Podcasts about Don Rich

Play Episode Listen Later May 20, 2023

Episode 165 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Dark Stat” and the career of the Grateful Dead. This is a long one, even longer than the previous episode, but don't worry, that won't be the norm. There's a reason these two were much longer than average. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-minute bonus episode available, on "Codine" by the Charlatans. Errata I mispronounce Brent Mydland's name as Myland a couple of times, and in the introduction I say "Touch of Grey" came out in 1988 -- I later, correctly, say 1987. (I seem to have had a real problem with dates in the intro -- I also originally talked about "Blue Suede Shoes" being in 1954 before fixing it in the edit to be 1956) Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by the Grateful Dead, and Grayfolded runs to two hours. I referred to a lot of books for this episode, partly because almost everything about the Grateful Dead is written from a fannish perspective that already assumes background knowledge, rather than to provide that background knowledge. Of the various books I used, Dennis McNally's biography of the band and This Is All a Dream We Dreamed: An Oral History of the Grateful Dead by Blair Jackson and David Gans are probably most useful for the casually interested. Other books on the Dead I used included McNally's Jerry on Jerry, a collection of interviews with Garcia; Deal, Bill Kreutzmann's autobiography; The Grateful Dead FAQ by Tony Sclafani; So Many Roads by David Browne; Deadology by Howard F. Weiner; Fare Thee Well by Joel Selvin and Pamela Turley; and Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads by David Shenk and Steve Silberman. Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is the classic account of the Pranksters, though not always reliable. I reference Slaughterhouse Five a lot. As well as the novel itself, which everyone should read, I also read this rather excellent graphic novel adaptation, and The Writer's Crusade, a book about the writing of the novel. I also reference Ted Sturgeon's More Than Human. For background on the scene around Astounding Science Fiction which included Sturgeon, John W. Campbell, L. Ron Hubbard, and many other science fiction writers, I recommend Alec Nevala-Lee's Astounding. 1,000 True Fans can be read online, as can the essay on the Californian ideology, and John Perry Barlow's "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace". The best collection of Grateful Dead material is the box set The Golden Road, which contains all the albums released in Pigpen's lifetime along with a lot of bonus material, but which appears currently out of print. Live/Dead contains both the live version of "Dark Star" which made it well known and, as a CD bonus track, the original single version. And archive.org has more live recordings of the group than you can possibly ever listen to. Grayfolded can be bought from John Oswald's Bandcamp Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript [Excerpt: Tuning from "Grayfolded", under the warnings Before we begin -- as we're tuning up, as it were, I should mention that this episode contains discussions of alcoholism, drug addiction, racism, nonconsensual drugging of other people, and deaths from drug abuse, suicide, and car accidents. As always, I try to deal with these subjects as carefully as possible, but if you find any of those things upsetting you may wish to read the transcript rather than listen to this episode, or skip it altogether. Also, I should note that the members of the Grateful Dead were much freer with their use of swearing in interviews than any other band we've covered so far, and that makes using quotes from them rather more difficult than with other bands, given the limitations of the rules imposed to stop the podcast being marked as adult. If I quote anything with a word I can't use here, I'll give a brief pause in the audio, and in the transcript I'll have the word in square brackets. [tuning ends] All this happened, more or less. In 1910, T. S. Eliot started work on "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", which at the time was deemed barely poetry, with one reviewer imagining Eliot saying "I'll just put down the first thing that comes into my head, and call it 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.'" It is now considered one of the great classics of modernist literature. In 1969, Kurt Vonnegut wrote "Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death", a book in which the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, comes unstuck in time, and starts living a nonlinear life, hopping around between times reliving his experiences in the Second World War, and future experiences up to 1976 after being kidnapped by beings from the planet Tralfamadore. Or perhaps he has flashbacks and hallucinations after having a breakdown from PTSD. It is now considered one of the great classics of modernist literature or of science fiction, depending on how you look at it. In 1953, Theodore Sturgeon wrote More Than Human. It is now considered one of the great classics of science fiction. In 1950, L. Ron Hubbard wrote Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. It is now considered either a bad piece of science fiction or one of the great revelatory works of religious history, depending on how you look at it. In 1994, 1995, and 1996 the composer John Oswald released, first as two individual CDs and then as a double-CD, an album called Grayfolded, which the composer says in the liner notes he thinks of as existing in Tralfamadorian time. The Tralfamadorians in Vonnegut's novels don't see time as a linear thing with a beginning and end, but as a continuum that they can move between at will. When someone dies, they just think that at this particular point in time they're not doing so good, but at other points in time they're fine, so why focus on the bad time? In the book, when told of someone dying, the Tralfamadorians just say "so it goes". In between the first CD's release and the release of the double-CD version, Jerry Garcia died. From August 1942 through August 1995, Jerry Garcia was alive. So it goes. Shall we go, you and I? [Excerpt: The Grateful Dead, "Dark Star (Omni 3/30/94)"] "One principle has become clear. Since motives are so frequently found in combination, it is essential that the complex types be analyzed and arranged, with an eye kept single nevertheless to the master-theme under discussion. Collectors, both primary and subsidiary, have done such valiant service that the treasures at our command are amply sufficient for such studies, so extensive, indeed, that the task of going through them thoroughly has become too great for the unassisted student. It cannot be too strongly urged that a single theme in its various types and compounds must be made predominant in any useful comparative study. This is true when the sources and analogues of any literary work are treated; it is even truer when the bare motive is discussed. The Grateful Dead furnishes an apt illustration of the necessity of such handling. It appears in a variety of different combinations, almost never alone. Indeed, it is so widespread a tale, and its combinations are so various, that there is the utmost difficulty in determining just what may properly be regarded the original kernel of it, the simple theme to which other motives were joined. Various opinions, as we shall see, have been held with reference to this matter, most of them justified perhaps by the materials in the hands of the scholars holding them, but none quite adequate in view of later evidence." That's a quote from The Grateful Dead: The History of a Folk Story, by Gordon Hall Gerould, published in 1908. Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five opens with a chapter about the process of writing the novel itself, and how difficult it was. He says "I would hate to tell you what this lousy little book cost me in money and anxiety and time. When I got home from the Second World War twenty-three years ago, I thought it would be easy for me to write about the destruction of Dresden, since all I would have to do would be to report what I had seen. And I thought, too, that it would be a masterpiece or at least make me a lot of money, since the subject was so big." This is an episode several of my listeners have been looking forward to, but it's one I've been dreading writing, because this is an episode -- I think the only one in the series -- where the format of the podcast simply *will not* work. Were the Grateful Dead not such an important band, I would skip this episode altogether, but they're a band that simply can't be ignored, and that's a real problem here. Because my intent, always, with this podcast, is to present the recordings of the artists in question, put them in context, and explain why they were important, what their music meant to its listeners. To put, as far as is possible, the positive case for why the music mattered *in the context of its time*. Not why it matters now, or why it matters to me, but why it matters *in its historical context*. Whether I like the music or not isn't the point. Whether it stands up now isn't the point. I play the music, explain what it was they were doing, why they were doing it, what people saw in it. If I do my job well, you come away listening to "Blue Suede Shoes" the way people heard it in 1956, or "Good Vibrations" the way people heard it in 1966, and understanding why people were so impressed by those records. That is simply *not possible* for the Grateful Dead. I can present a case for them as musicians, and hope to do so. I can explain the appeal as best I understand it, and talk about things I like in their music, and things I've noticed. But what I can't do is present their recordings the way they were received in the sixties and explain why they were popular. Because every other act I have covered or will cover in this podcast has been a *recording* act, and their success was based on records. They may also have been exceptional live performers, but James Brown or Ike and Tina Turner are remembered for great *records*, like "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" or "River Deep, Mountain High". Their great moments were captured on vinyl, to be listened back to, and susceptible of analysis. That is not the case for the Grateful Dead, and what is worse *they explicitly said, publicly, on multiple occasions* that it is not possible for me to understand their art, and thus that it is not possible for me to explain it. The Grateful Dead did make studio records, some of them very good. But they always said, consistently, over a thirty year period, that their records didn't capture what they did, and that the only way -- the *only* way, they were very clear about this -- that one could actually understand and appreciate their music, was to see them live, and furthermore to see them live while on psychedelic drugs. [Excerpt: Grateful Dead crowd noise] I never saw the Grateful Dead live -- their last UK performance was a couple of years before I went to my first ever gig -- and I have never taken a psychedelic substance. So by the Grateful Dead's own criteria, it is literally impossible for me to understand or explain their music the way that it should be understood or explained. In a way I'm in a similar position to the one I was in with La Monte Young in the last episode, whose music it's mostly impossible to experience without being in his presence. This is one reason of several why I placed these two episodes back to back. Of course, there is a difference between Young and the Grateful Dead. The Grateful Dead allowed -- even encouraged -- the recording of their live performances. There are literally thousands of concert recordings in circulation, many of them of professional quality. I have listened to many of those, and I can hear what they were doing. I can tell you what *I* think is interesting about their music, and about their musicianship. And I think I can build up a good case for why they were important, and why they're interesting, and why those recordings are worth listening to. And I can certainly explain the cultural phenomenon that was the Grateful Dead. But just know that while I may have found *a* point, *an* explanation for why the Grateful Dead were important, by the band's own lights and those of their fans, no matter how good a job I do in this episode, I *cannot* get it right. And that is, in itself, enough of a reason for this episode to exist, and for me to try, even harder than I normally do, to get it right *anyway*. Because no matter how well I do my job this episode will stand as an example of why this series is called "*A* History", not *the* history. Because parts of the past are ephemeral. There are things about which it's true to say "You had to be there". I cannot know what it was like to have been an American the day Kennedy was shot, I cannot know what it was like to be alive when a man walked on the Moon. Those are things nobody my age or younger can ever experience. And since August the ninth, 1995, the experience of hearing the Grateful Dead's music the way they wanted it heard has been in that category. And that is by design. Jerry Garcia once said "if you work really hard as an artist, you may be able to build something they can't tear down, you know, after you're gone... What I want to do is I want it here. I want it now, in this lifetime. I want what I enjoy to last as long as I do and not last any longer. You know, I don't want something that ends up being as much a nuisance as it is a work of art, you know?" And there's another difficulty. There are only two points in time where it makes sense to do a podcast episode on the Grateful Dead -- late 1967 and early 1968, when the San Francisco scene they were part of was at its most culturally relevant, and 1988 when they had their only top ten hit and gained their largest audience. I can't realistically leave them out of the story until 1988, so it has to be 1968. But the songs they are most remembered for are those they wrote between 1970 and 1972, and those songs are influenced by artists and events we haven't yet covered in the podcast, who will be getting their own episodes in the future. I can't explain those things in this episode, because they need whole episodes of their own. I can't not explain them without leaving out important context for the Grateful Dead. So the best I can do is treat the story I'm telling as if it were in Tralfamadorian time. All of it's happening all at once, and some of it is happening in different episodes that haven't been recorded yet. The podcast as a whole travels linearly from 1938 through to 1999, but this episode is happening in 1968 and 1972 and 1988 and 1995 and other times, all at once. Sometimes I'll talk about things as if you're already familiar with them, but they haven't happened yet in the story. Feel free to come unstuck in time and revisit this time after episode 167, and 172, and 176, and 192, and experience it again. So this has to be an experimental episode. It may well be an experiment that you think fails. If so, the next episode is likely to be far more to your taste, and much shorter than this or the last episode, two episodes that between them have to create a scaffolding on which will hang much of the rest of this podcast's narrative. I've finished my Grateful Dead script now. The next one I write is going to be fun: [Excerpt: Grateful Dead, "Dark Star"] Infrastructure means everything. How we get from place to place, how we transport goods, information, and ourselves, makes a big difference in how society is structured, and in the music we hear. For many centuries, the prime means of long-distance transport was by water -- sailing ships on the ocean, canal boats and steamboats for inland navigation -- and so folk songs talked about the ship as both means of escape, means of making a living, and in some senses as a trap. You'd go out to sea for adventure, or to escape your problems, but you'd find that the sea itself brought its own problems. Because of this we have a long, long tradition of sea shanties which are known throughout the world: [Excerpt: A. L. Lloyd, "Off to Sea Once More"] But in the nineteenth century, the railway was invented and, at least as far as travel within a landmass goes, it replaced the steamboat in the popular imaginary. Now the railway was how you got from place to place, and how you moved freight from one place to another. The railway brought freedom, and was an opportunity for outlaws, whether train robbers or a romanticised version of the hobo hopping onto a freight train and making his way to new lands and new opportunity. It was the train that brought soldiers home from wars, and the train that allowed the Great Migration of Black people from the South to the industrial North. There would still be songs about the riverboats, about how ol' man river keeps rolling along and about the big river Johnny Cash sang about, but increasingly they would be songs of the past, not the present. The train quickly replaced the steamboat in the iconography of what we now think of as roots music -- blues, country, folk, and early jazz music. Sometimes this was very literal. Furry Lewis' "Kassie Jones" -- about a legendary train driver who would break the rules to make sure his train made the station on time, but who ended up sacrificing his own life to save his passengers in a train crash -- is based on "Alabamy Bound", which as we heard in the episode on "Stagger Lee", was about steamboats: [Excerpt: Furry Lewis, "Kassie Jones"] In the early episodes of this podcast we heard many, many, songs about the railway. Louis Jordan saying "take me right back to the track, Jack", Rosetta Tharpe singing about how "this train don't carry no gamblers", the trickster freight train driver driving on the "Rock Island Line", the mystery train sixteen coaches long, the train that kept-a-rollin' all night long, the Midnight Special which the prisoners wished would shine its ever-loving light on them, and the train coming past Folsom Prison whose whistle makes Johnny Cash hang his head and cry. But by the 1960s, that kind of song had started to dry up. It would happen on occasion -- "People Get Ready" by the Impressions is the most obvious example of the train metaphor in an important sixties record -- but by the late sixties the train was no longer a symbol of freedom but of the past. In 1969 Harry Nilsson sang about how "Nobody Cares About the Railroads Any More", and in 1968 the Kinks sang about "The Last of the Steam-Powered Trains". When in 1968 Merle Haggard sang about a freight train, it was as a memory, of a child with hopes that ended up thwarted by reality and his own nature: [Excerpt: Merle Haggard, "Mama Tried"] And the reason for this was that there had been another shift, a shift that had started in the forties and accelerated in the late fifties but had taken a little time to ripple through the culture. Now the train had been replaced in the popular imaginary by motorised transport. Instead of hopping on a train without paying, if you had no money in your pocket you'd have to hitch-hike all the way. Freedom now meant individuality. The ultimate in freedom was the biker -- the Hell's Angels who could go anywhere, unburdened by anything -- and instead of goods being moved by freight train, increasingly they were being moved by truck drivers. By the mid-seventies, truck drivers took a central place in American life, and the most romantic way to live life was to live it on the road. On The Road was also the title of a 1957 novel by Jack Kerouac, which was one of the first major signs of this cultural shift in America. Kerouac was writing about events in the late forties and early fifties, but his book was also a precursor of the sixties counterculture. He wrote the book on one continuous sheet of paper, as a stream of consciousness. Kerouac died in 1969 of an internal haemmorage brought on by too much alcohol consumption. So it goes. But the big key to this cultural shift was caused by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, a massive infrastructure spending bill that led to the construction of the modern American Interstate Highway system. This accelerated a program that had already started, of building much bigger, safer, faster roads. It also, as anyone who has read Robert Caro's The Power Broker knows, reinforced segregation and white flight. It did this both by making commuting into major cities from the suburbs easier -- thus allowing white people with more money to move further away from the cities and still work there -- and by bulldozing community spaces where Black people lived. More than a million people lost their homes and were forcibly moved, and orders of magnitude more lost their communities' parks and green spaces. And both as a result of deliberate actions and unconscious bigotry, the bulk of those affected were Black people -- who often found themselves, if they weren't forced to move, on one side of a ten-lane highway where the park used to be, with white people on the other side of the highway. The Federal-Aid Highway Act gave even more power to the unaccountable central planners like Robert Moses, the urban planner in New York who managed to become arguably the most powerful man in the city without ever getting elected, partly by slowly compromising away his early progressive ideals in the service of gaining more power. Of course, not every new highway was built through areas where poor Black people lived. Some were planned to go through richer areas for white people, just because you can't completely do away with geographical realities. For example one was planned to be built through part of San Francisco, a rich, white part. But the people who owned properties in that area had enough political power and clout to fight the development, and after nearly a decade of fighting it, the development was called off in late 1966. But over that time, many of the owners of the impressive buildings in the area had moved out, and they had no incentive to improve or maintain their properties while they were under threat of demolition, so many of them were rented out very cheaply. And when the beat community that Kerouac wrote about, many of whom had settled in San Francisco, grew too large and notorious for the area of the city they were in, North Beach, many of them moved to these cheap homes in a previously-exclusive area. The area known as Haight-Ashbury. [Excerpt: The Grateful Dead, "Grayfolded"] Stories all have their starts, even stories told in Tralfamadorian time, although sometimes those starts are shrouded in legend. For example, the story of Scientology's start has been told many times, with different people claiming to have heard L. Ron Hubbard talk about how writing was a mug's game, and if you wanted to make real money, you needed to get followers, start a religion. Either he said this over and over and over again, to many different science fiction writers, or most science fiction writers of his generation were liars. Of course, the definition of a writer is someone who tells lies for money, so who knows? One of the more plausible accounts of him saying that is given by Theodore Sturgeon. Sturgeon's account is more believable than most, because Sturgeon went on to be a supporter of Dianetics, the "new science" that Hubbard turned into his religion, for decades, even while telling the story. The story of the Grateful Dead probably starts as it ends, with Jerry Garcia. There are three things that everyone writing about the Dead says about Garcia's childhood, so we might as well say them here too. The first is that he was named by a music-loving father after Jerome Kern, the songwriter responsible for songs like "Ol' Man River" (though as Oscar Hammerstein's widow liked to point out, "Jerome Kern wrote dum-dum-dum-dum, *my husband* wrote 'Ol' Man River'" -- an important distinction we need to bear in mind when talking about songwriters who write music but not lyrics). The second is that when he was five years old that music-loving father drowned -- and Garcia would always say he had seen his father dying, though some sources claim this was a false memory. So it goes. And the third fact, which for some reason is always told after the second even though it comes before it chronologically, is that when he was four he lost two joints from his right middle finger. Garcia grew up a troubled teen, and in turn caused trouble for other people, but he also developed a few interests that would follow him through his life. He loved the fantastical, especially the fantastical macabre, and became an avid fan of horror and science fiction -- and through his love of old monster films he became enamoured with cinema more generally. Indeed, in 1983 he bought the film rights to Kurt Vonnegut's science fiction novel The Sirens of Titan, the first story in which the Tralfamadorians appear, and wrote a script based on it. He wanted to produce the film himself, with Francis Ford Coppola directing and Bill Murray starring, but most importantly for him he wanted to prevent anyone who didn't care about it from doing it badly. And in that he succeeded. As of 2023 there is no film of The Sirens of Titan. He loved to paint, and would continue that for the rest of his life, with one of his favourite subjects being Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein monster. And when he was eleven or twelve, he heard for the first time a record that was hugely influential to a whole generation of Californian musicians, even though it was a New York record -- "Gee" by the Crows: [Excerpt: The Crows, "Gee"] Garcia would say later "That was an important song. That was the first kind of, like where the voices had that kind of not-trained-singer voices, but tough-guy-on-the-street voice." That record introduced him to R&B, and soon he was listening to Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, to Ray Charles, and to a record we've not talked about in the podcast but which was one of the great early doo-wop records, "WPLJ" by the Four Deuces: [Excerpt: The Four Deuces, "WPLJ"] Garcia said of that record "That was one of my anthem songs when I was in junior high school and high school and around there. That was one of those songs everybody knew. And that everybody sang. Everybody sang that street-corner favorite." Garcia moved around a lot as a child, and didn't have much time for school by his own account, but one of the few teachers he did respect was an art teacher when he was in North Beach, Walter Hedrick. Hedrick was also one of the earliest of the conceptual artists, and one of the most important figures in the San Francisco arts scene that would become known as the Beat Generation (or the Beatniks, which was originally a disparaging term). Hedrick was a painter and sculptor, but also organised happenings, and he had also been one of the prime movers in starting a series of poetry readings in San Francisco, the first one of which had involved Allen Ginsberg giving the first ever reading of "Howl" -- one of a small number of poems, along with Eliot's "Prufrock" and "The Waste Land" and possibly Pound's Cantos, which can be said to have changed twentieth-century literature. Garcia was fifteen when he got to know Hedrick, in 1957, and by then the Beat scene had already become almost a parody of itself, having become known to the public because of the publication of works like On the Road, and the major artists in the scene were already rejecting the label. By this point tourists were flocking to North Beach to see these beatniks they'd heard about on TV, and Hedrick was actually employed by one cafe to sit in the window wearing a beret, turtleneck, sandals, and beard, and draw and paint, to attract the tourists who flocked by the busload because they could see that there was a "genuine beatnik" in the cafe. Hedrick was, as well as a visual artist, a guitarist and banjo player who played in traditional jazz bands, and he would bring records in to class for his students to listen to, and Garcia particularly remembered him bringing in records by Big Bill Broonzy: [Excerpt: Big Bill Broonzy, "When Things Go Wrong (It Hurts Me Too)"] Garcia was already an avid fan of rock and roll music, but it was being inspired by Hedrick that led him to get his first guitar. Like his contemporary Paul McCartney around the same time, he was initially given the wrong instrument as a birthday present -- in Garcia's case his mother gave him an accordion -- but he soon persuaded her to swap it for an electric guitar he saw in a pawn shop. And like his other contemporary, John Lennon, Garcia initially tuned his instrument incorrectly. He said later "When I started playing the guitar, believe me, I didn't know anybody that played. I mean, I didn't know anybody that played the guitar. Nobody. They weren't around. There were no guitar teachers. You couldn't take lessons. There was nothing like that, you know? When I was a kid and I had my first electric guitar, I had it tuned wrong and learned how to play on it with it tuned wrong for about a year. And I was getting somewhere on it, you know… Finally, I met a guy that knew how to tune it right and showed me three chords, and it was like a revelation. You know what I mean? It was like somebody gave me the key to heaven." He joined a band, the Chords, which mostly played big band music, and his friend Gary Foster taught him some of the rudiments of playing the guitar -- things like how to use a capo to change keys. But he was always a rebellious kid, and soon found himself faced with a choice between joining the military or going to prison. He chose the former, and it was during his time in the Army that a friend, Ron Stevenson, introduced him to the music of Merle Travis, and to Travis-style guitar picking: [Excerpt: Merle Travis, "Nine-Pound Hammer"] Garcia had never encountered playing like that before, but he instantly recognised that Travis, and Chet Atkins who Stevenson also played for him, had been an influence on Scotty Moore. He started to realise that the music he'd listened to as a teenager was influenced by music that went further back. But Stevenson, as well as teaching Garcia some of the rudiments of Travis-picking, also indirectly led to Garcia getting discharged from the Army. Stevenson was not a well man, and became suicidal. Garcia decided it was more important to keep his friend company and make sure he didn't kill himself than it was to turn up for roll call, and as a result he got discharged himself on psychiatric grounds -- according to Garcia he told the Army psychiatrist "I was involved in stuff that was more important to me in the moment than the army was and that was the reason I was late" and the psychiatrist thought it was neurotic of Garcia to have his own set of values separate from that of the Army. After discharge, Garcia did various jobs, including working as a transcriptionist for Lenny Bruce, the comedian who was a huge influence on the counterculture. In one of the various attacks over the years by authoritarians on language, Bruce was repeatedly arrested for obscenity, and in 1961 he was arrested at a jazz club in North Beach. Sixty years ago, the parts of speech that were being criminalised weren't pronouns, but prepositions and verbs: [Excerpt: Lenny Bruce, "To is a Preposition, Come is a Verb"] That piece, indeed, was so controversial that when Frank Zappa quoted part of it in a song in 1968, the record label insisted on the relevant passage being played backwards so people couldn't hear such disgusting filth: [Excerpt: The Mothers of Invention, "Harry You're a Beast"] (Anyone familiar with that song will understand that the censored portion is possibly the least offensive part of the whole thing). Bruce was facing trial, and he needed transcripts of what he had said in his recordings to present in court. Incidentally, there seems to be some confusion over exactly which of Bruce's many obscenity trials Garcia became a transcriptionist for. Dennis McNally says in his biography of the band, published in 2002, that it was the most famous of them, in autumn 1964, but in a later book, Jerry on Jerry, a book of interviews of Garcia edited by McNally, McNally talks about it being when Garcia was nineteen, which would mean it was Bruce's first trial, in 1961. We can put this down to the fact that many of the people involved, not least Garcia, lived in Tralfamadorian time, and were rather hazy on dates, but I'm placing the story here rather than in 1964 because it seems to make more sense that Garcia would be involved in a trial based on an incident in San Francisco than one in New York. Garcia got the job, even though he couldn't type, because by this point he'd spent so long listening to recordings of old folk and country music that he was used to transcribing indecipherable accents, and often, as Garcia would tell it, Bruce would mumble very fast and condense multiple syllables into one. Garcia was particularly impressed by Bruce's ability to improvise but talk in entire paragraphs, and he compared his use of language to bebop. Another thing that was starting to impress Garcia, and which he also compared to bebop, was bluegrass: [Excerpt: Bill Monroe, "Fire on the Mountain"] Bluegrass is a music that is often considered very traditional, because it's based on traditional songs and uses acoustic instruments, but in fact it was a terribly *modern* music, and largely a postwar creation of a single band -- Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys. And Garcia was right when he said it was "white bebop" -- though he did say "The only thing it doesn't have is the harmonic richness of bebop. You know what I mean? That's what it's missing, but it has everything else." Both bebop and bluegrass evolved after the second world war, though they were informed by music from before it, and both prized the ability to improvise, and technical excellence. Both are musics that involved playing *fast*, in an ensemble, and being able to respond quickly to the other musicians. Both musics were also intensely rhythmic, a response to a faster paced, more stressful world. They were both part of the general change in the arts towards immediacy that we looked at in the last episode with the creation first of expressionism and then of pop art. Bluegrass didn't go into the harmonic explorations that modern jazz did, but it was absolutely as modern as anything Charlie Parker was doing, and came from the same impulses. It was tradition and innovation, the past and the future simultaneously. Bill Monroe, Jackson Pollock, Charlie Parker, Jack Kerouac, and Lenny Bruce were all in their own ways responding to the same cultural moment, and it was that which Garcia was responding to. But he didn't become able to play bluegrass until after a tragedy which shaped his life even more than his father's death had. Garcia had been to a party and was in a car with his friends Lee Adams, Paul Speegle, and Alan Trist. Adams was driving at ninety miles an hour when they hit a tight curve and crashed. Garcia, Adams, and Trist were all severely injured but survived. Speegle died. So it goes. This tragedy changed Garcia's attitudes totally. Of all his friends, Speegle was the one who was most serious about his art, and who treated it as something to work on. Garcia had always been someone who fundamentally didn't want to work or take any responsibility for anything. And he remained that way -- except for his music. Speegle's death changed Garcia's attitude to that, totally. If his friend wasn't going to be able to practice his own art any more, Garcia would practice his, in tribute to him. He resolved to become a virtuoso on guitar and banjo. His girlfriend of the time later said “I don't know if you've spent time with someone rehearsing ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown' on a banjo for eight hours, but Jerry practiced endlessly. He really wanted to excel and be the best. He had tremendous personal ambition in the musical arena, and he wanted to master whatever he set out to explore. Then he would set another sight for himself. And practice another eight hours a day of new licks.” But of course, you can't make ensemble music on your own: [Excerpt: Jerry Garcia and Bob Hunter, "Oh Mary Don't You Weep" (including end)] "Evelyn said, “What is it called when a person needs a … person … when you want to be touched and the … two are like one thing and there isn't anything else at all anywhere?” Alicia, who had read books, thought about it. “Love,” she said at length." That's from More Than Human, by Theodore Sturgeon, a book I'll be quoting a few more times as the story goes on. Robert Hunter, like Garcia, was just out of the military -- in his case, the National Guard -- and he came into Garcia's life just after Paul Speegle had left it. Garcia and Alan Trist met Hunter ten days after the accident, and the three men started hanging out together, Trist and Hunter writing while Garcia played music. Garcia and Hunter both bonded over their shared love for the beats, and for traditional music, and the two formed a duo, Bob and Jerry, which performed together a handful of times. They started playing together, in fact, after Hunter picked up a guitar and started playing a song and halfway through Garcia took it off him and finished the song himself. The two of them learned songs from the Harry Smith Anthology -- Garcia was completely apolitical, and only once voted in his life, for Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to keep Goldwater out, and regretted even doing that, and so he didn't learn any of the more political material people like Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, and Bob Dylan were doing at the time -- but their duo only lasted a short time because Hunter wasn't an especially good guitarist. Hunter would, though, continue to jam with Garcia and other friends, sometimes playing mandolin, while Garcia played solo gigs and with other musicians as well, playing and moving round the Bay Area and performing with whoever he could: [Excerpt: Jerry Garcia, "Railroad Bill"] "Bleshing, that was Janie's word. She said Baby told it to her. She said it meant everyone all together being something, even if they all did different things. Two arms, two legs, one body, one head, all working together, although a head can't walk and arms can't think. Lone said maybe it was a mixture of “blending” and “meshing,” but I don't think he believed that himself. It was a lot more than that." That's from More Than Human In 1961, Garcia and Hunter met another young musician, but one who was interested in a very different type of music. Phil Lesh was a serious student of modern classical music, a classically-trained violinist and trumpeter whose interest was solidly in the experimental and whose attitude can be summed up by a story that's always told about him meeting his close friend Tom Constanten for the first time. Lesh had been talking with someone about serialism, and Constanten had interrupted, saying "Music stopped being created in 1750 but it started again in 1950". Lesh just stuck out his hand, recognising a kindred spirit. Lesh and Constanten were both students of Luciano Berio, the experimental composer who created compositions for magnetic tape: [Excerpt: Luciano Berio, "Momenti"] Berio had been one of the founders of the Studio di fonologia musicale di Radio Milano, a studio for producing contemporary electronic music where John Cage had worked for a time, and he had also worked with the electronic music pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Lesh would later remember being very impressed when Berio brought a tape into the classroom -- the actual multitrack tape for Stockhausen's revolutionary piece Gesang Der Juenglinge: [Excerpt: Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Gesang Der Juenglinge"] Lesh at first had been distrustful of Garcia -- Garcia was charismatic and had followers, and Lesh never liked people like that. But he was impressed by Garcia's playing, and soon realised that the two men, despite their very different musical interests, had a lot in common. Lesh was interested in the technology of music as well as in performing and composing it, and so when he wasn't studying he helped out by engineering at the university's radio station. Lesh was impressed by Garcia's playing, and suggested to the presenter of the station's folk show, the Midnight Special, that Garcia be a guest. Garcia was so good that he ended up getting an entire solo show to himself, where normally the show would feature multiple acts. Lesh and Constanten soon moved away from the Bay Area to Las Vegas, but both would be back -- in Constanten's case he would form an experimental group in San Francisco with their fellow student Steve Reich, and that group (though not with Constanten performing) would later premiere Terry Riley's In C, a piece influenced by La Monte Young and often considered one of the great masterpieces of minimalist music. By early 1962 Garcia and Hunter had formed a bluegrass band, with Garcia on guitar and banjo and Hunter on mandolin, and a rotating cast of other musicians including Ken Frankel, who played banjo and fiddle. They performed under different names, including the Tub Thumpers, the Hart Valley Drifters, and the Sleepy Valley Hog Stompers, and played a mixture of bluegrass and old-time music -- and were very careful about the distinction: [Excerpt: The Hart Valley Drifters, "Cripple Creek"] In 1993, the Republican political activist John Perry Barlow was invited to talk to the CIA about the possibilities open to them with what was then called the Information Superhighway. He later wrote, in part "They told me they'd brought Steve Jobs in a few weeks before to indoctrinate them in modern information management. And they were delighted when I returned later, bringing with me a platoon of Internet gurus, including Esther Dyson, Mitch Kapor, Tony Rutkowski, and Vint Cerf. They sealed us into an electronically impenetrable room to discuss the radical possibility that a good first step in lifting their blackout would be for the CIA to put up a Web site... We told them that information exchange was a barter system, and that to receive, one must also be willing to share. This was an alien notion to them. They weren't even willing to share information among themselves, much less the world." 1962 brought a new experience for Robert Hunter. Hunter had been recruited into taking part in psychological tests at Stanford University, which in the sixties and seventies was one of the preeminent universities for psychological experiments. As part of this, Hunter was given $140 to attend the VA hospital (where a janitor named Ken Kesey, who had himself taken part in a similar set of experiments a couple of years earlier, worked a day job while he was working on his first novel) for four weeks on the run, and take different psychedelic drugs each time, starting with LSD, so his reactions could be observed. (It was later revealed that these experiments were part of a CIA project called MKUltra, designed to investigate the possibility of using psychedelic drugs for mind control, blackmail, and torture. Hunter was quite lucky in that he was told what was going to happen to him and paid for his time. Other subjects included the unlucky customers of brothels the CIA set up as fronts -- they dosed the customers' drinks and observed them through two-way mirrors. Some of their experimental subjects died by suicide as a result of their experiences. So it goes. ) Hunter was interested in taking LSD after reading Aldous Huxley's writings about psychedelic substances, and he brought his typewriter along to the experiment. During the first test, he wrote a six-page text, a short excerpt from which is now widely quoted, reading in part "Sit back picture yourself swooping up a shell of purple with foam crests of crystal drops soft nigh they fall unto the sea of morning creep-very-softly mist ... and then sort of cascade tinkley-bell-like (must I take you by the hand, ever so slowly type) and then conglomerate suddenly into a peal of silver vibrant uncomprehendingly, blood singingly, joyously resounding bells" Hunter's experience led to everyone in their social circle wanting to try LSD, and soon they'd all come to the same conclusion -- this was something special. But Garcia needed money -- he'd got his girlfriend pregnant, and they'd married (this would be the first of several marriages in Garcia's life, and I won't be covering them all -- at Garcia's funeral, his second wife, Carolyn, said Garcia always called her the love of his life, and his first wife and his early-sixties girlfriend who he proposed to again in the nineties both simultaneously said "He said that to me!"). So he started teaching guitar at a music shop in Palo Alto. Hunter had no time for Garcia's incipient domesticity and thought that his wife was trying to make him live a conventional life, and the two drifted apart somewhat, though they'd still play together occasionally. Through working at the music store, Garcia got to know the manager, Troy Weidenheimer, who had a rock and roll band called the Zodiacs. Garcia joined the band on bass, despite that not being his instrument. He later said "Troy was a lot of fun, but I wasn't good enough a musician then to have been able to deal with it. I was out of my idiom, really, 'cause when I played with Troy I was playing electric bass, you know. I never was a good bass player. Sometimes I was playing in the wrong key and didn't even [fuckin'] know it. I couldn't hear that low, after playing banjo, you know, and going to electric...But Troy taught me the principle of, hey, you know, just stomp your foot and get on it. He was great. A great one for the instant arrangement, you know. And he was also fearless for that thing of get your friends to do it." Garcia's tenure in the Zodiacs didn't last long, nor did this experiment with rock and roll, but two other members of the Zodiacs will be notable later in the story -- the harmonica player, an old friend of Garcia's named Ron McKernan, who would soon gain the nickname Pig Pen after the Peanuts character, and the drummer, Bill Kreutzmann: [Excerpt: The Grateful Dead, "Drums/Space (Skull & Bones version)"] Kreutzmann said of the Zodiacs "Jerry was the hired bass player and I was the hired drummer. I only remember playing that one gig with them, but I was in way over my head. I always did that. I always played things that were really hard and it didn't matter. I just went for it." Garcia and Kreutzmann didn't really get to know each other then, but Garcia did get to know someone else who would soon be very important in his life. Bob Weir was from a very different background than Garcia, though both had the shared experience of long bouts of chronic illness as children. He had grown up in a very wealthy family, and had always been well-liked, but he was what we would now call neurodivergent -- reading books about the band he talks about being dyslexic but clearly has other undiagnosed neurodivergences, which often go along with dyslexia -- and as a result he was deemed to have behavioural problems which led to him getting expelled from pre-school and kicked out of the cub scouts. He was never academically gifted, thanks to his dyslexia, but he was always enthusiastic about music -- to a fault. He learned to play boogie piano but played so loudly and so often his parents sold the piano. He had a trumpet, but the neighbours complained about him playing it outside. Finally he switched to the guitar, an instrument with which it is of course impossible to make too loud a noise. The first song he learned was the Kingston Trio's version of an old sea shanty, "The Wreck of the John B": [Excerpt: The Kingston Trio, "The Wreck of the John B"] He was sent off to a private school in Colorado for teenagers with behavioural issues, and there he met the boy who would become his lifelong friend, John Perry Barlow. Unfortunately the two troublemakers got on with each other *so* well that after their first year they were told that it was too disruptive having both of them at the school, and only one could stay there the next year. Barlow stayed and Weir moved back to the Bay Area. By this point, Weir was getting more interested in folk music that went beyond the commercial folk of the Kingston Trio. As he said later "There was something in there that was ringing my bells. What I had grown up thinking of as hillbilly music, it started to have some depth for me, and I could start to hear the music in it. Suddenly, it wasn't just a bunch of ignorant hillbillies playing what they could. There was some depth and expertise and stuff like that to aspire to.” He moved from school to school but one thing that stayed with him was his love of playing guitar, and he started taking lessons from Troy Weidenheimer, but he got most of his education going to folk clubs and hootenannies. He regularly went to the Tangent, a club where Garcia played, but Garcia's bluegrass banjo playing was far too rigorous for a free spirit like Weir to emulate, and instead he started trying to copy one of the guitarists who was a regular there, Jorma Kaukonnen. On New Year's Eve 1963 Weir was out walking with his friends Bob Matthews and Rich Macauley, and they passed the music shop where Garcia was a teacher, and heard him playing his banjo. They knocked and asked if they could come in -- they all knew Garcia a little, and Bob Matthews was one of his students, having become interested in playing banjo after hearing the theme tune to the Beverly Hillbillies, played by the bluegrass greats Flatt and Scruggs: [Excerpt: Flatt and Scruggs, "The Beverly Hillbillies"] Garcia at first told these kids, several years younger than him, that they couldn't come in -- he was waiting for his students to show up. But Weir said “Jerry, listen, it's seven-thirty on New Year's Eve, and I don't think you're going to be seeing your students tonight.” Garcia realised the wisdom of this, and invited the teenagers in to jam with him. At the time, there was a bit of a renaissance in jug bands, as we talked about back in the episode on the Lovin' Spoonful. This was a form of music that had grown up in the 1920s, and was similar and related to skiffle and coffee-pot bands -- jug bands would tend to have a mixture of portable string instruments like guitars and banjos, harmonicas, and people using improvised instruments, particularly blowing into a jug. The most popular of these bands had been Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers, led by banjo player Gus Cannon and with harmonica player Noah Lewis: [Excerpt: Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers, "Viola Lee Blues"] With the folk revival, Cannon's work had become well-known again. The Rooftop Singers, a Kingston Trio style folk group, had had a hit with his song "Walk Right In" in 1963, and as a result of that success Cannon had even signed a record contract with Stax -- Stax's first album ever, a month before Booker T and the MGs' first album, was in fact the eighty-year-old Cannon playing his banjo and singing his old songs. The rediscovery of Cannon had started a craze for jug bands, and the most popular of the new jug bands was Jim Kweskin's Jug Band, which did a mixture of old songs like "You're a Viper" and more recent material redone in the old style. Weir, Matthews, and Macauley had been to see the Kweskin band the night before, and had been very impressed, especially by their singer Maria D'Amato -- who would later marry her bandmate Geoff Muldaur and take his name -- and her performance of Leiber and Stoller's "I'm a Woman": [Excerpt: Jim Kweskin's Jug Band, "I'm a Woman"] Matthews suggested that they form their own jug band, and Garcia eagerly agreed -- though Matthews found himself rapidly moving from banjo to washboard to kazoo to second kazoo before realising he was surplus to requirements. Robert Hunter was similarly an early member but claimed he "didn't have the embouchure" to play the jug, and was soon also out. He moved to LA and started studying Scientology -- later claiming that he wanted science-fictional magic powers, which L. Ron Hubbard's new religion certainly offered. The group took the name Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Champions -- apparently they varied the spelling every time they played -- and had a rotating membership that at one time or another included about twenty different people, but tended always to have Garcia on banjo, Weir on jug and later guitar, and Garcia's friend Pig Pen on harmonica: [Excerpt: Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Champions, "On the Road Again"] The group played quite regularly in early 1964, but Garcia's first love was still bluegrass, and he was trying to build an audience with his bluegrass band, The Black Mountain Boys. But bluegrass was very unpopular in the Bay Area, where it was simultaneously thought of as unsophisticated -- as "hillbilly music" -- and as elitist, because it required actual instrumental ability, which wasn't in any great supply in the amateur folk scene. But instrumental ability was something Garcia definitely had, as at this point he was still practising eight hours a day, every day, and it shows on the recordings of the Black Mountain Boys: [Excerpt: The Black Mountain Boys, "Rosa Lee McFall"] By the summer, Bob Weir was also working at the music shop, and so Garcia let Weir take over his students while he and the Black Mountain Boys' guitarist Sandy Rothman went on a road trip to see as many bluegrass musicians as they could and to audition for Bill Monroe himself. As it happened, Garcia found himself too shy to audition for Monroe, but Rothman later ended up playing with Monroe's Blue Grass Boys. On his return to the Bay Area, Garcia resumed playing with the Uptown Jug Champions, but Pig Pen started pestering him to do something different. While both men had overlapping tastes in music and a love for the blues, Garcia's tastes had always been towards the country end of the spectrum while Pig Pen's were towards R&B. And while the Uptown Jug Champions were all a bit disdainful of the Beatles at first -- apart from Bob Weir, the youngest of the group, who thought they were interesting -- Pig Pen had become enamoured of another British band who were just starting to make it big: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Not Fade Away"] 29) Garcia liked the first Rolling Stones album too, and he eventually took Pig Pen's point -- the stuff that the Rolling Stones were doing, covers of Slim Harpo and Buddy Holly, was not a million miles away from the material they were doing as Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Champions. Pig Pen could play a little electric organ, Bob had been fooling around with the electric guitars in the music shop. Why not give it a go? The stuff bands like the Rolling Stones were doing wasn't that different from the electric blues that Pig Pen liked, and they'd all seen A Hard Day's Night -- they could carry on playing with banjos, jugs, and kazoos and have the respect of a handful of folkies, or they could get electric instruments and potentially have screaming girls and millions of dollars, while playing the same songs. This was a convincing argument, especially when Dana Morgan Jr, the son of the owner of the music shop, told them they could have free electric instruments if they let him join on bass. Morgan wasn't that great on bass, but what the hell, free instruments. Pig Pen had the best voice and stage presence, so he became the frontman of the new group, singing most of the leads, though Jerry and Bob would both sing a few songs, and playing harmonica and organ. Weir was on rhythm guitar, and Garcia was the lead guitarist and obvious leader of the group. They just needed a drummer, and handily Bill Kreutzmann, who had played with Garcia and Pig Pen in the Zodiacs, was also now teaching music at the music shop. Not only that, but about three weeks before they decided to go electric, Kreutzmann had seen the Uptown Jug Champions performing and been astonished by Garcia's musicianship and charisma, and said to himself "Man, I'm gonna follow that guy forever!" The new group named themselves the Warlocks, and started rehearsing in earnest. Around this time, Garcia also finally managed to get some of the LSD that his friend Robert Hunter had been so enthusiastic about three years earlier, and it was a life-changing experience for him. In particular, he credited LSD with making him comfortable being a less disciplined player -- as a bluegrass player he'd had to be frighteningly precise, but now he was playing rock and needed to loosen up. A few days after taking LSD for the first time, Garcia also heard some of Bob Dylan's new material, and realised that the folk singer he'd had little time for with his preachy politics was now making electric music that owed a lot more to the Beat culture Garcia considered himself part of: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Subterranean Homesick Blues"] Another person who was hugely affected by hearing that was Phil Lesh, who later said "I couldn't believe that was Bob Dylan on AM radio, with an electric band. It changed my whole consciousness: if something like that could happen, the sky was the limit." Up to that point, Lesh had been focused entirely on his avant-garde music, working with friends like Steve Reich to push music forward, inspired by people like John Cage and La Monte Young, but now he realised there was music of value in the rock world. He'd quickly started going to rock gigs, seeing the Rolling Stones and the Byrds, and then he took acid and went to see his friend Garcia's new electric band play their third ever gig. He was blown away, and very quickly it was decided that Lesh would be the group's new bass player -- though everyone involved tells a different story as to who made the decision and how it came about, and accounts also vary as to whether Dana Morgan took his sacking gracefully and let his erstwhile bandmates keep their instruments, or whether they had to scrounge up some new ones. Lesh had never played bass before, but he was a talented multi-instrumentalist with a deep understanding of music and an ability to compose and improvise, and the repertoire the Warlocks were playing in the early days was mostly three-chord material that doesn't take much rehearsal -- though it was apparently beyond the abilities of poor Dana Morgan, who apparently had to be told note-by-note what to play by Garcia, and learn it by rote. Garcia told Lesh what notes the strings of a bass were tuned to, told him to borrow a guitar and practice, and within two weeks he was on stage with the Warlocks: [Excerpt: The Grateful Dead, “Grayfolded"] In September 1995, just weeks after Jerry Garcia's death, an article was published in Mute magazine identifying a cultural trend that had shaped the nineties, and would as it turned out shape at least the next thirty years. It's titled "The Californian Ideology", though it may be better titled "The Bay Area Ideology", and it identifies a worldview that had grown up in Silicon Valley, based around the ideas of the hippie movement, of right-wing libertarianism, of science fiction authors, and of Marshall McLuhan. It starts "There is an emerging global orthodoxy concerning the relation between society, technology and politics. We have called this orthodoxy `the Californian Ideology' in honour of the state where it originated. By naturalising and giving a technological proof to a libertarian political philosophy, and therefore foreclosing on alternative futures, the Californian Ideologues are able to assert that social and political debates about the future have now become meaningless. The California Ideology is a mix of cybernetics, free market economics, and counter-culture libertarianism and is promulgated by magazines such as WIRED and MONDO 2000 and preached in the books of Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly and others. The new faith has been embraced by computer nerds, slacker students, 30-something capitalists, hip academics, futurist bureaucrats and even the President of the USA himself. As usual, Europeans have not been slow to copy the latest fashion from America. While a recent EU report recommended adopting the Californian free enterprise model to build the 'infobahn', cutting-edge artists and academics have been championing the 'post-human' philosophy developed by the West Coast's Extropian cult. With no obvious opponents, the global dominance of the Californian ideology appears to be complete." [Excerpt: Grayfolded] The Warlocks' first gig with Phil Lesh on bass was on June the 18th 1965, at a club called Frenchy's with a teenage clientele. Lesh thought his playing had been wooden and it wasn't a good gig, and apparently the management of Frenchy's agreed -- they were meant to play a second night there, but turned up to be told they'd been replaced by a band with an accordion and clarinet. But by September the group had managed to get themselves a residency at a small bar named the In Room, and playing there every night made them cohere. They were at this point playing the kind of sets that bar bands everywhere play to this day, though at the time the songs they were playing, like "Gloria" by Them and "In the Midnight Hour", were the most contemporary of hits. Another song that they introduced into their repertoire was "Do You Believe in Magic" by the Lovin' Spoonful, another band which had grown up out of former jug band musicians. As well as playing their own sets, they were also the house band at The In Room and as such had to back various touring artists who were the headline acts. The first act they had to back up was Cornell Gunter's version of the Coasters. Gunter had brought his own guitarist along as musical director, and for the first show Weir sat in the audience watching the show and learning the parts, staring intently at this musical director's playing. After seeing that, Weir's playing was changed, because he also picked up how the guitarist was guiding the band while playing, the small cues that a musical director will use to steer the musicians in the right direction. Weir started doing these things himself when he was singing lead -- Pig Pen was the frontman but everyone except Bill sang sometimes -- and the group soon found that rather than Garcia being the sole leader, now whoever was the lead singer for the song was the de facto conductor as well. By this point, the Bay Area was getting almost overrun with people forming electric guitar bands, as every major urban area in America was. Some of the bands were even having hits already -- We Five had had a number three hit with "You Were On My Mind", a song which had originally been performed by the folk duo Ian and Sylvia: [Excerpt: We Five, "You Were On My Mind"] Although the band that was most highly regarded on the scene, the Charlatans, was having problems with the various record companies they tried to get signed to, and didn't end up making a record until 1969. If tracks like "Number One" had been released in 1965 when they were recorded, the history of the San Francisco music scene may have taken a very different turn: [Excerpt: The Charlatans, "Number One"] Bands like Jefferson Airplane, the Great Society, and Big Brother and the Holding Company were also forming, and Autumn Records was having a run of success with records by the Beau Brummels, whose records were produced by Autumn's in-house A&R man, Sly Stone: [Excerpt: The Beau Brummels, "Laugh Laugh"] The Warlocks were somewhat cut off from this, playing in a dive bar whose clientele was mostly depressed alcoholics. But the fact that they were playing every night for an audience that didn't care much gave them freedom, and they used that freedom to improvise. Both Lesh and Garcia were big fans of John Coltrane, and they started to take lessons from his style of playing. When the group played "Gloria" or "Midnight Hour" or whatever, they started to extend the songs and give themselves long instrumental passages for soloing. Garcia's playing wasn't influenced *harmonically* by Coltrane -- in fact Garcia was always a rather harmonically simple player. He'd tend to play lead lines either in Mixolydian mode, which is one of the most standard modes in rock, pop, blues, and jazz, or he'd play the notes of the chord that was being played, so if the band were playing a G chord his lead would emphasise the notes G, B, and D. But what he was influenced by was Coltrane's tendency to improvise in long, complex, phrases that made up a single thought -- Coltrane was thinking musically in paragraphs, rather than sentences, and Garcia started to try the same kind of th

united states america god tv love ceo music american new york california death new year history canada black world president friends children europe google babies uk ai apple mental health internet man freedom las vegas france england space hell law mexico magic film british americans young san francisco sound west friend club colorado european writing fire italy philadelphia brand devil playing moon elon musk european union mind tools army north america writer pennsylvania alabama nashville south night habits angels south africa north dead new orleans ptsd world war ii band fame heroes wall massachusetts empire va sun stone web touch silicon valley republicans pittsburgh apologies mothers beatles roots dancing eagles greece stanford cd cat studio columbia cia dvd rolling stones mtv bones west coast beats independence adams elvis wales doors air force streets pacific campbell wheel twenty coca cola rock and roll bay area villains cutting ibm east coast papa stanford university garcia roses wyoming eleven berkeley steve jobs mountains hart billionaires frankenstein david bowie stones intel buddhist daughters eyes turtles nest individuals bob dylan esp riot wired big brother djs routines golden age airplanes cocaine anthem musicians impressions spectrum cds declaration vault americana john lennon invention cornell university frank sinatra last days warner paul mccartney lsd range sides woodstock number one matthews nobel prize elvis presley generally communists bill murray dino californians defence guinness tina turner skull good morning johnny cash pound boomers neil young backstage brew holy grail tim ferriss wreck jimi hendrix james brown alligators motown scientology warner brothers lenny beach boys national guard bitches us government love songs cradle icons mondo all stars stevenson grateful dead dresden american revolution peanuts jack nicholson francis ford coppola kinks eric clapton john mayer eliot sixty peace corps palo alto miles davis carnegie hall trout reprise avalon mk ultra mute hound wasteland lovin george harrison lone hubbard starship rod stewart carousel howl bluegrass crusade ike paul simon ray charles midi sirens monterey lou reed frank zappa desi collectors happenings omni gee yoko ono little richard janis joplin healy viper barlow chuck berry world wide web zz top bakersfield tangent estimates xerox old west weir scully stills carlos santana velvet underground van morrison tubes rock music cutler booker t kurt vonnegut john coltrane brian wilson caltech chipmunks dick cheney dennis hopper aldous huxley kevin kelly east west hangman buddy holly ram dass dean martin randy newman hunter s thompson cyberspace galapagos hard days scott adams steve wozniak sturgeon american beauty david crosby good vibrations jack kerouac byrds dilbert boris karloff charlatans ginsberg gunter hells angels spoonful lyndon johnson john cage jerry garcia great migration bozo astounding les h eric schmidt charlie parker helms merle haggard fillmore go crazy easy rider chords mcnally jefferson airplane chick corea glen campbell stax dark star timothy leary allen ginsberg bahamian pete seeger greatest story ever told todd rundgren power brokers on the road joe smith cantos george jones scientologists rothman dusseldorf scruggs jackson pollock midnight special truckin' mgs buddy guy coltrane trist true fans deadheads warlocks new hollywood yardbirds muscle shoals count basie john campbell valium coasters technocracy lenny bruce electronic frontier foundation harry nilsson midnight hour diggers allman brothers band bo diddley skeleton keys watkins glen marshall mcluhan casey jones everly brothers prepositions benny goodman frenchy bowery kqed sgt pepper steve reich kerouac do you believe working man cell block southern comfort money money vonnegut tom wolfe graham nash baskervilles rifkin hornsby bruce hornsby stoller on new year boulders decca harts great society beatniks altamont slaughterhouse five varese beat generation ken kesey inc. jefferson starship hedrick robert a heinlein beverly hillbillies bob weir holding company pigpen stephen stills uncle john goldwater zodiacs acid tests telecasters bill monroe outlaw country suspicious minds robert moses buck owens johnny b goode international order sly stone people get ready chet atkins flatt senatorial arpanet robert anton wilson mccoy tyner phil lesh haight ashbury bill graham stockhausen bolos pranksters basil rathbone all along warners robert caro north beach folsom prison steve cropper family dog gordon moore leiber macauley john w campbell bozos odd fellows cassady dianetics fare thee well louis jordan dire wolf terry riley karlheinz stockhausen phil ochs mountain high basie gibsons stewart brand charles ives robert hunter vint cerf rhino records green onions peter tork kingston trio winterland morning dew jimmie rodgers fillmore east mickey hart roy wood eric dolphy golden road cecil taylor van dyke parks ink spots giants stadium monterey pop festival merry pranksters jerome kern i walk not fade away information superhighway blue suede shoes live dead one flew over the cuckoo turing award new riders johnny johnson brand new bag other one warner brothers records steve silberman oscar hammerstein purple sage prufrock stagger lee ramrod luciano berio port chester world class performers joel selvin theodore sturgeon berio billy pilgrim discordianism owsley merle travis lee adams buckaroos scotty moore damascene have you seen esther dyson incredible string band general electric company fillmore west monterey jazz festival la monte young james jamerson ashbury blue cheer john dawson alembic john perry barlow standells bill kreutzmann david browne jug band wplj mixolydian bobby bland kesey neal cassady junior walker slim harpo astounding science fiction bakersfield sound blue grass boys mitch kapor travelling wilburys torbert gary foster furthur donna jean surrealistic pillow reverend gary davis more than human david gans john oswald haight street ratdog furry lewis dennis mcnally harold jones alec nevala lee sam cutler floyd cramer pacific bell firesign theater sugar magnolia brierly bob matthews owsley stanley hassinger uncle martin don rich geoff muldaur death don plunderphonics smiley smile langmuir in room brent mydland jim kweskin jesse belvin kilgore trout david shenk have no mercy so many roads turn on your lovelight gus cannon one more saturday night vince welnick noah lewis aoxomoxoa tralfamadore dana morgan garcia garcia dan healey edgard varese cream puff war viola lee blues 'the love song

Dorm Damage With Tom & Zeus Episode 11 "Favorite Guitarists"

Rock N Roll Pantheon

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 4, 2023 55:29

On the 11th Episode of Dorm Damage With Tom & Zeus, the guys discuss their favorite guitarists and then give a top ten list each. On Shout It Out Loudcast, Album Review Crew and The Zeppelin Chronicles, Tom & Zeus always point out songs that are dominated by incredible riffs, solos and melody. The guitar is rock's most identifiable instrument. Many of their favorite guitarists are in KISS, Led Zeppelin and a ton of bands that are features on ARC. The guys discuss what they look for in a guitarist and the various types of guitar gods. They each give their unique list of favorite guitarists. Their lists contain many suprises and some omitted famous names as well.A fun discussion about guitar gods is great way to end 2022! For all things Shout It Out Loudcast check out our amazing website by clicking below: www.ShoutItOutLoudcast.com Interested in more Shout It Out Loudcast content? Care to help us out? Come join us on Patreon by clicking below: SIOL Patreon Get all your Shout It Out Loudcast Merchandise by clicking below:Shout It Out Loudcast Merchandise at AMAZON Shop At Our Amazon Store by clicking below:Shout It Out Loudcast Amazon Store Please Email us comments or suggestions by clicking below:ShoutItOutLoudcast@Gmail.com Please subscribe to us and give us a 5 Star (Child) review on the following places below:iTunesPodchaserStitcheriHeart RadioSpotify Please follow us and like our social media pages clicking below:TwitterFacebook PageFacebook Group Page Shout It Out LoudcastersInstagramYouTube Proud Member of the Pantheon Podcast click below to see the website:Pantheon Podcast Network

Dorm Damage With Tom & Zeus Episode 11 "Favorite Guitarists"

Shout It Out Loudcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 28, 2022 55:29

On the 11th Episode of Dorm Damage With Tom & Zeus, the guys discuss their favorite guitarists and then give a top ten list each. On Shout It Out Loudcast, Album Review Crew and The Zeppelin Chronicles, Tom & Zeus always point out songs that are dominated by incredible riffs, solos and melody. The guitar is rock's most identifiable instrument. Many of their favorite guitarists are in KISS, Led Zeppelin and a ton of bands that are features on ARC. The guys discuss what they look for in a guitarist and the various types of guitar gods. They each give their unique list of favorite guitarists. Their lists contain many suprises and some omitted famous names as well.A fun discussion about guitar gods is great way to end 2022! For all things Shout It Out Loudcast check out our amazing website by clicking below: www.ShoutItOutLoudcast.com Interested in more Shout It Out Loudcast content? Care to help us out? Come join us on Patreon by clicking below: SIOL Patreon Get all your Shout It Out Loudcast Merchandise by clicking below:Shout It Out Loudcast Merchandise at AMAZON Shop At Our Amazon Store by clicking below:Shout It Out Loudcast Amazon Store Please Email us comments or suggestions by clicking below:ShoutItOutLoudcast@Gmail.com Please subscribe to us and give us a 5 Star (Child) review on the following places below:iTunesPodchaserStitcheriHeart RadioSpotify Please follow us and like our social media pages clicking below:TwitterFacebook PageFacebook Group Page Shout It Out LoudcastersInstagramYouTube Proud Member of the Pantheon Podcast click below to see the website:Pantheon Podcast Network

Don $Rich$ Lux Family

Talk Yo Ishh

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 28, 2022 36:54

My homie and adopted family Don $Rich$ is a very talented and creative artist. He's been in the rap game for years and has left his mark all over the US , along with his musically talented family member, the famous Faith Evans. Don Rich is involved in the Luxury Family network and together his crew travel and collaborate in well known studios for some amazing hits. I am proud to be a part of the Lux Family because this is exclusive group that has been very successful. Talk yo iSHH has even made several cameos in music videos produced and performed by Don Rich. Follow his links and check out his music on all platforms including YouTube. When you see D Rich, you see gold! https://youtu.be/ZrtX2kiYKqQ https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010538622614 https://luxuryfamilyentertainment.com/ https://instagram.com/luxury_family_entertainment?igshid=ZjA0NjI3M2I= Daddyrichbaby@gmail.com https://soundcloud.com/jklipps/money-bags?utm_source=mobi&utm_campaign=social_sharing&utm_terms=reco_roster_override.control Make Sure To Follow Talk Yo Ishh and Tatiana @ https://www.ageofradio.org/talkyoishh/ Facebook @TalkyoiSHH Facebook @tatiana.vitiello.3 Twitter @talkyoishh Tik Tok @talkyoishh Instagram @talkyoishh_pod Instagram @tatianavitiello Also check out and follow Age of Radio @ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ageofradioverse/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ageofradio Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/ageofradio Advertising Inquiries: https://www.ageofradio.org/adspace Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

family talk rich faith evans don rich

Rev.Don Rich- "The blood of the lamb"

Play Episode Listen Later May 5, 2022 29:48

Rev. Don Rich

rich rev blood of the lamb don rich

Rev. Don Rich- "The sin of silence"

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 1, 2022 58:54

Rev. Don Rich ministers conference 2002

rich silence rev don rich

(Rich series) Rev. Don Rich- “Touch me again”

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 8, 2022 56:26

“Rev. Don Rich series”

rich touch rev don rich

(Rich Series) Rev. Don Rich- “ Why”

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 8, 2022 55:21

“Don Rich series”

rich don rich

(Rich series) Rev. Don Rich- “ What did the little chicken see”

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 8, 2022 58:40

“Rev. Don Rich series”

rich rev chicken don rich

Rev. Don Rich- “ When brooks dry up”

Backbone Radio with Matt Dunn

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 14, 2021 66:26

Rev. Don Rich

rich rev don rich

Ep. 35. DOB: Drunk on The Birds Vol. 3

Drunk on Broad

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 1, 2021 35:35

Don & Rich talk discuss the horrible 13-7 Eagles loss to the Giants and look ahead to the upcoming game against the New York JetsCheck Out All Things Drunk On Broadhttps://linktr.ee/DrunkOnBroadPodcastCheck Out our sponsor La-Touraine Watches https://la-touraine.com/Originally Aired - 11.30.21

giants birds eagles drunk don rich

Backbone Radio with Matt Dunn - March 19, 2021 - HR 3

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 20, 2021 42:33

Embarrassed to be an American in the Biden Era. China laughing at Biden. Along with Russia. Reviewing Biden's three pratfalls heading up the steps to Air Force One. White House spokesperson explains it was "very windy" outside. Contextualizing this week's strange "Green Screen Fail." How long can all this go on? Notes on Fatherhood. A Special Set of Skills. With Listener Calls & Music via Kesha, Maroon 5, Don Rich and Buck Owens. Matt Dunn of Backbone Radio guest-hosting the Steffan Tubbs Show. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

music american china russia joe biden white house skills fatherhood maroon embarrassed backbone kesha air force one contextualizing buck owens special set matt dunn don rich

Albums and All That, Starting with the letter I as in India, Part 2

Vinyl-O-Matic

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 4, 2021 56:59

Altered Images [00:29] "Insects" I Could Be Happy Epic EPC A13 1834 1981 Have I mentioned my undying love for Clare Grogan? Mose Allison [03:58] "Your Mind Is on Vacation" I Don't Worry About a Thing Atlantic SD 1389 1962 (1966 reissue) Sometimes, you just have to go with the classics. Featuring Mose on piano, Addison Farmer on bass, and Osie Johnson on drums. Jim Croce [06:35] "Workin' at the Car Wash Blues" I Got a Name ABC Records ABCX-797 1973 Posthumously release, this particular track made it to number 32 on the Hot 100. It was also covered by none other than The Great Gonzo (https://youtu.be/evEK_xJCewM). Sammy Davis, Jr. [09:07] "I've Got You Under My Skin" I Gotta Be Me Reprise Records RS 6324 1968 Usually can't go wrong with Cole Porter. Sammy appears in hippy frippery of the times on the cover. Dire Wolves Just Exactly Perfect Sisters Band [12:57] "Myriads" I Just Wasn't Made for These Set Times Centripetal Force CF.05 2020 An album title that I can certainly relate to. Easily one of my favorite albums of 2020. Tony Bennett [25:06] "The Best Is Yet to Come" I Left My Heart in San Francisco Columbia CS 8669 1962 San Francisco has been kinda weird lately, so we'll just pretend the best is yet to come. Loretta Lynn [28:21] "Walking After Midnight" I Remember Patsy MCA Records-2265 1977 Some great harmonies going on here. Jack La Forge, his Piano and Orchestra [30:38] "The Cleopatra Kick" I Remember You Regina Records R 282 1963 Well, you know I love novelty songs. Spiritualized [32:48] "I Think I'm in Love (Chemical Brothers Vocal Remix)" I Think I'm in Love Dedicated Spirit 014T 1998 Oddly enough, this 12" remix is shorter than the album version of this song. Gilbert O'Sullivan [41:15] "Get Down" I'm a Writer, Not a Fighter MAM MAM 7 1973 Some funky-ish clavinet from Mr. O'Sullivan. We'll presume he's singing about his dog. Made it to number 7 on the Hot 100. Divine [43:53] "I'm So Beautiful (Divine Mix)" I'm So Beautiful Proto ENA(T) 121 1984 Some Hi-NRG dance music from the one and only Divine. Buck Owens and his Buckaroos [50:25] "I've Got a Tiger by the Tail" I've Got a Tiger by the Tail Capitol Records ST-2283 1965 Every day someone is born who has never heard Buck Owens and his Buckaroos. Buck takes the solo on this one, and Don Rich helps out with harmony. Buck Owens and his Buckaroos [52:37] "Alabama, Louisiana, or Maybe Tennessee" I've Got You on My Mind Again Capitol Records ST 131 1968 A little travelling music please. Music behind the DJ: "Gomez" by Vic Mizzy

music starting writer alabama divine letter louisiana tiger piano buck albums orchestras tony bennett workin loretta lynn cole porter jim croce sammy davis buck owens spiritualized got you worry about mose allison india part record collector buckaroos altered images clare grogan great gonzo don rich 33rpm vic mizzy your old pal will

44. Jason Parfait

Beyond Tenor Talk

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2020 51:18

JASON PARFAIT was born in Houma, Louisiana. As a saxophone player, Jason Parfait was always surrounded by musicians in his family. Both parents were vocalists and his father was an avid guitar player. During his school age years, Jason was always involved with the school band and then at age 17 began his professional career, with his step-father, in the Bourre’ Band. This beginning led to his participation and recordings with Treater, Don Rich, Foret Tradition, and his involvement and contributions with over 60 albums. If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit dougstonejazz.com/podcast-1 You can join our mailing list and never miss out on the current happenings!Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please fill out the sponsor formDiscover Doug’s music: dougstonejazz.com/musicInstagram: instagram.com/dougstonejazzsaxophoneFacebook: facebook.com/dougstoneBoston Sax ShopKeep The Music Playing Grant

music performance jazz louisiana lsu musicians improvisation gigs tenor saxophone parfait reeds houma woodwinds treater don rich

7/28/20 Consequences of Tearing Down Capitalism

The Real Investment Show Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 29, 2020 11:21

After a preview of our podcast interview w Dr. Don Rich, CEO of Esoterica Capital, RIA Advisors Chief Investment Strategist Lance Roberts relates an encounter with a freshly-minted college graduate, and their discussion of MMT and Capitalism. -------- Articles mentioned in this podcast: -------- Get more info & commentary: SUBSCRIBE to The Real Investment Show here: -------- Register for the next Right Lane Retirement preparation class: Visit our Site: www.realinvestmentadvice.com Contact Us: 1-855-RIA-PLAN Connect with us on social:

ceo consequences register capitalism tearing down mmt don rich real investment show

Current State of U.S. Labor Market: Making Sense of May's Payroll Report

Rich Insights

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 10, 2020 10:42

The non-farm payroll report for May SIGNIFICANTLY surprised to the upside. Why was the consensus so wrong? What are the other labor market indicators saying? Today's daily Rich Insights, Dr. Don Rich attempts to answer these questions, and more importantly, assess the overall state of the U.S. labor market.

making sense current state payroll labor market market making don rich

Backbone Radio with Matt Dunn - April 26, 2020 - HR 2

Backbone Radio with Matt Dunn

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 26, 2020 41:14

The Lockdown Is Not Sustainable. As Governor Jared Polis prepares to reopen the state of Colorado, he endures a serious scolding from Jake Tapper this morning on CNN. We applaud Gov. Polis for seeking "sustainable" solutions to the crisis, as we ponder CNN's motivations for wanting to keep the American People in prison. Should Coloradans have to live by New York rules? We don't think so. Coronavirus is not a one-size-fits-all pandemic. The cure must not be worse than the disease. The time has come for the gradual reopening, especially as the curves have flattened and the models have dropped so dramatically. And besides, the people simply will not be accepting the shutdown too much longer. The rebellion is brewing. Meanwhile, we sense something has gone terribly wrong with today's Democratic Party. Why did Queen Pelosi hold the working class hostage for two full weeks of delaying PPP funding? Why is the Leftist MSM more on the side of the Chinese Communists in this current crisis? And why are Democrats so actively punishing African-American politicians -- such as Karen Whitsett and Vernon Jones -- for supporting President Trump? The Democratic mindset has moved from being merely unhealthy to being downright alarming. Let's not let them cheat their way to victory in 2020. Prayers for President Trump. Love's Gonna Live Here Again. Junior's Farm. With Listener Calls & Music via Dua Lipa, Buck Owens, Don Rich and Paul McCartney.

new york donald trump coronavirus prayer colorado african americans cnn democrats gov paul mccartney democratic party dua lipa ppp backbone polis american people jake tapper buck owens matt dunn don rich

Baird's Pierson: Worst of dislocation may be behind us, but massive uncertainty lies ahead

Money Life with Chuck Jaffe

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 14, 2020 61:21

Warren Pierson, deputy chief investment officer at the Baird Funds, said that while the worst dislocation of the viral economy is now starting to wind down, the uncertainty ahead will shape and potentially surprise the bond market, as credit downgrades, low interest rates and more play out for at least the rest of the year as a recovery struggles to to gain a foothold. Also on the show, Preston Caldwell from Morningstar Inc. discusses the firm's best, worst and current forecasts for the economic outcomes from the COVID-19 pandemic, Chuck answers an audience question about deciding which securities to sell in order to raise cash now, and Don Rich from the Esoterica NextG Economy ETF talks stocks in the Market Call.

covid-19 lies massive uncertainty pierson dislocation don rich morningstar inc

Flat River Band, Jingle Bells, Every Dog and Bruce Hilliard

Better Each Day Podcast Radio Show with Bruce Hilliard

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 28, 2019 25:21

One thing is apparent when you listen to The Flat River Band. The trio, comprised of siblings Andy, Dennijo, and Chad Sitze, love to have fun when they are playing music – and it shows. “We have a blast,” says Andy. I think that all bands, if they've been playing long enough with each other - they have a good time. Otherwise they wouldn't play together.” Andy recognizes it could be the family ties they enjoy. “I think we're able to dig each other to that point where well, maybe we've gone too far. But, at the same time, we know where that line is. It's enjoyable as long as everybody knows where the lines are at.” This bond has carried the success of the band throughout the years as the trio has opened for the Dixie Chicks’ Natalie Maines, Alison Krauss, Ricky Skaggs, Rhonda Vincent, TG Sheppard, among others. The brothers have also charted #1 hits on the bluegrass gospel charts as well as have had their songs featured in the 2018 movie “The Least of These — A Christmas Story” featuring Duane Allen (Oak Ridge Boys), Deborah Allen, and Tayla Lynn (Loretta Lynn’s granddaughter). That unabandoned joy and love of music comes to the forefront when you listen to the band’s new album, Every Dog Has Its Day. The trio’s fifth effort is one that the band is very excited to bring to the attention of its fans. “For this collection, we recorded seven songs that are all original,” reflected Dennijo. “We’re always excited about releasing new material, but I feel this collection is our best yet. Our vocals were recorded all at the same time, so we rehearsed pretty extensively. In the past, we always built around the lead vocalist. On Every Dog Has Its Day project, we all three sang at the same time, so if someone made a mistake, we’d have to start over. By doing this, we captured a vibe that we have never captured before.” Aaron McDaris who plays with Rhonda Vincent and the Rage was brought into play banjo, and much to the brothers’ surprise, he brought with him his 1934 Gibson RB-3 that was owned by Sonny Osborne who recorded the University of Tennessee’s theme song “Rocky Top” with that same banjo in 1967. One of Dennijo’s guitar superheroes, Johnny Hiland who is legally blind was brought in to play the electric guitar, while Stuart Duncan played fiddle. Those all-star names only add to the first—rate musicianship that fans have expected from The Flat River Band over the years. Again, Chad chalks that up to the undeniable bond between the three brothers that grew through a dozen years performing at Branson’s Silver Dollar City and five at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge. “Thank God, we've been able to really play together as brothers. A lot of times, you’ll see other bands, and you’ll see different members across the years. I think that with us, that togetherness comes from that bond of being brothers. We hope to be together for a long time. It's a special thing because I feel like sometimes when we play, we almost have an idea what the next person's going to do. What move he's going to make - whether it be on the guitar or where's he going to go with his vocals. It’s like Buck Owens and Don Rich. I think that extra bond, that helps. You know what I'm saying?” The fans of the Flat River Band know exactly what the band is saying with their music, and they will likely respond in positive fashion to the band’s new music. One track that Dennijo is particularly excited about is “Deal With The Devil,” which he thinks will strike a chord with listeners. “With the current place our country's in, we've all gotten politically correct. It seems like everything that I stand for as a Christian as a human-being and the way I was raised has almost become bad - God in school, prayer and guns. We shortened the title down to ‘Deal with the Devil,’ but the original title is ‘Uncle Sam's Deal with the Devil.’ I wrote this a couple years ago. We were in a place where you’ve got to stand for...

god university dogs devil tennessee band rage flat thank god uncle sam jingle bells dollywood rocky top deal with the devil alison krauss pigeon forge buck owens ricky skaggs every dog silver dollar city rhonda vincent stuart duncan tg sheppard deborah allen don rich johnny hiland bruce hilliard

Flat River Band, Jingle Bells, Every Dog and Bruce Hilliard

Better Each Day Podcast Radio Show with Bruce Hilliard

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 28, 2019 25:21

One thing is apparent when you listen to The Flat River Band. The trio, comprised of siblings Andy, Dennijo, and Chad Sitze, love to have fun when they are playing music – and it shows. “We have a blast,” says Andy. I think that all bands, if they've been playing long enough with each other - they have a good time. Otherwise they wouldn't play together.” Andy recognizes it could be the family ties they enjoy. “I think we're able to dig each other to that point where well, maybe we've gone too far. But, at the same time, we know where that line is. It's enjoyable as long as everybody knows where the lines are at.” This bond has carried the success of the band throughout the years as the trio has opened for the Dixie Chicks’ Natalie Maines, Alison Krauss, Ricky Skaggs, Rhonda Vincent, TG Sheppard, among others. The brothers have also charted #1 hits on the bluegrass gospel charts as well as have had their songs featured in the 2018 movie “The Least of These — A Christmas Story” featuring Duane Allen (Oak Ridge Boys), Deborah Allen, and Tayla Lynn (Loretta Lynn’s granddaughter). That unabandoned joy and love of music comes to the forefront when you listen to the band’s new album, Every Dog Has Its Day. The trio’s fifth effort is one that the band is very excited to bring to the attention of its fans. “For this collection, we recorded seven songs that are all original,” reflected Dennijo. “We’re always excited about releasing new material, but I feel this collection is our best yet. Our vocals were recorded all at the same time, so we rehearsed pretty extensively. In the past, we always built around the lead vocalist. On Every Dog Has Its Day project, we all three sang at the same time, so if someone made a mistake, we’d have to start over. By doing this, we captured a vibe that we have never captured before.” Aaron McDaris who plays with Rhonda Vincent and the Rage was brought into play banjo, and much to the brothers’ surprise, he brought with him his 1934 Gibson RB-3 that was owned by Sonny Osborne who recorded the University of Tennessee’s theme song “Rocky Top” with that same banjo in 1967. One of Dennijo’s guitar superheroes, Johnny Hiland who is legally blind was brought in to play the electric guitar, while Stuart Duncan played fiddle. Those all-star names only add to the first—rate musicianship that fans have expected from The Flat River Band over the years. Again, Chad chalks that up to the undeniable bond between the three brothers that grew through a dozen years performing at Branson’s Silver Dollar City and five at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge. “Thank God, we've been able to really play together as brothers. A lot of times, you’ll see other bands, and you’ll see different members across the years. I think that with us, that togetherness comes from that bond of being brothers. We hope to be together for a long time. It's a special thing because I feel like sometimes when we play, we almost have an idea what the next person's going to do. What move he's going to make - whether it be on the guitar or where's he going to go with his vocals. It’s like Buck Owens and Don Rich. I think that extra bond, that helps. You know what I'm saying?” The fans of the Flat River Band know exactly what the band is saying with their music, and they will likely respond in positive fashion to the band’s new music. One track that Dennijo is particularly excited about is “Deal With The Devil,” which he thinks will strike a chord with listeners. “With the current place our country's in, we've all gotten politically correct. It seems like everything that I stand for as a Christian as a human-being and the way I was raised has almost become bad - God in school, prayer and guns. We shortened the title down to ‘Deal with the Devil,’ but the original title is ‘Uncle Sam's Deal with the Devil.’ I wrote this a couple years ago. We were in a place where you’ve got to stand for...

god university dogs devil tennessee band rage flat thank god uncle sam jingle bells dollywood rocky top deal with the devil alison krauss pigeon forge buck owens ricky skaggs every dog silver dollar city rhonda vincent stuart duncan tg sheppard deborah allen don rich johnny hiland bruce hilliard

Episode 56: “Bye Bye Love” by the Everly Brothers

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 11, 2019

Episode fifty-six of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Bye Bye Love” by The Everly Brotherss, and at the history of country close harmony. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Short Fat Fannie” by Larry Williams. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. There are no first-rate biographies of the Everly Brothers in print, at least in English (apparently there’s a decent one in French, but I don’t speak French well enough for that). Ike’s Boys by Phyllis Karp is the only full-length bio, and I relied on that in the absence of anything else, but it’s been out of print for nearly thirty years, and is not worth the exorbitant price it goes for second-hand. How Nashville Became Music City by Michael Kosser has a good amount of information on the Bryants. The Everlypedia is a series of PDFs containing articles on anything related to the Everly Brothers, in alphabetical order. There are many, many cheap compilations of the Everly Brothers’ early material available. I’d recommend this one, because as well as all the hits up to 1962 it has the complete Songs our Daddy Taught Us. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript [Intro: Ike Everly introducing the Everly Brothers] We’ve talked before about how vocal harmonies are no longer a big part of rock music, but were essential to it in the fifties and sixties. But what we’ve not discussed is that there are multiple different types of harmony that we see in the music of that period. One, which we’ve already seen, is the vocal group sound — the sound of doo-wop. There, there might be a lead singer, but everyone involved has their own important role to play, singing separate backing vocal lines that intertwine. One singer will be taking a bass melody, another will be singing a falsetto line, and so on. It’s the sound of a collection of individual personalities, working together but to their own agendas. Another style which we’re going to look at soon is the girl group sound. There you have a lead singer singing a line on her own, and two or three backing vocalists echoing lines on the chorus — it’s the sound of a couple of friends providing support for someone who’s in trouble. The lead singer will sing her problems, and the friends will respond with something supportive. Then there’s the style which Elvis used — a single lead vocalist over a group of backing vocalists, mostly providing “oohs” and “aahs”. The backing vocals here just work as another instrumental texture. But there’s one style which would be as influential as any of these, and which was brought into rock and roll by a single act — a duo who, more than anyone else in rock music, epitomised vocal harmony: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Bye Bye Love”] Don and Phil Everly were brought up in music. Their father, Ike Everly, had been a coalminer in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, but decided to quit coal mining and become a professional musician when he was trapped in his second cave-in, deciding he wasn’t ever going to go through that a third time. He had learned a particular guitar style, which would later become known as “Travis picking” after its most famous exponent, Merle Travis — though Travis himself usually referred to it as “Muhlenberg picking”. Travis and Ike Everly knew each other, and it was Ike Everly, and Ike’s friend Mose Rager, who taught Travis how to play in that style, which they had learned from another friend, Kennedy Jones, who in turn learned it from a black country-blues player named Arnold Schultz, who had invented the style: [Excerpt, Ike Everly, “Blue Smoke”] Ike Everly was widely regarded as one of the greatest country guitarists of all time, and his “Ike Everly’s Rag” was later recorded by Merle Travis and Joe Maphis: [Excerpt: Merle Travis and Joe Maphis, “Ike Everly’s Rag”] But while Ike Everly was known as a country player, Don Everly would always later claim that deep down Ike was a blues man. He played country because that was what the audiences wanted to hear, but his first love was the blues. But even when playing country, he wasn’t just playing the kind of music that was becoming popular at the time, but he was also playing the old Appalachian folk songs, and teaching them to his sons. He would play songs like “Who’s Going to Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”, which was most famously recorded by Woody Guthrie: [Excerpt: Woody Guthrie, “Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”] The Everly family travelled all over the South and Midwest, moving between radio stations on which Ike Everly would get himself shows. As they grew old enough, his two sons, Don and Phil, would join him, as would his wife, though Margaret Everly was more of a manager than a performer. Don soon became good enough that he got his own fifteen-minute show, performing as “Little Donnie”, as well as performing with his family. The Everly family would perform their show live, first thing in the morning — they were playing country music and so they were supposed to be playing for the farmers, and their show began at 5AM, with the young boys heading off to school, still in the dark, after the show had finished. The radio show continued for many years, and the boys developed all sorts of tricks for keeping an audience entertained, which would stand them in good stead in future years. One thing they used to do was to have both brothers and their father play the same guitar simultaneously, with Phil fretting the bass notes, Ike Everly playing those notes, and Don playing lead on the top strings. I’ve not found a recording of them doing that together, but some footage does exist of them doing this with Tennessee Ernie Ford on his TV show — Ford, of course, being someone whose biggest hit had been written by Ike Everly’s old friend Merle Travis: [Excerpt: Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Everly Brothers, “Rattlesnake Daddy”] That kind of trick was fairly common among country acts at the time — Buck Owens and Don Rich would do pretty much the same act together in the 1960s, and like the Everlys would play fairly straightforward blues licks while doing it. But while Ike Everly was primarily an instrumentalist, his sons would become known mostly as singers. People often, incorrectly, describe the Everly Brothers as singing “bluegrass harmonies”. This is understandable, as bluegrass music comes from Kentucky, and does often have close harmonies in it. But the Everlys were actually singing in a style that was around for years before Bill Monroe started performing the music that would become known as bluegrass. There was a whole tradition of close harmony in country music that is usually dated back to the 1920s. The first people to really popularise it were a duo who were known as “Mac and Bob” — Lester McFarland and Robert Gardner. The two men met in Kentucky, at the Kentucky School for the Blind, where they were both studying music, in 1916. They started singing close harmony together in the early 1920s, and while they sang in the overly-enunciated way that was popular at the time, you can hear the roots of the Everlys’ style in their harmonies: [Excerpt: McFarland and Gardner, “That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine”] The style is known as “close harmony” because the singers are singing notes that are close to each other in the scale, and it was the foundation of country vocal harmonies. Usually in this style, there are two singers, singing about a third apart. The lower singer will sing the melody, while the higher singer will harmonise, following the melody line closely. This style of harmony was particularly suited to the vocal blend you can get from siblings, who tend to have extremely similar voices — and if done well it can sound like one voice harmonising with itself. And so from the 1930s on there were a lot of brother acts who performed this kind of music. One duo who the Everlys would often point to as a particular influence was the Bailes Brothers: [Excerpt: the Bailes Brothers, “Oh So Many Years”] But at the time the Everly Brothers were coming up, there was one duo, more than any other, who were immensely popular in the close harmony style — the Louvin Brothers: [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, “Midnight Special”] The Louvin Brothers, Charlie and Ira, were cousins of John D. Loudermilk, whose “Sittin’ in the Balcony” we heard in the Eddie Cochran episode a few weeks ago. They were country and gospel singers, who are nowadays probably sadly best known for the cover of their album “Satan is Real”, which often makes those Internet listicles about the most ridiculous album covers. But in the mid fifties, they were one of the most popular groups in country music, and influenced everyone — they were particular favourites of Elvis, and regular performers on the Grand Ole Opry. Their style was a model for the Everlys, but sadly so was their personal relationship. Ira and Charlie never got on, and would often get into fights on stage, and the same was true of the Everly Brothers. In 1970, Phil Everly said “We’ve only ever had one argument. It’s lasted twenty-five years”, and that argument would continue for the rest of their lives. There were various explanations offered for their enmity over the years, ranging from them vying to be their father’s favourite, to Don resenting Phil’s sweeter voice upstaging him — he was once quoted as saying “I’ve been a has-been since I was ten”. But fundamentally the two brothers were just too different in everything from temperament to politics — Don is a liberal Democrat, while Phil was a conservative Republican — and their views on how life should be lived. It seems most likely that two such different people resented being forced into constant proximity with each other, and reacted against it. And so the Everlys became another of those sibling rivalries that have recurred throughout rock and roll history. But despite their personal differences, they had a vocal blend that was possibly even better than that of the Louvins, if that’s possible. But talent on its own doesn’t necessarily bring success, and for a while it looked like the Everlys were going to be washed up before the brothers got out of their teens. While they had some success with their radio show, by 1955 there was much less of a market for live music on the radio — it was much cheaper for the radio stations to employ DJs to play records, now that the legal ban on broadcasting recordings had been lifted. The Everly family’s radio show ended, and both Ike and Margaret got jobs cutting hair, while encouraging their sons in their music career. After a few months of this, Margaret decided she was going to move the boys to Nashville, to try to get them a record deal, while Ike remained in nearby Knoxville working as a barber. While the family had not had much success in the music industry, they had made contacts with several people, and Chet Atkins, in particular, was an admirer, not only of Ike Everly’s guitar playing, but of his barbering skills as well — according to at least one account I’ve read, Atkins was a regular customer of Ike’s. Atkins seems to have been, at first, mostly interested in Don Everly as a songwriter and maybe a solo performer — he carried out some correspondence with Don while Don was still in school, and got Kitty Wells, one of the biggest country stars of the fifties, to record one of Don’s songs, “Thou Shalt Not Steal”, when Don was only sixteen: [Excerpt: Kitty Wells, “Thou Shalt Not Steal”] That became a top twenty country hit, and Don looked like he might be on his way to a successful career, especially after another of his songs, “Here We Are Again”, was recorded by Anita Carter of the famous Carter family: [Excerpt: Anita Carter, “Here We Are Again”] But Margaret Everly, the Everlys’ mother and the person who seemed to have the ambition that drove them, didn’t want Don to be a solo star — she wanted the two brothers to be equal in every way, and would make sure they wore the same clothes, had the same toys growing up, and so on. She took Don’s royalties from songwriting, and used them to get both brothers Musicians’ union cards — in the same way, when Don had had his own radio show, Margaret had made Don give Phil half of his five-dollar fee. So solo stardom was never going to be in Don Everly’s future. Margaret wanted the Everly Brothers to be a successful duo, and that was that. Chet Atkins was going to help *both* her sons. Atkins got them a deal with Columbia Records in 1956 for a single, “Keep A-Lovin’ Me”, written by Don: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Keep A-Lovin’ Me”] That record flopped, and the Everlys were later very dismissive of it — Phil said of the two songs on that single “they were stinko, boy! Really stinko!” Columbia weren’t interested in putting out anything else by the Everlys, and quickly dropped them. Part of the reason was that they were signed as a country act, but they already wanted to do more, and in particular to incorporate more influence from the rhythm and blues music they were listening to. Don worshipped Hank Williams, and Phil loved Lefty Frizzell, but they both also adored Bo Diddley, and were obsessed with his style. Don, in particular — who was the more accomplished instrumentalist of the two, and who unlike Phil would play rhythm guitar on their records — wanted to learn how Diddley played guitar, and would spend a lot of time with Chet Atkins, who taught him how to play in the open tunings Diddley used, and some of the rhythms he was playing with. Despite the brothers’ lack of success on Columbia, Atkins still had faith in them, and he got in touch with his friend Wesley Rose, who was the president of Acuff-Rose publishing, the biggest music publishing company in Nashville at the time. Rose made a deal with the brothers. If they would sign to Acuff-Rose as songwriters, and if they’d agree to record only Acuff-Rose songs, he would look after their career and get them a record deal. They agreed, and Rose got them signed to Cadence Records, a mid-sized indie label whose biggest star at the time was Andy Williams. The first single they recorded for Cadence was a song that had been rejected by thirty other artists before it was passed on to the Everlys as a last resort. “Bye Bye Love” was written by the husband and wife team Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, who had been writing for a decade, for people such as Carl Smith and Moon Mullican. Their first hit had come in 1948, with “Country Boy”, a song which Little Jimmy Dickens took to number seven on the country charts: [Excerpt: Little Jimmy Dickens, “Country Boy”] But they had not had much chart success after that, though they’d placed songs with various Nashville-based country singers. They were virtual unknowns, and their most recent song, “Bye Bye Love”, had been written for a duo called Johnny and Jack. They hadn’t been interested, so the Bryants had passed the song along to their friend Chet Atkins, who had tried to record it with Porter Wagoner, who had recorded other songs by the Bryants, like “Tryin’ to Forget the Blues”: [Excerpt: Porter Wagoner, “Tryin’ to Forget the Blues”] But when Atkins took the song into the studio, he decided it wasn’t strong enough for Wagoner. Atkins wanted to change a few chords, and Boudleaux Bryant told him that if the song wasn’t strong enough as it was, he just shouldn’t record it at all. But while the song might not have been strong enough for a big country star like Porter Wagoner, it was strong enough for Chet Atkins’ new proteges, who were, after all, hardly going to have a big hit. So Atkins took the multiply-rejected song in for the duo to record as their first single for Cadence. In one of those coincidences that seems too good to be true, Ike Everly was Boudleaux Bryant’s barber, and had been bragging to him for years about how talented his sons were, but Bryant had just dismissed this — around Nashville, everyone is a major talent, or their son or daughter or husband or wife is. Two things happened to change the rather mediocre song into a classic that would change the face of popular music. The first was, simply, the brothers’ harmonies. They had by this point developed an intuitive understanding of each other’s voices, and a superb musicality. It’s interesting to listen to the very first take of the song: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Bye Bye Love (take 1)”] That’s Don singing the low lead and Phil taking the high harmony. Now, if you’re familiar with the finished record, you can tell that what Phil’s singing there isn’t the closer harmony part he ended up singing on the final version. There are some note choices there that he decided against for the final record. But what you can tell is that they are instinctively great harmony singers. It’s not the harmony part that would become famous, but it’s a *good* one in its own right. The second thing is that they changed the song from the rather sedate country song the Bryants had come up with, radically rearranging it. Don had written a song called “Give Me a Future”, which he’d intended to be in the Bo Diddley style, and one can hear something of Diddley’s rhythm in the stop-start guitar part: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Give Me a Future”] Don took that guitar part, and attached it to the Bryants’ song, and with the help of Chet Atkins’ lead guitar fills turned it into something quite new — a record with a rockabilly feel, but with country close harmony vocals: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Bye Bye Love”] The brothers were, at first, worried because almost as soon as it came out, a cover version by Webb Pierce, one of the biggest names in country music, came out: [Excerpt: Webb Pierce, “Bye Bye Love”] But they were surprised to discover that while Pierce’s version did chart — reaching the top ten in the country charts — it was nowhere near as successful as their own version, which went to number one on the country charts and number two in pop, and charted on the R&B charts as well. After that success, the Bryants wrote a string of hits for the brothers, a run of classics starting with “Wake Up Little Suzie”, a song which was banned on many stations because it suggested impropriety — even though, listening to the lyrics, it very clearly states that no impropriety has gone on, and indeed that the protagonist is horrified at the suggestion that it might have: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Wake Up Little Suzie”] These records would usually incorporate some of Don’s Bo Diddley influence, while remaining firmly in the country end of rock and roll. The Bryants also started to give the brothers ballads like “Devoted to You” and “All I Have to Do is Dream”, which while they still deal with adolescent concerns, have a sweetness and melody to them quite unlike anything else that was being recorded by rock and roll artists of the time. After the first single, everything else that the Bryants wrote for the Everlys was tailored specifically to them — Boudleaux Bryant, who would attend more of the sessions, would have long conversations with the brothers and try to write songs that fit with their lives and musical tastes, as well as fitting them to their voices. One of the things that’s very noticeable about interviews with the brothers is that they both tend to credit Boudleaux alone with having written the songs that he co-wrote with his wife, even though everything suggests that the Bryants were a true partnership, and both have solo credits for songs that are stylistically indistinguishable from those written as a team. Whether this is pure sexism, or it’s just because Boudleaux is the one who used to demo the songs for them and so they think of him as the primary author, is hard to tell — probably a combination. This was also a perception that Boudleaux Bryant encouraged. While Felice was the person who had originally decided to go into songwriting, and was the one who came up with most of the ideas, Boudleaux was only interested in making money — and he’d often sneak off to write songs by himself so he would get all the money rather than have to share it with his wife. Boudleaux would also on occasion be given incomplete songs by friends like Atkins, and finish them up with Felice — but only Boudleaux and the original writer would get their names on it. The result was that Boudleaux got the credit from people around him, even when they knew better. One of my sources for this episode is an interview with the Bryants’ son, Dane, and at one point in that interview he says “Now, lots of times I will say, ‘My father.’ I mean Dad and Mom”. As the Everly brothers disagreed about almost everything, they of course disagreed about the quality of the material that the Bryants were bringing them. Phil Everly was always utterly unstinting in his praise of them, saying that the Bryants’ songs were some of the best songs ever written. Don, on the other hand, while he definitely appreciated material like “All I Have to Do is Dream”, wasn’t so keen on their writing in general, mostly because it dealt primarily with adolescent concerns. He thought that the material the brothers were writing for themselves — though still immature, as one would expect from people who were still in their teens at the start of their career — was aiming at a greater emotional maturity than the material the Bryants wrote. And on the evidence of their first album, that’s certainly true. The first album is, like many albums of the time, a patchy affair. It pulls together the hit singles the brothers had already released, together with a bunch of rather mediocre cover versions of then-current hits. Those cover versions tend to support Don’s repeated claims that the brothers were as interested in R&B and blues as in country — apart from a version of “Be-Bop-A-Lula”, all the covers are of R&B hits of the time — two by Little Richard, two by Ray Charles, and one by the relatively obscure blues singer Titus Turner. But among those songs, there are also a handful of Don Everly originals, and one in particular, “I Wonder if I Care as Much”, is quite an astonishing piece of songwriting: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “I Wonder If I Care As Much”] Don’s songs were often B-sides – that one was the B-side to “Bye Bye Love” – and to my mind they’re often rather more interesting than the A-sides. While that first album is rather patchy, the second album, Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, is a minor revelation, and one of the pillars on which the Everly Brothers’ artistic reputation rests. It’s been suggested that the album was done as a way of getting back at the record company for some slight or other, by making a record that was completely uncommercial. That might be the case, but I don’t think so — and if it was, it was a gesture that backfired magnificently, as it’s still, sixty years on, a consistent seller. Songs Our Daddy Taught Us is precisely what it sounds like — an album consisting of songs the brothers had been taught by their father. It’s a mixture of Appalachian folk songs and country standards, performed by the brothers accompanied just by Don’s acoustic guitar and Floyd Chance on upright bass: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”] It’s quite possibly the most artistically satisfying album made in the fifties by a rock and roll act, and it’s had such an influence that as recently as 2013 Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day and the jazz-pop singer Norah Jones recorded an album, Foreverly, that’s just a cover version of the whole album: [Excerpt: Billie Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones, “Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”] So as the 1950s drew to a close, the Everly Brothers were on top of the world. They’d had a run of classic singles, and they’d just released one of the greatest albums of all time. But there was trouble ahead, and when we pick up on their career again, we’ll see exactly how wrong things could go for them.

tv history english internet future real french boys nashville dad satan mom south kentucky blues republicans blind democrats mine midwest mac columbia elvis rock and roll bob dylan djs musicians elvis presley devoted gardner knoxville green day excerpt appalachian tom petty atkins george harrison ike ray charles mixcloud little richard pdfs rock music balcony rag grand ole opry roy orbison norah jones hank williams columbia records sittin midnight special andy williams bo diddley icare everly brothers tryin weavers jeff lynne country boy billie joe armstrong sam phillips wagoner bill monroe buck owens chet atkins loudermilk larry williams eddie cochran carl smith thou shalt not steal bob moore porter wagoner muhlenberg blue smoke louvin brothers kitty wells merle travis tennessee ernie ford all i have bryants bye bye love robert gardner lefty frizzell kentucky school phil everly diddley webb pierce monument records don rich everlys fred foster boudleaux bryant moon mullican john d loudermilk kennedy jones be bop a lula anita carter nashville a team that silver haired daddy

Episode 56: “Bye Bye Love” by the Everly Brothers

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 11, 2019

Episode fifty-six of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Bye Bye Love” by The Everly Brotherss, and at the history of country close harmony. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Short Fat Fannie” by Larry Williams. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. There are no first-rate biographies of the Everly Brothers in print, at least in English (apparently there’s a decent one in French, but I don’t speak French well enough for that). Ike’s Boys by Phyllis Karp is the only full-length bio, and I relied on that in the absence of anything else, but it’s been out of print for nearly thirty years, and is not worth the exorbitant price it goes for second-hand. How Nashville Became Music City by Michael Kosser has a good amount of information on the Bryants. The Everlypedia is a series of PDFs containing articles on anything related to the Everly Brothers, in alphabetical order. There are many, many cheap compilations of the Everly Brothers’ early material available. I’d recommend this one, because as well as all the hits up to 1962 it has the complete Songs our Daddy Taught Us. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript [Intro: Ike Everly introducing the Everly Brothers] We’ve talked before about how vocal harmonies are no longer a big part of rock music, but were essential to it in the fifties and sixties. But what we’ve not discussed is that there are multiple different types of harmony that we see in the music of that period. One, which we’ve already seen, is the vocal group sound — the sound of doo-wop. There, there might be a lead singer, but everyone involved has their own important role to play, singing separate backing vocal lines that intertwine. One singer will be taking a bass melody, another will be singing a falsetto line, and so on. It’s the sound of a collection of individual personalities, working together but to their own agendas. Another style which we’re going to look at soon is the girl group sound. There you have a lead singer singing a line on her own, and two or three backing vocalists echoing lines on the chorus — it’s the sound of a couple of friends providing support for someone who’s in trouble. The lead singer will sing her problems, and the friends will respond with something supportive. Then there’s the style which Elvis used — a single lead vocalist over a group of backing vocalists, mostly providing “oohs” and “aahs”. The backing vocals here just work as another instrumental texture. But there’s one style which would be as influential as any of these, and which was brought into rock and roll by a single act — a duo who, more than anyone else in rock music, epitomised vocal harmony: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Bye Bye Love”] Don and Phil Everly were brought up in music. Their father, Ike Everly, had been a coalminer in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, but decided to quit coal mining and become a professional musician when he was trapped in his second cave-in, deciding he wasn’t ever going to go through that a third time. He had learned a particular guitar style, which would later become known as “Travis picking” after its most famous exponent, Merle Travis — though Travis himself usually referred to it as “Muhlenberg picking”. Travis and Ike Everly knew each other, and it was Ike Everly, and Ike’s friend Mose Rager, who taught Travis how to play in that style, which they had learned from another friend, Kennedy Jones, who in turn learned it from a black country-blues player named Arnold Schultz, who had invented the style: [Excerpt, Ike Everly, “Blue Smoke”] Ike Everly was widely regarded as one of the greatest country guitarists of all time, and his “Ike Everly’s Rag” was later recorded by Merle Travis and Joe Maphis: [Excerpt: Merle Travis and Joe Maphis, “Ike Everly’s Rag”] But while Ike Everly was known as a country player, Don Everly would always later claim that deep down Ike was a blues man. He played country because that was what the audiences wanted to hear, but his first love was the blues. But even when playing country, he wasn’t just playing the kind of music that was becoming popular at the time, but he was also playing the old Appalachian folk songs, and teaching them to his sons. He would play songs like “Who’s Going to Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”, which was most famously recorded by Woody Guthrie: [Excerpt: Woody Guthrie, “Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”] The Everly family travelled all over the South and Midwest, moving between radio stations on which Ike Everly would get himself shows. As they grew old enough, his two sons, Don and Phil, would join him, as would his wife, though Margaret Everly was more of a manager than a performer. Don soon became good enough that he got his own fifteen-minute show, performing as “Little Donnie”, as well as performing with his family. The Everly family would perform their show live, first thing in the morning — they were playing country music and so they were supposed to be playing for the farmers, and their show began at 5AM, with the young boys heading off to school, still in the dark, after the show had finished. The radio show continued for many years, and the boys developed all sorts of tricks for keeping an audience entertained, which would stand them in good stead in future years. One thing they used to do was to have both brothers and their father play the same guitar simultaneously, with Phil fretting the bass notes, Ike Everly playing those notes, and Don playing lead on the top strings. I’ve not found a recording of them doing that together, but some footage does exist of them doing this with Tennessee Ernie Ford on his TV show — Ford, of course, being someone whose biggest hit had been written by Ike Everly’s old friend Merle Travis: [Excerpt: Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Everly Brothers, “Rattlesnake Daddy”] That kind of trick was fairly common among country acts at the time — Buck Owens and Don Rich would do pretty much the same act together in the 1960s, and like the Everlys would play fairly straightforward blues licks while doing it. But while Ike Everly was primarily an instrumentalist, his sons would become known mostly as singers. People often, incorrectly, describe the Everly Brothers as singing “bluegrass harmonies”. This is understandable, as bluegrass music comes from Kentucky, and does often have close harmonies in it. But the Everlys were actually singing in a style that was around for years before Bill Monroe started performing the music that would become known as bluegrass. There was a whole tradition of close harmony in country music that is usually dated back to the 1920s. The first people to really popularise it were a duo who were known as “Mac and Bob” — Lester McFarland and Robert Gardner. The two men met in Kentucky, at the Kentucky School for the Blind, where they were both studying music, in 1916. They started singing close harmony together in the early 1920s, and while they sang in the overly-enunciated way that was popular at the time, you can hear the roots of the Everlys’ style in their harmonies: [Excerpt: McFarland and Gardner, “That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine”] The style is known as “close harmony” because the singers are singing notes that are close to each other in the scale, and it was the foundation of country vocal harmonies. Usually in this style, there are two singers, singing about a third apart. The lower singer will sing the melody, while the higher singer will harmonise, following the melody line closely. This style of harmony was particularly suited to the vocal blend you can get from siblings, who tend to have extremely similar voices — and if done well it can sound like one voice harmonising with itself. And so from the 1930s on there were a lot of brother acts who performed this kind of music. One duo who the Everlys would often point to as a particular influence was the Bailes Brothers: [Excerpt: the Bailes Brothers, “Oh So Many Years”] But at the time the Everly Brothers were coming up, there was one duo, more than any other, who were immensely popular in the close harmony style — the Louvin Brothers: [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, “Midnight Special”] The Louvin Brothers, Charlie and Ira, were cousins of John D. Loudermilk, whose “Sittin’ in the Balcony” we heard in the Eddie Cochran episode a few weeks ago. They were country and gospel singers, who are nowadays probably sadly best known for the cover of their album “Satan is Real”, which often makes those Internet listicles about the most ridiculous album covers. But in the mid fifties, they were one of the most popular groups in country music, and influenced everyone — they were particular favourites of Elvis, and regular performers on the Grand Ole Opry. Their style was a model for the Everlys, but sadly so was their personal relationship. Ira and Charlie never got on, and would often get into fights on stage, and the same was true of the Everly Brothers. In 1970, Phil Everly said “We’ve only ever had one argument. It’s lasted twenty-five years”, and that argument would continue for the rest of their lives. There were various explanations offered for their enmity over the years, ranging from them vying to be their father’s favourite, to Don resenting Phil’s sweeter voice upstaging him — he was once quoted as saying “I’ve been a has-been since I was ten”. But fundamentally the two brothers were just too different in everything from temperament to politics — Don is a liberal Democrat, while Phil was a conservative Republican — and their views on how life should be lived. It seems most likely that two such different people resented being forced into constant proximity with each other, and reacted against it. And so the Everlys became another of those sibling rivalries that have recurred throughout rock and roll history. But despite their personal differences, they had a vocal blend that was possibly even better than that of the Louvins, if that’s possible. But talent on its own doesn’t necessarily bring success, and for a while it looked like the Everlys were going to be washed up before the brothers got out of their teens. While they had some success with their radio show, by 1955 there was much less of a market for live music on the radio — it was much cheaper for the radio stations to employ DJs to play records, now that the legal ban on broadcasting recordings had been lifted. The Everly family’s radio show ended, and both Ike and Margaret got jobs cutting hair, while encouraging their sons in their music career. After a few months of this, Margaret decided she was going to move the boys to Nashville, to try to get them a record deal, while Ike remained in nearby Knoxville working as a barber. While the family had not had much success in the music industry, they had made contacts with several people, and Chet Atkins, in particular, was an admirer, not only of Ike Everly’s guitar playing, but of his barbering skills as well — according to at least one account I’ve read, Atkins was a regular customer of Ike’s. Atkins seems to have been, at first, mostly interested in Don Everly as a songwriter and maybe a solo performer — he carried out some correspondence with Don while Don was still in school, and got Kitty Wells, one of the biggest country stars of the fifties, to record one of Don’s songs, “Thou Shalt Not Steal”, when Don was only sixteen: [Excerpt: Kitty Wells, “Thou Shalt Not Steal”] That became a top twenty country hit, and Don looked like he might be on his way to a successful career, especially after another of his songs, “Here We Are Again”, was recorded by Anita Carter of the famous Carter family: [Excerpt: Anita Carter, “Here We Are Again”] But Margaret Everly, the Everlys’ mother and the person who seemed to have the ambition that drove them, didn’t want Don to be a solo star — she wanted the two brothers to be equal in every way, and would make sure they wore the same clothes, had the same toys growing up, and so on. She took Don’s royalties from songwriting, and used them to get both brothers Musicians’ union cards — in the same way, when Don had had his own radio show, Margaret had made Don give Phil half of his five-dollar fee. So solo stardom was never going to be in Don Everly’s future. Margaret wanted the Everly Brothers to be a successful duo, and that was that. Chet Atkins was going to help *both* her sons. Atkins got them a deal with Columbia Records in 1956 for a single, “Keep A-Lovin’ Me”, written by Don: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Keep A-Lovin’ Me”] That record flopped, and the Everlys were later very dismissive of it — Phil said of the two songs on that single “they were stinko, boy! Really stinko!” Columbia weren’t interested in putting out anything else by the Everlys, and quickly dropped them. Part of the reason was that they were signed as a country act, but they already wanted to do more, and in particular to incorporate more influence from the rhythm and blues music they were listening to. Don worshipped Hank Williams, and Phil loved Lefty Frizzell, but they both also adored Bo Diddley, and were obsessed with his style. Don, in particular — who was the more accomplished instrumentalist of the two, and who unlike Phil would play rhythm guitar on their records — wanted to learn how Diddley played guitar, and would spend a lot of time with Chet Atkins, who taught him how to play in the open tunings Diddley used, and some of the rhythms he was playing with. Despite the brothers’ lack of success on Columbia, Atkins still had faith in them, and he got in touch with his friend Wesley Rose, who was the president of Acuff-Rose publishing, the biggest music publishing company in Nashville at the time. Rose made a deal with the brothers. If they would sign to Acuff-Rose as songwriters, and if they’d agree to record only Acuff-Rose songs, he would look after their career and get them a record deal. They agreed, and Rose got them signed to Cadence Records, a mid-sized indie label whose biggest star at the time was Andy Williams. The first single they recorded for Cadence was a song that had been rejected by thirty other artists before it was passed on to the Everlys as a last resort. “Bye Bye Love” was written by the husband and wife team Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, who had been writing for a decade, for people such as Carl Smith and Moon Mullican. Their first hit had come in 1948, with “Country Boy”, a song which Little Jimmy Dickens took to number seven on the country charts: [Excerpt: Little Jimmy Dickens, “Country Boy”] But they had not had much chart success after that, though they’d placed songs with various Nashville-based country singers. They were virtual unknowns, and their most recent song, “Bye Bye Love”, had been written for a duo called Johnny and Jack. They hadn’t been interested, so the Bryants had passed the song along to their friend Chet Atkins, who had tried to record it with Porter Wagoner, who had recorded other songs by the Bryants, like “Tryin’ to Forget the Blues”: [Excerpt: Porter Wagoner, “Tryin’ to Forget the Blues”] But when Atkins took the song into the studio, he decided it wasn’t strong enough for Wagoner. Atkins wanted to change a few chords, and Boudleaux Bryant told him that if the song wasn’t strong enough as it was, he just shouldn’t record it at all. But while the song might not have been strong enough for a big country star like Porter Wagoner, it was strong enough for Chet Atkins’ new proteges, who were, after all, hardly going to have a big hit. So Atkins took the multiply-rejected song in for the duo to record as their first single for Cadence. In one of those coincidences that seems too good to be true, Ike Everly was Boudleaux Bryant’s barber, and had been bragging to him for years about how talented his sons were, but Bryant had just dismissed this — around Nashville, everyone is a major talent, or their son or daughter or husband or wife is. Two things happened to change the rather mediocre song into a classic that would change the face of popular music. The first was, simply, the brothers’ harmonies. They had by this point developed an intuitive understanding of each other’s voices, and a superb musicality. It’s interesting to listen to the very first take of the song: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Bye Bye Love (take 1)”] That’s Don singing the low lead and Phil taking the high harmony. Now, if you’re familiar with the finished record, you can tell that what Phil’s singing there isn’t the closer harmony part he ended up singing on the final version. There are some note choices there that he decided against for the final record. But what you can tell is that they are instinctively great harmony singers. It’s not the harmony part that would become famous, but it’s a *good* one in its own right. The second thing is that they changed the song from the rather sedate country song the Bryants had come up with, radically rearranging it. Don had written a song called “Give Me a Future”, which he’d intended to be in the Bo Diddley style, and one can hear something of Diddley’s rhythm in the stop-start guitar part: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Give Me a Future”] Don took that guitar part, and attached it to the Bryants’ song, and with the help of Chet Atkins’ lead guitar fills turned it into something quite new — a record with a rockabilly feel, but with country close harmony vocals: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Bye Bye Love”] The brothers were, at first, worried because almost as soon as it came out, a cover version by Webb Pierce, one of the biggest names in country music, came out: [Excerpt: Webb Pierce, “Bye Bye Love”] But they were surprised to discover that while Pierce’s version did chart — reaching the top ten in the country charts — it was nowhere near as successful as their own version, which went to number one on the country charts and number two in pop, and charted on the R&B charts as well. After that success, the Bryants wrote a string of hits for the brothers, a run of classics starting with “Wake Up Little Suzie”, a song which was banned on many stations because it suggested impropriety — even though, listening to the lyrics, it very clearly states that no impropriety has gone on, and indeed that the protagonist is horrified at the suggestion that it might have: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Wake Up Little Suzie”] These records would usually incorporate some of Don’s Bo Diddley influence, while remaining firmly in the country end of rock and roll. The Bryants also started to give the brothers ballads like “Devoted to You” and “All I Have to Do is Dream”, which while they still deal with adolescent concerns, have a sweetness and melody to them quite unlike anything else that was being recorded by rock and roll artists of the time. After the first single, everything else that the Bryants wrote for the Everlys was tailored specifically to them — Boudleaux Bryant, who would attend more of the sessions, would have long conversations with the brothers and try to write songs that fit with their lives and musical tastes, as well as fitting them to their voices. One of the things that’s very noticeable about interviews with the brothers is that they both tend to credit Boudleaux alone with having written the songs that he co-wrote with his wife, even though everything suggests that the Bryants were a true partnership, and both have solo credits for songs that are stylistically indistinguishable from those written as a team. Whether this is pure sexism, or it’s just because Boudleaux is the one who used to demo the songs for them and so they think of him as the primary author, is hard to tell — probably a combination. This was also a perception that Boudleaux Bryant encouraged. While Felice was the person who had originally decided to go into songwriting, and was the one who came up with most of the ideas, Boudleaux was only interested in making money — and he’d often sneak off to write songs by himself so he would get all the money rather than have to share it with his wife. Boudleaux would also on occasion be given incomplete songs by friends like Atkins, and finish them up with Felice — but only Boudleaux and the original writer would get their names on it. The result was that Boudleaux got the credit from people around him, even when they knew better. One of my sources for this episode is an interview with the Bryants’ son, Dane, and at one point in that interview he says “Now, lots of times I will say, ‘My father.’ I mean Dad and Mom”. As the Everly brothers disagreed about almost everything, they of course disagreed about the quality of the material that the Bryants were bringing them. Phil Everly was always utterly unstinting in his praise of them, saying that the Bryants’ songs were some of the best songs ever written. Don, on the other hand, while he definitely appreciated material like “All I Have to Do is Dream”, wasn’t so keen on their writing in general, mostly because it dealt primarily with adolescent concerns. He thought that the material the brothers were writing for themselves — though still immature, as one would expect from people who were still in their teens at the start of their career — was aiming at a greater emotional maturity than the material the Bryants wrote. And on the evidence of their first album, that’s certainly true. The first album is, like many albums of the time, a patchy affair. It pulls together the hit singles the brothers had already released, together with a bunch of rather mediocre cover versions of then-current hits. Those cover versions tend to support Don’s repeated claims that the brothers were as interested in R&B and blues as in country — apart from a version of “Be-Bop-A-Lula”, all the covers are of R&B hits of the time — two by Little Richard, two by Ray Charles, and one by the relatively obscure blues singer Titus Turner. But among those songs, there are also a handful of Don Everly originals, and one in particular, “I Wonder if I Care as Much”, is quite an astonishing piece of songwriting: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “I Wonder If I Care As Much”] Don’s songs were often B-sides – that one was the B-side to “Bye Bye Love” – and to my mind they’re often rather more interesting than the A-sides. While that first album is rather patchy, the second album, Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, is a minor revelation, and one of the pillars on which the Everly Brothers’ artistic reputation rests. It’s been suggested that the album was done as a way of getting back at the record company for some slight or other, by making a record that was completely uncommercial. That might be the case, but I don’t think so — and if it was, it was a gesture that backfired magnificently, as it’s still, sixty years on, a consistent seller. Songs Our Daddy Taught Us is precisely what it sounds like — an album consisting of songs the brothers had been taught by their father. It’s a mixture of Appalachian folk songs and country standards, performed by the brothers accompanied just by Don’s acoustic guitar and Floyd Chance on upright bass: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”] It’s quite possibly the most artistically satisfying album made in the fifties by a rock and roll act, and it’s had such an influence that as recently as 2013 Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day and the jazz-pop singer Norah Jones recorded an album, Foreverly, that’s just a cover version of the whole album: [Excerpt: Billie Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones, “Who’s Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”] So as the 1950s drew to a close, the Everly Brothers were on top of the world. They’d had a run of classic singles, and they’d just released one of the greatest albums of all time. But there was trouble ahead, and when we pick up on their career again, we’ll see exactly how wrong things could go for them.

tv history english internet future real french boys nashville dad satan mom south kentucky blues republicans blind democrats mine midwest mac columbia elvis rock and roll djs musicians devoted gardner knoxville green day excerpt appalachian atkins ike ray charles mixcloud little richard pdfs rock music balcony rag grand ole opry norah jones hank williams columbia records sittin midnight special andy williams bo diddley icare everly brothers tryin country boy billie joe armstrong wagoner bill monroe buck owens loudermilk chet atkins larry williams eddie cochran carl smith thou shalt not steal porter wagoner muhlenberg blue smoke louvin brothers merle travis kitty wells tennessee ernie ford all i have bryants bye bye love robert gardner lefty frizzell kentucky school phil everly diddley webb pierce don rich everlys moon mullican boudleaux bryant john d loudermilk kennedy jones anita carter that silver haired daddy

Episode 56: "Bye Bye Love" by the Everly Brothers

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 11, 2019 36:36

Episode fifty-six of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Bye Bye Love" by The Everly Brotherss, and at the history of country close harmony. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Short Fat Fannie" by Larry Williams. ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. There are no first-rate biographies of the Everly Brothers in print, at least in English (apparently there's a decent one in French, but I don't speak French well enough for that). Ike's Boys by Phyllis Karp is the only full-length bio, and I relied on that in the absence of anything else, but it's been out of print for nearly thirty years, and is not worth the exorbitant price it goes for second-hand. How Nashville Became Music City by Michael Kosser has a good amount of information on the Bryants. The Everlypedia is a series of PDFs containing articles on anything related to the Everly Brothers, in alphabetical order. There are many, many cheap compilations of the Everly Brothers' early material available. I'd recommend this one, because as well as all the hits up to 1962 it has the complete Songs our Daddy Taught Us. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript [Intro: Ike Everly introducing the Everly Brothers] We've talked before about how vocal harmonies are no longer a big part of rock music, but were essential to it in the fifties and sixties. But what we've not discussed is that there are multiple different types of harmony that we see in the music of that period. One, which we've already seen, is the vocal group sound -- the sound of doo-wop. There, there might be a lead singer, but everyone involved has their own important role to play, singing separate backing vocal lines that intertwine. One singer will be taking a bass melody, another will be singing a falsetto line, and so on. It's the sound of a collection of individual personalities, working together but to their own agendas. Another style which we're going to look at soon is the girl group sound. There you have a lead singer singing a line on her own, and two or three backing vocalists echoing lines on the chorus -- it's the sound of a couple of friends providing support for someone who's in trouble. The lead singer will sing her problems, and the friends will respond with something supportive. Then there's the style which Elvis used -- a single lead vocalist over a group of backing vocalists, mostly providing "oohs" and "aahs". The backing vocals here just work as another instrumental texture. But there's one style which would be as influential as any of these, and which was brought into rock and roll by a single act -- a duo who, more than anyone else in rock music, epitomised vocal harmony: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Bye Bye Love"] Don and Phil Everly were brought up in music. Their father, Ike Everly, had been a coalminer in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, but decided to quit coal mining and become a professional musician when he was trapped in his second cave-in, deciding he wasn't ever going to go through that a third time. He had learned a particular guitar style, which would later become known as "Travis picking" after its most famous exponent, Merle Travis -- though Travis himself usually referred to it as "Muhlenberg picking". Travis and Ike Everly knew each other, and it was Ike Everly, and Ike's friend Mose Rager, who taught Travis how to play in that style, which they had learned from another friend, Kennedy Jones, who in turn learned it from a black country-blues player named Arnold Schultz, who had invented the style: [Excerpt, Ike Everly, "Blue Smoke"] Ike Everly was widely regarded as one of the greatest country guitarists of all time, and his "Ike Everly's Rag" was later recorded by Merle Travis and Joe Maphis: [Excerpt: Merle Travis and Joe Maphis, "Ike Everly's Rag"] But while Ike Everly was known as a country player, Don Everly would always later claim that deep down Ike was a blues man. He played country because that was what the audiences wanted to hear, but his first love was the blues. But even when playing country, he wasn't just playing the kind of music that was becoming popular at the time, but he was also playing the old Appalachian folk songs, and teaching them to his sons. He would play songs like "Who's Going to Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?", which was most famously recorded by Woody Guthrie: [Excerpt: Woody Guthrie, "Who's Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?"] The Everly family travelled all over the South and Midwest, moving between radio stations on which Ike Everly would get himself shows. As they grew old enough, his two sons, Don and Phil, would join him, as would his wife, though Margaret Everly was more of a manager than a performer. Don soon became good enough that he got his own fifteen-minute show, performing as "Little Donnie", as well as performing with his family. The Everly family would perform their show live, first thing in the morning -- they were playing country music and so they were supposed to be playing for the farmers, and their show began at 5AM, with the young boys heading off to school, still in the dark, after the show had finished. The radio show continued for many years, and the boys developed all sorts of tricks for keeping an audience entertained, which would stand them in good stead in future years. One thing they used to do was to have both brothers and their father play the same guitar simultaneously, with Phil fretting the bass notes, Ike Everly playing those notes, and Don playing lead on the top strings. I've not found a recording of them doing that together, but some footage does exist of them doing this with Tennessee Ernie Ford on his TV show -- Ford, of course, being someone whose biggest hit had been written by Ike Everly's old friend Merle Travis: [Excerpt: Tennessee Ernie Ford and the Everly Brothers, "Rattlesnake Daddy"] That kind of trick was fairly common among country acts at the time -- Buck Owens and Don Rich would do pretty much the same act together in the 1960s, and like the Everlys would play fairly straightforward blues licks while doing it. But while Ike Everly was primarily an instrumentalist, his sons would become known mostly as singers. People often, incorrectly, describe the Everly Brothers as singing "bluegrass harmonies". This is understandable, as bluegrass music comes from Kentucky, and does often have close harmonies in it. But the Everlys were actually singing in a style that was around for years before Bill Monroe started performing the music that would become known as bluegrass. There was a whole tradition of close harmony in country music that is usually dated back to the 1920s. The first people to really popularise it were a duo who were known as "Mac and Bob" -- Lester McFarland and Robert Gardner. The two men met in Kentucky, at the Kentucky School for the Blind, where they were both studying music, in 1916. They started singing close harmony together in the early 1920s, and while they sang in the overly-enunciated way that was popular at the time, you can hear the roots of the Everlys' style in their harmonies: [Excerpt: McFarland and Gardner, "That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine"] The style is known as "close harmony" because the singers are singing notes that are close to each other in the scale, and it was the foundation of country vocal harmonies. Usually in this style, there are two singers, singing about a third apart. The lower singer will sing the melody, while the higher singer will harmonise, following the melody line closely. This style of harmony was particularly suited to the vocal blend you can get from siblings, who tend to have extremely similar voices -- and if done well it can sound like one voice harmonising with itself. And so from the 1930s on there were a lot of brother acts who performed this kind of music. One duo who the Everlys would often point to as a particular influence was the Bailes Brothers: [Excerpt: the Bailes Brothers, "Oh So Many Years"] But at the time the Everly Brothers were coming up, there was one duo, more than any other, who were immensely popular in the close harmony style -- the Louvin Brothers: [Excerpt: The Louvin Brothers, "Midnight Special"] The Louvin Brothers, Charlie and Ira, were cousins of John D. Loudermilk, whose "Sittin' in the Balcony" we heard in the Eddie Cochran episode a few weeks ago. They were country and gospel singers, who are nowadays probably sadly best known for the cover of their album "Satan is Real", which often makes those Internet listicles about the most ridiculous album covers. But in the mid fifties, they were one of the most popular groups in country music, and influenced everyone -- they were particular favourites of Elvis, and regular performers on the Grand Ole Opry. Their style was a model for the Everlys, but sadly so was their personal relationship. Ira and Charlie never got on, and would often get into fights on stage, and the same was true of the Everly Brothers. In 1970, Phil Everly said "We've only ever had one argument. It's lasted twenty-five years", and that argument would continue for the rest of their lives. There were various explanations offered for their enmity over the years, ranging from them vying to be their father's favourite, to Don resenting Phil's sweeter voice upstaging him -- he was once quoted as saying "I've been a has-been since I was ten". But fundamentally the two brothers were just too different in everything from temperament to politics -- Don is a liberal Democrat, while Phil was a conservative Republican -- and their views on how life should be lived. It seems most likely that two such different people resented being forced into constant proximity with each other, and reacted against it. And so the Everlys became another of those sibling rivalries that have recurred throughout rock and roll history. But despite their personal differences, they had a vocal blend that was possibly even better than that of the Louvins, if that's possible. But talent on its own doesn't necessarily bring success, and for a while it looked like the Everlys were going to be washed up before the brothers got out of their teens. While they had some success with their radio show, by 1955 there was much less of a market for live music on the radio -- it was much cheaper for the radio stations to employ DJs to play records, now that the legal ban on broadcasting recordings had been lifted. The Everly family's radio show ended, and both Ike and Margaret got jobs cutting hair, while encouraging their sons in their music career. After a few months of this, Margaret decided she was going to move the boys to Nashville, to try to get them a record deal, while Ike remained in nearby Knoxville working as a barber. While the family had not had much success in the music industry, they had made contacts with several people, and Chet Atkins, in particular, was an admirer, not only of Ike Everly's guitar playing, but of his barbering skills as well -- according to at least one account I've read, Atkins was a regular customer of Ike's. Atkins seems to have been, at first, mostly interested in Don Everly as a songwriter and maybe a solo performer -- he carried out some correspondence with Don while Don was still in school, and got Kitty Wells, one of the biggest country stars of the fifties, to record one of Don's songs, "Thou Shalt Not Steal", when Don was only sixteen: [Excerpt: Kitty Wells, "Thou Shalt Not Steal"] That became a top twenty country hit, and Don looked like he might be on his way to a successful career, especially after another of his songs, "Here We Are Again", was recorded by Anita Carter of the famous Carter family: [Excerpt: Anita Carter, "Here We Are Again"] But Margaret Everly, the Everlys' mother and the person who seemed to have the ambition that drove them, didn't want Don to be a solo star -- she wanted the two brothers to be equal in every way, and would make sure they wore the same clothes, had the same toys growing up, and so on. She took Don's royalties from songwriting, and used them to get both brothers Musicians' union cards -- in the same way, when Don had had his own radio show, Margaret had made Don give Phil half of his five-dollar fee. So solo stardom was never going to be in Don Everly's future. Margaret wanted the Everly Brothers to be a successful duo, and that was that. Chet Atkins was going to help *both* her sons. Atkins got them a deal with Columbia Records in 1956 for a single, "Keep A-Lovin' Me", written by Don: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Keep A-Lovin' Me"] That record flopped, and the Everlys were later very dismissive of it -- Phil said of the two songs on that single "they were stinko, boy! Really stinko!" Columbia weren't interested in putting out anything else by the Everlys, and quickly dropped them. Part of the reason was that they were signed as a country act, but they already wanted to do more, and in particular to incorporate more influence from the rhythm and blues music they were listening to. Don worshipped Hank Williams, and Phil loved Lefty Frizzell, but they both also adored Bo Diddley, and were obsessed with his style. Don, in particular -- who was the more accomplished instrumentalist of the two, and who unlike Phil would play rhythm guitar on their records -- wanted to learn how Diddley played guitar, and would spend a lot of time with Chet Atkins, who taught him how to play in the open tunings Diddley used, and some of the rhythms he was playing with. Despite the brothers' lack of success on Columbia, Atkins still had faith in them, and he got in touch with his friend Wesley Rose, who was the president of Acuff-Rose publishing, the biggest music publishing company in Nashville at the time. Rose made a deal with the brothers. If they would sign to Acuff-Rose as songwriters, and if they'd agree to record only Acuff-Rose songs, he would look after their career and get them a record deal. They agreed, and Rose got them signed to Cadence Records, a mid-sized indie label whose biggest star at the time was Andy Williams. The first single they recorded for Cadence was a song that had been rejected by thirty other artists before it was passed on to the Everlys as a last resort. "Bye Bye Love" was written by the husband and wife team Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, who had been writing for a decade, for people such as Carl Smith and Moon Mullican. Their first hit had come in 1948, with "Country Boy", a song which Little Jimmy Dickens took to number seven on the country charts: [Excerpt: Little Jimmy Dickens, "Country Boy"] But they had not had much chart success after that, though they'd placed songs with various Nashville-based country singers. They were virtual unknowns, and their most recent song, "Bye Bye Love", had been written for a duo called Johnny and Jack. They hadn't been interested, so the Bryants had passed the song along to their friend Chet Atkins, who had tried to record it with Porter Wagoner, who had recorded other songs by the Bryants, like "Tryin' to Forget the Blues": [Excerpt: Porter Wagoner, "Tryin' to Forget the Blues"] But when Atkins took the song into the studio, he decided it wasn't strong enough for Wagoner. Atkins wanted to change a few chords, and Boudleaux Bryant told him that if the song wasn't strong enough as it was, he just shouldn't record it at all. But while the song might not have been strong enough for a big country star like Porter Wagoner, it was strong enough for Chet Atkins' new proteges, who were, after all, hardly going to have a big hit. So Atkins took the multiply-rejected song in for the duo to record as their first single for Cadence. In one of those coincidences that seems too good to be true, Ike Everly was Boudleaux Bryant's barber, and had been bragging to him for years about how talented his sons were, but Bryant had just dismissed this -- around Nashville, everyone is a major talent, or their son or daughter or husband or wife is. Two things happened to change the rather mediocre song into a classic that would change the face of popular music. The first was, simply, the brothers' harmonies. They had by this point developed an intuitive understanding of each other's voices, and a superb musicality. It's interesting to listen to the very first take of the song: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Bye Bye Love (take 1)"] That's Don singing the low lead and Phil taking the high harmony. Now, if you're familiar with the finished record, you can tell that what Phil's singing there isn't the closer harmony part he ended up singing on the final version. There are some note choices there that he decided against for the final record. But what you can tell is that they are instinctively great harmony singers. It's not the harmony part that would become famous, but it's a *good* one in its own right. The second thing is that they changed the song from the rather sedate country song the Bryants had come up with, radically rearranging it. Don had written a song called "Give Me a Future", which he'd intended to be in the Bo Diddley style, and one can hear something of Diddley's rhythm in the stop-start guitar part: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Give Me a Future"] Don took that guitar part, and attached it to the Bryants' song, and with the help of Chet Atkins' lead guitar fills turned it into something quite new -- a record with a rockabilly feel, but with country close harmony vocals: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Bye Bye Love"] The brothers were, at first, worried because almost as soon as it came out, a cover version by Webb Pierce, one of the biggest names in country music, came out: [Excerpt: Webb Pierce, "Bye Bye Love"] But they were surprised to discover that while Pierce's version did chart -- reaching the top ten in the country charts -- it was nowhere near as successful as their own version, which went to number one on the country charts and number two in pop, and charted on the R&B charts as well. After that success, the Bryants wrote a string of hits for the brothers, a run of classics starting with "Wake Up Little Suzie", a song which was banned on many stations because it suggested impropriety -- even though, listening to the lyrics, it very clearly states that no impropriety has gone on, and indeed that the protagonist is horrified at the suggestion that it might have: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Wake Up Little Suzie"] These records would usually incorporate some of Don's Bo Diddley influence, while remaining firmly in the country end of rock and roll. The Bryants also started to give the brothers ballads like "Devoted to You" and "All I Have to Do is Dream", which while they still deal with adolescent concerns, have a sweetness and melody to them quite unlike anything else that was being recorded by rock and roll artists of the time. After the first single, everything else that the Bryants wrote for the Everlys was tailored specifically to them -- Boudleaux Bryant, who would attend more of the sessions, would have long conversations with the brothers and try to write songs that fit with their lives and musical tastes, as well as fitting them to their voices. One of the things that's very noticeable about interviews with the brothers is that they both tend to credit Boudleaux alone with having written the songs that he co-wrote with his wife, even though everything suggests that the Bryants were a true partnership, and both have solo credits for songs that are stylistically indistinguishable from those written as a team. Whether this is pure sexism, or it's just because Boudleaux is the one who used to demo the songs for them and so they think of him as the primary author, is hard to tell -- probably a combination. This was also a perception that Boudleaux Bryant encouraged. While Felice was the person who had originally decided to go into songwriting, and was the one who came up with most of the ideas, Boudleaux was only interested in making money -- and he'd often sneak off to write songs by himself so he would get all the money rather than have to share it with his wife. Boudleaux would also on occasion be given incomplete songs by friends like Atkins, and finish them up with Felice -- but only Boudleaux and the original writer would get their names on it. The result was that Boudleaux got the credit from people around him, even when they knew better. One of my sources for this episode is an interview with the Bryants' son, Dane, and at one point in that interview he says "Now, lots of times I will say, 'My father.' I mean Dad and Mom". As the Everly brothers disagreed about almost everything, they of course disagreed about the quality of the material that the Bryants were bringing them. Phil Everly was always utterly unstinting in his praise of them, saying that the Bryants' songs were some of the best songs ever written. Don, on the other hand, while he definitely appreciated material like "All I Have to Do is Dream", wasn't so keen on their writing in general, mostly because it dealt primarily with adolescent concerns. He thought that the material the brothers were writing for themselves -- though still immature, as one would expect from people who were still in their teens at the start of their career -- was aiming at a greater emotional maturity than the material the Bryants wrote. And on the evidence of their first album, that's certainly true. The first album is, like many albums of the time, a patchy affair. It pulls together the hit singles the brothers had already released, together with a bunch of rather mediocre cover versions of then-current hits. Those cover versions tend to support Don's repeated claims that the brothers were as interested in R&B and blues as in country -- apart from a version of "Be-Bop-A-Lula", all the covers are of R&B hits of the time -- two by Little Richard, two by Ray Charles, and one by the relatively obscure blues singer Titus Turner. But among those songs, there are also a handful of Don Everly originals, and one in particular, "I Wonder if I Care as Much", is quite an astonishing piece of songwriting: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "I Wonder If I Care As Much"] Don's songs were often B-sides – that one was the B-side to “Bye Bye Love” – and to my mind they're often rather more interesting than the A-sides. While that first album is rather patchy, the second album, Songs Our Daddy Taught Us, is a minor revelation, and one of the pillars on which the Everly Brothers' artistic reputation rests. It's been suggested that the album was done as a way of getting back at the record company for some slight or other, by making a record that was completely uncommercial. That might be the case, but I don't think so -- and if it was, it was a gesture that backfired magnificently, as it's still, sixty years on, a consistent seller. Songs Our Daddy Taught Us is precisely what it sounds like -- an album consisting of songs the brothers had been taught by their father. It's a mixture of Appalachian folk songs and country standards, performed by the brothers accompanied just by Don's acoustic guitar and Floyd Chance on upright bass: [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, “Who's Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”] It's quite possibly the most artistically satisfying album made in the fifties by a rock and roll act, and it's had such an influence that as recently as 2013 Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day and the jazz-pop singer Norah Jones recorded an album, Foreverly, that's just a cover version of the whole album: [Excerpt: Billie Joe Armstrong and Norah Jones, “Who's Gonna Shoe Your Pretty Little Feet?”] So as the 1950s drew to a close, the Everly Brothers were on top of the world. They'd had a run of classic singles, and they'd just released one of the greatest albums of all time. But there was trouble ahead, and when we pick up on their career again, we'll see exactly how wrong things could go for them.

tv history english internet future real french boys nashville dad satan mom south kentucky republicans blind democrats midwest mac columbia elvis rock and roll djs musicians devoted gardner knoxville green day excerpt appalachian atkins ike ray charles mixcloud little richard pdfs rock music balcony rag grand ole opry norah jones hank williams columbia records sittin andy williams bo diddley icare everly brothers tryin country boy billie joe armstrong wagoner bill monroe buck owens chet atkins loudermilk larry williams eddie cochran carl smith thou shalt not steal porter wagoner muhlenberg kitty wells merle travis tennessee ernie ford all i have bryants bye bye love robert gardner lefty frizzell kentucky school phil everly diddley webb pierce don rich everlys moon mullican boudleaux bryant john d loudermilk kennedy jones anita carter that silver haired daddy

10. The Bakersfield Sound

COUNTRY-Country Music

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 17, 2019 64:44

The 2nd in our 3 part series looking at the major historical movements in Country Music. This week we're talkin' slick shiny suits, sparkling twangy Telecasters, dim lights, thick smoke and loud loud music! The Bakersfield Sound was California throwing down the gauntlet, bringing a whole new badass edge to Country Music that Nashville had never seen before. And this week we look at most the characters who made this a thing: Buck Owens, Don Rich, Merle Haggard, Red Simpson and all the other key figures behind one of country music’s biggest movement.

california nashville country music merle haggard telecasters buck owens bakersfield sound don rich red simpson

Episode 43: “I Gotta Know” by Wanda Jackson

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 29, 2019

Episode forty-three of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Gotta Know” by Wanda Jackson, and the links between rockabilly and the Bakersfield Sound. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Bacon Fat” by Andre Williams. —-more—- 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 Wanda Jackson’s autobiography, Every Night is Saturday Night. I also made reference to the website Women in Rock & Roll’s First Wave, and I am very likely to reference that again in future episodes on Wanda Jackson and others. I mentioned the podcast Cocaine and Rhinestones, and its episode on “Okie From Muskogee”. Several other episodes of that podcast touch tangentially on people mentioned in this episode too — the two-parter on Buck Owens and Don Rich, the episode on Ralph Mooney, and the episodes on Ralph Mooney and the Louvin Brothers all either deal with musicians who played on Wanda’s records, with Ken Nelson, or both. Generally I think most people who enjoy this podcast will enjoy that one as well. And this compilation collects most of Jackson’s important early work. Errata I say Jackson’s career spans more than the time this podcast covers. I meant in length of time – this podcast covers sixty-two years, and Jackson’s career so far has lasted seventy-one – but the ambiguity could suggest that this podcast doesn’t cover anything prior to 1948. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we’re going to talk about someone whose career as a live performer spans more than the time that this podcast covers. Wanda Jackson started performing in 1948, and she finally retired from live performance in March 2019, though she has an album coming out later this year. She is only the second performer we’ve dealt with who is still alive and working, and she has the longest career of any of them. Wanda Jackson is, simply, the queen of rockabilly, and she’s a towering figure in the genre. Jackson was born in Oklahoma, but as this was the tail-end of the great depression, she and her family migrated to California when she was small, as stragglers in the great migration that permanently changed California. The migration of the Okies in the 1930s is a huge topic, and one that I don’t have the space to explain in this podcast — if you’re interested in it, I’d recommend as a starting point listening to the episode of the great country music podcast Cocaine & Rhinestones on “Okie From Muskogee”, which I’ll link in the show notes. The very, very, shortened version is that bad advice as to best farming practices created an environmental disaster on an almost apocalyptic scale across the whole middle of America, right at the point that the country was also going through the worst economic disaster in its history. As entire states became almost uninhabitable, three and a half million people moved from the Great Plains to elsewhere in the US, and a large number of them moved to California, where no matter what state they actually came from they became known as “Okies”. But the thing to understand about the Okies for this purpose is that they were a despised underclass — and as we’ve seen throughout this series, members of despised underclasses often created the most exciting and innovative music. The music the Okies who moved to California made was far more raucous than the country music that was popular in the Eastern states, and it had a huge admixture of blues and boogie woogie in it. Records like Jack Guthrie’s “Oakie Boogie”, for example, a clear precursor of rockabilly: [Excerpt: Jack Guthrie, “Oakie Boogie”] We talked way back in episode three about Western Swing and the distinction in the thirties and forties between country music and western music. The “Western” in that music came from the wild west, but it also referred to the west coast and the migrants from the Dust Bowl. Of the two biggest names in Western Swing, one, Bob Wills, was from Texas but moved to Oklahoma, while the other, Spade Cooley, was from Oklahoma but moved to California. It was the Western Swing that was being made by Dust Bowl migrants in California in the 1940s that, when it made its way eastwards to Tennessee, transmuted itself into rockabilly. And that is the music that young Wanda Jackson was listening to when she was tiny. Her father, who she absolutely adored, was a fan of Bob Wills, Spade Cooley, and Tex Williams, as well as of Jimmie Rodgers’ hillbilly music and the blues. They lived in Greenfield, a town a few miles away from Bakersfield, where her father worked, and if any of you know anything at all about country music that will tell you a lot in itself. Bakersfield would become, in the 1950s, the place where musicians like Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, and Wynn Stewart, most of them from Dust Bowl migrant families themselves, developed a tough form of honky-tonk country and western that was influenced by hillbilly boogie and Western Swing. Wanda Jackson spent the formative years of her childhood in the same musical and social environment as those musicians, and while she and her family moved back to Oklahoma a few years later, she had already been exposed to that style of music. At the time, when anyone went out to dance, it was to live music, and since her parents couldn’t afford babysitters, when they went out, as they did most weekends, they took Wanda with them, so between the ages of five and ten she seems to have seen almost every great Western band of the forties. Her first favourite as a kid was Spade Cooley, who was, along with Bob Wills, considered the greatest Western Swing bandleader of all. However, this podcast has a policy of not playing Cooley’s records (the balance of musical importance to outright evil is tipped too far in his case, and I advise you not to look for details as to why), so I won’t play an excerpt of him here, as I normally would. The other artist she loved though was a sibling group called The Maddox Brothers and Rose, who were a group that bridged the gap between Western Swing and the newer Bakersfield Sound: [Excerpt: The Maddox Brothers and Rose, “George’s Playhouse Boogie”] The Maddox Brothers and Rose were also poor migrants who’d moved to California, though in their case they’d travelled just *before* the inrush of Okies rather than at the tail end of it. They’re another of those groups who are often given the credit for having made the first rock and roll record, although as we’ve often discussed that’s a largely meaningless claim. They were, however, one of the big influences both on the Bakersfield Sound and on the music that became rockabilly. Wanda loved the Maddox Brothers and Rose, and in particular she loved their stage presence — the shiny costumes they wore, and the feistiness of Rose, in particular. She decided before she was even in school that she wanted to be “a girl singer”, as she put it, just like Rose Maddox. When she was six, her father bought her a guitar from the Sears Roebuck catalogue and started teaching her chords. He played a little guitar and fiddle, and the two of them would play together every night. They’d sit together and try to work out the chords for songs they knew from the radio or records, and Wanda’s mother would write down the chords in a notebook for them. She also taught herself to yodel, since that was something that all the country and western singers at the time would do, and had done ever since the days of Jimmie Rodgers in the late twenties and early thirties. The record she copied to learn to yodel was “Chime Bells” by Elton Britt, “Country Music’s Yodelling Cowboy Crooner”: [Excerpt: Elton Britt, “Chime Bells”] By the time she was in her early teens, she was regularly performing for her friends at parties, and her friends dared her to audition for a local radio show that played country music and had a local talent section. Her friends all went with her to the station, and she played Jimmie Rodgers’ “Blue Yodel #6” for the DJ who ran the show. [Excerpt: Jimmie Rodgers, “Blue Yodel #6”] To her shock, but not the shock of her friends, the DJ loved her sound, and gave her a regular spot on the local talent section of his show, which in turn led to her getting her own fifteen-minute radio show, in which she would sing popular country hits of the time period. One of the people whose songs she would perform on a regular basis was Hank Thompson. Thompson was a honky-tonk singer who performed a pared-down version of the Bob Wills style of Western Swing. Thompson’s music was using the same rhythms and instrumentation as Wills, but with much more focus on the vocals and the song than on instrumental solos. Thonpson’s music was one of several precursors to the music that became rockabilly, though he was most successful with mid-tempo ballads like “The Wild Side of Life”: [Excerpt: Hank Thompson, “The Wild Side of Life”] Thompson, like Wanda, lived in Oklahoma, and he happened to be driving one day and hear her show on the radio. He phoned her up at the station and asked her if she would come and perform with his band that Saturday night. When she told him she’d have to ask her mother, he laughed at first — he hadn’t realised she was only fourteen, because her voice made her sound so much older. At this time, it was normal for bands that toured to have multiple featured singers and to perform in a revue style, rather than to have a single lead vocalist — there were basically two types of tour that happened: package tours featuring multiple different acts doing their own things, and revues, where one main act would introduce several featured guests to join them on stage. Johnny Otis and James Brown, for example, both ran revue shows at various points, and Hank Thompson’s show seems also to have been in this style. Jackson had never played with a band before, and by her own account she wasn’t very good when she guested with Thompson’s band for the first time. But Thompson had faith in her. He couldn’t take her on the road, because she was still so young she had to go to school, but every time he played Oklahoma he’d invite her to do a few numbers with his band, mentoring her and teaching her on stage how to perform with other musicians. Thompson also invited Jackson to appear on his local TV show, which led to her getting a TV show of her own in the Oklahoma area, and she became part of a loose group of locally-popular musicians, including the future homophobic campaigner against human rights Anita Bryant. While she was still in high school, Thompson recorded demos of her singing and took them to his producer, Ken Nelson, at Capitol Records. Nelson liked her voice, but when he found out she was under eighteen he decided to pass on recording her, just due to the legal complications and the fact that she’d not yet finished school. Instead, Jackson was signed to Decca Records, where she cut her first recordings with members of Thompson’s band. Her first single was a duet with another featured singer from Thompson’s band, Billy Gray. Thompson, who was running the session, basically forced Jackson to sing it against her objections. She didn’t have a problem with the song itself, but she didn’t want to make her name from a duet, rather than as a solo artist. [Excerpt: Billy Gray and Wanda Jackson, “You Can’t Have My Love”] She might not have been happy with the recording at first, but she was feeling better about it by the time she started her senior year in High School with a top ten country single. Her followups were less successful, and she became unhappy with the way her career was going. In particular she was horrified when she first played the Grand Ole Opry. She was told she couldn’t go onstage in the dress she was wearing, because her shoulders were uncovered and that was obscene — at this time, Jackson was basically the only country singer in the business who was trying to look glamorous rather than like a farmgirl — and then, when she did get on stage, wearing a jacket, she was mocked by a couple of the comedy acts, who stood behind her making fun of her throughout her entire set. Clearly the country establishment wasn’t going to get along with her at all. But then she left school, and became a full-time musician, and she made a decision which would have an enormous effect on her. Her father was her manager, but if she was going to get more gigs and perform as a solo artist rather than just doing the occasional show with Hank Thompson, she needed a booking agent, and neither she nor her father had an idea how to get one. So they did what seemed like the most obvious thing to them, and bought a copy of Billboard and started looking through the ads. They eventually found an ad from a booking agent named Bob Neal, in Memphis, and phoned him up, explaining that Wanda was a recording artist for Decca records. Neal had heard her records, which had been locally popular in Memphis, and was particularly looking for a girl singer to fill out the bill on a tour he was promoting with a new young singer he managed, named Elvis Presley. Backstage after her support slot on the first show of the tour, she and her father heard a terrible screaming coming from the auditorium. They thought at first that there must have been a fire, and Wanda’s father went out to investigate, telling her not to come with him. He came back a minute later telling her, “You’ve got to come see this”. The screaming was, of course, at Elvis, and immediately Wanda knew that he was not any ordinary country singer. The two of them started dating, and Elvis even gave Wanda his ring, which is still in her possession, and while they eventually drifted apart, he had a profound influence on her. Her father was not impressed with Elvis’ performance, saying “That boy’s got to get his show in order… He’s all over the stage messin’ around. And he’s got to stop slurrin’ his words, too.” Wanda, on the other hand, was incredibly impressed with him, and as the two of them toured — on a bill which also included Bob Neal’s other big act of the time, Johnny Cash — he would teach her how to be more of a rock and roller like him. In particular, he taught her to strum the acoustic guitar with a single strum, rather than to hit each string individually, which was the style of country players at the time. Meanwhile, her recording career was flagging — she hadn’t had another hit with any of her solo recordings, and she was starting to wonder if Decca was the right place for her. She did, though, have a hit as a songwriter, with a song called “Without Your Love”, which she’d written for Bobby Lord, a singer who appeared with her on the radio show Ozark Jubilee. [Excerpt: Bobby Lord, “Without Your Love”] That song had gone to the top ten in the country charts, and turned out to be Lord’s only hit single. But while she could come up with a hit for him, she wasn’t having hits herself, and she decided that she wanted to leave Decca. Her contract was up, and while they did have the option to extend it for another year and were initially interested in exercising the option, Decca agreed to let her go. Meanwhile, Wanda was also thinking about what kind of music she wanted to make in the future. Elvis had convinced her that she should move into rockabilly, but she didn’t know how to do it. She talked about this to Thelma Blackmon, the mother of one of her schoolfriends, who had written a couple of songs for her previously, and Blackmon came back with a song called “I Gotta Know”, which Jackson decided would be perfect to restart her career. At this point Hank Thompson went to Ken Nelson, and told him that that underage singer he’d liked was no longer underage, and would he be interested in signing her? He definitely was interested, and he took her into the Capitol tower to record with a group of session musicians who he employed for as many of his West Coast sessions as possible, and who were at that point just beginning to create what later became the Bakersfield Sound. The musicians on that session were some of the best in the country music field — Jelly Sanders on fiddle, Joe Maphis on guitar, and the legendary Ralph Mooney on steel guitar, and they were perfect for recording what would become a big country hit. But “I Gotta Know” was both country and rock and roll. While the choruses are definitely country: [Excerpt: Wanda Jackson, “I Gotta Know”] the verses are firmly in the rock and roll genre: [Excerpt: Wanda Jackson, “I Gotta Know”] Now, I’m indebted to the website “Women in Rock & Roll’s First Wave”, which I’ll link in the shownotes, for this observation, but this kind of genre-mixing was very common particularly with women, and particularly with women who had previously had careers outside rock and roll and were trying to transition into it. While male performers in that situation would generally jump in head first and come up with an embarrassment like Perry Como’s version of “Ko Ko Mo”, female performers would do something rather different. They would, in fact, tend to do what Jackson did here, and combine the two genres, either by having a verse in one style and a chorus in the other, as Wanda does, or in other ways, as in for example Kay Starr’s “Rock and Roll Waltz”: [Excerpt: Kay Starr, “Rock and Roll Waltz”] Starr is a particularly good example here, because she’s doing what a lot of female performers were doing at the time, which is trying to lace the recording with enough irony and humour that it could be taken as either a record in the young persons’ style parodying the old persons’ music, or a record in the older style mocking the new styles. By sitting on the fence in this way and being ambiguous enough, the established stars could back down if this rock and roll music turned out to be just another temporary fad. Jackson isn’t quite doing that, but with her Elvis-style hiccups on the line “I gotta know, I gotta know”, she comes very close to parody, in a way that could easily be written off if the experiment had failed. The experiment didn’t fail, however, and “I Gotta Know” became Jackson’s biggest hit of the fifties, making its way to number fifteen on the country charts — rather oddly, given that she was clearly repositioning herself for the rockabilly market, it seemed to sell almost solely to the country market, and didn’t cross over the way that Carl Perkins or Gene Vincent did. Her next single could have been the one that cemented her reputation as the greatest female rockabilly star of all, had it not been for one simple mistake. The song “Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad!” had been a favourite in her stage act for years, and she would let out a tremendous growl on the title line when she got to it, which would always get audiences worked up. Unfortunately, she horrified Ken Nelson in the studio by taking a big drink of milk while all the session musicians were on a coffee break. She hadn’t realised what milk does to a singer’s throat, and when they came to record the song she couldn’t get her voice to do the growl that had always worked on stage. The result was still a good record, but it wasn’t the massive success it would otherwise have been: [Excerpt: Wanda Jackson, “Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad!”] After that failed, Ken Nelson floundered around for quite a while trying to find something else that could work for Jackson. She kept cutting rockabilly tracks, but they never quite had the power of her stage performances, and meanwhile Nelson was making mistakes in what material he brought in, just as he was doing at the same time with Gene Vincent. Just like with Vincent, whenever Wanda brought in her own material, or material she’d picked to cover by other people, it worked fine, but when Nelson brought in something it would go down like a lead balloon. Probably the worst example was a terrible attempt to capitalise on the current calypso craze, a song called “Don’a Wanna”, which was written by Boudleaux Bryant, one of the great songwriters of the fifties, but which wouldn’t have been his best effort even before it was given a racist accent at Nelson’s suggestion (and which Jackson cringed at doing even at the time, let alone sixty years later): [Excerpt: Wanda Jackson, “Don’a Wanna”] Much better was “Cool Love”, which Jackson co-wrote herself, with her friend Vicki Countryman, Thelma Blackmon’s daughter: [Excerpt: Wanda Jackson, “Cool Love”] That one is possibly too closely modelled after Elvis’ recent hits, right down to the backing vocals, but it features a great Buck Owens guitar solo, it’s fun, and Jackson is clearly engaged with the material. But just like all the other records since “I Wanna Know”, “Cool Love” did nothing on the charts — and indeed it wouldn’t be until 1960 that Jackson would reach the charts again in the USA. But when she did, it would be with recordings she’d made years earlier, during the time period we’re talking about now. And before she did, she would have her biggest success of all, and become the first rock and roll star about whom the cliche really was true — even though she was having no success in her home country, she was big in Japan. But that’s a story for a few weeks’ time…

united states america tv women california history texas lord rock japan dj western tennessee nashville high school oklahoma records thompson west coast gotta elvis capitol rock and roll billboard bob dylan cocaine hot dogs elvis presley saturday night country music wills johnny cash backstage james brown tom petty george harrison mixcloud bakersfield greenfield rock music cooley grand ole opry roy orbison great plains wild side capitol records merle haggard every night dust bowl blackmon first wave everly brothers rhinestones weavers decca jeff lynne carl perkins sam phillips buck owens perry como chet atkins wanda jackson western swing bob wills decca records jimmie rodgers bob moore gene vincent anita bryant louvin brothers andre williams hank thompson sears roebuck okies rock and roller bakersfield sound johnny otis kay starr billy gray spade cooley monument records don rich without your love bobby lord ken nelson fred foster boudleaux bryant rose maddox blue yodel bob neal nashville a team i gotta know

Episode 43: “I Gotta Know” by Wanda Jackson

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 29, 2019

Episode forty-three of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Gotta Know” by Wanda Jackson, and the links between rockabilly and the Bakersfield Sound. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Bacon Fat” by Andre Williams. —-more—- 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 Wanda Jackson’s autobiography, Every Night is Saturday Night. I also made reference to the website Women in Rock & Roll’s First Wave, and I am very likely to reference that again in future episodes on Wanda Jackson and others. I mentioned the podcast Cocaine and Rhinestones, and its episode on “Okie From Muskogee”. Several other episodes of that podcast touch tangentially on people mentioned in this episode too — the two-parter on Buck Owens and Don Rich, the episode on Ralph Mooney, and the episodes on Ralph Mooney and the Louvin Brothers all either deal with musicians who played on Wanda’s records, with Ken Nelson, or both. Generally I think most people who enjoy this podcast will enjoy that one as well. And this compilation collects most of Jackson’s important early work. Errata I say Jackson’s career spans more than the time this podcast covers. I meant in length of time – this podcast covers sixty-two years, and Jackson’s career so far has lasted seventy-one – but the ambiguity could suggest that this podcast doesn’t cover anything prior to 1948. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we’re going to talk about someone whose career as a live performer spans more than the time that this podcast covers. Wanda Jackson started performing in 1948, and she finally retired from live performance in March 2019, though she has an album coming out later this year. She is only the second performer we’ve dealt with who is still alive and working, and she has the longest career of any of them. Wanda Jackson is, simply, the queen of rockabilly, and she’s a towering figure in the genre. Jackson was born in Oklahoma, but as this was the tail-end of the great depression, she and her family migrated to California when she was small, as stragglers in the great migration that permanently changed California. The migration of the Okies in the 1930s is a huge topic, and one that I don’t have the space to explain in this podcast — if you’re interested in it, I’d recommend as a starting point listening to the episode of the great country music podcast Cocaine & Rhinestones on “Okie From Muskogee”, which I’ll link in the show notes. The very, very, shortened version is that bad advice as to best farming practices created an environmental disaster on an almost apocalyptic scale across the whole middle of America, right at the point that the country was also going through the worst economic disaster in its history. As entire states became almost uninhabitable, three and a half million people moved from the Great Plains to elsewhere in the US, and a large number of them moved to California, where no matter what state they actually came from they became known as “Okies”. But the thing to understand about the Okies for this purpose is that they were a despised underclass — and as we’ve seen throughout this series, members of despised underclasses often created the most exciting and innovative music. The music the Okies who moved to California made was far more raucous than the country music that was popular in the Eastern states, and it had a huge admixture of blues and boogie woogie in it. Records like Jack Guthrie’s “Oakie Boogie”, for example, a clear precursor of rockabilly: [Excerpt: Jack Guthrie, “Oakie Boogie”] We talked way back in episode three about Western Swing and the distinction in the thirties and forties between country music and western music. The “Western” in that music came from the wild west, but it also referred to the west coast and the migrants from the Dust Bowl. Of the two biggest names in Western Swing, one, Bob Wills, was from Texas but moved to Oklahoma, while the other, Spade Cooley, was from Oklahoma but moved to California. It was the Western Swing that was being made by Dust Bowl migrants in California in the 1940s that, when it made its way eastwards to Tennessee, transmuted itself into rockabilly. And that is the music that young Wanda Jackson was listening to when she was tiny. Her father, who she absolutely adored, was a fan of Bob Wills, Spade Cooley, and Tex Williams, as well as of Jimmie Rodgers’ hillbilly music and the blues. They lived in Greenfield, a town a few miles away from Bakersfield, where her father worked, and if any of you know anything at all about country music that will tell you a lot in itself. Bakersfield would become, in the 1950s, the place where musicians like Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, and Wynn Stewart, most of them from Dust Bowl migrant families themselves, developed a tough form of honky-tonk country and western that was influenced by hillbilly boogie and Western Swing. Wanda Jackson spent the formative years of her childhood in the same musical and social environment as those musicians, and while she and her family moved back to Oklahoma a few years later, she had already been exposed to that style of music. At the time, when anyone went out to dance, it was to live music, and since her parents couldn’t afford babysitters, when they went out, as they did most weekends, they took Wanda with them, so between the ages of five and ten she seems to have seen almost every great Western band of the forties. Her first favourite as a kid was Spade Cooley, who was, along with Bob Wills, considered the greatest Western Swing bandleader of all. However, this podcast has a policy of not playing Cooley’s records (the balance of musical importance to outright evil is tipped too far in his case, and I advise you not to look for details as to why), so I won’t play an excerpt of him here, as I normally would. The other artist she loved though was a sibling group called The Maddox Brothers and Rose, who were a group that bridged the gap between Western Swing and the newer Bakersfield Sound: [Excerpt: The Maddox Brothers and Rose, “George’s Playhouse Boogie”] The Maddox Brothers and Rose were also poor migrants who’d moved to California, though in their case they’d travelled just *before* the inrush of Okies rather than at the tail end of it. They’re another of those groups who are often given the credit for having made the first rock and roll record, although as we’ve often discussed that’s a largely meaningless claim. They were, however, one of the big influences both on the Bakersfield Sound and on the music that became rockabilly. Wanda loved the Maddox Brothers and Rose, and in particular she loved their stage presence — the shiny costumes they wore, and the feistiness of Rose, in particular. She decided before she was even in school that she wanted to be “a girl singer”, as she put it, just like Rose Maddox. When she was six, her father bought her a guitar from the Sears Roebuck catalogue and started teaching her chords. He played a little guitar and fiddle, and the two of them would play together every night. They’d sit together and try to work out the chords for songs they knew from the radio or records, and Wanda’s mother would write down the chords in a notebook for them. She also taught herself to yodel, since that was something that all the country and western singers at the time would do, and had done ever since the days of Jimmie Rodgers in the late twenties and early thirties. The record she copied to learn to yodel was “Chime Bells” by Elton Britt, “Country Music’s Yodelling Cowboy Crooner”: [Excerpt: Elton Britt, “Chime Bells”] By the time she was in her early teens, she was regularly performing for her friends at parties, and her friends dared her to audition for a local radio show that played country music and had a local talent section. Her friends all went with her to the station, and she played Jimmie Rodgers’ “Blue Yodel #6” for the DJ who ran the show. [Excerpt: Jimmie Rodgers, “Blue Yodel #6”] To her shock, but not the shock of her friends, the DJ loved her sound, and gave her a regular spot on the local talent section of his show, which in turn led to her getting her own fifteen-minute radio show, in which she would sing popular country hits of the time period. One of the people whose songs she would perform on a regular basis was Hank Thompson. Thompson was a honky-tonk singer who performed a pared-down version of the Bob Wills style of Western Swing. Thompson’s music was using the same rhythms and instrumentation as Wills, but with much more focus on the vocals and the song than on instrumental solos. Thonpson’s music was one of several precursors to the music that became rockabilly, though he was most successful with mid-tempo ballads like “The Wild Side of Life”: [Excerpt: Hank Thompson, “The Wild Side of Life”] Thompson, like Wanda, lived in Oklahoma, and he happened to be driving one day and hear her show on the radio. He phoned her up at the station and asked her if she would come and perform with his band that Saturday night. When she told him she’d have to ask her mother, he laughed at first — he hadn’t realised she was only fourteen, because her voice made her sound so much older. At this time, it was normal for bands that toured to have multiple featured singers and to perform in a revue style, rather than to have a single lead vocalist — there were basically two types of tour that happened: package tours featuring multiple different acts doing their own things, and revues, where one main act would introduce several featured guests to join them on stage. Johnny Otis and James Brown, for example, both ran revue shows at various points, and Hank Thompson’s show seems also to have been in this style. Jackson had never played with a band before, and by her own account she wasn’t very good when she guested with Thompson’s band for the first time. But Thompson had faith in her. He couldn’t take her on the road, because she was still so young she had to go to school, but every time he played Oklahoma he’d invite her to do a few numbers with his band, mentoring her and teaching her on stage how to perform with other musicians. Thompson also invited Jackson to appear on his local TV show, which led to her getting a TV show of her own in the Oklahoma area, and she became part of a loose group of locally-popular musicians, including the future homophobic campaigner against human rights Anita Bryant. While she was still in high school, Thompson recorded demos of her singing and took them to his producer, Ken Nelson, at Capitol Records. Nelson liked her voice, but when he found out she was under eighteen he decided to pass on recording her, just due to the legal complications and the fact that she’d not yet finished school. Instead, Jackson was signed to Decca Records, where she cut her first recordings with members of Thompson’s band. Her first single was a duet with another featured singer from Thompson’s band, Billy Gray. Thompson, who was running the session, basically forced Jackson to sing it against her objections. She didn’t have a problem with the song itself, but she didn’t want to make her name from a duet, rather than as a solo artist. [Excerpt: Billy Gray and Wanda Jackson, “You Can’t Have My Love”] She might not have been happy with the recording at first, but she was feeling better about it by the time she started her senior year in High School with a top ten country single. Her followups were less successful, and she became unhappy with the way her career was going. In particular she was horrified when she first played the Grand Ole Opry. She was told she couldn’t go onstage in the dress she was wearing, because her shoulders were uncovered and that was obscene — at this time, Jackson was basically the only country singer in the business who was trying to look glamorous rather than like a farmgirl — and then, when she did get on stage, wearing a jacket, she was mocked by a couple of the comedy acts, who stood behind her making fun of her throughout her entire set. Clearly the country establishment wasn’t going to get along with her at all. But then she left school, and became a full-time musician, and she made a decision which would have an enormous effect on her. Her father was her manager, but if she was going to get more gigs and perform as a solo artist rather than just doing the occasional show with Hank Thompson, she needed a booking agent, and neither she nor her father had an idea how to get one. So they did what seemed like the most obvious thing to them, and bought a copy of Billboard and started looking through the ads. They eventually found an ad from a booking agent named Bob Neal, in Memphis, and phoned him up, explaining that Wanda was a recording artist for Decca records. Neal had heard her records, which had been locally popular in Memphis, and was particularly looking for a girl singer to fill out the bill on a tour he was promoting with a new young singer he managed, named Elvis Presley. Backstage after her support slot on the first show of the tour, she and her father heard a terrible screaming coming from the auditorium. They thought at first that there must have been a fire, and Wanda’s father went out to investigate, telling her not to come with him. He came back a minute later telling her, “You’ve got to come see this”. The screaming was, of course, at Elvis, and immediately Wanda knew that he was not any ordinary country singer. The two of them started dating, and Elvis even gave Wanda his ring, which is still in her possession, and while they eventually drifted apart, he had a profound influence on her. Her father was not impressed with Elvis’ performance, saying “That boy’s got to get his show in order… He’s all over the stage messin’ around. And he’s got to stop slurrin’ his words, too.” Wanda, on the other hand, was incredibly impressed with him, and as the two of them toured — on a bill which also included Bob Neal’s other big act of the time, Johnny Cash — he would teach her how to be more of a rock and roller like him. In particular, he taught her to strum the acoustic guitar with a single strum, rather than to hit each string individually, which was the style of country players at the time. Meanwhile, her recording career was flagging — she hadn’t had another hit with any of her solo recordings, and she was starting to wonder if Decca was the right place for her. She did, though, have a hit as a songwriter, with a song called “Without Your Love”, which she’d written for Bobby Lord, a singer who appeared with her on the radio show Ozark Jubilee. [Excerpt: Bobby Lord, “Without Your Love”] That song had gone to the top ten in the country charts, and turned out to be Lord’s only hit single. But while she could come up with a hit for him, she wasn’t having hits herself, and she decided that she wanted to leave Decca. Her contract was up, and while they did have the option to extend it for another year and were initially interested in exercising the option, Decca agreed to let her go. Meanwhile, Wanda was also thinking about what kind of music she wanted to make in the future. Elvis had convinced her that she should move into rockabilly, but she didn’t know how to do it. She talked about this to Thelma Blackmon, the mother of one of her schoolfriends, who had written a couple of songs for her previously, and Blackmon came back with a song called “I Gotta Know”, which Jackson decided would be perfect to restart her career. At this point Hank Thompson went to Ken Nelson, and told him that that underage singer he’d liked was no longer underage, and would he be interested in signing her? He definitely was interested, and he took her into the Capitol tower to record with a group of session musicians who he employed for as many of his West Coast sessions as possible, and who were at that point just beginning to create what later became the Bakersfield Sound. The musicians on that session were some of the best in the country music field — Jelly Sanders on fiddle, Joe Maphis on guitar, and the legendary Ralph Mooney on steel guitar, and they were perfect for recording what would become a big country hit. But “I Gotta Know” was both country and rock and roll. While the choruses are definitely country: [Excerpt: Wanda Jackson, “I Gotta Know”] the verses are firmly in the rock and roll genre: [Excerpt: Wanda Jackson, “I Gotta Know”] Now, I’m indebted to the website “Women in Rock & Roll’s First Wave”, which I’ll link in the shownotes, for this observation, but this kind of genre-mixing was very common particularly with women, and particularly with women who had previously had careers outside rock and roll and were trying to transition into it. While male performers in that situation would generally jump in head first and come up with an embarrassment like Perry Como’s version of “Ko Ko Mo”, female performers would do something rather different. They would, in fact, tend to do what Jackson did here, and combine the two genres, either by having a verse in one style and a chorus in the other, as Wanda does, or in other ways, as in for example Kay Starr’s “Rock and Roll Waltz”: [Excerpt: Kay Starr, “Rock and Roll Waltz”] Starr is a particularly good example here, because she’s doing what a lot of female performers were doing at the time, which is trying to lace the recording with enough irony and humour that it could be taken as either a record in the young persons’ style parodying the old persons’ music, or a record in the older style mocking the new styles. By sitting on the fence in this way and being ambiguous enough, the established stars could back down if this rock and roll music turned out to be just another temporary fad. Jackson isn’t quite doing that, but with her Elvis-style hiccups on the line “I gotta know, I gotta know”, she comes very close to parody, in a way that could easily be written off if the experiment had failed. The experiment didn’t fail, however, and “I Gotta Know” became Jackson’s biggest hit of the fifties, making its way to number fifteen on the country charts — rather oddly, given that she was clearly repositioning herself for the rockabilly market, it seemed to sell almost solely to the country market, and didn’t cross over the way that Carl Perkins or Gene Vincent did. Her next single could have been the one that cemented her reputation as the greatest female rockabilly star of all, had it not been for one simple mistake. The song “Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad!” had been a favourite in her stage act for years, and she would let out a tremendous growl on the title line when she got to it, which would always get audiences worked up. Unfortunately, she horrified Ken Nelson in the studio by taking a big drink of milk while all the session musicians were on a coffee break. She hadn’t realised what milk does to a singer’s throat, and when they came to record the song she couldn’t get her voice to do the growl that had always worked on stage. The result was still a good record, but it wasn’t the massive success it would otherwise have been: [Excerpt: Wanda Jackson, “Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad!”] After that failed, Ken Nelson floundered around for quite a while trying to find something else that could work for Jackson. She kept cutting rockabilly tracks, but they never quite had the power of her stage performances, and meanwhile Nelson was making mistakes in what material he brought in, just as he was doing at the same time with Gene Vincent. Just like with Vincent, whenever Wanda brought in her own material, or material she’d picked to cover by other people, it worked fine, but when Nelson brought in something it would go down like a lead balloon. Probably the worst example was a terrible attempt to capitalise on the current calypso craze, a song called “Don’a Wanna”, which was written by Boudleaux Bryant, one of the great songwriters of the fifties, but which wouldn’t have been his best effort even before it was given a racist accent at Nelson’s suggestion (and which Jackson cringed at doing even at the time, let alone sixty years later): [Excerpt: Wanda Jackson, “Don’a Wanna”] Much better was “Cool Love”, which Jackson co-wrote herself, with her friend Vicki Countryman, Thelma Blackmon’s daughter: [Excerpt: Wanda Jackson, “Cool Love”] That one is possibly too closely modelled after Elvis’ recent hits, right down to the backing vocals, but it features a great Buck Owens guitar solo, it’s fun, and Jackson is clearly engaged with the material. But just like all the other records since “I Wanna Know”, “Cool Love” did nothing on the charts — and indeed it wouldn’t be until 1960 that Jackson would reach the charts again in the USA. But when she did, it would be with recordings she’d made years earlier, during the time period we’re talking about now. And before she did, she would have her biggest success of all, and become the first rock and roll star about whom the cliche really was true — even though she was having no success in her home country, she was big in Japan. But that’s a story for a few weeks’ time…

united states america tv women california history texas lord rock japan dj western tennessee high school oklahoma records thompson west coast gotta elvis capitol rock and roll billboard cocaine hot dogs elvis presley saturday night country music wills johnny cash backstage james brown mixcloud bakersfield greenfield rock music cooley grand ole opry great plains wild side capitol records merle haggard every night dust bowl blackmon first wave rhinestones decca carl perkins buck owens perry como wanda jackson western swing bob wills decca records jimmie rodgers gene vincent anita bryant andre williams louvin brothers hank thompson sears roebuck okies bakersfield sound johnny otis kay starr billy gray spade cooley without your love don rich bobby lord ken nelson boudleaux bryant blue yodel bob neal i gotta know

Episode 43: "I Gotta Know" by Wanda Jackson

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 29, 2019 30:38

Episode forty-three of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "I Gotta Know" by Wanda Jackson, and the links between rockabilly and the Bakersfield Sound. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Bacon Fat" by Andre Williams. ----more---- 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 Wanda Jackson's autobiography, Every Night is Saturday Night. I also made reference to the website Women in Rock & Roll's First Wave, and I am very likely to reference that again in future episodes on Wanda Jackson and others. I mentioned the podcast Cocaine and Rhinestones, and its episode on "Okie From Muskogee". Several other episodes of that podcast touch tangentially on people mentioned in this episode too -- the two-parter on Buck Owens and Don Rich, the episode on Ralph Mooney, and the episodes on Ralph Mooney and the Louvin Brothers all either deal with musicians who played on Wanda's records, with Ken Nelson, or both. Generally I think most people who enjoy this podcast will enjoy that one as well. And this compilation collects most of Jackson's important early work. Errata I say Jackson's career spans more than the time this podcast covers. I meant in length of time – this podcast covers sixty-two years, and Jackson's career so far has lasted seventy-one – but the ambiguity could suggest that this podcast doesn't cover anything prior to 1948. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we're going to talk about someone whose career as a live performer spans more than the time that this podcast covers. Wanda Jackson started performing in 1948, and she finally retired from live performance in March 2019, though she has an album coming out later this year. She is only the second performer we've dealt with who is still alive and working, and she has the longest career of any of them. Wanda Jackson is, simply, the queen of rockabilly, and she's a towering figure in the genre. Jackson was born in Oklahoma, but as this was the tail-end of the great depression, she and her family migrated to California when she was small, as stragglers in the great migration that permanently changed California. The migration of the Okies in the 1930s is a huge topic, and one that I don't have the space to explain in this podcast -- if you're interested in it, I'd recommend as a starting point listening to the episode of the great country music podcast Cocaine & Rhinestones on "Okie From Muskogee", which I'll link in the show notes. The very, very, shortened version is that bad advice as to best farming practices created an environmental disaster on an almost apocalyptic scale across the whole middle of America, right at the point that the country was also going through the worst economic disaster in its history. As entire states became almost uninhabitable, three and a half million people moved from the Great Plains to elsewhere in the US, and a large number of them moved to California, where no matter what state they actually came from they became known as "Okies". But the thing to understand about the Okies for this purpose is that they were a despised underclass -- and as we've seen throughout this series, members of despised underclasses often created the most exciting and innovative music. The music the Okies who moved to California made was far more raucous than the country music that was popular in the Eastern states, and it had a huge admixture of blues and boogie woogie in it. Records like Jack Guthrie's "Oakie Boogie", for example, a clear precursor of rockabilly: [Excerpt: Jack Guthrie, "Oakie Boogie"] We talked way back in episode three about Western Swing and the distinction in the thirties and forties between country music and western music. The "Western" in that music came from the wild west, but it also referred to the west coast and the migrants from the Dust Bowl. Of the two biggest names in Western Swing, one, Bob Wills, was from Texas but moved to Oklahoma, while the other, Spade Cooley, was from Oklahoma but moved to California. It was the Western Swing that was being made by Dust Bowl migrants in California in the 1940s that, when it made its way eastwards to Tennessee, transmuted itself into rockabilly. And that is the music that young Wanda Jackson was listening to when she was tiny. Her father, who she absolutely adored, was a fan of Bob Wills, Spade Cooley, and Tex Williams, as well as of Jimmie Rodgers' hillbilly music and the blues. They lived in Greenfield, a town a few miles away from Bakersfield, where her father worked, and if any of you know anything at all about country music that will tell you a lot in itself. Bakersfield would become, in the 1950s, the place where musicians like Buck Owens, Merle Haggard, and Wynn Stewart, most of them from Dust Bowl migrant families themselves, developed a tough form of honky-tonk country and western that was influenced by hillbilly boogie and Western Swing. Wanda Jackson spent the formative years of her childhood in the same musical and social environment as those musicians, and while she and her family moved back to Oklahoma a few years later, she had already been exposed to that style of music. At the time, when anyone went out to dance, it was to live music, and since her parents couldn't afford babysitters, when they went out, as they did most weekends, they took Wanda with them, so between the ages of five and ten she seems to have seen almost every great Western band of the forties. Her first favourite as a kid was Spade Cooley, who was, along with Bob Wills, considered the greatest Western Swing bandleader of all. However, this podcast has a policy of not playing Cooley's records (the balance of musical importance to outright evil is tipped too far in his case, and I advise you not to look for details as to why), so I won't play an excerpt of him here, as I normally would. The other artist she loved though was a sibling group called The Maddox Brothers and Rose, who were a group that bridged the gap between Western Swing and the newer Bakersfield Sound: [Excerpt: The Maddox Brothers and Rose, "George's Playhouse Boogie"] The Maddox Brothers and Rose were also poor migrants who'd moved to California, though in their case they'd travelled just *before* the inrush of Okies rather than at the tail end of it. They're another of those groups who are often given the credit for having made the first rock and roll record, although as we've often discussed that's a largely meaningless claim. They were, however, one of the big influences both on the Bakersfield Sound and on the music that became rockabilly. Wanda loved the Maddox Brothers and Rose, and in particular she loved their stage presence -- the shiny costumes they wore, and the feistiness of Rose, in particular. She decided before she was even in school that she wanted to be "a girl singer", as she put it, just like Rose Maddox. When she was six, her father bought her a guitar from the Sears Roebuck catalogue and started teaching her chords. He played a little guitar and fiddle, and the two of them would play together every night. They'd sit together and try to work out the chords for songs they knew from the radio or records, and Wanda's mother would write down the chords in a notebook for them. She also taught herself to yodel, since that was something that all the country and western singers at the time would do, and had done ever since the days of Jimmie Rodgers in the late twenties and early thirties. The record she copied to learn to yodel was "Chime Bells" by Elton Britt, "Country Music's Yodelling Cowboy Crooner": [Excerpt: Elton Britt, "Chime Bells"] By the time she was in her early teens, she was regularly performing for her friends at parties, and her friends dared her to audition for a local radio show that played country music and had a local talent section. Her friends all went with her to the station, and she played Jimmie Rodgers' "Blue Yodel #6" for the DJ who ran the show. [Excerpt: Jimmie Rodgers, "Blue Yodel #6"] To her shock, but not the shock of her friends, the DJ loved her sound, and gave her a regular spot on the local talent section of his show, which in turn led to her getting her own fifteen-minute radio show, in which she would sing popular country hits of the time period. One of the people whose songs she would perform on a regular basis was Hank Thompson. Thompson was a honky-tonk singer who performed a pared-down version of the Bob Wills style of Western Swing. Thompson's music was using the same rhythms and instrumentation as Wills, but with much more focus on the vocals and the song than on instrumental solos. Thonpson's music was one of several precursors to the music that became rockabilly, though he was most successful with mid-tempo ballads like "The Wild Side of Life": [Excerpt: Hank Thompson, "The Wild Side of Life"] Thompson, like Wanda, lived in Oklahoma, and he happened to be driving one day and hear her show on the radio. He phoned her up at the station and asked her if she would come and perform with his band that Saturday night. When she told him she'd have to ask her mother, he laughed at first -- he hadn't realised she was only fourteen, because her voice made her sound so much older. At this time, it was normal for bands that toured to have multiple featured singers and to perform in a revue style, rather than to have a single lead vocalist -- there were basically two types of tour that happened: package tours featuring multiple different acts doing their own things, and revues, where one main act would introduce several featured guests to join them on stage. Johnny Otis and James Brown, for example, both ran revue shows at various points, and Hank Thompson's show seems also to have been in this style. Jackson had never played with a band before, and by her own account she wasn't very good when she guested with Thompson's band for the first time. But Thompson had faith in her. He couldn't take her on the road, because she was still so young she had to go to school, but every time he played Oklahoma he'd invite her to do a few numbers with his band, mentoring her and teaching her on stage how to perform with other musicians. Thompson also invited Jackson to appear on his local TV show, which led to her getting a TV show of her own in the Oklahoma area, and she became part of a loose group of locally-popular musicians, including the future homophobic campaigner against human rights Anita Bryant. While she was still in high school, Thompson recorded demos of her singing and took them to his producer, Ken Nelson, at Capitol Records. Nelson liked her voice, but when he found out she was under eighteen he decided to pass on recording her, just due to the legal complications and the fact that she'd not yet finished school. Instead, Jackson was signed to Decca Records, where she cut her first recordings with members of Thompson's band. Her first single was a duet with another featured singer from Thompson's band, Billy Gray. Thompson, who was running the session, basically forced Jackson to sing it against her objections. She didn't have a problem with the song itself, but she didn't want to make her name from a duet, rather than as a solo artist. [Excerpt: Billy Gray and Wanda Jackson, "You Can't Have My Love"] She might not have been happy with the recording at first, but she was feeling better about it by the time she started her senior year in High School with a top ten country single. Her followups were less successful, and she became unhappy with the way her career was going. In particular she was horrified when she first played the Grand Ole Opry. She was told she couldn't go onstage in the dress she was wearing, because her shoulders were uncovered and that was obscene -- at this time, Jackson was basically the only country singer in the business who was trying to look glamorous rather than like a farmgirl -- and then, when she did get on stage, wearing a jacket, she was mocked by a couple of the comedy acts, who stood behind her making fun of her throughout her entire set. Clearly the country establishment wasn't going to get along with her at all. But then she left school, and became a full-time musician, and she made a decision which would have an enormous effect on her. Her father was her manager, but if she was going to get more gigs and perform as a solo artist rather than just doing the occasional show with Hank Thompson, she needed a booking agent, and neither she nor her father had an idea how to get one. So they did what seemed like the most obvious thing to them, and bought a copy of Billboard and started looking through the ads. They eventually found an ad from a booking agent named Bob Neal, in Memphis, and phoned him up, explaining that Wanda was a recording artist for Decca records. Neal had heard her records, which had been locally popular in Memphis, and was particularly looking for a girl singer to fill out the bill on a tour he was promoting with a new young singer he managed, named Elvis Presley. Backstage after her support slot on the first show of the tour, she and her father heard a terrible screaming coming from the auditorium. They thought at first that there must have been a fire, and Wanda's father went out to investigate, telling her not to come with him. He came back a minute later telling her, "You've got to come see this". The screaming was, of course, at Elvis, and immediately Wanda knew that he was not any ordinary country singer. The two of them started dating, and Elvis even gave Wanda his ring, which is still in her possession, and while they eventually drifted apart, he had a profound influence on her. Her father was not impressed with Elvis' performance, saying "That boy's got to get his show in order... He's all over the stage messin' around. And he's got to stop slurrin' his words, too." Wanda, on the other hand, was incredibly impressed with him, and as the two of them toured -- on a bill which also included Bob Neal's other big act of the time, Johnny Cash -- he would teach her how to be more of a rock and roller like him. In particular, he taught her to strum the acoustic guitar with a single strum, rather than to hit each string individually, which was the style of country players at the time. Meanwhile, her recording career was flagging -- she hadn't had another hit with any of her solo recordings, and she was starting to wonder if Decca was the right place for her. She did, though, have a hit as a songwriter, with a song called "Without Your Love", which she'd written for Bobby Lord, a singer who appeared with her on the radio show Ozark Jubilee. [Excerpt: Bobby Lord, "Without Your Love"] That song had gone to the top ten in the country charts, and turned out to be Lord's only hit single. But while she could come up with a hit for him, she wasn't having hits herself, and she decided that she wanted to leave Decca. Her contract was up, and while they did have the option to extend it for another year and were initially interested in exercising the option, Decca agreed to let her go. Meanwhile, Wanda was also thinking about what kind of music she wanted to make in the future. Elvis had convinced her that she should move into rockabilly, but she didn't know how to do it. She talked about this to Thelma Blackmon, the mother of one of her schoolfriends, who had written a couple of songs for her previously, and Blackmon came back with a song called "I Gotta Know", which Jackson decided would be perfect to restart her career. At this point Hank Thompson went to Ken Nelson, and told him that that underage singer he'd liked was no longer underage, and would he be interested in signing her? He definitely was interested, and he took her into the Capitol tower to record with a group of session musicians who he employed for as many of his West Coast sessions as possible, and who were at that point just beginning to create what later became the Bakersfield Sound. The musicians on that session were some of the best in the country music field -- Jelly Sanders on fiddle, Joe Maphis on guitar, and the legendary Ralph Mooney on steel guitar, and they were perfect for recording what would become a big country hit. But "I Gotta Know" was both country and rock and roll. While the choruses are definitely country: [Excerpt: Wanda Jackson, "I Gotta Know"] the verses are firmly in the rock and roll genre: [Excerpt: Wanda Jackson, "I Gotta Know"] Now, I'm indebted to the website "Women in Rock & Roll's First Wave", which I'll link in the shownotes, for this observation, but this kind of genre-mixing was very common particularly with women, and particularly with women who had previously had careers outside rock and roll and were trying to transition into it. While male performers in that situation would generally jump in head first and come up with an embarrassment like Perry Como's version of "Ko Ko Mo", female performers would do something rather different. They would, in fact, tend to do what Jackson did here, and combine the two genres, either by having a verse in one style and a chorus in the other, as Wanda does, or in other ways, as in for example Kay Starr's "Rock and Roll Waltz": [Excerpt: Kay Starr, "Rock and Roll Waltz"] Starr is a particularly good example here, because she's doing what a lot of female performers were doing at the time, which is trying to lace the recording with enough irony and humour that it could be taken as either a record in the young persons' style parodying the old persons' music, or a record in the older style mocking the new styles. By sitting on the fence in this way and being ambiguous enough, the established stars could back down if this rock and roll music turned out to be just another temporary fad. Jackson isn't quite doing that, but with her Elvis-style hiccups on the line "I gotta know, I gotta know", she comes very close to parody, in a way that could easily be written off if the experiment had failed. The experiment didn't fail, however, and "I Gotta Know" became Jackson's biggest hit of the fifties, making its way to number fifteen on the country charts -- rather oddly, given that she was clearly repositioning herself for the rockabilly market, it seemed to sell almost solely to the country market, and didn't cross over the way that Carl Perkins or Gene Vincent did. Her next single could have been the one that cemented her reputation as the greatest female rockabilly star of all, had it not been for one simple mistake. The song "Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad!" had been a favourite in her stage act for years, and she would let out a tremendous growl on the title line when she got to it, which would always get audiences worked up. Unfortunately, she horrified Ken Nelson in the studio by taking a big drink of milk while all the session musicians were on a coffee break. She hadn't realised what milk does to a singer's throat, and when they came to record the song she couldn't get her voice to do the growl that had always worked on stage. The result was still a good record, but it wasn't the massive success it would otherwise have been: [Excerpt: Wanda Jackson, "Hot Dog! That Made Him Mad!"] After that failed, Ken Nelson floundered around for quite a while trying to find something else that could work for Jackson. She kept cutting rockabilly tracks, but they never quite had the power of her stage performances, and meanwhile Nelson was making mistakes in what material he brought in, just as he was doing at the same time with Gene Vincent. Just like with Vincent, whenever Wanda brought in her own material, or material she'd picked to cover by other people, it worked fine, but when Nelson brought in something it would go down like a lead balloon. Probably the worst example was a terrible attempt to capitalise on the current calypso craze, a song called "Don'a Wanna", which was written by Boudleaux Bryant, one of the great songwriters of the fifties, but which wouldn't have been his best effort even before it was given a racist accent at Nelson's suggestion (and which Jackson cringed at doing even at the time, let alone sixty years later): [Excerpt: Wanda Jackson, "Don'a Wanna"] Much better was "Cool Love", which Jackson co-wrote herself, with her friend Vicki Countryman, Thelma Blackmon's daughter: [Excerpt: Wanda Jackson, "Cool Love"] That one is possibly too closely modelled after Elvis' recent hits, right down to the backing vocals, but it features a great Buck Owens guitar solo, it's fun, and Jackson is clearly engaged with the material. But just like all the other records since "I Wanna Know", "Cool Love" did nothing on the charts -- and indeed it wouldn't be until 1960 that Jackson would reach the charts again in the USA. But when she did, it would be with recordings she'd made years earlier, during the time period we're talking about now. And before she did, she would have her biggest success of all, and become the first rock and roll star about whom the cliche really was true -- even though she was having no success in her home country, she was big in Japan. But that's a story for a few weeks' time...

united states america tv women california history texas lord japan dj western tennessee high school oklahoma records thompson west coast gotta elvis capitol rock and roll billboard cocaine hot dogs elvis presley saturday night country music wills johnny cash backstage james brown mixcloud bakersfield greenfield rock music cooley grand ole opry great plains wild side capitol records merle haggard rock roll every night dust bowl blackmon first wave rhinestones decca carl perkins buck owens perry como wanda jackson western swing bob wills decca records jimmie rodgers gene vincent anita bryant andre williams louvin brothers hank thompson sears roebuck okies bakersfield sound johnny otis kay starr billy gray spade cooley don rich without your love bobby lord ken nelson boudleaux bryant blue yodel bob neal cocaine rhinestones i gotta know

Buck Owens - Buck Owens Sings Harlan Howard

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 13, 2019 156:10

In this week's episode, we're featuring one of the best albums in the long career of Buck Owens: "Buck Owens Sings Harlan Howard" (1961). Born in Detroit and barely receiving nine years of formal education, Harlan Howard relocated to Tucson then Los Angeles in the mid-fifties seeking a steady wage. It was there he was introduced to several early Bakersfield pioneers, including Wynn Stewart and Buck Owens. Extremely handy with a turn of phrase, Howard's stock skyrocketed when Charlie Walker cut "Pick Me Up On Your Way Down" and the following year Ray Price and Guy Mitchell's versions of "Heartaches By The Number" prompted a move to Nashville, where the songwriter earned the nicknames "The Irving Berlin Of Country Music", "Dean Of Nashville Songwriters" and "Mr. Songwriter". Few in country history have had as many hits with as many artists, and Howard's partnership with Buck Owens is legendary. This album, put out shortly after the third Owens/Howard hit in "Foolin' Around", has Buck covering several current hits from the pen of Harlan Howard, as well as many more from the deep songbook of the talented writer. Set in an era before the tele twang element of the Bakersfield sound had come to fruition and before Don Rich was let loose on harmony vocals - if you had to buy only one Buck Owens album, "Buck Owens Sings Harlan Howard" may well be it.

los angeles nashville detroit buck songwriter tucson arizona sings bakersfield buck owens foolin charlie walker ray price guy mitchell harlan howard don rich

Buck Owens - Buck Owens Sings Harlan Howard

The Picky Fingers Banjo Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 13, 2019 156:10

In this week's episode, we're featuring one of the best albums in the long career of Buck Owens: "Buck Owens Sings Harlan Howard" (1961). Born in Detroit and barely receiving nine years of formal education, Harlan Howard relocated to Tucson then Los Angeles in the mid-fifties seeking a steady wage. It was there he was introduced to several early Bakersfield pioneers, including Wynn Stewart and Buck Owens. Extremely handy with a turn of phrase, Howard's stock skyrocketed when Charlie Walker cut "Pick Me Up On Your Way Down" and the following year Ray Price and Guy Mitchell's versions of "Heartaches By The Number" prompted a move to Nashville, where the songwriter earned the nicknames "The Irving Berlin Of Country Music", "Dean Of Nashville Songwriters" and "Mr. Songwriter". Few in country history have had as many hits with as many artists, and Howard's partnership with Buck Owens is legendary. This album, put out shortly after the third Owens/Howard hit in "Foolin' Around", has Buck covering several current hits from the pen of Harlan Howard, as well as many more from the deep songbook of the talented writer. Set in an era before the tele twang element of the Bakersfield sound had come to fruition and before Don Rich was let loose on harmony vocals - if you had to buy only one Buck Owens album, "Buck Owens Sings Harlan Howard" may well be it.

los angeles nashville detroit buck songwriter tucson arizona sings bakersfield buck owens charlie walker ray price harlan howard don rich

"Dig This With The Splendid Bohemians" - Bill Mesnik and Rich Buckland Host and Toast "The Artistry of Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam"

---

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 31, 2019 61:46

rich toast artistry splendid dwight yoakam buckland bohemians buck owens don rich

#12 - How to Figure Out Harmony Parts

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 16, 2018 44:34

Being able to play (or sing?) harmony parts is one of the most useful skills to have as a banjo player, especially when playing with other musicians. In this episode, Keith teaches you how to find basic harmony parts using a system of finding the proper interval with the major scale. Get the tab sheet for this episode! Go to banjopodcast.libsyn.com, or email the show at pickyfingersbanjopodcast@gmail.com Support the show! www.patreon.com/banjopodcast There are lots of short sound clips in this episode! In the order of appearance, they are: "Your Love is Like a Flower" performed by the Bluegrass Album Band "Silver Bell" performed by Buddy Emmons "And Your Bird Can Sing" performed by The Beatles "When the Red, Red, Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin' Along" performed by The Ritz "Arkansas Traveler" performed by David Peters "Telluride" performed by the David Grisman Quintet "I'm Goin' Back Home Where I Belong" performed by Don Rich & the Buckaroos "Bye Bye Love" performed by the Everly Brothers "Abide With Me" performed by Thelonious Monk "Born to be With You" performed by J.D. Crowe "Steam Powered Aereo Plane" performed by John Hartford "All Blues" performed by Miles Davis "Revival" performed by the Allman Brothers Band "Up And Around the Bend" performed by Bela Fleck

figure flower bend goin bluegrass banjo your love scruggs bela fleck flatt bobbin don rich

Jana Jae & Her Blue Fiddle, Hee Haw Regular & Buck Owens ex Wife

CaregiverDave.com

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 26, 2018 29:00

Join Dave Nassaney, The Caregiver's Caregiver, and his co-host, Neil Haley as they interview fiddle player, and Hee Haw regular, Jana Jae, Between 1967 and 1970, she was married, raised two children, was divorced and resumed a musical career, winning national fiddle championships in 1973 and 1974. In 1974, while playing in a bluegrass band, she was heard by Buck Owens. When, in 1975, Don Rich died in a motorcycle accident, she replaced him in Owens’ Buckeroos and regularly played with them on tour and on Hee Haw. In 1977, after recording a solo album of Owens’ songs without permission, she was sacked, but later, she and Owens married. It proved a stormy relationship. First, Owens divorced her; they then remarried, but soon afterwards she divorced Owens. She continued to play with him until 1979, when she became a solo artist and recorded for Lark Records

regular owens fiddle ex wife hee haw buck owens don rich neil haley

Buck Owens & His Buckeroos - Together Again/My Heart Skips A Beat

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 19, 2018 154:10

In this episode, we're featuring a classic example of the "Bakersfield Sound": Buck Owens & His Buckeroos' landmark "Together Again/My Heart Skips A Beat" (1964). Jam-packed with twangy telecasters, crying steel guitar and uncanny harmonies between Buck & right-hand-man Don Rich, we meet the Buckeroos right at the peak of their powers. Ignored largely by the Nashville establishment, Buck & the boys toured hard, bringing the music to the people - and as a result, they became one of the tightest country and western bands out there. They were making money hand-over-fist, but having fun too - and this album reflects that. Highlights include the infectious "Truck Drivin' Man", the clever "Ain't It Amazin', Gracie" and the twin hits in "Together Again" and "My Heart Skips A Beat". But really, there aren't any bad songs on this record. Get you some.

man nashville buck jam skips buck owens together again don rich

Buck Owens & His Buckeroos - Together Again/My Heart Skips A Beat