Podcasts about country gentleman

Joseph Glidden is known as the father of barbed wire, but who actually invented it was a matter of disagreement. As a consequence, Glidden's invention was embroiled in legal battles for years.  Research: “Barb Fence: Its Utility, Efficiency and Economy : a Book for the Farmer, the Gardener and the Country Gentleman.” Washburn & Moen Manufacturing Company. Lucius P. Goddard. Accessed online: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=v_EoAAAAYAAJ&rdid=book-v_EoAAAAYAAJ&rdot=1 “Barbed Wire.” The Burlington Hawk-Eye. May 3, 1879. https://www.newspapers.com/image/31320626/?match=1&terms=%22joseph%20f.%20glidden%22 “Barbed Wire.” Chicago Tribune. Dec. 22, 1880. https://www.newspapers.com/image/349503001/?match=1&terms=%22joseph%20f.%20glidden%22 “Barbed Wire: The Saga.” Joseph H. Glidden Homestead. https://www.gliddenhomestead.org/barbedwire.html Boardman, Mark. “The Winner.” True West. Sept. 22, 2022. https://truewestmagazine.com/article/the-winner/ Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Joseph Farwell Glidden". Encyclopedia Britannica, 6 Mar. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Joseph-Farwell-Glidden “Dekalb Gets New Hospital.” Republican-Northwestern. Oct. 30, 1906. https://www.newspapers.com/image/69739499/?match=1&terms=%22Joseph%20F.%20Glidden%22 Glover, Robert. “The Haish-Glidden relationship.” Jacob Haish Story. April 22, 2018. http://www.jacobhaishstory.com/2018/04/glover-haish-glidden-relationship.html Haish, Jacob. “"A Reminiscent Chapter from the Unwritten History of Barb Wire Prior to and Immediately Following the Celebrated Decision of Judge Blodgette, December 15, 1880.” Accessed via Jacob Haish Story: http://www.jacobhaishstory.com/2016/10/a-reminiscent-chapter-from-unwritten.html Harford, Tim. “'The devil's rope': How barbed wire changed America.” BBC. Aug. 6, 2017. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40448594 “HISTORY OF DEKALB.” City of Dekalb. https://www.cityofdekalb.com/854/History-of-DeKalb Joseph F. Glidden Homestead and Historical Center. https://www.gliddenhomestead.org/index.html McCallum, Henry D. “Barbed Wire in Texas.” The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, vol. 61, no. 2, 1957, pp. 207–19. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30241926 Rumrill, Alan. F. “A Moment in Local History: Joseph Glidden's Invention.” The Keene Sentinel. Aug. 19, 2023. https://www.sentinelsource.com/news/local/a-moment-in-local-history-joseph-gliddens-invention-by-alan-f-rumrill/article_fd52ab67-53cf-5ac3-a780-f2ab94411f16.html “Story of Barb Wire.” Belvedere Daily Republican. Jan. 11, 1906. https://www.newspapers.com/image/69693931/?match=1&terms=%22Joseph%20F.%20Glidden%22 “The Washburn & Moen Maufacturing Company … “ Chicago Tribune. Nov. 13,1876. https://www.newspapers.com/image/349595774/?match=1&terms=%22jacob%20haish%22 “WASHBURN & MOEN MANUF'G CO. et al. v. BEAT 'EM ALL BARBED-WIRE CO. et al.” U.S. Supreme Court. Accessed via Cornell Law School: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/143/275  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a reissue of my interview with Canada's Country Gentleman, Tommy Hunter.When I reached out to him in the summer of 2020, he was more than accomodating with me & we had an awesome discussion about his early beginnings & his 30 plus years on both CBC TV & on the Nashville network.This was one of my most applauded interviews & I'm proud to feature the legendary Tommy Hunter as my first "classic" episode.If you enjoy this episode & would like to help me to continue producing shows like this one, why not click on the "buy me a coffee" link here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/tsolobandq

NWA US Tag Team Championship --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/baddsupermantv/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/baddsupermantv/support

238. A whole buncha' Chet, oh you betcha! Celebrating the one and only "Mr. Guitar" on tonite's "Go Kat, GO!" radio program, listening to some incredible pickin' action courtesy of Chet Atkins on his 99th birthday. Join us for an exclusive interview with High Noon "guitarist extraordinaire" Sean Mencher (freshly returned from the Red Hot & Blue Weekender!) as we discuss th' fuss about 'The Country Gentleman's amazing musical legacy. Plenty of NEW rockin' albums to debut today as well -let's rip the plastic off The Hicksville Bombers' & Snakebite's latest platters PLUS dip our needle into the Sirocco Bros. hot 45 record! Fabulous requests mixed in on demand and plenty of your favorite vintage rockin' recordings heard on DJ Del Villarreal's "Go Kat, GO! The Rock-A-Billy Show!" -good to the last bop!™*If you live in SE MI, metro Detroit, be sure to check out the Rockabilly Summer Motor Expo on Sunday, July 23rd! More info at www.RockabillySummerMotorExpo.com for registration, tickets & more!Please follow on FaceBook, Instagram & Twitter!

In this mini episode, Brittany of the Post Road Library shares one of her favorite reads of the year: The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by KJ Charles, a historical romance set in Regency England.   

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Have you ever seen a country girl twerk? On this episode of Meet My Friend, Grandaddy Lo takes us on a backroad journey to talk about this latest album, 4.40, hit dance single Backroads Boogie, Trail ride tours, and more. Be sure to stream his new single, Country Girl Twerk, on March 31st, 2023. Follow  @GRANDADDYLO  on Youtube Today to stay in tune with his movement. 0:00 - Start 0:20 - The Backroads Country Gentleman 1:57 - Country/Hiphop Genre 5:42 - Trail rides 8:47 - Learning from Mistakes 14:15 - 4.40 The Album 18:46 - Venting in music 20:28 - Backroads Boogie Dance 24:16 - Success! 28:18 - UMA Video of the Year 29:50 - Country Girl Twerk 38:22 - Words of Motivation #yeahthatgreenville #trailrides #countryhiphop #countrygirl #twerk #backroadsboogie #GrandaddyLo --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aliandfriends/support

Its Mid-Week show show. This week we discuss the softening of men, Dad jokes, Idiots on a plane, FBI scandal, Oklahoma weed vote, and a possible train overpass in Coffeyville. 

I'm happy to re introduce my 2020 interview with "Canada's Country Gentleman", Tommy Hunter.In this episode, we discussed Tommy's early beginnings in London Ontario & his journey from there to the bright lights that would shine on his career for decades. The Tommy Hunter show ran from 1965 to 1992, making it the longest running national TV show. Tommy would also become very popular in the USA. This was one of my personal favourite interviews & I'm sure that it will make you smile. And hey, if you enjoy this episode, why not show your love & buy me a cup of coffee? https://www.buymeacoffee.com/tsolobandq

微信公众号：「365读书」（dus365)，有不定期赠书福利；微博：365读书v。主播：潮羽&云公子，365天每天更新一期。 文字版已在微信公众号【365读书】发布 。QQ：587586744 背景音乐：1、Muriel Anderson - Andante from Symphony for a Country Gentleman 2、John H. Clarke - Spanish Romance by Anonymous。

On today's episode, Jill is joined by B from @bandherbooks to talk upcoming romance! B talks about how she got started working in libraries and where her love of romance novels started. A book reviewer for Library Journal, B also shares recommendations for forthcoming romance novels she's most excited about. Books mentioned in this episode Bend Toward the Sun by Jen Devon Chick Magnet By Emma Berry Love and Other Flight Delays by Denise Williams Ana Maria and the Fox by Liana De la Rosa The Secret Lives of Country Gentleman by KJ Charles The Stand Up Groomsman by Jackie Lau The Duke Gets Even by Joanna Shu Before I Let Go by Kennedy Ryan Bitter Medicine by Mia Tsai Midnight Duet by Jen Comfort Something Wild and Wonderful by Anita Kelly Second Chance at Rancho Lindo by Sabrina Sol Georgie All Along by Kate Clayborn We hope you enjoy this episode of the Professional Book Nerds podcast. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen! You can follow the Professional Book Nerds on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok @ProBookNerds. Want to reach out? Send an email to professionalbooknerds@overdrive.com.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chester Burton "Chet" Atkins, known as "Mr. Guitar" and "The Country Gentleman", was an American musician who, along with Owen Bradley and Bob Ferguson, helped create the Nashville sound, the country music style which expanded its appeal to adult pop music fans.

Almost two years ago, I struck up a friendship with Canada's "Country Gentleman", Tommy Hunter. We've had several conversations both before & after this interview was recorded in summer of 2020. He was a regular visitor to Canadian living rooms every week for decades even before the Tommy Hunter show was picked up by the Nashville Network in the U.S.A. . Most of my generation have fond memories of him & the family friendly entertainment his show provided for us. In recent months, Tommy Hunter has been under the weather & could use our moral support. At the time of this interview from the summer of 2020, I was very impressed with his eloquence & his humble appreciation of his Millions of fans. I hope you enjoy listening to this interview as much as I enjoyed conducting it.

4/20 wouldn't be 4/20 without 420, BRO!All hail Chet Atkins! The Country Gentleman and an Arkansas Traveler.The 420 Song!

As the Spring weather rolls into the Windy City Irish Radio studios, so does the thoughts Spring Break.  Warm ocean breezes, sand between your toes and your favorite boat drinks!  Ah, boat drinks.  Hey, speaking of boat drinks, did you know that the Parrot Head King turned 75?  Yep, with all of our holiday merriment, the new year, Valentine's Day and, of course, the High Holy Days of the St. Patrick's season, we neglected to wish Jimmy Buffett a happy 75th birthday on Christmas Day.  So, Windy City Irish Radio takes a bit of a Spring Break to honor Jimmy's 75th with music from Irishmen Tex Deegan, Amon Folan, Paul Brady and, of course, Jimmy doing a bit of Van Morrison.  Hey, that's not all!  We have Spring music sure to put a spring in your step from Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire, Seamus Cooley doing a Jimmy Keane tune, Enya, The Celtic Women, The Country Gentleman,  Dervish and so much more.  It's all right here on Windy City Irish Radio each and every Sunday afternoon from 12:00 noon to 1pm on 750 AM WNDZ and live steaming on Global Irish Radio at www.globalirishradio.com and, of course, catch our podcast on our website at www.windycityirishradio.com.  

I caught up with Tom Jones, who retired from the Navy JAG Corps in December 2019, this past July, explaining how he went from serving as the deputy staff judge advocate at a combatant command to the panhandle of Oklahoma, where he is a now a rancher, lawyer, and holding public officer.  (Spoiler alert: he is not Kevin Costner in Yellowstone.)  Along the way, Tom explains how he had to take the indirect approach in order to gain admission to the Oklahoma bar without sitting for a bar examination, how a U.S. Marine judge advocate who sought the do the same thing a year or two earlier paved the way, and reminds us that no matter how long one has served, one is a lawyer whose skill sets transcend career progression.   Tom's LinkedIn profile can be accessed here.

The name Cash will forever be in Music History, especially Country Music. It began with Johnny and now Rosanne carries it on. So much talent and so many memories. The voice of Sonny James, "The Country Gentleman", will forever be remembered by so many people. Starting in the late '50s he had multiple hits on the Billboard Country Charts.  Grady L., beginning in the late (name a year) makes people laugh. And you will too when you hear him. Enjoy!

Adam Pope sits down with Darin & Brooke Aldridge. Darin chronicles his musical journey that led him from listening to The Beach Boys and Vince Gill to playing in a band with the legendary Country Gentleman , meeting Brooke at a church gig, and more. Brooke talks about going to singing contests, listening to 90's country radio, meeting Darin & pursuing their dreams together… all the way to the Grand Ole Opry and beyond. Listen for their Facebook Live famous dog- Otis, as he joins in the conversation!

Special guest Justin talks about bass guitar, popular music and meeting his hero Chet Atkins. Chester Burton "Chet" Atkins (June 20, 1924 – June 30, 2001), known as "Mr. Guitar" and "The Country Gentleman", was an American musician, occasional vocalist, songwriter, and record producer who, along with Owen Bradley, Bob Ferguson and others, created the country music style that came to be known as the Nashville sound, which expanded country music's appeal to adult pop music fans. He was primarily known as a guitarist. He also played the mandolin, fiddle, banjo, and ukulele. 

This week's podcast interview features Bluegrass Hall of Fame bass player Tom Gray.  In this interview Tom talks about how he discovered bluegrass, the Washington DC bluegrass scene in the 1950s, his time spent performing with with the Country Gentleman and the Seldom Scene.  He also discusses the early years of Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine.

The Color of Cider provides a snap shot of an early practices used to deter black farmers gaining true equality and the difficulties facing African Americans today who may view farming as a step back to the plantation. We begin this episode with a quote from Booker T. Washington who born into slavery on April 5, 1856. He was able to learn to read and write despite the tendency of slave owners to not allow blacks to gain education. He help co-found the Tuskegee Institute. On September 18, 1895 Washington gave a speech at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Georgia. He asserted that vocational education, which gave blacks an opportunity for economic security, was more valuable to them than social advantages, higher education, or political office. Washington asked blacks to "Cast down your buckets where you are" and focus instead on becoming agricultural and industrial laborers. In essence he was asking for blacks to not push against racial segregation.  In turn for this act of accepting one's station in the black community, he asked for a guarantee that blacks would receive a basic education and due process in the law. The largely white audience in attendance loved the speech. The fall back from the black community, who were  called at the time "Black Intellectuals" was immediate outrage. W.E.B. DuBois, also a famous black activist called Washington's speech, the"Atlanta Compromise." Du Bois denounced Washington platform to accept ones position. What was curious about Washington was that he asked Black Americans to accept their unequal position, while at the same time secretly funded litigation for civil rights cases. Five years later, in 1900 Washington founded the National Negro Business League, with the mission of promoting the economic development of African Americans. He wrote a ground breaking auto biographical book called Up From Slavery. One particular quote/story from B. T. Washington makes the case of why it was and so hard for Black to gain upward mobility. This comes from an article in the Country Gentleman magazine described as a journal for The Farm, The Garden and The Fireside. "In one case I happen to remember a family that had three or four strong persons at work every day that was allowed to rent only about ten acres of land. When I asked the owner of the plantation why he did not let this family have more land he replied that the soil was so productive that if he allowed them to rent more they would soon be making such a profit that they would be able to buy land of their own and he would lose them as renters. This is one way to make the Negro inefficient as a laborer—attempting to discourage him instead of encouraging him." One doesn't need to be a rocket scientist to see that Cider today is white because blacks did not have the same opportunity to own land and farm. Washington died on November 14, 1915. Today in 2020, we are witnessing an uprising of Black Lives Matter taking place not only in the US, but world wide. Today's Black Live Matters shows I believe that Washington's call for acceptance of one's status didn't work. Blacks have never been treated with a fair due process in the law.  For our modern times, I recommend the following book. Farming While Black : Soul Fire Farm's Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land by, Leah Penniman Published by Chelsea Green Printing Contact for Soul Fire Farm Help Support Cider Chat Please donate today. Help keep the chat thriving! Find this episode and all episodes at the page for Cider Chat's podcasts. Listen also at iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher (for Android), iHeartRadio , Spotify and wherever you love to listen to podcasts. Follow on Cider Chat's blog, social media and podcast Twitter @ciderchat Instagram: @ciderchatciderville Cider Chat FaceBook Page Cider Chat YouTube

For the final episode of season one of Toy Heart, we have host Tom Power’s 2019 sit down with legendary artist, musician, and sideman Jerry Douglas at the International Bluegrass Music Association’s annual business conference in Raleigh, NC. Douglas talks all about hearing “Uncle Josh” Graves for the first time with Flatt & Scruggs and, in the early days, using a toothbrush to turn his own guitar into something like a Dobro. He tells stories of his father’s band, the The West Virginia Travellers, and being discovered by the Country Gentlemen. He shares about his lifelong friendship with Ricky Skaggs — and his connections with Tony Rice, J.D. Crowe, Alison Krauss, Ray Charles, to O Brother, and more. Jerry Douglas will go down as one of the finest American musicians of his generation, but for this episode we focus on his true love — his life in bluegrass.

This week's episode of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs is the second of two bonus episodes answering listener questions at the end of the first year of the podcast. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a bonus podcast, answering even more questions. ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. This one also includes the songs from the Patreon bonus episode, as that's even more questions and answers. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Welcome to the second and final part of this year's question and answer bonus podcasts. This week I'm actually going to do two of these. The one that's going on the main podcast is going to consist of those questions that my backers asked that have to do primarily with the podcast and the music, while the one that's going only to backers consists mostly of questions that have been asked about me and my life and so forth -- stuff that might be less interesting to the casual listener, but that clearly someone is interested in. Next week I get back to the main story, with an episode about Carl Perkins, but right now we're going to jump straight into the questions.   Matthew Elmslie asks:   "It's not an issue you've had to confront yet, as you navigate the mid-'50s, but eventually you're going to come up against the clash between the concept of popular music where the basic unit is the song or single, and the one where the basic unit is the album. What are your thoughts on that and how do you plan to deal with it?" This is a question I had to give some consideration to when I was writing my book California Dreaming, which in many ways was sort of a trial run for the podcast, and which like the podcast told its story by looking at individual tracks. I think it can be a problem, but probably not in the way it first appears.   First, the period where the album was dominant was a fairly short one -- it's only roughly from 1967 through about 1974 that the bands who were getting the most critical respect were primarily thinking in terms of albums rather than singles. After that, once punk starts, the pendulum swings back again, so it's not a long period of time that I have to think of in those terms. But it is something that has to be considered during that period. On the other hand, even during that period, there were many acts who were still primarily singles acts -- the Monkees, Slade, the Move, T-Rex... many of whom, arguably, had more long-term influence than many of the album acts of the time.   I think for the most part, though, even the big album acts were still working mostly in ways that allow themselves to be looked at through the lens of single tracks. Like even on something like Dark Side of the Moon, which is about as concept-albumy as it gets, there's still "Money" and "Great Gig in the Sky" which are individual tracks people know even if they don't necessarily know the album, and which could be used as the focus of an episode on the album. Even with Led Zeppelin, who never released singles at all, there are tracks that might as well have been singles, like "Whole Lotta Love" or "Stairway to Heaven". So for the most part it's fairly easy to find a single track I can focus on.   The real problem only comes in for a handful of albums -- records, mostly from that period in the late sixties and early seventies, which absolutely deserve to be considered as part of the podcast, but which don't have standout tracks. It's hard to pick one track from, say, Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart or Astral Weeks by Van Morrison -- those two albums really do need considering as albums rather than as individual tracks -- there's no reason to choose, say, "Frownland" over "The Dust Blows Forward 'n' the Dust Blows Back" or vice versa, or "Madame George" over "Slim Slow Slider".   What I'll do in those cases will probably vary from case to case. So with Trout Mask Replica I'd probably just pick one song as the title song for the episode but still talk about the whole album, while with Astral Weeks the most likely thing is for me to focus the episode on "Brown-Eyed Girl", which isn't on the album, but talk about the making of Astral Weeks after "Brown-Eyed Girl" was a success. That's assuming I cover both those albums at all, but I named them because I'm more likely to than not.   [Excerpt: Van Morrison, “Brown-Eyed Girl”]   Russell Stallings asks: "Andrew, in [the] 60s it seems rock guitar was dominated by Stratocasters and Les Pauls, what was the guitar of choice in the period we are currently covering (1957) ?"   Well, 1957 is just about the point where this becomes an interesting question. Before this point the guitar hasn't played much of a part in the proceedings -- we've seen guitarists, but there've been more piano players -- 1957 is really the point where the guitar becomes the primary rock and roll instrument.   Before I go any further, I just want to say that I've never been a particular gearhead. There are people out there who can tell the difference instantly between different types of guitars based on a note or two. I'm not one of them -- I can sort of make out the difference between a Fendery sound and a Gibsony one and a Rickenbackery one, but not at a tremendous level of precision. I tend to care more about the technique of the player than the sound of the instrument, so this isn't my area of expertise. But I'll give this a go.   Now, there wasn't a straightforward single most popular guitar at this point. It's true that from the late sixties on rock pretty much standardised around the Les Paul and the Stratocaster -- though it was from the late sixties, and you get a lot of people playing different guitars in the early and mid sixties -- but in the fifties people were still figuring things out as individuals. But at the same time, there is, sort of, an answer to this.   The Strat wasn't particularly popular in the 50s. The only first-rank 50s rocker who played a Strat was Buddy Holly, who always played one on stage, though he varied his guitars in the studio from what I've read. Buddy Holly is indirectly the reason the Strat later became so popular -- he inspired Hank Marvin of the Shadows to get one, and Marvin inspired pretty much every guitarist in Britain to copy him. But other than in surf music, the Strat wasn't really popular until around 1967. You'd occasionally get a Telecaster player in the 50s -- Buck Owens, who played on quite a few rockabilly sessions for people like Gene Vincent and Wanda Jackson before he became one of the greats of country music, played a Telecaster. And James Burton, who played in the fifties with Ricky Nelson and Dale Hawkins, among others, was another Telecaster player. But in general there weren't a lot of Fender players.   [Excerpt: Ricky Nelson, “Hello, Mary Lou”, James Burton guitar solo]   Some people did play Gibsons -- most of the Chicago electric blues people seem to have been Gibson people, and so was Chuck Berry. Scotty Moore also played a Gibson. But rather than go for the Les Paul, they'd mostly go for hollow-body models like the L5, which could be played as either electric or acoustic. Scotty Moore also used a custom-built Echosonic amp, so he could get a similar guitar sound on stage to the one he'd got in the studio with Sam Phillips, and he used the L5 and Echosonic combination on all the Elvis hits of the fifties. Carl Perkins did play a Les Paul at first, including on "Blue Suede Shoes", but he switched to a Gibson ES-5 (and got himself an Echosonic from the same person who made Scotty Moore's) after that.   [Excerpt: Carl Perkins, “Matchbox”]   For acoustic guitar, people generally either used a Martin, like Elvis Presley or Ray Edenton, who was the session rhythm player who doubled Don Everly's guitar in the studio (Phil Everly would double it live, but he didn't play on the records), or they'd play a Gibson acoustic, as Don Everly and Buddy Holly did. But overwhelmingly the most popular guitar on rockabilly sessions -- which means in rock and roll for these purposes, since with the exception of Chuck Berry the R&B side of rock and roll remained dominated by piano and sax -- the most popular rockabilly guitar was a Gretsch. There were various popular models of Gretsch guitar, like the Duo Jet, but the most popular were the 6120, the Country Gentleman, and the Tennessean, all of which were variants on the same basic design, and all of which were endorsed by Chet Atkins, which is why they became the pre-eminent guitars among rockabilly musicians, all of whom idolised Atkins. You can hear how that guitar sounds when Atkins plays it here…   [Excerpt: Chet Atkins, “Mr. Sandman”]   Atkins himself played these guitars on sessions for Elvis (where he just played rhythm) and the Everly Brothers (for whom he played lead in the studio). Duane Eddy, Cliff Gallup of the Blue Caps, Eddie Cochran, and many more played Gretsch guitars in imitation of Atkins. Bo Diddley also played a Gretsch before he started playing his own custom-built guitar.   There was no default guitar choice in the 50s the way there was later, but the Gretsch seemed to be the choice of the guitarists who were most admired at the time, and so it also became the choice for anyone else who wanted that clean, country-style, rockabilly lead guitar sound. That sound went out of fashion in the later sixties, but George Harrison used a Gretsch for most of his early leads, and Michael Nesmith of the Monkees always played a Gretsch -- when they started doing twelve-strings, in 1966, they initially only made three, one for Chet Atkins, one for George Harrison, and one for Nesmith, though they later mass-produced them.   But anyway, yeah. No single answer, but Gretsch Country Gentleman, with a hollow-bodied Gibson in close second, is the closest you'll get.   William Maybury asks "About when does the History of Soul divorce from the History of Rock, in your eyes?" That's a difficult question, and it's something I'll be dealing with in a lot more detail when we get to the 1970s, over a whole series of episodes. This is the grotesquely oversimplified version. The short answer is -- when "soul" stopped being the label that was applied to cutting-edge black music that white people could rip off. The history of rock is, at least in part, a history of white musicians incorporating innovations that first appeared in black musicians' work. It's not *just* that, of course, but that's a big part of it.   Now, around 1970 or so, "rock" gets redefined specifically as music that is made by white men with guitars, and other people making identical music were something else. Like there's literally no difference, stylistically, between "Maggot Brain" by Funkadelic and things like Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac or "Watermelon in Easter Hay" by Frank Zappa, but people talk about P-Funk as a funk group rather than a rock group – I know the question was about soul, rather than funk, but in the early seventies there was a huge overlap between the two.   [Excerpt: Funkadelic, “Maggot Brain”]   But as long as soul music remained at the forefront of musical innovations, those innovations were incorporated by white "rock" acts, and any attempt to tell the story of rock music which ignores George Clinton or Stevie Wonder or Sly Stone or Marvin Gaye would be a fundamentally dishonest one.   But some time around the mid-seventies, "soul" stops being a label that's applied to innovative new music, and becomes a label for music that's consciously retro or conservative, people like, say, Luther Vandross. Not that there's anything wrong with retro music -- and there's some great soul music made in the 80s and 90s -- but the music that was at the cutting edge was first disco and then hip-hop, and that's the music that was spawning the innovations that the rock musicians would incorporate into their work.   And, indeed, after around 1980 rock itself becomes more consciously retro and less experimental, and so the rate of incorporation of new musical ideas slows down too, though never completely stops.   But there's always some fuzziness around genre labels. For example, if you consider Prince to be a soul musician, then obviously he's still part of the story. Same goes for Michael Jackson. I don't know if I'd consider either of them to be soul per se, but I could make a case for it, and obviously it's impossible to tell the story of rock in the eighties without those two, any more than you could tell it without, say, Bruce Springsteen.   So, really, there's a slow separation between the two genres over about a twenty-year period, starting in the mid-sixties and finishing in the mid-eighties. I *imagine* that Prince is probably the last new musician who might be described as soul who will be appearing in the podcast, but it really depends on where you draw the boundaries of what counts as soul. There'll be a few disco and hip-hop acts appearing over the last half of the series, and some of them might be considered soul by some people.   That's the best I can do at answering the question right now, but it's a vastly oversimplified version of the real answer, which is "listen to all the podcasts for the seventies when I get to them".   One from Jeff Stanzler:   "For me, the most surprising inclusion so far was the Janis Martin record. You did speak some about why you felt it warranted inclusion, but I'd love to hear more of your thinking on this, and maybe also on the larger philosophical question of including records that were more like significant signposts than records that had huge impact at the time."   [Excerpt: Janis Martin, “Drugstore Rock & Roll”]   Some of this goes back to some of the stuff I was talking about last week, about how there are multiple factors at play when it comes to any song I'm choosing, but the Janis Martin one makes a good example of how those factors play into each other.   First, everything I said in that episode is true -- it *is* an important signpost in the transition of rock and roll into a music specifically aimed at white teenagers, and it is the first record I've come across that deals with the 1950s of Happy Days and American Graffiti rather than the other things that were going on in the culture. Even though "Drugstore Rock and Roll" wasn't a massively successful record, I think that makes it worth including.   But there were other factors that warranted its inclusion too. The first of these was simply that I wanted to include at least one song by a woman at that point. If you don't count the Platters, who had one female member, it had been three months since the last song by a woman. I knew I was going to be doing Wanda Jackson a few weeks later, but it's important to me that I show how women were always part of the story of rock and roll. The podcast is going to be biased towards men, because it's telling the story of an industry that was massively biased towards men, but where women did have the opportunity to break through I want to give them credit. This is not including "token women" or anything like that -- rather it's saying "women have always been part of the story, their part of the story has been ignored, I want to do what I can to redress the balance a bit, so long as I don't move into actively misrepresenting history".   Then there's the fact that Janis Martin had what to my mind was a fascinating story, and one that allowed me to talk about a lot of social issues of the time, at least in brief.   And finally there's the way that her story ties in with those of other people I've covered. Her admiration of Ruth Brown allowed me to tie the story in with the episode on "Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean", and also gave me a way to neatly bookend the story, while showing the influence of one of the songs I'd already covered. Her working for RCA and with the same musicians as Elvis meant that I could talk a bit more about those musicians, and her being marketed as "the Female Elvis" meant that I could talk about Elvis' larger cultural impact on the world in 1956, something that needed to be discussed in the series, but which I hadn't found space for in an episode on Elvis himself at that point. (And in talking about the various Elvis-based novelty records I was also able to mention a few figures who will turn up in future episodes, planting seeds for later).   [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran and the Holly Twins, “I Want Elvis For Christmas”]   So that's the thinking there. Every episode has to serve a bunch of different purposes if I'm going to tell this story in only five hundred episodes, and the Janis Martin one, I think, did that better than many. As to the larger question of signposts versus impact at the time -- I am trying, for the most part, to tell the story from the point of view of the time we're looking at, and look at what mattered to listeners and other musicians at the time. But you also have to fill in the details of stuff that's going to affect things in the future. So for example you can't talk about REM without first having covered people like Big Star, so even though Big Star weren't huge at the time, they'll definitely be covered. On the other hand someone like, say, Nick Drake, who had little influence until he was rediscovered decades later, won't be covered, except maybe in passing when talking about other artists Joe Boyd produced, because he didn't really have an effect on the wider story.   In general, the prime consideration for any song that I include is -- does it advance the overall story I'm telling? There'll be stuff left out that would be in if the only criterion was how people reacted to it at the time, and there'll be stuff included which, on its own merits, just wouldn't make the list at all. There's one Adam Faith album track, for example, that I'm going to talk about in roughly nine months, which I think is almost certainly not even the best track that Adam Faith recorded that day, which is about as low a bar as it gets. But it'll be in there because it's an important link in a larger story, even though it's not a song that mattered at all at the time.   And a final question from Daniel Helton on whether I considered doing an episode on "Ain't Got No Home" by Clarence "Frogman" Henry.   [Excerpt: Clarence “Frogman” Henry, “Ain't Got No Home”]   It's a great record, but much of what I'd have to say about it would be stuff about the New Orleans scene and Cosimo Matassa's studio and so forth -- stuff that I'd probably already covered in the episodes on Fats Domino and Lloyd Price (including the episode on Price that's coming up later), so it'd be covering too much of the same ground for me to devote a full episode to it.   If I was going to cover Frogman in the main podcast, it would *probably* be with "I Don't Know Why (But I Do)" because that came out at a time when there were far fewer interesting records being made, and I'd then cover his history including "Ain't Got No Home" as part of that, but I don't think that's likely.   In fact, yeah, I'll pencil in "Ain't Got No Home" for next week's Patreon episode. Don't expect much, because those are only ten-minute ones, but it came out at around the same time as next week's proper episode was recorded, and it *is* a great record. I'll see what I can do for that one.   Anyway, between this and the Patreon bonus episode, I think that's all the questions covered. Thanks to everyone who asked one, and if I haven't answered your questions fully, please let me know and I'll try and reply in the comments to the Patreon post. We'll be doing this again next year, so sign up for the Patreon now if you want that. Next week we're back to the regular podcasts, with an episode on "Matchbox" by Carl Perkins. Also, I'm *hoping* -- though not completely guaranteeing yet -- that I'll have the book based on the first fifty episodes done and out by this time next week. These things always take longer than I expect, but here's hoping there'll be an announcement next week. See you then.  

This week’s episode of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs is the second of two bonus episodes answering listener questions at the end of the first year of the podcast. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a bonus podcast, answering even more questions. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. This one also includes the songs from the Patreon bonus episode, as that’s even more questions and answers. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Welcome to the second and final part of this year’s question and answer bonus podcasts. This week I’m actually going to do two of these. The one that’s going on the main podcast is going to consist of those questions that my backers asked that have to do primarily with the podcast and the music, while the one that’s going only to backers consists mostly of questions that have been asked about me and my life and so forth — stuff that might be less interesting to the casual listener, but that clearly someone is interested in. Next week I get back to the main story, with an episode about Carl Perkins, but right now we’re going to jump straight into the questions.   Matthew Elmslie asks:   “It’s not an issue you’ve had to confront yet, as you navigate the mid-’50s, but eventually you’re going to come up against the clash between the concept of popular music where the basic unit is the song or single, and the one where the basic unit is the album. What are your thoughts on that and how do you plan to deal with it?” This is a question I had to give some consideration to when I was writing my book California Dreaming, which in many ways was sort of a trial run for the podcast, and which like the podcast told its story by looking at individual tracks. I think it can be a problem, but probably not in the way it first appears.   First, the period where the album was dominant was a fairly short one — it’s only roughly from 1967 through about 1974 that the bands who were getting the most critical respect were primarily thinking in terms of albums rather than singles. After that, once punk starts, the pendulum swings back again, so it’s not a long period of time that I have to think of in those terms. But it is something that has to be considered during that period. On the other hand, even during that period, there were many acts who were still primarily singles acts — the Monkees, Slade, the Move, T-Rex… many of whom, arguably, had more long-term influence than many of the album acts of the time.   I think for the most part, though, even the big album acts were still working mostly in ways that allow themselves to be looked at through the lens of single tracks. Like even on something like Dark Side of the Moon, which is about as concept-albumy as it gets, there’s still “Money” and “Great Gig in the Sky” which are individual tracks people know even if they don’t necessarily know the album, and which could be used as the focus of an episode on the album. Even with Led Zeppelin, who never released singles at all, there are tracks that might as well have been singles, like “Whole Lotta Love” or “Stairway to Heaven”. So for the most part it’s fairly easy to find a single track I can focus on.   The real problem only comes in for a handful of albums — records, mostly from that period in the late sixties and early seventies, which absolutely deserve to be considered as part of the podcast, but which don’t have standout tracks. It’s hard to pick one track from, say, Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart or Astral Weeks by Van Morrison — those two albums really do need considering as albums rather than as individual tracks — there’s no reason to choose, say, “Frownland” over “The Dust Blows Forward ‘n’ the Dust Blows Back” or vice versa, or “Madame George” over “Slim Slow Slider”.   What I’ll do in those cases will probably vary from case to case. So with Trout Mask Replica I’d probably just pick one song as the title song for the episode but still talk about the whole album, while with Astral Weeks the most likely thing is for me to focus the episode on “Brown-Eyed Girl”, which isn’t on the album, but talk about the making of Astral Weeks after “Brown-Eyed Girl” was a success. That’s assuming I cover both those albums at all, but I named them because I’m more likely to than not.   [Excerpt: Van Morrison, “Brown-Eyed Girl”]   Russell Stallings asks: “Andrew, in [the] 60s it seems rock guitar was dominated by Stratocasters and Les Pauls, what was the guitar of choice in the period we are currently covering (1957) ?”   Well, 1957 is just about the point where this becomes an interesting question. Before this point the guitar hasn’t played much of a part in the proceedings — we’ve seen guitarists, but there’ve been more piano players — 1957 is really the point where the guitar becomes the primary rock and roll instrument.   Before I go any further, I just want to say that I’ve never been a particular gearhead. There are people out there who can tell the difference instantly between different types of guitars based on a note or two. I’m not one of them — I can sort of make out the difference between a Fendery sound and a Gibsony one and a Rickenbackery one, but not at a tremendous level of precision. I tend to care more about the technique of the player than the sound of the instrument, so this isn’t my area of expertise. But I’ll give this a go.   Now, there wasn’t a straightforward single most popular guitar at this point. It’s true that from the late sixties on rock pretty much standardised around the Les Paul and the Stratocaster — though it was from the late sixties, and you get a lot of people playing different guitars in the early and mid sixties — but in the fifties people were still figuring things out as individuals. But at the same time, there is, sort of, an answer to this.   The Strat wasn’t particularly popular in the 50s. The only first-rank 50s rocker who played a Strat was Buddy Holly, who always played one on stage, though he varied his guitars in the studio from what I’ve read. Buddy Holly is indirectly the reason the Strat later became so popular — he inspired Hank Marvin of the Shadows to get one, and Marvin inspired pretty much every guitarist in Britain to copy him. But other than in surf music, the Strat wasn’t really popular until around 1967. You’d occasionally get a Telecaster player in the 50s — Buck Owens, who played on quite a few rockabilly sessions for people like Gene Vincent and Wanda Jackson before he became one of the greats of country music, played a Telecaster. And James Burton, who played in the fifties with Ricky Nelson and Dale Hawkins, among others, was another Telecaster player. But in general there weren’t a lot of Fender players.   [Excerpt: Ricky Nelson, “Hello, Mary Lou”, James Burton guitar solo]   Some people did play Gibsons — most of the Chicago electric blues people seem to have been Gibson people, and so was Chuck Berry. Scotty Moore also played a Gibson. But rather than go for the Les Paul, they’d mostly go for hollow-body models like the L5, which could be played as either electric or acoustic. Scotty Moore also used a custom-built Echosonic amp, so he could get a similar guitar sound on stage to the one he’d got in the studio with Sam Phillips, and he used the L5 and Echosonic combination on all the Elvis hits of the fifties. Carl Perkins did play a Les Paul at first, including on “Blue Suede Shoes”, but he switched to a Gibson ES-5 (and got himself an Echosonic from the same person who made Scotty Moore’s) after that.   [Excerpt: Carl Perkins, “Matchbox”]   For acoustic guitar, people generally either used a Martin, like Elvis Presley or Ray Edenton, who was the session rhythm player who doubled Don Everly’s guitar in the studio (Phil Everly would double it live, but he didn’t play on the records), or they’d play a Gibson acoustic, as Don Everly and Buddy Holly did. But overwhelmingly the most popular guitar on rockabilly sessions — which means in rock and roll for these purposes, since with the exception of Chuck Berry the R&B side of rock and roll remained dominated by piano and sax — the most popular rockabilly guitar was a Gretsch. There were various popular models of Gretsch guitar, like the Duo Jet, but the most popular were the 6120, the Country Gentleman, and the Tennessean, all of which were variants on the same basic design, and all of which were endorsed by Chet Atkins, which is why they became the pre-eminent guitars among rockabilly musicians, all of whom idolised Atkins. You can hear how that guitar sounds when Atkins plays it here…   [Excerpt: Chet Atkins, “Mr. Sandman”]   Atkins himself played these guitars on sessions for Elvis (where he just played rhythm) and the Everly Brothers (for whom he played lead in the studio). Duane Eddy, Cliff Gallup of the Blue Caps, Eddie Cochran, and many more played Gretsch guitars in imitation of Atkins. Bo Diddley also played a Gretsch before he started playing his own custom-built guitar.   There was no default guitar choice in the 50s the way there was later, but the Gretsch seemed to be the choice of the guitarists who were most admired at the time, and so it also became the choice for anyone else who wanted that clean, country-style, rockabilly lead guitar sound. That sound went out of fashion in the later sixties, but George Harrison used a Gretsch for most of his early leads, and Michael Nesmith of the Monkees always played a Gretsch — when they started doing twelve-strings, in 1966, they initially only made three, one for Chet Atkins, one for George Harrison, and one for Nesmith, though they later mass-produced them.   But anyway, yeah. No single answer, but Gretsch Country Gentleman, with a hollow-bodied Gibson in close second, is the closest you’ll get.   William Maybury asks “About when does the History of Soul divorce from the History of Rock, in your eyes?” That’s a difficult question, and it’s something I’ll be dealing with in a lot more detail when we get to the 1970s, over a whole series of episodes. This is the grotesquely oversimplified version. The short answer is — when “soul” stopped being the label that was applied to cutting-edge black music that white people could rip off. The history of rock is, at least in part, a history of white musicians incorporating innovations that first appeared in black musicians’ work. It’s not *just* that, of course, but that’s a big part of it.   Now, around 1970 or so, “rock” gets redefined specifically as music that is made by white men with guitars, and other people making identical music were something else. Like there’s literally no difference, stylistically, between “Maggot Brain” by Funkadelic and things like Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac or “Watermelon in Easter Hay” by Frank Zappa, but people talk about P-Funk as a funk group rather than a rock group – I know the question was about soul, rather than funk, but in the early seventies there was a huge overlap between the two.   [Excerpt: Funkadelic, “Maggot Brain”]   But as long as soul music remained at the forefront of musical innovations, those innovations were incorporated by white “rock” acts, and any attempt to tell the story of rock music which ignores George Clinton or Stevie Wonder or Sly Stone or Marvin Gaye would be a fundamentally dishonest one.   But some time around the mid-seventies, “soul” stops being a label that’s applied to innovative new music, and becomes a label for music that’s consciously retro or conservative, people like, say, Luther Vandross. Not that there’s anything wrong with retro music — and there’s some great soul music made in the 80s and 90s — but the music that was at the cutting edge was first disco and then hip-hop, and that’s the music that was spawning the innovations that the rock musicians would incorporate into their work.   And, indeed, after around 1980 rock itself becomes more consciously retro and less experimental, and so the rate of incorporation of new musical ideas slows down too, though never completely stops.   But there’s always some fuzziness around genre labels. For example, if you consider Prince to be a soul musician, then obviously he’s still part of the story. Same goes for Michael Jackson. I don’t know if I’d consider either of them to be soul per se, but I could make a case for it, and obviously it’s impossible to tell the story of rock in the eighties without those two, any more than you could tell it without, say, Bruce Springsteen.   So, really, there’s a slow separation between the two genres over about a twenty-year period, starting in the mid-sixties and finishing in the mid-eighties. I *imagine* that Prince is probably the last new musician who might be described as soul who will be appearing in the podcast, but it really depends on where you draw the boundaries of what counts as soul. There’ll be a few disco and hip-hop acts appearing over the last half of the series, and some of them might be considered soul by some people.   That’s the best I can do at answering the question right now, but it’s a vastly oversimplified version of the real answer, which is “listen to all the podcasts for the seventies when I get to them”.   One from Jeff Stanzler:   “For me, the most surprising inclusion so far was the Janis Martin record. You did speak some about why you felt it warranted inclusion, but I’d love to hear more of your thinking on this, and maybe also on the larger philosophical question of including records that were more like significant signposts than records that had huge impact at the time.”   [Excerpt: Janis Martin, “Drugstore Rock & Roll”]   Some of this goes back to some of the stuff I was talking about last week, about how there are multiple factors at play when it comes to any song I’m choosing, but the Janis Martin one makes a good example of how those factors play into each other.   First, everything I said in that episode is true — it *is* an important signpost in the transition of rock and roll into a music specifically aimed at white teenagers, and it is the first record I’ve come across that deals with the 1950s of Happy Days and American Graffiti rather than the other things that were going on in the culture. Even though “Drugstore Rock and Roll” wasn’t a massively successful record, I think that makes it worth including.   But there were other factors that warranted its inclusion too. The first of these was simply that I wanted to include at least one song by a woman at that point. If you don’t count the Platters, who had one female member, it had been three months since the last song by a woman. I knew I was going to be doing Wanda Jackson a few weeks later, but it’s important to me that I show how women were always part of the story of rock and roll. The podcast is going to be biased towards men, because it’s telling the story of an industry that was massively biased towards men, but where women did have the opportunity to break through I want to give them credit. This is not including “token women” or anything like that — rather it’s saying “women have always been part of the story, their part of the story has been ignored, I want to do what I can to redress the balance a bit, so long as I don’t move into actively misrepresenting history”.   Then there’s the fact that Janis Martin had what to my mind was a fascinating story, and one that allowed me to talk about a lot of social issues of the time, at least in brief.   And finally there’s the way that her story ties in with those of other people I’ve covered. Her admiration of Ruth Brown allowed me to tie the story in with the episode on “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean”, and also gave me a way to neatly bookend the story, while showing the influence of one of the songs I’d already covered. Her working for RCA and with the same musicians as Elvis meant that I could talk a bit more about those musicians, and her being marketed as “the Female Elvis” meant that I could talk about Elvis’ larger cultural impact on the world in 1956, something that needed to be discussed in the series, but which I hadn’t found space for in an episode on Elvis himself at that point. (And in talking about the various Elvis-based novelty records I was also able to mention a few figures who will turn up in future episodes, planting seeds for later).   [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran and the Holly Twins, “I Want Elvis For Christmas”]   So that’s the thinking there. Every episode has to serve a bunch of different purposes if I’m going to tell this story in only five hundred episodes, and the Janis Martin one, I think, did that better than many. As to the larger question of signposts versus impact at the time — I am trying, for the most part, to tell the story from the point of view of the time we’re looking at, and look at what mattered to listeners and other musicians at the time. But you also have to fill in the details of stuff that’s going to affect things in the future. So for example you can’t talk about REM without first having covered people like Big Star, so even though Big Star weren’t huge at the time, they’ll definitely be covered. On the other hand someone like, say, Nick Drake, who had little influence until he was rediscovered decades later, won’t be covered, except maybe in passing when talking about other artists Joe Boyd produced, because he didn’t really have an effect on the wider story.   In general, the prime consideration for any song that I include is — does it advance the overall story I’m telling? There’ll be stuff left out that would be in if the only criterion was how people reacted to it at the time, and there’ll be stuff included which, on its own merits, just wouldn’t make the list at all. There’s one Adam Faith album track, for example, that I’m going to talk about in roughly nine months, which I think is almost certainly not even the best track that Adam Faith recorded that day, which is about as low a bar as it gets. But it’ll be in there because it’s an important link in a larger story, even though it’s not a song that mattered at all at the time.   And a final question from Daniel Helton on whether I considered doing an episode on “Ain’t Got No Home” by Clarence “Frogman” Henry.   [Excerpt: Clarence “Frogman” Henry, “Ain’t Got No Home”]   It’s a great record, but much of what I’d have to say about it would be stuff about the New Orleans scene and Cosimo Matassa’s studio and so forth — stuff that I’d probably already covered in the episodes on Fats Domino and Lloyd Price (including the episode on Price that’s coming up later), so it’d be covering too much of the same ground for me to devote a full episode to it.   If I was going to cover Frogman in the main podcast, it would *probably* be with “I Don’t Know Why (But I Do)” because that came out at a time when there were far fewer interesting records being made, and I’d then cover his history including “Ain’t Got No Home” as part of that, but I don’t think that’s likely.   In fact, yeah, I’ll pencil in “Ain’t Got No Home” for next week’s Patreon episode. Don’t expect much, because those are only ten-minute ones, but it came out at around the same time as next week’s proper episode was recorded, and it *is* a great record. I’ll see what I can do for that one.   Anyway, between this and the Patreon bonus episode, I think that’s all the questions covered. Thanks to everyone who asked one, and if I haven’t answered your questions fully, please let me know and I’ll try and reply in the comments to the Patreon post. We’ll be doing this again next year, so sign up for the Patreon now if you want that. Next week we’re back to the regular podcasts, with an episode on “Matchbox” by Carl Perkins. Also, I’m *hoping* — though not completely guaranteeing yet — that I’ll have the book based on the first fifty episodes done and out by this time next week. These things always take longer than I expect, but here’s hoping there’ll be an announcement next week. See you then.  

This week’s episode of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs is the second of two bonus episodes answering listener questions at the end of the first year of the podcast. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a bonus podcast, answering even more questions. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. This one also includes the songs from the Patreon bonus episode, as that’s even more questions and answers. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Welcome to the second and final part of this year’s question and answer bonus podcasts. This week I’m actually going to do two of these. The one that’s going on the main podcast is going to consist of those questions that my backers asked that have to do primarily with the podcast and the music, while the one that’s going only to backers consists mostly of questions that have been asked about me and my life and so forth — stuff that might be less interesting to the casual listener, but that clearly someone is interested in. Next week I get back to the main story, with an episode about Carl Perkins, but right now we’re going to jump straight into the questions.   Matthew Elmslie asks:   “It’s not an issue you’ve had to confront yet, as you navigate the mid-’50s, but eventually you’re going to come up against the clash between the concept of popular music where the basic unit is the song or single, and the one where the basic unit is the album. What are your thoughts on that and how do you plan to deal with it?” This is a question I had to give some consideration to when I was writing my book California Dreaming, which in many ways was sort of a trial run for the podcast, and which like the podcast told its story by looking at individual tracks. I think it can be a problem, but probably not in the way it first appears.   First, the period where the album was dominant was a fairly short one — it’s only roughly from 1967 through about 1974 that the bands who were getting the most critical respect were primarily thinking in terms of albums rather than singles. After that, once punk starts, the pendulum swings back again, so it’s not a long period of time that I have to think of in those terms. But it is something that has to be considered during that period. On the other hand, even during that period, there were many acts who were still primarily singles acts — the Monkees, Slade, the Move, T-Rex… many of whom, arguably, had more long-term influence than many of the album acts of the time.   I think for the most part, though, even the big album acts were still working mostly in ways that allow themselves to be looked at through the lens of single tracks. Like even on something like Dark Side of the Moon, which is about as concept-albumy as it gets, there’s still “Money” and “Great Gig in the Sky” which are individual tracks people know even if they don’t necessarily know the album, and which could be used as the focus of an episode on the album. Even with Led Zeppelin, who never released singles at all, there are tracks that might as well have been singles, like “Whole Lotta Love” or “Stairway to Heaven”. So for the most part it’s fairly easy to find a single track I can focus on.   The real problem only comes in for a handful of albums — records, mostly from that period in the late sixties and early seventies, which absolutely deserve to be considered as part of the podcast, but which don’t have standout tracks. It’s hard to pick one track from, say, Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart or Astral Weeks by Van Morrison — those two albums really do need considering as albums rather than as individual tracks — there’s no reason to choose, say, “Frownland” over “The Dust Blows Forward ‘n’ the Dust Blows Back” or vice versa, or “Madame George” over “Slim Slow Slider”.   What I’ll do in those cases will probably vary from case to case. So with Trout Mask Replica I’d probably just pick one song as the title song for the episode but still talk about the whole album, while with Astral Weeks the most likely thing is for me to focus the episode on “Brown-Eyed Girl”, which isn’t on the album, but talk about the making of Astral Weeks after “Brown-Eyed Girl” was a success. That’s assuming I cover both those albums at all, but I named them because I’m more likely to than not.   [Excerpt: Van Morrison, “Brown-Eyed Girl”]   Russell Stallings asks: “Andrew, in [the] 60s it seems rock guitar was dominated by Stratocasters and Les Pauls, what was the guitar of choice in the period we are currently covering (1957) ?”   Well, 1957 is just about the point where this becomes an interesting question. Before this point the guitar hasn’t played much of a part in the proceedings — we’ve seen guitarists, but there’ve been more piano players — 1957 is really the point where the guitar becomes the primary rock and roll instrument.   Before I go any further, I just want to say that I’ve never been a particular gearhead. There are people out there who can tell the difference instantly between different types of guitars based on a note or two. I’m not one of them — I can sort of make out the difference between a Fendery sound and a Gibsony one and a Rickenbackery one, but not at a tremendous level of precision. I tend to care more about the technique of the player than the sound of the instrument, so this isn’t my area of expertise. But I’ll give this a go.   Now, there wasn’t a straightforward single most popular guitar at this point. It’s true that from the late sixties on rock pretty much standardised around the Les Paul and the Stratocaster — though it was from the late sixties, and you get a lot of people playing different guitars in the early and mid sixties — but in the fifties people were still figuring things out as individuals. But at the same time, there is, sort of, an answer to this.   The Strat wasn’t particularly popular in the 50s. The only first-rank 50s rocker who played a Strat was Buddy Holly, who always played one on stage, though he varied his guitars in the studio from what I’ve read. Buddy Holly is indirectly the reason the Strat later became so popular — he inspired Hank Marvin of the Shadows to get one, and Marvin inspired pretty much every guitarist in Britain to copy him. But other than in surf music, the Strat wasn’t really popular until around 1967. You’d occasionally get a Telecaster player in the 50s — Buck Owens, who played on quite a few rockabilly sessions for people like Gene Vincent and Wanda Jackson before he became one of the greats of country music, played a Telecaster. And James Burton, who played in the fifties with Ricky Nelson and Dale Hawkins, among others, was another Telecaster player. But in general there weren’t a lot of Fender players.   [Excerpt: Ricky Nelson, “Hello, Mary Lou”, James Burton guitar solo]   Some people did play Gibsons — most of the Chicago electric blues people seem to have been Gibson people, and so was Chuck Berry. Scotty Moore also played a Gibson. But rather than go for the Les Paul, they’d mostly go for hollow-body models like the L5, which could be played as either electric or acoustic. Scotty Moore also used a custom-built Echosonic amp, so he could get a similar guitar sound on stage to the one he’d got in the studio with Sam Phillips, and he used the L5 and Echosonic combination on all the Elvis hits of the fifties. Carl Perkins did play a Les Paul at first, including on “Blue Suede Shoes”, but he switched to a Gibson ES-5 (and got himself an Echosonic from the same person who made Scotty Moore’s) after that.   [Excerpt: Carl Perkins, “Matchbox”]   For acoustic guitar, people generally either used a Martin, like Elvis Presley or Ray Edenton, who was the session rhythm player who doubled Don Everly’s guitar in the studio (Phil Everly would double it live, but he didn’t play on the records), or they’d play a Gibson acoustic, as Don Everly and Buddy Holly did. But overwhelmingly the most popular guitar on rockabilly sessions — which means in rock and roll for these purposes, since with the exception of Chuck Berry the R&B side of rock and roll remained dominated by piano and sax — the most popular rockabilly guitar was a Gretsch. There were various popular models of Gretsch guitar, like the Duo Jet, but the most popular were the 6120, the Country Gentleman, and the Tennessean, all of which were variants on the same basic design, and all of which were endorsed by Chet Atkins, which is why they became the pre-eminent guitars among rockabilly musicians, all of whom idolised Atkins. You can hear how that guitar sounds when Atkins plays it here…   [Excerpt: Chet Atkins, “Mr. Sandman”]   Atkins himself played these guitars on sessions for Elvis (where he just played rhythm) and the Everly Brothers (for whom he played lead in the studio). Duane Eddy, Cliff Gallup of the Blue Caps, Eddie Cochran, and many more played Gretsch guitars in imitation of Atkins. Bo Diddley also played a Gretsch before he started playing his own custom-built guitar.   There was no default guitar choice in the 50s the way there was later, but the Gretsch seemed to be the choice of the guitarists who were most admired at the time, and so it also became the choice for anyone else who wanted that clean, country-style, rockabilly lead guitar sound. That sound went out of fashion in the later sixties, but George Harrison used a Gretsch for most of his early leads, and Michael Nesmith of the Monkees always played a Gretsch — when they started doing twelve-strings, in 1966, they initially only made three, one for Chet Atkins, one for George Harrison, and one for Nesmith, though they later mass-produced them.   But anyway, yeah. No single answer, but Gretsch Country Gentleman, with a hollow-bodied Gibson in close second, is the closest you’ll get.   William Maybury asks “About when does the History of Soul divorce from the History of Rock, in your eyes?” That’s a difficult question, and it’s something I’ll be dealing with in a lot more detail when we get to the 1970s, over a whole series of episodes. This is the grotesquely oversimplified version. The short answer is — when “soul” stopped being the label that was applied to cutting-edge black music that white people could rip off. The history of rock is, at least in part, a history of white musicians incorporating innovations that first appeared in black musicians’ work. It’s not *just* that, of course, but that’s a big part of it.   Now, around 1970 or so, “rock” gets redefined specifically as music that is made by white men with guitars, and other people making identical music were something else. Like there’s literally no difference, stylistically, between “Maggot Brain” by Funkadelic and things like Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac or “Watermelon in Easter Hay” by Frank Zappa, but people talk about P-Funk as a funk group rather than a rock group – I know the question was about soul, rather than funk, but in the early seventies there was a huge overlap between the two.   [Excerpt: Funkadelic, “Maggot Brain”]   But as long as soul music remained at the forefront of musical innovations, those innovations were incorporated by white “rock” acts, and any attempt to tell the story of rock music which ignores George Clinton or Stevie Wonder or Sly Stone or Marvin Gaye would be a fundamentally dishonest one.   But some time around the mid-seventies, “soul” stops being a label that’s applied to innovative new music, and becomes a label for music that’s consciously retro or conservative, people like, say, Luther Vandross. Not that there’s anything wrong with retro music — and there’s some great soul music made in the 80s and 90s — but the music that was at the cutting edge was first disco and then hip-hop, and that’s the music that was spawning the innovations that the rock musicians would incorporate into their work.   And, indeed, after around 1980 rock itself becomes more consciously retro and less experimental, and so the rate of incorporation of new musical ideas slows down too, though never completely stops.   But there’s always some fuzziness around genre labels. For example, if you consider Prince to be a soul musician, then obviously he’s still part of the story. Same goes for Michael Jackson. I don’t know if I’d consider either of them to be soul per se, but I could make a case for it, and obviously it’s impossible to tell the story of rock in the eighties without those two, any more than you could tell it without, say, Bruce Springsteen.   So, really, there’s a slow separation between the two genres over about a twenty-year period, starting in the mid-sixties and finishing in the mid-eighties. I *imagine* that Prince is probably the last new musician who might be described as soul who will be appearing in the podcast, but it really depends on where you draw the boundaries of what counts as soul. There’ll be a few disco and hip-hop acts appearing over the last half of the series, and some of them might be considered soul by some people.   That’s the best I can do at answering the question right now, but it’s a vastly oversimplified version of the real answer, which is “listen to all the podcasts for the seventies when I get to them”.   One from Jeff Stanzler:   “For me, the most surprising inclusion so far was the Janis Martin record. You did speak some about why you felt it warranted inclusion, but I’d love to hear more of your thinking on this, and maybe also on the larger philosophical question of including records that were more like significant signposts than records that had huge impact at the time.”   [Excerpt: Janis Martin, “Drugstore Rock & Roll”]   Some of this goes back to some of the stuff I was talking about last week, about how there are multiple factors at play when it comes to any song I’m choosing, but the Janis Martin one makes a good example of how those factors play into each other.   First, everything I said in that episode is true — it *is* an important signpost in the transition of rock and roll into a music specifically aimed at white teenagers, and it is the first record I’ve come across that deals with the 1950s of Happy Days and American Graffiti rather than the other things that were going on in the culture. Even though “Drugstore Rock and Roll” wasn’t a massively successful record, I think that makes it worth including.   But there were other factors that warranted its inclusion too. The first of these was simply that I wanted to include at least one song by a woman at that point. If you don’t count the Platters, who had one female member, it had been three months since the last song by a woman. I knew I was going to be doing Wanda Jackson a few weeks later, but it’s important to me that I show how women were always part of the story of rock and roll. The podcast is going to be biased towards men, because it’s telling the story of an industry that was massively biased towards men, but where women did have the opportunity to break through I want to give them credit. This is not including “token women” or anything like that — rather it’s saying “women have always been part of the story, their part of the story has been ignored, I want to do what I can to redress the balance a bit, so long as I don’t move into actively misrepresenting history”.   Then there’s the fact that Janis Martin had what to my mind was a fascinating story, and one that allowed me to talk about a lot of social issues of the time, at least in brief.   And finally there’s the way that her story ties in with those of other people I’ve covered. Her admiration of Ruth Brown allowed me to tie the story in with the episode on “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean”, and also gave me a way to neatly bookend the story, while showing the influence of one of the songs I’d already covered. Her working for RCA and with the same musicians as Elvis meant that I could talk a bit more about those musicians, and her being marketed as “the Female Elvis” meant that I could talk about Elvis’ larger cultural impact on the world in 1956, something that needed to be discussed in the series, but which I hadn’t found space for in an episode on Elvis himself at that point. (And in talking about the various Elvis-based novelty records I was also able to mention a few figures who will turn up in future episodes, planting seeds for later).   [Excerpt: Eddie Cochran and the Holly Twins, “I Want Elvis For Christmas”]   So that’s the thinking there. Every episode has to serve a bunch of different purposes if I’m going to tell this story in only five hundred episodes, and the Janis Martin one, I think, did that better than many. As to the larger question of signposts versus impact at the time — I am trying, for the most part, to tell the story from the point of view of the time we’re looking at, and look at what mattered to listeners and other musicians at the time. But you also have to fill in the details of stuff that’s going to affect things in the future. So for example you can’t talk about REM without first having covered people like Big Star, so even though Big Star weren’t huge at the time, they’ll definitely be covered. On the other hand someone like, say, Nick Drake, who had little influence until he was rediscovered decades later, won’t be covered, except maybe in passing when talking about other artists Joe Boyd produced, because he didn’t really have an effect on the wider story.   In general, the prime consideration for any song that I include is — does it advance the overall story I’m telling? There’ll be stuff left out that would be in if the only criterion was how people reacted to it at the time, and there’ll be stuff included which, on its own merits, just wouldn’t make the list at all. There’s one Adam Faith album track, for example, that I’m going to talk about in roughly nine months, which I think is almost certainly not even the best track that Adam Faith recorded that day, which is about as low a bar as it gets. But it’ll be in there because it’s an important link in a larger story, even though it’s not a song that mattered at all at the time.   And a final question from Daniel Helton on whether I considered doing an episode on “Ain’t Got No Home” by Clarence “Frogman” Henry.   [Excerpt: Clarence “Frogman” Henry, “Ain’t Got No Home”]   It’s a great record, but much of what I’d have to say about it would be stuff about the New Orleans scene and Cosimo Matassa’s studio and so forth — stuff that I’d probably already covered in the episodes on Fats Domino and Lloyd Price (including the episode on Price that’s coming up later), so it’d be covering too much of the same ground for me to devote a full episode to it.   If I was going to cover Frogman in the main podcast, it would *probably* be with “I Don’t Know Why (But I Do)” because that came out at a time when there were far fewer interesting records being made, and I’d then cover his history including “Ain’t Got No Home” as part of that, but I don’t think that’s likely.   In fact, yeah, I’ll pencil in “Ain’t Got No Home” for next week’s Patreon episode. Don’t expect much, because those are only ten-minute ones, but it came out at around the same time as next week’s proper episode was recorded, and it *is* a great record. I’ll see what I can do for that one.   Anyway, between this and the Patreon bonus episode, I think that’s all the questions covered. Thanks to everyone who asked one, and if I haven’t answered your questions fully, please let me know and I’ll try and reply in the comments to the Patreon post. We’ll be doing this again next year, so sign up for the Patreon now if you want that. Next week we’re back to the regular podcasts, with an episode on “Matchbox” by Carl Perkins. Also, I’m *hoping* — though not completely guaranteeing yet — that I’ll have the book based on the first fifty episodes done and out by this time next week. These things always take longer than I expect, but here’s hoping there’ll be an announcement next week. See you then.  

Hanna Brooks Olsen stops by to talk about the science of skipping stones, grocery store parking lots, bucket hats, and how we accidentally buried the lede on our Booger McFarland story.

Tonight on Monday Night Smoke, it's a Country Gentleman filled with Bakerstreet U.S.A. from 4noggins. One of my favorite pipes and one of my favorite tobaccos, it's going to be a good night.

Tonight for Monday Night Smoke, we have Carey's English Oriental Supreme in a Country Gentleman and Sutliff Private Stock: Maple Street in a Brigham Mountaineer. https://maplecitymedia.wordpress.com/mcpipeblog/

Today we are reviewing one of our favorites, the Country Gentleman from Missouri Meerschaum. As always this is not a sponsered episode, I am just a fan promoting a product that I like and is quality.

This Episode was actually supposed to air yesterday (Feb 28) but I went with a different post, so some of the date references will be off a bit. Here I explain my personal challenge to smoke the same corncob pipe every day for one month. The pipe will be a staight Country Gentleman, the tobacco will be everything I have in the pipe. I was inspired by the feb-burnout the guys on the Corn Cob Nation Facebook group did. I didn't have a new enough cob to give it a go with them, so, I'm doing this instead. Look for a first smoke episode later tonight, it will be bare bones and no editing. Updates will happen every Friday from here on out.

The Prussian Rabbit Breed Thank you for listening.  If you would like to support the podcast, and keep the lights on, you can support us whenever you use Amazon through the link below: It will not cost you anything extra, and I can not see who purchased what. Or you can become a Fluffle Supporter by donating through Patreon.com at the link below: Patreon/Hare of the Rabbit What's this Patreon? Patreon is an established online platform that allows fans to provide regular financial support to creators. Patreon was created by a musician who needed a easy way for fans to support his band. What do you need? Please support Hare of the Rabbit Podcast financially by becoming a Patron. Patrons agree to a regular contribution, starting at $1 per episode. Patreon.com takes a token amount as a small processing fee, but most of your money will go directly towards supporting the Hare of the Rabbit Podcast. You can change or stop your payments at any time. You can also support by donating through PayPal.com at the link below: Hare of the Rabbit PayPal Thank you for your support, Jeff Hittinger. The Prussian Rabbit Breed From the United Kingdom comes a rabbit with the name of Prussian. There has only been one mention of this breed found, which appeared in January 1858 in a publication titled the Cottage Gardner and Country Gentleman, which speaks of a show held in Nottingham in the same month and year where four classes had been provided for rabbits. P. Boulton writes "The Prussian Rabbit - At the Nottingham Show, January 1858, a pair of rabbits were exhibited under this name. They were remarkably small in size, and beautiful in their proportions; they were both white, with pink eyes, their ears were very short, and carried erect. The heads of both buck and doe were rounder than in any other variety. They were timid creatures, so much so that the noise and inspection of the visitors at the Show were sufficient to destroy one of this very interesting pair of rabbits. They are the only pair I have seen, or heard of; and I believe that they were imported, but whether directly from Prussia, or not, I was unable to ascertain." Now as to whether these little white rabbits called Prussian were actually imported from what is now northern Germany or not, we shall never know, but Bob Whitman is of the opinion that theses could well be the very beginning of the breed we now call the Polish Rabbit. THE RABBIT AND THE CRAB http://www.kstrom.net/isk/maya/rabbit.html Once upon a time the rabbit teamed up with the crab to grow some carrots. They worked for several days together in harmony. First they chose the seed and then they planted it. Then they took care of the young plants, the two of them always in agreement. They harvested the crop and separated the tops from the carrots. But the arguments began when the time came to divide the crop. The rabbit wanted to deceive the crab with sweet talk: "See? We have two piles there, a big one and a little one. You can have the big one and I'll take the small one." After seeing that the big pile was of tops and the small one was of carrots, the crab answered: "Thank you very much, my dear friend, but I like to be fair. Let's divide the two piles in half, I'll divide and you choose, or you divide and I'll choose, as you prefer. What do you say?" "No, no! I can't agree," said the rabbit. Let's walk some thirty paces from here and we'll come back running. The first one to get there gets the carrots and the other one gets the tops. What do you say?" "Well, all right,it seems fair to me," answered the crab. "Finally we're in agreement!" said the rabbit. He was very happy, because he was sure he was going to win: "I'm so pleased about this, that if you win, I'm prepared to give you all the carrots and all the tops. Do you agree?" "I agree!" repeated the crab. "There's one other thing," said the rabbit, "since I know you're slower than me, I'm going to give you a ten-pace handicap." "No, that's too much! I can't accept that," said the crab, pretending that he didn't want to take advantage of him. "You're the one that ought to have a ten-pace handicap. I won't take no for an answer." "I accept, I accept," the rabbit hastened to answer, not wanting to contradict him, and glad to do what he asked. That way the other fellow wouldn't get angry, and he threw himself in behind the crab. With this agreement they went together in a friendly fashion to the place where the race was going to start. The rabbit went ahead to take the ten-pace handicap. But, as soon as he turned his back, the crab, who was neither slow nor lazy, seized the rabbit's tail with his claws, without him realizing it. When they came to where the carrots were, the rabbit turned around thinking that he had left the crab far behind. But then the crab opened his claws and fell real quietly on top of the carrots. "Where are you, friend?" the rabbit asked happily when he didn't see him anywhere. "Here I am!" answered the crab behind him. The rabbit jumped with surprise and then stood frozen in his tracks, not believing what he saw. There was the crab, climbing over the piles of carrots: "Here I am! And I got here before you did!" That day was the first time ever that the rabbit lost. He was very sad because he could not understand how the crab got ahead of him. That's how the crab got to keep the carrots. This was the story of the rabbit and the crab. Word of the week: Occupation Plant of the week: Larkspur   © Copyrighted

Just me rambling on aboutvhow much snow we have gotten over the last few days. I do also talk about smoking my Country Gentleman with Mac Baren Vintage Syran outside in the snow.

Wacky chorus + stereo reverb = this one’s got some noises in it, and we love how crazy it got. Enjoy our first ever two-amp, stereo recording and all the boyoyoyoyoyoing this Julia has to offer. And on the bass???? Slap on this chorus and some reverb, and get ready to make the Transformers 6 soundtrack. Gear used:  2000s Gretsch 6122 Country Gentleman 1995 Fender Stratocaster Special Stulce low-watt, EL84 head Marshall 2x12 cabinet Fender Blues Jr. III Sennheiser MD421 Sennheiser e906 Walrus Audio Julia Chorus T.C. Electronics Hall of Fame Reverb

Just thought I’d say hello. Music today is just me playing with a cool new iPad app (yes I finally got one, the iPad Air, more on that on a later episode) called “Scape” by Brian Eno. It’s so much fun to mess around with. Happy birthdays to my Dad and my Son.

Dobro, Mandolin, Fiddle, Banjo's, Guitar, Tambourine and Handclaps. Our Bluegrass Gospel Version of The Classic Gospel Song—The Hallelujah Side Lyrics:Johnson Oatman, Jr  Music: J. Howard Entwisle 1898 Public DomainThe 1st to Record “The Hallelujah Side” Was Ernest Stoneman & His Dixie Mountaineers. On September 21, 1926, They Recorded It for Victor. Since Then The Classic Gospel Song Is Been Recorded by The Tinley Quaker City Gospel Singers, Bill Gaither, The Chuck Wagon Gang and, and the Country Gentleman.“The Hallelujah Side”Verse One:Once a sinner far from Jesus....I was perishing with cold....But the blessed Savior heard me when I cried.....Then He threw His arms around me and He led me to His fold....And, I'm living on the hallelujah side....The Chorus:O glory be to Jesus...let the hallelujahs roll....Help me ring the Savior's praises....far and wide.....For I've opened up toward Heaven all the windows of my soul.....And I'm living on the hallelujah side.....Verse Two:Though the world may sweep around me...with her dazzle and her dreams....Yet I envy not her vanities and pride......For my soul looks up to Heaven where the golden sunlight gleams....And, I'm living on the hallelujah side....Verse Three:Not for all earth's golden millions would I leave this precious place....Though the tempter to persuade me oft has tried....For I'm safe in God's pavilion, happy in His love and grace....And, I'm living on the hallelujah side....Verse Four:Here the sun is always shining...here the sky is always bright....Tis no place for gloomy Christians to abide....For my soul is filled with music and my heart with great delight....And, I'm living on the hallelujah side....Verse Five:And upon the streets of glory...when we reach the other shore.....And have safely crossed the Jordan's rolling tide...You will find me shouting "Glory" just outside my mansion door....Where I'm living on the hallelujah side....The Chorus:O glory be to Jesus...let the hallelujahs roll....Help me ring the Savior's praises....far and wide.....For I've opened up toward Heaven all the windows of my soul.....And I'm living on the hallelujah side.....© 2013 Shiloh Worship Music COPY FREELY;This Music is copyrighted to prevent misuse, however,permission is granted for non-commercial copying-Radio play permitted- www.shilohworshipmusic.com

We begin our Made-in-Canada segment with Tommy Hunter and His Pals in celebration of the 82nd birthday (March 20) of “Canada’s Country Gentleman.”  Next, we hear a bit of comedy about the result of what happens when we consume what is often delicately referred to as “musical fruit,” which you would never expect the CBC […]