Podcast appearances and mentions of Chris Welch

Chris Welch, Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives shares his thoughts on the budget. 

WAND-TV Statehouse reporter Mike Militech joined Patrick to explain why House Speaker Chris Welch kicked one of his top fiscal experts out of the caucus and who may be picking up the tab for Chicago-area mass transit.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week Paul and John welcome Chris Welch, Managing Director of Welch Group. As a fourth-generation leader of this 91-year-old family business, Chris shares how his transport company has become a pioneering "lighthouse" in the logistics decarbonisation journey. With refreshing candour, he reveals how their innovative approach to electric vehicles, charging infrastructure sharing, and community focus is transforming the industry. Discover how Welch's unique blend of family values, commercial wisdom, and environmental commitment is creating a sustainable roadmap for the future of transport. Welch Group https://welchgroup.co.uk Chris Welch https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-welch-98777589

Some products are so successful they become snynonymous with their whole category — nobody asks for a facial tissue, they ask for a Kleenex, you know? Today's episode is, at least in part, about two of those products. First, The Verge's Jennifer Pattison Tuohy joins the show to chart the rise and fall of the Roomba, the robot vacuum that practically invented the category and yet seems to have been left behind. Can iRobot get its robot back on its feet? After that, Kobo CEO Michael Tamblyn discusses the state of e-readers, what it's like to always be "the best non-Amazon option," and what we all want from devices that aren't our smartphone. Finally, The Verge's Chris Welch helps us answer a question on the Vergecast Hotline (call 866-VERGE11, or email vergecast@theverge.com!) about which TV you should buy in 2025. It's a complicated question, but there are answers. Further reading: From CNN: The secret military technology inside the household vacuum robot iRobot announces eight new robot vacuums iRobot tells investors its future is in doubt Will iRobot's reinvention of the Roomba be at the expense of its history of innovation? Amazon wants to map your home, so it bought iRobot The death of the Amazon deal could mean goodbye iRobot iRobot's founder is working on a new kind of home robot Michael Tamblyn's website Kobo announces its first color e-readers The best ereader to buy right now Email us at vergecast@theverge.com or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is all about companies in flux. First, we chat with The Verge's Alex Heath about all things Meta — whether the company is still serious about the metaverse, why its AI plans seem to be going so well, what "OG Facebook" really means, and what headsets to expect this year. After that, The Verge's Chris Welch takes us through the last year at Sonos, from the disastrous app launch to the pretty good headphones that were totally derailed by the disastrous app launch. Can the company get it together in order to launch its next big swing, a set-top box codenamed Pinewood? Finally, we answer a question on the Vergecast Hotline all about business cards. Because, yes, it's 2025, but sometimes you still need a place to put a business card. Further reading: Mark Zuckerberg tells Meta employees to ‘buckle up' in internal meeting Meta says this is the make or break year for the metaverse Meta's Ray-Bans smart glasses sold more than 1 million units last year Meta's AR / VR hardware roadmap through 2027 Meta CTO says the company is working to ‘catch' leakers Zuck wants to bring the “OG Facebook” back. The Sonos app fiasco: how a great audio brand nearly ruined its reputation Sonos CEO Patrick Spence steps down after disastrous app launch Sonos' interim CEO hits all the right notes in first letter to employees Sonos Arc Ultra review: don't call it a comeback (yet) Sonos Ace review: was it worth it? | The Verge After a bruising year, Sonos readies its next big thing: a streaming box Adobe Scan Email us at vergecast@theverge.com or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The latest metal movers episode focuses on the impact of President Donald Trump's second term on the battery metals and EV sectors. What will his policies mean for critical minerals and the future of electric vehicles? Join Thomas Kavanagh, Editor, Argus Battery Materials and Chris Welch, Reporter, Argus Battery Materials as they address this questions and more. Key topics covered in the podcast: Trump's first executive orders The impact of removing the EV mandate Battery metals in the second Trump era

In this episode, Fran Spielman interviews Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch regarding a variety of pressing state issues as Illinois prepares for a new Trump presidency. Welch addresses the financial struggles of middle-class families, the state's strategies to 'Trump-proof' itself, the potential impact of Trump's policies, and the need for responsible budgeting without resorting to tax increases. The discussion also touches upon the state's budget shortfall, the relationship between Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and the state, and the prospect of reforms and funding for public transit and infrastructure projects. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Chicago Tribune political reporter Rick Pearson joined Patrick Pfingsten to talk about his conversation with House Speaker Chris Welch, drama among Democrats at the Statehouse, and the Madigan trial.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chicago Tribune reporter Dan Petrella joined Patrick Pfingsten to explain a major fine for a fixture in Illinois' COVID response and the ongoing battle between Governor JB Pritzker, House Speaker Chris Welch, and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dan and Steven go live with the first Yesshift episode of the year, and also the first Yesshift News Desk Edition of the year. Off the top, we acknowledge the passing of Peter Banks' Flash bandmate Colin Carter. We also give January birthday shout-outs to Tony Kaye, Trevor Rabin, and Jon Davison. And the news items include how you can get involved in a Chris Welch Q&A we're hosting via www.DrumTalkTVBrilliance.com , a new set of tour dates for Jon Anderson & The Band Geeks (which includes changes in the personnel), and some upcoming releases pertaining to Yes, Yes members, and prog rock.

We're ringing in the holidays with a festive Show Swap, Christmukkah-style! Join us as we wrap up the year in news, discuss what makes a holiday-themed episode work, share some of our favorites, and then exchange our gifts: Reviews of two classic holiday episodes that combine Christmas and Hanukkah with hilarious results. ———

In the wake of Tuesday's election results and the beginning of the fall veto session, House Speaker Chris Welch joined Springfield's Morning News to talk about challenges facing the Democratic supermajority.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Verge's Jennifer Pattison Tuohy joins the show to discuss a bunch of updates in the smart home world, including what's new from Google Home and in iOS 18, plus some big news in the world of smart locks and video doorbells. Then, The Verge's Chris Welch comes on to test some new earbuds, and see which pair has the best sound – and the best mic. After that, a new take on the Vergecast's chaotic wearables theory. Further reading:  Ki is bringing wireless power to kitchen appliances The Eufy Smart Lock E30 is the company's first Matter device The Ultraloq Bolt Mission from U-tec is the first smart lock with UWB Assa Abloy buys Level Lock to bolster its smart lock business TP-Link Tapo D225 Video Doorbell Camera review Ring's entry-level wireless doorbell gets a head-to-toe view iOS 18 lets you control Matter devices without a smart home hub The Thread 1.4 spec is here, but it will be a while until we see any benefit Google TV gets a big upgrade Google is set to supercharge Google Home with Gemini intelligence And on wireless earbuds: The best wireless earbuds to buy right now Samsung's Galaxy Buds 2 Pro are its best earbuds yet Google Pixel Buds Pro 2 review: big upgrade, much smaller earbuds Bose's new QuietComfort Earbuds offer top-tier ANC for under $200 Apple AirPods 4 review: defying expectations Nothing's first open-ear headphones keep you aware of your surroundings Email us at vergecast@theverge.com or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Join our new Discord! https://discord.gg/muD2TYgC8f AI News: OpenAI's rumored Strawberry reasoning model is real and might just be paving the way for GPT-5 aka Project Orion according to a huge story in The Information. Plus, GameNGen uses AI to generate DOOM on the fly, Cursor AI is turning everyone into programmers, lots more people are mad at AI (some for good reason) and a big AI regulation bill may pass in California. IT'S A BONKERS WEEK FOLKS. Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/AIForHumansShow Follow us for more on X @AIForHumansShow Join our TikTok @aiforhumansshow And to contact or book us for speaking/consultation, please visit our website: https://www.aiforhumans.show/ #openAI #ai #aitools   // SHOW LINKS // OpenAI's Orion & Strawberry This Year? (PAYWALL) https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-shows-strawberry-ai-to-the-feds-and-uses-it-to-develop-orion Jimmy Apples Orion Tease https://x.com/apples_jimmy/status/1828451205326270643 GameNGen https://gamengen.github.io/ GAN Theft Auto https://youtu.be/udPY5rQVoW0?si=rrnfhRrAx2KB4xSp Cursor AI https://www.cursor.com/ Cursor Having a ChatGPT Moment https://x.com/bresslertweets/status/1827464937691660329?s=46&t=17oDBgHEpb6XXTFzmF-pkg McKay Wrigley Builds Dashboard With Curor + Voice https://x.com/mckaywrigley/status/1828124977927000465 Claude Artifact's on iOS & Android https://x.com/alexalbert__/status/1828502920788103363 Chris Welch's Thread on Pixel AI https://www.threads.net/@chriswelch/post/C-8LF4BOSAP?hl=en The Verge on New Google GenArt AI Pixel feature https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/26/24228808/ai-image-editing-photoshop-comparison-argument Hank Green's Video on Google Training on AI https://youtu.be/JiMXb2NkAxQ?si=4nnqjLapBiKQycEk Elon Backs SB 1047 while A16Z, OpenAI Oppose https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/26/elon-musk-supports-california-ai-bill-00176388 Spamming Hi at Every LLM https://x.com/zswitten/status/1826771850531356811 The Creature Factory -- BTS of Fake AI Puppet Studio https://www.reddit.com/r/aivideo/comments/1eymo93/the_creature_factory Bad Guy Makeovers https://www.reddit.com/r/aivideo/comments/1exxqlt/bad_guy_makeovers/  

Today on the flagship podcast of the correct height-to-width ratio of a foldable phone:  The Verge's David Pierce, Allison Johnson, Victoria Song, and Chris Welch discuss all the new gadget announcements from Google's Pixel event — including the Pixel 9, the Pixel Watch 3, the Pixel buds, and more. Further reading: Google Pixel 9 launch event live coverage: all the news Google's Pixel 9 lineup is a Pro show Google's new Pixel Buds Pro 2 seem better in every way that matters The Pixel 9 Pro XL showed me the future of AI photography Google Pixel Watch 3 hands-on: a big leap forward The Google TV Streamer might be the Apple TV 4K rival we've been waiting for Why Google decided now's the time to move on from Chromecast The Nest Learning Thermostat gets its biggest upgrade in over a decade Google's Pixel Fold one year later: I can't wait for the sequel Email us at vergecast@theverge.com or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch joins Springfield's Morning News to discuss the end of the legislative session, police reform, and potential gun legislation Share and subscribe, and ensure that your neighbors and loved ones have the gift of knowledge.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Cabin is presented by the Wisconsin Counties Association and this week we're featuring Iowa County; https://bit.ly/3upz4fDThe Cabin is also presented by Jolly Good: https://bit.ly/DWxJollyGoodCampfire Conversation: In this episode of The Cabin Podcast, we explore a variety of unique and exciting arcade bars across Wisconsin. AnaElise Beckman kicks things off with the story of Aftershock Classic Arcade in Madison, founded by Brad Van after discovering a broken Pac-Man machine. Now revived by Chris Welch, it features classic games like Dance Dance Revolution and House Of The Dead, along with a selection of craft drinks and snacks. Eric Paulsen highlights Vagabond Arcade in River Falls, where visitors can enjoy retro games by paying an hourly rate, and Heroes Venture Arcade in Two Rivers, which boasts over 150 games without the need for quarters. Jake Rome takes us to The Garcade in Menomonee Falls, offering over 150 arcade games and 30+ pinball machines, as well as WOW - Wausau on the Water Family Fun, a family-focused arcade with great deals and event spaces. Lastly, we visit Cherry Lanes Arcade Bar in Sturgeon Bay, a renovated bowling alley turned hotspot for unique cocktails, craft beers, and vintage arcade games, featuring weekly free bowling and Xtreme bingo nights.Inside Sponsors:Ho-Chunk Nation: https://bit.ly/3l2CfruWisconsin Counties Association: https://bit.ly/3ehxDHHPraise in the Pines: https://bit.ly/3VeLBBB

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David Haugh and Marshall Harris were joined by Illinois Speaker of the House Chris Welch to discuss the Bears' pursuit of public funding for a new stadium on the lakefront, which still hasn't gained traction from lawmakers.

Today on the flagship podcast of audio over Wi-Fi:  03:02 - The Verge's Chris Welch shares his review of Sonos's Ace headphones. Sonos Ace review: was it worth it? Sonos CEO Patrick Spence addresses the company's divisive app redesign 28:58 - MoviePass, MovieCrash director Muta'Ali and MoviePass CEO Stacy Spikes discuss what went wrong with the MoviePass subscription service and how that story was documented in the film. MoviePass, MovieCrash review: a damning account of corporate greed MoviePass is using you to ruin the movies  56:47 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy answers a question from The Vergecast Hotline about smart home gadgets for renters.  Home Assistant: Setting up the Aqara FP2 Presence Sensor - Derek Seaman's Tech Blog  Yale launches its first retrofit smart lock — the Yale Approach with Wi-Fi  The new Yale Keypad Touch brings fingerprint unlocking to August smart locks Aqara kick-starts its first Matter-over-Thread smart lock with a promise of Home Key support  The new Yale Keypad Touch brings fingerprint unlocking to August smart locks Email us at vergecast@theverge.com or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on the flagship podcast of tandem OLEDs:  The Verge's David Pierce and Chris Welch discuss the new iPad Pros with an OLED screen, Sonos' controversial new app, and Sonos' leaked headphones.  Apple iPad Pro (2024) review: the best kind of overkill The new Apple iPad Air is great — but it's not the one to get The new Sonos app is missing a lot of features, and people aren't happy Sonos Ace headphones will have magnetic ear cushions and 30-hour battery life The Verge's Will Poor buys a bunch of broken iPhones on eBay, and pits the Apple Store against independent repair techs. Jet City Device Repair iFixit's iPhone 8 charge port repair guide Hugh Jeffreys' iPhone 12 investigation Apple's plan to allow used parts in iPhone repairs David answers a question from the Vergecast Hotline about why some people think the iPad should be a Macbook replacement.  Email us at vergecast@theverge.com or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

State of the State preview with Chris Welch.

Pretty pictures and rosy financial forecasts have piqued interest in building a new White Sox stadium in the South Loop, but it's time to put some meat on the bone and talk about how to pay for it.That was the bottom line Thursday from Il. House Speaker Chris Welch, a key player in determining whether the dazzling renderings released by developer Related Midwest turn into reality or remain a pipe dream.“I would love to know how they're planning to pay for it. I look forward to hearing that from the developers. I imagine they're taking it step-by-step. They want to make sure there is an appetite for it,” Welch told the Sun-Times. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tony sits down with golf bio-mechanics expert Chris Welch to talk about the early days of golf research at the Alabama Sports Medicine Institute, the role of Hank Johnson, and where we are today in golf instruction! Produced by Clint Crouch

Whoops, we accidentally predicted the future too well in our last episode! So we're back to catch up on the doom and gloom at Paramount+, the mass hysteria surrounding Amazon Prime Video's turn to ads, and more news from the past month. Then we'll make the case for why Marvel's new “Spotlight” series Echo breathes new life into their struggling TV formula… if you can make it through the first 25 minutes of franchise-mandated flashbacks. Plus it's a new year, so it's time to get your streaming house in order. We'll help you budget with the return of our awards-pending advice segment Add/Keep/Cancel. ———

Welcome Natties to Episode 24 "Down the Rabbit Hole!" Featuring special guest Chris Welch! Join us for our second episode in Joshua Tree! We talk about checking into the AirBnb, near death experiences, living in a simulation and MORE! Down the rabbit hole we went! Enjoy Natties and remember to please like, rate and follow!All Socials: @thenaturalspod

Today on the flagship podcast of machine learning-based recommendation systems: 03:31 - The Verge's David Pierce chats with Spotify's co-president and chief product officer Gustav Söderström about recommendations, audiobooks, app design, what Spotify wants to be, and whether it's possible to do it all well.  Spotify - The Verge 44:08 - Alex Cranz joins the show to discuss a bunch of recent streaming news, including the plan to combine Disney Plus and Hulu.  Streaming - The Verge 1:10:28 - Chris Welch joins the show to help answer this week's Vergecast Hotline question about mp3 players.  The Mighty — an iPod shuffle for Spotify — finally arrives for $85 bemighty.com Email us at vergecast@theverge.com or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Verge's Nilay Patel, David Pierce, and Alex Cranz discuss the Meta Quest 3 review, Google gadgets, and Threads continuing to compete with X. Chris Welch joins the show to discuss the result of Sonos' legal battle with Google. Further reading: Google Pixel Watch 2 review: better battery, better watch Pixel 8 and 8 Pro review: in Google we trust? WordPress now offers official support for ActivityPub  Threads is getting an edit button — and you don't have to pay for it @mosseri • We're not anti-news At US v. Google antitrust trial, the Apple search deal takes center stage  Judge blasts Sonos for abusing patent system and throws out $32.5 million win against Google Google is already bringing back the software features it removed because of Sonos' lawsuit  Sonos vows to keep fighting Google for the benefit of smaller companies – and its own revenue Ruling pdf: https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/znpnznkjgpl/GOOGLE%20SONOS%20TRIAL%20ruling.pdf Google has fixed its recent history of terrible speakers with the Pixel 8 Pro  Alameda's paper trail leads straight to Sam Bankman-Fried Samsung joins Google in RCS shaming Apple  Sony's new PS5 with a removable disc drive launches in November Email us at vergecast@theverge.com or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We're teaming up and uncovering all the secrets inside the House of Mouse: From the drama over Bob Iger's bathroom (really!) to the mysterious disappearance of ESPN and other Disney-owned channels for Charter and Spectrum cable customers. (We even have the latest details on the last-minute deal they struck on Monday!) Plus: Why is Comcast eagerly moving up the Hulu sale? What does Brian Roberts know that we don't?? And is it the identity of Ben Glenroy's killer?! Yes, we're also digging into season 3 of Only Murders in the Building, which just passed the halfway point and is turning into quite the whodunit. Except this season one of the whos who might've dunit is none other than Meryl Streep. What does her celebrity star power do to the carefully-balanced gravity of our beloved Hulu comedy? Listen through to the end of the episode to find out our opinions on "the Meryl of it all" and our predictions about the identity of the latest killer stalking the halls of the Arconia. But first! Join us as we… Catch up on the Hollywood strikes! Discuss Rolling Stone's bombshell piece about the toxic culture at Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show. And pour one out for Quibi (again!). ———

We're back from our hot streaming summer vacation and ready for a sweaty (and depressing) streaming fall! We'll summon some laughs with our review of FX stalwart What We Do in the Shadows (wrapping its fifth season this week!) and try our best to conjure some good news after a bleak August. But first! Get excited for a surprise round of Renewed or Canceled?! (Discouraging Vibes ONLY Edition) and a deep dive into the existential questions plaguing the streaming universe: What exactly will be airing on network TV this fall? And just how many of those things are Bachelor-themed? What's the deal with the price hikes at Disney+ and Hulu? Listen in as we struggle to understand our options in real time! And speaking of Disney: What are they going to do with ESPN?! ———

Today on the flagship podcast of transformers (both the movie and the AI thing):  03:46 - The Verge's Victoria Song, Chris Welch, Allison Johnson, and David Pierce discuss using the new features and tools in beta versions of Apple's watchOS 10, tvOS 17, iOS 17, and iPadOS 17.  28:36 - The Verge's James Vincent joins the show to discuss how we should think about using the popular vocabulary terms in AI like GPT, LLM, transformers, hallucinations, etc. Are we using them the right way? Does it matter how we use them?  54:20 - David is joined by The Verge's Ash Parrish and Polygon's Chris Plante to share the video games they are most excited about after a string of announcements from Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Ubisoft, Summer Game Fest, and others.  1:25:46 - We answer a question from the Vergecast Hotline Email us at vergecast@theverge.com, or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 166 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Crossroads", Cream, the myth of Robert Johnson, and whether white men can sing the blues. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-eight-minute bonus episode available, on “Tip-Toe Thru' the Tulips" by Tiny Tim. 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/ Errata I talk about an interview with Clapton from 1967, I meant 1968. I mention a Graham Bond live recording from 1953, and of course meant 1963. I say Paul Jones was on vocals in the Powerhouse sessions. Steve Winwood was on vocals, and Jones was on harmonica. Resources As I say at the end, the main resource you need to get if you enjoyed this episode is Brother Robert by Annye Anderson, Robert Johnson's stepsister. There are three Mixcloud mixes this time. As there are so many songs by Cream, Robert Johnson, John Mayall, and Graham Bond excerpted, and Mixcloud won't allow more than four songs by the same artist in any mix, I've had to post the songs not in quite the same order in which they appear in the podcast. But the mixes are here -- one, two, three. This article on Mack McCormick gives a fuller explanation of the problems with his research and behaviour. The other books I used for the Robert Johnson sections were McCormick's Biography of a Phantom; Up Jumped the Devil: The Real Life of Robert Johnson, by Bruce Conforth and Gayle Dean Wardlow; Searching for Robert Johnson by Peter Guralnick; and Escaping the Delta by Elijah Wald. I can recommend all of these subject to the caveats at the end of the episode. The information on the history and prehistory of the Delta blues mostly comes from Before Elvis by Larry Birnbaum, with some coming from Charley Patton by John Fahey. The information on Cream comes mostly from Cream: How Eric Clapton Took the World by Storm by Dave Thompson. I also used Ginger Baker: Hellraiser by Ginger Baker and Ginette Baker, Mr Showbiz by Stephen Dando-Collins, Motherless Child by Paul Scott, and  Alexis Korner: The Biography by Harry Shapiro. The best collection of Cream's work is the four-CD set Those Were the Days, which contains every track the group ever released while they were together (though only the stereo mixes of the albums, and a couple of tracks are in slightly different edits from the originals). You can get Johnson's music on many budget compilation records, as it's in the public domain in the EU, but the double CD collection produced by Steve LaVere for Sony in 2011 is, despite the problems that come from it being associated with LaVere, far and away the best option -- the remasters have a clarity that's worlds ahead of even the 1990s CD version it replaced. And for a good single-CD introduction to the Delta blues musicians and songsters who were Johnson's peers and inspirations, Back to the Crossroads: The Roots of Robert Johnson, compiled by Elijah Wald as a companion to his book on Johnson, can't be beaten, and contains many of the tracks excerpted in this episode. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before we start, a quick note that this episode contains discussion of racism, drug addiction, and early death. There's also a brief mention of death in childbirth and infant mortality. It's been a while since we looked at the British blues movement, and at the blues in general, so some of you may find some of what follows familiar, as we're going to look at some things we've talked about previously, but from a different angle. In 1968, the Bonzo Dog Band, a comedy musical band that have been described as the missing link between the Beatles and the Monty Python team, released a track called "Can Blue Men Sing the Whites?": [Excerpt: The Bonzo Dog Band, "Can Blue Men Sing the Whites?"] That track was mocking a discussion that was very prominent in Britain's music magazines around that time. 1968 saw the rise of a *lot* of British bands who started out as blues bands, though many of them went on to different styles of music -- Fleetwood Mac, Ten Years After, Jethro Tull, Chicken Shack and others were all becoming popular among the kind of people who read the music magazines, and so the question was being asked -- can white men sing the blues? Of course, the answer to that question was obvious. After all, white men *invented* the blues. Before we get any further at all, I have to make clear that I do *not* mean that white people created blues music. But "the blues" as a category, and particularly the idea of it as a music made largely by solo male performers playing guitar... that was created and shaped by the actions of white male record executives. There is no consensus as to when or how the blues as a genre started -- as we often say in this podcast "there is no first anything", but like every genre it seems to have come from multiple sources. In the case of the blues, there's probably some influence from African music by way of field chants sung by enslaved people, possibly some influence from Arabic music as well, definitely some influence from the Irish and British folk songs that by the late nineteenth century were developing into what we now call country music, a lot from ragtime, and a lot of influence from vaudeville and minstrel songs -- which in turn themselves were all very influenced by all those other things. Probably the first published composition to show any real influence of the blues is from 1904, a ragtime piano piece by James Chapman and Leroy Smith, "One O' Them Things": [Excerpt: "One O' Them Things"] That's not very recognisable as a blues piece yet, but it is more-or-less a twelve-bar blues. But the blues developed, and it developed as a result of a series of commercial waves. The first of these came in 1914, with the success of W.C. Handy's "Memphis Blues", which when it was recorded by the Victor Military Band for a phonograph cylinder became what is generally considered the first blues record proper: [Excerpt: The Victor Military Band, "Memphis Blues"] The famous dancers Vernon and Irene Castle came up with a dance, the foxtrot -- which Vernon Castle later admitted was largely inspired by Black dancers -- to be danced to the "Memphis Blues", and the foxtrot soon overtook the tango, which the Castles had introduced to the US the previous year, to become the most popular dance in America for the best part of three decades. And with that came an explosion in blues in the Handy style, cranked out by every music publisher. While the blues was a style largely created by Black performers and writers, the segregated nature of the American music industry at the time meant that most vocal performances of these early blues that were captured on record were by white performers, Black vocalists at this time only rarely getting the chance to record. The first blues record with a Black vocalist is also technically the first British blues record. A group of Black musicians, apparently mostly American but led by a Jamaican pianist, played at Ciro's Club in London, and recorded many tracks in Britain, under a name which I'm not going to say in full -- it started with Ciro's Club, and continued alliteratively with another word starting with C, a slur for Black people. In 1917 they recorded a vocal version of "St. Louis Blues", another W.C. Handy composition: [Excerpt: Ciro's Club C**n Orchestra, "St. Louis Blues"] The first American Black blues vocal didn't come until two years later, when Bert Williams, a Black minstrel-show performer who like many Black performers of his era performed in blackface even though he was Black, recorded “I'm Sorry I Ain't Got It You Could Have It If I Had It Blues,” [Excerpt: Bert Williams, "I'm Sorry I Ain't Got It You Could Have It If I Had It Blues,”] But it wasn't until 1920 that the second, bigger, wave of popularity started for the blues, and this time it started with the first record of a Black *woman* singing the blues -- Mamie Smith's "Crazy Blues": [Excerpt: Mamie Smith, "Crazy Blues"] You can hear the difference between that and anything we've heard up to that point -- that's the first record that anyone from our perspective, a hundred and three years later, would listen to and say that it bore any resemblance to what we think of as the blues -- so much so that many places still credit it as the first ever blues record. And there's a reason for that. "Crazy Blues" was one of those records that separates the music industry into before and after, like "Rock Around the Clock", "I Want to Hold Your Hand", Sgt Pepper, or "Rapper's Delight". It sold seventy-five thousand copies in its first month -- a massive number by the standards of 1920 -- and purportedly went on to sell over a million copies. Sales figures and market analysis weren't really a thing in the same way in 1920, but even so it became very obvious that "Crazy Blues" was a big hit, and that unlike pretty much any other previous records, it was a big hit among Black listeners, which meant that there was a market for music aimed at Black people that was going untapped. Soon all the major record labels were setting up subsidiaries devoted to what they called "race music", music made by and for Black people. And this sees the birth of what is now known as "classic blues", but at the time (and for decades after) was just what people thought of when they thought of "the blues" as a genre. This was music primarily sung by female vaudeville artists backed by jazz bands, people like Ma Rainey (whose earliest recordings featured Louis Armstrong in her backing band): [Excerpt: Ma Rainey, "See See Rider Blues"] And Bessie Smith, the "Empress of the Blues", who had a massive career in the 1920s before the Great Depression caused many of these "race record" labels to fold, but who carried on performing well into the 1930s -- her last recording was in 1933, produced by John Hammond, with a backing band including Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden: [Excerpt: Bessie Smith, "Give Me a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer"] It wouldn't be until several years after the boom started by Mamie Smith that any record companies turned to recording Black men singing the blues accompanied by guitar or banjo. The first record of this type is probably "Norfolk Blues" by Reese DuPree from 1924: [Excerpt: Reese DuPree, "Norfolk Blues"] And there were occasional other records of this type, like "Airy Man Blues" by Papa Charlie Jackson, who was advertised as the “only man living who sings, self-accompanied, for Blues records.” [Excerpt: Papa Charlie Jackson, "Airy Man Blues"] But contrary to the way these are seen today, at the time they weren't seen as being in some way "authentic", or "folk music". Indeed, there are many quotes from folk-music collectors of the time (sadly all of them using so many slurs that it's impossible for me to accurately quote them) saying that when people sang the blues, that wasn't authentic Black folk music at all but an adulteration from commercial music -- they'd clearly, according to these folk-music scholars, learned the blues style from records and sheet music rather than as part of an oral tradition. Most of these performers were people who recorded blues as part of a wider range of material, like Blind Blake, who recorded some blues music but whose best work was his ragtime guitar instrumentals: [Excerpt: Blind Blake, "Southern Rag"] But it was when Blind Lemon Jefferson started recording for Paramount records in 1926 that the image of the blues as we now think of it took shape. His first record, "Got the Blues", was a massive success: [Excerpt: Blind Lemon Jefferson, "Got the Blues"] And this resulted in many labels, especially Paramount, signing up pretty much every Black man with a guitar they could find in the hopes of finding another Blind Lemon Jefferson. But the thing is, this generation of people making blues records, and the generation that followed them, didn't think of themselves as "blues singers" or "bluesmen". They were songsters. Songsters were entertainers, and their job was to sing and play whatever the audiences would want to hear. That included the blues, of course, but it also included... well, every song anyone would want to hear.  They'd perform old folk songs, vaudeville songs, songs that they'd heard on the radio or the jukebox -- whatever the audience wanted. Robert Johnson, for example, was known to particularly love playing polka music, and also adored the records of Jimmie Rodgers, the first country music superstar. In 1941, when Alan Lomax first recorded Muddy Waters, he asked Waters what kind of songs he normally played in performances, and he was given a list that included "Home on the Range", Gene Autry's "I've Got Spurs That Jingle Jangle Jingle", and Glenn Miller's "Chattanooga Choo-Choo". We have few recordings of these people performing this kind of song though. One of the few we have is Big Bill Broonzy, who was just about the only artist of this type not to get pigeonholed as just a blues singer, even though blues is what made him famous, and who later in his career managed to record songs like the Tin Pan Alley standard "The Glory of Love": [Excerpt: Big Bill Broonzy, "The Glory of Love"] But for the most part, the image we have of the blues comes down to one man, Arthur Laibley, a sales manager for the Wisconsin Chair Company. The Wisconsin Chair Company was, as the name would suggest, a company that started out making wooden chairs, but it had branched out into other forms of wooden furniture -- including, for a brief time, large wooden phonographs. And, like several other manufacturers, like the Radio Corporation of America -- RCA -- and the Gramophone Company, which became EMI, they realised that if they were going to sell the hardware it made sense to sell the software as well, and had started up Paramount Records, which bought up a small label, Black Swan, and soon became the biggest manufacturer of records for the Black market, putting out roughly a quarter of all "race records" released between 1922 and 1932. At first, most of these were produced by a Black talent scout, J. Mayo Williams, who had been the first person to record Ma Rainey, Papa Charlie Jackson, and Blind Lemon Jefferson, but in 1927 Williams left Paramount, and the job of supervising sessions went to Arthur Laibley, though according to some sources a lot of the actual production work was done by Aletha Dickerson, Williams' former assistant, who was almost certainly the first Black woman to be what we would now think of as a record producer. Williams had been interested in recording all kinds of music by Black performers, but when Laibley got a solo Black man into the studio, what he wanted more than anything was for him to record the blues, ideally in a style as close as possible to that of Blind Lemon Jefferson. Laibley didn't have a very hands-on approach to recording -- indeed Paramount had very little concern about the quality of their product anyway, and Paramount's records are notorious for having been put out on poor-quality shellac and recorded badly -- and he only occasionally made actual suggestions as to what kind of songs his performers should write -- for example he asked Son House to write something that sounded like Blind Lemon Jefferson, which led to House writing and recording "Mississippi County Farm Blues", which steals the tune of Jefferson's "See That My Grave is Kept Clean": [Excerpt: Son House, "Mississippi County Farm Blues"] When Skip James wanted to record a cover of James Wiggins' "Forty-Four Blues", Laibley suggested that instead he should do a song about a different gun, and so James recorded "Twenty-Two Twenty Blues": [Excerpt: Skip James, "Twenty-Two Twenty Blues"] And Laibley also suggested that James write a song about the Depression, which led to one of the greatest blues records ever, "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues": [Excerpt: Skip James, "Hard Time Killing Floor Blues"] These musicians knew that they were getting paid only for issued sides, and that Laibley wanted only blues from them, and so that's what they gave him. Even when it was a performer like Charlie Patton. (Incidentally, for those reading this as a transcript rather than listening to it, Patton's name is more usually spelled ending in ey, but as far as I can tell ie was his preferred spelling and that's what I'm using). Charlie Patton was best known as an entertainer, first and foremost -- someone who would do song-and-dance routines, joke around, play guitar behind his head. He was a clown on stage, so much so that when Son House finally heard some of Patton's records, in the mid-sixties, decades after the fact, he was astonished that Patton could actually play well. Even though House had been in the room when some of the records were made, his memory of Patton was of someone who acted the fool on stage. That's definitely not the impression you get from the Charlie Patton on record: [Excerpt: Charlie Patton, "Poor Me"] Patton is, as far as can be discerned, the person who was most influential in creating the music that became called the "Delta blues". Not a lot is known about Patton's life, but he was almost certainly the half-brother of the Chatmon brothers, who made hundreds of records, most notably as members of the Mississippi Sheiks: [Excerpt: The Mississippi Sheiks, "Sitting on Top of the World"] In the 1890s, Patton's family moved to Sunflower County, Mississippi, and he lived in and around that county until his death in 1934. Patton learned to play guitar from a musician called Henry Sloan, and then Patton became a mentor figure to a *lot* of other musicians in and around the plantation on which his family lived. Some of the musicians who grew up in the immediate area around Patton included Tommy Johnson: [Excerpt: Tommy Johnson, "Big Road Blues"] Pops Staples: [Excerpt: The Staple Singers, "Will The Circle Be Unbroken"] Robert Johnson: [Excerpt: Robert Johnson, "Crossroads"] Willie Brown, a musician who didn't record much, but who played a lot with Patton, Son House, and Robert Johnson and who we just heard Johnson sing about: [Excerpt: Willie Brown, "M&O Blues"] And Chester Burnett, who went on to become known as Howlin' Wolf, and whose vocal style was equally inspired by Patton and by the country star Jimmie Rodgers: [Excerpt: Howlin' Wolf, "Smokestack Lightnin'"] Once Patton started his own recording career for Paramount, he also started working as a talent scout for them, and it was him who brought Son House to Paramount. Soon after the Depression hit, Paramount stopped recording, and so from 1930 through 1934 Patton didn't make any records. He was tracked down by an A&R man in January 1934 and recorded one final session: [Excerpt, Charlie Patton, "34 Blues"] But he died of heart failure two months later. But his influence spread through his proteges, and they themselves influenced other musicians from the area who came along a little after, like Robert Lockwood and Muddy Waters. This music -- or that portion of it that was considered worth recording by white record producers, only a tiny, unrepresentative, portion of their vast performing repertoires -- became known as the Delta Blues, and when some of these musicians moved to Chicago and started performing with electric instruments, it became Chicago Blues. And as far as people like John Mayall in Britain were concerned, Delta and Chicago Blues *were* the blues: [Excerpt: John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, "It Ain't Right"] John Mayall was one of the first of the British blues obsessives, and for a long time thought of himself as the only one. While we've looked before at the growth of the London blues scene, Mayall wasn't from London -- he was born in Macclesfield and grew up in Cheadle Hulme, both relatively well-off suburbs of Manchester, and after being conscripted and doing two years in the Army, he had become an art student at Manchester College of Art, what is now Manchester Metropolitan University. Mayall had been a blues fan from the late 1940s, writing off to the US to order records that hadn't been released in the UK, and by most accounts by the late fifties he'd put together the biggest blues collection in Britain by quite some way. Not only that, but he had one of the earliest home tape recorders, and every night he would record radio stations from Continental Europe which were broadcasting for American service personnel, so he'd amassed mountains of recordings, often unlabelled, of obscure blues records that nobody else in the UK knew about. He was also an accomplished pianist and guitar player, and in 1956 he and his drummer friend Peter Ward had put together a band called the Powerhouse Four (the other two members rotated on a regular basis) mostly to play lunchtime jazz sessions at the art college. Mayall also started putting on jam sessions at a youth club in Wythenshawe, where he met another drummer named Hughie Flint. Over the late fifties and into the early sixties, Mayall more or less by himself built up a small blues scene in Manchester. The Manchester blues scene was so enthusiastic, in fact, that when the American Folk Blues Festival, an annual European tour which initially featured Willie Dixon, Memhis Slim, T-Bone Walker, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, and John Lee Hooker, first toured Europe, the only UK date it played was at the Manchester Free Trade Hall, and people like Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones and Jimmy Page had to travel up from London to see it. But still, the number of blues fans in Manchester, while proportionally large, was objectively small enough that Mayall was captivated by an article in Melody Maker which talked about Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies' new band Blues Incorporated and how it was playing electric blues, the same music he was making in Manchester. He later talked about how the article had made him think that maybe now people would know what he was talking about. He started travelling down to London to play gigs for the London blues scene, and inviting Korner up to Manchester to play shows there. Soon Mayall had moved down to London. Korner introduced Mayall to Davey Graham, the great folk guitarist, with whom Korner had recently recorded as a duo: [Excerpt: Alexis Korner and Davey Graham, "3/4 AD"] Mayall and Graham performed together as a duo for a while, but Graham was a natural solo artist if ever there was one. Slowly Mayall put a band together in London. On drums was his old friend Peter Ward, who'd moved down from Manchester with him. On bass was John McVie, who at the time knew nothing about blues -- he'd been playing in a Shadows-style instrumental group -- but Mayall gave him a stack of blues records to listen to to get the feeling. And on guitar was Bernie Watson, who had previously played with Screaming Lord Sutch and the Savages. In late 1963, Mike Vernon, a blues fan who had previously published a Yardbirds fanzine, got a job working for Decca records, and immediately started signing his favourite acts from the London blues circuit. The first act he signed was John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, and they recorded a single, "Crawling up a Hill": [Excerpt: John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, "Crawling up a Hill (45 version)"] Mayall later called that a "clumsy, half-witted attempt at autobiographical comment", and it sold only five hundred copies. It would be the only record the Bluesbreakers would make with Watson, who soon left the band to be replaced by Roger Dean (not the same Roger Dean who later went on to design prog rock album covers). The second group to be signed by Mike Vernon to Decca was the Graham Bond Organisation. We've talked about the Graham Bond Organisation in passing several times, but not for a while and not in any great detail, so it's worth pulling everything we've said about them so far together and going through it in a little more detail. The Graham Bond Organisation, like the Rolling Stones, grew out of Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated. As we heard in the episode on "I Wanna Be Your Man" a couple of years ago, Blues Incorporated had been started by Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies, and at the time we're joining them in 1962 featured a drummer called Charlie Watts, a pianist called Dave Stevens, and saxophone player Dick Heckstall-Smith, as well as frequent guest performers like a singer who called himself Mike Jagger, and another one, Roderick Stewart. That group finally found themselves the perfect bass player when Dick Heckstall-Smith put together a one-off group of jazz players to play an event at Cambridge University. At the gig, a little Scottish man came up to the group and told them he played bass and asked if he could sit in. They told him to bring along his instrument to their second set, that night, and he did actually bring along a double bass. Their bluff having been called, they decided to play the most complicated, difficult, piece they knew in order to throw the kid off -- the drummer, a trad jazz player named Ginger Baker, didn't like performing with random sit-in guests -- but astonishingly he turned out to be really good. Heckstall-Smith took down the bass player's name and phone number and invited him to a jam session with Blues Incorporated. After that jam session, Jack Bruce quickly became the group's full-time bass player. Bruce had started out as a classical cellist, but had switched to the double bass inspired by Bach, who he referred to as "the guv'nor of all bass players". His playing up to this point had mostly been in trad jazz bands, and he knew nothing of the blues, but he quickly got the hang of the genre. Bruce's first show with Blues Incorporated was a BBC recording: [Excerpt: Blues Incorporated, "Hoochie Coochie Man (BBC session)"] According to at least one source it was not being asked to take part in that session that made young Mike Jagger decide there was no future for him with Blues Incorporated and to spend more time with his other group, the Rollin' Stones. Soon after, Charlie Watts would join him, for almost the opposite reason -- Watts didn't want to be in a band that was getting as big as Blues Incorporated were. They were starting to do more BBC sessions and get more gigs, and having to join the Musicians' Union. That seemed like a lot of work. Far better to join a band like the Rollin' Stones that wasn't going anywhere. Because of Watts' decision to give up on potential stardom to become a Rollin' Stone, they needed a new drummer, and luckily the best drummer on the scene was available. But then the best drummer on the scene was *always* available. Ginger Baker had first played with Dick Heckstall-Smith several years earlier, in a trad group called the Storyville Jazzmen. There Baker had become obsessed with the New Orleans jazz drummer Baby Dodds, who had played with Louis Armstrong in the 1920s. Sadly because of 1920s recording technology, he hadn't been able to play a full kit on the recordings with Armstrong, being limited to percussion on just a woodblock, but you can hear his drumming style much better in this version of "At the Jazz Band Ball" from 1947, with Mugsy Spanier, Jack Teagarden, Cyrus St. Clair and Hank Duncan: [Excerpt: "At the Jazz Band Ball"] Baker had taken Dobbs' style and run with it, and had quickly become known as the single best player, bar none, on the London jazz scene -- he'd become an accomplished player in multiple styles, and was also fluent in reading music and arranging. He'd also, though, become known as the single person on the entire scene who was most difficult to get along with. He resigned from his first band onstage, shouting "You can stick your band up your arse", after the band's leader had had enough of him incorporating bebop influences into their trad style. Another time, when touring with Diz Disley's band, he was dumped in Germany with no money and no way to get home, because the band were so sick of him. Sometimes this was because of his temper and his unwillingness to suffer fools -- and he saw everyone else he ever met as a fool -- and sometimes it was because of his own rigorous musical ideas. He wanted to play music *his* way, and wouldn't listen to anyone who told him different. Both of these things got worse after he fell under the influence of a man named Phil Seaman, one of the only drummers that Baker respected at all. Seaman introduced Baker to African drumming, and Baker started incorporating complex polyrhythms into his playing as a result. Seaman also though introduced Baker to heroin, and while being a heroin addict in the UK in the 1960s was not as difficult as it later became -- both heroin and cocaine were available on prescription to registered addicts, and Baker got both, which meant that many of the problems that come from criminalisation of these drugs didn't affect addicts in the same way -- but it still did not, by all accounts, make him an easier person to get along with. But he *was* a fantastic drummer. As Dick Heckstall-Smith said "With the advent of Ginger, the classic Blues Incorporated line-up, one which I think could not be bettered, was set" But Alexis Korner decided that the group could be bettered, and he had some backers within the band. One of the other bands on the scene was the Don Rendell Quintet, a group that played soul jazz -- that style of jazz that bridged modern jazz and R&B, the kind of music that Ray Charles and Herbie Hancock played: [Excerpt: The Don Rendell Quintet, "Manumission"] The Don Rendell Quintet included a fantastic multi-instrumentalist, Graham Bond, who doubled on keyboards and saxophone, and Bond had been playing occasional experimental gigs with the Johnny Burch Octet -- a group led by another member of the Rendell Quartet featuring Heckstall-Smith, Bruce, Baker, and a few other musicians, doing wholly-improvised music. Heckstall-Smith, Bruce, and Baker all enjoyed playing with Bond, and when Korner decided to bring him into the band, they were all very keen. But Cyril Davies, the co-leader of the band with Korner, was furious at the idea. Davies wanted to play strict Chicago and Delta blues, and had no truck with other forms of music like R&B and jazz. To his mind it was bad enough that they had a sax player. But the idea that they would bring in Bond, who played sax and... *Hammond* organ? Well, that was practically blasphemy. Davies quit the group at the mere suggestion. Bond was soon in the band, and he, Bruce, and Baker were playing together a *lot*. As well as performing with Blues Incorporated, they continued playing in the Johnny Burch Octet, and they also started performing as the Graham Bond Trio. Sometimes the Graham Bond Trio would be Blues Incorporated's opening act, and on more than one occasion the Graham Bond Trio, Blues Incorporated, and the Johnny Burch Octet all had gigs in different parts of London on the same night and they'd have to frantically get from one to the other. The Graham Bond Trio also had fans in Manchester, thanks to the local blues scene there and their connection with Blues Incorporated, and one night in February 1963 the trio played a gig there. They realised afterwards that by playing as a trio they'd made £70, when they were lucky to make £20 from a gig with Blues Incorporated or the Octet, because there were so many members in those bands. Bond wanted to make real money, and at the next rehearsal of Blues Incorporated he announced to Korner that he, Bruce, and Baker were quitting the band -- which was news to Bruce and Baker, who he hadn't bothered consulting. Baker, indeed, was in the toilet when the announcement was made and came out to find it a done deal. He was going to kick up a fuss and say he hadn't been consulted, but Korner's reaction sealed the deal. As Baker later said "‘he said “it's really good you're doing this thing with Graham, and I wish you the best of luck” and all that. And it was a bit difficult to turn round and say, “Well, I don't really want to leave the band, you know.”'" The Graham Bond Trio struggled at first to get the gigs they were expecting, but that started to change when in April 1963 they became the Graham Bond Quartet, with the addition of virtuoso guitarist John McLaughlin. The Quartet soon became one of the hottest bands on the London R&B scene, and when Duffy Power, a Larry Parnes teen idol who wanted to move into R&B, asked his record label to get him a good R&B band to back him on a Beatles cover, it was the Graham Bond Quartet who obliged: [Excerpt: Duffy Power, "I Saw Her Standing There"] The Quartet also backed Power on a package tour with other Parnes acts, but they were also still performing their own blend of hard jazz and blues, as can be heard in this recording of the group live in June 1953: [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Quartet, "Ho Ho Country Kicking Blues (Live at Klooks Kleek)"] But that lineup of the group didn't last very long. According to the way Baker told the story, he fired McLaughlin from the group, after being irritated by McLaughlin complaining about something on a day when Baker was out of cocaine and in no mood to hear anyone else's complaints. As Baker said "We lost a great guitar player and I lost a good friend." But the Trio soon became a Quartet again, as Dick Heckstall-Smith, who Baker had wanted in the band from the start, joined on saxophone to replace McLaughlin's guitar. But they were no longer called the Graham Bond Quartet. Partly because Heckstall-Smith joining allowed Bond to concentrate just on his keyboard playing, but one suspects partly to protect against any future lineup changes, the group were now The Graham Bond ORGANisation -- emphasis on the organ. The new lineup of the group got signed to Decca by Vernon, and were soon recording their first single, "Long Tall Shorty": [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Long Tall Shorty"] They recorded a few other songs which made their way onto an EP and an R&B compilation, and toured intensively in early 1964, as well as backing up Power on his follow-up to "I Saw Her Standing There", his version of "Parchman Farm": [Excerpt: Duffy Power, "Parchman Farm"] They also appeared in a film, just like the Beatles, though it was possibly not quite as artistically successful as "A Hard Day's Night": [Excerpt: Gonks Go Beat trailer] Gonks Go Beat is one of the most bizarre films of the sixties. It's a far-future remake of Romeo and Juliet. where the two star-crossed lovers are from opposing countries -- Beatland and Ballad Isle -- who only communicate once a year in an annual song contest which acts as their version of a war, and is overseen by "Mr. A&R", played by Frank Thornton, who would later star in Are You Being Served? Carry On star Kenneth Connor is sent by aliens to try to bring peace to the two warring countries, on pain of exile to Planet Gonk, a planet inhabited solely by Gonks (a kind of novelty toy for which there was a short-lived craze then). Along the way Connor encounters such luminaries of British light entertainment as Terry Scott and Arthur Mullard, as well as musical performances by Lulu, the Nashville Teens, and of course the Graham Bond Organisation, whose performance gets them a telling-off from a teacher: [Excerpt: Gonks Go Beat!] The group as a group only performed one song in this cinematic masterpiece, but Baker also made an appearance in a "drum battle" sequence where eight drummers played together: [Excerpt: Gonks Go Beat drum battle] The other drummers in that scene included, as well as some lesser-known players, Andy White who had played on the single version of "Love Me Do", Bobby Graham, who played on hits by the Kinks and the Dave Clark Five, and Ronnie Verrell, who did the drumming for Animal in the Muppet Show. Also in summer 1964, the group performed at the Fourth National Jazz & Blues Festival in Richmond -- the festival co-founded by Chris Barber that would evolve into the Reading Festival. The Yardbirds were on the bill, and at the end of their set they invited Bond, Baker, Bruce, Georgie Fame, and Mike Vernon onto the stage with them, making that the first time that Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Jack Bruce were all on stage together. Soon after that, the Graham Bond Organisation got a new manager, Robert Stigwood. Things hadn't been working out for them at Decca, and Stigwood soon got the group signed to EMI, and became their producer as well. Their first single under Stigwood's management was a cover version of the theme tune to the Debbie Reynolds film "Tammy". While that film had given Tamla records its name, the song was hardly an R&B classic: [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Tammy"] That record didn't chart, but Stigwood put the group out on the road as part of the disastrous Chuck Berry tour we heard about in the episode on "All You Need is Love", which led to the bankruptcy of  Robert Stigwood Associates. The Organisation moved over to Stigwood's new company, the Robert Stigwood Organisation, and Stigwood continued to be the credited producer of their records, though after the "Tammy" disaster they decided they were going to take charge themselves of the actual music. Their first album, The Sound of 65, was recorded in a single three-hour session, and they mostly ran through their standard set -- a mixture of the same songs everyone else on the circuit was playing, like "Hoochie Coochie Man", "Got My Mojo Working", and "Wade in the Water", and originals like Bruce's "Train Time": [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Train Time"] Through 1965 they kept working. They released a non-album single, "Lease on Love", which is generally considered to be the first pop record to feature a Mellotron: [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Lease on Love"] and Bond and Baker also backed another Stigwood act, Winston G, on his debut single: [Excerpt: Winston G, "Please Don't Say"] But the group were developing severe tensions. Bruce and Baker had started out friendly, but by this time they hated each other. Bruce said he couldn't hear his own playing over Baker's loud drumming, Baker thought that Bruce was far too fussy a player and should try to play simpler lines. They'd both try to throw each other during performances, altering arrangements on the fly and playing things that would trip the other player up. And *neither* of them were particularly keen on Bond's new love of the Mellotron, which was all over their second album, giving it a distinctly proto-prog feel at times: [Excerpt: The Graham Bond Organisation, "Baby Can it Be True?"] Eventually at a gig in Golders Green, Baker started throwing drumsticks at Bruce's head while Bruce was trying to play a bass solo. Bruce retaliated by throwing his bass at Baker, and then jumping on him and starting a fistfight which had to be broken up by the venue security. Baker fired Bruce from the band, but Bruce kept turning up to gigs anyway, arguing that Baker had no right to sack him as it was a democracy. Baker always claimed that in fact Bond had wanted to sack Bruce but hadn't wanted to get his hands dirty, and insisted that Baker do it, but neither Bond nor Heckstall-Smith objected when Bruce turned up for the next couple of gigs. So Baker took matters into his own hands, He pulled out a knife and told Bruce "If you show up at one more gig, this is going in you." Within days, Bruce was playing with John Mayall, whose Bluesbreakers had gone through some lineup changes by this point. Roger Dean had only played with the Bluesbreakers for a short time before Mayall had replaced him. Mayall had not been impressed with Eric Clapton's playing with the Yardbirds at first -- even though graffiti saying "Clapton is God" was already starting to appear around London -- but he had been *very* impressed with Clapton's playing on "Got to Hurry", the B-side to "For Your Love": [Excerpt: The Yardbirds, "Got to Hurry"] When he discovered that Clapton had quit the band, he sprang into action and quickly recruited him to replace Dean. Clapton knew he had made the right choice when a month after he'd joined, the group got the word that Bob Dylan had been so impressed with Mayall's single "Crawling up a Hill" -- the one that nobody liked, not even Mayall himself -- that he wanted to jam with Mayall and his band in the studio. Clapton of course went along: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan and the Bluesbreakers, "If You Gotta Go, Go Now"] That was, of course, the session we've talked about in the Velvet Underground episode and elsewhere of which little other than that survives, and which Nico attended. At this point, Mayall didn't have a record contract, his experience recording with Mike Vernon having been no more successful than the Bond group's had been. But soon he got a one-off deal -- as a solo artist, not with the Bluesbreakers -- with Immediate Records. Clapton was the only member of the group to play on the single, which was produced by Immediate's house producer Jimmy Page: [Excerpt: John Mayall, "I'm Your Witchdoctor"] Page was impressed enough with Clapton's playing that he invited him round to Page's house to jam together. But what Clapton didn't know was that Page was taping their jam sessions, and that he handed those tapes over to Immediate Records -- whether he was forced to by his contract with the label or whether that had been his plan all along depends on whose story you believe, but Clapton never truly forgave him. Page and Clapton's guitar-only jams had overdubs by Bill Wyman, Ian Stewart, and drummer Chris Winter, and have been endlessly repackaged on blues compilations ever since: [Excerpt: Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton, "Draggin' My Tail"] But Mayall was having problems with John McVie, who had started to drink too much, and as soon as he found out that Jack Bruce was sacked by the Graham Bond Organisation, Mayall got in touch with Bruce and got him to join the band in McVie's place. Everyone was agreed that this lineup of the band -- Mayall, Clapton, Bruce, and Hughie Flint -- was going places: [Excerpt: John Mayall's Bluesbreakers with Jack Bruce, "Hoochie Coochie Man"] Unfortunately, it wasn't going to last long. Clapton, while he thought that Bruce was the greatest bass player he'd ever worked with, had other plans. He was going to leave the country and travel the world as a peripatetic busker. He was off on his travels, never to return. Luckily, Mayall had someone even better waiting in the wings. A young man had, according to Mayall, "kept coming down to all the gigs and saying, “Hey, what are you doing with him?” – referring to whichever guitarist was onstage that night – “I'm much better than he is. Why don't you let me play guitar for you?” He got really quite nasty about it, so finally, I let him sit in. And he was brilliant." Peter Green was probably the best blues guitarist in London at that time, but this lineup of the Bluesbreakers only lasted a handful of gigs -- Clapton discovered that busking in Greece wasn't as much fun as being called God in London, and came back very soon after he'd left. Mayall had told him that he could have his old job back when he got back, and so Green was out and Clapton was back in. And soon the Bluesbreakers' revolving door revolved again. Manfred Mann had just had a big hit with "If You Gotta Go, Go Now", the same song we heard Dylan playing earlier: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "If You Gotta Go, Go Now"] But their guitarist, Mike Vickers, had quit. Tom McGuinness, their bass player, had taken the opportunity to switch back to guitar -- the instrument he'd played in his first band with his friend Eric Clapton -- but that left them short a bass player. Manfred Mann were essentially the same kind of band as the Graham Bond Organisation -- a Hammond-led group of virtuoso multi-instrumentalists who played everything from hardcore Delta blues to complex modern jazz -- but unlike the Bond group they also had a string of massive pop hits, and so made a lot more money. The combination was irresistible to Bruce, and he joined the band just before they recorded an EP of jazz instrumental versions of recent hits: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"] Bruce had also been encouraged by Robert Stigwood to do a solo project, and so at the same time as he joined Manfred Mann, he also put out a solo single, "Drinkin' and Gamblin'" [Excerpt: Jack Bruce, "Drinkin' and Gamblin'"] But of course, the reason Bruce had joined Manfred Mann was that they were having pop hits as well as playing jazz, and soon they did just that, with Bruce playing on their number one hit "Pretty Flamingo": [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "Pretty Flamingo"] So John McVie was back in the Bluesbreakers, promising to keep his drinking under control. Mike Vernon still thought that Mayall had potential, but the people at Decca didn't agree, so Vernon got Mayall and Clapton -- but not the other band members -- to record a single for a small indie label he ran as a side project: [Excerpt: John Mayall and Eric Clapton, "Bernard Jenkins"] That label normally only released records in print runs of ninety-nine copies, because once you hit a hundred copies you had to pay tax on them, but there was so much demand for that single that they ended up pressing up five hundred copies, making it the label's biggest seller ever. Vernon eventually convinced the heads at Decca that the Bluesbreakers could be truly big, and so he got the OK to record the album that would generally be considered the greatest British blues album of all time -- Blues Breakers, also known as the Beano album because of Clapton reading a copy of the British kids' comic The Beano in the group photo on the front. [Excerpt: John Mayall with Eric Clapton, "Ramblin' On My Mind"] The album was a mixture of originals by Mayall and the standard repertoire of every blues or R&B band on the circuit -- songs like "Parchman Farm" and "What'd I Say" -- but what made the album unique was Clapton's guitar tone. Much to the chagrin of Vernon, and of engineer Gus Dudgeon, Clapton insisted on playing at the same volume that he would on stage. Vernon later said of Dudgeon "I can remember seeing his face the very first time Clapton plugged into the Marshall stack and turned it up and started playing at the sort of volume he was going to play. You could almost see Gus's eyes meet over the middle of his nose, and it was almost like he was just going to fall over from the sheer power of it all. But after an enormous amount of fiddling around and moving amps around, we got a sound that worked." [Excerpt: John Mayall with Eric Clapton, "Hideaway"] But by the time the album cane out. Clapton was no longer with the Bluesbreakers. The Graham Bond Organisation had struggled on for a while after Bruce's departure. They brought in a trumpet player, Mike Falana, and even had a hit record -- or at least, the B-side of a hit record. The Who had just put out a hit single, "Substitute", on Robert Stigwood's record label, Reaction: [Excerpt: The Who, "Substitute"] But, as you'll hear in episode 183, they had moved to Reaction Records after a falling out with their previous label, and with Shel Talmy their previous producer. The problem was, when "Substitute" was released, it had as its B-side a song called "Circles" (also known as "Instant Party -- it's been released under both names). They'd recorded an earlier version of the song for Talmy, and just as "Substitute" was starting to chart, Talmy got an injunction against the record and it had to be pulled. Reaction couldn't afford to lose the big hit record they'd spent money promoting, so they needed to put it out with a new B-side. But the Who hadn't got any unreleased recordings. But the Graham Bond Organisation had, and indeed they had an unreleased *instrumental*. So "Waltz For a Pig" became the B-side to a top-five single, credited to The Who Orchestra: [Excerpt: The Who Orchestra, "Waltz For a Pig"] That record provided the catalyst for the formation of Cream, because Ginger Baker had written the song, and got £1,350 for it, which he used to buy a new car. Baker had, for some time, been wanting to get out of the Graham Bond Organisation. He was trying to get off heroin -- though he would make many efforts to get clean over the decades, with little success -- while Bond was starting to use it far more heavily, and was also using acid and getting heavily into mysticism, which Baker despised. Baker may have had the idea for what he did next from an article in one of the music papers. John Entwistle of the Who would often tell a story about an article in Melody Maker -- though I've not been able to track down the article itself to get the full details -- in which musicians were asked to name which of their peers they'd put into a "super-group". He didn't remember the full details, but he did remember that the consensus choice had had Eric Clapton on lead guitar, himself on bass, and Ginger Baker on drums. As he said later "I don't remember who else was voted in, but a few months later, the Cream came along, and I did wonder if somebody was maybe believing too much of their own press". Incidentally, like The Buffalo Springfield and The Pink Floyd, Cream, the band we are about to meet, had releases both with and without the definite article, and Eric Clapton at least seems always to talk about them as "the Cream" even decades later, but they're primarily known as just Cream these days. Baker, having had enough of the Bond group, decided to drive up to Oxford to see Clapton playing with the Bluesbreakers. Clapton invited him to sit in for a couple of songs, and by all accounts the band sounded far better than they had previously. Clapton and Baker could obviously play well together, and Baker offered Clapton a lift back to London in his new car, and on the drive back asked Clapton if he wanted to form a new band. Clapton was as impressed by Baker's financial skills as he was by his musicianship. He said later "Musicians didn't have cars. You all got in a van." Clearly a musician who was *actually driving a new car he owned* was going places. He agreed to Baker's plan. But of course they needed a bass player, and Clapton thought he had the perfect solution -- "What about Jack?" Clapton knew that Bruce had been a member of the Graham Bond Organisation, but didn't know why he'd left the band -- he wasn't particularly clued in to what the wider music scene was doing, and all he knew was that Bruce had played with both him and Baker, and that he was the best bass player he'd ever played with. And Bruce *was* arguably the best bass player in London at that point, and he was starting to pick up session work as well as his work with Manfred Mann. For example it's him playing on the theme tune to "After The Fox" with Peter Sellers, the Hollies, and the song's composer Burt Bacharach: [Excerpt: The Hollies with Peter Sellers, "After the Fox"] Clapton was insistent. Baker's idea was that the band should be the best musicians around. That meant they needed the *best* musicians around, not the second best. If Jack Bruce wasn't joining, Eric Clapton wasn't joining either. Baker very reluctantly agreed, and went round to see Bruce the next day -- according to Baker it was in a spirit of generosity and giving Bruce one more chance, while according to Bruce he came round to eat humble pie and beg for forgiveness. Either way, Bruce agreed to join the band. The three met up for a rehearsal at Baker's home, and immediately Bruce and Baker started fighting, but also immediately they realised that they were great at playing together -- so great that they named themselves the Cream, as they were the cream of musicians on the scene. They knew they had something, but they didn't know what. At first they considered making their performances into Dada projects, inspired by the early-twentieth-century art movement. They liked a band that had just started to make waves, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band -- who had originally been called the Bonzo Dog Dada Band -- and they bought some props with the vague idea of using them on stage in the same way the Bonzos did. But as they played together they realised that they needed to do something different from that. At first, they thought they needed a fourth member -- a keyboard player. Graham Bond's name was brought up, but Clapton vetoed him. Clapton wanted Steve Winwood, the keyboard player and vocalist with the Spencer Davis Group. Indeed, Winwood was present at what was originally intended to be the first recording session the trio would play. Joe Boyd had asked Eric Clapton to round up a bunch of players to record some filler tracks for an Elektra blues compilation, and Clapton had asked Bruce and Baker to join him, Paul Jones on vocals, Winwood on Hammond and Clapton's friend Ben Palmer on piano for the session. Indeed, given that none of the original trio were keen on singing, that Paul Jones was just about to leave Manfred Mann, and that we know Clapton wanted Winwood in the band, one has to wonder if Clapton at least half-intended for this to be the eventual lineup of the band. If he did, that plan was foiled by Baker's refusal to take part in the session. Instead, this one-off band, named The Powerhouse, featured Pete York, the drummer from the Spencer Davis Group, on the session, which produced the first recording of Clapton playing on the Robert Johnson song originally titled "Cross Road Blues" but now generally better known just as "Crossroads": [Excerpt: The Powerhouse, "Crossroads"] We talked about Robert Johnson a little back in episode ninety-seven, but other than Bob Dylan, who was inspired by his lyrics, we had seen very little influence from Johnson up to this point, but he's going to be a major influence on rock guitar for the next few years, so we should talk about him a little here. It's often said that nobody knew anything about Robert Johnson, that he was almost a phantom other than his records which existed outside of any context as artefacts of their own. That's... not really the case. Johnson had died a little less than thirty years earlier, at only twenty-seven years old. Most of his half-siblings and step-siblings were alive, as were his son, his stepson, and dozens of musicians he'd played with over the years, women he'd had affairs with, and other assorted friends and relatives. What people mean is that information about Johnson's life was not yet known by people they consider important -- which is to say white blues scholars and musicians. Indeed, almost everything people like that -- people like *me* -- know of the facts of Johnson's life has only become known to us in the last four years. If, as some people had expected, I'd started this series with an episode on Johnson, I'd have had to redo the whole thing because of the information that's made its way to the public since then. But here's what was known -- or thought -- by white blues scholars in 1966. Johnson was, according to them, a field hand from somewhere in Mississippi, who played the guitar in between working on the cotton fields. He had done two recording sessions, in 1936 and 1937. One song from his first session, "Terraplane Blues", had been a very minor hit by blues standards: [Excerpt: Robert Johnson, "Terraplane Blues"] That had sold well -- nobody knows how well, but maybe as many as ten thousand copies, and it was certainly a record people knew in 1937 if they liked the Delta blues, but ten thousand copies total is nowhere near the sales of really successful records, and none of the follow-ups had sold anything like that much -- many of them had sold in the hundreds rather than the thousands. As Elijah Wald, one of Johnson's biographers put it "knowing about Johnson and Muddy Waters but not about Leroy Carr or Dinah Washington was like knowing about, say, the Sir Douglas Quintet but not knowing about the Beatles" -- though *I* would add that the Sir Douglas Quintet were much bigger during the sixties than Johnson was during his lifetime. One of the few white people who had noticed Johnson's existence at all was John Hammond, and he'd written a brief review of Johnson's first two singles under a pseudonym in a Communist newspaper. I'm going to quote it here, but the word he used to talk about Black people was considered correct then but isn't now, so I'll substitute Black for that word: "Before closing we cannot help but call your attention to the greatest [Black] blues singer who has cropped up in recent years, Robert Johnson. Recording them in deepest Mississippi, Vocalion has certainly done right by us and by the tunes "Last Fair Deal Gone Down" and "Terraplane Blues", to name only two of the four sides already released, sung to his own guitar accompaniment. Johnson makes Leadbelly sound like an accomplished poseur" Hammond had tried to get Johnson to perform at the Spirituals to Swing concerts we talked about in the very first episodes of the podcast, but he'd discovered that he'd died shortly before. He got Big Bill Broonzy instead, and played a couple of Johnson's records from a record player on the stage. Hammond introduced those recordings with a speech: "It is tragic that an American audience could not have been found seven or eight years ago for a concert of this kind. Bessie Smith was still at the height of her career and Joe Smith, probably the greatest trumpet player America ever knew, would still have been around to play obbligatos for her...dozens of other artists could have been there in the flesh. But that audience as well as this one would not have been able to hear Robert Johnson sing and play the blues on his guitar, for at that time Johnson was just an unknown hand on a Robinsonville, Mississippi plantation. Robert Johnson was going to be the big surprise of the evening for this audience at Carnegie Hall. I know him only from his Vocalion blues records and from the tall, exciting tales the recording engineers and supervisors used to bring about him from the improvised studios in Dallas and San Antonio. I don't believe Johnson had ever worked as a professional musician anywhere, and it still knocks me over when I think of how lucky it is that a talent like his ever found its way onto phonograph records. We will have to be content with playing two of his records, the old "Walkin' Blues" and the new, unreleased, "Preachin' Blues", because Robert Johnson died last week at the precise moment when Vocalion scouts finally reached him and told him that he was booked to appear at Carnegie Hall on December 23. He was in his middle twenties and nobody seems to know what caused his death." And that was, for the most part, the end of Robert Johnson's impact on the culture for a generation. The Lomaxes went down to Clarksdale, Mississippi a couple of years later -- reports vary as to whether this was to see if they could find Johnson, who they were unaware was dead, or to find information out about him, and they did end up recording a young singer named Muddy Waters for the Library of Congress, including Waters' rendition of "32-20 Blues", Johnson's reworking of Skip James' "Twenty-Two Twenty Blues": [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "32-20 Blues"] But Johnson's records remained unavailable after their initial release until 1959, when the blues scholar Samuel Charters published the book The Country Blues, which was the first book-length treatment ever of Delta blues. Sixteen years later Charters said "I shouldn't have written The Country Blues when I did; since I really didn't know enough, but I felt I couldn't afford to wait. So The Country Blues was two things. It was a romanticization of certain aspects of black life in an effort to force the white society to reconsider some of its racial attitudes, and on the other hand it was a cry for help. I wanted hundreds of people to go out and interview the surviving blues artists. I wanted people to record them and document their lives, their environment, and their music, not only so that their story would be preserved but also so they'd get a little money and a little recognition in their last years." Charters talked about Johnson in the book, as one of the performers who played "minor roles in the story of the blues", and said that almost nothing was known about his life. He talked about how he had been poisoned by his common-law wife, about how his records were recorded in a pool hall, and said "The finest of Robert Johnson's blues have a brooding sense of torment and despair. The blues has become a personified figure of despondency." Along with Charters' book came a compilation album of the same name, and that included the first ever reissue of one of Johnson's tracks, "Preaching Blues": [Excerpt: Robert Johnson, "Preaching Blues"] Two years later, John Hammond, who had remained an ardent fan of Johnson, had Columbia put out the King of the Delta Blues Singers album. At the time no white blues scholars knew what Johnson looked like and they had no photos of him, so a generic painting of a poor-looking Black man with a guitar was used for the cover. The liner note to King of the Delta Blues Singers talked about how Johnson was seventeen or eighteen when he made his recordings, how he was "dead before he reached his twenty-first birthday, poisoned by a jealous girlfriend", how he had "seldom, if ever, been away from the plantation in Robinsville, Mississippi, where he was born and raised", and how he had had such stage fright that when he was asked to play in front of other musicians, he'd turned to face a wall so he couldn't see them. And that would be all that any of the members of the Powerhouse would know about Johnson. Maybe they'd also heard the rumours that were starting to spread that Johnson had got his guitar-playing skills by selling his soul to the devil at a crossroads at midnight, but that would have been all they knew when they recorded their filler track for Elektra: [Excerpt: The Powerhouse, "Crossroads"] Either way, the Powerhouse lineup only lasted for that one session -- the group eventually decided that a simple trio would be best for the music they wanted to play. Clapton had seen Buddy Guy touring with just a bass player and drummer a year earlier, and had liked the idea of the freedom that gave him as a guitarist. The group soon took on Robert Stigwood as a manager, which caused more arguments between Bruce and Baker. Bruce was convinced that if they were doing an all-for-one one-for-all thing they should also manage themselves, but Baker pointed out that that was a daft idea when they could get one of the biggest managers in the country to look after them. A bigger argument, which almost killed the group before it started, happened when Baker told journalist Chris Welch of the Melody Maker about their plans. In an echo of the way that he and Bruce had been resigned from Blues Incorporated without being consulted, now with no discussion Manfred Mann and John Mayall were reading in the papers that their band members were quitting before those members had bothered to mention it. Mayall was furious, especially since the album Clapton had played on hadn't yet come out. Clapton was supposed to work a month's notice while Mayall found another guitarist, but Mayall spent two weeks begging Peter Green to rejoin the band. Green was less than eager -- after all, he'd been fired pretty much straight away earlier -- but Mayall eventually persuaded him. The second he did, Mayall turned round to Clapton and told him he didn't have to work the rest of his notice -- he'd found another guitar player and Clapton was fired: [Excerpt: John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, "Dust My Blues"] Manfred Mann meanwhile took on the Beatles' friend Klaus Voorman to replace Bruce. Voorman would remain with the band until the end, and like Green was for Mayall, Voorman was in some ways a better fit for Manfred Mann than Bruce was. In particular he could double on flute, as he did for example on their hit version of Bob Dylan's "The Mighty Quinn": [Excerpt: Manfred Mann "The Mighty Quinn"] The new group, The Cream, were of course signed in the UK to Stigwood's Reaction label. Other than the Who, who only stuck around for one album, Reaction was not a very successful label. Its biggest signing was a former keyboard player for Screaming Lord Sutch, who recorded for them under the names Paul Dean and Oscar, but who later became known as Paul Nicholas and had a successful career in musical theatre and sitcom. Nicholas never had any hits for Reaction, but he did release one interesting record, in 1967: [Excerpt: Oscar, "Over the Wall We Go"] That was one of the earliest songwriting attempts by a young man who had recently named himself David Bowie. Now the group were public, they started inviting journalists to their rehearsals, which were mostly spent trying to combine their disparate musical influences --

In this episode we welcome the very personable Richard Morton Jack to "RBP Towers" and ask him to talk about his monumental new biography of Nick Drake – along with his marvellous Flashback magazine and an audio interview with Small Faces/Humble Pie frontman Steve Marriott. We commence by hearing how Richard was initiated into pop music (and its freakier offshoots) — and how this led him to the arcane cult figures covered in Flashback, not to mention released on his Sunbeam label. From the underground sounds of Sam Gopal, Mad River and Blossom Toes to the exhaustive undertaking that was Nick Drake: The Life was a major gear-shift for Richard, but one that came with the blessing of the Drake estate — and a foreword by Nick's sister Gabrielle. In a long and in-depth conversation, we attempt to make sense of the life, death and musical magic of the troubled troubadour, placing him in the context of producer Joe Boyd's Witchseason stable and hearing about a 1970 Jackie interview with Nick that Richard unearthed during his no-stone-unturned research for the book. A very different legend of '60s/'70s English music can be heard in two clips from Chris Welch's 1985 audio interview with artful rock dodger Steve Marriott. We discuss the Small Faces and then Humble Pie; infamous manager Don Arden and Immediate boss Andrew Loog Oldham; Steve's blue-eyed-soul holler of a voice... and of course 1968's concept album Ogden's Nut Gone Flake. Then we briefly turn our attention to Steve's R&B-boom contemporary Tony McPhee (1944-2023) and the remarkable blues-infused hard rock trio that was the Groundhogs. Finally, Mark and Jasper talk us out with notes on (and quotes from) newly-added library pieces about — among other subjects – Odetta (1963), Marc Bolan (1970), Motörhead (1981), New York's Collective School of Music (2003) and Congolese street musicians Staff Benda Bilili (2009). Pieces discussed: Nick Drake by Jerry Gilbert, Nick Drake in Jackie, In Search of Nick Drake, Nick Drake: Exiled from Heaven, Steve Marriott audio, Tony McPhee audio, Odetta, Marc Bolan, Motörhead, Folk albums, The Who, Terence Trent D'Arby, The Collective and Staff Benda Bilili.

We were honored this week to have the celebrated journalist and author Mr. Chris Welch join us! Anyone who has followed Popular Music especially in the 1960s and 1970s will no doubt know this man who has been a staple of the Music Journalism scene since the 1960s. He has written over 40 books and thousands of articles. He first joined the British weekly music magazine Melody Maker in 1964, staying on until 1979. Chris has interviewed, hung with and traveled with every major rock act from the 1960s and 70s, including The Beatles, The Stones, The Who, Spencer Davis Group, and MANY more and later notably YES in the 70s and also Wings. So this was a homerun for us! Of Chris' many published works, he wrote the The Definitive Biography on Paul which was published in 1974. He later penned Close To The Edge: "The Story of YES published first in 1999, with a revision in 2003. He recently published a new book on the life of ELP Keyboardist Keith Emerson. We could have talked for hours about Chris' experiences. The man has lived quite the life and we are so thankful for the time he gave us! Thank you so very much Chris! His Links: www.chriswelchonline.com Keith Emerson Book

Today on the flagship podcast of quantum dots:  02:33 - Makena Kelly explains the various attempts from the US government to ban TikTok, and how that could actually work.  TikTok ban: all the news on attempts to ban the video platform Inside the US government's fight to ban TikTok 25:06 - Allison Johnson explains the state of the Android phone market, and where it's headed next this year.  The best Android phone to buy in 2023 51:28 - Chris Welch explains why this may be the best time to buy an OLED TV.  This is the best time in a decade to splurge on a premium OLED TV Making sense of new TV features in 2022  Vote for us in the People's Voice Webby Awards for Best Technology Podcast: http://bit.ly/3moCTDs  Email us at vergecast@theverge.com or call us at 866-VERGE11, we'd love to hear from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on the flagship podcast of not-yet-announced Sonos speakers: Adi Robertson and Sean Hollister discuss their review of the PSVR2, and how it ranks among the other VR options today, along with its predecessor.  PSVR 2 review: love on a leash We plugged the PSVR2 into a PC, and here's what it does Meta is improving Quest hand tracking so you can touch buttons and type on virtual keyboards Alex Cranz, Chris Welch, Chris Person, and Jennifer Pattison Tuohy discuss the world of multi-room audio devices to play music. How do smart speakers like Sonos, Amazon Echo, and Google Home compare to audiophile gadgets like the WiiM Mini and the Raspberry Pi? WiiM's Mini and Pro are the Chromecast Audio's real replacement Exclusive: these are the new Sonos Era speakers  Amazon's Alexa app gets more Sonos-y with new multiroom audio controls How to set up multiroom music playback with Google Home speakers Email us at vergecast@theverge.com, or call the Vergecast Hotline at 866-VERGE11, we'd love to hear from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on the flagship podcast of removable power cords: 02:14 - The Verge's Alex Cranz, Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, Chris Welch, and Nilay Patel discuss the updated version of the Apple HomePod.  Apple's new HomePod plays it safe How to use the Apple HomePod's temperature and humidity sensors 43:23 - Katharine Trendacosta joins the show to discuss why and how faking your death has been a common practice in online communities.  A Fake Death in Romancelandia She created a fake Twitter persona — then she killed it with COVID-19 1:05:19 - Verge senior editor Sean Hollister gives an updated review of Valve's Steam Deck, which had a buggy start in 2022. The Steam Deck wasn't born ready, but it's ready now Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Verge's Alex Cranz, Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, Chris Welch, and Andrew Hawkins discuss the best TVs, cars, and smart home gadgets they saw at CES 2023 — from a color-changing car to a vacuum suction system on an OLED TV. Further reading: CES 2023: Verge Video's best of Why Matter mattered at CES The $3,000 totally wireless Displace TV is the definition of CES absurdity Roku does the obvious thing and announces its own TV line  TCL's 2023 TVs have new branding and are gaming powerhouses Samsung's 2023 TV lineup bets everything on picture upgrades and AI tricks LG's latest Signature OLED TV receives all of its audio and video wirelessly LG's 2023 OLED TVs are brighter (again) and make webOS smarter LG wants to reinvent how you think of TV picture modes Sony breaks from tradition and won't announce new TVs at CES 2023  Sony and Honda just announced their new electric car brand, Afeela The Peugeot Inception concept is an EV knife aimed straight at the future The BMW i Vision Dee is a future EV sports sedan that can talk back to you Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Verge's Nilay Patel, Alex Cranz, Chris Welch, and Sean Hollister celebrate the holiday season with a full show dedicated to Bluetooth. 03:57 - We play Bluetooth Jeopardy! Play along here 30:38 - The crew discuss the many codecs layered onto the Bluetooth spec, and where the standard is headed. 46:56 - Former Bluetooth SIG executive director Dr. Mike Foley joins the show to discuss his time in charge of Bluetooth. Happy Holidays! Email us at vergecast@theverge.com or call us at 866-VERGE11, we'd love to hear from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

His "trial" interview when joining Melody Maker in 1964 was Joe Morello! Now, legendary music journalist and author Chris Welch joins us to talk about the recently released Keith Emerson biography he wrote! You can get it at http://www.keithemersonbook.com Known for his work with Melody Maker and beyond, Chris has written various books on artists and bands Jimi Hendrix, Yes, Cream, Led Zeppelin, Peter Grant, David Bowie, Adam Ant, Paul McCartney, Peter Gabriel, Vivian Stanshall, Tina Turner, Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton and Iron Maiden. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/yesshift/support

The new Keith Emerson biography by Chris Welch came out recently, and here we talk about it with Aaron and Jo Emerson, Keith's son and daughter-in-law, respectively! You can order the book via www.keithemersonbook.com Tune in as we talk about what it was like getting everything together, and feel free to chime in with some memories of Keith. (And for the Yes fans, Aaron has an amusing anecdote regarding 90125 and Steve Howe.) And tune in to our interview with Chris Welch on Wednesday, December 7th, 11am PST / 2pm EST / 7pm UK Time via facebook.com/Yesshift --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/yesshift/support

Bose is one of the most recognizable audio brands in the world: it was famous for the Wave radio in the 80s, it invented noise cancellation, you can see its logo on NFL sidelines every Sunday, and of course there are the popular consumer products like the QuietComfort headphones that reviewers like Chris Welch here at The Verge rate as some of the best in the game. Bose is in tons of cars as well: audio systems in GM, Honda, Hyundai, Porsche, and more are developed and tuned by Bose. Bose was founded in 1964 by Dr. Amar Bose, who donated a majority of the shares of the company to MIT, where he was a professor. That means to this day, Bose is a private company with no pressure to go public. However, Bose still has to compete against big tech in talent, products, and compatibility. So today I'm talking to Bose CEO Lila Snyder about Bose's dependence on platform vendors like Apple and Google, how she thinks about standards like Bluetooth, and where she thinks she can compete and win against AirPods and other products that get preferential treatment on phones. Links: Bose QuietComfort Earbuds II review: noise cancellation domination How Amar Bose used research to build better speakers List of Bose shelf stereos Hearing Aids | FDA Digital signal processor Functional organization Bose names its first female CEO as wait continues for new products Amar Bose '51 makes stock donation to MIT Meta announces huge job cuts affecting 11,000 employees Amazon mass layoffs will reportedly ax 10,000 people this week Elon Musk demands Twitter employees commit to ‘extremely hardcore' culture or leave The iPhone 7 has no headphone jack Bluetooth Special Interest Group Qualcomm Partners with Meta and Bose Bose gets into hearing aid business with new FDA-cleared SoundControl hearing aids Over-the-counter hearing aids could blur the line with headphones New Bose-Lexie Hearing Aid to Enter the Over-the-Counter Market Lexie Partners with Bose to Offer Lexie B1 Powered by Bose Hearing Aids Bose Frames Tempo review: the specs to beat Bose discontinues its niche Sport Open Earbuds BMW starts selling heated seat subscriptions for $18 a month Seven CEOs and one secretary of transportation on the future of cars Why Amazon VP Steve Boom just made the entire music catalog free with Prime                  Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23246668  Credits: Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. It was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright.  The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Director is Eleanor Donovan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Disney's board is bringing Bob Iger out of the Disney Vault and we're stockpiling the hot corporate goss like limited edition Beauty & The Beast DVDs in 2002. It's like if Succession had a PG rating… and we're loving every minute of it! But don't worry, because we're still thankful for Peacock's latest shenanigans (somebody pardon this bird, STAT!) and our beloved Hulu. Yes, little Hulu. The stepchild of the Great Big Bob Breakup. What will happen to poor Hulu?? … We might not have the answer to that question, but we do have a glowing review of Hulu's latest FX joint: Fleishman Is in Trouble. ———

In this episode, I am sharing a session I was asked to present at the IASB conference. I have provided both the video and audio versions of this session. The beauty of this session is that we brought in a robust powerhouse of project based learning experts from around the country to help shape the narrative around why this work matters so much.The session description is as follows:Looking for ways to transform learning for your students? Join Pleasant Valley Schools and Mississippi Bend AEA to explore how they innovated to engage students and educators in authentic learning experiences and project-based learning. Attendees will examine real-world scenarios where teachers are weaving content standards, universal constructs and social-emotional competencies together—all while remaining collaborative and providing rigorous and authentic work. Give your students voice and choice, showcase their learning, and understand how this type of work can happen in YOUR classroom.Check out the perspectives and the challenges to enhance learning experiences for all students. The show is on Spotify!Video Versionhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcDoocL9AQITOPICS WE EXPLOREQuick overview of the session and goals06:00 Chris Welch, administration perspective on authentic learning and students owning the learningStudents owning the learning changes the narrative around engagementUniversal Constructs that is so important10:00 rest of introductions and persepctive from Sarah Vice a 6th grade teacherFailure is a giftThe importance of human experienceProcess over product14:24 Steven Smith, NASA perspective8 most dreaded words "When am I ever going to use this?"Our students are going to be part of the space economyFailure is vital lesson we don't learn well19:21 Chris Welch, Administrator on providing context of how instructional design ofHow does civilizations from ancient history survive?What does survival look like present day with All Thirteen book?How do we then work with experts to think about the future that will be "present day" for our students?22:30 Jeff Robin and how to really think about projects from a real perspectiveTeachers need to do the project firstStudents don't want dumpster projectsYou only remember when learning is fun and exciting25:50 Amanda Clark and importance of strong leadershipNeed to provide space for teachers to be creative and to give teachers space to try things out.We need to do more than just teach standardsTeachers need support and love from leaders, community, school boards, etc.27:41 Erin Starkey and her story how pbl brought joy back to her teachingPBL was a lightbulb for Erin because she was passionate and that is contagiousPBL was a gamechanger because she found joy and in students from age of 4 and above29:30 Beth Campbell, librarian perspective on how to build school community to do the workIsolated spaces in schools are gone. PBL brings opportunities to team because together we are betterLibrary should be alive and vibrant with co-teaching and co-design for learning opportunitiesIncredible research on the brain and heart31:45 Chad Uhde, elementary principal and form PBL instructional coachPower of taking risks and see what we can do. Be brave to change identity of studentsPBL provides new outlet for students to showcase who they are and their why35:00 How do you assess and measure and quantify success?Jeff RobinCan the students explain what they have learned?Do we need an easy number?Are we doing education for ourselves or for the students?Erin StarkeyRequires intentional integrationUBD and designing formative flags around the wayConstantly meet needs of students naturally in PBLRubrics for learning not a checklist of tasksSteven SmithLots of standards are performance based on what students can doChallenge the paradigm that we need a numerical value for everythingLife does not work that wayPreparing students for a world that they will be creatingWe are not helping our students by creating widgetsAre we here for our students or ourselves?Why go through all the nonsense of teaching if we want each student to fit a single mold?We are in the space age and students will decide if they want to go to Disney in Florida, California, or space?We need to either start preparing our students for the future or stop pretending like we are tryingChris WelchFocus on standards and conversation on "How do you know?"Where is the learning visible?We end up with not just standards but thinking progressions on how to think at deeper cognitive rigor and DOK.Exchange not just instruction but facilitationYOUR CHALLENGEShare ideas you gathered from the conversation with us on the socials.What resonated with you?RESOURCE MENTIONED IN SHOWEverything can be found here - https://sites.google.com/view/creatingauthenticlearning/power-of-authentic-learningUniversal Constructs

Produced by Ken Fuller, Wayne Hall and Jeffrey Crecelius This week we met the delightful Chris Welch who wrote one of the most important books about Yes, Close To The Edge - The Yes Story. Journalist for Melody Maker, Kerrang and many other publications, Chris has known the band from its earliest days and we very much enjoyed talking to him about those days in the early 70s as well as his trip to Advision to see the band recording Tormato. It was a  great conversation so we hope you enjoy it as well. What was it like in London in the early 70s?Did punk kill prog?How was the atmosphere in Advision? Take a listen to the episode and then let us know what you think below! Chris' Melody Maker Studio report and Tormato review: Facebook has just changed how pages work which means that I've had to establish a new place for us to post and discuss Yes-related happenings. It's a new group entitled, rather creatively, YMP Discussion Group. For the moment it's open to anyone to join but I'll be adding rules and joining requirements when I have time. One of the advantages of the new format is that all members of the group have the same ability to post content, so it's a bit more egalitarian, or somesuch. Please do search for the group and join in. https://www.facebook.com/groups/3216603008606331/ If you haven't already done so, please sign up at tormatobook.com to the email newsletter. PRESALE IS UNDERWAY (for subscribers only)! If you sign up now, for free, you can have access to the newsletters you've missed. It really helps to know people are looking forward to reading the culmination of my decades of Tormato obsession. Not final artwork or title - just me messing about with one of Jeremy North's photos Become a Patron! YMP Patrons: Producers: Ken FullerJeffrey Crecelius andWayne Hall Patrons: Aaron SteelmanDave OwenMark James LangPaul TomeiJoost MaglevDavid HeydenPaul WilsonMartin KjellbergBob MartilottaLindMichael O'ConnorWilliam HayesBrian SullivanDavid PannellLobate ScarpMiguel FalcãoChris BandiniDavid WatkinsonNeal KaforeyRachel HadawayCraig EstenesDemMark 'Zarkol' BaggsPaul HailesDoug CurranRobert NasirFergus CubbageScott ColomboFred BarringerDavidGeoff BailieSimon BarrowGeoffrey MasonStephen LambeGuy R DeRomeSteve DillHenrik AntonssonSteve PerryHogne Bø PettersenSteve RodeDeclan LogueSteve ScottTodd DudleyJimJamie McQuinnSteven RoehrJohn ParryKeith HoisingtonAlan BeggTerence SadlerJohn HoldenBarry GorskyMichael HanderhanTim StannardJoseph CottrellJohn ThomsonJohn CowanTony HandleyRobert Please follow/subscribe! If you are still listening to the podcast on the website, please consider subscribing so you don't risk missing anything: Theme music The music I use is the last movement of Stravinsky's Firebird Suite. This has been used as introduction music at many Yes concerts. My theme music is not take from a live concert - I put it together from: archive.org

Ciao! And welcome back to another season of sexy potential murder victims (and Jennifer Coolidge victims) on HBO's breakout hit The White Lotus (now with extra Sicily!). We're sharing our thoughts on the season premier, discussing why expectations for the show might be unrealistically high, and making our predictions for this new installment of Mike White's excellent anthology series. But first we're unpacking three strange news stories you might've missed: The holidays are almost here which means we've got a roundup of all the exclusive merch Disney is dying to sell you… if you subscribe to Disney+ (Bob Chapek would hate to see this limited edition Lightsaber fall into the wrong hands…). Is Disney merch not your style? Well then Netflix would like to invite you to your local Wal-Mart for some good old fashioned corporate synergy (and popcorn!). And just in case you forgot that the holiday are almost here (terrifying, we know) Peacock is continuing its grand pivot from NBC-style comedies to… Hallmark original movies? Sure, why not?! Plus a startling Simpsons confession from Dianne, our favorite anthologies of all time, and we accidentally introduce a brand new segment: TV TAROT! So join us, won't you? It's in the cards… ———

02:23 - The Verge's David Pierce brings in deputy editor Dan Seifert, reviewer Allison Johnson, and managing editor Alex Cranz to answer Vergecast Hotline questions about Samsung's new Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Z Flip 4. 23:56 - Chris Welch returns to the show for more earbuds voice call testing, this time on the NYC ferry with the new Samsung Galaxy Buds 2 Pro and the Google Pixel Buds Pro. 41:22 - Nilay Patel shares his experience reviewing the Ford F-150 Lightning, and the troubles with its touchscreen control panel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Vergecast is now the flagship podcast of twice-a-week podcasts. Our new Wednesday episode digs even deeper into The Verge's reporting and the products you care about. And it launches today! 03:00 - David Pierce talks with Adi Robertson about Meta's VR prototypes she previewed. 19:44 - Chris Welch tests a bunch of wireless earbuds to find out which has the best phone call quality. 40:44 - Alex Cranz and David discuss what their dream E Ink device is, and why it still doesn't exist. We're going to do a lot of experimenting on this show, so I hope you'll tell us what you like and don't like. Email us at vergecast@theverge.com, we'd love to hear from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David Pierce rejoins The Vergecast with Nilay Patel and Alex Cranz. The crew discuss Netflix losing subscribers for the first time in over a decade, CNN Plus shutting down only a month after it launched, and a whole lot more. Verge editor Chris Welch joins the show to discuss Sonos' new budget soundbar that is set to release in June. Relevant links: gone90.biz Netflix just lost subscribers for the first time in over a decade The writing may be on the wall for sharing Netflix accounts CNN Plus is shutting down only a month after it launched The Obamas are leaving Spotify for a new multiplatform podcast deal Spotify opens up video podcasting to everyone in the US and select markets Exclusive: this is the new budget soundbar from Sonos A year after LG left the smartphone business, Samsung is the big winner The latest leak of Google's upcoming Pixel Watch shows off a familiar design Playdate review: all it's cranked up to be  A camera battery with a USB-C port is a gadget whose time has come Elon Musk lays out funding for ambitious Twitter takeover Delta confirms ‘exploratory' Starlink tests Tesla earned over $3 billion in profit in the first quarter California net neutrality law to remain intact after appeals court says it won't reconsider earlier decision Instagram is begging you to stop reposting TikToks to Reels This firm made Republicans go viral — now it's falling apart  Booming warehouse growth clashes with rural life in California's Inland Empire Inside the pandemic's PPE supply chain nightmare A former Foxconn executive tries to explain what went wrong in Wisconsin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices