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Crystal's Nightcap
EXPOSING G-EAZY!

Crystal's Nightcap

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 3, 2023 49:22


In tonight's episode of "Crystal's Nightcap" I saw Tim McGraw AGAIN and he thrusted at me, we go to a fancy GALA in Central Park to celebrate my boss, exposing GEazy, getting drunk with my neighbors, and MORE!

Nick and Dave Deep Dive the Metaverse
3. Wolf (Nichols, 1994) Wolfman of Wall Street

Nick and Dave Deep Dive the Metaverse

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 1, 2023 101:33


Good evening Cultists, and welcome to the third and final installment of our '90s Horror Cycle series.  Mike Nichols's 1994 Supernatural Thriller, Wolf is the black sheep of the three films. Eschewing the 18th Century Gothic setting of the previous films for the backdrop of the New York publishing world.  Instead of stalking across the foggy moors, this Wolfman prowls Central Park in pleated corduroys. So please join your Horror Hosts for this dissection of Wolf!  Dissection Topic https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111742/?ref_=ext_shr Dark Tidings https://www.homedepot.com/p/Home-Accents-Holiday-5-ft-Poseable-Bat-Skeleton-with-LED-Eyes-23SV23636/324081088 https://movieweb.com/the-toxic-avenger-remake-first-reactions/ https://halloweendailynews.com/2023/09/nightmare-before-christmas-theaters/ Argyle Goolsby joins Calabrese on Cala-bass https://www.calabreserock.com/ Vault of Darkness https://renegadegamestudios.com/werewolf-the-apocalypse-5th-edition-core-rulebook/ https://www.disneyplus.com/movies/werewolf-by-night/J1sCDfT3MaDl Unholy Sacrament https://untp.beer/OpmPG Theme Music  https://tridroid.bandcamp.com/album/crimson-shadows #wolf #mikenichols #jacknicholson #michellepfiefer #jamesspader #christopherplummer #davidhydepierce #davidschwimmer #enniomorricone #giusepperotunno #rickbaker #werewolf #wolfman #werewolfmovies #classicmonsters #horrormovies #monstermovies #creaturefeature #werewolves #justmarkingmyterritory 

A History Of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs
Episode 168: “I Say a Little Prayer” by Aretha Franklin

A History Of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 28, 2023


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

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games people play mahalia jackson billy preston take my hand locomotion bridge over troubled water mc5 arista bobby womack stoller clive davis wilson pickett scepter steinway allman ginger baker sister rosetta tharpe shea stadium republican presidential warrick god only knows cab calloway schoenberg wonder bread stephen stills sammy davis barry gibb bacharach eleanor rigby berns night away big bopper buddah stax records grammies preacher man lionel hampton bill graham jackson five tim buckley stockhausen james earl ray dramatics oh happy day solomon burke sam moore duane allman cannonball adderley leiber shirelles hamp montanez woody herman thanksgiving parade phil ochs natural woman artistically lesley gore ruth brown basie precious lord wayne kramer kingpins hal david one you al kooper gene vincent bring me down southern strategy female vocalist whiter shade nile rogers world needs now joe robinson nessun dorma franklins betty carter rick hall little prayer brill building this girl you are my sunshine my sweet lord king curtis aaron cohen gerry goffin never grow old jackie deshannon norman greenbaum darius milhaud mardin henry george say a little prayer cashbox bernard purdie webern betty shabazz precious memories jerry butler so fine bernard edwards loserville james cleveland esther phillips ahmet ertegun cissy houston tom dowd fillmore west milhaud vandross jerry wexler in love with you mike douglas show david ritz john hersey arif mardin bob johnston edwin hawkins peter guralnick new africa ted white i was made champion jack dupree lady soul play that song make me over henry cowell joe south wait until pops staples ellie greenwich jesus yes john fred morris levy how i got over spooner oldham charles cooke brook benton medgar chuck rainey soul stirrers ralph burns henry stone don covay bert berns i never loved thomas dorsey way i love you larry payne will you love me tomorrow hollywood palace gospel music workshop harlem square club baby i love you fruitgum company gene mcdaniels ertegun anyone who had savoy records judy clay civil disorders national advisory commission charles l hughes tilt araiza
2 Old 4 TikTok
A Week of Mess: Football wife drama, TikTok gossip, and an incident in Central Park

2 Old 4 TikTok

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 28, 2023 62:35


Dena and Catalina start off this week chatting about a Yom Kippur song (@broadwaywiz) by Ben Platt and Molly Gordon. Then, they take a deep dive into a certain podcast host's incident in Central Park. Catalina shares a reflection by @celebritymemoirbookclub on her algorithm and Dena discusses Jersey Shore drama via @alexisebawden and of course they have to bring up Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Maggie Rogers (@maggierogers) stitched the video about what it's like to be a freshman at NYU and there is a blue collar guy audio trend going around the platform, recapped by @therealkatherine. Dena highlights content creator @vitakari and Catalina shares some of the latest Shakira and Piqué gossip, featuring a video by @devotedly.yours. There's a lot to learn on TikTok this week including where Dutch people apparently keep calendars (@faeiryne) and which carry-on bags actually fit airline standards (@rileejsmith). Next up the ladies discuss the idea of first and second cities including videos by @katherout and @avocado.dan. They close with @a_twink_and_a_redhead's impressions of how people wake up to different alarms.   Check out all the videos we mention and more on our blog (2old4tiktok.com), Instagram (@2old4tiktokpod), and TikTok (@2old4tiktok_podcast).  

Cider Chat
380: The Legacy of the Downing Brothers: Architects of Nature

Cider Chat

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 27, 2023 32:48


The Architectural and Horticultural Endeavors of the Downing Brothers In the realm of landscape design and horticulture, few names are as revered as those of Andrew Jackson Downing and his brother, Charles Downing. Through their combined efforts, they have left a lasting imprint on the field, shaping not only the aesthetics but also the principles that govern landscape design and horticulture. Andrew Jackson Downing, born in 1815, was an iconic figure in 19th-century America, regarded as one of the founding fathers of landscape architecture. His visionary work combined aesthetics, functionality, and harmony with nature, aiming to create landscapes that were both beautiful and beneficial to the soul. He was an ardent advocate for the integration of parks and public green spaces in urban areas, emphasizing the profound impact such spaces could have on the well-being of the residents. Downing's contribution to landscape design and architecture is noteworthy. He was the author of seminal works like "A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening," which became a cornerstone for American landscape architecture. This book illustrated his innovative and holistic approach to design, which involved harmonizing architectural elements with the natural environment. Kick off tour to New York Apple Camp and the Downings In this episode, audio snap shots from the Milton and Newburgh New York as part of the Downing tour, pre Apple Camp. Tour Itinerary: Assemble at Milton Historical Train Station 41 Dock Rd., Milton, NY 12547 Caravan to Crawford House Walk neighborhood and visit site of Andrew Jackson Downing former nursery Visit Downing Park Construction started in 1894 and the park was opened in 1897. 181-141 Carpenter Ave, Newburgh, NY 12550 Visit to  Cedar Hill Cemetery 5468 Route 9W North, Newburgh NY 12550 Andrew J. Downing (left) and and Charles Downing gravesite tall headstone to right at Cedar Hill Cemetery, Newburgh New York Lunch  Visit Klyne Esopus Museum with historian Louis Tiemperio 764 Route 9W, Ulster Park, NY 12487 Charles Downing: The Pomological Pioneer Charles Downing, the elder brother of Andrew, was an eminent pomologist, dedicating his life to the study of fruits, with a particular focus on apples. His extensive research and writings on pomology have contributed immensely to the understanding and classification of various fruit varieties, including a myriad of apple species. Charles worked meticulously to catalog different apple varieties, contributing significantly to the field's growing body of knowledge. Charles' work in pomology complemented Andrew's landscape designs, merging form with function, aesthetics with agriculture. The duo often collaborated, creating designs that were not only visually appealing but also agriculturally productive, embodying a holistic approach to landscape architecture. Legacy Tragically, Andrew Jackson Downing's life was cut short in 1852 when he died in a steamboat accident on the Hudson River. Despite his untimely death at the age of 36, his ideas continued to shape American landscape architecture, influencing the design of renowned public spaces, including New York's Central Park. Charles Downing continued his work in pomology after his brother's passing, solidifying his reputation as a leading authority on fruit and helping to propagate a diverse array of fruit varieties across America. The intertwining legacies of the Downing brothers live on, their principles echoing in the gardens, parks, and orchards of today. Mentions in this chat Fermentis: SafCider™ Yeasts for your cider! Visit Idaho and taste the ciders! More info at https://nwcider.com/map

The Jeremiah Show
SN2Ep3 - The ARWEN LEWIS SHOW - Richard Barone | Music Artist - Author

The Jeremiah Show

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 26, 2023 62:23


THE ARWEN LEWIS SHOW - Richard Baron Arwen welcomes Richard Barone! Richard is a recording artist, performer, producer, and author. Since pioneering the indie rock scene in Hoboken, NJ as frontman of The Bongos and helping to launch the chamber pop movement with his solo debut “Cool Blue Halo”, Barone has produced numerous studio recordings and worked with artists in every musical genre. His list of collaborators has included producer Tony Visconti, Donovan, Lou Reed, and folk legend Pete Seeger. He has scored shows and staged all-star concert events at venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, and Summer Stage in Central Park. His memoir Frontman: Surviving The Rock Star Myth was published in 2007. His album Sorrows & Promises and his latest book, Music + Revolution (2022), are celebrations of the 1960s music scene in Greenwich Village NYC, where Barone lives. He teaches the course “Music + Revolution” at The New School's School of Jazz & Contemporary Music, has served on the Board of Governors of The Recording Academy (GRAMMYs), serves on the Advisory Board of Anthology Film Archives, and hosts Folk Radio on WBAI New York.  @TonyVisconti, @Donovan, @LouReed, @PeteSeeger. Richard's Website: http://www.richardbarone.com More info:Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Barone The Arwen Lewis Show Host | Arwen Lewis Executive Producer | Jeremiah D. Higgins Producer - Sound Engineer - Richard “Dr. D” Dugan https://arwenlewismusic.com/ On Instagram, Follow Arwen Lewis Here: @thearwenlewisshow @arwenlewis www.thejeremiahshow.com On Instagram @jeremiahdhiggins https://linktr.ee/jeremiahdhiggins

A Quest for Well-Being
Life and Death: The Joy Of Healing The Heart & Soul

A Quest for Well-Being

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 25, 2023 61:34


— Is it possible that you could have prevented your father's death if you had saved him? In spite of the fact that this was what he wanted, wasn't that difficult? ” When we die, how do we want others to remember us? In our final days, how do we want to be treated? Death is nothing new to Yvonne Caputo. In her early thirties, she was able to name seventeen family members and friends who had passed away. Claude and his son Jimmy, both dead by suicide, her cousin Alan, murdered in Central Park, and her brother Mark, killed in a car accident, were among those who died. Each of these deaths left her with many questions, the most important of which was: Why don't we talk about the end of life before the end of life? While working in a retirement community, Yvonne learned about the Five Wishes®, a legal document that expresses a person's end-of-life wishes beyond an advance directive. She decided to broach this difficult subject with her dad. What would the outcome of discussing such a dark subject be? Yvonne Caputo's first book, Flying with Dad, was about her father's experiences in World War II. But this wasn't what readers focused their questions on. Instead, they asked her about how she and her dad talked about what he wanted for his end-of-life experiences, how she walked him through his Five Wishes document and how, when the day came, she stopped the paramedics from reviving him. In Dying with Dad, Yvonne shares the joy she felt when her father died on his terms. And the reason she knew what those terms were was because they had had a heart-to-heart conversation about it before it was too late. Dying with Dad inspires us to think about meaningful discussions for when we or our loved ones are aging or preparing for death. Discussions about death and grief, but also about crossing the finish line joyfully and triumphantly. You can have the conversations that matter, before it's too late. Valeria interviews Yvonne Caputo  — She is the author of Flying with Dad: A Daughter. A Father. And the Hidden Gifts in His Stories from WWII and Dying with Dad: Tough Talks for Easier Endings.  Yvonne Caputo is also a psychotherapist, corporate trainer, a consultant, and she has been a teacher and the head of a human resource department in a retirement community. She has a master's degree in education and clinical psychology.  To learn more about Yvonne Caputo and her work, please visit: https://ingeniumbooks.com/yvonne-caputo/               — This podcast is a quest for well-being, a quest for a meaningful life through the exploration of fundamental truths, enlightening ideas, insights on physical, mental, and spiritual health. The inspiration is Love. The aspiration is to awaken new ways of thinking that can lead us to a new way of being, being well. 

WCBS 880 All Local
Tropical Storm Ophelia sends heavy rain and wind our way, Global Citizen Festival takes over Central Park, and a house explodes in West Milford

WCBS 880 All Local

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 23, 2023 4:44


Anita Bonita has the afternoon's top local stories from the WCBS newsroom.

Podcast Para Tudo
#149 - Central Park, letreiro de Hollywood e unfollow

Podcast Para Tudo

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 22, 2023 33:17


Você já fez um elogio gratuito a alguém? Vem saber como eu e os meninos do Diva Depressão fomos elogiados por estranhos nos EUA. Também falo sobre locais famosos de lá e o climão de dar unfollow no Instagram. | Siga o Podcast Para Tudo no Instagram (@podcastparatudo ) e mande suas reclamações, sugestões e pedidos de ajuda. ♥️ Lorelay Fox é drag queen há 15 anos e está no YouTube para espalhar mensagens de aceitação e empatia, além de conselhos de maquiagem artística e falar sobre coisas da vida! Siga no Instagram: @‌lorelayfox e no http://youtube.com/LorelayFox

Milk Crates and Turntables. A Music Discussion Podcast
Ep.118 - Rewind to 1967: The Year That Changed Music Forever

Milk Crates and Turntables. A Music Discussion Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 21, 2023 129:55 Transcription Available


What if we told you that the summer of 1967 could hold the secrets to some of the greatest music ever? With our old pals, Scott, Mark and Lou of the Music Relish Show, we rewind time to this iconic year, unearthing fascinating stories and dissecting pivotal moments in music history. From The Doors' groundbreaking debut album to the first Shafa music festival in Central Park, our conversation takes unexpected twists, even as we navigate technical glitches, sharing laughs, and profound insights along the way.Drum roll, please! We explore the importance of drumming in setting the tone of a song, using The Doors' debut album as a case study. Our banter veers from the arrest of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to the Beatles' promotional film for Strawberry Fields Forever. But it's not all music - we also dive into the movies, TV shows, and pop culture moments that defined 1967. Elvis Presley's Clambake, the anti-war movie You Only Live Twice, and TV classics like Hill Street Blues and Kojak are all up for discussion.Finally, our conversation circles back to the bands that shaped the sound of '67, featuring Credence Clearwater Revival, Fleetwood Mac, and Earth, Wind, and Fire, among others. We debate the controversy surrounding Bob Welch's exclusion from Fleetwood Mac and reflect on the Grammy Award win of Jethro Tull. It's a vibrant, exhaustive discussion that doesn't shy away from personal anecdotes and playful banter. So, sit back, relax, and let us take you on a sonic journey through 1967 - a year that forever changed the face of music and pop culture.

Morning Prayer and Worship
We have the mind of Christ – Morning Prayer, Thursday, Proper 19

Morning Prayer and Worship

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 21, 2023 17:50


Join me live in our Prayer and Worship Facebook group Monday, September 25 at 7pm central time. I'll share a bit about the Podcast and what's coming up in the future! There will be songs! Join our Facebook group here! It's Thursday of Ordinary Time, Proper 19 in the Church Calendar. September 21, 2023. Our general order and lectionary comes from the Book of Common Prayer Daily Office. We'll sing “Oh For A Thousand Tongues” by Carl Glaser, Charles Wesley, David Crowder, and Jack Parker with a prayer of confession. We'll read Psalm 71 followed by the Gloria Patri. Our Scripture lesson is 1 Corinthians 2:14-3:15 . We'll say the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Collect of the Day followed by a time of spontaneous, prompted prayer. If you have a prayer request please submit it here. Sign up here for the email list. Morning Prayer and Worship is a production of Steady Stream Ministries, a 501(c)(3) non profit organization. Thank you for giving to support this ministry. You can go here to find out more. Would you like to be a guest reader on a future podcast episode? Go to benwardmusic.com/readers and find out more! Art: Sheep Meadow, Central Park, Eleanor Doughty Proper 19 - O God, because without you we are not able to please you mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

The Running for Real Podcast
Together Run 95 with Tina: New York City

The Running for Real Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 21, 2023 64:13


Join Tina for a Together Run in New York City where she's been attending Climate Week NYC and holding a book launch for Becoming a Sustainable Runner with New York Road Runners. Start with a body scan in Times Square, then head over to Central Park for conversation. Check out Order Becoming a Sustainable Runner Sign up for the Running For Real newsletter! Go to https://2before.com to get 30% off 20-packs plus free shipping! Sign up for 100 days of sustainability  Thanks for listening! If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you enjoy Running for Real, please leave us a review! Follow Tina on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. You'll find Running for Real on Instagram too! Want to be a member of the Running for Real community? Join #Running4Real Superstars on Facebook!  Subscribe to our YouTube channel for additional content, including our "RED-S: Realize. Reflect. Recover" series of 50+ videos. Thank you for your support - we appreciate each and every one of you!

Palace Intrigue: A daily Royal Family podcast
Prince Williams jogs Central Park, meets some 60 year olds, visits a firehouse, avoids a rat

Palace Intrigue: A daily Royal Family podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 21, 2023 6:14


Prince William got the full NYC experience - a run in Central Park, a rat sighting, a firehouse, and talking to 60 year old Canadian women.Meanwhie, the King was in France to have dinner with Mick JaggerThis show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/4522904/advertisement

Naughty But Nice with Rob Shuter
Prince William went for a run in Central Park and nobody noticed. Sophie Turner and Taylor Swift step out for girls' night in New York City. Jamie Lynn Spears is getting special treatment from ‘DWTS'

Naughty But Nice with Rob Shuter

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 21, 2023 21:31 Transcription Available


Prince William arrived in New York City Monday —on a commercial flight, no less—and had a jam-packed two days. Sophie Turner and Taylor Swift pictured linking arms as they enjoyed a night out in New York City. The ‘DWTS' production team is allowing Jamie Lynn Spears to practice at a studio near her home in Tennessee. Rob is joined by the charming Marc Lupo. Don't forget to vote in today's poll on Twitter at @naughtynicerob or in our Facebook group.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark Simone
Mark's 11:00 Monologue

Mark Simone

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 20, 2023 17:52


Prince William was jogging in Central Park. Nobody noticed him. Several World Leaders didn't come to the UN conference because Biden is a vegetable. Mark trashed the ex-royals, so everyone in England loves Mark now.

Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant
Fight And Flight: Christian Cooper's Story

Going Wild with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 19, 2023 40:09


Long before the infamous Central Park incident went viral (where a white woman called the cops on him during a birdwatching outing), Christian Cooper had been obsessed with birds. It was a love nurtured through his involvement in The Audubon Society, an environmental organization dedicated to bird conservation.  But recently, Christian's dedication to and love for this organization has been put to the test. We'll hear how growing up as a closeted queer person in the 80s, a career contributing to Marvel comics, and a life spent paying attention to birds has prepared Christian to navigate controversies and side with what is right. Follow Christian Cooper on Instagram. Thanks for listening to Going Wild. We're really excited to share the rest of this season with you! You can learn more about season three HERE and catch up on seasons one and two HERE.  If you want to support us, you can follow Going Wild on your favorite podcast-listening app. And while you're there, please leave us a review. It really helps. You can also get updates and bonus content by following me, Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant, and PBS Nature on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook. You can find more information on all of our guests this season in each episode's show notes. And you can catch new episodes of Nature, Wednesdays at 8/7 Central on PBS, pbs.org/nature, and the PBS app. Going Wild is a podcast by PBS Nature. NATURE is an award-winning series created by The WNET Group and made possible by all of you. Views and opinions expressed during the podcast are those of the individuals expressing them and do not necessarily reflect those of THIRTEEN Productions LLC/The WNET Group.

The Lucky Few
225. NYC Buddy Walk Highlights

The Lucky Few

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 19, 2023 42:09


Friends, we're catching you up on the fun and exciting weekend we had at The NYC Buddy Walk! Even on a humid September Saturday, we walked, danced, and celebrated Down syndrome with over 2,000 people in Central Park. Our girl Macy was invited to be a Grand Marshal and we share some highlights of her duties and time on stage! We give our tips for attending not only the NYC Buddy Walk, but some tips from our experience participating in our local walks. Whether you're part of the flagship walk in NYC or one of the many across the country, there's nothing like the support and community these walks give all those who attend. We're so grateful to have met so many of you in NYC and look forward to the next walk!  --- SHOW NOTES History of The Buddy Walk Learn More About National Down Syndrome Society (NDSS) DISCOUNT CODE Friends, grab your narrative shifting gear over on The Lucky Few Merch Shop and use code PODCAST for 10% off! THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSOR: Thank you, Enable SNP , for sponsoring this episode! 47. Planning for the Future w/Phillip Clark from Enable SNP 191. Future Planning for the WHOLE Family - ft. Phillip Clark, Enable SNP HELP US SHIFT THE NARRATIVE Interested in partnering with The Lucky Few Podcast as a sponsor? Email hello@theluckyfewpodcast.com for more information! LET'S CHAT Email hello@theluckyfewpodcast.com with your questions and Good News for future episodes. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theluckyfewpod/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/theluckyfewpod/support

1080 KYMN Radio - Northfield Minnesota
Dina Fesler and Betsy Lane-Getaz talk about UN Int'l Day of Peace

1080 KYMN Radio - Northfield Minnesota

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 18, 2023


Dina Fesler and Betsy Lane-Getaz provide information about the UN International Day of Peace on Thursday, September 21, 5-7pm at Central Park in Northfield. There will be food, music, activities and education to learn about the U.N.'s goals for sustainable development and about organizations making a difference locally.

The Mix Chicago Flash Briefings
Global Citizen Festival, Katy Perry Sells Music Catalog, National Cheeseburger Day

The Mix Chicago Flash Briefings

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 18, 2023 0:46


Global Citizen Festival is taking place this weekend at the Great Lawn of Central Park with Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ms. Lauryn Hill, Jung Kook and Anitta are all set to perform and the event will be streamed to the world. Katy Perry sold her music catalog to Litmus Music for $225 million. Today is National Cheeseburger Day you can celebrate at McDonald's & get a double cheeseburger for 50 cents.

Michelle's Sanctuary
New York Love Story | Bedtime Story for Grown-Ups (The Cozy Launderette Series)

Michelle's Sanctuary

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 17, 2023 48:26


Fall asleep with a bedtime story for grown-ups, "A New York Love Story." Part of the "Cozy Launderette Series," tonight's sleep story is set against the backdrop of Central Park's magic, capturing the essence of eternal love and destiny in a cozy brownstone launderette. Travel through time and space to the heart of Manhattan in 1971.  Engage with the unique characters of the laundry club, a chosen family brought together in the basement launderette of brownstone on the Upper West Side. Enjoy partaking in a Central Park wedding on the cusp of Autumn, a celebration in the iconic Tavern on the Green, and a trip to the "hottest spot in town" the cozy laundry room. Release your anxiety and cares and step into this charming world before you fall asleep. It's time to dream away.  Original Story, Voiceover, Production, and Sleep Meditation Music by Michelle Hotaling, Dreamaway Visions LLC 2023 All Rights Reserved Michelle's Sanctuary is a place where you may enjoy high quality bedtime stories and guided sleep meditations completely FREE with a focus on mental vacations, sleep hypnosis, manifestations, and using your imagination to enjoy relaxing adventures before bedtime. Grown ups deserve bedtime stories too!  This channel was started with the intention of helping others find balance, a good night's rest, and stay aligned with aspirations and goals in life. We are all part of this human existence together and the more than we become mindful individuals, the better we make this world and our personal experiences in this world.  Having firsthand experience with anxiety, insomnia, and a strong desire to connect with my higher self and live my best life, I have tailored these recordings in ways that I have personally found helpful.   This channel is not a replacement for consultations with a doctor or medical professional but can help you find more balance and a healing night's sleep. I always welcome comments, feedback & suggestions. Social media & Contact Information - Interact with Michelle here: www.michellessanctuary.com TWITTER: http://twitter.com/michsanctuary INSTAGRAM: https://instagram.com/michellessanctuary FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/michellessanctuary/ TIKTOK: http://www.tiktok.com/@michellessanctuary Email: michellessanctuary@gmail.com If you would like to support this channel and help keep new content coming: https://www.paypal.me/michellessanctuary https://www.venmo.com/michellehotaling https://www.buymeacoffee.com/michsanctuary Digital Downloads and Streaming Options- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6KSw0pmfwv0mZwb0DLlNLA iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/artist/michelles-sanctuary/1343585415 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/artists/B079JCXBDG/michelle's-sanctuary Insight Timer: https://insighttimer.com/michellessanctuary --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michelles-sanctuary/support

Noticias de América
Botero, un artista colombiano y universal

Noticias de América

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 16, 2023 2:28


Fernando Botero falleció el pasado 15 de septiembre, en Mónaco. Tenía 91 años. Sophia Vari, su esposa, había fallecido en mayo pasado. La obra de Botero, presente alrededor del mundo, abarcó temas universales como el dolor y la indiferencia, y también la violencia en América Latina. Fernando Botero descubrió que al deformar la realidad con curvas renacentistas y voluminosas, semejantes a frutas jugosas que dan ganas de tocar, el espectador puede comprender con mayor claridad situaciones de la vida cotidiana, pero también situaciones más complejas, y de todos los tiempos, como la serie sobre el Viacrucis, donde representa el dolor y la indiferencia.“No es un viacrucis que se apegue a la visión que tiene el Vaticano. Botero aborda este tema y lo despoja de todo animo sobrenatural. Incluso hay tres obras donde Cristo no es golpeado por un soldado romano, sino por un policía. El maestro Fernando Botero trabajó estos personajes con una forma muy personal de entender la vida de Cristo. Hay una obra monumental y muy conmovedora que muestra a Cristo crucificado, en el Central Park de Nueva York. Muestra cómo algo enorme, podría no parece importarle a nadie; la vida continúa”, explicó a RFI Camilo Castaño, curador del Museo de Antioquia.Botero fue un artista universal, pero también profundamente ligado a su natal Colombia, así como a sus problemas.“El tema de la violencia en la obra de Fernando Botero estuvo presente a lo largo de toda su obra, sobre todo la violencia en Colombia. Hay dos cuadros titulados ‘motosierra', para referirse a dos momentos donde la violencia fue sistemática en el país: los años 40 y 50, período que quedó en la memoria histórica colombiana. Y luego, a finales de los 90 y comienzos del siglo XXI, donde esa motosierra representaba una forma más reciente de la violencia, donde se descuartizan cuerpos, personas vivas, por parte de los paramilitares”, explicó el sociólogo y teórico del arte, Elkin Rubiano, de la Universidad de Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano.Además de donar una parte de sus obras a museos colombianos, Fernando Botero también donó cuadros de Picasso, Miró y Bonnard. Murió acompañado por su hija y nieta tras vivir varios años con la enfermedad de Párkinson. 

Good Morning Aurora
Friday | 9/15/2023 | Tia Juarez (Fox Valley Business Expo) & More!

Good Morning Aurora

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 15, 2023 56:47


Good morning Aurora! It's Friday and we have an amazing show for you all this morning. We have an interview for you as well as a debut of some previously unreleased content. Our guest today is Tia Juarez of Community Collective, here to tell us about the upcoming Fox Valley Business Expo. Here about this great opportunity to connect and network with other professionals. After that we will show you some footage of the early days of our show. Back when Good Morning Aurora was just an audio podcast we interviewed the Chief and Deputy Chief of the North Aurora Police Department. The year was 2020 and GMA was only months old! We hope you like the new feel, style and content of the show and thank you for watching! Here's the news: - Join our friends of Zenadigm, The Garret Rhea Trio & the Naperville Alive Center for a Healing Dance Jam on Friday, September 29th. This will be from 4 to 7 pm and will take place at the Naperville Community Concert Center, located at 55 Concert Lane in Naperville's Central Park. This live performance will be awesome and entry is free! Check it out and enjoy an evening in downtown Naperville. - The Java Plus Chili Cook Off will be Saturday, October 21st and entries are now being accepted! The event will be from 11 am to 3 pm at 1677 Montgomery road. If you have awesome chili let the world know by participating in the event this year. The grand prize is $100 and entry fee and application must be received by Friday, October 13th. Cook, compete and eat! To taste the chili and vote is only $7! Have an awesome day and a wonderful weekend. Our show will return Monday morning with more news, weather and the very best of Aurora. Subscribe to the show on YouTube at this link: https://www.youtube.com/c/GoodMorningAuroraPodcast The second largest city's first daily news podcast is here. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday & Friday to our FB Live from 8 am to 9 am. Make sure to like and subscribe to stay updated on all things Aurora. Twitter: goodmorningaur1 Instagram: goodmorningaurorail Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6dVweK5Zc4uPVQQ0Fp1vEP... Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/.../good-morning.../id1513229463 Anchor: https://anchor.fm/goodmorningaurora #positivevibes #positiveenergy #downtownaurora #kanecountyil #bataviail #genevail #stcharlesil #saintcharlesil #elginil #northaurorail #auroraillinois #cityofaurorail #auroramedia #auroranews #goodmorningaurora #news #dailynews #subscribe #youtube #podcast #spotify #morningnews #morningshow #friday --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/goodmorningaurora/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/goodmorningaurora/support

Above Ground Podcast
Conversations of Courage w/Erika Barber

Above Ground Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 13, 2023 50:46


You will never be the same following the loss of someone you care about to suicide. Loss is part of your history, but it doesn't have to tell the whole story. Erika Barber,  first lost her older sister, Andrea. Then later on, Erika lost her dad, John. Through those losses came the ability to start having conversations of courage and Erika's  courageousness to be comfortable talking about the uncomfortable leads to connection.    Welcome to episode two hundred twenty two of Above Ground Podcast. We continue with our Suicide Prevention and Awareness month episodes, as we have done since 2019, with our guest,  Erika Barber.      Erika Barber,  first lost her older sister, Andrea, when Erika was just fifteen to suicide. When Andrea died, Erika wanted to just be a teenager. She couldn't address her pain like an adult, she  wanted to hang with her friends. Forget the inevitable changes that were ahead for her family and the grief of losing your older sister. Forget her life would be forever touched by suicide. She'd be the that girl who's sister died by suicide.    Following the loss of Andrea, Erika's mother dealt with her pain by drowning it in alcohol, while her dad sought out help. John, went to the groups, took his meds as prescribed, faced the loss of his daughter, Andrea. John lost his battle with depression eight years ago. Once again, Erika was facing a loss by suicide. But, not just any loss. This was the loss of her dad in 2015. The loss of her dad was profound.    Erika lived with mental health challenges herself. Facing a family of mental health challenges, both figuratively and literally.  Erika did the work to find herself working through her loss courageously.    Erika found the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention  in 2007, through an Out of the Darkness walk. Her ten year Board of Director's term  just ended. Erika wanted to be involved as soon as she heard a radio ad that was calling her tribe together. People that would finally get her and understand.    October 24, 2023 is the Chicagoland AFSP Out of the Darkness Walk in Chicago, Illinois. Erika will be in attendance and if you're in the Chicagoland area you should be too.  Especially , since you're more closer than you think to someone who died by suicide.    Come to Saratoga Spa State Park on Sunday September, 24,2023 at 9am for the Out of the Darkness Walk for R.I.T.A. and remember our loved ones. Stop by the Above Ground Podcast table and not for profits all over Nippertown. As well as a remembrance ceremony and activities to create tributes to celebrate their memory.     Sunday October 1, 2023 is the next Upstate Punk Rock Flea Market at Empire Live Albany. 11am-5pm.  It is also the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Schenectady Walk at Central Park. Make sure when they ask where you heard about these events, tell them, Above Ground Podcast guided you. Thanks for listening to episode two hundred twenty-two and until next time, get well, be safe, stay above.  AFSP Chicago Erika Barber book Conversations of Courage   AFSP Capital Region New York   TPP book Never Underestimate the Power of You   Will Foley single Memoir (Despair & Mayhem)     

1080 KYMN Radio - Northfield Minnesota
Angelica Linder and Francisco Murillo – Hispanic Heritage Celebration

1080 KYMN Radio - Northfield Minnesota

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 13, 2023


Angelica Linder and Francisco Murillo of the Northfield Public Library provide information about Hispanic Heritage Month and events during the 2023 Hispanic Heritage Celebration on Saturday, September 16, 11:00am-5:00pm at Central Park in Northfield.

The Mighty Oregon Podcast
108. Ajani Cornelius – Now You're in Eugene

The Mighty Oregon Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 4, 2023 37:27


New York City has some of the most recognizable fixtures of any city in the world. The Statue of Liberty. Central Park. The Empire State Building. Dive even further and you'll find some of the most famous basketball courts in the world as well. Madison Square Garen and Rucker Park. So it's tough when you're trying to make your mark on the football field in the basketball capital of the world. Ajani Cornelius took his talents from the Concrete Jungle to Rhode Island University, where in 2022, he would become a standout for the Rams and one of the best offensive linemen in the FCS. The transfer portal awaited, and Cornelius found himself surrounded by the sounds of silence.This is the Mighty Oregon podcast and this is the Ducks new offensive lineman Ajani Cornelius…Now You're in Eugene.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Fearless with Jason Whitlock
Ep 514 | Al Sharpton Uses ‘Central Park 5' to Paint Donald Trump as Racist, Shame Black Rappers

Fearless with Jason Whitlock

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 1, 2023 73:07


How concerned is the liberal establishment about Donald Trump's newfound popularity among black Americans? Cue Al Sharpton and the revisionist historical society. In 1989, in the midst of a record murder rate in New York City, five teens were convicted and sent to prison for the violent assault and rape of a jogger in Central Park. As a lifelong New Yorker, concerned citizen, and respected businessman, Donald Trump purchased ad space in NYC newspapers calling for action in battling crime in the city and suitable punishment for those convicted of murder. In an effort to throttle the momentum Trump's campaign is building among black voters, rappers, and influencers, the good reverend is pointing to Trump's word from 34 years ago as proof to all black people that the former president is, in fact, a racist, all because DNA would later have those five teens' convictions vacated. Jason sets the record straight in the case of “The Central Park Lie.” Start your NFL season on September 7th with our NFL “Funslinger” Kickoff Live Recording and Watch Party. The LIVE recording will begin at 4:00 pm as Jason hosts Hall of Fame legends Brett Favre, Warren Sapp, and pro football great Seth Joyner. This is your chance to mingle with your favorite sports stars and live out your own VIP experience. Don't just watch the show – be a part of it. Mingle with the legends, enjoy great BBQ and beverages, and watch the first game of the season, Lions vs. Chiefs. Get Your Tickets NOW!! https://fearlessarmyrollcall.com/funslinger/ We want to hear from the Fearless Army!! Join the conversation in the show chat, leave a comment or email Jason at FearlessBlazeShow@gmail.com Refuge Ghost Sleeve is made in America - from American Buffalo Leather - and it blocks 5G signals that other Faraday sleeves miss and the only Faraday sleeve that blocks signal AND sound. Visit RefugePrivacy.com today. Use the code “FEARLESS” to save 10% off your order. Get 10% off Blaze swag by using code Fearless10 at https://shop.blazemedia.com/fearless Make yourself an official member of the “Fearless Army!” Support Conservative Voices! Subscribe to BlazeTV at https://get.blazetv.com/FEARLESS and get $10 off your yearly subscription. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Gist
I WAS WRONG: The Central Park Karen

The Gist

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 31, 2023 37:43


In May 2020, Amy Cooper had her dog off leash in New York City's Central Park, when a black bird watcher name Christian Cooper asked her to leash her dog. In response, Amy Cooper said she would call the police and tell them that "an African American man" was threatening her. A video of the incident went viral, and "the Central Park Karen" was born. Only, the story was more nuanced than the media had led many to believe about what had really transpired that day, and it was reporter Kmele Foster who dug into this story and found levels of detail which, upon reading it, made Mike rethink his position on this incident. Produced by Joel Patterson and Corey Wara Email us at thegist@mikepesca.com To advertise on the show, visit: https://advertisecast.com/TheGist Subscribe to The Gist Subscribe: https://subscribe.mikepesca.com/ Follow Mikes Substack at: Pesca Profundities | Mike Pesca | Substack Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Talking Home Renovations with the House Maven
Insulation with Christine Williamson- revisited

Talking Home Renovations with the House Maven

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 30, 2023 49:07


This week we are revisiting episode 51. Great for women in renovations season!A listener wrote to request an episode on insulation- here it is! Christine Williamson of Building Science Fight Club explains the factors to consider when insulating your house. I hope you enjoy this deep dive into the subject. Christine is an accomplished building scientist who has a large following on instagram through her account Building Science Fight Club (@buildingsciencefightclub). She can also be reached through her website https://www.christine-williamson.comAbout our guest:Christine Williamson's professional experience includes building-science consulting for the restoration of Belvedere Castle in New York City's Central Park, forensic investigations of building failures at the air-traffic control tower of LAX, and the Wheeler Opera House in Aspen, among other projects. She offers new-construction risk-mitigation consulting for residential towers, mid-rise mixed-use buildings, and production homes, as well as some of the most extraordinary private residences in the world. She has worked across North America from the Canadian Arctic to the Caribbean. She began her career working for architect Chris Benedict in New York City, where she performed blower-door tests on gut rehabs in Harlem and Washington Heights and assisted in the design of one of the first multi-family Passive Houses in the United States. In her current practice, she reviews drawings and makes recommendations that promote appropriate water control, air control, energy efficiency, constructability, and durability. For clients with a portfolio of upcoming projects, she assists in developing design standards commensurate with their tolerance for risk. During the construction phase, she reviews work in progress and addresses conditions or changes in sequence or scope that were not anticipated during the design phase.In existing buildings, she investigates failures related to enclosure design and mechanical systems as well as material and installation defects. Failures include leaks, corrosion, rot, mold, odors, poor indoor air quality, and discomfort due to poor temperature or humidity control. Her experience in new construction and attendant understanding of the division of labor among the trades, and typical sequencing and construction practices inform not just her analysis in forensic cases, but also her repair and retrofit recommendations, which are designed to minimize disruption in occupied buildings.Christine Williamson is a member and former chair of ASHRAE Technical Committee 1.12, Moisture Management in Buildings. She is an associate member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and is a member of the Northeast Sustainable E