickel as a player, and didn’t want that life for his son. As Arthur was an obedient kid, he did as his father said — he never in his life learned to play any musical instrument. But that didn’t stop him loving music and wanting to sing. He would listen to the radio all the time, listening to crooners like Patti Page and Nat “King” Cole, and as a teenager he got himself a job working at a cafe owned by a local gig promoter, which meant he was able to get free entry to the R&B shows the promoter put on at a local chitlin circuit venue, and get to meet the stars who played there. He would talk to people like Clyde McPhatter, and ask him how he managed to hit the high notes — though he wasn’t satisfied by McPhatter’s answer that “It’s just there”, thinking there must be more to it than that. And he became very friendly with the Clovers, once having a baseball game with them, and spending a lot of time with their lead singer, Buddy Bailey, asking him details of how he got particular vocal effects in the song “One Mint Julep”: [Excerpt: The Clovers, “One Mint Julep”] He formed a vocal group called the Heartstrings, who would perform songs like “Sixty Minute Man”, and got a regular spot on a local TV show, but according to his account, after a few weeks one of the other members decided he didn’t need to bother practising any more, and messed up on live TV. The group split up after that. The only time he got to perform once that group split up was when he would sit in in a band led by his friend George Brooks, who regularly gigged around Muscle Shoals. But there seemed no prospect of anything bigger happening — there were no music publishing companies or recording studios in Alabama, and everyone from Alabama who had made an impact in music had moved away to do it — W.C. Handy, Hank Williams, Sam Phillips, they’d all done truly great things, but they’d done them in Memphis or Nashville, not in Montgomery or Birmingham. There was just not the music industry infrastructure there to do anything. That started to change in 1956, when the first record company to set up in Muscle Shoals got its start. Tune Records was a tiny label run from a bus station, and most of its business was the same kind of stuff that Sam Phillips did before Sun became big — making records of people’s weddings and so on. But then the owner of the label, James Joiner, came up with a song that he thought might be commercial if a young singer he knew named Bobby Denton sang it. “A Fallen Star” was done as cheaply as humanly possible — it was recorded at a radio station, cut live in one take. The engineer on the track was a DJ who was on the air at the time — he put a record on, engineered the track while the record was playing, and made sure the musicians finished before the record he was playing did, so he could get back on the air. That record itself wasn’t a hit, and was so unsuccessful that I’ve not been able to find a copy of it anywhere, but it inspired hit cover versions from Ferlin Husky and Jimmy C. Newman: [Excerpt: Jimmy C. Newman, “A Fallen Star”] Off the back of those hit versions, Joiner started his own publishing company to go with his record company. Suddenly there was a Muscle Shoals music scene, and everything started to change. A lot of country musicians in the area gravitated towards Joiner, and started writing songs for his publishing company. At this point, this professional music scene in the area was confined to white people — Joiner recalled later that a young singer named Percy Sledge had auditioned for him, but that Joiner simply didn’t understand his type of music — but a circle of songwriters formed that would be important later. Jud Phillips, Sam’s brother, signed Denton to his new label, Judd, and Denton started recording songs by two of these new songwriters, Rick Hall and Billy Sherrill. Denton’s recordings were unsuccessful, but they started getting cover versions. Roy Orbison’s first single on RCA was a Hall and Sherrill song: [Excerpt: Roy Orbison, “Sweet and Innocent”] Hall and Sherrill then started up their own publishing company, with the help of a loan from Joiner, and with a third partner, Tom Stafford. Stafford is a figure who has been almost written out of music history, and about whom I’ve been able to find out very little, but who seems in some ways the most intriguing person among these white musicians and entrepreneurs. Friends from the time describe him as a “reality-hacking poet”, and he seems to have been a beatnik, or a proto-hippie, the only one in Muscle Shoals and maybe the only one in the state of Alabama at the time. He was the focal point of a whole group of white musicians, people like Norbert Puttnam, David Briggs, Dan Penn, and Spooner Oldham. These musicians loved Black music, and wanted to play it, thinking of it as more exciting than the pop and country that they also played. But they loved it in a rather appropriative way — and in the same way, they had what they *thought* was an anti-racist attitude. Even though they were white, they referred to themselves collectively as a word I’m not going to use, the single most offensive slur against Black people. And so when Arthur Alexander turned up and got involved in this otherwise-white group of musicians, their attitudes varied widely. Terry Thompson, for example, who Alexander said was one of the best players ever to play guitar, as good as Nashville legends like Roy Clark and Jerry Reed, was also, according to Alexander, “the biggest racist there ever was”, and made derogatory remarks about Black people – though he said that Alexander didn’t count. Others, like Dan Penn, have later claimed that they took an “I don’t even see race” attitude, while still others were excited to be working with an actual Black man. Alexander would become close friends with some of them, would remain at arm’s length with most, but appreciated the one thing that they all had in common – that they, like him, wanted to perform R&B *and* country *and* pop. For Hall, Sherrill, and Stafford’s fledgling publishing company FAME, Alexander and one of his old bandmates from the Heartstrings, Henry Lee Bennett, wrote a song called “She Wanna Rock”, which was recorded in Nashville by the rockabilly singer Arnie Derksen, at Owen Bradley’s studio with the Nashville A-Team backing him: [Excerpt: Arnie Derksen, “She Wanna Rock”] That record wasn’t a success, and soon after that, the partnership behind FAME dissolved. Rick Hall was getting super-ambitious and wanted to become a millionaire by the time he was thirty, Tom Stafford was content with the minor success they had, and wanted to keep hanging round with his friends, watching films, and occasionally helping them make a record, and Billy Sherrill had a minor epiphany and decided he wanted to make country music rather than rock and roll. Rick Hall kept the FAME name for a new company he was starting up and Sherrill headed over to Nashville and got a job with Sam Phillips at Sun’s Nashville studio. Sherrill would later move on from Sun and produce and write for almost every major country star of the sixties and seventies – most notably, he co-wrote “Stand By Your Man” with Tammy Wynette, and produced “He Stopped Loving Her Today” for George Jones. And Stafford kept the studio and the company, which was renamed Spar. Arthur Alexander stuck with Tom Stafford, as did most of the musicians, and while he was working a day job as a bellhop, he would also regularly record demos for other writers at Stafford’s studio. By the start of 1960, 19-year-old June had married another nineteen-year-old, Ann. And it was around this point that Stafford came to him with a half-completed lyric that needed music. Alexander took Stafford’s partial lyric, and finished it. He added a standard blues riff, which he had liked in Brook Benton’s record “Kiddio”: [Excerpt: Brook Benton, “Kiddio”] The resulting song, “Sally Sue Brown”, was a mixture of gutbucket blues and rockabilly, with a soulful vocal, and it was released under the name June Alexander on Judd Records: [Excerpt: June Alexander, “Sally Sue Brown”] It’s a good record, but it didn’t have any kind of success. So Arthur started listening to the radio more, trying to see what the current hits were, so he could do something more commercial. He particularly liked the Drifters and Ben E. King, and he decided to try to write a song that fit their styles. He eventually came up with one that was inspired by real events — his wife, Ann, had an ex who had tried to win her back once he’d found out she was dating Arthur. He took the song, “You Better Move On”, to Stafford, who knew it would be a massive hit, but also knew that he couldn’t produce the record himself, so they got in touch with Rick Hall, who agreed to produce the track. There were multiple sessions, and after each one, Hall would take the tapes away, study them, and come up with improvements that they would use at the next session. Hall, like Alexander, wanted to get a sound like Ben E. King — he would later say, “It was my conception that it should have a groove similar to ‘Stand By Me’, which was a big record at the time. But I didn’t want to cop it to the point where people would recognise it was a cop. You dig? So we used the bass line and modified it just a little bit, put the acoustic guitar in front of that.”: [Excerpt: Arthur Alexander, “You Better Move On”] For a B-side, they chose a song written by Terry Thompson, “A Shot of Rhythm and Blues”, which would prove almost as popular as the A-side: [Excerpt: Arthur Alexander, “A Shot of Rhythm and Blues”] Hall shopped the record around every label in Nashville, with little success. Eventually, in February 1961, the record was released by Dot Records, the label that Pat Boone was on. It went to number twenty-four on the pop charts, becoming the first ever hit record to be made in Alabama. Rick Hall made enough money from it that he was able to build a new, much better, studio, and Muscle Shoals was set to become one of the most important recording centres in the US. As Norbert Puttnam, who had played bass on “You Better Move On”, and who would go on to become one of the most successful session bass players and record producers in Nashville, later said “If it wasn’t for Arthur Alexander, we’d all be at Reynolds” — the local aluminium factory. But Arthur Alexander wouldn’t record much at Muscle Shoals from that point on. His contracts were bought out — allegedly, Stafford, a heavy drug user, was bought off with a case of codeine — and instead of working with Rick Hall, the perfectionist producer who would go on to produce a decade-long string of hits, he was being produced by Noel Ball, a DJ with little production experience, though one who had a lot of faith in Alexander’s talent, and who had been the one to get him signed to Dot. His first album was a collection of covers of current hits. The album is widely regarded as a failure, and Alexander’s heart wasn’t in it — his father had just died, his wife had had a miscarriage, and his marriage was falling apart. But his second single for Dot was almost as great as his first. Recorded at Owen Bradley’s studio with top Nashville session players, the A-side, “Where Have You Been?” was written by the Brill Building team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill, and was very much in the style of “You Better Move On”: [Excerpt: Arthur Alexander, “Where Have You Been?”] While the B-side, “Soldiers of Love” (and yes, it was called “Soldiers of Love” on the original label, rather than “Soldier”), was written by Buzz Cason and Tony Moon, two members of Brenda Lee’s backing band, The Casuals: [Excerpt: Arthur Alexander, “Soldiers of Love”] The single was only a modest hit, reaching number fifty-eight, but just like his first single, both sides became firm favourites with musicians in Britain. Even though he wasn’t having a huge amount of commercial success, music lovers really appreciated his music, and bands in Britain, playing long sets, would pick up on Arthur’s songs. Almost every British guitar group had Arthur Alexander songs in their setlists, even though he was unaware of it at the time. For his third Dot single, Arthur was in trouble. He’d started drinking a lot, and taking a lot of speed, and his marriage was falling apart. Meanwhile, Noel Ball was trying to get him to record all sorts of terrible songs. He decided he’d better write one himself, and he’d make it about the deterioration of his marriage to Ann — though in the song he changed her name to Anna, because it scanned better: [Excerpt: Arthur Alexander, “Anna (Go To Him)”] Released with a cover version of Gene Autry’s country classic “I Hang My Head and Cry” as the B-side, that made the top ten on the R&B chart, but it only made number sixty-eight on the pop charts. His next single, “Go Home Girl”, another attempt at a “You Better Move On” soundalike, only made number 102. Meanwhile, a song that Alexander had written and recorded, but that Dot didn’t want to put out, went to number forty-two when it was picked up by the white singer Steve Alaimo: [Excerpt: Steve Alaimo, “Every Day I Have To Cry”] He was throwing himself into his work at this point, to escape the problems in his personal life. He’d often just go to a local nightclub and sit in with a band featuring a bass player called Billy Cox, and Cox’s old Army friend, who was just starting to get a reputation as a musician, a guitarist they all called Marbles but who would later be better known as Jimi Hendrix. He was drinking heavily, divorced, and being terribly mismanaged, as well as being ripped off by his record and publishing companies. He was living with a friend, Joe Henderson, who had had a hit a couple of years earlier with “Snap Your Fingers”: [Excerpt: Joe Henderson, “Snap Your Fingers”] Henderson and Alexander would push each other to greater extremes of drug use, enabling each other’s addiction, and one day Arthur came home to find his friend dead in the bathroom, of what was officially a heart attack but which everyone assumes was an overdose. Not only that, but Noel Ball was dying of cancer, and for all that he hadn’t been the greatest producer, Arthur cared deeply about him. He tried a fresh start with Monument Records, and he was now being produced by Fred Foster, who had produced Roy Orbison’s classic hits, and his arrangements were being done by Bill Justis, the saxophone player who had had a hit with “Raunchy” on a subsidiary of Sun a few years earlier. Some of his Monument recordings were excellent, like his first single for the label, “Baby For You”: [Excerpt: Arthur Alexander, “Baby For You”] On the back of that single, he toured the UK, and appeared on several big British TV shows, and was generally feted by all the major bands who were fans of his work, but he had no more commercial success at Monument than he had at the end of his time on Dot. And his life was getting worse and worse. He had a breakdown, brought on by his constant use of amphetamines and cannabis, and started hallucinating that people he saw were people from his past life — he stopped a taxi so he could get out and run after a man he was convinced was his dead father, and assaulted an audience member he was convinced was his ex-wife. He was arrested, diagnosed with schizophrenia, and spent several months in a psychiatric hospital. Shortly after he got out, Arthur visited his friend Otis Redding, who was in the studio in Memphis, and was cutting a song that he and Arthur had co-written several years earlier, “Johnny’s Heartbreak”: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, “Johnny’s Heartbreak”] Otis asked Arthur to join him on a tour he was going to be going on a couple of weeks later, but fog grounded Arthur’s plane so he was never able to meet up with Otis in Atlanta, and the tour proceeded without him — and so Arthur was not on the plane that Redding was on, on December 10 1967, which crashed and killed him. Arthur saw this as divine intervention, but he was seeing patterns in everything at this point, and he had several more breakdowns. He ended up getting dropped by Monument in 1970. He was hospitalised again after a bad LSD trip led to him standing naked in the middle of the road, and he spent several years drifting, unable to have a hit, though he was still making music. He kept having bad luck – for example, he recorded a song by the songwriter Dennis Linde, which was an almost guaranteed hit, and could have made for a comeback for him: [Excerpt: Arthur Alexander, “Burning Love”] But between him recording it and releasing it as a single, Elvis Presley released his version, which went to number two on the charts, and killed any chance of Arthur’s version being a success: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Burning Love”] He did, though, have a bit of a comeback in 1975, when he rerecorded his old song “Every Day I Have To Cry”, as “Every Day I Have To Cry Some”, in a version which many people think likely inspired Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart” a few years later: [Excerpt: Arthur Alexander, “Every Day I Have To Cry Some”] That made number forty-five, but unfortunately his follow-up, “Sharing the Night Together”, was another song where multiple people released versions of it at the same time, without realising, and so didn’t chart – Dr. Hook eventually had a hit with it a year later. Arthur stepped away from music. He managed to get himself more mentally well, and spent the years from 1978 through 1993 working a series of blue-collar jobs in Cleveland — construction worker, bus driver, and janitor. He rarely opened up to people about ever having been a singer. He suffered through more tragedy, too, like the murder of one of his sons, but he remained mentally stable. But then, in March 1993, he made a comeback. The producer Ben Vaughn persuaded him into the studio, and he got a contract with Elektra records. He made his first album in twenty-two years, a mixture of new songs and reworkings of his older ones. It got great reviews, and he was rediscovered by the music press as a soul pioneer. He got a showcase spot at South by Southwest, he was profiled by NPR on Fresh Air, and he was playing to excited crowds of new, young fans. He was in the process of getting his publishing rights back, and might finally start to see some money from his hits. And then, three months after that album came out, in the middle of a meeting with a publisher about the negotiations for his new contracts, he had a massive heart attack, and died the next day, aged fifty-three. His bad luck had caught up with him again.

Episode ninety-five of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "You Better Move On", and the sad story of Arthur Alexander. 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 "Mother-In-Law" by Ernie K-Doe. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ ----more---- Resources As always, I've created Mixcloud playlists with full versions of all the songs in the episode. This week it's been split into two parts because of the number of songs by Arthur Alexander. Part one. Part two. This compilation collects the best of Alexander's Dot work. Much of the information in this episode comes from Richard Younger's biography of Alexander. It's unfortunately not in print in the UK, and goes for silly money, though I believe it can be bought cheaply in the US. And a lot of the background on Muscle Shoals comes from Country Soul by Charles L. Hughes.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript   Before we start, a warning for those who need it. This is one of the sadder episodes we're going to be doing, and it deals with substance abuse, schizophrenia, and miscarriage. One of the things we're going to see a lot of in the next few weeks and months is the growing integration of the studios that produced much of the hit music to come out of the Southern USA in the sixties -- studios in what the writer Charles L. Hughes calls the country-soul triangle: Nashville, Memphis, and Muscle Shoals. That integration produced some of the greatest music of the era, but it's also the case that with few exceptions, narratives about that have tended to centre the white people involved at the expense of the Black people. The Black musicians tend to be regarded as people who allowed the white musicians to cast off their racism and become better people, rather than as colleagues who in many cases somewhat resented the white musicians -- there were jobs that weren't open to Black musicians in the segregated South, and now here were a bunch of white people taking some of the smaller number of jobs that *were* available to them.  This is not to say that those white musicians were, individually, racist -- many were very vocally opposed to racism -- but they were still beneficiaries of a racist system. These white musicians who loved Black music slowly, over a decade or so, took over the older Black styles of music, and made them into white music. Up to this point, when we've looked at R&B, blues, or soul recordings, all the musicians involved have been Black people, almost without exception. And for most of the fifties, rock and roll was a predominantly Black genre, before the influx of the rockabillies made it seem, briefly, like it could lead to a truly post-racial style of music. But over the 1960s, we're going to see white people slowly colonise those musics, and push Black musicians to the margins. And this episode marks a crucial turning point in the story, as we see the establishment of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, as a centre of white people making music in previously Black genres. But the start of that story comes with a Black man making music that most people at the time saw as coded as white. Today we're going to look at someone whose music is often considered the epitome of deep soul, but who worked with many of the musicians who made the Nashville Sound what it was, and who was as influenced by Gene Autry as he was by many of the more obvious singers who might influence a soul legend. Today, we're going to look at Arthur Alexander, and at "You Better Move On": [Excerpt: Arthur Alexander, "You'd Better Move On"] Arthur Alexander's is one of the most tragic stories we'll be looking at. He was a huge influence on every musician who came up in the sixties, but he never got the recognition for it. He was largely responsible for the rise of Muscle Shoals studios, and he wrote songs that were later covered by the Beatles, and Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones, as well as many, many more. The musician Norbert Putnam told the story of visiting George Harrison in the seventies, and seeing his copy of Alexander's hit single "You Better Move On". He said to Harrison, "Did you know I played bass on that?" and Harrison replied, "If I phoned Paul up now, he'd come over and kiss your feet". That's how important Arthur Alexander was to the Beatles, and to the history of rock music. But he never got to reap the rewards his talent entitled him to. He spent most of his life in poverty, and is now mostly known only to fans of the subgenre known as deep soul. Part of this is because his music is difficult to categorise. While most listeners would now consider it soul music, it's hard to escape the fact that Alexander's music has an awful lot of elements of country music in it. This is something that Alexander would point out himself -- in interviews, he would talk about how he loved singing cowboys in films -- people like Roy Rogers and Gene Autry -- and about how when he was growing up the radio stations he would listen to would "play a Drifters record and maybe an Eddy Arnold record, and they didn't make no distinction. That's the way it was until much later". The first record he truly loved was Eddy Arnold's 1946 country hit "That's How Much I Love You": [Excerpt: Eddy Arnold, "That's How Much I Love You"] Alexander grew up in Alabama, but in what gets described as a relatively integrated area for the time and place -- by his own account, the part of East Florence he grew up in had only one other Black family, and all the other children he played with were white, and he wasn't even aware of segregation until he was eight or nine. Florence is itself part of a quad-city area with three other nearby towns – Muscle Shoals, Sheffield, and Tuscumbia. This area as a whole is often known as either “the Shoals”, or “Muscle Shoals”, and when people talk about music, it's almost always the latter, so from this point on, I'll be using “Muscle Shoals” to refer to all four towns. The consensus among people from the area seems to have been that while Alabama itself was one of the most horribly racist parts of the country, Muscle Shoals was much better than the rest of Alabama. Some have suggested that this comparative integration was part of the reason for the country influence in Alexander's music, but as we've seen in many previous episodes, there were a lot more Black fans of country music than popular myth would suggest, and musicians like Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, and Bo Diddley were very obviously influenced by country singers. Alexander's father was also called Arthur, and so for all his life the younger Arthur Alexander was known to family and friends as "June", for Junior. Arthur senior had been a blues guitarist in his youth, and according to his son was also an excellent singer, but he got very angry the one time June picked up his guitar and tried to play it -- he forbade him from ever playing the guitar, saying that he'd never made a nickel as a player, and didn't want that life for his son. As Arthur was an obedient kid, he did as his father said -- he never in his life learned to play any musical instrument. But that didn't stop him loving music and wanting to sing. He would listen to the radio all the time, listening to crooners like Patti Page and Nat "King" Cole, and as a teenager he got himself a job working at a cafe owned by a local gig promoter, which meant he was able to get free entry to the R&B shows the promoter put on at a local chitlin circuit venue, and get to meet the stars who played there. He would talk to people like Clyde McPhatter, and ask him how he managed to hit the high notes -- though he wasn't satisfied by McPhatter's answer that "It's just there", thinking there must be more to it than that. And he became very friendly with the Clovers, once having a baseball game with them, and spending a lot of time with their lead singer, Buddy Bailey, asking him details of how he got particular vocal effects in the song "One Mint Julep": [Excerpt: The Clovers, "One Mint Julep"] He formed a vocal group called the Heartstrings, who would perform songs like "Sixty Minute Man", and got a regular spot on a local TV show, but according to his account, after a few weeks one of the other members decided he didn't need to bother practising any more, and messed up on live TV. The group split up after that. The only time he got to perform once that group split up was when he would sit in in a band led by his friend George Brooks, who regularly gigged around Muscle Shoals. But there seemed no prospect of anything bigger happening -- there were no music publishing companies or recording studios in Alabama, and everyone from Alabama who had made an impact in music had moved away to do it -- W.C. Handy, Hank Williams, Sam Phillips, they'd all done truly great things, but they'd done them in Memphis or Nashville, not in Montgomery or Birmingham. There was just not the music industry infrastructure there to do anything. That started to change in 1956, when the first record company to set up in Muscle Shoals got its start. Tune Records was a tiny label run from a bus station, and most of its business was the same kind of stuff that Sam Phillips did before Sun became big -- making records of people's weddings and so on. But then the owner of the label, James Joiner, came up with a song that he thought might be commercial if a young singer he knew named Bobby Denton sang it. "A Fallen Star" was done as cheaply as humanly possible -- it was recorded at a radio station, cut live in one take. The engineer on the track was a DJ who was on the air at the time -- he put a record on, engineered the track while the record was playing, and made sure the musicians finished before the record he was playing did, so he could get back on the air. That record itself wasn't a hit, and was so unsuccessful that I've not been able to find a copy of it anywhere, but it inspired hit cover versions from Ferlin Husky and Jimmy C. Newman: [Excerpt: Jimmy C. Newman, “A Fallen Star”] Off the back of those hit versions, Joiner started his own publishing company to go with his record company. Suddenly there was a Muscle Shoals music scene, and everything started to change. A lot of country musicians in the area gravitated towards Joiner, and started writing songs for his publishing company. At this point, this professional music scene in the area was confined to white people -- Joiner recalled later that a young singer named Percy Sledge had auditioned for him, but that Joiner simply didn't understand his type of music -- but a circle of songwriters formed that would be important later. Jud Phillips, Sam's brother, signed Denton to his new label, Judd, and Denton started recording songs by two of these new songwriters, Rick Hall and Billy Sherrill. Denton's recordings were unsuccessful, but they started getting cover versions. Roy Orbison's first single on RCA was a Hall and Sherrill song: [Excerpt: Roy Orbison, "Sweet and Innocent"] Hall and Sherrill then started up their own publishing company, with the help of a loan from Joiner, and with a third partner, Tom Stafford. Stafford is a figure who has been almost written out of music history, and about whom I've been able to find out very little, but who seems in some ways the most intriguing person among these white musicians and entrepreneurs. Friends from the time describe him as a "reality-hacking poet", and he seems to have been a beatnik, or a proto-hippie, the only one in Muscle Shoals and maybe the only one in the state of Alabama at the time. He was the focal point of a whole group of white musicians, people like Norbert Puttnam, David Briggs, Dan Penn, and Spooner Oldham. These musicians loved Black music, and wanted to play it, thinking of it as more exciting than the pop and country that they also played. But they loved it in a rather appropriative way -- and in the same way, they had what they *thought* was an anti-racist attitude. Even though they were white, they referred to themselves collectively as a word I'm not going to use, the single most offensive slur against Black people. And so when Arthur Alexander turned up and got involved in this otherwise-white group of musicians, their attitudes varied widely. Terry Thompson, for example, who Alexander said was one of the best players ever to play guitar, as good as Nashville legends like Roy Clark and Jerry Reed, was also, according to Alexander, “the biggest racist there ever was”, and made derogatory remarks about Black people – though he said that Alexander didn't count. Others, like Dan Penn, have later claimed that they took an “I don't even see race” attitude, while still others were excited to be working with an actual Black man. Alexander would become close friends with some of them, would remain at arm's length with most, but appreciated the one thing that they all had in common – that they, like him, wanted to perform R&B *and* country *and* pop. For Hall, Sherrill, and Stafford's fledgling publishing company FAME, Alexander and one of his old bandmates from the Heartstrings, Henry Lee Bennett, wrote a song called “She Wanna Rock”, which was recorded in Nashville by the rockabilly singer Arnie Derksen, at Owen Bradley's studio with the Nashville A-Team backing him: [Excerpt: Arnie Derksen, "She Wanna Rock"] That record wasn't a success, and soon after that, the partnership behind FAME dissolved. Rick Hall was getting super-ambitious and wanted to become a millionaire by the time he was thirty, Tom Stafford was content with the minor success they had, and wanted to keep hanging round with his friends, watching films, and occasionally helping them make a record, and Billy Sherrill had a minor epiphany and decided he wanted to make country music rather than rock and roll. Rick Hall kept the FAME name for a new company he was starting up and Sherrill headed over to Nashville and got a job with Sam Phillips at Sun's Nashville studio. Sherrill would later move on from Sun and produce and write for almost every major country star of the sixties and seventies – most notably, he co-wrote "Stand By Your Man" with Tammy Wynette, and produced "He Stopped Loving Her Today" for George Jones. And Stafford kept the studio and the company, which was renamed Spar. Arthur Alexander stuck with Tom Stafford, as did most of the musicians, and while he was working a day job as a bellhop, he would also regularly record demos for other writers at Stafford's studio. By the start of 1960, 19-year-old June had married another nineteen-year-old, Ann. And it was around this point that Stafford came to him with a half-completed lyric that needed music. Alexander took Stafford's partial lyric, and finished it. He added a standard blues riff, which he had liked in Brook Benton's record “Kiddio”: [Excerpt: Brook Benton, “Kiddio”] The resulting song, “Sally Sue Brown”, was a mixture of gutbucket blues and rockabilly, with a soulful vocal, and it was released under the name June Alexander on Judd Records: [Excerpt: June Alexander, "Sally Sue Brown"] It's a good record, but it didn't have any kind of success. So Arthur started listening to the radio more, trying to see what the current hits were, so he could do something more commercial. He particularly liked the Drifters and Ben E. King, and he decided to try to write a song that fit their styles. He eventually came up with one that was inspired by real events -- his wife, Ann, had an ex who had tried to win her back once he'd found out she was dating Arthur. He took the song, "You Better Move On", to Stafford, who knew it would be a massive hit, but also knew that he couldn't produce the record himself, so they got in touch with Rick Hall, who agreed to produce the track. There were multiple sessions, and after each one, Hall would take the tapes away, study them, and come up with improvements that they would use at the next session. Hall, like Alexander, wanted to get a sound like Ben E. King -- he would later say, "It was my conception that it should have a groove similar to 'Stand By Me', which was a big record at the time. But I didn't want to cop it to the point where people would recognise it was a cop. You dig? So we used the bass line and modified it just a little bit, put the acoustic guitar in front of that.": [Excerpt: Arthur Alexander, "You Better Move On"] For a B-side, they chose a song written by Terry Thompson, "A Shot of Rhythm and Blues", which would prove almost as popular as the A-side: [Excerpt: Arthur Alexander, "A Shot of Rhythm and Blues"] Hall shopped the record around every label in Nashville, with little success. Eventually, in February 1961, the record was released by Dot Records, the label that Pat Boone was on. It went to number twenty-four on the pop charts, becoming the first ever hit record to be made in Alabama. Rick Hall made enough money from it that he was able to build a new, much better, studio, and Muscle Shoals was set to become one of the most important recording centres in the US. As Norbert Puttnam, who had played bass on "You Better Move On", and who would go on to become one of the most successful session bass players and record producers in Nashville, later said "If it wasn't for Arthur Alexander, we'd all be at Reynolds" -- the local aluminium factory. But Arthur Alexander wouldn't record much at Muscle Shoals from that point on. His contracts were bought out -- allegedly, Stafford, a heavy drug user, was bought off with a case of codeine -- and instead of working with Rick Hall, the perfectionist producer who would go on to produce a decade-long string of hits, he was being produced by Noel Ball, a DJ with little production experience, though one who had a lot of faith in Alexander's talent, and who had been the one to get him signed to Dot. His first album was a collection of covers of current hits. The album is widely regarded as a failure, and Alexander's heart wasn't in it -- his father had just died, his wife had had a miscarriage, and his marriage was falling apart. But his second single for Dot was almost as great as his first. Recorded at Owen Bradley's studio with top Nashville session players, the A-side, "Where Have You Been?" was written by the Brill Building team of Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill, and was very much in the style of "You Better Move On": [Excerpt: Arthur Alexander, "Where Have You Been?"] While the B-side, "Soldiers of Love" (and yes, it was called "Soldiers of Love" on the original label, rather than "Soldier"), was written by Buzz Cason and Tony Moon, two members of Brenda Lee's backing band, The Casuals: [Excerpt: Arthur Alexander, "Soldiers of Love"] The single was only a modest hit, reaching number fifty-eight, but just like his first single, both sides became firm favourites with musicians in Britain. Even though he wasn't having a huge amount of commercial success, music lovers really appreciated his music, and bands in Britain, playing long sets, would pick up on Arthur's songs. Almost every British guitar group had Arthur Alexander songs in their setlists, even though he was unaware of it at the time. For his third Dot single, Arthur was in trouble. He'd started drinking a lot, and taking a lot of speed, and his marriage was falling apart. Meanwhile, Noel Ball was trying to get him to record all sorts of terrible songs. He decided he'd better write one himself, and he'd make it about the deterioration of his marriage to Ann -- though in the song he changed her name to Anna, because it scanned better: [Excerpt: Arthur Alexander, "Anna (Go To Him)"] Released with a cover version of Gene Autry's country classic "I Hang My Head and Cry" as the B-side, that made the top ten on the R&B chart, but it only made number sixty-eight on the pop charts. His next single, "Go Home Girl", another attempt at a "You Better Move On" soundalike, only made number 102. Meanwhile, a song that Alexander had written and recorded, but that Dot didn't want to put out, went to number forty-two when it was picked up by the white singer Steve Alaimo: [Excerpt: Steve Alaimo, "Every Day I Have To Cry"] He was throwing himself into his work at this point, to escape the problems in his personal life. He'd often just go to a local nightclub and sit in with a band featuring a bass player called Billy Cox, and Cox's old Army friend, who was just starting to get a reputation as a musician, a guitarist they all called Marbles but who would later be better known as Jimi Hendrix. He was drinking heavily, divorced, and being terribly mismanaged, as well as being ripped off by his record and publishing companies. He was living with a friend, Joe Henderson, who had had a hit a couple of years earlier with "Snap Your Fingers": [Excerpt: Joe Henderson, "Snap Your Fingers"] Henderson and Alexander would push each other to greater extremes of drug use, enabling each other's addiction, and one day Arthur came home to find his friend dead in the bathroom, of what was officially a heart attack but which everyone assumes was an overdose. Not only that, but Noel Ball was dying of cancer, and for all that he hadn't been the greatest producer, Arthur cared deeply about him. He tried a fresh start with Monument Records, and he was now being produced by Fred Foster, who had produced Roy Orbison's classic hits, and his arrangements were being done by Bill Justis, the saxophone player who had had a hit with "Raunchy" on a subsidiary of Sun a few years earlier. Some of his Monument recordings were excellent, like his first single for the label, "Baby For You": [Excerpt: Arthur Alexander, "Baby For You"] On the back of that single, he toured the UK, and appeared on several big British TV shows, and was generally feted by all the major bands who were fans of his work, but he had no more commercial success at Monument than he had at the end of his time on Dot. And his life was getting worse and worse. He had a breakdown, brought on by his constant use of amphetamines and cannabis, and started hallucinating that people he saw were people from his past life -- he stopped a taxi so he could get out and run after a man he was convinced was his dead father, and assaulted an audience member he was convinced was his ex-wife. He was arrested, diagnosed with schizophrenia, and spent several months in a psychiatric hospital. Shortly after he got out, Arthur visited his friend Otis Redding, who was in the studio in Memphis, and was cutting a song that he and Arthur had co-written several years earlier, "Johnny's Heartbreak": [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Johnny's Heartbreak"] Otis asked Arthur to join him on a tour he was going to be going on a couple of weeks later, but fog grounded Arthur's plane so he was never able to meet up with Otis in Atlanta, and the tour proceeded without him -- and so Arthur was not on the plane that Redding was on, on December 10 1967, which crashed and killed him. Arthur saw this as divine intervention, but he was seeing patterns in everything at this point, and he had several more breakdowns. He ended up getting dropped by Monument in 1970. He was hospitalised again after a bad LSD trip led to him standing naked in the middle of the road, and he spent several years drifting, unable to have a hit, though he was still making music. He kept having bad luck – for example, he recorded a song by the songwriter Dennis Linde, which was an almost guaranteed hit, and could have made for a comeback for him: [Excerpt: Arthur Alexander, “Burning Love”] But between him recording it and releasing it as a single, Elvis Presley released his version, which went to number two on the charts, and killed any chance of Arthur's version being a success: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “Burning Love”] He did, though, have a bit of a comeback in 1975, when he rerecorded his old song "Every Day I Have To Cry", as "Every Day I Have To Cry Some", in a version which many people think likely inspired Bruce Springsteen's "Hungry Heart" a few years later: [Excerpt: Arthur Alexander, "Every Day I Have To Cry Some"] That made number forty-five, but unfortunately his follow-up, “Sharing the Night Together”, was another song where multiple people released versions of it at the same time, without realising, and so didn't chart – Dr. Hook eventually had a hit with it a year later. Arthur stepped away from music. He managed to get himself more mentally well, and spent the years from 1978 through 1993 working a series of blue-collar jobs in Cleveland -- construction worker, bus driver, and janitor. He rarely opened up to people about ever having been a singer. He suffered through more tragedy, too, like the murder of one of his sons, but he remained mentally stable. But then, in March 1993, he made a comeback. The producer Ben Vaughn persuaded him into the studio, and he got a contract with Elektra records. He made his first album in twenty-two years, a mixture of new songs and reworkings of his older ones. It got great reviews, and he was rediscovered by the music press as a soul pioneer. He got a showcase spot at South by Southwest, he was profiled by NPR on Fresh Air, and he was playing to excited crowds of new, young fans. He was in the process of getting his publishing rights back, and might finally start to see some money from his hits. And then, three months after that album came out, in the middle of a meeting with a publisher about the negotiations for his new contracts, he had a massive heart attack, and died the next day, aged fifty-three. His bad luck had caught up with him again.

Suponemos que en estas semanas de aislamiento, a todos nos ha dado tiempo de comprar papel higiénico como si no hubiera un mañana, llamar a la familia y a los amigos, encontrar esas fotos que parecían perdidas, limpiar los altillos, vaciar la nevera, y, por supuesto, ordenar los libros y los discos. Cuando te pones a esto último, lo de los discos, de pronto, aparecen algunas obras de arte que, con más o menos tiempo, te reencuentras hasta contigo mismo... Pues hoy hemos decidido recopilar algunas de ellas. Si alguna vez quieres retroceder en el tiempo y revisar la historia cultural de lo que se llama Americana, no está de más remitirse a Dom Flemons, un historiador de la música. Es un folclorista de Phoenix, Arizona. Cantante y compositor, se ha convertido, además, en todo un experto en instrumentos tradicionales. Fue socio fundador de Carolina Chocolate Drops y dejó el grupo en 2014 para seguir en solitario. El cuarto de sus discos, Black Cowboys, formó parte de una de las múltiples series de las que edita Smithsonian. Está inspirado en sus raíces familiares y narra una buena parte de la rica y profunda historia de la música del oeste de Estados Unidos, a menudo ignorada. Las canciones incluyen estándares tan queridos como "Home On the Range" pero también hay espacio para temas originales del estilo de "He’s A Lone Ranger", un homenaje a la figura de Bass Reeves, crecido en la región de Texarcana y convertido en diputado. Mirando a esos discos que de pronto aparecen, nos hemos encontrado con Stoney Edwards, un cantante de country con una presencia significativa entre los artistas más enraizados dentro de la música country. Nativo de Seminole, en Oklahoma, ha pasado a la historia por una canción como "She's My Rock", convertida en todo un éxito del año 1972 y más aún cuando Brenda Lee y George Jones la versionaron un par de años más tarde. Y buscando y buscando… le ha tocado el turno a Charley Pride, que creció escuchando a algunos de los maestros como Ernest Tubb, Eddy Arnold, Hank Williams y George Jones. Desarrolló un estilo propio partiendo de ellos, pero incluyó a otros de sus favoritos, como Sam Cooke, B.B. King o Brook Benton. Y es que volvemos a remitirnos a esa frase de Nick Lowe en la que nos recordaba que si eres capaz de unir el country y el soul conseguirás la mejor de las canciones. Charley Pride siempre entendió que la música americana se construye desde el country, el gospel y el blues. Es muy posible que su canción más recordada sea "Is Anybody Goin' To San Antone?", que alcanzó la cima de las listas de country en Abril de 1970. A costa de un malentendido entre la editorial y los compositores -Glenn Martin y Dave Kirby-, el tema había sido grabado y publicado por Bake Turner, jugador del equipo de fútbol americano de los Jets de New York. Pride intento encontrar otros singles para sustituirlo, pero la grabación había quedado tan perfecta como acabamos de escuchar y decidieron editarla. La versión de Turner no tuvo la más mínima repercusión. Ray Charles es un nombre antes el que hay que quitarse cualquier sombrero y cuando te reencuentras con alguno de sus Lps antológicos solo puedes estar agradecido. En 1952 se había mudado al sello ABC/Paramount para poder tener un mayor control sobre su música. Fue por entonces cuando decidió ensanchar el horizonte estilístico y adentrarse en caminos que hasta entonces no había experimentado. Eddy Arnold y Cindy Walker compusieron “You Don’t Know Me” y el primero de ellos grabó la versión original en la primavera de 1956. Pero seis años después, el músico invidente la llevó al segundo puesto de las listas generales de singles tras sorprender a la industria con un álbum convertido en fundamental para la historia de la música popular Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music. En ocasiones, uno agradece tener cierto tiempo para permitir la reaparición de músicos y canciones que tenías durante demasiado tiempo en el olvido. Y estas fechas nos han traído al presente al tejano de Simonton Dobie Gray, cuya carrera abarcó el soul… y también el country. A mitad de los 60 dejó para el recuerdo "The 'In' Crowd", pero en 1973, el mismo año en que nació TOMA UNO publicó "Drift Away". Aquella canción que había compuesto Mentor Williams tres años antes y que había grabado en origen John Henry Kurtz fue la que marcó la carrera del artista de Texas. Ted Hawkins siempre fue un personaje enigmático. Tocaba en la calle o en pequeños locales y era poco comunicativo. Muchos se arrogaron haberle descubierto a lo largo de los años, pero este artista de Biloxi, en Mississippi, era difícil de llevar a otros terrenos que no fueran el de su libertad personal. Sus grabaciones se repartieron de forma indiscriminada y algunas de ellas fueron ordenadas por Rounder en 1982, con una excelente aceptación por parte de la crítica, aunque con mínimas ventas. Ted Hawkins mezclaba gospel, folk y country con acento sureño y un acompañamiento casi minimalista, propio de los pioneros. Cuando te encuentras con un disco como The Next Hundred Years de 1994, editado poco menos de un año antes de su muerte, es su grabación emblemática. El cierre de aquel último disco en vida fue esta versión a “Long As I Can See The Light”, que también fue el último corte de Cosmos Factory para la Creedence Clearwater Revival, que en un mes cumplirá medio siglo de edición. Darius Rucker tenía muy claro que en su álbum True Believers, iba a incluir una versión de “Wagon Wheel”, que sacaron a la luz Old Crow Medicine Show y que se convirtió en uno de los temas favoritos de su hija. La melodía y los coros de esta canción pertenecen a Bob Dylan, que la maquetó en 1973 durante las sesiones de grabación de Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid y aunque nunca se editó oficialmente, se pudo encontrar en algunos discos piratas de Dylan con el nombre de "Rock Me Mama". A pesar de que estaba inacabada, Ketch Secor escribió una letra adicional y convirtió "Rock Me Mama" en "Wagon Wheel", siendo incluida en el álbum O.C.M.S. de 2004. Cuando en estos tiempos escuchas una canción que describe un viaje en autostop desde Nueva Inglaterra hasta Carolina del Norte, pasando por Virginia para llegar a Cumberland Gap y Johnson City, en Tennessee, para encontrarte con tu amor, supone todo una brisa alegre. Darius Rucker, el que fuera miembro de Hootie & the Blowfish, contó por entonces en las armonías vocales con los miembros de Lady Antebellum, que el pasado jueves anunció el cambio de su nombre por el de Lady A, mostrándose arrepentidos y avergonzados por no haber considerado la asociación del término "Antebellum" con la esclavitud, previo a la Guerra Civil de Estados Unidos. A veces, mirando en los armarios, te encuentras con algunos discos que hacía tiempo que no escuchábamos. Esta vez nos hemos ido a 1974 y a un álbum como That's A Plenty. Fue una época en que las distribuidoras españolas de discográficas internacionales se preocupaban, y mucho, por editar una buena parte de las novedades de Gran Bretaña y Estados Unidos. Aquel disco de las Pointer Sisters fue toda una sorpresa, sobre todo cuando esta canción, se llevó el premio Grammy a la mejor canción de country. Trataba, como suele ocurrir en buena parte de los temas del género, sobre una ruptura, en este caso basada en la experiencia personal de Bonnie Pointer y tras escuchar a James Taylor. Mavis Staples es una de las grandes veteranas a las que hay que rendir pleitesía de vez en cuando, porque suponen mantener viva la llama de la reivindicación de las raíces más profundas de la música norteamericana y la fusión de los géneros y de las formas. Mavis grabó hace 10 años un álbum como You’re Not Alone con la producción de Jeff Tweddy, consiguiendo un Grammy como mejor álbum de Americana. Aquel disco nos permitió recordar un Lp como Green River, el tercero de la CCR, cuyo nombre fue tomado del escrito de la etiqueta de una botella de jarabe, además de ser un lugar que John Fogerty solía visitar en Putah Creek, un río del norte de California. Cerrando la cara A de aquel vinilo encontramos “Wrote a Song For Everyone”, una canción que Fogerty elegiría en 2013 como título de su álbum de su noveno álbum en solitario en el que contó con un buen número de invitados pero que antes había versionado de esta forma la veterana vocalista. Yola es una vocalista y compositora británica de Bristol descubierta por Dan Auerbach, miembro de los Black Keys, que la descubrió a través de un vídeo actuando en Nashville que le envió un amigo. Él mismo fue el productor de su álbum de debut, Walk Through Fire, publicado a finales de febrero de 2019 y convertido en uno de los favoritos de TOMA UNO. Desde entonces, se ha convertido en una de las voces más recurrentes del panorama de la Americana, participando en la última edición de Festival de Newport junto a las Highwomen, Sheryl Crow y Dolly Parton, por ejemplo. Su anticipo de su único álbum hasta el momento fue “Ride Out In The Country”, un tapiz sonoro lleno de sonidos tradicionales que unificaban fiddle, Steel guitar, cuerdas y una capacidad interpretativa poco común. Carolina Chocolate Drops enamoró a los aficionados con su propuesta de poner al día la música del siglo XIX y la tradición de muchas décadas de la música de Estados Unidos. Esa formación acústica procedente de Carolina del Norte encontró en su álbum Leaving Eden a otro de los productores perfectos para mantener esa fórmula de contactar el pasado y el presente. Era Buddy Miller, que logró que aquel disco se percibiera como una fiesta de sábado por la noche. Dentro de aquel ramillete de canciones con ecos de siglos pasados, era inevitable destacar un tema propio como “Country Girl”. En aquel trío destacó la personalidad de Rhiannon Giddens, a quien hemos venido siguiendo desde hace tiempo y que nos ha dejado multitud de aventuras sonoras e incluso sus aportaciones como actriz a series televisivas como Nashville. Mickey Guyton es una joven artista de Arlington, en Texas, que se ha convertido en una de las voces más populares de la escena del country en los últimos tiempos. Su más reciente novedad es un tema como “Black Like Me”, que vio la luz coincidiendo con el reciente Blackout Tuesday y que narra su experiencia personal en la vida cotidiana de Estados Unidos y en la industria del country, poniendo el énfasis en determinadas desigualdades muy evidentes. Sus diferencias con su sello discográfico son bien conocidas. Esa nueva canción tiene entre sus versos uno que dice, explícitamente, “Si piensas que vivimos en la tierra de los libres, deberías intentar ser negra como yo”. Hoy queremos concluir con un artista que marcó un momento crucial en la historia de este género. Es DeFord Bailey. Él fue toda una estrella del country desde los años 20 hasta la llegada de la década de los 40. Tocaba varios instrumentos, pero era especialmente conocido como armonicista. El 10 de diciembre de 1927, tras un espacio de música clásica de la NBC llamado Music Appreciation Hour, la emisora de Nashville WSM comenzó su Barn Dance con un comentario de su gerente y locutor, George D. Hay, que ha pasado a la historia: "Durante la última hora, hemos estado escuchando música en gran parte de Grand Opera, pero a partir de ahora, presentaremos" The Grand Ole Opry ". La primera canción que sonó fue "Pan American Blues", que es la que hoy cierra el tiempo de TOMA UNO y nos cita para mañana en la sintonía habitual de cada fin de semana en Radio 3. Hoy hemos reunido algunas de las canciones que hemos venido escuchando también en estas fechas de cuarentena. Hemos recorrido con ellas distintas etapas de la country music. Y, al final, resulta que entre todos los artistas que nos han acompañado había una coincidencia. Todos son negros… Black Lives Matter. Escuchar audio