Podcasts about C minor

ReferencesProc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2023 Jan30;120(6):e2219630120Nature Cardiovascular Research 2023.volume 2, pages 425–437.Nature Metabolism 2019. volume 1, pages 937–946.Hunter/Garcia 1971. "Bertha" https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=82ADE0DUeM4&si=HAuEBhorg4bXRw-KHunter/Garcia. 1971. "Goin Down the Road/Not Fade Away"https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=pvcb1mkihho&si=c9AbanXawvcnEf6bSaint-Saens. 1886. Symphony 3.in C Minor. OP.78.https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWCZq33BrOo&si=9dq44Wzw7l_Ij_0q

*Explicit Mix* - 128BPM -New workout mix featuring all songs in the key of C Minor.  Instagram: @djrolemodel ❤❤❤ #djrolemodel

*Explicit Mix* - 128BPM -New workout mix featuring all songs in the key of C Minor.  Instagram: @djrolemodel ❤❤❤ #djrolemodel

Allyson Devenish picks her favourite recording of Schubert's Piano Sonata in C minor.

In Episode 19 of The Choral Director's Toolbox, host Dr. William Baker unpacks the controversy surrounding Austrian or Germanic Latin in Classical-period choral performance. With his signature clarity and wit, Dr. Baker challenges conventional assumptions and offers practical insight on pronunciation for clarity and expression. This week's listener question addresses ideal seating—or no seating at all—for choral rehearsals. Today's inspiration features Mozart's majestic Kyrie from the Great Mass in C Minor, performed by The William Baker Festival Singers. Tune in for a thoughtful and invigorating episode!

On this week's episode of Inside the Music, Artistic Director of Capital Region Classical Derek Delaney explores Felix Mendelssohn's early works with live CRC performance by the Ébène Quartet and pianist Pei-Yao Wang and friends.Piano Quartet in C Minor, Op. 1AdagioScherzo: PrestoAllegro moderatoPei‐Yao Wang, piano; Carmit Zori, violin; Eric Nowlin, viola; Sophie Shao, cello[2/14/2010 performance]Quartet in A Minor, Op. 13Adagio non lentoIntermezzo: Allegretto con moto—Allegro di moltoPresto—Adagio non lentoÉbène Quartet [11/13/2014 performance]Dive deeper into this episode's repertoire by heading to our YouTube channel for a discussion with some of our audience members about the program.Follow us to stay up to date on the latest from Capital Region Classical including concerts, events, and new episodes of Inside the Music:WebsiteFacebookInstagramYouTube© Capital Region Classical

Here is a edit i made of Paul Skelton's masterpiece Impromptu In C Minor I added a piece from the motivational speech 'Believe In Yourself' from Eddie Pinero in the breakdown to add some extra feelings to it. Really like how it works together Paul Skelton - Impromptu In C Minor, Beatport ---> https://shorturl.at/e2jzU Eddie Pinero - Believe In Yourself, Youtube ---> https://shorturl.at/frKiq = Believe In C Minor Hope you like it! All rights belong to their respective artists and/or license holders. Please be sure to support the original artists on Beatport. Thank You for listening // Peteerson

Nina Bernat is a double bass performer and educator based in New York City. In 2023, Nina was honored as a recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant and winner of the CAG Elmaleh Competition. Her recent first-prize awards include the Barbash J.S. Bach String Competition, the Minnesota Orchestra Young Artist Competition, the Juilliard Double Bass Competition, and the 2019 International Society of Bassists Solo Competition. In this episode, recorded live in San Francisco in 2025, Nina shares her background and discusses the program she performed at the 2025 San Francisco Winter Bass Bash. Enjoy! Recital program: Nina Bernat, double bass Keisuke Nakagoshi, piano Bach Suite No. 5 in C Minor, BV 1011 Prelude, Allemande, Courante Pantomime by Sofia Gubaidulina Prayer by Enrst Bloch Sonata for Violin by Aaron Copland photo credit: Titilayo Ayangade Subscribe to the podcast to get these interviews delivered to you automatically! Connect with us: all things double bass double bass merch double bass sheet music Thank you to our sponsor! Upton Bass - From Grammy Award winners and Philharmonic players like ME Max Zeugner of the New York Philharmonic, each Upton Bass is crafted with precision in Connecticut, USA, and built to last for generations.  Discover your perfect bass with Upton Bass today! theme music by Eric Hochberg

*Explicit Mix* - 128BPM -New workout mix featuring all songs in the key of C Minor.  Instagram: @djrolemodel ❤❤❤ #djrolemodel

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 16:32:07 +0000 https://aus-liebe-zur-musik.podigee.io/127-new-episode 945b6c65198f572592951f71e84659b9 Christian ist im Urlaub, weshalb sich für diese Episode mal wieder Janek zu Peter gesellt. Janek und Christoph sind schon den Raum für das anstehende Katja Werker Konzert am vorbereiten. Eine große Lieferung von T+A ist angekommen, die Solitaire 540 und sowie höchstwertige Komponenten der herausragenden HV Serie. Janek hatte eine tolle Vorführung mit dem dCS Bartok an MBL 126, die noch weitere Hörvergleiche mit Accuphase Vorstufen nach sich zieht, denn: Nicht jeder ist rein digital Musik am genießen, was eine Schaltzentrale und Lautstärkeregelung in Form einer hochwertigen Vorstufe unerlässlich macht. Außerdem ist der neue Wiim Vibelink auf den Markt gekommen, den Peter und Janek kurz besprechen. Titel der Woche Janek: Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67 - Beethoven; Beethoven Orchester Bonn, Stefan Blunier Peter: U2 - With or Without You (Songs of Surrender) Hier findet ihr die Playlisten zu unserem Podcast. Immer aktualisiert - einmal auf Qobuz und einmal auf Tidal: Qobuz: https://open.qobuz.com/playlist/13181317 Tidal: https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/794fc949-7d62-44d4-9c8c-3ede893e3a02 full no

Attention ALL JANE AUSTEN FANS!Regency-era beauty may look effortless in period dramas, but trust me, it was anything but!From toxic face creams to eyebrow-darkening lead shavings (yes, really), women went to extreme lengths to achieve the ideal porcelain complexion. In this episode, we're diving into the wild, weird, and downright dangerous beauty practices of the past. Was it all worth it? I'll let you be the judge!Are You Ready?***************Sources:Dead Pretty: The Perils of Georgian Beauty Regimes by Jon Sleighhttps://artuk.org/discover/stories/dead-pretty-the-perils-of-georgian-beauty-regimesFrom Vanity to Insanity? The Perilous Battle for Female Beauty In Georgian Britain by Iona Bentleyhttps://historiansforhistory.wordpress.com/2021/02/09/from-vanity-to-insanity-the-perilous-battle-for-female-beauty-in-georgian-britain-by-iona-bentley/Women's Regency Makeup: An Overviewhttps://hair-and-makeup-artist.com/womens-regency-makeup/Regency Cosmetics and Make-Up Looking your Best in 1811http://hibiscus-sinensis.com/regency/cosmetics.htm***************Leave Us a 5* Rating, it helps the show!Apple Podcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/beauty-unlocked-the-podcast/id1522636282Spotify Podcast:https://open.spotify.com/show/37MLxC8eRob1D0ZcgcCorA****************Follow Us on Social Media & Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!TikTok:tiktok.com/@beautyunlockedthepodYouTube:@beautyunlockedspodcasthour****************Intro/Outro Music:Music by Savvier from Fugue FAME INCAdditional Music:Audio HeroBellini "Fantasy on Themes from Norma"Vivaldi Classics "Concerto for Flute, Violin, and Continuo in C Minor

Irish violinist Aoife Ní Bhriain and jazz pianist and composer Julian Joseph are the first guests in the new series with Jeffrey Boakye and Anna Phoebe. Together they add the first five tracks, taking us from the Mercury Prize-winning jazz group Ezra Collective to a celebrated pair of sisters at the piano, via a 1975 pop classic heavily influenced by Frédéric Chopin.Producer: Jerome Weatherald Presented with musical direction by Jeffrey Boakye and Anna PhoebeThe five tracks in this week's playlist:God Gave Me Feet For Dancing by Ezra Collective Nocturne No. 20 in C-Sharp Minor by Frédéric Chopin Could it be Magic by Barry Manilow Kabir by John McLaughlin, Shankar Mahadevan & Zakir Hussain Double Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra: Mvt 1 by Philip Glass, performed by Katia & Marielle LabèqueOther music in this episode:Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac Dollar Wine by Colin Lucas Feeling Good by Nina Simone Prelude in C Minor, Op 28, No 20 by Frédéric Chopin Could it be Magic by Donna Summer Could it be Magic by Take That

微信公众号：「365读书」（dus365)，有不定期赠书福利；微博：365读书v。主播：潮羽，365天每天更新一期。 文字版已在微信公众号【365读书】发布 。QQ：647519872 背景音乐： 1.GIN - Think of You；2.Alfred Brendel - Sonata No. 8 in C Minor for Piano, Op. 13, ''Sonata Pathétique''：II. Adagio cantabile；3.Gabriel Faure - Aprés un reve；4.Xeuphoria - Memories (Goodbye Version)；5.Carinthia - Hidden Paths To Finding；6.Carlos Barbosa-Lima - Gymnopédie No. 1；7.Haneda Ryoko - 爱溜 (방울져 떨어질 사랑)；8.Eminence Symphony Orchestra - Main Theme fromShe and Her Cat(Instrumental)。

On this week's episode of Inside the Music, Derek continues his exploration of Chopin and the composer's evocation of night and dreams in his works with live CRC performances by pianists Emanuel Ax, Jonathan Biss, Rafal Blechacz, Ieva Jokubaviciute, and Dubravka Tomsic. Fantasie in F Minor, Op. 49Dubravka Tomsic [12/4/2003 performance]Berceuse in D-flat Major, Op. 57Dubravka Tomsic [12/4/2003 performance]Nocturne in F Major, Op. 15, No. 1Emanuel Ax [1/25/2009 performance]Nocturne in C Minor, Op. 48, No. 1Ieva Jokubaviciute [2/21/2010 performance]Nocturne in E Major, Op. 62, No. 2Rafal Blechacz [10/26/2014 performance]Nocturne in C-sharp Minor, Op. 27, No. 1Emanuel Ax [2/29/2008 performance]Nocturne in D-flat Major, Op. 27, No. 2Jonathan Biss [4/15/2009 performance]Dive deeper into this episode's repertoire by heading to our YouTube channel for a discussion with some of our audience members about the program.Follow us to stay up to date on the latest from Capital Region Classical including concerts, events, and new episodes of Inside the Music:WebsiteFacebookInstagramYouTube© Capital Region Classical

微信公众号：「365读书」（dus365)，有不定期赠书福利；微博：365读书v。主播：潮羽，365天每天更新一期。 文字版已在微信公众号【365读书】发布 。QQ：647519872 背景音乐：1.伍々慧 - Waltz in your dream；2.Yulia - 새벽 그림자；3.Khatia Buniatishvili - Cantata, BWV 208： No. 9, Schafe können sicher weiden (Arr. for Piano)；4.Arthur Rubinstein - Sonata No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 13, ＂Pathétique＂： II. Adagio cantabile；5.久石譲 - マルコとジーナのテーマ。

American conductor Marin Alsop was the first woman to lead major orchestras in the UK, South America and in the United States, becoming principal conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 2007. Nominated for Grammy Awards five times, in 2013 she became the first ever woman to lead the Last Night Of The Proms, and is now regarded as one of the greatest conductors in the world. She talks to John Wilson about her professional musician parents who nurtured her love of music and supported her career choice from the age of 9 when she first revealed she wanted to be a conductor. Marin also talks about Leonard Bernstein, the great American composer and conductor, who inspired her ambitions and later became a mentor to her. She also chooses Carl Jung's work The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, and explains how his theories have helped her in leading orchestras around the world.Producer: Edwina PitmanMusic and archive used: Serenade in C major for String Orchestra, Op. 48; Valse, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, New York City Ballet Orchestra, 1986 Irish Spring commercial: "Clean as a Whistle" 1980 Leonard Bernstein, Young People's Concerts: "What is Classical Music?", CBS Television, 24 January 1959 Omnibus: Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, BBC2, 10 May 1985 Archive of Leonard Bernstein and Marin Alsop at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, 1987 Leonard Bernstein, Young People's Concerts: "What Does Music Mean?", CBS Television, 18 January 1958 Archive of OrchKids concert, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Woman's Hour, BBC Radio 4, 26 July, 2005 Rhapsody in Blue, George Gershwin, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Marin Alsop Last Night of the Proms, BBC1, 7 September 2013 Symphony No. 2 in C Minor, "Resurrection", Gustav Mahler, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Marin Alsop

We'll look at Beethoven's final three piano sonatas: No. 30 in E Major, Op. 109 (1820); No. 31 in A-flat Major, Op. 110 (1822); and No. 32 in C Minor, Op. 111 (1822).    

Happy HOlidays, PRIDE fam! Welcome to a brand new episode featuring Creative Director, President, and CEO of the National Children's Chorus Luke McEndarfer. Listen in as we discuss his love for music, what it was like winning a Grammy Award, how he got into conducting, hot topics and so much more! So grab yourself a treat, and take a little time to hang with PRIDE! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/pridethepodcast/support

微信公众号：「365读书」（dus365)，有不定期赠书福利；微博：365读书v。主播：潮羽，365天每天更新一期。 文字版已在微信公众号【365读书】发布 。QQ：647519872 背景音乐：1.Otto A Totland - Solêr；2.Michele Campanella - Hungarian Rhapsody No.1 in C sharp minor, S.244；3.Alfred Brendel - Sonata No. 8 in C Minor for Piano, Op. 13, ''Sonata Pathétique''：II. Adagio cantabile。

Here are two statements by Dmitri Shostakovich about the same piece, the 8th symphony that we are talking about today: Statement No. 1, Shostakovich's published comments about the symphony when it was first performed in 1943: The 8th Symphony reflects my…elevated creative mood, influenced by the joyful news of the Red Army's victories…. "The Eighth Symphony contains tragic and dramatic inner conflicts. But on the whole it is optimistic and life-asserting. The first movement is a long adagio, with a dramatically tense climax. The second movement is a march, with scherzo elements, and the third is a dynamic march. The fourth movement, in spite of its march form, is sad in mood. The fifth and final movement is bright and gay, like a pastoral, with dance elements and folk motifs. "The philosophical conception of my new work can be summed up in these words: life is beautiful. All that is dark and evil rots away, and beauty triumphs." Statement No. 2, from the disputed book Testimony, published in the 1970s: ‘And then the war came and the sorrow became a common one. We could talk about it, we could cry openly, cry for our lost ones. People stopped fearing tears. Before the war there probably wasn't a single family who hadn't lost someone, a father, a brother, or if not a relative, then a close friend. Everyone had someone to cry over, but you had to cry silently, under the blanket, so no one would see. Everyone feared everyone else, and the sorrow oppressed and suffocated us. It suffocated me too. I had to write about it. I had to write a Requiem for all those who died, who had suffered. I had to describe the horrible extermination machine and express protest against it. The Seventh and Eighth Symphonies are my Requiems. I don't know of a more profound example of Shostakovich's doublespeak, or of his ability to make diametrically opposing statements about the meaning behind his music.  Shostakovich's 8th symphony premiered at the height of World War II, and it was not a hit, unlike his 7th symphony which had swept the world with its seeming patriotic fervor and its devastating condemnation of the Nazis. Shostakovich's 8th is a very different piece, darker, edgier, less catchy, less simple, and certainly less optimistic. It was panned in the Soviet Union by the official critics and was effectively banned from performance in teh Soviet Union from 1948 until the late 1950s. It was also not particularly popular outside of the Soviet Union, as the 7th's popularity and accessibility dwarfed the 8th, though this equation has now flipped, with the 8th symphony now probably becoming slightly more often played than the 7th. As always with Shostakovich, he mixes tradition with his own Shostakovich-ian innovations. The symphony has a Sonata Form first movement, but that movement is longer than the following three movements combined. It has a darkness to light theme from C Minor to C Major, like in Beethoven's 5th and Mahler's 2nd, but whether the ending is optimistic is subject to furious debate. It has not 1 but 2 scherzos, but they are among the least funny scherzos ever written, and it has a slow movement that is surprisingly un-emotional. The requiem Shostakovich speaks of seems to happen slowly over the course of this 1 hour symphony. It is perhaps Shostakovich's most ambiguous mature symphony, and it is also thought of as one of his greatest masterpieces. Today on this Patreon Sponsored episode, we'll dive into this remarkable work, trying to create a framework to understand this huge and demanding symphony. Join us!

On this episode of Inside the Music, Derek explores two of Beethoven's late piano sonatas, Opp. 109 and 111, in their entirety performed live at CRC by pianist Paul Lewis.Piano Sonata in E Major, Op. 109Piano Sonata in C Minor, Op. 111Paul Lewis [3/22/2015 performance]Dive deeper into this episode's repertoire by heading to our YouTube channel for a discussion with some of our audience members about the program.Follow us to stay up to date on the latest from Capital Region Classical including concerts, events, and new episodes of Inside the Music:WebsiteFacebookInstagramYouTube© Capital Region Classical

To the Batcave! In this bonus episode, we'll hear five Suspense stars who played Gotham City bad guys opposite Adam West and Burt Ward on Batman. We'll hear Vincent Price (Egghead) and Ida Lupino (Dr. Cassandra Spellcraft) in "Fugue in C Minor" (originally aired on CBS on June 1, 1944), Roddy McDowall (Bookworm) in "One Way Street" (originally aired on CBS on January 23, 1947), Anne Baxter (Zelda the Great, and Olga, Queen of the Cossacks) in "Always Room at the Top" (originally aired on CBS on February 20, 1947), Van Johnson (The Minstrel) in "The Defense Rests" (originally aired on CBS on October 6, 1949), and Milton Berle (Louie the Lilac) in "Rave Notice" (originally aired on CBS on October 25, 1950).

Donald Macleod examines Bruckner's lifelong struggle to become the great composer we know todayFrom our modern perspective, it can be difficult to appreciate why it took so long for Anton Bruckner to be recognised as one of the leading musical voices of the 19th century. His spectacular symphonies regularly pack out concert halls today but his own era took many decades to warm up to his music. Only in his sixties did Bruckner begin to achieve the popularity he deserved and, even then, he retained a reputation as a bit of an oddball. Colleagues were disturbed by his unsophisticated manners, unquestioning religious devotion and peculiar personal habits. His tendency to see enemies all around regularly tested his relationships. His romantic choices were routinely disastrous.Music Featured: Mass No 2 in Em (Kyrie) Symphony No 2 in C minor (1872 first Version, ed. W. Carragan) (2nd mvt, Scherzo. Schnell) Requiem in D Minor, (No 2, Sequentia; Dies irae) Symphony No 9 in D Minor, (1st mvt Feierlich, misterioso) Symphony No 8 in C minor (1890 Version, ed. Novak): (2nd mvt, Scherzo, Allegro moderato - Trio, Langsam) Ave Maria WAB 6 Symphony No 1 in C Minor (1877 Rev. Linz Version, Ed. Nowak), (1st mvt, Allegro) Mass in F Minor, (3rd mvt, Credo) Symphony No 6 in A major (ed. Novak) (3rd mvt, Scherzo, Nicht schnell - Trio, Langsam) Symphony No 2 in C minor (1877 version) (2nd mvt, Andante) Symphony No 3 in D minor ‘Wagner Symphony' (1873 version) (4th mvt, Finale, Allegro – Etwas langsamer – Erstes Zeitmaß) String Quintet in F major, (4th mvt, Finale, Lebhaft bewegt) Prelude in D Minor Te Deum in C major (opening) Symphony No 7 in E Major (arr. Hermann Behn), (3rd mvt, Scherzo, Sehr schnell) Ave Maria, WAB 7 (Arr. for Horn Ensemble) Symphony No 7 in E Major (Ed. Haas), (2nd mvt, Adagio, Sehr feierlich und sehr langsam) Te Deum in C major (No 5, In te domini speravi) Virga Jesse, WAB 52 Symphony No 8 in C minor (ed. Novak) (1st mvt, Allegro moderato) Symphony No 8 in C minor (ed. Haas): (4th mvt, Finale, Feierlich, nicht schnell)Presented by Donald Macleod Produced by Chris Taylor for BBC Audio Wales & WestFor full track listings, including artist and recording details, and to listen to the pieces featured in full (for 30 days after broadcast) head to the series page for Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0022c5f And you can delve into the A-Z of all the composers we've featured on Composer of the Week here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3cjHdZlXwL7W41XGB77X3S0/composers-a-to-z

An austere fugue subject here begins with a strange leap. To play this four-note opening on a keyboard is to outline a symmetrical structure, reminding us of the bare pillar that holds up the structure. Adorned on the structure are two faster, florid themes which enter later in this long piece.  But our moment today is its ending -- a deceptive ending leads to a brief coda, but when it happens, its harmony strikes us with a surprising dissonance, feeling almost like the resolute major tonic triad that it wants to become. But a pesky A natural, the sixth scale degree, dashes this to pieces.    Bertrand Cuiller plays the C# minor fugue (with prelude) for the Netherlands Bach Society

Mr. Wobblebottom Likes to Wiggle! - By Eian Tsou Mendelssohn Trio in C Minor, No. 2 - Performed by Katherine Jung, Aurelia Solars, and Ryan Huang

☕️左岸咖啡館，乘載了法國塞納河左岸的人文底蘊，也包含對法式生活的美好嚮往。 無論是青澀回憶中的昂列奶茶、陪你晨起甦醒的拿鐵咖啡， 或是如假日心情、更輕盈的無加糖拿鐵… 走進左岸咖啡館，享受一個人的美好時光。

Baritone Roderick Williams and bassoonist Amy Harman kick off with a famous four-letter acronym as they add the next five tracks to the playlist with Anna Phoebe and Jeffrey Boakye as they go on their latest international musical journey.From the cop, the cowboy and the construction worker in Greenwich Village, the show drops in on Brahms, visits the Canary Islands, and ends up at an unorthodox Ella Fitzgerald version of a traditional Scottish folk song.Producer: Jerome Weatherald Presented with musical direction by Jeffrey Boakye and Anna PhoebeThe five tracks in this week's playlist:YMCA by The Village People Scherzo in C Minor from the F-A-E Sonata by Johannes Brahms Canarios by John Williams ‘Pourquoi me réveiller?' by Alfredo Kraus My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean by Ella FitzgeraldOther music in this episode:Linger by The Cranberries Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood by Nina Simone Macho Man by The Village People In the Navy by The Village People America from West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim Gypsy Woman by Crystal Waters Riverdance by Bill Whelan My Bonnie by Tony Sheridan and The Beat Brothers My Bonnie by Ray Charles

Send us a Text Message.In this closing episode of Season 1 of the Piano Ninja Tricks podcast, join your host Lisa Spector, The Piano Ninja, as she shares Piano Ninja Tricks from her recent all-Chopin YouTube Live concert. Lisa shares Chopin's Nocturne in C Minor, Op. 48 No. 1 as performed in her recent All Chopin program on YouTube Live. WATCH THE FULL CHOPIN PROGRAM ON YOUTUBE HERE ⬇️https://www.youtube.com/live/E92z-cyEgWMListen in to discover specific piano ninja tricks highlighted during her performance of the C minor nocturne. Lisa also shares exciting news about her upcoming projects, including re-recording all piano ninja tricks and preparing for the Beyond the Keys Piano Retreat in Monterey, California.This retreat offers a unique blend of masterclasses, private lessons, and outdoor activities designed to inspire piano enthusiasts. Learn more and sign up at https://LisaSpector.com/retreat. Tune in for this special finale and get a sneak peek into what's coming next in September!Music opening and closing played by Lisa SpectorOpening: End of Chopin Etude Op. 10 No. 12 "Revolutionary"Closing: Beginning of Chopin Etude Op. 25 No. 2 in F minorInstagram IG Broadcast Channel YouTubeBest Free Piano Ninja Fingering TricksPiano Ninja Tricksters ClubWebsitePodcast Art by Cindy Wyckoff at Design It Digital

Support Breaking Walls at https://www.patreon.com/thewallbreakers The man you just heard is famed actor Vincent Price. While Price was a film star, he had a unique contract which allowed him to act in as much radio as he wanted. By early June 1944 Price was thirty-three years old and had starred on Broadway and appeared in more than ten films. On Thursday June 1st and then again on Monday June 5th for the west coast, Price appeared with Ida Lupino in an episode of Suspense called “Fugue in C Minor.” Written by Lucille Fletcher, it's a horror story about a widower and woman who fall in love through their sharing of classical music. As their relationship progresses, the woman learns the man's children think their father murdered their mother and hid her body in a room behind the mechanism of their home's pipe organ. The instrument is so large it is part of the very structure of the house. While Vincent Price was very comfortable working in radio, many film stars weren't. By the time this west coast version of Suspense was airing Monday June 5th, 1944 at 9PM over KNX, allied soldiers were in their boats, slowly making their way across the English channel to begin their invasion of the Normandy coast of France. This would be Vincent Price's last broadcast before departing for military service. For more info on the D Day invasion, tune into Breaking Walls episode 152 which covers the entire broadcast day.

The famous C minor fugue near the beginning of the Well-Tempered Clavier expresses the emotions of sadness, loneliness, and melancholy, according to harpsichordist Masato Suzuki. Suzuki provides a sensitive performance with attention to articulate detail in the fugue subject. This, naturally, leads Christian and Alex into a comparison with race cars.  But, more straightforwardly, this fugue is part of the large journey that is the whole two books of preludes and fugues. The first prelude is a walk in the garden; its fugue is a hopeful step forward. But the following prelude in C minor is intrepid and fearless, boldly marching out the door. So, this fugue is when we finally run onto the road, with all of the uneasiness this entails. Explore with us how these first four parts of the WTC work together, what a countersubject (or even a second countersubject) is, and how this fugue embodies the very word root of "fugue" (to fly, flee).    Fugue in C minor as played by Masato Suzuki for the Netherlands Bach Society Playlist with the entire Well-Tempered Clavier

Clive Myrie is an award-winning journalist and news presenter who is one of the BBC's most experienced foreign correspondents. In 2021 he took over from John Humphrys as Question Master of the quiz show Mastermind and has also presented travel programmes about Italy and the Caribbean. Clive's parents are from Jamaica and he was born in Farnworth, near Bolton – one of seven children. As a young boy he had a paper round and one of the perks was reading the leftover newspapers which gave him the opportunity to learn about a world beyond Bolton. He loved watching the news on television and his role models were Alan Whicker and Sir Trevor McDonald who inspired him to become a journalist. After he graduated from university Clive took up a place on the BBC's reporter training scheme and in 1996 he was sent to Japan - his first posting as a foreign correspondent. During his career he has reported from war zones including Afghanistan, Iraq and Ukraine. In 2021 Clive was named Television Journalist of the Year and Network Presenter of the Year at the Royal Television Society Television Journalism Awards.Clive lives in north London with his wife Catherine. DISC ONE: String Quartet No. 14 in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 131: VI. Adagio quasi un poco andante. Composed by Ludwig van Beethoven and performed by Kodály Quartet DISC TWO: Welcome to My World - Jim Reeves DISC THREE: Così fan tutte ossia La scuola degli amanti, K.588 / Act 1 - Soave sia il vento. Composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and performed by Kiri Te Kanawa (soprano), Ann Murray (mezzo soprano), Ferruccio Furlanetto (bass) and Wiener Philharmoniker DISC FOUR: All Blues - Miles Davis DISC FIVE: Cello Suite No. 5 in C Minor, BWV 1011: I. Prelude. Composed by Johann Sebastian Bach and performed by Paul Tortelier DISC SIX: Slave to the Rhythm - Grace Jones DISC SEVEN: Long, Long Summer - Dizzy Gillespie DISC EIGHT: Stomp! - The Brothers JohnsonBOOK CHOICE: The Metropolitan Museum of Art catalogue LUXURY ITEM: Hot pepper sauce CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Long, Long Summer - Dizzy GillespiePresenter Lauren Laverne Producer Paula McGinley

Please enjoy Fugue In C Minor a great episode of the legendary Suspense - - a Old Time Radio OTR classic.

A Candle In The Window - By Andrea Kaczmarek Mendelssohn Trio in C Minor, No. 2 - Performed by Katherine Jung, Aurelia Faidley, Ryan Huang

Inside The Music delves into Ludwig van Beethoven's ability to turn a single musical idea into countless melodies. Join Derek Delaney, Artistic Director of Capital Region Classical, as he examines theme and variation works of Beethoven with live CRC performances by pianists Arnaldo Cohen, Emanuel Ax, Jonathan Biss, and Paul Lewis.32 Variations in C Minor, WoO 80Arnaldo Cohen, piano [10/23/2004 performance]6 Variations on a Theme in F Major, Op. 34Emanuel Ax [4/24/2016 performance]Piano Sonata in F Minor, Op. 57, AppassionataAndante con motoJonathan Biss, piano [4/12/2015 performance]Piano Sonata in E Major, Op. 109Gesangvoll, mit innigster Empfindung. Andante molto cantabile ed espressivoPaul Lewis [3/22/2015 [performance]Dive deeper into this episode's repertoire by heading to our YouTube channel for a discussion with some of our audience members about the program.Follow us to stay up to date on the latest from Capital Region Classical including concerts, events, and new episodes of Inside the Music:WebsiteFacebookInstagramYouTube© Capital Region Classical

This week, Aaron and Leyla continue their traversal through the Shrek-iverse in Shrek 2! Join us for a discussion of deadbeat donkeys, needing more Fiona, and Fairy Godmother being one of the villains of all time. --- Our theme song is "Obsolete" by Keshco, from the album "Filmmaker's Reference Kit Volume 2." Our other projects: Aaron's TTRPGs- https://aaronsxl.itch.io/ Aaron's TTRPG Reviews- https://www.youtube.com/@aavoigt https://aavoigt.com/

Inside The Music continues its exploration of Ludwig van Beethoven's early works which would lead to his monumental career. Join Derek Delaney, Artistic Director of Capital Region Classical, as he explores these impactful works of Beethoven with live CRC performances by pianist Rafał Blechacz, the Brentano Quartet, Pamela Frank, violin and Claude Frank, piano, and Musicians from Marlboro.Piano Sonata in C Minor, Op. 13, PathétiqueAdagio cantabileRondo: AllegroRafał Blechacz, piano [10/26/2014 performance]Quartet in F Major, Op. 18, No. 1Adagio affettuoso ed appassionatoBrentano Quartet [1/24/2010 performance]Violin Sonata in A Minor, Op. 23PrestoPamela Frank, violin and Claude Frank, piano [1/30/2000 performance]Quintet for Piano and Winds in E-flat Major, Op. 16Rondo: Allegro ma non troppoMusicians From Marlboro – Gilbert Kalish, piano; Rudy Vrbsky, oboe; Alexander Fiterstein, clarinet; Shinyee Na, bassoon; Paul LaFollette [3/2/2006 performance]Dive deeper into this episode's repertoire by heading to our YouTube channel for a discussion with some of our audience members about the program.Follow us to stay up to date on the latest from Capital Region Classical including concerts, events, and new episodes of Inside the Music:WebsiteFacebookInstagramYouTube© Capital Region Classical

Mother Earth blesses us with a trillion  natural medicines. in the ongoing reality of viruses, and contaminations, and environmental diseases, despair, and disasters it is high time we take back our human authority and integrity from the pharmaceutical agglomerates and their power driven race to profit from human disease and despair in the last century.   This is our golden opportunity to take back our rightful reigns in reclaiming indigenous, native systems of medicine- so that, once again, we can heal, nourish ourselves, each other and Mother Nature.Background Music: Rachmaninoff - Piano Concerto #2 in C Minor, Op. 18 Support the Show.May Peace Be Your Journey~www.mayatiwari.comwww.facebook.com/mayatiwariahimsa.Buzzsprout.com

SOME LISTENERS ARE LOSING MIXES ON THEIR APPLE PODCASTS. NOT SURE THE REASON, BUT ALL MIXES ARE AVAILABLE ON THE PODOMATIC APP. *Explicit Mix* - 128BPM - New workout mix featuring songs in the key of C Minor!  Instagram: @djrolemodel ❤❤❤ #djrolemodel

This Day in Legal History: Racist Restrictive Covenants Struck DownOn May 3, 1948, a significant legal decision was rendered by the United States Supreme Court, fundamentally altering the landscape of civil rights and property law. The case, Shelley v. Kraemer, addressed the pernicious practice of racially-restrictive covenants in real estate. These covenants were agreements embedded in the deeds of properties that prohibited the sale of these properties to individuals of certain races, most commonly African Americans.The Supreme Court's decision in Shelley v. Kraemer struck down the legal enforcement of these covenants, ruling that while private parties may enter into whatever agreements they choose, they cannot seek judicial enforcement of covenants that violated constitutional principles of equality. The Court held that such enforcement by state courts constituted state action and therefore was subject to the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.The background of the case involved an African American family, the Shelleys, who purchased a home in a neighborhood in St. Louis, Missouri. This neighborhood had an existing covenant that barred African Americans from owning property. When the Shelleys moved in, several of their white neighbors sought to enforce the covenant to prevent them from taking ownership.The Missouri Supreme Court had originally sided with the neighbors, ruling that the covenant was enforceable. However, the U.S. Supreme Court's decision reversed this ruling. Justice Fred M. Vinson, writing for the majority, emphasized that the enforcement of racially restrictive covenants by state courts amounted to a state action that denied equal protection of the laws.This landmark decision was a crucial step forward in the fight against institutionalized racism, particularly in housing. It reflected the growing judicial recognition of civil rights issues and set a precedent for future rulings related to racial discrimination. Moreover, Shelley v. Kraemer highlighted the judiciary's role in upholding constitutional rights against socially entrenched racial discrimination.The ruling did not, however, eliminate racially restrictive covenants overnight. Many neighborhoods continued to observe such agreements informally, and it wasn't until later legislative efforts, such as the Fair Housing Act of 1968, that such practices were comprehensively outlawed. Nevertheless, the Shelley v. Kraemer decision remains a pivotal moment in American legal history, celebrated for its affirmation of the principles of equality and justice enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.The Biden administration is set to implement a rule that will allow undocumented immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children and are covered under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program to receive subsidized health insurance through Obamacare. This rule, scheduled for release by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), will redefine "lawfully present" individuals to include DACA recipients, enabling them to access premium tax credits and cost-sharing reductions when purchasing plans from federal and state marketplaces beginning November 1, 2024.HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra emphasized the importance of this change, noting that over a third of DACA recipients currently lack health insurance. The inclusion of DACA recipients is expected to improve not only their health and wellbeing but also contribute positively to the overall economy. Additionally, the rule will permit these individuals to enroll in basic health programs similar to Medicaid in certain states, provided they earn no more than 200% of the poverty level.The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services anticipate that this adjustment could result in 100,000 previously uninsured DACA recipients gaining health coverage. This decision marks a significant shift from previous policies where DACA recipients were excluded from being considered "lawfully present" for insurance purposes due to the original rationale behind the DACA policy, which did not address eligibility for insurance affordability programs.The significant development in this story is the modification of the definition of "lawfully present" by the HHS to include DACA recipients. This change is crucial as it directly impacts the eligibility of these individuals for health insurance subsidies under Obamacare, a shift in policy that broadens access to healthcare for a previously marginalized group.DACA Immigrants Win Access to Obamacare Subsidies in HHS RuleIn a groundbreaking trial in Chicago, attorneys for Angela Valadez, an 89-year-old woman who developed colon cancer, argued that pharmaceutical companies GSK and Boehringer Ingelheim were aware that the heartburn medication Zantac could become carcinogenic under certain conditions but failed to alert the public. The lawyers contended that Zantac's active ingredient, ranitidine, could transform into a cancer-causing substance called NDMA if it aged or was subjected to high temperatures, and accused the companies of covering up the degradation of the pills by altering their appearance.GSK and Boehringer Ingelheim, the only defendants in this trial after other companies reached settlements, defended their product. They insisted that Zantac has been proven safe and effective through numerous studies and that no direct evidence links Zantac to Valadez's cancer, citing her other risk factors for the disease. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had removed Zantac and its generic versions from the market in 2020 after detecting NDMA in some samples. Despite this, a significant legal victory came for the companies in 2022 when a judge dismissed about 50,000 claims, questioning the scientific backing of the assertion that Zantac could cause cancer. However, with more than 70,000 cases still pending, largely in Delaware, the issue remains a significant legal and public health concern. A newer version of Zantac with a different active ingredient is currently on the market, which does not contain ranitidine.GSK knew about Zantac cancer risk, attorneys tell jury in first trial | ReutersIn the ongoing criminal trial of former U.S. President Donald Trump in New York, a new defensive angle emerged as Trump's lawyer portrayed the hush money payment at the center of the trial as potentially extortive. The payment in question involved Stormy Daniels, real name Stephanie Clifford, who was reportedly paid to keep quiet about an alleged encounter with Trump prior to the 2016 presidential election.During the proceedings, defense attorney Emil Bove questioned Keith Davidson, Daniels' former lawyer, about his history with negotiating cash-for-dirt agreements with celebrities, hinting that Davidson's actions bordered on extortion. Trump's legal team appears to be focusing on undermining the credibility of prosecution witnesses like Daniels and Michael Cohen, Trump's former lawyer and fixer, who arranged the controversial $130,000 payment. Trump has denied any encounter with Daniels and pleaded not guilty to the charges of falsifying business records to conceal the payment.This trial aspect dovetails with previous testimony regarding Cohen's disappointment over not receiving a major governmental post after Trump's election victory. Cohen, who later disassociated from Trump and criticized him publicly, is expected to be a key witness. He has already served prison time for his role in the payment scheme.Moreover, the trial has seen further complications due to Trump's conduct outside the courtroom. Justice Juan Merchan has had to address violations of a gag order by Trump, who has been fined and could potentially face jail for continuing infractions. Trump has criticized the trial publicly, claiming it is an attempt to prevent his political comeback and alleging conflicts of interest by those involved in the trial.Trump's various legal troubles include other serious charges, such as attempting to overturn the 2020 election results and mishandling classified documents, adding layers of complexity to his current legal battles as he campaigns for the 2024 presidential election. These developments suggest a trial fraught with legal and political ramifications, with Trump's defense pushing back against what they suggest are questionable prosecutorial tactics and witness credibility.Trump trial hears Michael Cohen was 'despondent' he was denied a government post | ReutersTrump lawyer suggests hush money payment was extortion | ReutersThis week's closing theme is by Johannes Brahms.Johannes Brahms, born on May 7, 1833, in Hamburg, Germany, is one of the most revered figures in the history of classical music. His compositions span a wide range of genres, including chamber works, symphonies, and choral compositions. Brahms was known for his perfectionist approach, often taking years to refine his works to his satisfaction.Among his most celebrated creations is Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68. This symphony, which took Brahms about 14 years to complete, is frequently dubbed "Beethoven's Tenth" due to its stylistic similarities to Ludwig van Beethoven's symphonic work, especially the Ninth Symphony. Brahms's dedication to living up to Beethoven's legacy is evident in the meticulous structure and emotional depth of the piece.Symphony No. 1 was first performed in 1876, and since then, it has become a staple in the orchestral repertoire. It is particularly noted for its profound depth and complexity. The symphony unfolds over four movements, beginning with a dramatic and tense first movement that features a memorable timpani motif, which sets a somber and introspective mood. This is followed by a gentle and lyrical second movement, offering a stark contrast to the dramatic opening. The third movement, often considered the heart of the symphony, showcases Brahms's skill in thematic development and orchestral color. The finale is a triumphant resolution to the symphony's earlier tensions, culminating in a powerful and uplifting theme that echoes Beethoven's own symphonic climaxes.This week's closing theme features this masterful work by Brahms, inviting listeners to explore the depths of his musical genius. Symphony No. 1 stands not just as a nod to Beethoven's influence but as a significant original contribution to the symphonic form, marking Brahms's triumphant emergence as a composer of the first order in the orchestral domain.Without further ado, Brahm's Symphony No. 1 in C Minor, Op. 68 - III. Un poco allegretto e grazioso, enjoy. Get full access to Minimum Competence - Daily Legal News Podcast at www.minimumcomp.com/subscribe

Back during the pandemic, our friends and fellow podcast Rockin' the Suburbs hosted a weekly Zoom jam session for its listeners called the “Friday Night Hootenanny.” It was at those jams that Jay met our guest this week, Mike Wagner. Mike's just released an album, as Total Strangers, featuring many of the musicians that joined those Friday jams. Songs:Total Strangers - “All Falling Down”Total Strangers - “Card Trick”Nick joins the show minutes after moving into his new place and brings us a Three for Thursday this week.Songs:Quade - “The Balance”Lusine - “Come and Go”Scary Goldings - “Professor Vicarious”Via Music Radar, Greg discovered an interview from late March on the The Colin & Samir Show with Jacob Collier. In it, Collier takes issue with Rick Rubin's “Creativity Manifesto” and the guys discuss his points. It's a conversation worth sticking around for…Song:Bach - “Prelude No. 2 in C Minor”

The Honourable Lady Rita Rae is a lawyer and judge, and the current Rector of the University of Glasgow. Early in her career she was a rare woman in the heavily male-dominated legal world. She went on to work on many high profile criminal cases over five decades as a solicitor, an advocate and subsequently a judge in Scotland's Supreme Court.Rita grew up in Plains, Airdrie, to the east of Glasgow. She was a shy child but earned the nickname ‘The Last Word' from her parents because of her need to argue her case when she felt something wasn't right. She was inspired to become a lawyer by her maternal grandfather, a noted advocate and anti-fascist from Naples.Her parents met in a munitions factory in Italy where her mother was working. Her father was a Scottish bomb disposal expert helping to dismantle munitions after the war. They married and moved to Scotland, but Rita and her brother were not accepted by her Scottish family because of their Catholicism. Rita became a solicitor in 1974, entering a world dominated by men. When told by a senior colleague that women were ‘emotionally unsuitable for court work', she set about proving him wrong. She became a partner in her firm at the age of 27, and was called to the bar in 1982, one of just 13 female advocates in Scotland at the time. She was made a Sheriff in 1997 and a Judge of the Supreme Courts in 2014.In 2021 she was elected Rector of the University of Glasgow, the first female working rector in the university's 570-year history.DISC ONE: Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18 - III. Allegro scherzando. Composed by Sergei Rachmaninoff, performed by Vladimir Ashkenazy (piano) and London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by André Previn DISC TWO: “Ah! Dite alla giovine” from Act 2 of La Traviata. Composed by Giuseppe Verdi, performed by Angela Gheorghiu (soprano), Leo Nucci (baritone) and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, conducted by Sir Georg Solti DISC THREE: Mamma - Beniamino Gigli DISC FOUR: Aranjuez mon amour - Massimo Ranieri DISC FIVE: Cheap Flights - Fascinating Aïda DISC SIX: “The Flower Song” (“La fleur que tu m'avais jetee”), Carmen, Act II. Composed by Georges Bizet, performed by José Carreras (tenor) and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, conducted by Jacques Delacôte DISC SEVEN: Ave Maria. Composed by Giulio Caccini (Arr. Brinums) and performed by Inessa Galante (Soprano), Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Aleksandrs Vilumanis DISC EIGHT: Climb Ev'ry Mountain - Peggy WoodBOOK CHOICE: The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, its Regions and their Peoples by David Gilmour LUXURY ITEM: A solar powered car CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Mamma - Beniamino Gigli Presenter Lauren Laverne Producers Paula McGinley and Tim Bano

This week is full of beautiful cello headbanging as Grace takes us on another journey to Get Bakedthoven! We have a High Thought about saxopets (or trumpophones?), a messy and thrilling Bong Box on the trials of living in the age of apps, and a discussion of who did or did not influence the character of Lydia Tar. Shoutout to Gretchen Yanover! Roll up, light up, and join us. All audio included in this episode for educational discussion. Watch the full videos here: Calidore String Quartet plays Mendelssohn's Quartet in D major for Strings, Op.44, No.1 Jerusalem Quartet plays Shostakovich String Quartet No. 8 in C Minor, Op.110 The Brentano Quartet plays Schumann String Quartet in A Major, op.41, no.3 Nina Lee: Cellist for Brentano String Quartet interview on I am every GIRL Marin Alsop interview on Wired Marin Alsop conducts National Youth Orchestra playing Mahler's Symphony No.1 in D Major, 'Titan' Gretchen Yanover for Northwest Sinfonietta playing 'Suddenly I Felt Joy' looped live ---- Find us: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.stonerchickspodcast.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Want more Stoner Chicks? Become a Patron! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/stonerchicks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Grace Penzell, Phoebe Richards (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@27phoebe27⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠), Kayla Teel (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@kayla_teel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠), and Stephani Thompson (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@fannytragic⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠). Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@stonerchickspodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Stoner Chicks Podcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@broccolibroads⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Email: stonerchickspodcast@gmail.com Snail Mail: PO Box 80586, Seattle, WA 98108 --- Edited by German at YPEditor.com; Theme Song by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jessica DiMari⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠; Cover Art by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ben Redder⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠AJ Dent⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and Kayla Teel

On this episode of the Old Time Radiocast we present you with two stories from the classic radio program Suspense! Check out all of our podcasts at CrypticCountyPodcasts.com where you'll find shows like Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast and Odd Trails.      

Episode Notes The Oxford English Dictionary is the gold-standard of all English language dictionaries. However, its most prolific contributor, a surgeon/War Hero/psychotic murderer, did so from a place you'd least expect it. W.C. Minor Instagram // Facebook // YouTube // Twitter WikiWalks.net Support Wiki Walks by contributing to their tip jar: https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/wikiwalks

Episode 169 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Piece of My Heart" and the short, tragic life of Janis Joplin. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a half-hour bonus episode available, on "Spinning Wheel" by Blood, Sweat & Tears. 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 There are two Mixcloud mixes this time. As there are so many songs by Big Brother and the Holding Company and Janis Joplin excerpted, and Mixcloud won't allow more than four songs by the same artist in any mix, I've had to post the songs not in quite the same order in which they appear in the podcast. But the mixes are here — one, two . For information on Janis Joplin I used three biographies -- Scars of Sweet Paradise by Alice Echols, Janis: Her Life and Music by Holly George-Warren, and Buried Alive by Myra Friedman. I also referred to the chapter '“Being Good Isn't Always Easy": Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, Dusty Springfield, and the Color of Soul' in Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination by Jack Hamilton. Some information on Bessie Smith came from Bessie Smith by Jackie Kay, a book I can't really recommend given the lack of fact-checking, and Bessie by Chris Albertson. I also referred to Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday by Angela Y. Davis And the best place to start with Joplin's music is this five-CD box, which contains both Big Brother and the Holding Company albums she was involved in, plus her two studio albums and bonus tracks. 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 contains discussion of drug addiction and overdose, alcoholism, mental illness, domestic abuse, child abandonment, and racism. If those subjects are likely to cause you upset, you may want to check the transcript or skip this one rather than listen. Also, a subject I should probably say a little more about in this intro because I know I have inadvertently caused upset to at least one listener with this in the past. When it comes to Janis Joplin, it is *impossible* to talk about her without discussing her issues with her weight and self-image. The way I write often involves me paraphrasing the opinions of the people I'm writing about, in a mode known as close third person, and sometimes that means it can look like I am stating those opinions as my own, and sometimes things I say in that mode which *I* think are obviously meant in context to be critiques of those attitudes can appear to others to be replicating them. At least once, I have seriously upset a fat listener when talking about issues related to weight in this manner. I'm going to try to be more careful here, but just in case, I'm going to say before I begin that I think fatphobia is a pernicious form of bigotry, as bad as any other form of bigotry. I'm fat myself and well aware of how systemic discrimination affects fat people. I also think more generally that the pressure put on women to look a particular way is pernicious and disgusting in ways I can't even begin to verbalise, and causes untold harm. If *ANYTHING* I say in this episode comes across as sounding otherwise, that's because I haven't expressed myself clearly enough. Like all people, Janis Joplin had negative characteristics, and at times I'm going to say things that are critical of those. But when it comes to anything to do with her weight or her appearance, if *anything* I say sounds critical of her, rather than of a society that makes women feel awful for their appearance, it isn't meant to. Anyway, on with the show. On January the nineteenth, 1943, Seth Joplin typed up a letter to his wife Dorothy, which read “I wish to tender my congratulations on the anniversary of your successful completion of your production quota for the nine months ending January 19, 1943. I realize that you passed through a period of inflation such as you had never before known—yet, in spite of this, you met your goal by your supreme effort during the early hours of January 19, a good three weeks ahead of schedule.” As you can probably tell from that message, the Joplin family were a strange mixture of ultraconformism and eccentricity, and those two opposing forces would dominate the personality of their firstborn daughter for the whole of her life.  Seth Joplin was a respected engineer at Texaco, where he worked for forty years, but he had actually dropped out of engineering school before completing his degree. His favourite pastime when he wasn't at work was to read -- he was a voracious reader -- and to listen to classical music, which would often move him to tears, but he had also taught himself to make bathtub gin during prohibition, and smoked cannabis. Dorothy, meanwhile, had had the possibility of a singing career before deciding to settle down and become a housewife, and was known for having a particularly beautiful soprano voice. Both were, by all accounts, fiercely intelligent people, but they were also as committed as anyone to the ideals of the middle-class family even as they chafed against its restrictions. Like her mother, young Janis had a beautiful soprano voice, and she became a soloist in her church choir, but after the age of six, she was not encouraged to sing much. Dorothy had had a thyroid operation which destroyed her singing voice, and the family got rid of their piano soon after (different sources say that this was either because Dorothy found her daughter's singing painful now that she couldn't sing herself, or because Seth was upset that his wife could no longer sing. Either seems plausible.) Janis was pushed to be a high-achiever -- she was given a library card as soon as she could write her name, and encouraged to use it, and she was soon advanced in school, skipping a couple of grades. She was also by all accounts a fiercely talented painter, and her parents paid for art lessons. From everything one reads about her pre-teen years, she was a child prodigy who was loved by everyone and who was clearly going to be a success of some kind. Things started to change when she reached her teenage years. Partly, this was just her getting into rock and roll music, which her father thought a fad -- though even there, she differed from her peers. She loved Elvis, but when she heard "Hound Dog", she loved it so much that she tracked down a copy of Big Mama Thornton's original, and told her friends she preferred that: [Excerpt: Big Mama Thornton, "Hound Dog"] Despite this, she was still also an exemplary student and overachiever. But by the time she turned fourteen, things started to go very wrong for her. Partly this was just down to her relationship with her father changing -- she adored him, but he became more distant from his daughters as they grew into women. But also, puberty had an almost wholly negative effect on her, at least by the standards of that time and place. She put on weight (which, again, I do not think is a negative thing, but she did, and so did everyone around her), she got a bad case of acne which didn't ever really go away, and she also didn't develop breasts particularly quickly -- which, given that she was a couple of years younger than the other people in the same classes at school, meant she stood out even more. In the mid-sixties, a doctor apparently diagnosed her as having a "hormone imbalance" -- something that got to her as a possible explanation for why she was, to quote from a letter she wrote then, "not really a woman or enough of one or something." She wondered if "maybe something as simple as a pill could have helped out or even changed that part of me I call ME and has been so messed up.” I'm not a doctor and even if I were, diagnosing historical figures is an unethical thing to do, but certainly the acne, weight gain, and mental health problems she had are all consistent with PCOS, the most common endocrine disorder among women, and it seems likely given what the doctor told her that this was the cause. But at the time all she knew was that she was different, and that in the eyes of her fellow students she had gone from being pretty to being ugly. She seems to have been a very trusting, naive, person who was often the brunt of jokes but who desperately needed to be accepted, and it became clear that her appearance wasn't going to let her fit into the conformist society she was being brought up in, while her high intelligence, low impulse control, and curiosity meant she couldn't even fade into the background. This left her one other option, and she decided that she would deliberately try to look and act as different from everyone else as possible. That way, it would be a conscious choice on her part to reject the standards of her fellow pupils, rather than her being rejected by them. She started to admire rebels. She became a big fan of Jerry Lee Lewis, whose music combined the country music she'd grown up hearing in Texas, the R&B she liked now, and the rebellious nature she was trying to cultivate: [Excerpt: Jerry Lee Lewis, "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On"] When Lewis' career was derailed by his marriage to his teenage cousin, Joplin wrote an angry letter to Time magazine complaining that they had mistreated him in their coverage. But as with so many people of her generation, her love of rock and roll music led her first to the blues and then to folk, and she soon found herself listening to Odetta: [Excerpt: Odetta, "Muleskinner Blues"] One of her first experiences of realising she could gain acceptance from her peers by singing was when she was hanging out with the small group of Bohemian teenagers she was friendly with, and sang an Odetta song, mimicking her voice exactly. But young Janis Joplin was listening to an eclectic range of folk music, and could mimic more than just Odetta. For all that her later vocal style was hugely influenced by Odetta and by other Black singers like Big Mama Thornton and Etta James, her friends in her late teens and early twenties remember her as a vocal chameleon with an achingly pure soprano, who would more often than Odetta be imitating the great Appalachian traditional folk singer Jean Ritchie: [Excerpt: Jean Ritchie, "Lord Randall"] She was, in short, trying her best to become a Beatnik, despite not having any experience of that subculture other than what she read in books -- though she *did* read about them in books, devouring things like Kerouac's On The Road. She came into conflict with her mother, who didn't understand what was happening to her daughter, and who tried to get family counselling to understand what was going on. Her father, who seemed to relate more to Janis, but who was more quietly eccentric, put an end to that, but Janis would still for the rest of her life talk about how her mother had taken her to doctors who thought she was going to end up "either in jail or an insane asylum" to use her words. From this point on, and for the rest of her life, she was torn between a need for approval from her family and her peers, and a knowledge that no matter what she did she couldn't fit in with normal societal expectations. In high school she was a member of the Future Nurses of America, the Future Teachers of America, the Art Club, and Slide Rule Club, but she also had a reputation as a wild girl, and as sexually active (even though by all accounts at this point she was far less so than most of the so-called "good girls" – but her later activity was in part because she felt that if she was going to have that reputation anyway she might as well earn it). She also was known to express radical opinions, like that segregation was wrong, an opinion that the other students in her segregated Texan school didn't even think was wrong, but possibly some sort of sign of mental illness. Her final High School yearbook didn't contain a single other student's signature. And her initial choice of university, Lamar State College of Technology, was not much better. In the next town over, and attended by many of the same students, it had much the same attitudes as the school she'd left. Almost the only long-term effect her initial attendance at university had on her was a negative one -- she found there was another student at the college who was better at painting. Deciding that if she wasn't going to be the best at something she didn't want to do it at all, she more or less gave up on painting at that point. But there was one positive. One of the lecturers at Lamar was Francis Edward "Ab" Abernethy, who would in the early seventies go on to become the Secretary and Editor of the Texas Folklore Society, and was also a passionate folk musician, playing double bass in string bands. Abernethy had a great collection of blues 78s. and it was through this collection that Janis first discovered classic blues, and in particular Bessie Smith: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Black Mountain Blues"] A couple of episodes ago, we had a long look at the history of the music that now gets called "the blues" -- the music that's based around guitars, and generally involves a solo male vocalist, usually Black during its classic period. At the time that music was being made though it wouldn't have been thought of as "the blues" with no modifiers by most people who were aware of it. At the start, even the songs they were playing weren't thought of as blues by the male vocalist/guitarists who played them -- they called the songs they played "reels". The music released by people like Blind Lemon Jefferson, Son House, Robert Johnson, Kokomo Arnold and so on was thought of as blues music, and people would understand and agree with a phrase like "Lonnie Johnson is a blues singer", but it wasn't the first thing people thought of when they talked about "the blues". Until relatively late -- probably some time in the 1960s -- if you wanted to talk about blues music made by Black men with guitars and only that music, you talked about "country blues". If you thought about "the blues", with no qualifiers, you thought about a rather different style of music, one that white record collectors started later to refer to as "classic blues" to differentiate it from what they were now calling "the blues". Nowadays of course if you say "classic blues", most people will think you mean Muddy Waters or John Lee Hooker, people who were contemporary at the time those white record collectors were coming up with their labels, and so that style of music gets referred to as "vaudeville blues", or as "classic female blues": [Excerpt: Mamie Smith, "Crazy Blues"] What we just heard was the first big blues hit performed by a Black person, from 1920, and as we discussed in the episode on "Crossroads" that revolutionised the whole record industry when it came out. The song was performed by Mamie Smith, a vaudeville performer, and was originally titled "Harlem Blues" by its writer, Perry Bradford, before he changed the title to "Crazy Blues" to get it to a wider audience. Bradford was an important figure in the vaudeville scene, though other than being the credited writer of "Keep A-Knockin'" he's little known these days. He was a Black musician and grew up playing in minstrel shows (the history of minstrelsy is a topic for another day, but it's more complicated than the simple image of blackface that we are aware of today -- though as with many "more complicated than that" things it is, also the simple image of blackface we're aware of). He was the person who persuaded OKeh records that there would be a market for music made by Black people that sounded Black (though as we're going to see in this episode, what "sounding Black" means is a rather loaded question). "Crazy Blues" was the result, and it was a massive hit, even though it was marketed specifically towards Black listeners: [Excerpt: Mamie Smith, "Crazy Blues"] The big stars of the early years of recorded blues were all making records in the shadow of "Crazy Blues", and in the case of its very biggest stars, they were working very much in the same mould. The two most important blues stars of the twenties both got their start in vaudeville, and were both women. Ma Rainey, like Mamie Smith, first performed in minstrel shows, but where Mamie Smith's early records had her largely backed by white musicians, Rainey was largely backed by Black musicians, including on several tracks Louis Armstrong: [Excerpt: Ma Rainey, "See See Rider"] Rainey's band was initially led by Thomas Dorsey, one of the most important men in American music, who we've talked about before in several episodes, including the last one. He was possibly the single most important figure in two different genres -- hokum music, when he, under the name "Georgia Tom" recorded "It's Tight Like That" with Tampa Red: [Excerpt: Tampa Red and Georgia Tom, "It's Tight Like That"] And of course gospel music, which to all intents and purposes he invented, and much of whose repertoire he wrote: [Excerpt: Mahalia Jackson, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord"] When Dorsey left Rainey's band, as we discussed right back in episode five, he was replaced by a female pianist, Lil Henderson. The blues was a woman's genre. And Ma Rainey was, by preference, a woman's woman, though she was married to a man: [Excerpt: Ma Rainey, "Prove it on Me"] So was the biggest star of the classic blues era, who was originally mentored by Rainey. Bessie Smith, like Rainey, was a queer woman who had relationships with men but was far more interested in other women.  There were stories that Bessie Smith actually got her start in the business by being kidnapped by Ma Rainey, and forced into performing on the same bills as her in the vaudeville show she was touring in, and that Rainey taught Smith to sing blues in the process. In truth, Rainey mentored Smith more in stagecraft and the ways of the road than in singing, and neither woman was only a blues singer, though both had huge success with their blues records.  Indeed, since Rainey was already in the show, Smith was initially hired as a dancer rather than a singer, and she also worked as a male impersonator. But Smith soon branched out on her own -- from the beginning she was obviously a star. The great jazz clarinettist Sidney Bechet later said of her "She had this trouble in her, this thing that would not let her rest sometimes, a meanness that came and took her over. But what she had was alive … Bessie, she just wouldn't let herself be; it seemed she couldn't let herself be." Bessie Smith was signed by Columbia Records in 1923, as part of the rush to find and record as many Black women blues singers as possible. Her first recording session produced "Downhearted Blues", which became, depending on which sources you read, either the biggest-selling blues record since "Crazy Blues" or the biggest-selling blues record ever, full stop, selling three quarters of a million copies in the six months after its release: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Downhearted Blues"] Smith didn't make royalties off record sales, only making a flat fee, but she became the most popular Black performer of the 1920s. Columbia signed her to an exclusive contract, and she became so rich that she would literally travel between gigs on her own private train. She lived an extravagant life in every way, giving lavishly to her friends and family, but also drinking extraordinary amounts of liquor, having regular affairs, and also often physically or verbally attacking those around her. By all accounts she was not a comfortable person to be around, and she seemed to be trying to fit an entire lifetime into every moment. From 1923 through 1929 she had a string of massive hits. She recorded material in a variety of styles, including the dirty blues: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Empty Bed Blues] And with accompanists like Louis Armstrong: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith with Louis Armstrong, "Cold in Hand Blues"] But the music for which she became best known, and which sold the best, was when she sang about being mistreated by men, as on one of her biggest hits, "'Tain't Nobody's Biz-Ness if I Do" -- and a warning here, I'm going to play a clip of the song, which treats domestic violence in a way that may be upsetting: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "'Tain't Nobody's Biz-Ness if I Do"] That kind of material can often seem horrifying to today's listeners -- and quite correctly so, as domestic violence is a horrifying thing -- and it sounds entirely too excusing of the man beating her up for anyone to find it comfortable listening. But the Black feminist scholar Angela Davis has made a convincing case that while these records, and others by Smith's contemporaries, can't reasonably be considered to be feminist, they *are* at the very least more progressive than they now seem, in that they were, even if excusing it, pointing to a real problem which was otherwise left unspoken. And that kind of domestic violence and abuse *was* a real problem, including in Smith's own life. By all accounts she was terrified of her husband, Jack Gee, who would frequently attack her because of her affairs with other people, mostly women. But she was still devastated when he left her for a younger woman, not only because he had left her, but also because he kidnapped their adopted son and had him put into a care home, falsely claiming she had abused him. Not only that, but before Jack left her closest friend had been Jack's niece Ruby and after the split she never saw Ruby again -- though after her death Ruby tried to have a blues career as "Ruby Smith", taking her aunt's surname and recording a few tracks with Sammy Price, the piano player who worked with Sister Rosetta Tharpe: [Excerpt: Ruby Smith with Sammy Price, "Make Me Love You"] The same month, May 1929, that Gee left her, Smith recorded what was to become her last big hit, and most well-known song, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out": [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out"] And that could have been the theme for the rest of her life. A few months after that record came out, the Depression hit, pretty much killing the market for blues records. She carried on recording until 1931, but the records weren't selling any more. And at the same time, the talkies came in in the film industry, which along with the Depression ended up devastating the vaudeville audience. Her earnings were still higher than most, but only a quarter of what they had been a year or two earlier. She had one last recording session in 1933, produced by John Hammond for OKeh Records, where she showed that her style had developed over the years -- it was now incorporating the newer swing style, and featured future swing stars Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden in the backing band: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Gimme a Pigfoot"] Hammond was not hugely impressed with the recordings, preferring her earlier records, and they would be the last she would ever make. She continued as a successful, though no longer record-breaking, live act until 1937, when she and her common-law husband, Lionel Hampton's uncle Richard Morgan, were in a car crash. Morgan escaped, but Smith died of her injuries and was buried on October the fourth 1937. Ten thousand people came to her funeral, but she was buried in an unmarked grave -- she was still legally married to Gee, even though they'd been separated for eight years, and while he supposedly later became rich from songwriting royalties from some of her songs (most of her songs were written by other people, but she wrote a few herself) he refused to pay for a headstone for her. Indeed on more than one occasion he embezzled money that had been raised by other people to provide a headstone. Bessie Smith soon became Joplin's favourite singer of all time, and she started trying to copy her vocals. But other than discovering Smith's music, Joplin seems to have had as terrible a time at university as at school, and soon dropped out and moved back in with her parents. She went to business school for a short while, where she learned some secretarial skills, and then she moved west, going to LA where two of her aunts lived, to see if she could thrive better in a big West Coast city than she did in small-town Texas. Soon she moved from LA to Venice Beach, and from there had a brief sojourn in San Francisco, where she tried to live out her beatnik fantasies at a time when the beatnik culture was starting to fall apart. She did, while she was there, start smoking cannabis, though she never got a taste for that drug, and took Benzedrine and started drinking much more heavily than she had before. She soon lost her job, moved back to Texas, and re-enrolled at the same college she'd been at before. But now she'd had a taste of real Bohemian life -- she'd been singing at coffee houses, and having affairs with both men and women -- and soon she decided to transfer to the University of Texas at Austin. At this point, Austin was very far from the cultural centre it has become in recent decades, and it was still a straitlaced Texan town, but it was far less so than Port Arthur, and she soon found herself in a folk group, the Waller Creek Boys. Janis would play autoharp and sing, sometimes Bessie Smith covers, but also the more commercial country and folk music that was popular at the time, like "Silver Threads and Golden Needles", a song that had originally been recorded by Wanda Jackson but at that time was a big hit for Dusty Springfield's group The Springfields: [Excerpt: The Waller Creek Boys, "Silver Threads and Golden Needles"] But even there, Joplin didn't fit in comfortably. The venue where the folk jams were taking place was a segregated venue, as everywhere around Austin was. And she was enough of a misfit that the campus newspaper did an article on her headlined "She Dares to Be Different!", which read in part "She goes barefooted when she feels like it, wears Levi's to class because they're more comfortable, and carries her Autoharp with her everywhere she goes so that in case she gets the urge to break out into song it will be handy." There was a small group of wannabe-Beatniks, including Chet Helms, who we've mentioned previously in the Grateful Dead episode, Gilbert Shelton, who went on to be a pioneer of alternative comics and create the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, and Shelton's partner in Rip-Off Press, Dave Moriarty, but for the most part the atmosphere in Austin was only slightly better for Janis than it had been in Port Arthur. The final straw for her came when in an annual charity fundraiser joke competition to find the ugliest man on campus, someone nominated her for the "award". She'd had enough of Texas. She wanted to go back to California. She and Chet Helms, who had dropped out of the university earlier and who, like her, had already spent some time on the West Coast, decided to hitch-hike together to San Francisco. Before leaving, she made a recording for her ex-girlfriend Julie Paul, a country and western musician, of a song she'd written herself. It's recorded in what many say was Janis' natural voice -- a voice she deliberately altered in performance in later years because, she would tell people, she didn't think there was room for her singing like that in an industry that already had Joan Baez and Judy Collins. In her early years she would alternate between singing like this and doing her imitations of Black women, but the character of Janis Joplin who would become famous never sang like this. It may well be the most honest thing that she ever recorded, and the most revealing of who she really was: [Excerpt: Janis Joplin, "So Sad to Be Alone"] Joplin and Helms made it to San Francisco, and she started performing at open-mic nights and folk clubs around the Bay Area, singing in her Bessie Smith and Odetta imitation voice, and sometimes making a great deal of money by sounding different from the wispier-voiced women who were the norm at those venues. The two friends parted ways, and she started performing with two other folk musicians, Larry Hanks and Roger Perkins, and she insisted that they would play at least one Bessie Smith song at every performance: [Excerpt: Janis Joplin, Larry Hanks, and Roger Perkins, "Black Mountain Blues (live in San Francisco)"] Often the trio would be joined by Billy Roberts, who at that time had just started performing the song that would make his name, "Hey Joe", and Joplin was soon part of the folk scene in the Bay Area, and admired by Dino Valenti, David Crosby, and Jerry Garcia among others. She also sang a lot with Jorma Kaukonnen, and recordings of the two of them together have circulated for years: [Excerpt: Janis Joplin and Jorma Kaukonnen, "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out"] Through 1963, 1964, and early 1965 Joplin ping-ponged from coast to coast, spending time in the Bay Area, then Greenwich Village, dropping in on her parents then back to the Bay Area, and she started taking vast quantities of methamphetamine. Even before moving to San Francisco she had been an occasional user of amphetamines – at the time they were regularly prescribed to students as study aids during exam periods, and she had also been taking them to try to lose some of the weight she always hated. But while she was living in San Francisco she became dependent on the drug. At one point her father was worried enough about her health to visit her in San Francisco, where she managed to fool him that she was more or less OK. But she looked to him for reassurance that things would get better for her, and he couldn't give it to her. He told her about a concept that he called the "Saturday night swindle", the idea that you work all week so you can go out and have fun on Saturday in the hope that that will make up for everything else, but that it never does. She had occasional misses with what would have been lucky breaks -- at one point she was in a motorcycle accident just as record labels were interested in signing her, and by the time she got out of the hospital the chance had gone. She became engaged to another speed freak, one who claimed to be an engineer and from a well-off background, but she was becoming severely ill from what was by now a dangerous amphetamine habit, and in May 1965 she decided to move back in with her parents, get clean, and have a normal life. Her new fiance was going to do the same, and they were going to have the conformist life her parents had always wanted, and which she had always wanted to want. Surely with a husband who loved her she could find a way to fit in and just be normal. She kicked the addiction, and wrote her fiance long letters describing everything about her family and the new normal life they were going to have together, and they show her painfully trying to be optimistic about the future, like one where she described her family to him: "My mother—Dorothy—worries so and loves her children dearly. Republican and Methodist, very sincere, speaks in clichés which she really means and is very good to people. (She thinks you have a lovely voice and is terribly prepared to like you.) My father—richer than when I knew him and kind of embarrassed about it—very well read—history his passion—quiet and very excited to have me home because I'm bright and we can talk (about antimatter yet—that impressed him)! I keep telling him how smart you are and how proud I am of you.…" She went back to Lamar, her mother started sewing her a wedding dress, and for much of the year she believed her fiance was going to be her knight in shining armour. But as it happened, the fiance in question was described by everyone else who knew him as a compulsive liar and con man, who persuaded her father to give him money for supposed medical tests before the wedding, but in reality was apparently married to someone else and having a baby with a third woman. After the engagement was broken off, she started performing again around the coffeehouses in Austin and Houston, and she started to realise the possibilities of rock music for her kind of performance. The missing clue came from a group from Austin who she became very friendly with, the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, and the way their lead singer Roky Erickson would wail and yell: [Excerpt: The 13th Floor Elevators, "You're Gonna Miss Me (live)"] If, as now seemed inevitable, Janis was going to make a living as a performer, maybe she should start singing rock music, because it seemed like there was money in it. There was even some talk of her singing with the Elevators. But then an old friend came to Austin from San Francisco with word from Chet Helms. A blues band had formed, and were looking for a singer, and they remembered her from the coffee houses. Would she like to go back to San Francisco and sing with them? In the time she'd been away, Helms had become hugely prominent in the San Francisco music scene, which had changed radically. A band from the area called the Charlatans had been playing a fake-Victorian saloon called the Red Dog in nearby Nevada, and had become massive with the people who a few years earlier had been beatniks: [Excerpt: The Charlatans, "32-20"] When their residency at the Red Dog had finished, several of the crowd who had been regulars there had become a collective of sorts called the Family Dog, and Helms had become their unofficial leader. And there's actually a lot packed into that choice of name. As we'll see in a few future episodes, a lot of West Coast hippies eventually started calling their collectives and communes families. This started as a way to get round bureaucracy -- if a helpful welfare officer put down that the unrelated people living in a house together were a family, suddenly they could get food stamps. As with many things, of course, the label then affected how people thought about themselves, and one thing that's very notable about the San Francisco scene hippies in particular is that they are some of the first people to make a big deal about what we now  call "found family" or "family of choice". But it's also notable how often the hippie found families took their model from the only families these largely middle-class dropouts had ever known, and structured themselves around men going out and doing the work -- selling dope or panhandling or being rock musicians or shoplifting -- with the women staying at home doing the housework. The Family Dog started promoting shows, with the intention of turning San Francisco into "the American Liverpool", and soon Helms was rivalled only by Bill Graham as the major promoter of rock shows in the Bay Area. And now he wanted Janis to come back and join this new band. But Janis was worried. She was clean now. She drank far too much, but she wasn't doing any other drugs. She couldn't go back to San Francisco and risk getting back on methamphetamine. She needn't worry about that, she was told, nobody in San Francisco did speed any more, they were all on LSD -- a drug she hated and so wasn't in any danger from. Reassured, she made the trip back to San Francisco, to join Big Brother and the Holding Company. Big Brother and the Holding Company were the epitome of San Francisco acid rock at the time. They were the house band at the Avalon Ballroom, which Helms ran, and their first ever gig had been at the Trips Festival, which we talked about briefly in the Grateful Dead episode. They were known for being more imaginative than competent -- lead guitarist James Gurley was often described as playing parts that were influenced by John Cage, but was equally often, and equally accurately, described as not actually being able to keep his guitar in tune because he was too stoned. But they were drawing massive crowds with their instrumental freak-out rock music. Helms thought they needed a singer, and he had remembered Joplin, who a few of the group had seen playing the coffee houses. He decided she would be perfect for them, though Joplin wasn't so sure. She thought it was worth a shot, but as she wrote to her parents before meeting the group "Supposed to rehearse w/ the band this afternoon, after that I guess I'll know whether I want to stay & do that for awhile. Right now my position is ambivalent—I'm glad I came, nice to see the city, a few friends, but I'm not at all sold on the idea of becoming the poor man's Cher.” In that letter she also wrote "I'm awfully sorry to be such a disappointment to you. I understand your fears at my coming here & must admit I share them, but I really do think there's an awfully good chance I won't blow it this time." The band she met up with consisted of lead guitarist James Gurley, bass player Peter Albin, rhythm player Sam Andrew, and drummer David Getz.  To start with, Peter Albin sang lead on most songs, with Joplin adding yelps and screams modelled on those of Roky Erickson, but in her first gig with the band she bowled everyone over with her lead vocal on the traditional spiritual "Down on Me", which would remain a staple of their live act, as in this live recording from 1968: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Down on Me (Live 1968)"] After that first gig in June 1966, it was obvious that Joplin was going to be a star, and was going to be the group's main lead vocalist. She had developed a whole new stage persona a million miles away from her folk performances. As Chet Helms said “Suddenly this person who would stand upright with her fists clenched was all over the stage. Roky Erickson had modeled himself after the screaming style of Little Richard, and Janis's initial stage presence came from Roky, and ultimately Little Richard. It was a very different Janis.” Joplin would always claim to journalists that her stage persona was just her being herself and natural, but she worked hard on every aspect of her performance, and far from the untrained emotional outpouring she always suggested, her vocal performances were carefully calculated pastiches of her influences -- mostly Bessie Smith, but also Big Mama Thornton, Odetta, Etta James, Tina Turner, and Otis Redding. That's not to say that those performances weren't an authentic expression of part of herself -- they absolutely were. But the ethos that dominated San Francisco in the mid-sixties prized self-expression over technical craft, and so Joplin had to portray herself as a freak of nature who just had to let all her emotions out, a wild woman, rather than someone who carefully worked out every nuance of her performances. Joplin actually got the chance to meet one of her idols when she discovered that Willie Mae Thornton was now living and regularly performing in the Bay Area. She and some of her bandmates saw Big Mama play a small jazz club, where she performed a song she wouldn't release on a record for another two years: [Excerpt: Big Mama Thornton, "Ball 'n' Chain"] Janis loved the song and scribbled down the lyrics, then went backstage to ask Big Mama if Big Brother could cover the song. She gave them her blessing, but told them "don't" -- and here she used a word I can't use with a clean rating -- "it up". The group all moved in together, communally, with their partners -- those who had them. Janis was currently single, having dumped her most recent boyfriend after discovering him shooting speed, as she was still determined to stay clean. But she was rapidly discovering that the claim that San Franciscans no longer used much speed had perhaps not been entirely true, as for example Sam Andrew's girlfriend went by the nickname Speedfreak Rita. For now, Janis was still largely clean, but she did start drinking more. Partly this was because of a brief fling with Pigpen from the Grateful Dead, who lived nearby. Janis liked Pigpen as someone else on the scene who didn't much like psychedelics or cannabis -- she didn't like drugs that made her think more, but only drugs that made her able to *stop* thinking (her love of amphetamines doesn't seem to fit this pattern, but a small percentage of people have a different reaction to amphetamine-type stimulants, perhaps she was one of those). Pigpen was a big drinker of Southern Comfort -- so much so that it would kill him within a few years -- and Janis started joining him. Her relationship with Pigpen didn't last long, but the two would remain close, and she would often join the Grateful Dead on stage over the years to duet with him on "Turn On Your Lovelight": [Excerpt: Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead, "Turn on Your Lovelight"] But within two months of joining the band, Janis nearly left. Paul Rothchild of Elektra Records came to see the group live, and was impressed by their singer, but not by the rest of the band. This was something that would happen again and again over the group's career. The group were all imaginative and creative -- they worked together on their arrangements and their long instrumental jams and often brought in very good ideas -- but they were not the most disciplined or technically skilled of musicians, even when you factored in their heavy drug use, and often lacked the skill to pull off their better ideas. They were hugely popular among the crowds at the Avalon Ballroom, who were on the group's chemical wavelength, but Rothchild was not impressed -- as he was, in general, unimpressed with psychedelic freakouts. He was already of the belief in summer 1966 that the fashion for extended experimental freak-outs would soon come to an end and that there would be a pendulum swing back towards more structured and melodic music. As we saw in the episode on The Band, he would be proved right in a little over a year, but being ahead of the curve he wanted to put together a supergroup that would be able to ride that coming wave, a group that would play old-fashioned blues. He'd got together Stefan Grossman, Steve Mann, and Taj Mahal, and he wanted Joplin to be the female vocalist for the group, dueting with Mahal. She attended one rehearsal, and the new group sounded great. Elektra Records offered to sign them, pay their rent while they rehearsed, and have a major promotional campaign for their first release. Joplin was very, very, tempted, and brought the subject up to her bandmates in Big Brother. They were devastated. They were a family! You don't leave your family! She was meant to be with them forever! They eventually got her to agree to put off the decision at least until after a residency they'd been booked for in Chicago, and she decided to give them the chance, writing to her parents "I decided to stay w/the group but still like to think about the other thing. Trying to figure out which is musically more marketable because my being good isn't enough, I've got to be in a good vehicle.” The trip to Chicago was a disaster. They found that the people of Chicago weren't hugely interested in seeing a bunch of white Californians play the blues, and that the Midwest didn't have the same Bohemian crowds that the coastal cities they were used to had, and so their freak-outs didn't go down well either. After two weeks of their four-week residency, the club owner stopped paying them because they were so unpopular, and they had no money to get home. And then they were approached by Bob Shad. (For those who know the film Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, the Bob Shad in that film is named after this one -- Judd Apatow, the film's director, is Shad's grandson) This Shad was a record producer, who had worked with people like Big Bill Broonzy, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, and Billy Eckstine over an eighteen-year career, and had recently set up a new label, Mainstream Records. He wanted to sign Big Brother and the Holding Company. They needed money and... well, it was a record contract! It was a contract that took half their publishing, paid them a five percent royalty on sales, and gave them no advance, but it was still a contract, and they'd get union scale for the first session. In that first session in Chicago, they recorded four songs, and strangely only one, "Down on Me", had a solo Janis vocal. Of the other three songs, Sam Andrew and Janis dueted on Sam's song "Call on Me", Albin sang lead on the group composition "Blindman", and Gurley and Janis sang a cover of "All Is Loneliness", a song originally by the avant-garde street musician Moondog: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "All is Loneliness"] The group weren't happy with the four songs they recorded -- they had to keep the songs to the length of a single, and the engineers made sure that the needles never went into the red, so their guitars sounded far more polite and less distorted than they were used to. Janis was fascinated by the overdubbing process, though, especially double-tracking, which she'd never tried before but which she turned out to be remarkably good at. And they were now signed to a contract, which meant that Janis wouldn't be leaving the group to go solo any time soon. The family were going to stay together. But on the group's return to San Francisco, Janis started doing speed again, encouraged by the people around the group, particularly Gurley's wife. By the time the group's first single, "Blindman" backed with "All is Loneliness", came out, she was an addict again. That initial single did nothing, but the group were fast becoming one of the most popular in the Bay Area, and almost entirely down to Janis' vocals and on-stage persona. Bob Shad had already decided in the initial session that while various band members had taken lead, Janis was the one who should be focused on as the star, and when they drove to LA for their second recording session it was songs with Janis leads that they focused on. At that second session, in which they recorded ten tracks in two days, the group recorded a mix of material including one of Janis' own songs, the blues track "Women is Losers", and a version of the old folk song "the Cuckoo Bird" rearranged by Albin. Again they had to keep the arrangements to two and a half minutes a track, with no extended soloing and a pop arrangement style, and the results sound a lot more like the other San Francisco bands, notably Jefferson Airplane, than like the version of the band that shows itself in their live performances: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Coo Coo"] After returning to San Francisco after the sessions, Janis went to see Otis Redding at the Fillmore, turning up several hours before the show started on all three nights to make sure she could be right at the front. One of the other audience members later recalled “It was more fascinating for me, almost, to watch Janis watching Otis, because you could tell that she wasn't just listening to him, she was studying something. There was some kind of educational thing going on there. I was jumping around like the little hippie girl I was, thinking This is so great! and it just stopped me in my tracks—because all of a sudden Janis drew you very deeply into what the performance was all about. Watching her watch Otis Redding was an education in itself.” Joplin would, for the rest of her life, always say that Otis Redding was her all-time favourite singer, and would say “I started singing rhythmically, and now I'm learning from Otis Redding to push a song instead of just sliding over it.” [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "I Can't Turn You Loose (live)"] At the start of 1967, the group moved out of the rural house they'd been sharing and into separate apartments around Haight-Ashbury, and they brought the new year in by playing a free show organised by the Hell's Angels, the violent motorcycle gang who at the time were very close with the proto-hippies in the Bay Area. Janis in particular always got on well with the Angels, whose drugs of choice, like hers, were speed and alcohol more than cannabis and psychedelics. Janis also started what would be the longest on-again off-again relationship she would ever have, with a woman named Peggy Caserta. Caserta had a primary partner, but that if anything added to her appeal for Joplin -- Caserta's partner Kimmie had previously been in a relationship with Joan Baez, and Joplin, who had an intense insecurity that made her jealous of any other female singer who had any success, saw this as in some way a validation both of her sexuality and, transitively, of her talent. If she was dating Baez's ex's lover, that in some way put her on a par with Baez, and when she told friends about Peggy, Janis would always slip that fact in. Joplin and Caserta would see each other off and on for the rest of Joplin's life, but they were never in a monogamous relationship, and Joplin had many other lovers over the years. The next of these was Country Joe McDonald of Country Joe and the Fish, who were just in the process of recording their first album Electric Music for the Mind and Body, when McDonald and Joplin first got together: [Excerpt: Country Joe and the Fish, "Grace"] McDonald would later reminisce about lying with Joplin, listening to one of the first underground FM radio stations, KMPX, and them playing a Fish track and a Big Brother track back to back. Big Brother's second single, the other two songs recorded in the Chicago session, had been released in early 1967, and the B-side, "Down on Me", was getting a bit of airplay in San Francisco and made the local charts, though it did nothing outside the Bay Area: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Down on Me"] Janis was unhappy with the record, though, writing to her parents and saying, “Our new record is out. We seem to be pretty dissatisfied w/it. I think we're going to try & get out of the record contract if we can. We don't feel that they know how to promote or engineer a record & every time we recorded for them, they get all our songs, which means we can't do them for another record company. But then if our new record does something, we'd change our mind. But somehow, I don't think it's going to." The band apparently saw a lawyer to see if they could get out of the contract with Mainstream, but they were told it was airtight. They were tied to Bob Shad no matter what for the next five years. Janis and McDonald didn't stay together for long -- they clashed about his politics and her greater fame -- but after they split, she asked him to write a song for her before they became too distant, and he obliged and recorded it on the Fish's next album: [Excerpt: Country Joe and the Fish, "Janis"] The group were becoming so popular by late spring 1967 that when Richard Lester, the director of the Beatles' films among many other classics, came to San Francisco to film Petulia, his follow-up to How I Won The War, he chose them, along with the Grateful Dead, to appear in performance segments in the film. But it would be another filmmaker that would change the course of the group's career irrevocably: [Excerpt: Scott McKenzie, "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)"] When Big Brother and the Holding Company played the Monterey Pop Festival, nobody had any great expectations. They were second on the bill on the Saturday, the day that had been put aside for the San Francisco acts, and they were playing in the early afternoon, after a largely unimpressive night before. They had a reputation among the San Francisco crowd, of course, but they weren't even as big as the Grateful Dead, Moby Grape or Country Joe and the Fish, let alone Jefferson Airplane. Monterey launched four careers to new heights, but three of the superstars it made -- Otis Redding, Jimi Hendrix, and the Who -- already had successful careers. Hendrix and the Who had had hits in the UK but not yet broken the US market, while Redding was massively popular with Black people but hadn't yet crossed over to a white audience. Big Brother and the Holding Company, on the other hand, were so unimportant that D.A. Pennebaker didn't even film their set -- their manager at the time had not wanted to sign over the rights to film their performance, something that several of the other acts had also refused -- and nobody had been bothered enough to make an issue of it. Pennebaker just took some crowd shots and didn't bother filming the band. The main thing he caught was Cass Elliot's open-mouthed astonishment at Big Brother's performance -- or rather at Janis Joplin's performance. The members of the group would later complain, not entirely inaccurately, that in the reviews of their performance at Monterey, Joplin's left nipple (the outline of which was apparently visible through her shirt, at least to the male reviewers who took an inordinate interest in such things) got more attention than her four bandmates combined. As Pennebaker later said “She came out and sang, and my hair stood on end. We were told we weren't allowed to shoot it, but I knew if we didn't have Janis in the film, the film would be a wash. Afterward, I said to Albert Grossman, ‘Talk to her manager or break his leg or whatever you have to do, because we've got to have her in this film. I can't imagine this film without this woman who I just saw perform.” Grossman had a talk with the organisers of the festival, Lou Adler and John Phillips, and they offered Big Brother a second spot, the next day, if they would allow their performance to be used in the film. The group agreed, after much discussion between Janis and Grossman, and against the wishes of their manager: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Ball and Chain (live at Monterey)"] They were now on Albert Grossman's radar. Or at least, Janis Joplin was. Joplin had always been more of a careerist than the other members of the group. They were in music to have a good time and to avoid working a straight job, and while some of them were more accomplished musicians than their later reputations would suggest -- Sam Andrew, in particular, was a skilled player and serious student of music -- they were fundamentally content with playing the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore and making five hundred dollars or so a week between them. Very good money for 1967, but nothing else. Joplin, on the other hand, was someone who absolutely craved success. She wanted to prove to her family that she wasn't a failure and that her eccentricity shouldn't stop them being proud of her; she was always, even at the depths of her addictions, fiscally prudent and concerned about her finances; and she had a deep craving for love. Everyone who talks about her talks about how she had an aching need at all times for approval, connection, and validation, which she got on stage more than she got anywhere else. The bigger the audience, the more they must love her. She'd made all her decisions thus far based on how to balance making music that she loved with commercial success, and this would continue to be the pattern for her in future. And so when journalists started to want to talk to her, even though up to that point Albin, who did most of the on-stage announcements, and Gurley, the lead guitarist, had considered themselves joint leaders of the band, she was eager. And she was also eager to get rid of their manager, who continued the awkward streak that had prevented their first performance at the Monterey Pop Festival from being filmed. The group had the chance to play the Hollywood Bowl -- Bill Graham was putting on a "San Francisco Sound" showcase there, featuring Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, and got their verbal agreement to play, but after Graham had the posters printed up, their manager refused to sign the contracts unless they were given more time on stage. The next day after that, they played Monterey again -- this time the Monterey Jazz Festival. A very different crowd to the Pop Festival still fell for Janis' performance -- and once again, the film being made of the event didn't include Big Brother's set because of their manager. While all this was going on, the group's recordings from the previous year were rushed out by Mainstream Records as an album, to poor reviews which complained it was nothing like the group's set at Monterey: [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Bye Bye Baby"] They were going to need to get out of that contract and sign with somewhere better -- Clive Davis at Columbia Records was already encouraging them to sign with him -- but to do that, they needed a better manager. They needed Albert Grossman. Grossman was one of the best negotiators in the business at that point, but he was also someone who had a genuine love for the music his clients made.  And he had good taste -- he managed Odetta, who Janis idolised as a singer, and Bob Dylan, who she'd been a fan of since his first album came out. He was going to be the perfect manager for the group. But he had one condition though. His first wife had been a heroin addict, and he'd just been dealing with Mike Bloomfield's heroin habit. He had one absolutely ironclad rule, a dealbreaker that would stop him signing them -- they didn't use heroin, did they? Both Gurley and Joplin had used heroin on occasion -- Joplin had only just started, introduced to the drug by Gurley -- but they were only dabblers. They could give it up any time they wanted, right? Of course they could. They told him, in perfect sincerity, that the band didn't use heroin and it wouldn't be a problem. But other than that, Grossman was extremely flexible. He explained to the group at their first meeting that he took a higher percentage than other managers, but that he would also make them more money than other managers -- if money was what they wanted. He told them that they needed to figure out where they wanted their career to be, and what they were willing to do to get there -- would they be happy just playing the same kind of venues they were now, maybe for a little more money, or did they want to be as big as Dylan or Peter, Paul, and Mary? He could get them to whatever level they wanted, and he was happy with working with clients at every level, what did they actually want? The group were agreed -- they wanted to be rich. They decided to test him. They were making twenty-five thousand dollars a year between them at that time, so they got ridiculously ambitious. They told him they wanted to make a *lot* of money. Indeed, they wanted a clause in their contract saying the contract would be void if in the first year they didn't make... thinking of a ridiculous amount, they came up with seventy-five thousand dollars. Grossman's response was to shrug and say "Make it a hundred thousand." The group were now famous and mixing with superstars -- Peter Tork of the Monkees had become a close friend of Janis', and when they played a residency in LA they were invited to John and Michelle Phillips' house to see a rough cut of Monterey Pop. But the group, other than Janis, were horrified -- the film barely showed the other band members at all, just Janis. Dave Getz said later "We assumed we'd appear in the movie as a band, but seeing it was a shock. It was all Janis. They saw her as a superstar in the making. I realized that though we were finally going to be making money and go to another level, it also meant our little family was being separated—there was Janis, and there was the band.” [Excerpt: Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Bye Bye Baby"] If the group were going to make that hundred thousand dollars a year, they couldn't remain on Mainstream Records, but Bob Shad was not about to give up his rights to what could potentially be the biggest group in America without a fight. But luckily for the group, Clive Davis at Columbia had seen their Monterey performance, and he was also trying to pivot the label towards the new rock music. He was basically willing to do anything to get them. Eventually Columbia agreed to pay Shad two hundred thousand dollars for the group's contract -- Davis and Grossman negotiated so half that was an advance on the group's future earnings, but the other half was just an expense for the label. On top of that the group got an advance payment of fifty thousand dollars for their first album for Columbia, making a total investment by Columbia of a quarter of a million dollars -- in return for which they got to sign the band, and got the rights to the material they'd recorded for Mainstream, though Shad would get a two percent royalty on their first two albums for Columbia. Janis was intimidated by signing for Columbia, because that had been Aretha Franklin's label before she signed to Atlantic, and she regarded Franklin as the greatest performer in music at that time.  Which may have had something to do with the choice of a new song the group added to their setlist in early 1968 -- one which was a current hit for Aretha's sister Erma: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] We talked a little in the last episode about the song "Piece of My Heart" itself, though mostly from the perspective of its performer, Erma Franklin. But the song was, as we mentioned, co-written by Bert Berns. He's someone we've talked about a little bit in previous episodes, notably the ones on "Here Comes the Night" and "Twist and Shout", but those were a couple of years ago, and he's about to become a major figure in the next episode, so we might as well take a moment here to remind listeners (or tell those who haven't heard those episodes) of the basics and explain where "Piece of My Heart" comes in Berns' work as a whole. Bert Berns was a latecomer to the music industry, not getting properly started until he was thirty-one, after trying a variety of other occupations. But when he did get started, he wasted no time making his mark -- he knew he had no time to waste. He had a weak heart and knew the likelihood was he was going to die young. He started an association with Wand records as a songwriter and performer, writing songs for some of Phil Spector's pre-fame recordings, and he also started producing records for Atlantic, where for a long while he was almost the equal of Jerry Wexler or Leiber and Stoller in terms of number of massive hits created. His records with Solomon Burke were the records that first got the R&B genre renamed soul (previously the word "soul" mostly referred to a kind of R&Bish jazz, rather than a kind of gospel-ish R&B). He'd also been one of the few American music industry professionals to work with British bands before the Beatles made it big in the USA, after he became alerted to the Beatles' success with his song "Twist and Shout", which he'd co-written with Phil Medley, and which had been a hit in a version Berns produced for the Isley Brothers: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, "Twist and Shout"] That song shows the two elements that existed in nearly every single Bert Berns song or production. The first is the Afro-Caribbean rhythm, a feel he picked up during a stint in Cuba in his twenties. Other people in the Atlantic records team were also partial to those rhythms -- Leiber and Stoller loved what they called the baion rhythm -- but Berns more than anyone else made it his signature. He also very specifically loved the song "La Bamba", especially Ritchie Valens' version of it: [Excerpt: Ritchie Valens, "La Bamba"] He basically seemed to think that was the greatest record ever made, and he certainly loved that three-chord trick I-IV-V-IV chord sequence -- almost but not quite the same as the "Louie Louie" one.  He used it in nearly every song he wrote from that point on -- usually using a bassline that went something like this: [plays I-IV-V-IV bassline] He used it in "Twist and Shout" of course: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, "Twist and Shout"] He used it in "Hang on Sloopy": [Excerpt: The McCoys, "Hang on Sloopy"] He *could* get more harmonically sophisticated on occasion, but the vast majority of Berns' songs show the power of simplicity. They're usually based around three chords, and often they're actually only two chords, like "I Want Candy": [Excerpt: The Strangeloves, "I Want Candy"] Or the chorus to "Here Comes the Night" by Them, which is two chords for most of it and only introduces a third right at the end: [Excerpt: Them, "Here Comes the Night"] And even in that song you can hear the "Twist and Shout"/"La Bamba" feel, even if it's not exactly the same chords. Berns' whole career was essentially a way of wringing *every last possible drop* out of all the implications of Ritchie Valens' record. And so even when he did a more harmonically complex song, like "Piece of My Heart", which actually has some minor chords in the bridge, the "La Bamba" chord sequence is used in both the verse: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] And the chorus: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] Berns co-wrote “Piece of My Heart” with Jerry Ragavoy. Berns and Ragavoy had also written "Cry Baby" for Garnet Mimms, which was another Joplin favourite: [Excerpt: Garnet Mimms, "Cry Baby"] And Ragavoy, with other collaborators

It's been a crazy month, and the Halloween Haunts countdown of bonus episodes suffered as a result. To make it up to you after a lengthy delay, I'm sharing a trilogy of terror - three scary old time radio shows to enjoy in the days before Halloween. First, Frank Lovejoy learns about the consequences of defying a voodoo curse in "Papa Benjamin," a Cornell Woolrich adapted for Escape (originally aired on CBS on January 24, 1948). Next, Peter Lorre stars in "The Black Cat," Edgar Allan Poe's tale of cruelty, rage, and a killer undone by the strangest of circumstances from Mystery in the Air (originally aired on NBC on September 18, 1947). Finally, Ida Lupino and Vincent Price co-star in Lucille Fletcher's Victorian era horror story "Fugue in C-Minor" from Suspense (originally aired on CBS on June 1, 1944).

This two-parter from 2012 covers William Chester Minor, whose life was tumultuous. Medical school, mental health issues, and murder are all part of the story of this prolific contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.