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Wenn Musik Wunden, Schnitte und Blessuren heilen kann, dann die von Deafheaven. Wummernde Gitarrenwände, nackte Aggression und rettende Melodien lassen Fleisch und Knochen genesen. Die hipste Metalband der Welt ist auf «Lonely People With Power» da, wo sie vor 12 Jahren den Durchbruch schaffte. +++ PLAYLIST +++ 21:56 SQUID INK von MY MORNING JACKET 21:52 LEMME KNOW von MY MORNING JACKET 21:49 KISMET von KELLAN CHRISTOPHER CRAGG 21:46 WHY DID YOU GO? von KELLAN CHRISTOPHER CRAGG 21:42 DOA von ST. VINCENT 21:39 SWEETEST FRUIT von ST. VINCENT 21:33 BOBB-R-EDIT 23von ROBAG WRUHME 21:27 JE ME VOIS von LA COLERE 21:24 SUGARCAT von DOPE LEMON 21:20 BIG JET PLANE von ANGUS AND JULIA STONE 21:18 BREAK ME DOWN von YUKIMI 21:14 DUSTY von HANNAH COHEN 21:09 FREE von LITTLE SIMZ 21:04 NO FRONT TEETH von PERFUME GENIUS FEAT. ALDOUS HARDING 20:58 LEAST I HAVE YOU von COCOROSIE 20:56 MANGO von BAZE 20:51 IMMER DUR NÄCHT von STAHLBERGER 20:45 MR. TAP N' GO von MASTERS OF REALITY 20:38 THE GARDEN ROUTE vin DEAFHEAVEN 20:33 MAGNOLIA von DEAFHEAVEN 20:30 APPEAR DISAPPEAR von THE YOUNG GODS 20:23 FINDING MONEY von REAL LIES FEAT. JESSICA BARDEN 20:21 CRY CRY CRY von SOUKEY 20:16 BACKSEAT von SOUKEY 20:13 BULLSEYE von LUCY DACUS/HOZIER 20:08 NOT STRONG ENOUGH von BOYGENIUS 20:05 GLIDE von NEIKED/PORTUGAL. THE MAN
Grab your Reese's Pieces and get ready to CRY CRY CRY, because today we're flying our bikes all the way back to Steven Spielberg's heartwarming, near-perfect film, E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL! Along the way we discuss frog-dissections, the paralyzing nature of childhood fears, and whether or not Alex looks like E.T. with a hat on. Subscribe to our PATREON to watch the video episode and more!
Mit 20 Millionen verkauften Exemplaren ist "Breakfast in America" das erfolgreichste Album von Supertramp und sogar eines der meistverkauften Alben überhaupt. Damit gelingt Supertramp 1979 der große Durchbruch in den USA. Mit Erscheinen dieses Podcasts sind seit der Veröffentlichung von "Breakfast in America" bereits 45 Jahre vergangen. "Breakfast in America" ist ein zeitloser Meilenstein des progressiven Pop mit Songs, die auch heute noch relevant sind. Das sind neben dem Titelsong auch "The Logical Song", "Goodbye Stranger" und "Take The Long Way Home". Die Gründung der Band Supertramp Supertramp haben sich 1969 gegründet. Rick Davies spielt bereits im Alter von 12 Jahren Schlagzeug und steigt dann zum Keyboarder auf. Bei einem Gig in München lernt er den holländischen Millionär Stanley August, genannt Sam, kennen. Dieser ermutigt ihn dazu eine eigene Band zu gründen. Über eine Annonce im "Melody Maker", einer großen britischen Musikzeitschrift, die bis ins Jahr 2000 wöchentlich erschienen ist, sucht er geeignete Musiker. Daraufhin meldet sich Roger Hodgson bei ihm und die beiden gründen die Band "Daddy". Ihr allererster Auftritt findet im damaligen Münchner Szene-Lokal "PN hit-house" auf der Leopoldstraße statt. Unter der Woche spielten doch meist Cover-Bands, während am Wochenende die Bands aus Großbritannien auftraten. In München entscheiden sie sich für einen neuen Bandnamen: aus Daddy wird Supertramp. Von "Supertramp" bis hin zu "Breakfast in America" Die ersten Alben "Supertramp" und "Indelibly Stamped" sind wenig erfolgreich, weshalb das Kapitel Supertramp bereits 1971 zunächst als beendet erscheint. Die Band besteht zu diesem Zeitpunkt aus Rick Davies, Rodger Hodgson, Kevin Currie, Frank Farrell und Dave Winthrop. Ihr Finanzier Sam zieht sich aus dem Musikgeschäft zurück, 1973 stehen Supertramp vor der Auflösung. Ein Jahr später — in neuer Formation — veröffentlichen sie "Crime of the Century". Zu Davies und Hodgson gesellen sich nun John Helliwell, Bob Siebenberg und Dougie Thomson dazu. Erstmals in der Bandgeschichte agieren auch Gastmusiker bei den Aufnahmen. Mit ihrem fünften Album 1977 "Even in the Quietest Moments" und der daraus veröffentlichten Single "Give a Little Bit" folgt dann endlich auch der Durchbruch in den USA und Supertramp zieht es nach Los Angeles. Dort entsteht ihr sechstes Studioalbum "Breakfast in America" und eröffnet, passend zum Albumtitel, mit "Gone Hollywood". Insgesamt gibt es für Davies und Hodgson drei Phasen von Songwriting während der Produktion des Albums. Sie schreiben ihre Songs zuhause und nehmen sie auch dort zunächst als Demo auf, eine weitere Demo wird im Studio aufgenommen, bis sie im dritten Schritt das Arrangement festlegen und die Songs tatsächlich einspielen. Opener "Gone Hollywood" und Closer "Child of Vision" Für unsere SWR1 Musikredakion sind beides epische Stücke. Mit gut 7,5 Minuten behalten Supertramp ihre Tradition bei, den Closer ziemlich episch zu gestalten. "Child of Vision" thematisiert angeblich das Verhältnis zwischen den beiden äußerst unterschiedlichen Songwriter-Persönlichkeiten: Rick Davies und Roger Hudgson. Hodgson hat den Song geschrieben und dabei möglicherweise an Davies gedacht. Die beiden haben gänzlich unterschiedliche Vorstellungen vom Leben, nicht nur auf musikalischer Ebene und eben diese Widersprüche werden in "Child of Vision" thematisiert. Davies kommt aus dem Jazz, dem Rhythm and Blues und hat dementsprechend andere musikalische oder auch thematisch viel tiefere, destruktivere Ansätze an Texten, während Roger Hodgson vom Pop geprägt ist und eine Falsettstimme mitbringt. "The Logical Song" Die Welt der erwachsenen Erziehungsschule aus Sicht eines Teenagers. "The Logical Song" handelt davon, dass Schülerinnen und Schülern gelehrt wird nach Außen zu funktionieren, aber nicht, wer man innerlich wirklich ist und was den wahren Sinn des Lebens ausmacht. Die Nummer war die Lead-Single von "Breakfast in America" und ist bis heute ein absoluter Rock-Klassiker und für SWR1 Musikredakteur Frank König ein wahres Meisterwerk. Der Song ist in drei Teile gegliedert: beginnend in der Kindheit, über die Schulzeit im Internat bis hin zum Erwachsenendasein. Rodgson beschreibt die magische Schönheit der Kinderwelt und stellt sie der widersprüchlichen und überfordernden Erwachsenenwelt gegenüber und stellt sich die Frage: Wer bin ich eigentlich? Ein Meilenstein der Musikgeschichte Warum der Ursprungstitel des Albums eigentlich "Hello Stranger" sein sollte, von welchen Songs der Beatles sich Supertramp in "Breakfast in America" inspirieren lassen haben, welche ungewöhnlichen Instrumente bei der Produktion zum Einsatz kamen und ob Johnny Hallywell sein stilbringendes Saxophon tatsächlich auf der Studio-Toilette aufgenommen hat, das und mehr gibt es im Meilenstein zu "Breakfast in America" von Supertramp. __________ Über diese Songs vom Album "Breakfast in America" wird im Podcast gesprochen (04:49) – "The Logical Song"(14:18) – "Gone Hollywood"(21:40) – "Gone Hollywood"(22:24) – "Child of Vision"(29:24) – "The Logical Song"(48:12) – "Goodbye Stranger"(56:03) – "Breakfast in America"(01:03:54) – "Take the Long Way Home"__________ Über diese Songs wird außerdem im Podcast gesprochen (26:34) – "Here Comes the Sun" von The Beatles(01:40:12) – "Hyper Hyper" von Scooter(01:10:43) – "When We Were Young" von David Guetta und Kim Petras(01:11:07) – "Cry Cry Cry" von Coldplay(01:11:41) – "It Might Be Time" von Tame Impala (Prod. Kevin Parker)__________ Shownotes Buch von Frank Bösch über das Jahr 1979: https://www.chbeck.de/boesch-zeitenwende-1979/product/26071725 Buchtipp: Ein Tribute an Supertramp – Die illustrierte Biografie: https://www.isbn.de/buch/9783750535305/ein-tribut-an-supertramp Wie "The Logical Song" entstanden ist_ https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/classic-tracks-supertramp-logical-song Making Of "The Logical Song" im Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tfOF7XcOlg Wie Schauspielerin Kate Murtagh als Kellnerin auf das Plattencover von "Breakfast in America" kam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=salH6GDlNuE Podcast-Tipp: "Fuck you very, very much! Die größten Beefs im Musikbiz" von ARD Kultur: https://www.ardaudiothek.de/sendung/fuck-you-very-very-much-die-groessten-beefs-im-musikbiz/13172547/ Liste der Meilensteine-Folgen von 1 bis 250__________ Ihr wollt mehr Podcasts wie diesen? Abonniert die SWR1 Meilensteine! Fragen, Kritik, Anregungen? Schreibt uns an: meilensteine@swr.de
0:00 Sunrise Intro 2:51 Church 6:40 Trouble In Town 11:13 Broken 13:43 Daddy 18:40 WOTW/POTP 20:36 Arabesque 25:54 When I Need A Friend 28:00 Sunset 28:11 Guns 30:07 Orphans 33:54 Eko 36:37 Cry Cry Cry 39:35 Old Friends 41:52 Bani Adam 45:08 Champion Of The World 49:17 Everyday Life 53:33 Outro All uploads on this channel are for promotional purposes only! The music has been converted before uploading to prevent ripping and to protect the artist(s) and label(s). If you don't want your content here please contact us immediately via email: allmusiclive@outlook.com and WE WILL REMOVE THE EPISODE IMMEDIATELY!
On January 12, 1968 Johnny Cash was at a crossroads in his legendary career. Having reached the heights of stardom with songs like "Big River", "Cry Cry Cry" and "Guess Things Happen That Way", the Man in Black was in jeapordy of riding off into the sunset" on a Tennesse Stud when Columbia Records relented to his request to record an album inside the walls of a hardened prison. Johnny had been doing these shows for a decade, and believed it was the perfect audience to catapult him into the next phase of his career. On January 13, he performed two shows in mess hall 2 of California's notorious Folsom Prison. The recordings from those concerts turned out to be not only one of the greatest country music albums of all time, but one of the greatest live albums of any genre. This week an actual relative (by marriage) of Johnny joins us, the inimitable TJ2 from the Rock and Roll Heaven Podcast, to talk about the tremendous legacy of this album and his relative. #johnnycash #folsomeprisonblues #columbiarecords #folsomprison #walktheline #Jackson YUH Theme by David T and Mojo 3 https://www.amazon.com/Insanity-Sobriety-Blues-David-Mojo3/dp/B091N8BJNB Rock and Roll Heaven on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rock-and-roll-heaven/id1450730862 Johnny Cash At Folsom Prison on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/album/4TJIdlY9hGSSTO1kUs1neh?si=hQzMgfeeSUmgrzQJgRv8Iw Rock and Roll Heaven Pod on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/RockandrollLT/ Yeah Uh Huh Social Stuff: Yeah Uh Huh on TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@yeahuhhuhpod Yeah Uh Huh on Facebook https://facebook.com/YeahUhHuhPod Yeah Uh Huh on Twitter https://twitter.com/YeahUhHuhPod Yeah Uh Huh on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/7pS9l716ljEQLeMMxwihoS?si=27bd15fb26ed46aa Yeah Uh Huh on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/yeah-uh-huh/id1565097611 Yeah Uh Huh Website: https://yeah-uh-huh.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/lisa-huey/message
In tonight's episode of Pudding On The Wrist, special guest OrangeG joins us in the control room to talk about his new record, The Void Bereft. A fantastic conversation about music, books, songwriting, as well as choice tracks from The The, Jens Lekman, Haley Heyndricx, Cry Cry Cry, The Kingston Trio, Josh Ritter, and more.
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“I'll Meet You Here” The New York-born Dar Williams has been crafting some of the most engaging music of the last 30 years. A graduate of Wesleyan, Williams got her start in the early '90s in Boston. She had moved there to pursue a career in theater, but inspired by contemporaries like Throwing Muses and Melissa Ferrick, Williams starting writing songs of her own and she hit the ground running, knocking out cassette-only efforts like I Have No History and All My Heroes Are Dead. Her proper full length debut The Honesty Room came out on her own label Burning Field Music and found her a fan in Joan Baez who not only later recorded some of Dar's songs, she invited Williams to tour with her. With almost 20 albums under her belt, including The Green World, Mortal City, My Better Self and her new one I'll Meet You Here, Williams has established herself as one of the most enduring and endearing songwriters out there. She's toured with Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin and Ani Di Franco, recorded with everyone from John Prine to Clifff Eberhart and she formed the group Cry Cry Cry along with Richard Shindell and Lucy Kaplansky as vehicle to honor their favorite folk numbers. An environmental activist, an educator and an author of several books ranging from YA to urban planning—her book The Tofu Tollbooth is an essential directory of natural food store-- Dar Williams kind of does it all. I'll Meet You Here is her first new album in 6 years and it's a refreshing blast of rootsy rock, introspective folk and horn-tinged Americana. This record is a melodic blast of utter musical joy. A playful lyricist who can also be so emotionally exact it's like a direct sucker punch, Dar Williams is one of our very best.
Terry Adams talks about his famous mom.
8-15-21 When things are not going well with you, do you run to a freind to pour out your troubles? Do you unload on a co worker? Or do you turn to God and cry out to Him?
Are you a crier? Do you cry when the wind blows too hard? Do you know someone that never cries? For years scientists have argued about the reasons we cry. Tears of joy appear to be expressed in the same manner as tears of sadness. It's only the emotion that distinguishes the two. And, surprisingly, the tears we shed when chopping onions are chemically different than the tears we cry when expressing our feelings. Take a listen to hear some interesting research findings in the up-and-coming field of the science of crying. Enjoy!
Anime has produced more than enough tear jerking series throughout the years. Join Gracie, Isabelle, and Agnes as they discuss the noteworthy anime series that have managed to reduce them into puddles of tears. There are spoilers discussed in this episode, and one of the girls ends up breaking into tears just talking about the anime that made her cry!
All uploads on this channel are for promotional purposes only! The music has been converted before uploading to prevent ripping and to protect the artist(s) and label(s). If you don't want your content here (that goes for audio or images) please contact me immediately via email: unpluggedtube@outlook.it and I WILL REMOVE THE EPISODE OR ARTWORK IMMEDIATELY! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Shortly into Coldplay's soundcheck, singer Chris Martin cut off the opening song, "Cry Cry Cry," right in the middle. His band had brought along a nine-piece choir, and he asked them to take "Cry Cry Cry" one more time. When one of the singers asked if there was a problem, Martin replied, "No, I'm just in f****** heaven right now!" SET LIST "Cry Cry Cry" "Viva La Vida" "Broken" "1999" (Prince cover) "Champion Of The World" Team UNPLUGGED.
This is a conversation for anyone whose dream of becoming a parent hasn’t come to fruition in the “traditional” way. Whether you’ve faced the pleasantries of infertility, required a surrogate, given the gift of adoption, are navigating this journey without a partner, or accidentally got knocked up by some random one night stand; there is...
Arkane Aleworks is a brewery from Largo, FL. The beer presented is called Sunny Side. It is a double dry hopped, new England style double IPA. The next one is from Calusa, and it is a heavy triple IPA. It is weighing in at 10% abv. Happy Sunday folks! Cheers. Find me on Instagram @bminusshow … Continue reading "Arkane Aleworks Sunny Side DDH NE DIPA and Calusa Cry Cry Cry TIPA"
More Florida heat, as you may or may not know that I have a beer supplier from that area, so I can enjoy the Florida heat in California. The first beer is from Unseen Creatures brewing called The Child. This is a 7% abv india pale ale. The next one is a triple IPA from … Continue reading "Unseen Creatures The Child IPA and Calusa Cry Cry Cry TIPA"
A epoca de Ouro! 1950sRhythm & Blues e Country se cruzam e dão vida ao filho bastardo! Rock'n'Roll!Um Milk Shake de Chocolate, por favor!Playlist:Clyde McPhatter - A Lover's QuestionDion & the Belmonts - A Teenager in LoveFrankie Lymon & The Teenagers - Why Do Fools Fall In LoveFats Domino - Ain't That a Shame Thurston Houston - Little Bitty Pretty OneLeslie Gore - It's My PartyBill Haley & the Comets - See You Later AlligatorBrenda Lee - That's All You Gotta DoChordettes - Mr. SandmanThe Drifters - There Goes My BabyBobby Vee - Take Good Care of My BabyThe Five Satins - In The Still Of The NiteJackie Wilson - Lonely TeardropsThe Platters - The Great PretenderThe Penguins - Earth AngelRoy Orbison - Only the LonelyJames Brown - Please, Please, PleaseFats Domino - I Hear You KnockingConnie Francis - Lipstick on Your CollarCurtis Lee - Pretty Little Angel EyesPaul Anka - Diana (1957-24)The Cadillacs - SpeedoChuck Berry - MaybelleneElvis Presley - In Your ArmsEddie Cochran - Summertime BluBuddy Holly - Peggy SueJohnny Cash - Cry! Cry! Cry!Dean Martin - I Walk the LineDownload MP3 File
Cry Cry Cry! As good as laughter to make you feel good. Discover how crying is a powerful tool to make you beautiful, healthy and relaxed! We chat about our experiences of allowing our tears to flow and what happens when we do and don’t. What are your cultural and social beliefs about crying? Are they healthy? Link to Gene Keys book: https://amzn.to/2B3Cnmu Content information from this episode: https://www.livetheimpossible.today/053 Get the free Live the Impossible Playbook, here https://www.livetheimpossible.today/ Oliver & Susanas mentoring programs: https://silverhoj.com/ Pam the Health Genie: https://www.pamlob.com/ Oliver & Susanas travel blog: https://www.conscioustravelfamily.com/ Jon Century our household Magic Musician: https://www.joncentury.com/music
In this episode we go through our thoughts on Money in the bank as well as the weekly shows! A bit of some breaking news and what we think they should do with the tournament for the IC title! As well as talk shit and maybe start a rumor or two! But hey that’s just what we do! Thanks for being awesome listeners and enjoy! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app
Peter falls subject to all of the tears and literally cannot even. How do we feel about the two babes that went home? How do you feel? Will we ever recover? Find out now
On this episode Bobby, Bruce, Brandon, Jeff, and guest Mishi discuss: -Trump impeachment -Does your vote matter? -Holiday season: gift giving etiquette -To touch or not to touch -Porn categories -Movie suggestions -and more Note: After the Trump Impeachment and Voting topics (33:37) this podcast kinda goes off the rails. Be prepared. As always, check us out on Instagram @onechance_manysounds and our individual social media accounts (listen for @'s) and send any comments, critiques, question, and suggestions to OneChanceManySounds@gmail.com.
Episode thirty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "I Walk The Line" by Johnny Cash, and is part two of a trilogy on the aftermath of Elvis leaving Sun, and the birth of rockabilly. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a thirteen-minute bonus episode available, on "Don't Be Angry" by Nappy Brown. ----more---- Errata Two minor errors I noticed while editing but didn't think were worth going back and redoing -- I pronounce "Belshazzar" incorrectly (it's pronounced as Cash does in the song, as far as I can tell), and I said that the lyric to "Get Rhythm" contains the phrase "if you get the blues", when of course it's "when you get the blues". Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. My main source for this episode is Johnny Cash: The Life by Robert Hilburn. I'm relying heavily on Sam Phillips: the Man Who Invented Rock and Roll by Peter Guralnick for all the episodes dealing with Phillips and Sun Records. This triple-CD set contains everything Johnny Cash recorded for Sun Records. His early Sun singles are also on this ten-disc set, which charts the history of Sun Records, with the A- and B-sides of ninety of the first Sun singles in chronological order for an absurdly low price. This will help give you the full context for Cash's work, in a way hearing it in isolation wouldn't. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript This podcast is called a history of rock music, but one of the things we're going to learn as the story goes on is that the history of any genre in popular music eventually encompasses them all. And at the end of 1955, in particular, there was no hard and fast distinction between the genres of rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and country music. So today we're going to talk about someone who, to many, epitomises country music more than any other artist, but who started out recording for Sam Phillips at Sun Studios, making music that was stylistically indistinguishable from any of the other rockabilly artists there, and whose career would intertwine with all of them for decades to come. Before you listen to this one, you might want to go back and listen to last week's episode, on "Blue Suede Shoes", because the stories of Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins tie together quite a lot, and this is effectively part two of a three-parter, about Sun Records and the birth of rockabilly. Johnny Cash's birth name was actually J.R. Cash -- initials rather than a full name -- and that was how he was known until he joined the Air Force. His parents apparently had a disagreement over what their son's name should be, and so rather than give him full names, they just gave him initials. The Air Force wouldn't allow him to just use initials as his name, so he changed his name to John R. Cash. It was only once he became a professional musician that he took on the name Johnny Cash. He still never had a middle name, just a middle initial. While he was in the military, he'd been the very first American to learn that Stalin had died, as he'd been the radio operator who'd intercepted and decoded the Russian transmissions about it. But the military had never been the career he wanted. He wanted to be a singer. He just didn't know how. After returning to the US from his stint in the Air Force in Germany, aged twenty-two, Cash got married and moved to Memphis, to be near his brother. Cash's brother introduced him to two of his colleagues, Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant. Both Perkins and Grant could play a little guitar, and they started getting together to play a little music, sometimes with a steel player called Red Kernodle. They were very, very, unskilled musicians, but that didn't matter. They had a couple of things that mattered far more than skill. They had a willingness to try anything if it might sound good, and they had Cash's voice, which even as a callow young man sounded like Cash had been carved out of rock and imbued with the spirit of an Old Testament prophet. Cash never had a huge range, but his voice had a sonority to it that was quite astonishing, a resonant bass-baritone that demanded you pay attention to what it had to say. And Cash had a determination that he was going to become a famous singer. He had no idea how one was to go about this, but he knew it was what he wanted to do. To start with, they mostly performed the gospel songs that Cash loved. This was the music that is euphemistically called Southern Gospel, but which is really white gospel. Cash had had a religious experience as a kid, when his elder brother, who had wanted to become a priest, had died and had had a deathbed vision of heaven and hell, and Cash wanted to become a gospel singer to pay tribute to his brother while also indulging his own love of music. But then at one of their jam sessions, Cash brought in a song he had written himself, called "Belshazzar", based on a story from the Bible: [Excerpt: Johnny Cash: "Belshazzar"] The other two were amazed. Not so much by the song itself, but by the fact that you could write a song at all. The idea that songs were something you write was not something that had really occurred to them. Cash, Perkins, and Grant all played acoustic guitar at first, and none of them were particularly good. They were mostly just hanging out together, having fun. They were just singing stuff they'd heard on the radio, and they particularly wanted to sound like the Louvin Brothers: [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, "This Little Light of Mine"] They were having fun together, but that was all. But Cash was ambitious to do something more. And that "something more" took shape when he heard a record, one that was recorded the day after the plane that took Cash back into the US touched down: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, "That's All Right Mama"] He liked the sound of that record a lot. And what he liked even more was hearing the DJ, after the song was played, say that the record was out on Sun Records, a label based in Memphis itself. Johnny, Luther, and Marshall went to see Elvis, Scotty, and Bill perform, playing on the back of a flatbed truck and just playing the two songs on their single. Cash was immediately worried – Elvis was clearly a teenager, and Cash himself was a grown man of twenty-two. Had he missed his chance at stardom? Was he too old? Cash had a chat with Elvis, and went along again the next night to see the trio performing a proper set at a nightclub, and this time he talked with Scotty Moore and asked him how to get signed to Sun. Moore told him to speak to Sam Phillips, and so Cash got hold of Sun's phone number and started calling, asking to speak to Phillips, who was never in – he was out on the road a lot of the time, pushing the label's records to distributors and radio stations. But Cash also knew that he was going to have to do something more to get recorded. He was going to have to turn his little guitar jam sessions into a proper group like Elvis, Scotty, and Bill, not just three people bashing away together at acoustic guitars. They sometimes had Red on steel guitar, but they still needed some variety. Cash was obviously going to be the lead singer, so it made sense for him to stick with the acoustic rhythm guitar. Luther Perkins got himself an electric guitar and started playing lead lines which amounted to little more than boogie-woogie basslines transposed up an octave. Marshall Grant, meanwhile, got himself a double bass, and taped markers on it to show him where the notes were. He'd never played one before, so all he could do was play single notes every other beat, with big gaps between the notes -- "Boom [pause] boom [pause] boom [pause] boom" -- he couldn't get his fingers between the notes any faster. This group was clearly not anything like as professional as Presley and his group, but they had *something*. Their limitations as musicians meant that they had to find ways to make the songs work without relying on complicated parts or virtuoso playing. As Luther Perkins would later put it, "You know how all those hot-shot guitarists race their fingers all over the strings? Well, they’re looking for the right sound. I found it.” But Cash was still, frankly, a little worried that his group weren't all that great, and when he finally went to see Sam Phillips in person, having failed to get hold of him on the phone, he went alone. Phillips was immediately impressed by Cash's bearing and presence. He was taller, and more dignified, than most of the people who came in to audition for Phillips. He was someone with presence, and gravitas, and Phillips thought he had the makings of a star. The day after meeting Phillips for the first time, Cash brought his musician friends around as well, and Johnny, Luther, Marshall, and Red all had a chat with Phillips. Phillips explained to them that they didn't need to be technically great musicians, just have the right kind of sound. The four of them rehearsed, and then came back to Phillips with some of the material they'd been practising. But when it came time to audition, their steel player got so scared that he couldn't tune his guitar, his hands were shaking so much. Eventually he decided that he was holding the other three back, and left the studio, and the audition continued with just the group who had now become the Tennessee Three – a name they chose because while they all now lived in Tennessee, none of them had originally come from there. Phillips liked their sound, but explained that he wasn't particularly interested in putting out gospel music. There's an urban legend that Phillips said "go home and sin, then come back with a song I can sell", though this was denied by Cash. But it is true that he'd had no sales success with gospel music, and that he wanted something more commercial. Whatever Phillips said, though, Cash took the hint, and went home and started writing secular songs. The one he came back to Phillips with, "Hey Porter", was inspired by the sound of the railway, and had a boom-chick-a-boom rhythm that would soon become Cash's trademark: [Excerpt, "Hey Porter": Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two] Phillips liked it, and the Tennessee Three set to recording it. Or at least that was what they were called when they recorded it, but by the time it was released Sam Phillips had suggested a slight name change, and the single came out under the name Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two. As the Tennessee Two didn't have a drummer, Cash put paper between the strings and the fretboard of his acoustic guitar to deaden the sound and turn it into something that approximated the sound of a snare drum. The resulting boom-chick sound was one that would become a signature of Cash's recordings for the next few decades, a uniquely country music take on the two-beat rhythm. That sound was almost entirely forced on the group by their instrumental limitations, but it was a sound that worked. The song Cash brought in to Phillips as a possible B-side was called "Folsom Prison Blues", and it was only an original in the loosest possible sense. Before going off to Germany with the air force, Cash had seen a film called "Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison", and it had given Cash the idea that someone should write a song about that. But he'd put the idea to the back of his mind until two other inspirations arrived. The first was a song called "Crescent City Blues", which he heard on a Gordon Jenkins album that a fellow airman in Germany owned: [Excerpt: Gordon Jenkins (Beverly Maher vocals): "Crescent City Blues"] If you've not heard that song before, and are familiar with Cash's work, you're probably mildly in shock right now at just how much like “Folsom Prison Blues” that is. Jenkins' song in turn is also strongly inspired by another song, also titled "Crescent City Blues", by the boogie-woogie pianist Little Brother Montgomery: [Excerpt Little Brother Montgomery, "Crescent City Blues"] The second musical inspiration for Cash's prison song was a song by Cash's idol, Jimmie Rodgers, "Blue Yodel #1", also known as "T For Texas": [Excerpt: Jimmie Rodgers, "Blue Yodel #1"] The line "I'm gonna shoot poor Thelma, just to see her jump and fall" hit Cash hard, and he realised that the most morally bankrupt person he could imagine was someone who would kill someone else just to watch them die. He put this bleak amorality together with the idea of a song about Folsom, and changed just enough of the words to "Crescent City Blues" that it worked with this new concept of the character, and he titled the result "Folsom Prison Blues": [Excerpt: Johnny Cash, "Folsom Prison Blues"] 9) Sam Phillips didn't think that was suitable as the B-side to "Hey Porter", and they eventually went for a sad song that Cash had written titled "Cry Cry Cry," but "Folsom Prison Blues" was put aside as a future possibility. When the contract was drawn up, the only person who was actually signed to Sun was Cash – Phillips didn't want to be tied to the other two musicians. But while only Cash was signed to the label, they split the money more or less equitably, in a forty-thirty-thirty split (other sources say that the split was completely equal). “Hey Porter” and “Cry Cry Cry” both charted, and "Folsom Prison Blues" became Cash's second single, and one of the songs that would define him for the rest of his career. It went to number four on the country and western chart, and established him as a genuine star of country music. It's around this time that Sun signed Carl Perkins, which caused problems. Cash resented the way that he was being treated by Phillips as being less important than Perkins. He thought that Phillips was now only interested in his new star, and wasn't going to bother promoting Cash's records any more. This would be a recurring pattern with Phillips over the next few years -- he would discover some new star and whoever his previous favourite was would be convinced that Phillips no longer cared about them any more. This is ultimately what led to Sun's downfall, as one by one his discoveries moved on to other labels that they believed valued them more than Phillips did. Phillips, on the other hand, always argued that he had to put in more time when dealing with a new discovery, because he had to build their career up, and that established artists would always forget what he'd done for them when they saw him doing the same things for the next person. That's not to say, though, that Cash disliked Perkins. Quite the contrary. The two became close friends -- though Cash became even closer with Clayton Perkins, Carl's wayward brother, who had a juvenile sense of humour that appealed to Cash. Cash even co-wrote a song with Perkins, "All Mama's Children", which became the B-side to Perkins' "Boppin' the Blues": [Excerpt, Carl Perkins, "All Mama's Children"] It's not the greatest song either man ever wrote, by any means, but it was the start of a working relationship that would continue off and on for decades, and which both men would benefit from significantly. By this point, Cash had started to build a following, and as you might expect given his inspiration, he was following the exact same career path as Elvis Presley. He was managed by Elvis' first proper manager, Bob Neal, and he was given a regular slot on the Louisiana Hayride, the country music radio show that Elvis had built his reputation on. But this meant that Cash was being promoted alongside Carl Perkins, as a rock and roll star. This would actually do wonders for Cash's career in the long term. A lot of people who wouldn't listen to anything labeled country were fans of Cash in the mid fifties, and remained with him, and this meant that his image was always a little more appealing to rock audiences than many other similar singers. You can trace a direct line between Cash being promoted as a rock and roller in 1955 and 56, and his comeback with the American Recordings series more than forty years later. But when Cash brought in a new song he'd written, about his struggle while on the road to be true to his wife (and, implicitly, also to his God), it caused a clash between him and Sam Phillips. That song was quite possibly inspired by a line in "Sixteen Tons", the big hit from Tennessee Ernie Ford that year, which Cash fell in love with when it came out, and which made Cash a lifelong fan of its writer Merle Travis: [Excerpt: "Sixteen Tons", Tennessee Ernie Ford] He never made the connection publicly himself, but that image of walking the line almost definitely stuck in Cash's mind, and it became the central image of a song he wrote while on the road, thinking about fidelity in every sense. "I Walk the Line" was the subject of a lot of debate between Cash and Phillips, neither of whom were entirely convinced by the other's argument. Cash was sure that the song was a good one, maybe the best song he ever wrote, but he wanted to play it as a slow, plaintive, lovelorn ballad. Phillips, on the other hand, wasn't so impressed by the song itself, but he thought that it had some potential if it was sped up to the kind of tempo that "Hey Porter", "Cry Cry Cry" and "Folsom Prison Blues" had all been performed in -- a rock and roll tempo, for Cash's rock and roll audience. Give it some rhythm, and some of the boom-chika-boom, and there might be something there. Cash argued that he didn't need to. After all, the other song he had brought in, one that he cared about much less and had originally written to give to Elvis, was a rock and roll song. The lyrics even went "Get rhythm if you get the blues": [Excerpt: Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two: "Get Rhythm"] That song itself would go on to become a hit for Cash, and a staple of his live shows, but Phillips didn't see a reason why, just because one side of the record was uptempo, the other shouldn't be as well. He wanted the music to be universal, rather than personal, and to his mind a strong rhythm was necessary for universality. They eventually compromised and recorded two versions, a faster one recorded the way Phillips wanted it, and a slower one, the way Cash liked it. Cash walked out convinced that Phillips would see reason and release the slower version. He was devastated to find that Phillips had released the faster version. Cash later said, “The first time I heard it on the radio, I called him and said, ‘I hate that sound. Please don’t release any more records. I hate that sound.’ ” But then the record became a massive hit, and Cash decided that maybe the sound wasn't so bad after all. It went to number one on the country jukebox chart, made the top twenty in the pop charts, and sold more than two million copies as a single. Phillips had unquestionably had the right instincts, commercially at least. [Excerpt: Johnny Cash, "I Walk The Line"] "I Walk The Line" has a very, very, unusual structure. There's a key change after every single verse. This is just not something that you do, normally. Most pop songs will either stay in one key throughout, have a different key for different sections (so they might be in a minor key for the verse and a major key for the chorus, for example) or have one key change near the end, to give the song a bit of a kick. Here, the first verse is in F, then it goes up a fourth for the second verse, in B flat. It goes up another fourth, to E flat, for the third verse, then for the fourth verse it's back down to B flat, and the fifth verse it's back down to F, though an octave lower. (For those wondering about those keys, either they're playing with capoes or, more likely, Sam Phillips sped the track up a semitone to make it sound faster.) And this is really very, very, clever in the way it sets the mood of the song. The song starts and ends in the same place both musically and lyrically -- the last verse is a duplicate of the first, though sung an octave lower than it started -- and the rising and falling overall arc of the song suggests a natural cycle that goes along with the metaphors in the lyrics -- the tides, heartbeats, day and night, dark and light. The protagonist of the song is walking a thin line, wobbling, liable at any moment to fall over to one side or another, just like the oscillation and return to the original tonal centre in this song. What sounds like a relatively crude piece of work is, when listened to closely, a much more inventive record. And this is true of the chord sequences in the individual verses too. The verses only have three chords each -- the standard three chords that most country or blues songs have, the tonic, subdominant and dominant of the key. But they're not arranged in the standard order that you'd have them in, in a three-chord trick or a twelve-bar blues. Instead the verses all start with the dominant, an unusual, unstable, choice that came about from Cash having once threaded a tape backwards and having been fascinated by the sound. The dominant is normally the last chord. Here it's the first. The backwards tape is also one story as to where he got the idea of the humming that starts every verse -- though Cash also used to claim that the humming was so he could find the right note because there were so many key changes. This is not a song that's structured like a normal country and western song, and it's quite an extraordinarily personal piece of work. It's an expression of one man's very personal aesthetic, no matter how much Sam Phillips altered it to fit his own ideas of what Cash should be recording. It's an utterly idiosyncratic, utterly *strange* record, and a very strong contender for the best thing Sun Records ever put out, which is a high bar to meet. The fact that this sold two million copies in a country market that is usually characterised as conservative shows just how wrong such stereotypes can be. It was a masterpiece, and Johnny Cash was set for a very, very, long and artistically successful career. But that career wouldn't be with Sun. His life was in turmoil, the marriage that he had written so movingly about trying to keep together was falling apart, and he was beginning to think that he would do better doing as Elvis had and moving to a major label. Soon he would be signed to Columbia, the label where he would spend almost all his career, but we'll have one last glimpse of him at Sun. before he went off to Columbia and superstardom, in a future episode. And next week, we'll look at how Elvis was doing away from Sun.
Episode thirty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Walk The Line” by Johnny Cash, and is part two of a trilogy on the aftermath of Elvis leaving Sun, and the birth of rockabilly. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a thirteen-minute bonus episode available, on “Don’t Be Angry” by Nappy Brown. —-more—- Errata Two minor errors I noticed while editing but didn’t think were worth going back and redoing — I pronounce “Belshazzar” incorrectly (it’s pronounced as Cash does in the song, as far as I can tell), and I said that the lyric to “Get Rhythm” contains the phrase “if you get the blues”, when of course it’s “when you get the blues”. Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. My main source for this episode is Johnny Cash: The Life by Robert Hilburn. I’m relying heavily on Sam Phillips: the Man Who Invented Rock and Roll by Peter Guralnick for all the episodes dealing with Phillips and Sun Records. This triple-CD set contains everything Johnny Cash recorded for Sun Records. His early Sun singles are also on this ten-disc set, which charts the history of Sun Records, with the A- and B-sides of ninety of the first Sun singles in chronological order for an absurdly low price. This will help give you the full context for Cash’s work, in a way hearing it in isolation wouldn’t. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript This podcast is called a history of rock music, but one of the things we’re going to learn as the story goes on is that the history of any genre in popular music eventually encompasses them all. And at the end of 1955, in particular, there was no hard and fast distinction between the genres of rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and country music. So today we’re going to talk about someone who, to many, epitomises country music more than any other artist, but who started out recording for Sam Phillips at Sun Studios, making music that was stylistically indistinguishable from any of the other rockabilly artists there, and whose career would intertwine with all of them for decades to come. Before you listen to this one, you might want to go back and listen to last week’s episode, on “Blue Suede Shoes”, because the stories of Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins tie together quite a lot, and this is effectively part two of a three-parter, about Sun Records and the birth of rockabilly. Johnny Cash’s birth name was actually J.R. Cash — initials rather than a full name — and that was how he was known until he joined the Air Force. His parents apparently had a disagreement over what their son’s name should be, and so rather than give him full names, they just gave him initials. The Air Force wouldn’t allow him to just use initials as his name, so he changed his name to John R. Cash. It was only once he became a professional musician that he took on the name Johnny Cash. He still never had a middle name, just a middle initial. While he was in the military, he’d been the very first American to learn that Stalin had died, as he’d been the radio operator who’d intercepted and decoded the Russian transmissions about it. But the military had never been the career he wanted. He wanted to be a singer. He just didn’t know how. After returning to the US from his stint in the Air Force in Germany, aged twenty-two, Cash got married and moved to Memphis, to be near his brother. Cash’s brother introduced him to two of his colleagues, Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant. Both Perkins and Grant could play a little guitar, and they started getting together to play a little music, sometimes with a steel player called Red Kernodle. They were very, very, unskilled musicians, but that didn’t matter. They had a couple of things that mattered far more than skill. They had a willingness to try anything if it might sound good, and they had Cash’s voice, which even as a callow young man sounded like Cash had been carved out of rock and imbued with the spirit of an Old Testament prophet. Cash never had a huge range, but his voice had a sonority to it that was quite astonishing, a resonant bass-baritone that demanded you pay attention to what it had to say. And Cash had a determination that he was going to become a famous singer. He had no idea how one was to go about this, but he knew it was what he wanted to do. To start with, they mostly performed the gospel songs that Cash loved. This was the music that is euphemistically called Southern Gospel, but which is really white gospel. Cash had had a religious experience as a kid, when his elder brother, who had wanted to become a priest, had died and had had a deathbed vision of heaven and hell, and Cash wanted to become a gospel singer to pay tribute to his brother while also indulging his own love of music. But then at one of their jam sessions, Cash brought in a song he had written himself, called “Belshazzar”, based on a story from the Bible: [Excerpt: Johnny Cash: “Belshazzar”] The other two were amazed. Not so much by the song itself, but by the fact that you could write a song at all. The idea that songs were something you write was not something that had really occurred to them. Cash, Perkins, and Grant all played acoustic guitar at first, and none of them were particularly good. They were mostly just hanging out together, having fun. They were just singing stuff they’d heard on the radio, and they particularly wanted to sound like the Louvin Brothers: [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, “This Little Light of Mine”] They were having fun together, but that was all. But Cash was ambitious to do something more. And that “something more” took shape when he heard a record, one that was recorded the day after the plane that took Cash back into the US touched down: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “That’s All Right Mama”] He liked the sound of that record a lot. And what he liked even more was hearing the DJ, after the song was played, say that the record was out on Sun Records, a label based in Memphis itself. Johnny, Luther, and Marshall went to see Elvis, Scotty, and Bill perform, playing on the back of a flatbed truck and just playing the two songs on their single. Cash was immediately worried – Elvis was clearly a teenager, and Cash himself was a grown man of twenty-two. Had he missed his chance at stardom? Was he too old? Cash had a chat with Elvis, and went along again the next night to see the trio performing a proper set at a nightclub, and this time he talked with Scotty Moore and asked him how to get signed to Sun. Moore told him to speak to Sam Phillips, and so Cash got hold of Sun’s phone number and started calling, asking to speak to Phillips, who was never in – he was out on the road a lot of the time, pushing the label’s records to distributors and radio stations. But Cash also knew that he was going to have to do something more to get recorded. He was going to have to turn his little guitar jam sessions into a proper group like Elvis, Scotty, and Bill, not just three people bashing away together at acoustic guitars. They sometimes had Red on steel guitar, but they still needed some variety. Cash was obviously going to be the lead singer, so it made sense for him to stick with the acoustic rhythm guitar. Luther Perkins got himself an electric guitar and started playing lead lines which amounted to little more than boogie-woogie basslines transposed up an octave. Marshall Grant, meanwhile, got himself a double bass, and taped markers on it to show him where the notes were. He’d never played one before, so all he could do was play single notes every other beat, with big gaps between the notes — “Boom [pause] boom [pause] boom [pause] boom” — he couldn’t get his fingers between the notes any faster. This group was clearly not anything like as professional as Presley and his group, but they had *something*. Their limitations as musicians meant that they had to find ways to make the songs work without relying on complicated parts or virtuoso playing. As Luther Perkins would later put it, “You know how all those hot-shot guitarists race their fingers all over the strings? Well, they’re looking for the right sound. I found it.” But Cash was still, frankly, a little worried that his group weren’t all that great, and when he finally went to see Sam Phillips in person, having failed to get hold of him on the phone, he went alone. Phillips was immediately impressed by Cash’s bearing and presence. He was taller, and more dignified, than most of the people who came in to audition for Phillips. He was someone with presence, and gravitas, and Phillips thought he had the makings of a star. The day after meeting Phillips for the first time, Cash brought his musician friends around as well, and Johnny, Luther, Marshall, and Red all had a chat with Phillips. Phillips explained to them that they didn’t need to be technically great musicians, just have the right kind of sound. The four of them rehearsed, and then came back to Phillips with some of the material they’d been practising. But when it came time to audition, their steel player got so scared that he couldn’t tune his guitar, his hands were shaking so much. Eventually he decided that he was holding the other three back, and left the studio, and the audition continued with just the group who had now become the Tennessee Three – a name they chose because while they all now lived in Tennessee, none of them had originally come from there. Phillips liked their sound, but explained that he wasn’t particularly interested in putting out gospel music. There’s an urban legend that Phillips said “go home and sin, then come back with a song I can sell”, though this was denied by Cash. But it is true that he’d had no sales success with gospel music, and that he wanted something more commercial. Whatever Phillips said, though, Cash took the hint, and went home and started writing secular songs. The one he came back to Phillips with, “Hey Porter”, was inspired by the sound of the railway, and had a boom-chick-a-boom rhythm that would soon become Cash’s trademark: [Excerpt, “Hey Porter”: Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two] Phillips liked it, and the Tennessee Three set to recording it. Or at least that was what they were called when they recorded it, but by the time it was released Sam Phillips had suggested a slight name change, and the single came out under the name Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two. As the Tennessee Two didn’t have a drummer, Cash put paper between the strings and the fretboard of his acoustic guitar to deaden the sound and turn it into something that approximated the sound of a snare drum. The resulting boom-chick sound was one that would become a signature of Cash’s recordings for the next few decades, a uniquely country music take on the two-beat rhythm. That sound was almost entirely forced on the group by their instrumental limitations, but it was a sound that worked. The song Cash brought in to Phillips as a possible B-side was called “Folsom Prison Blues”, and it was only an original in the loosest possible sense. Before going off to Germany with the air force, Cash had seen a film called “Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison”, and it had given Cash the idea that someone should write a song about that. But he’d put the idea to the back of his mind until two other inspirations arrived. The first was a song called “Crescent City Blues”, which he heard on a Gordon Jenkins album that a fellow airman in Germany owned: [Excerpt: Gordon Jenkins (Beverly Maher vocals): “Crescent City Blues”] If you’ve not heard that song before, and are familiar with Cash’s work, you’re probably mildly in shock right now at just how much like “Folsom Prison Blues” that is. Jenkins’ song in turn is also strongly inspired by another song, also titled “Crescent City Blues”, by the boogie-woogie pianist Little Brother Montgomery: [Excerpt Little Brother Montgomery, “Crescent City Blues”] The second musical inspiration for Cash’s prison song was a song by Cash’s idol, Jimmie Rodgers, “Blue Yodel #1”, also known as “T For Texas”: [Excerpt: Jimmie Rodgers, “Blue Yodel #1”] The line “I’m gonna shoot poor Thelma, just to see her jump and fall” hit Cash hard, and he realised that the most morally bankrupt person he could imagine was someone who would kill someone else just to watch them die. He put this bleak amorality together with the idea of a song about Folsom, and changed just enough of the words to “Crescent City Blues” that it worked with this new concept of the character, and he titled the result “Folsom Prison Blues”: [Excerpt: Johnny Cash, “Folsom Prison Blues”] 9) Sam Phillips didn’t think that was suitable as the B-side to “Hey Porter”, and they eventually went for a sad song that Cash had written titled “Cry Cry Cry,” but “Folsom Prison Blues” was put aside as a future possibility. When the contract was drawn up, the only person who was actually signed to Sun was Cash – Phillips didn’t want to be tied to the other two musicians. But while only Cash was signed to the label, they split the money more or less equitably, in a forty-thirty-thirty split (other sources say that the split was completely equal). “Hey Porter” and “Cry Cry Cry” both charted, and “Folsom Prison Blues” became Cash’s second single, and one of the songs that would define him for the rest of his career. It went to number four on the country and western chart, and established him as a genuine star of country music. It’s around this time that Sun signed Carl Perkins, which caused problems. Cash resented the way that he was being treated by Phillips as being less important than Perkins. He thought that Phillips was now only interested in his new star, and wasn’t going to bother promoting Cash’s records any more. This would be a recurring pattern with Phillips over the next few years — he would discover some new star and whoever his previous favourite was would be convinced that Phillips no longer cared about them any more. This is ultimately what led to Sun’s downfall, as one by one his discoveries moved on to other labels that they believed valued them more than Phillips did. Phillips, on the other hand, always argued that he had to put in more time when dealing with a new discovery, because he had to build their career up, and that established artists would always forget what he’d done for them when they saw him doing the same things for the next person. That’s not to say, though, that Cash disliked Perkins. Quite the contrary. The two became close friends — though Cash became even closer with Clayton Perkins, Carl’s wayward brother, who had a juvenile sense of humour that appealed to Cash. Cash even co-wrote a song with Perkins, “All Mama’s Children”, which became the B-side to Perkins’ “Boppin’ the Blues”: [Excerpt, Carl Perkins, “All Mama’s Children”] It’s not the greatest song either man ever wrote, by any means, but it was the start of a working relationship that would continue off and on for decades, and which both men would benefit from significantly. By this point, Cash had started to build a following, and as you might expect given his inspiration, he was following the exact same career path as Elvis Presley. He was managed by Elvis’ first proper manager, Bob Neal, and he was given a regular slot on the Louisiana Hayride, the country music radio show that Elvis had built his reputation on. But this meant that Cash was being promoted alongside Carl Perkins, as a rock and roll star. This would actually do wonders for Cash’s career in the long term. A lot of people who wouldn’t listen to anything labeled country were fans of Cash in the mid fifties, and remained with him, and this meant that his image was always a little more appealing to rock audiences than many other similar singers. You can trace a direct line between Cash being promoted as a rock and roller in 1955 and 56, and his comeback with the American Recordings series more than forty years later. But when Cash brought in a new song he’d written, about his struggle while on the road to be true to his wife (and, implicitly, also to his God), it caused a clash between him and Sam Phillips. That song was quite possibly inspired by a line in “Sixteen Tons”, the big hit from Tennessee Ernie Ford that year, which Cash fell in love with when it came out, and which made Cash a lifelong fan of its writer Merle Travis: [Excerpt: “Sixteen Tons”, Tennessee Ernie Ford] He never made the connection publicly himself, but that image of walking the line almost definitely stuck in Cash’s mind, and it became the central image of a song he wrote while on the road, thinking about fidelity in every sense. “I Walk the Line” was the subject of a lot of debate between Cash and Phillips, neither of whom were entirely convinced by the other’s argument. Cash was sure that the song was a good one, maybe the best song he ever wrote, but he wanted to play it as a slow, plaintive, lovelorn ballad. Phillips, on the other hand, wasn’t so impressed by the song itself, but he thought that it had some potential if it was sped up to the kind of tempo that “Hey Porter”, “Cry Cry Cry” and “Folsom Prison Blues” had all been performed in — a rock and roll tempo, for Cash’s rock and roll audience. Give it some rhythm, and some of the boom-chika-boom, and there might be something there. Cash argued that he didn’t need to. After all, the other song he had brought in, one that he cared about much less and had originally written to give to Elvis, was a rock and roll song. The lyrics even went “Get rhythm if you get the blues”: [Excerpt: Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two: “Get Rhythm”] That song itself would go on to become a hit for Cash, and a staple of his live shows, but Phillips didn’t see a reason why, just because one side of the record was uptempo, the other shouldn’t be as well. He wanted the music to be universal, rather than personal, and to his mind a strong rhythm was necessary for universality. They eventually compromised and recorded two versions, a faster one recorded the way Phillips wanted it, and a slower one, the way Cash liked it. Cash walked out convinced that Phillips would see reason and release the slower version. He was devastated to find that Phillips had released the faster version. Cash later said, “The first time I heard it on the radio, I called him and said, ‘I hate that sound. Please don’t release any more records. I hate that sound.’ ” But then the record became a massive hit, and Cash decided that maybe the sound wasn’t so bad after all. It went to number one on the country jukebox chart, made the top twenty in the pop charts, and sold more than two million copies as a single. Phillips had unquestionably had the right instincts, commercially at least. [Excerpt: Johnny Cash, “I Walk The Line”] “I Walk The Line” has a very, very, unusual structure. There’s a key change after every single verse. This is just not something that you do, normally. Most pop songs will either stay in one key throughout, have a different key for different sections (so they might be in a minor key for the verse and a major key for the chorus, for example) or have one key change near the end, to give the song a bit of a kick. Here, the first verse is in F, then it goes up a fourth for the second verse, in B flat. It goes up another fourth, to E flat, for the third verse, then for the fourth verse it’s back down to B flat, and the fifth verse it’s back down to F, though an octave lower. (For those wondering about those keys, either they’re playing with capoes or, more likely, Sam Phillips sped the track up a semitone to make it sound faster.) And this is really very, very, clever in the way it sets the mood of the song. The song starts and ends in the same place both musically and lyrically — the last verse is a duplicate of the first, though sung an octave lower than it started — and the rising and falling overall arc of the song suggests a natural cycle that goes along with the metaphors in the lyrics — the tides, heartbeats, day and night, dark and light. The protagonist of the song is walking a thin line, wobbling, liable at any moment to fall over to one side or another, just like the oscillation and return to the original tonal centre in this song. What sounds like a relatively crude piece of work is, when listened to closely, a much more inventive record. And this is true of the chord sequences in the individual verses too. The verses only have three chords each — the standard three chords that most country or blues songs have, the tonic, subdominant and dominant of the key. But they’re not arranged in the standard order that you’d have them in, in a three-chord trick or a twelve-bar blues. Instead the verses all start with the dominant, an unusual, unstable, choice that came about from Cash having once threaded a tape backwards and having been fascinated by the sound. The dominant is normally the last chord. Here it’s the first. The backwards tape is also one story as to where he got the idea of the humming that starts every verse — though Cash also used to claim that the humming was so he could find the right note because there were so many key changes. This is not a song that’s structured like a normal country and western song, and it’s quite an extraordinarily personal piece of work. It’s an expression of one man’s very personal aesthetic, no matter how much Sam Phillips altered it to fit his own ideas of what Cash should be recording. It’s an utterly idiosyncratic, utterly *strange* record, and a very strong contender for the best thing Sun Records ever put out, which is a high bar to meet. The fact that this sold two million copies in a country market that is usually characterised as conservative shows just how wrong such stereotypes can be. It was a masterpiece, and Johnny Cash was set for a very, very, long and artistically successful career. But that career wouldn’t be with Sun. His life was in turmoil, the marriage that he had written so movingly about trying to keep together was falling apart, and he was beginning to think that he would do better doing as Elvis had and moving to a major label. Soon he would be signed to Columbia, the label where he would spend almost all his career, but we’ll have one last glimpse of him at Sun. before he went off to Columbia and superstardom, in a future episode. And next week, we’ll look at how Elvis was doing away from Sun.
Episode thirty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Walk The Line” by Johnny Cash, and is part two of a trilogy on the aftermath of Elvis leaving Sun, and the birth of rockabilly. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a thirteen-minute bonus episode available, on “Don’t Be Angry” by Nappy Brown. —-more—- Errata Two minor errors I noticed while editing but didn’t think were worth going back and redoing — I pronounce “Belshazzar” incorrectly (it’s pronounced as Cash does in the song, as far as I can tell), and I said that the lyric to “Get Rhythm” contains the phrase “if you get the blues”, when of course it’s “when you get the blues”. Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. My main source for this episode is Johnny Cash: The Life by Robert Hilburn. I’m relying heavily on Sam Phillips: the Man Who Invented Rock and Roll by Peter Guralnick for all the episodes dealing with Phillips and Sun Records. This triple-CD set contains everything Johnny Cash recorded for Sun Records. His early Sun singles are also on this ten-disc set, which charts the history of Sun Records, with the A- and B-sides of ninety of the first Sun singles in chronological order for an absurdly low price. This will help give you the full context for Cash’s work, in a way hearing it in isolation wouldn’t. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript This podcast is called a history of rock music, but one of the things we’re going to learn as the story goes on is that the history of any genre in popular music eventually encompasses them all. And at the end of 1955, in particular, there was no hard and fast distinction between the genres of rock and roll, rhythm and blues, and country music. So today we’re going to talk about someone who, to many, epitomises country music more than any other artist, but who started out recording for Sam Phillips at Sun Studios, making music that was stylistically indistinguishable from any of the other rockabilly artists there, and whose career would intertwine with all of them for decades to come. Before you listen to this one, you might want to go back and listen to last week’s episode, on “Blue Suede Shoes”, because the stories of Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins tie together quite a lot, and this is effectively part two of a three-parter, about Sun Records and the birth of rockabilly. Johnny Cash’s birth name was actually J.R. Cash — initials rather than a full name — and that was how he was known until he joined the Air Force. His parents apparently had a disagreement over what their son’s name should be, and so rather than give him full names, they just gave him initials. The Air Force wouldn’t allow him to just use initials as his name, so he changed his name to John R. Cash. It was only once he became a professional musician that he took on the name Johnny Cash. He still never had a middle name, just a middle initial. While he was in the military, he’d been the very first American to learn that Stalin had died, as he’d been the radio operator who’d intercepted and decoded the Russian transmissions about it. But the military had never been the career he wanted. He wanted to be a singer. He just didn’t know how. After returning to the US from his stint in the Air Force in Germany, aged twenty-two, Cash got married and moved to Memphis, to be near his brother. Cash’s brother introduced him to two of his colleagues, Luther Perkins and Marshall Grant. Both Perkins and Grant could play a little guitar, and they started getting together to play a little music, sometimes with a steel player called Red Kernodle. They were very, very, unskilled musicians, but that didn’t matter. They had a couple of things that mattered far more than skill. They had a willingness to try anything if it might sound good, and they had Cash’s voice, which even as a callow young man sounded like Cash had been carved out of rock and imbued with the spirit of an Old Testament prophet. Cash never had a huge range, but his voice had a sonority to it that was quite astonishing, a resonant bass-baritone that demanded you pay attention to what it had to say. And Cash had a determination that he was going to become a famous singer. He had no idea how one was to go about this, but he knew it was what he wanted to do. To start with, they mostly performed the gospel songs that Cash loved. This was the music that is euphemistically called Southern Gospel, but which is really white gospel. Cash had had a religious experience as a kid, when his elder brother, who had wanted to become a priest, had died and had had a deathbed vision of heaven and hell, and Cash wanted to become a gospel singer to pay tribute to his brother while also indulging his own love of music. But then at one of their jam sessions, Cash brought in a song he had written himself, called “Belshazzar”, based on a story from the Bible: [Excerpt: Johnny Cash: “Belshazzar”] The other two were amazed. Not so much by the song itself, but by the fact that you could write a song at all. The idea that songs were something you write was not something that had really occurred to them. Cash, Perkins, and Grant all played acoustic guitar at first, and none of them were particularly good. They were mostly just hanging out together, having fun. They were just singing stuff they’d heard on the radio, and they particularly wanted to sound like the Louvin Brothers: [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, “This Little Light of Mine”] They were having fun together, but that was all. But Cash was ambitious to do something more. And that “something more” took shape when he heard a record, one that was recorded the day after the plane that took Cash back into the US touched down: [Excerpt: Elvis Presley, “That’s All Right Mama”] He liked the sound of that record a lot. And what he liked even more was hearing the DJ, after the song was played, say that the record was out on Sun Records, a label based in Memphis itself. Johnny, Luther, and Marshall went to see Elvis, Scotty, and Bill perform, playing on the back of a flatbed truck and just playing the two songs on their single. Cash was immediately worried – Elvis was clearly a teenager, and Cash himself was a grown man of twenty-two. Had he missed his chance at stardom? Was he too old? Cash had a chat with Elvis, and went along again the next night to see the trio performing a proper set at a nightclub, and this time he talked with Scotty Moore and asked him how to get signed to Sun. Moore told him to speak to Sam Phillips, and so Cash got hold of Sun’s phone number and started calling, asking to speak to Phillips, who was never in – he was out on the road a lot of the time, pushing the label’s records to distributors and radio stations. But Cash also knew that he was going to have to do something more to get recorded. He was going to have to turn his little guitar jam sessions into a proper group like Elvis, Scotty, and Bill, not just three people bashing away together at acoustic guitars. They sometimes had Red on steel guitar, but they still needed some variety. Cash was obviously going to be the lead singer, so it made sense for him to stick with the acoustic rhythm guitar. Luther Perkins got himself an electric guitar and started playing lead lines which amounted to little more than boogie-woogie basslines transposed up an octave. Marshall Grant, meanwhile, got himself a double bass, and taped markers on it to show him where the notes were. He’d never played one before, so all he could do was play single notes every other beat, with big gaps between the notes — “Boom [pause] boom [pause] boom [pause] boom” — he couldn’t get his fingers between the notes any faster. This group was clearly not anything like as professional as Presley and his group, but they had *something*. Their limitations as musicians meant that they had to find ways to make the songs work without relying on complicated parts or virtuoso playing. As Luther Perkins would later put it, “You know how all those hot-shot guitarists race their fingers all over the strings? Well, they’re looking for the right sound. I found it.” But Cash was still, frankly, a little worried that his group weren’t all that great, and when he finally went to see Sam Phillips in person, having failed to get hold of him on the phone, he went alone. Phillips was immediately impressed by Cash’s bearing and presence. He was taller, and more dignified, than most of the people who came in to audition for Phillips. He was someone with presence, and gravitas, and Phillips thought he had the makings of a star. The day after meeting Phillips for the first time, Cash brought his musician friends around as well, and Johnny, Luther, Marshall, and Red all had a chat with Phillips. Phillips explained to them that they didn’t need to be technically great musicians, just have the right kind of sound. The four of them rehearsed, and then came back to Phillips with some of the material they’d been practising. But when it came time to audition, their steel player got so scared that he couldn’t tune his guitar, his hands were shaking so much. Eventually he decided that he was holding the other three back, and left the studio, and the audition continued with just the group who had now become the Tennessee Three – a name they chose because while they all now lived in Tennessee, none of them had originally come from there. Phillips liked their sound, but explained that he wasn’t particularly interested in putting out gospel music. There’s an urban legend that Phillips said “go home and sin, then come back with a song I can sell”, though this was denied by Cash. But it is true that he’d had no sales success with gospel music, and that he wanted something more commercial. Whatever Phillips said, though, Cash took the hint, and went home and started writing secular songs. The one he came back to Phillips with, “Hey Porter”, was inspired by the sound of the railway, and had a boom-chick-a-boom rhythm that would soon become Cash’s trademark: [Excerpt, “Hey Porter”: Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two] Phillips liked it, and the Tennessee Three set to recording it. Or at least that was what they were called when they recorded it, but by the time it was released Sam Phillips had suggested a slight name change, and the single came out under the name Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two. As the Tennessee Two didn’t have a drummer, Cash put paper between the strings and the fretboard of his acoustic guitar to deaden the sound and turn it into something that approximated the sound of a snare drum. The resulting boom-chick sound was one that would become a signature of Cash’s recordings for the next few decades, a uniquely country music take on the two-beat rhythm. That sound was almost entirely forced on the group by their instrumental limitations, but it was a sound that worked. The song Cash brought in to Phillips as a possible B-side was called “Folsom Prison Blues”, and it was only an original in the loosest possible sense. Before going off to Germany with the air force, Cash had seen a film called “Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison”, and it had given Cash the idea that someone should write a song about that. But he’d put the idea to the back of his mind until two other inspirations arrived. The first was a song called “Crescent City Blues”, which he heard on a Gordon Jenkins album that a fellow airman in Germany owned: [Excerpt: Gordon Jenkins (Beverly Maher vocals): “Crescent City Blues”] If you’ve not heard that song before, and are familiar with Cash’s work, you’re probably mildly in shock right now at just how much like “Folsom Prison Blues” that is. Jenkins’ song in turn is also strongly inspired by another song, also titled “Crescent City Blues”, by the boogie-woogie pianist Little Brother Montgomery: [Excerpt Little Brother Montgomery, “Crescent City Blues”] The second musical inspiration for Cash’s prison song was a song by Cash’s idol, Jimmie Rodgers, “Blue Yodel #1”, also known as “T For Texas”: [Excerpt: Jimmie Rodgers, “Blue Yodel #1”] The line “I’m gonna shoot poor Thelma, just to see her jump and fall” hit Cash hard, and he realised that the most morally bankrupt person he could imagine was someone who would kill someone else just to watch them die. He put this bleak amorality together with the idea of a song about Folsom, and changed just enough of the words to “Crescent City Blues” that it worked with this new concept of the character, and he titled the result “Folsom Prison Blues”: [Excerpt: Johnny Cash, “Folsom Prison Blues”] 9) Sam Phillips didn’t think that was suitable as the B-side to “Hey Porter”, and they eventually went for a sad song that Cash had written titled “Cry Cry Cry,” but “Folsom Prison Blues” was put aside as a future possibility. When the contract was drawn up, the only person who was actually signed to Sun was Cash – Phillips didn’t want to be tied to the other two musicians. But while only Cash was signed to the label, they split the money more or less equitably, in a forty-thirty-thirty split (other sources say that the split was completely equal). “Hey Porter” and “Cry Cry Cry” both charted, and “Folsom Prison Blues” became Cash’s second single, and one of the songs that would define him for the rest of his career. It went to number four on the country and western chart, and established him as a genuine star of country music. It’s around this time that Sun signed Carl Perkins, which caused problems. Cash resented the way that he was being treated by Phillips as being less important than Perkins. He thought that Phillips was now only interested in his new star, and wasn’t going to bother promoting Cash’s records any more. This would be a recurring pattern with Phillips over the next few years — he would discover some new star and whoever his previous favourite was would be convinced that Phillips no longer cared about them any more. This is ultimately what led to Sun’s downfall, as one by one his discoveries moved on to other labels that they believed valued them more than Phillips did. Phillips, on the other hand, always argued that he had to put in more time when dealing with a new discovery, because he had to build their career up, and that established artists would always forget what he’d done for them when they saw him doing the same things for the next person. That’s not to say, though, that Cash disliked Perkins. Quite the contrary. The two became close friends — though Cash became even closer with Clayton Perkins, Carl’s wayward brother, who had a juvenile sense of humour that appealed to Cash. Cash even co-wrote a song with Perkins, “All Mama’s Children”, which became the B-side to Perkins’ “Boppin’ the Blues”: [Excerpt, Carl Perkins, “All Mama’s Children”] It’s not the greatest song either man ever wrote, by any means, but it was the start of a working relationship that would continue off and on for decades, and which both men would benefit from significantly. By this point, Cash had started to build a following, and as you might expect given his inspiration, he was following the exact same career path as Elvis Presley. He was managed by Elvis’ first proper manager, Bob Neal, and he was given a regular slot on the Louisiana Hayride, the country music radio show that Elvis had built his reputation on. But this meant that Cash was being promoted alongside Carl Perkins, as a rock and roll star. This would actually do wonders for Cash’s career in the long term. A lot of people who wouldn’t listen to anything labeled country were fans of Cash in the mid fifties, and remained with him, and this meant that his image was always a little more appealing to rock audiences than many other similar singers. You can trace a direct line between Cash being promoted as a rock and roller in 1955 and 56, and his comeback with the American Recordings series more than forty years later. But when Cash brought in a new song he’d written, about his struggle while on the road to be true to his wife (and, implicitly, also to his God), it caused a clash between him and Sam Phillips. That song was quite possibly inspired by a line in “Sixteen Tons”, the big hit from Tennessee Ernie Ford that year, which Cash fell in love with when it came out, and which made Cash a lifelong fan of its writer Merle Travis: [Excerpt: “Sixteen Tons”, Tennessee Ernie Ford] He never made the connection publicly himself, but that image of walking the line almost definitely stuck in Cash’s mind, and it became the central image of a song he wrote while on the road, thinking about fidelity in every sense. “I Walk the Line” was the subject of a lot of debate between Cash and Phillips, neither of whom were entirely convinced by the other’s argument. Cash was sure that the song was a good one, maybe the best song he ever wrote, but he wanted to play it as a slow, plaintive, lovelorn ballad. Phillips, on the other hand, wasn’t so impressed by the song itself, but he thought that it had some potential if it was sped up to the kind of tempo that “Hey Porter”, “Cry Cry Cry” and “Folsom Prison Blues” had all been performed in — a rock and roll tempo, for Cash’s rock and roll audience. Give it some rhythm, and some of the boom-chika-boom, and there might be something there. Cash argued that he didn’t need to. After all, the other song he had brought in, one that he cared about much less and had originally written to give to Elvis, was a rock and roll song. The lyrics even went “Get rhythm if you get the blues”: [Excerpt: Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two: “Get Rhythm”] That song itself would go on to become a hit for Cash, and a staple of his live shows, but Phillips didn’t see a reason why, just because one side of the record was uptempo, the other shouldn’t be as well. He wanted the music to be universal, rather than personal, and to his mind a strong rhythm was necessary for universality. They eventually compromised and recorded two versions, a faster one recorded the way Phillips wanted it, and a slower one, the way Cash liked it. Cash walked out convinced that Phillips would see reason and release the slower version. He was devastated to find that Phillips had released the faster version. Cash later said, “The first time I heard it on the radio, I called him and said, ‘I hate that sound. Please don’t release any more records. I hate that sound.’ ” But then the record became a massive hit, and Cash decided that maybe the sound wasn’t so bad after all. It went to number one on the country jukebox chart, made the top twenty in the pop charts, and sold more than two million copies as a single. Phillips had unquestionably had the right instincts, commercially at least. [Excerpt: Johnny Cash, “I Walk The Line”] “I Walk The Line” has a very, very, unusual structure. There’s a key change after every single verse. This is just not something that you do, normally. Most pop songs will either stay in one key throughout, have a different key for different sections (so they might be in a minor key for the verse and a major key for the chorus, for example) or have one key change near the end, to give the song a bit of a kick. Here, the first verse is in F, then it goes up a fourth for the second verse, in B flat. It goes up another fourth, to E flat, for the third verse, then for the fourth verse it’s back down to B flat, and the fifth verse it’s back down to F, though an octave lower. (For those wondering about those keys, either they’re playing with capoes or, more likely, Sam Phillips sped the track up a semitone to make it sound faster.) And this is really very, very, clever in the way it sets the mood of the song. The song starts and ends in the same place both musically and lyrically — the last verse is a duplicate of the first, though sung an octave lower than it started — and the rising and falling overall arc of the song suggests a natural cycle that goes along with the metaphors in the lyrics — the tides, heartbeats, day and night, dark and light. The protagonist of the song is walking a thin line, wobbling, liable at any moment to fall over to one side or another, just like the oscillation and return to the original tonal centre in this song. What sounds like a relatively crude piece of work is, when listened to closely, a much more inventive record. And this is true of the chord sequences in the individual verses too. The verses only have three chords each — the standard three chords that most country or blues songs have, the tonic, subdominant and dominant of the key. But they’re not arranged in the standard order that you’d have them in, in a three-chord trick or a twelve-bar blues. Instead the verses all start with the dominant, an unusual, unstable, choice that came about from Cash having once threaded a tape backwards and having been fascinated by the sound. The dominant is normally the last chord. Here it’s the first. The backwards tape is also one story as to where he got the idea of the humming that starts every verse — though Cash also used to claim that the humming was so he could find the right note because there were so many key changes. This is not a song that’s structured like a normal country and western song, and it’s quite an extraordinarily personal piece of work. It’s an expression of one man’s very personal aesthetic, no matter how much Sam Phillips altered it to fit his own ideas of what Cash should be recording. It’s an utterly idiosyncratic, utterly *strange* record, and a very strong contender for the best thing Sun Records ever put out, which is a high bar to meet. The fact that this sold two million copies in a country market that is usually characterised as conservative shows just how wrong such stereotypes can be. It was a masterpiece, and Johnny Cash was set for a very, very, long and artistically successful career. But that career wouldn’t be with Sun. His life was in turmoil, the marriage that he had written so movingly about trying to keep together was falling apart, and he was beginning to think that he would do better doing as Elvis had and moving to a major label. Soon he would be signed to Columbia, the label where he would spend almost all his career, but we’ll have one last glimpse of him at Sun. before he went off to Columbia and superstardom, in a future episode. And next week, we’ll look at how Elvis was doing away from Sun.
Support the podcast through Patreon and get access to special audio and written content, be part of a private Facebook group and enjoy other benefits reserved for supporters of the podcast! ***** Today’s conversation is with Dar Williams. I’ve been a fan of Dar’s since the late 90’s when I first heard Cry Cry Cry, the band (and eponymous album) she recorded with Richard Schindell and Lucy Kaplansky. I’m sure I still have that on tape somewhere (yeah, I still have all my tapes from way back). Dar is a singer-songwriter with about 20 or so albums to her name as well as several books including her most recent, What I Found in a Thousand Towns. She is a great observer of culture and human behavior and what strikes me most about her music, her recent book and this conversation is that she is quite the optimist. I think that someone who is such a keen observer could easily fall into seeing the world from the dark side. But she doesn’t. She not only sees the good but she is also a problem solver – which is exactly why she published this book which was borne out of her observing towns across the country. It hasn’t all been easy for Dar and in this conversation, she does talk about her bouts with depression and her suicidal thoughts. But, as you’ll hear, she owns it. She doesn’t shy away from talking about her low points or beliefs and that right there makes her pretty bold in my book. I know you’ll love this conversation with the amazing Dar Williams. ***** Have a burning question and want to be featured on a future episode? Call 877-280-5170 and leave a message or email me here. ***** Connect with DarWebsite | Youtube | Facebook | Twitter Links/books/people mentionedWhat I Found in a Thousand Towns by Dar Williams (Amazon) Cry Cry Cry by Dar Williams, Richard Shindell and Lucy Kaplansky Brene Brown Ted Talk on shame So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson (Amazon) Monica Lewinsky Ted Talk on shame Felicity Huffman scandal The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk (Amazon) Connect with me: PATREON! (join the community!) Facebook Instagram WanderTours Be Bold Facebook Group (women-only) Twitter Enjoyed this episode? Subscribe then tell a friend! Be Bold, Beth
After a five-year hiatus, Wolf Parade released the new album "Cry Cry Cry" last fall. The Montreal quartet -- led by the songwriting duo of Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug -- picks up right where it left off with a collection songs of featuring mystifying lyrics and uptempo rock rhythms. Wolf Parade stopped into the CPR Performance Studio before a concert at the Ogden Theatre. The members played four songs from "Cry Cry Cry" and spoke with Alisha Sweeney about the band's growth since reuniting in 2016, how they wrote Wolf Parade songs during the hiatus and how the indie rock music industry has changed since the band's early days.
Wolf Parade's return from hiatus in 2016 found the band with renewed energy, plenty of which went into the recording of Cry Cry Cry, their vibrant fourth album. Filled with the spiky, art-damaged energy that runs through their best work, the band perform three Cry Cry Cry tracks and a Wolf Parade classic live from the KEXP Gathering Space. Recorded 01/03/2018. 4 songs - Lazarus Online, Soldier's Grin, You're Dreaming, Baby BlueSupport the show: https://www.kexp.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
The 4th episode of the "Music For The New Revolution" podcast, produced by David Heitler-Klevans and Rodney Whittenberg, features music related to the topic of forgiveness. Musical artists include Small Potatoes, Cry Cry Cry, The Decemberists, Sharon Katz & Peace Train and The Story, plus an in-depth interview with Sharon Katz including a live performance. Please consider supporting this podcast on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/musicforthenewrevolution
January Noisemakers: The first Noisemakers mix of the year features seven tracks to kickstart your music listening in 2018. We'll share music from Richmond, VA singer Lucy Dacus, Nashville's Liza Anne, Montreal post-punk band Ought, Miami electro-soul starlet Sabrina Claudio, indie-rock demigods Wolf Parade, a nod to the classics by the Black Eyed Peas and new music from Canadian synth pop group Young Galaxy. For a full track list and more, visit http://noisepop.com/podcast. Track list: Lucy Dacus - "Addiction." Historian, Matador, 2018. Liza Anne - "Paranoia." Fine But Dying, Arts & Crafts, 2018 Ought - "These 3 Things." Room Inside The World, Merge, 2018. Sabrina Claudio - "Unravel Me." About Time, SC Entertainment, 2017. Wolf Parade - "Valley Boy." Cry Cry Cry, Sub Pop, 2017 Black Eyed Peas - "STREET LIVIN'." STREET LIVIN' (single), Interscope, 2018. Young Galaxy - "Under My Wing." Down Time, self released, 2018. Links Mentioned in Episode: Adrian's Top 60 Albums of 2017 at EverythingEcstatic.net Black Eyed Peas, "STREET LIVIN'" VIDEO
Richards choice... *notes to follow*
On the TFT Podcast we listen to and discuss Wolf Parade’s long-awaited return on “Cry Cry Cry.” Episode 285: Pretty Tame for a Wolf Band originally appeared on Overthinking It, the site subjecting the popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve. [Latest Posts | Podcast (iTunes Link)]
It's been seven years since Wolf Parade released their last LP and subsequently went on an indefinite hiatus. Each member spent time on various side projects, but they're back together and sound more cohesive than ever.
It's been seven years since Wolf Parade released their last LP and subsequently went on an indefinite hiatus. Each member spent time on various side projects, but they're back together and sound more cohesive than ever.
Le lavage de la semaine avec Christian Bélair et Gyslaine Desrosiers ; Des PDG passent une nuit dans la rue : Discussion ; Culture populaire avec Pascale Lévesque et Frédéric Lambert : Martin Perizzolo ; Cinéma avec Georges Privet : Blade Runner 2049, de Denis Villeneuve ; Malefycia : Entrevue avec Mathieu Surprenant ; Musique avec Frédéric Lambert : Joel Quarrington et Schubert ; Vins avec Élyse Lambert : Deux suggestions, un blanc sicilien ; Mode avec Jean-Pierre Desnoyers : Gucci à l'université ; Cinéma avec Georges Privet : Ava, de Léa Mysius ; Vins avec Élyse Lambert : Deux suggestions, un rouge ; Mode avec Jean-Pierre Desnoyers ; Cinéma avec Georges Privet : Victoria and Abdul ; Musique avec Frédéric Lambert : Cry Cry Cry de Wolf Parade ; Culture populaire avec Pascale Lévesque : Le site Mediaversity
PODCAST: 17 Sep 2017 01 Will It Ever Stop Raining? – The Saw Doctors – Songs From Sun Street 02 Stockyard Hill – Sam Gleaves & Tyler Hughes – Sam Gleaves & Tyler Hughes 03 The Ivy Leaf – Kevin Crawford – Carrying The Tune 04 This Boy – The Jeremiahs – The Femme Fatale Of Maine 05 Song Of The Jay – Edgelarks – Edgelarks 06 Dance Around The Gallows Tree – Magpie Lane – Three Quarter Time 07 The Crow On The Cradle – Tan Yowes – Hefted 08 Lord Of The Dance – Maddy Prior – Lovely In The Dances – Songs Of Sydney Carter 09 John Ball – The Young'uns – Never Forget 10 Bold Riley – Peter Knight's Gigspanner – The Wife Of Urban Law 11 The Day They Dredged The Liffey / The Banks Of Montauk / The Road To Santa Fe – Tom Russell – Folk Hotel 12 Lord Thomas And Fair Ellender – Paul Brady – Unfinished Business 13 Cold Missouri Waters – Richard Shindell / Dar Williams / Lucy Kaplansky – Cry Cry Cry 14 82 Fires – The East Pointers – What We Leave Behind 15 Eli Greene's Cakewalk/Little Judique – George Penk, Clyde Curley & Susan Songer – A Portland Selection: Contra Dance Music In The Pacific Northwest 16 Turpin Hero – Pilgrims' Way – Stand & Deliver 17 The Wild Mountain Thyme – Paper Circus – 4 Track Demo 18 Byker Hill – Emerald Hill – The Lark, The Mermaid And Molly
WS Holland joins us again this week to talk about the Million Dollar Quartet session, being the first drummer with a full set on the Grand Ole Opry and other great stories. We continue our "Favorite Johnny Cash Song Countdown" with #15-11 and we hear new tunes from JD McPherson, The Blasters, Kitty, Daisy & Lewis, Lee Rocker covering Eddie Rabbitt, Hillbilly Moon Explosion covering Blondie and so much more! Intro Voice Over- Rob "Cool Daddy" Dempsey Shakin' Triple Play- JD McPherson- "It Shook Me Up" Elvis Presley- "All Shook Up" The Blasters- "I'm Shakin" Hillbilly Moon Explosion- "Call Me" Eddie Cochran- "C'mon Everybody" WS Holland interview part 2 Million Dollar Quartet- "Little Cabin On The Hill" WS Holland segment 1 Million Dollar Quartet- "Reconsider Baby" WS Holland segment 2 Carl Perkins- "Glad All Over" WS Holland segment 3 Billy Lee Riley- "I Want You Baby" Favorite Johnny Cash Song Countdown #15- "I Got Stripes" #14- "Cry Cry Cry" #13- "Ballad Of A Teenage Queen" #12- "Orange Blossom Special" #11- "Rock Island Line" Lee Rocker- "Drivin' My Life Away" Shiloh's Land- "Little Miss May" Johnny Horton- "I'll Do It Everytime" Kitty, Daisy & Lewis- "It Ain't Your Business"
Lots of new & live stuff today, along with some classics and some news.
Lots of new & live stuff today, along with some classics and some news.
It’s the busy season for shows, and we keep doing our best to keep you informed & ready with more previews, and Ron from Lockport challenges us to find a better "Wrecking Ball" than ol’ Hannah Montana; he didn’t know what he was getting into.
It’s the busy season for shows, and we keep doing our best to keep you informed & ready with more previews, and Ron from Lockport challenges us to find a better "Wrecking Ball" than ol’ Hannah Montana; he didn’t know what he was getting into.
Sam and Ivan talk about: * Eurosizes / iPhone 4S / Mophie Cases * Republican Circus * MF Global / Bank Transfer Day * Occupy Update / Greece Update / Google Plusification / Jobs Bio
Sam and Ivan talk about: * Eurosizes / iPhone 4S / Mophie Cases * Republican Circus * MF Global / Bank Transfer Day * Occupy Update / Greece Update / Google Plusification / Jobs Bio
Ok, the good news is, this should be the last time I do the show solo. Jo Ann's mom is doing better and on her way to recovering. She sends along her thanks for all the kind thoughts and prayers. Forgoing any surprises, Jo Ann will fly home tomorrow. We expect to be together for the Episode 4 Listener Feedback show on Tuesday. Woohoo! What do you think would help Ravu more, voting off Anthony or Rocky? Back in the extra video clips for episode 2, we saw that Liliana was suspicious of Stacy and Boo. She said they wanted to vote her out. Turns out she had good reason to be concerned. Do you think her fate was set earlier in the game or did the late night massage session trigger her demise? The teams are even now. Do you think Moto still has enough advantage to continue dominating or should they have kept the immunity? Here's the tribes after episode 4. Moto: Alex, Boo, Cassandra, Dreamz, Edgardo, Lisi, and Stacy Ravu: Anthony, Earl, Michelle, Mookie, Rocky, Rita, and Yau-Man I'm on a roll now after successfully picking Gary to leave. ;) My next prediction is that Lisi will be voted out. They've established her as a minor villian for this season with her cold comments towards Gary and her attack on Liliana. Therefore, she's a natural to go next. Who's your pick for the next one to get voted out? Do you think Ravu has a shot at redemption? We've got several ways you can reach us. You can call and leave a voicemail at 206-350-JASS(5277). You can record an audio comment and attach it or just type up a quick text message and send it to us via email at joannandstacyshow@gmail.com. Lastly, there's a link for comments on the web page here. You can click that link and post your thoughts out there for everyone to see. The intro music is dedicated to the two Ravu cry babys, Anthony and Rocky. The outro is dedicated to the Moto tribe. They've commited a classic Survivor Sin. They've gotten too comforable with their current status and opted to vote a member out instead of protecting their numbers. Here's a link to the artists in case you want to learn more about them. Cry Cry Cry by the Hypertonics Comfortable by Kristin Mainhart 00:01 Date 00:04 Cry Cry Cry by the Hypertonics 01:36 Introductions 03:36 Episode Recap and Observations 26:04 Next Week on Survivor 36:38 Comfortable by Kristin Mainhart Links for Today's Show Belgian Study Scientifically Confirming That Women Make Men Stupid Listener Paul's Surivor Fiji Visual Roster JSFL Results Update for Survivor: Fiji JSFL Rules for Survivor: Fiji Contact Info:Voicemail: 206-350-JASS(5277)Email: joannandstacyshow@gmail.com Enjoy, Jo Ann and Stacy
Here's a couple of Survivor golden rules for all the future contestants. 1) No matter how good your chances are looking, don't gloat. 2) No matter how angry or desperate you get, don't lash out in anger. Here are some questions to ponder for the Listener Feedback show. Have you ever eaten an entire pizza by yourself, in one sitting? Did it cost Yul anything when he revealed that he had the Hidden Immunity Idol during the auction? Did it perhaps help Jonathan in any way? When Yul, Becky, and Sundra were talking about "changing the order", what did they mean? Did they possibly have Jonathan as a fourth? Do you think the jury is likely to be swayed by the Raro brats (Adam, Candice, and Parvati)? Who did voting out Candice hurt more: Jonathan or Yul? Here is the new merged tribe after episode 11. Aitutonga: Adam, Becky, Jonathan, Parvati, Ozzy, Sundra, and Yul In the next on Survivor preview, Yul's talking about "arranging a hit", but we both think that's a misdirect and expect Adam to go next. Are you surprised that "Jonathan the rat" is still in the game? Do you think Parvati will exit the game for medical reasons? Who is your pick for who the next one to be voted out? We've got several ways you can reach us. You can call and leave a voicemail at 206-350-JASS(5277). You can record an audio comment and attach it or just type up a quick text message and send it to us via email at joannandstacyshow@gmail.com. Lastly, there's a link for comments on the web page here. You can click that link and post your thoughts out there for everyone to see. The intro music is dedicated to the mature Raro tribe. When the tables are turned and they are no longer in control, they certainly know how to self destruct with maximum drama. The outro is dedicated to the Candice Water Works project. Here's a link to the artists in case you want to learn more about them. The Bitter End by Steadman Cry Cry Cry by The Hypertonics 00:01 Date 00:05 The Bitter End by Steadman 01:31 Introductions 38:43 Next Week on Survivor 47:10 JSFL Update 52:34 Cry Cry Cry by The Hypertonics Links for Today's Show Brain Freeze! JSFL Results Update for Survivor: Cook Islands JSFL Rules for Survivor: Cook Islands Apply for Survivor 15 Apply for Mark Burnett's new reality show: Pirates Contact Info:Voicemail: 206-350-JASS(5277)Email: joannandstacyshow@gmail.comGizmo: Enjoy, Jo Ann and Stacy
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