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Dylan Patel is a man on a mission. We get into how: Huawei is giving NVIDIA a run for their money What USG needs to do about it What smart semiconductor tariff policy would look like o3 Outtro Music, a little texas country for you all: Ernest Tubb, Walking the Floor Over You https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQIRRReZIls Hank Thompson, Wild Side of Life https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPvARPfquPc And a completely wild post-WWII song I did not feel comfortable putting on the feed but worth a listen for the wtf factor: Ernest Tubb, Filipino Baby https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WXnoCyKGw8&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5tD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dylan Patel is a man on a mission. We get into how: Huawei is giving NVIDIA a run for their money What USG needs to do about it What smart semiconductor tariff policy would look like o3 Outtro Music, a little texas country for you all: Ernest Tubb, Walking the Floor Over You https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQIRRReZIls Hank Thompson, Wild Side of Life https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPvARPfquPc And a completely wild post-WWII song I did not feel comfortable putting on the feed but worth a listen for the wtf factor: Ernest Tubb, Filipino Baby https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WXnoCyKGw8&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5tD Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Comedian Mike Lukas co-hosted, check mike out at https://funnymuscle.com/https://funnymuscle.com/ Get his newest book Spin Kick - The hiss of death and all his books https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Your-Funny-Muscle-Create-ebook/dp/B0C4Q1T5VT/Super Bowl Sunday. Entertainment from 2024. 1st federal drug law, Volleyball invented, Electiona of 1825, fastest yodeler with a cigerette in his mouth. Todays birthdays - William Henry Harrison, Carmin Miranda, Ernest Tubb, Bobby Lewis, Carol King, Joe Pesci, Judith Light, Holly Johnson, Travis Tritt, Michael B. Jordan. Bill Haley died.Intro - Pour some sugar on me - Def Leppard http://defleppard.com/Are you ready for some football - Hank Williams jrLovin on me - Jack HarlowWorld on fire - Nate SmithBirthdays - In da club - 50 Cent http://50cent.com/Chicka Chicka Boom - Carmin MirandaWalking the floor over you - Ernest TubbTossin & Turnin - Bobby LewisIt's too late - Carol KingWho's the boss TV themeRelax - Frankie goes to HollywoodHere's a quarter - Travis TrittRock around the clock - Bill Haley & the CometsExit - Its not love - Dokken
In Episode 317, My Favorite Christmas Music, Sam Waldron presents 17 recordings from six previous holiday episodes of 45RPM, Music of the 40s and 50s. Performers include Ernest Tubb, Dean Martin, Julie London, Nat King... Read More The post Episode 317, My Favorite Christmas Music appeared first on Sam Waldron.
Songs include: Shame On You by Spade Cooley, At the Mail Call Today by Gene Autry, Stay a Little Longer by Bob Wills, It Don't Matter To Me Now by Ernest Tubb and Blue Eyes Crying In the Rain by Roy Acuff.
#1,027 - Milton L. Brown Returns Milton L. Brown Returns to The Paul Leslie Hour! Are you here? We love it when you're here tuned into The Paul Leslie Hour! This is episode #1,027 and we're welcoming back songwriter Milton L. Brown. Milton wrote songs like “Every Which Way But Loose” and “Cajun Invitation.” His songs have been recorded by Jimmy Buffett, Kenny Rogers, Anne Murray, Ernest Tubb, Roy Rogers and Blake Shelton. Milton joined The Paul Leslie Hour to talk about his new book Lyrics from Home: The Stories Behind the Songs. You can be a helper of The Paul Leslie Hour, just go right here and we thank you! Now, it's been years since Milton and Paul had an interview. What do you say we turn them loose? The Paul Leslie Hour is a talk show dedicated to “Helping People Tell Their Stories.” Some of the most iconic people of all time drop in to chat. Frequent topics include Arts, Entertainment and Culture.
This interview on Backstage Sonoma features host Steve Roby in conversation with renowned Country guitarist and singer Junior Brown. The discussion highlights Brown's illustrious career, marked by the release of 12 studio albums and multiple hits on the Billboard Country Singles Charts. It begins with an overview of Brown's musical journey, including influences from television and radio icons of the 50s and 60s, such as Ernest Tubb, and shows like "Hullabaloo" and "Shindig." Brown delves into the creation of his iconic instrument, the Git Steel double-neck guitar, explaining its practical utility in allowing him to switch between electric and steel guitar seamlessly during performances. The talk transitions into Brown's songwriting process, where he emphasizes the importance of titles and hooks in crafting his lyrics, typically before melodies. “When I'm asked about songwriting, a title will practically write the song if it's a good title, and every line of the song must support it. And if it doesn't, then you're getting away from it. You're drifting.” Host Roby draws attention to Brown's famous live rendition of "Highway Patrol," a song by Red Simpson. This performance showcases Brown's ability to personalize and revitalize classic tunes. Memorable performances, such as playing with rock and roll legend Bo Diddley, are recounted enthusiastically, underscoring significant milestones in Brown's career. The interview also touches on collaborative experiences with country music legends like Ray Price, George Jones, and Hank Thompson, hinting at these encounters' profound impact on Brown. Looking ahead, Brown shares his vision for an innovative album blending surf music with his trademark "twangy" sound, inspired by a painting he created called "Git Steel Surfer." The interview wraps up with mutual appreciation and well-wishes for Brown's future endeavors. Overall, the interview is a compelling blend of nostalgia, technical insights, and forward-looking creativity, offering fans a deeper appreciation of Junior Brown's multifaceted artistry. Junior Brown's California tour will make three stops in the North Bay, starting August 14 at Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley. On Friday, August 16, he plays at the Uptown Theatre in Napa and the Raven Theatre in Healdsburg for a show on Saturday, August 17. Ticket info here.
By Kurt Beyers- Edited by L Casserly Boomerang BeatTo introduce his new album, Front Porch Philosopher, Norman Collins offers “I Wanna Rule Somebody,” a pure piece of hard-driving, rock guitar and messaging in which the subject is the betrayal of belief and trust.The album and the single will be released on May 22.Guitar and a steady, hard fast drum begin, but not just to philosophy's beat. In this song, we get rock metaphysics. After the rest of the band crashes in, setting the rhythm and harmony of the argument, Norman introduces the subject:Join my church, I canSave your lifeTake my hand, and I mightWant your wifeThe song, and the album, are full of Norman's brand of progressive Americana. It is a fusion of a lot of different kinds of music —but mainly rock, blues, soul and country — and delivered hot and sweet.“I Wanna to Rule Somebody” is rock with what he describes as something like “Led Zeppelin goes country punk.”Oddly, the only tone that might be called “philosophical” is Norman when he's talking about the album.What does he want to say about “I Wanna to Rule Somebody” or Front Porch Philosopher“Well there's — I hate to brag — but there's some pretty good guitar playing on there. If people like guitar playing, there's good solos and,” he pauses, thinks a second, continues, “oh, nice chord changes. And interesting arrangements.”Which is a sedate, academic way to talk about music that, fast or slow, gets the pulse involved in listening and drives lyrics into heads like nails into walls.Let me prove, that you Got a soul Join our faith, underMy controlProposition-conclusion, proposition-conclusion. Drums provide punctuation.I wanna to rule, rule somebodyI don't care about who it isNorman knows his music and, as in “Get Back in the Car,” “What the Cat Dragged In” and “All I Wanted Was Roses,” he also knows how to put a story into lyrics.Norman has been making music, playing, and touring with a wide variety of musicians and bands since the late '60s, mainly out of San Francisco, though he was born and raised in St. Louis. He has also lived and worked in Nashville.Progressive Americana, for him, he says, “has something to do with a little bit of country and blues,” but influenced by much of American music from the last century. That becomes clear as he talks about influences.“Everybody has the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Chuck Berry as influences,” he said. “But I also like bands like, say, The Lovin' Spoonful. Nobody seems to mention them much. I like them a lot. I bought every album by them.”He includes all the English invasion bands, not only the Beatles and the Stones but bands such as the Zombies and the Kinks. He puts in San Francisco bands like Jefferson Airplane, Neil Young, Hot Tuna and others. As he goes on, he comes to people as varied in time and place as Howlin' Wolf, Sturgill Simpson, Rodney Crowell, BB King, Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, John Lee Hooker, early Fleetwood Mac with Peter Green.Progressive Americana indeed. His 2023 EP, Something to Say, has almost come to define the term for much of South America.“Hey Marie,” a single from that album, went close to viral on that continent and in Spain, said Larry Casserly, Norman's artist manager. “Due to my flexibility and experience, I enjoy the opportunity to stay busy here on the West Coast” Collins mentions. The band in Something to Say and Front Porch Philosophers is Norman Collins and the Tumblers.“I've been performing my own songs since I was 28,” he said. “I had a pretty popular band here in San Francisco, The Confessions, back in '81, and since then I've never been out of an original band.Front Porch Philosopher has a mix of old and new material. “I Wanna to Rule Somebody” and others are older tracks redone with a new producer/ arranger, Paul Kraushaar owner of PSR Recording. “Paul did a great job with these songs. The songs are more aggressive,” said Norman. “The guitar playing is more aggressive, the drums are more aggressive.”“We are mostly playing festivals and clubs type venues right now, and I'd like to take a step up in that direction” Norman states. “I know this new release will provide for more recognition and a chance to tour more places, larger venues and hopefully attract attention from an Indie label that believes in this music and might be willing to invest in this project,” said Norman. “This band,” he said, “is ready to go.”Get ready and go with Norman Collins and the Tumblers and connect on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/creator-to-creators-with-meosha-bean--4460322/support.
Musician include: Hank Thompson, Kitty Wells, Slim Whitman, Hank Williams, Red Foley and Ernest Tubb. Songs include: The Wild side of Life, Salty Dog Rag, Jambalya, It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels and Too Old to Cut the Mustard.
On this episode we explore the life and music of the Texas Troubadour, Ernest Tubb. From his humble beginnings in Crisp, Texas to becoming one of the elder statesmen of country music, Ernest was, and continued to be an inspiration for all those who followed. His innovative use of electric guitar in country music, his four-decade career with the Grand Ole Opry, his famous record store and it's Midnight Jamboree all pale in comparison to his heartbreaking, timeless music. Join me for a deep dive into the music of this legendary Texas icon.
Everybody from ROGER MILLER to ERNEST TUBB had a song about drinkin. WILLY NELSON, BRAD PAISLEY, MERLE HAGGARD, SHELLY WEST , TOM T HALL ,DAVE DUDLEY, JIM ED BROWN, DAVID FRIZZELL and one of my favorites by an artist named JOE NICHOLS sings "Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off".Duets with ALLEN JACKSON and JIMMY BUFFET, TOM T and DAVE DUDLEY are a real hoot. Enjoy my friends and please share with someone.
Original Air Date: June 05, 1959Host: Andrew RhynesShow: Grand Ole OpryPhone: (707) 98 OTRDW (6-8739) Exit music from: Roundup on the Prairie by Aaron Kenny https://bit.ly/3kTj0kK
In this episode the Dads get into every parent's nightmare: the Parenting Day From Hell. We came up with some songs to help you through these trying and exhausting times. These songs approach the Parenting Day From Hell in a variety of ways. Some describe how we are feeling at that moment. Others give us something to look forward to when the day is "over." We even have a couple of songs in this list that channel our inner HARDY and salute the day with his favorite offensive gesture. Mentioned in this Episode: Jason Kelce's Retirement George Strait Christmas Albums Professor Benjamin Bergen and the scientific research behind the middle finger Yip Harburgh's Famous Quote Office Space Good Night Moon by Margaret Wise Brown Charley Crockett busking in New York City Show Notes: 1:16 Dad Life Sound Check: Dave talks about the bonds that brothers form and how they sometimes confuse George Strait with Jose Feliciano. Mick talks about college visits and the song "Starting Over" by Chris Stapleton. 12:12 HARDY Report: We learn about the history of the Middle Finger thanks to HARDY, Post Malone and Professor Benjamin Bergen. 15:38 Farm Boy Update: Mick is working in the garden and planting spinach. 17:25: The Dads explain their thoughts and soundtracks for the Parenting Day From Hell. Sources: Intro Music: “Dark Country Rock” by Moodmode HARDY Report Theme Music: “Frantic” by Lemon Music Studio Farm Boy Update Theme Music: “The Wheels on the Bus Rockabilly Style (instrumental)” by Mike Cole "Amarillo By Morning" by George Strait "Feliz Navidad" by Pedro Feliciano "Starting Over" by Chris Stapleton "SOLD OUT" by HARDY "Take This Job and Shove It" by Johnny Paycheck "Hello Walls" by Faron Young "9 to 5" by Dolly Parton "Two Words" by Kolby Cooper "It's Five-o-Clock Somewhere" by Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett "Drink in My Hand" by Eric Church "Half of Me" by Thomas Rhett featuring Riley Green "Welcome to Hard Times - Live from the Ryman" by Charley Crockett "Thanks a Lot" by Ernest Tubb "Smoke Break" by Carrie Underwood "The Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning" by Willie Nelson "The Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning" by Chris Stapleton "Things Have Gone to Pieces" by George Jones "Working Man" by Larry Fleet Please subscribe to the show, rate it, and leave a review on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon, OverCast, Pandora, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts! Follow us on Instagram @CountryMusicDads and Facebook @CountryMusicDads or visit us on the web at CountryMusicDads.com. And if you want to hear some of these songs in full, check out the Country Music Dads Playlist and the Best Country Songs for Your Parenting Day From Hell Playlist on Spotify.
Episode 294, Cindy Walker, features 17 songs from the pen of one of the most prolific behind-the-scenes songwriters of the 20th century. Performers include Bing Crosby, Jerry Wallace, Kitty Wells, Willie Nelson, Ernest Tubb, Roy... Read More The post Episode 294, Cindy Walker appeared first on Sam Waldron.
Original Air Date: 1954Host: Andrew RhynesShow: Grand Ole OpryPhone: (707) 98 OTRDW (6-8739) Exit music from: Roundup on the Prairie by Aaron Kenny https://bit.ly/3kTj0kK
National pizza day. Entertainment from 2012. 1st federal drug law, Volleyball invented, Electiona of 1825, fastest yodeler with a cigerette in his mouth. Todays birthdays - William Henry Harrison, Carmin Miranda, Ernest Tubb, Bobby Lewis, Carol King, Joe Pesci, Judith Light, Holly Johnson, Travis Tritt, Michael B. Jordan. Bill Haley died.Intro - Pour some sugar on me - Def Leppard http://defleppard.com/Pizza party - The Royal HoundsSet fire to the rain - AdeleYou - Chris YoungBirthdays - In da club - 50 Cent http://50cent.com/Chicka Chicka Boom - Carmin MirandaWalking the floor over you - Ernest TubbTossin & Turnin - Bobby LewisIt's too late - Carol KingWho's the boss TV themeRelax - Frankie goes to HollywoodHere's a quarter - Travis TrittRock around the clock - Bill Haley & the CometsExit - Its not love - Dokken
"The Old Rugged Cross" has been a country gospel favorite ever since it became the title song of Ernest Tubb's 1952 gospel album; it has been performed by some of the twentieth century's most important recording artists, including Al Green, Andy Griffith, Anne Murray, Brad Paisley, Chet Atkins, Chris Barber, John Berry, Floyd Cramer, George Jones, Eddy Arnold, Jim Reeves, Johnny Cash and June Carter, Kevin Max, Ella Fitzgerald, Mahalia Jackson, Jo Stafford, Gordon MacRae, Merle Haggard, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Ray Price, Ricky Van Shelton, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans,[9] The Oak Ridge Boys, The Statler Brothers, Vince Gill, Willie Nelson, Alan Jackson, George Beverly Shea, James Morrison on the 1990 album "Snappy Doo", and John Prine on the 2007 album "Standard Songs for Average People" with Mac Wiseman. British television dramatist Dennis Potter used the gospel song prominently in several of his plays, most notably Pennies from Heaven (1978); and the song also played a major part in "Gridlock" (2007), an episode of the long-running sci-fi drama series Doctor Who. In early 2009, the song was covered by Ronnie Milsap on his gospel album Then Sings My Soul.
Episode 294, Cindy Walker, features 17 songs from the pen of one of the most prolific behind-the-scenes songwriters of the 20th century. Performers include Bing Crosby, Jerry Wallace, Kitty Wells, Willie Nelson, Ernest Tubb, Roy... Read More The post Episode 294, Cindy Walker appeared first on Sam Waldron.
HANK SNOW, MERLE HAGGARD, ERNEST TUBB, TOM T HALL, JACK GREENE,LEFTY FRIZZEL CAL SMITH and many more were influenced by one man and his music. Listen in and you'll hear them all and know who he was.
Original Air Date: January 03, 1953Host: Andrew RhynesShow: Grand Ole OpryPhone: (707) 98 OTRDW (6-8739) Exit music from: Roundup on the Prairie by Aaron Kenny https://bit.ly/3kTj0kK
Episode 292, Christmas 2023, celebrates secular holiday music performed by 21 artists, including The Andrews Sisters, The Mills Brothers, Andy Williams, Ernest Tubb, Kate Smith, Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Pearl Bailey, The Platters, and Connie... Read More The post Episode 292, Christmas 2023 appeared first on Sam Waldron.
We revisit the country genre for some down home Christmas cooking…of sleigh bells, holly, ham, and mistletoe. Songs from mid-century to just a year ago or so featuring some of your favorite country and Americana artists in our final show before Christmas Day 2023. Tune in for some classics and also-rans from Gene Autry, Eddy Arnold, Red Foley, The Louvin Brothers and John Prine as we share some roasted, toasted chestnuts from the yule log. We've also got some George Jones, Ernest Tubb and Willie Nelson right up alongside Kacey Musgraves and Raul Malo. We're saluting the season and telling stories from childhood's past, all for you wrapped up with pretty paper and holiday ribbons of gold on this year's Christmas show on community radio for Sonoma County, KOWS-LP, 92.5 FM, Occidental. Streaming your way across planet Earth on kowsfm.com. Now…let's say it once again…'war is over'.
Original Air Date: August 23, 1952Host: Andrew RhynesShow: Grand Ole OpryPhone: (707) 98 OTRDW (6-8739) Exit music from: Roundup on the Prairie by Aaron Kenny https://bit.ly/3kTj0kK
ROGER MILLER, WILLY NELSON, BRAD PAISLEY, MERLE HAGGARD, ERNEST TUBB and TOM T HALL all have a different take on drinking. Add SHELLEY WEST and JOE NICHOLS both singin about tequila. TOM T and ERNEST TUBB get together for some "Day Drinkin' , along with ALAN JACKSON & JIMMY BUFFETT at "5 Oclock Somewhere". DAVID FRIZZEL sums it all up. Pop a Top and give a listen my friends.
Original Air Date: July 12, 1952Host: Andrew RhynesShow: Grand Ole OpryPhone: (707) 98 OTRDW (6-8739) Exit music from: Roundup on the Prairie by Aaron Kenny https://bit.ly/3kTj0kK
Ernest Tubb, Eddie Miller, Don Sessions, Owen Bradley, and me.
Songs include: Sugar Foot Stomp, Jesus Give Me Water, Walking the Floor Over You, Piano Sonata #13, El Chivo and Jeep's Blues. Performers include: Cuarteto Coculense, James P. Johnson, Ernest Tubb, Arthur Schnabel, FDR and the Soul Stirrers.
Original Air Date: February 21, 1952Host: Andrew RhynesShow: Grand Ole OpryPhone: (707) 98 OTRDW (6-8739) Exit music from: Roundup on the Prairie by Aaron Kenny https://bit.ly/3kTj0kK
This week we welcome Phaedra Marze Clemmons! Phaedra Marze Clemmons was born and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana and has been singing all her life. She began singing on Ark-La_tex shows, jamborees, festivals and fairs as well as the famous Louisiana Hayride. She has won numerous talent contests, recorded several albums and has appeared on the Jimmy Snow Grand Ole Opry Gospel Show, Ernest Tubb's Midnight Jamboree, Nashville Palace, Jim Ed Brown's Night Life Theater, and others shows across the county. She moved to Nashville, Tn and worked on music and recorded for eight years. She has opened for Tracy Lawrence, Mike Reid, Ricky Skaggs, Kentucky Headhunters, Ronnie Millsap, Joe Diffy, and John Anderson. Phadrea and her husband, who is a Firefighter in Springdale, Arkansas, now live in Huntsville, Arkansas and they have three kids, 17, 19, 20. She has been performing in Branson for the past 12 years. She now currently sings in "The Hits" Show at the Copeland Theatre on Wednesday and Friday at 2:00 pm, which has been nominated for “New Show of the Year”, “New Matinee Show of the Year”, and “Female Vocalist of the Year” from the 2023 Branson Show Awards. She has also been nominated for “Female Vocalist of the Year” from the 2023 Branson Terry Awards. Phaedra also sings at Cowboy Church the first Sunday of every month at God and Country Theater. You can find Phadrea and her talented cast at the Copeland Theater. For tickets and information, call 417- 332-5338; or visit CopleandTheater.com.
Episode one hundred and sixty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “The Weight" by the Band, the Basement Tapes, and the continuing controversy over Dylan going electric. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a half-hour bonus episode available, on "S.F. Sorrow is Born" by the Pretty Things. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Also, a one-time request here -- Shawn Taylor, who runs the Facebook group for the podcast and is an old and dear friend of mine, has stage-three lung cancer. I will be hugely grateful to anyone who donates to the GoFundMe for her treatment. Errata At one point I say "when Robertson and Helm travelled to the Brill Building". I meant "when Hawkins and Helm". This is fixed in the transcript but not the recording. Resources There are three Mixcloud mixes this time. As there are so many songs by Bob Dylan and the Band excerpted, and Mixcloud won't allow more than four songs by the same artist in any mix, I've had to post the songs not in quite the same order in which they appear in the podcast. But the mixes are here — one, two, three. I've used these books for all the episodes involving Dylan: Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties by Elijah Wald, which is recommended, as all Wald's books are. Bob Dylan: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon is a song-by-song look at every song Dylan ever wrote, as is Revolution in the Air, by Clinton Heylin. Heylin also wrote the most comprehensive and accurate biography of Dylan, Behind the Shades. I've also used Robert Shelton's No Direction Home, which is less accurate, but which is written by someone who knew Dylan. Chronicles Volume 1 by Bob Dylan is a partial, highly inaccurate, but thoroughly readable autobiography. Information on Tiny Tim comes from Eternal Troubadour: The Improbable Life of Tiny Tim by Justin Martell. Information on John Cage comes from The Roaring Silence by David Revill Information on Woodstock comes from Small Town Talk by Barney Hoskyns. For material on the Basement Tapes, I've used Million Dollar Bash by Sid Griffin. And for the Band, I've used This Wheel's on Fire by Levon Helm with Stephen Davis, Testimony by Robbie Robertson, The Band by Craig Harris and Levon by Sandra B Tooze. I've also referred to the documentaries No Direction Home and Once Were Brothers. The complete Basement Tapes can be found on this multi-disc box set, while this double-CD version has the best material from the sessions. All the surviving live recordings by Dylan and the Hawks from 1966 are on this box set. There are various deluxe versions of Music From Big Pink, but still the best way to get the original album is in this twofer CD with the Band's second album. Transcript Just a brief note before I start – literally while I was in the middle of recording this episode, it was announced that Robbie Robertson had died today, aged eighty. Obviously I've not had time to alter the rest of the episode – half of which had already been edited – with that in mind, though I don't believe I say anything disrespectful to his memory. My condolences to those who loved him – he was a huge talent and will be missed. There are people in the world who question the function of criticism. Those people argue that criticism is in many ways parasitic. If critics knew what they were talking about, so the argument goes, they would create themselves, rather than talk about other people's creation. It's a variant of the "those who can't, teach" cliche. And to an extent it's true. Certainly in the world of rock music, which we're talking about in this podcast, most critics are quite staggeringly ignorant of the things they're talking about. Most criticism is ephemeral, published in newspapers, magazines, blogs and podcasts, and forgotten as soon as it has been consumed -- and consumed is the word . But sometimes, just sometimes, a critic will have an effect on the world that is at least as important as that of any of the artists they criticise. One such critic was John Ruskin. Ruskin was one of the preeminent critics of visual art in the Victorian era, particularly specialising in painting and architecture, and he passionately advocated for a form of art that would be truthful, plain, and honest. To Ruskin's mind, many artists of the past, and of his time, drew and painted, not what they saw with their own eyes, but what other people expected them to paint. They replaced true observation of nature with the regurgitation of ever-more-mannered and formalised cliches. His attacks on many great artists were, in essence, the same critiques that are currently brought against AI art apps -- they're just recycling and plagiarising what other people had already done, not seeing with their own eyes and creating from their own vision. Ruskin was an artist himself, but never received much acclaim for his own work. Rather, he advocated for the works of others, like Turner and the pre-Raphaelite school -- the latter of whom were influenced by Ruskin, even as he admired them for seeing with their own vision rather than just repeating influences from others. But those weren't the only people Ruskin influenced. Because any critical project, properly understood, becomes about more than just the art -- as if art is just anything. Ruskin, for example, studied geology, because if you're going to talk about how people should paint landscapes and what those landscapes look like, you need to understand what landscapes really do look like, which means understanding their formation. He understood that art of the kind he wanted could only be produced by certain types of people, and so society had to be organised in a way to produce such people. Some types of societal organisation lead to some kinds of thinking and creation, and to properly, honestly, understand one branch of human thought means at least to attempt to understand all of them. Opinions about art have moral consequences, and morality has political and economic consequences. The inevitable endpoint of any theory of art is, ultimately, a theory of society. And Ruskin had a theory of society, and social organisation. Ruskin's views are too complex to summarise here, but they were a kind of anarcho-primitivist collectivism. He believed that wealth was evil, and that the classical liberal economics of people like Mill was fundamentally anti-human, that the division of labour alienated people from their work. In Ruskin's ideal world, people would gather in communities no bigger than villages, and work as craftspeople, working with nature rather than trying to bend nature to their will. They would be collectives, with none richer or poorer than any other, and working the land without modern technology. in the first half of the twentieth century, in particular, Ruskin's influence was *everywhere*. His writings on art inspired the Impressionist movement, but his political and economic ideas were the most influential, right across the political spectrum. Ruskin's ideas were closest to Christian socialism, and he did indeed inspire many socialist parties -- most of the founders of Britain's Labour Party were admirers of Ruskin and influenced by his ideas, particularly his opposition to the free market. But he inspired many other people -- Gandhi talked about the profound influence that Ruskin had on him, saying in his autobiography that he got three lessons from Ruskin's Unto This Last: "That 1) the good of the individual is contained in the good of all. 2) a lawyer's work has the same value as the barber's in as much as all have the same right of earning their livelihood from their work. 3) a life of labour, i.e., the life of the tiller of the soil and the handicraftsman is the life worth living. The first of these I knew. The second I had dimly realized. The third had never occurred to me. Unto This Last made it clear as daylight for me that the second and third were contained in the first. I arose with the dawn, ready to reduce these principles to practice" Gandhi translated and paraphrased Unto this Last into Gujurati and called the resulting book Sarvodaya (meaning "uplifting all" or "the welfare of all") which he later took as the name of his own political philosophy. But Ruskin also had a more pernicious influence -- it was said in 1930s Germany that he and his friend Thomas Carlyle were "the first National Socialists" -- there's no evidence I know of that Hitler ever read Ruskin, but a *lot* of Nazi rhetoric is implicit in Ruskin's writing, particularly in his opposition to progress (he even opposed the bicycle as being too much inhuman interference with nature), just as much as more admirable philosophies, and he was so widely read in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that there's barely a political movement anywhere that didn't bear his fingerprints. But of course, our focus here is on music. And Ruskin had an influence on that, too. We've talked in several episodes, most recently the one on the Velvet Underground, about John Cage's piece 4'33. What I didn't mention in any of the discussions of that piece -- because I was saving it for here -- is that that piece was premiered at a small concert hall in upstate New York. The hall, the Maverick Concert Hall, was owned and run by the Maverick arts and crafts collective -- a collective that were so called because they were the *second* Ruskinite arts colony in the area, having split off from the Byrdcliffe colony after a dispute between its three founders, all of whom were disciples of Ruskin, and all of whom disagreed violently about how to implement Ruskin's ideas of pacifist all-for-one and one-for-all community. These arts colonies, and others that grew up around them like the Arts Students League were the thriving centre of a Bohemian community -- close enough to New York that you could get there if you needed to, far enough away that you could live out your pastoral fantasies, and artists of all types flocked there -- Pete Seeger met his wife there, and his father-in-law had been one of the stonemasons who helped build the Maverick concert hall. Dozens of artists in all sorts of areas, from Aaron Copland to Edward G Robinson, spent time in these communities, as did Cage. Of course, while these arts and crafts communities had a reputation for Bohemianism and artistic extremism, even radical utopian artists have their limits, and legend has it that the premiere of 4'33 was met with horror and derision, and eventually led to one artist in the audience standing up and calling on the residents of the town around which these artistic colonies had agglomerated: “Good people of Woodstock, let's drive these people out of town.” [Excerpt: The Band, "The Weight"] Ronnie Hawkins was almost born to make music. We heard back in the episode on "Suzie Q" in 2019 about his family and their ties to music. Ronnie's uncle Del was, according to most of the sources on the family, a member of the Sons of the Pioneers -- though as I point out in that episode, his name isn't on any of the official lists of group members, but he might well have performed with them at some point in the early years of the group. And he was definitely a country music bass player, even if he *wasn't* in the most popular country and western group of the thirties and forties. And Del had had two sons, Jerry, who made some minor rockabilly records: [Excerpt: Jerry Hawkins, "Swing, Daddy, Swing"] And Del junior, who as we heard in the "Susie Q" episode became known as Dale Hawkins and made one of the most important rock records of the fifties: [Excerpt: Dale Hawkins, "Susie Q"] Ronnie Hawkins was around the same age as his cousins, and was in awe of his country-music star uncle. Hawkins later remembered that after his uncle moved to Califormia to become a star “He'd come home for a week or two, driving a brand new Cadillac and wearing brand new clothes and I knew that's what I wanted to be." Though he also remembered “He spent every penny he made on whiskey, and he was divorced because he was running around with all sorts of women. His wife left Arkansas and went to Louisiana.” Hawkins knew that he wanted to be a music star like his uncle, and he started performing at local fairs and other events from the age of eleven, including one performance where he substituted for Hank Williams -- Williams was so drunk that day he couldn't perform, and so his backing band asked volunteers from the audience to get up and sing with them, and Hawkins sang Burl Ives and minstrel-show songs with the band. He said later “Even back then I knew that every important white cat—Al Jolson, Stephen Foster—they all did it by copying blacks. Even Hank Williams learned all the stuff he had from those black cats in Alabama. Elvis Presley copied black music; that's all that Elvis did.” As well as being a performer from an early age, though, Hawkins was also an entrepreneur with an eye for how to make money. From the age of fourteen he started running liquor -- not moonshine, he would always point out, but something far safer. He lived only a few miles from the border between Missouri and Arkansas, and alcohol and tobacco were about half the price in Missouri that they were in Arkansas, so he'd drive across the border, load up on whisky and cigarettes, and drive back and sell them at a profit, which he then used to buy shares in several nightclubs, which he and his bands would perform in in later years. Like every man of his generation, Hawkins had to do six months in the Army, and it was there that he joined his first ever full-time band, the Blackhawks -- so called because his name was Hawkins, and the rest of the group were Black, though Hawkins was white. They got together when the other four members were performing at a club in the area where Hawkins was stationed, and he was so impressed with their music that he jumped on stage and started singing with them. He said later “It sounded like something between the blues and rockabilly. It sort of leaned in both directions at the same time, me being a hayseed and those guys playing a lot funkier." As he put it "I wanted to sound like Bobby ‘Blue' Bland but it came out sounding like Ernest Tubb.” Word got around about the Blackhawks, both that they were a great-sounding rock and roll band and that they were an integrated band at a time when that was extremely unpopular in the southern states, and when Hawkins was discharged from the Army he got a call from Sam Phillips at Sun Records. According to Hawkins a group of the regular Sun session musicians were planning on forming a band, and he was asked to front the band for a hundred dollars a week, but by the time he got there the band had fallen apart. This doesn't precisely line up with anything else I know about Sun, though it perhaps makes sense if Hawkins was being asked to front the band who had variously backed Billy Lee Riley and Jerry Lee Lewis after one of Riley's occasional threats to leave the label. More likely though, he told everyone he knew that he had a deal with Sun but Phillips was unimpressed with the demos he cut there, and Hawkins made up the story to stop himself losing face. One of the session players for Sun, though, Luke Paulman, who played in Conway Twitty's band among others, *was* impressed with Hawkins though, and suggested that they form a band together with Paulman's bass player brother George and piano-playing cousin Pop Jones. The Paulman brothers and Jones also came from Arkansas, but they specifically came from Helena, Arkansas, the town from which King Biscuit Time was broadcast. King Biscuit Time was the most important blues radio show in the US at that time -- a short lunchtime programme which featured live performances from a house band which varied over the years, but which in the 1940s had been led by Sonny Boy Williamson II, and featured Robert Jr. Lockwood, Robert Johnson's stepson, on guiitar: [Excerpt: Sonny Boy Williamson II "Eyesight to the Blind (King Biscuit Time)"] The band also included a drummer, "Peck" Curtis, and that drummer was the biggest inspiration for a young white man from the town named Levon Helm. Helm had first been inspired to make music after seeing Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys play live when Helm was eight, and he had soon taken up first the harmonica, then the guitar, then the drums, becoming excellent at all of them. Even as a child he knew that he didn't want to be a farmer like his family, and that music was, as he put it, "the only way to get off that stinking tractor and out of that one hundred and five degree heat.” Sonny Boy Williamson and the King Biscuit Boys would perform in the open air in Marvell, Arkansas, where Helm was growing up, on Saturdays, and Helm watched them regularly as a small child, and became particularly interested in the drumming. “As good as the band sounded,” he said later “it seemed that [Peck] was definitely having the most fun. I locked into the drums at that point. Later, I heard Jack Nance, Conway Twitty's drummer, and all the great drummers in Memphis—Jimmy Van Eaton, Al Jackson, and Willie Hall—the Chicago boys (Fred Belew and Clifton James) and the people at Sun Records and Vee-Jay, but most of my style was based on Peck and Sonny Boy—the Delta blues style with the shuffle. Through the years, I've quickened the pace to a more rock-and-roll meter and time frame, but it still bases itself back to Peck, Sonny Boy Williamson, and the King Biscuit Boys.” Helm had played with another band that George Paulman had played in, and he was invited to join the fledgling band Hawkins was putting together, called for the moment the Sun Records Quartet. The group played some of the clubs Hawkins had business connections in, but they had other plans -- Conway Twitty had recently played Toronto, and had told Luke Paulman about how desperate the Canadians were for American rock and roll music. Twitty's agent Harold Kudlets booked the group in to a Toronto club, Le Coq D'Or, and soon the group were alternating between residencies in clubs in the Deep South, where they were just another rockabilly band, albeit one of the better ones, and in Canada, where they became the most popular band in Ontario, and became the nucleus of an entire musical scene -- the same scene from which, a few years later, people like Neil Young would emerge. George Paulman didn't remain long in the group -- he was apparently getting drunk, and also he was a double-bass player, at a time when the electric bass was becoming the in thing. And this is the best place to mention this, but there are several discrepancies in the various accounts of which band members were in Hawkins' band at which times, and who played on what session. They all *broadly* follow the same lines, but none of them are fully reconcilable with each other, and nobody was paying enough attention to lineup shifts in a bar band between 1957 and 1964 to be absolutely certain who was right. I've tried to reconcile the various accounts as far as possible and make a coherent narrative, but some of the details of what follows may be wrong, though the broad strokes are correct. For much of their first period in Ontario, the group had no bass player at all, relying on Jones' piano to fill in the bass parts, and on their first recording, a version of "Bo Diddley", they actually got the club's manager to play bass with them: [Excerpt: Ronnie Hawkins, "Hey Bo Diddley"] That is claimed to be the first rock and roll record made in Canada, though as everyone who has listened to this podcast knows, there's no first anything. It wasn't released as by the Sun Records Quartet though -- the band had presumably realised that that name would make them much less attractive to other labels, and so by this point the Sun Records Quartet had become Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks. "Hey Bo Diddley" was released on a small Canadian label and didn't have any success, but the group carried on performing live, travelling back down to Arkansas for a while and getting a new bass player, Lefty Evans, who had been playing in the same pool of musicians as them, having been another Sun session player who had been in Conway Twitty's band, and had written Twitty's "Why Can't I Get Through to You": [Excerpt: Conway Twitty, "Why Can't I Get Through to You"] The band were now popular enough in Canada that they were starting to get heard of in America, and through Kudlets they got a contract with Joe Glaser, a Mafia-connected booking agent who booked them into gigs on the Jersey Shore. As Helm said “Ronnie Hawkins had molded us into the wildest, fiercest, speed-driven bar band in America," and the group were apparently getting larger audiences in New Jersey than Sammy Davis Jr was, even though they hadn't released any records in the US. Or at least, they hadn't released any records in their own name in the US. There's a record on End Records by Rockin' Ronald and the Rebels which is very strongly rumoured to have been the Hawks under another name, though Hawkins always denied that. Have a listen for yourself and see what you think: [Excerpt: Rockin' Ronald and the Rebels, "Kansas City"] End Records, the label that was on, was one of the many record labels set up by George Goldner and distributed by Morris Levy, and when the group did release a record in their home country under their own name, it was on Levy's Roulette Records. An audition for Levy had been set up by Glaser's booking company, and Levy decided that given that Elvis was in the Army, there was a vacancy to be filled and Ronnie Hawkins might just fit the bill. Hawkins signed a contract with Levy, and it doesn't sound like he had much choice in the matter. Helm asked him “How long did you have to sign for?” and Hawkins replied "Life with an option" That said, unlike almost every other artist who interacted with Levy, Hawkins never had a bad word to say about him, at least in public, saying later “I don't care what Morris was supposed to have done, he looked after me and he believed in me. I even lived with him in his million-dollar apartment on the Upper East Side." The first single the group recorded for Roulette, a remake of Chuck Berry's "Thirty Days" retitled "Forty Days", didn't chart, but the follow-up, a version of Young Jessie's "Mary Lou", made number twenty-six on the charts: [Excerpt: Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, "Mary Lou"] While that was a cover of a Young Jessie record, the songwriting credits read Hawkins and Magill -- Magill was a pseudonym used by Morris Levy. Levy hoped to make Ronnie Hawkins into a really big star, but hit a snag. This was just the point where the payola scandal had hit and record companies were under criminal investigation for bribing DJs to play their records. This was the main method of promotion that Levy used, and this was so well known that Levy was, for a time, under more scrutiny than anyone. He couldn't risk paying anyone off, and so Hawkins' records didn't get the expected airplay. The group went through some lineup changes, too, bringing in guitarist Fred Carter (with Luke Paulman moving to rhythm and soon leaving altogether) from Hawkins' cousin Dale's band, and bass player Jimmy Evans. Some sources say that Jones quit around this time, too, though others say he was in the band for a while longer, and they had two keyboards (the other keyboard being supplied by Stan Szelest. As well as recording Ronnie Hawkins singles, the new lineup of the group also recorded one single with Carter on lead vocals, "My Heart Cries": [Excerpt: Fred Carter, "My Heart Cries"] While the group were now playing more shows in the USA, they were still playing regularly in Canada, and they had developed a huge fanbase there. One of these was a teenage guitarist called Robbie Robertson, who had become fascinated with the band after playing a support slot for them, and had started hanging round, trying to ingratiate himself with the band in the hope of being allowed to join. As he was a teenager, Hawkins thought he might have his finger on the pulse of the youth market, and when Hawkins and Helm travelled to the Brill Building to hear new songs for consideration for their next album, they brought Robertson along to listen to them and give his opinion. Robertson himself ended up contributing two songs to the album, titled Mr. Dynamo. According to Hawkins "we had a little time after the session, so I thought, Well, I'm just gonna put 'em down and see what happens. And they were released. Robbie was the songwriter for words, and Levon was good for arranging, making things fit in and all that stuff. He knew what to do, but he didn't write anything." The two songs in question were "Someone Like You" and "Hey Boba Lou": [Excerpt: Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, "Hey Boba Lou"] While Robertson was the sole writer of the songs, they were credited to Robertson, Hawkins, and Magill -- Morris Levy. As Robertson told the story later, “It's funny, when those songs came out and I got a copy of the album, it had another name on there besides my name for some writer like Morris Levy. So, I said to Ronnie, “There was nobody there writing these songs when I wrote these songs. Who is Morris Levy?” Ronnie just kinda tapped me on the head and said, “There are certain things about this business that you just let go and you don't question.” That was one of my early music industry lessons right there" Robertson desperately wanted to join the Hawks, but initially it was Robertson's bandmate Scott Cushnie who became the first Canadian to join the Hawks. But then when they were in Arkansas, Jimmy Evans decided he wasn't going to go back to Canada. So Hawkins called Robbie Robertson up and made him an offer. Robertson had to come down to Arkansas and get a couple of quick bass lessons from Helm (who could play pretty much every instrument to an acceptable standard, and so was by this point acting as the group's musical director, working out arrangements and leading them in rehearsals). Then Hawkins and Helm had to be elsewhere for a few weeks. If, when they got back, Robertson was good enough on bass, he had the job. If not, he didn't. Robertson accepted, but he nearly didn't get the gig after all. The place Hawkins and Helm had to be was Britain, where they were going to be promoting their latest single on Boy Meets Girls, the Jack Good TV series with Marty Wilde, which featured guitarist Joe Brown in the backing band: [Excerpt: Joe Brown, “Savage”] This was the same series that Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent were regularly appearing on, and while they didn't appear on the episodes that Hawkins and Helm appeared on, they did appear on the episodes immediately before Hawkins and Helm's two appearances, and again a couple of weeks after, and were friendly with the musicians who did play with Hawkins and Helm, and apparently they all jammed together a few times. Hawkins was impressed enough with Joe Brown -- who at the time was considered the best guitarist on the British scene -- that he invited Brown to become a Hawk. Presumably if Brown had taken him up on the offer, he would have taken the spot that ended up being Robertson's, but Brown turned him down -- a decision he apparently later regretted. Robbie Robertson was now a Hawk, and he and Helm formed an immediate bond. As Helm much later put it, "It was me and Robbie against the world. Our mission, as we saw it, was to put together the best band in history". As rockabilly was by this point passe, Levy tried converting Hawkins into a folk artist, to see if he could get some of the Kingston Trio's audience. He recorded a protest song, "The Ballad of Caryl Chessman", protesting the then-forthcoming execution of Chessman (one of only a handful of people to be executed in the US in recent decades for non-lethal offences), and he made an album of folk tunes, The Folk Ballads of Ronnie Hawkins, which largely consisted of solo acoustic recordings, plus a handful of left-over Hawks recordings from a year or so earlier. That wasn't a success, but they also tried a follow-up, having Hawkins go country and do an album of Hank Williams songs, recorded in Nashville at Owen Bradley's Quonset hut. While many of the musicians on the album were Nashville A-Team players, Hawkins also insisted on having his own band members perform, much to the disgust of the producer, and so it's likely (not certain, because there seem to be various disagreements about what was recorded when) that that album features the first studio recordings with Levon Helm and Robbie Robertson playing together: [Excerpt: Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, "Your Cheatin' Heart"] Other sources claim that the only Hawk allowed to play on the album sessions was Helm, and that the rest of the musicians on the album were Harold Bradley and Hank Garland on guitar, Owen Bradley and Floyd Cramer on piano, Bob Moore on bass, and the Anita Kerr singers. I tend to trust Helm's recollection that the Hawks played at least some of the instruments though, because the source claiming that also seems to confuse the Hank Williams and Folk Ballads albums, and because I don't hear two pianos on the album. On the other hand, that *does* sound like Floyd Cramer on piano, and the tik-tok bass sound you'd get from having Harold Bradley play a baritone guitar while Bob Moore played a bass. So my best guess is that these sessions were like the Elvis sessions around the same time and with several of the same musicians, where Elvis' own backing musicians played rhythm parts but left the prominent instruments to the A-team players. Helm was singularly unimpressed with the experience of recording in Nashville. His strongest memory of the sessions was of another session going on in the same studio complex at the time -- Bobby "Blue" Bland was recording his classic single "Turn On Your Love Light", with the great drummer Jabo Starks on drums, and Helm was more interested in listening to that than he was in the music they were playing: [Excerpt: Bobby "Blue" Bland, "Turn On Your Love Light"] Incidentally, Helm talks about that recording being made "downstairs" from where the Hawks were recording, but also says that they were recording in Bradley's Quonset hut. Now, my understanding here *could* be very wrong -- I've been unable to find a plan or schematic anywhere -- but my understanding is that the Quonset hut was a single-level structure, not a multi-level structure. BUT the original recording facilities run by the Bradley brothers were in Owen Bradley's basement, before they moved into the larger Quonset hut facility in the back, so it's possible that Bland was recording that in the old basement studio. If so, that won't be the last recording made in a basement we hear this episode... Fred Carter decided during the Nashville sessions that he was going to leave the Hawks. As his son told the story: "Dad had discovered the session musicians there. He had no idea that you could play and make a living playing in studios and sleep in your own bed every night. By that point in his life, he'd already been gone from home and constantly on the road and in the service playing music for ten years so that appealed to him greatly. And Levon asked him, he said, “If you're gonna leave, Fred, I'd like you to get young Robbie over here up to speed on guitar”…[Robbie] got kind of aggravated with him—and Dad didn't say this with any malice—but by the end of that week, or whatever it was, Robbie made some kind of comment about “One day I'm gonna cut you.” And Dad said, “Well, if that's how you think about it, the lessons are over.” " (For those who don't know, a musician "cutting" another one is playing better than them, so much better that the worse musician has to concede defeat. For the remainder of Carter's notice in the Hawks, he played with his back to Robertson, refusing to look at him. Carter leaving the group caused some more shuffling of roles. For a while, Levon Helm -- who Hawkins always said was the best lead guitar player he ever worked with as well as the best drummer -- tried playing lead guitar while Robertson played rhythm and another member, Rebel Payne, played bass, but they couldn't find a drummer to replace Helm, who moved back onto the drums. Then they brought in Roy Buchanan, another guitarist who had been playing with Dale Hawkins, having started out playing with Johnny Otis' band. But Buchanan didn't fit with Hawkins' personality, and he quit after a few months, going off to record his own first solo record: [Excerpt: Roy Buchanan, "Mule Train Stomp"] Eventually they solved the lineup problem by having Robertson -- by this point an accomplished lead player --- move to lead guitar and bringing in a new rhythm player, another Canadian teenager named Rick Danko, who had originally been a lead player (and who also played mandolin and fiddle). Danko wasn't expected to stay on rhythm long though -- Rebel Payne was drinking a lot and missing being at home when he was out on the road, so Danko was brought in on the understanding that he was to learn Payne's bass parts and switch to bass when Payne quit. Helm and Robertson were unsure about Danko, and Robertson expressed that doubt, saying "He only knows four chords," to which Hawkins replied, "That's all right son. You can teach him four more the way we had to teach you." He proved himself by sheer hard work. As Hawkins put it “He practiced so much that his arms swoll up. He was hurting.” By the time Danko switched to bass, the group also had a baritone sax player, Jerry Penfound, which allowed the group to play more of the soul and R&B material that Helm and Robertson favoured, though Hawkins wasn't keen. This new lineup of the group (which also had Stan Szelest on piano) recorded Hawkins' next album. This one was produced by Henry Glover, the great record producer, songwriter, and trumpet player who had played with Lucky Millinder, produced Wynonie Harris, Hank Ballard, and Moon Mullican, and wrote "Drowning in My Own Tears", "The Peppermint Twist", and "California Sun". Glover was massively impressed with the band, especially Helm (with whom he would remain friends for the rest of his life) and set aside some studio time for them to cut some tracks without Hawkins, to be used as album filler, including a version of the Bobby "Blue" Bland song "Farther On Up the Road" with Helm on lead vocals: [Excerpt: Levon Helm and the Hawks, "Farther On Up the Road"] There were more changes on the way though. Stan Szelest was about to leave the band, and Jones had already left, so the group had no keyboard player. Hawkins had just the replacement for Szelest -- yet another Canadian teenager. This one was Richard Manuel, who played piano and sang in a band called The Rockin' Revols. Manuel was not the greatest piano player around -- he was an adequate player for simple rockabilly and R&B stuff, but hardly a virtuoso -- but he was an incredible singer, able to do a version of "Georgia on My Mind" which rivalled Ray Charles, and Hawkins had booked the Revols into his own small circuit of clubs around Arkanasas after being impressed with them on the same bill as the Hawks a couple of times. Hawkins wanted someone with a good voice because he was increasingly taking a back seat in performances. Hawkins was the bandleader and frontman, but he'd often given Helm a song or two to sing in the show, and as they were often playing for several hours a night, the more singers the band had the better. Soon, with Helm, Danko, and Manuel all in the group and able to take lead vocals, Hawkins would start missing entire shows, though he still got more money than any of his backing group. Hawkins was also a hard taskmaster, and wanted to have the best band around. He already had great musicians, but he wanted them to be *the best*. And all the musicians in his band were now much younger than him, with tons of natural talent, but untrained. What he needed was someone with proper training, someone who knew theory and technique. He'd been trying for a long time to get someone like that, but Garth Hudson had kept turning him down. Hudson was older than any of the Hawks, though younger than Hawkins, and he was a multi-instrumentalist who was far better than any other musician on the circuit, having trained in a conservatory and learned how to play Bach and Chopin before switching to rock and roll. He thought the Hawks were too loud sounding and played too hard for him, but Helm kept on at Hawkins to meet any demands Hudson had, and Hawkins eventually agreed to give Hudson a higher wage than any of the other band members, buy him a new Lowry organ, and give him an extra ten dollars a week to give the rest of the band music lessons. Hudson agreed, and the Hawks now had a lineup of Helm on drums, Robertson on guitar, Manuel on piano, Danko on bass, Hudson on organ and alto sax, and Penfound on baritone sax. But these new young musicians were beginning to wonder why they actually needed a frontman who didn't turn up to many of the gigs, kept most of the money, and fined them whenever they broke one of his increasingly stringent set of rules. Indeed, they wondered why they needed a frontman at all. They already had three singers -- and sometimes a fourth, a singer called Bruce Bruno who would sometimes sit in with them when Penfound was unable to make a gig. They went to see Harold Kudlets, who Hawkins had recently sacked as his manager, and asked him if he could get them gigs for the same amount of money as they'd been getting with Hawkins. Kudlets was astonished to find how little Hawkins had been paying them, and told them that would be no problem at all. They had no frontman any more -- and made it a rule in all their contracts that the word "sideman" would never be used -- but Helm had been the leader for contractual purposes, as the musical director and longest-serving member (Hawkins, as a non-playing singer, had never joined the Musicians' Union so couldn't be the leader on contracts). So the band that had been Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks became the Levon Helm Sextet briefly -- but Penfound soon quit, and they became Levon and the Hawks. The Hawks really started to find their identity as their own band in 1964. They were already far more interested in playing soul than Hawkins had been, but they were also starting to get into playing soul *jazz*, especially after seeing the Cannonball Adderley Sextet play live: [Excerpt: Cannonball Adderley, "This Here"] What the group admired about the Adderley group more than anything else was a sense of restraint. Helm was particularly impressed with their drummer, Louie Hayes, and said of him "I got to see some great musicians over the years, and you see somebody like that play and you can tell, y' know, that the thing not to do is to just get it down on the floor and stomp the hell out of it!" The other influence they had, and one which would shape their sound even more, was a negative one. The two biggest bands on the charts at the time were the Beatles and the Beach Boys, and as Helm described it in his autobiography, the Hawks thought both bands' harmonies were "a blend of pale, homogenised, voices". He said "We felt we were better than the Beatles and the Beach Boys. We considered them our rivals, even though they'd never heard of us", and they decided to make their own harmonies sound as different as possible as a result. Where those groups emphasised a vocal blend, the Hawks were going to emphasise the *difference* in their voices in their own harmonies. The group were playing prestigious venues like the Peppermint Lounge, and while playing there they met up with John Hammond Jr, who they'd met previously in Canada. As you might remember from the first episode on Bob Dylan, Hammond Jr was the son of the John Hammond who we've talked about in many episodes, and was a blues musician in his own right. He invited Helm, Robertson, and Hudson to join the musicians, including Michael Bloomfield, who were playing on his new album, So Many Roads: [Excerpt: John P. Hammond, "Who Do You Love?"] That album was one of the inspirations that led Bob Dylan to start making electric rock music and to hire Bloomfield as his guitarist, decisions that would have profound implications for the Hawks. The first single the Hawks recorded for themselves after leaving Hawkins was produced by Henry Glover, and both sides were written by Robbie Robertson. "uh Uh Uh" shows the influence of the R&B bands they were listening to. What it reminds me most of is the material Ike and Tina Turner were playing at the time, but at points I think I can also hear the influence of Curtis Mayfield and Steve Cropper, who were rapidly becoming Robertson's favourite songwriters: [Excerpt: The Canadian Squires, "Uh Uh Uh"] None of the band were happy with that record, though. They'd played in the studio the same way they played live, trying to get a strong bass presence, but it just sounded bottom-heavy to them when they heard the record on a jukebox. That record was released as by The Canadian Squires -- according to Robertson, that was a name that the label imposed on them for the record, while according to Helm it was an alternative name they used so they could get bookings in places they'd only recently played, which didn't want the same band to play too often. One wonders if there was any confusion with the band Neil Young played in a year or so before that single... Around this time, the group also met up with Helm's old musical inspiration Sonny Boy Williamson II, who was impressed enough with them that there was some talk of them being his backing band (and it was in this meeting that Williamson apparently told Robertson "those English boys want to play the blues so bad, and they play the blues *so bad*", speaking of the bands who'd backed him in the UK, like the Yardbirds and the Animals). But sadly, Williamson died in May 1965 before any of these plans had time to come to fruition. Every opportunity for the group seemed to be closing up, even as they knew they were as good as any band around them. They had an offer from Aaron Schroeder, who ran Musicor Records but was more importantly a songwriter and publisher who had written for Elvis Presley and published Gene Pitney. Schroeder wanted to sign the Hawks as a band and Robertson as a songwriter, but Henry Glover looked over the contracts for them, and told them "If you sign this you'd better be able to pay each other, because nobody else is going to be paying you". What happened next is the subject of some controversy, because as these things tend to go, several people became aware of the Hawks at the same time, but it's generally considered that nothing would have happened the same way were it not for Mary Martin. Martin is a pivotal figure in music business history -- among other things she discovered Leonard Cohen and Gordon Lightfoot, managed Van Morrison, and signed Emmylou Harris to Warner Brothers records -- but a somewhat unknown one who doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. Martin was from Toronto, but had moved to New York, where she was working in Albert Grossman's office, but she still had many connections to Canadian musicians and kept an eye out for them. The group had sent demo tapes to Grossman's offices, and Grossman had had no interest in them, but Martin was a fan and kept pushing the group on Grossman and his associates. One of those associates, of course, was Grossman's client Bob Dylan. As we heard in the episode on "Like a Rolling Stone", Dylan had started making records with electric backing, with musicians who included Mike Bloomfield, who had played with several of the Hawks on the Hammond album, and Al Kooper, who was a friend of the band. Martin gave Richard Manuel a copy of Dylan's new electric album Highway 61 Revisited, and he enjoyed it, though the rest of the group were less impressed: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Highway 61 Revisited"] Dylan had played the Newport Folk Festival with some of the same musicians as played on his records, but Bloomfield in particular was more interested in continuing to play with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band than continuing with Dylan long-term. Mary Martin kept telling Dylan about this Canadian band she knew who would be perfect for him, and various people associated with the Grossman organisation, including Hammond, have claimed to have been sent down to New Jersey where the Hawks were playing to check them out in their live setting. The group have also mentioned that someone who looked a lot like Dylan was seen at some of their shows. Eventually, Dylan phoned Helm up and made an offer. He didn't need a full band at the moment -- he had Harvey Brooks on bass and Al Kooper on keyboards -- but he did need a lead guitar player and drummer for a couple of gigs he'd already booked, one in Forest Hills, New York, and a bigger gig at the Hollywood Bowl. Helm, unfamiliar with Dylan's work, actually asked Howard Kudlets if Dylan was capable of filling the Hollywood Bowl. The musicians rehearsed together and got a set together for the shows. Robertson and Helm thought the band sounded terrible, but Dylan liked the sound they were getting a lot. The audience in Forest Hills agreed with the Hawks, rather than Dylan, or so it would appear. As we heard in the "Like a Rolling Stone" episode, Dylan's turn towards rock music was *hated* by the folk purists who saw him as some sort of traitor to the movement, a movement whose figurehead he had become without wanting to. There were fifteen thousand people in the audience, and they listened politely enough to the first set, which Dylan played acoustically, But before the second set -- his first ever full electric set, rather than the very abridged one at Newport -- he told the musicians “I don't know what it will be like out there It's going to be some kind of carnival and I want you to all know that up front. So go out there and keep playing no matter how weird it gets!” There's a terrible-quality audience recording of that show in circulation, and you can hear the crowd's reaction to the band and to the new material: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Ballad of a Thin Man" (live Forest Hills 1965, audience noise only)] The audience also threw things at the musicians, knocking Al Kooper off his organ stool at one point. While Robertson remembered the Hollywood Bowl show as being an equally bad reaction, Helm remembered the audience there as being much more friendly, and the better-quality recording of that show seems to side with Helm: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Maggie's Farm (live at the Hollywood Bowl 1965)"] After those two shows, Helm and Robertson went back to their regular gig. and in September they made another record. This one, again produced by Glover, was for Atlantic's Atco subsidiary, and was released as by Levon and the Hawks. Manuel took lead, and again both songs were written by Robertson: [Excerpt: Levon and the Hawks, "He Don't Love You (And He'll Break Your Heart)"] But again that record did nothing. Dylan was about to start his first full electric tour, and while Helm and Robertson had not thought the shows they'd played sounded particularly good, Dylan had, and he wanted the two of them to continue with him. But Robertson and, especially, Helm, were not interested in being someone's sidemen. They explained to Dylan that they already had a band -- Levon and the Hawks -- and he would take all of them or he would take none of them. Helm in particular had not been impressed with Dylan's music -- Helm was fundamentally an R&B fan, while Dylan's music was rooted in genres he had little time for -- but he was OK with doing it, so long as the entire band got to. As Mary Martin put it “I think that the wonderful and the splendid heart of the band, if you will, was Levon, and I think he really sort of said, ‘If it's just myself as drummer and Robbie…we're out. We don't want that. It's either us, the band, or nothing.' And you know what? Good for him.” Rather amazingly, Dylan agreed. When the band's residency in New Jersey finished, they headed back to Toronto to play some shows there, and Dylan flew up and rehearsed with them after each show. When the tour started, the billing was "Bob Dylan with Levon and the Hawks". That billing wasn't to last long. Dylan had been booked in for nine months of touring, and was also starting work on what would become widely considered the first double album in rock music history, Blonde on Blonde, and the original plan was that Levon and the Hawks would play with him throughout that time. The initial recording sessions for the album produced nothing suitable for release -- the closest was "I Wanna Be Your Lover", a semi-parody of the Beatles' "I Want to be Your Man": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan with Levon and the Hawks, "I Wanna Be Your Lover"] But shortly into the tour, Helm quit. The booing had continued, and had even got worse, and Helm simply wasn't in the business to be booed at every night. Also, his whole conception of music was that you dance to it, and nobody was dancing to any of this. Helm quit the band, only telling Robertson of his plans, and first went off to LA, where he met up with some musicians from Oklahoma who had enjoyed seeing the Hawks when they'd played that state and had since moved out West -- people like Leon Russell, J.J. Cale (not John Cale of the Velvet Underground, but the one who wrote "Cocaine" which Eric Clapton later had a hit with), and John Ware (who would later go on to join the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band). They started loosely jamming with each other, sometimes also involving a young singer named Linda Ronstadt, but Helm eventually decided to give up music and go and work on an oil rig in New Orleans. Levon and the Hawks were now just the Hawks. The rest of the group soldiered on, replacing Helm with session drummer Bobby Gregg (who had played on Dylan's previous couple of albums, and had previously played with Sun Ra), and played on the initial sessions for Blonde on Blonde. But of those sessions, Dylan said a few weeks later "Oh, I was really down. I mean, in ten recording sessions, man, we didn't get one song ... It was the band. But you see, I didn't know that. I didn't want to think that" One track from the sessions did get released -- the non-album single "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?"] There's some debate as to exactly who's playing drums on that -- Helm says in his autobiography that it's him, while the credits in the official CD releases tend to say it's Gregg. Either way, the track was an unexpected flop, not making the top forty in the US, though it made the top twenty in the UK. But the rest of the recordings with the now Helmless Hawks were less successful. Dylan was trying to get his new songs across, but this was a band who were used to playing raucous music for dancing, and so the attempts at more subtle songs didn't come off the way he wanted: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan and the Hawks, "Visions of Johanna (take 5, 11-30-1965)"] Only one track from those initial New York sessions made the album -- "One Of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)" -- but even that only featured Robertson and Danko of the Hawks, with the rest of the instruments being played by session players: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan (One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)"] The Hawks were a great live band, but great live bands are not necessarily the same thing as a great studio band. And that's especially the case with someone like Dylan. Dylan was someone who was used to recording entirely on his own, and to making records *quickly*. In total, for his fifteen studio albums up to 1974's Blood on the Tracks, Dylan spent a total of eighty-six days in the studio -- by comparison, the Beatles spent over a hundred days in the studio just on the Sgt Pepper album. It's not that the Hawks weren't a good band -- very far from it -- but that studio recording requires a different type of discipline, and that's doubly the case when you're playing with an idiosyncratic player like Dylan. The Hawks would remain Dylan's live backing band, but he wouldn't put out a studio recording with them backing him until 1974. Instead, Bob Johnston, the producer Dylan was working with, suggested a different plan. On his previous album, the Nashville session player Charlie McCoy had guested on "Desolation Row" and Dylan had found him easy to work with. Johnston lived in Nashville, and suggested that they could get the album completed more quickly and to Dylan's liking by using Nashville A-Team musicians. Dylan agreed to try it, and for the rest of the album he had Robertson on lead guitar and Al Kooper on keyboards, but every other musician was a Nashville session player, and they managed to get Dylan's songs recorded quickly and the way he heard them in his head: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine"] Though Dylan being Dylan he did try to introduce an element of randomness to the recordings by having the Nashville musicians swap their instruments around and play each other's parts on "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35", though the Nashville players were still competent enough that they managed to get a usable, if shambolic, track recorded that way in a single take: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35"] Dylan said later of the album "The closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind was on individual bands in the Blonde on Blonde album. It's that thin, that wild mercury sound. It's metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up." The album was released in late June 1966, a week before Freak Out! by the Mothers of Invention, another double album, produced by Dylan's old producer Tom Wilson, and a few weeks after Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys. Dylan was at the forefront of a new progressive movement in rock music, a movement that was tying thoughtful, intelligent lyrics to studio experimentation and yet somehow managing to have commercial success. And a month after Blonde on Blonde came out, he stepped away from that position, and would never fully return to it. The first half of 1966 was taken up with near-constant touring, with Dylan backed by the Hawks and a succession of fill-in drummers -- first Bobby Gregg, then Sandy Konikoff, then Mickey Jones. This tour started in the US and Canada, with breaks for recording the album, and then moved on to Australia and Europe. The shows always followed the same pattern. First Dylan would perform an acoustic set, solo, with just an acoustic guitar and harmonica, which would generally go down well with the audience -- though sometimes they would get restless, prompting a certain amount of resistance from the performer: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Just Like a Woman (live Paris 1966)"] But the second half of each show was electric, and that was where the problems would arise. The Hawks were playing at the top of their game -- some truly stunning performances: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan and the Hawks, "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues (live in Liverpool 1966)"] But while the majority of the audience was happy to hear the music, there was a vocal portion that were utterly furious at the change in Dylan's musical style. Most notoriously, there was the performance at Manchester Free Trade Hall where this happened: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone (live Manchester 1966)"] That kind of aggression from the audience had the effect of pushing the band on to greater heights a lot of the time -- and a bootleg of that show, mislabelled as the Royal Albert Hall, became one of the most legendary bootlegs in rock music history. Jimmy Page would apparently buy a copy of the bootleg every time he saw one, thinking it was the best album ever made. But while Dylan and the Hawks played defiantly, that kind of audience reaction gets wearing. As Dylan later said, “Judas, the most hated name in human history, and for what—for playing an electric guitar. As if that is in some kind of way equitable to betraying our Lord, and delivering him up to be crucified; all those evil mothers can rot in hell.” And this wasn't the only stress Dylan, in particular, was under. D.A. Pennebaker was making a documentary of the tour -- a follow-up to his documentary of the 1965 tour, which had not yet come out. Dylan talked about the 1965 documentary, Don't Look Back, as being Pennebaker's film of Dylan, but this was going to be Dylan's film, with him directing the director. That footage shows Dylan as nervy and anxious, and covering for the anxiety with a veneer of flippancy. Some of Dylan's behaviour on both tours is unpleasant in ways that can't easily be justified (and which he has later publicly regretted), but there's also a seeming cruelty to some of his interactions with the press and public that actually reads more as frustration. Over and over again he's asked questions -- about being the voice of a generation or the leader of a protest movement -- which are simply based on incorrect premises. When someone asks you a question like this, there are only a few options you can take, none of them good. You can dissect the question, revealing the incorrect premises, and then answer a different question that isn't what they asked, which isn't really an option at all given the kind of rapid-fire situation Dylan was in. You can answer the question as asked, which ends up being dishonest. Or you can be flip and dismissive, which is the tactic Dylan chose. Dylan wasn't the only one -- this is basically what the Beatles did at press conferences. But where the Beatles were a gang and so came off as being fun, Dylan doing the same thing came off as arrogant and aggressive. One of the most famous artifacts of the whole tour is a long piece of footage recorded for the documentary, with Dylan and John Lennon riding in the back of a taxi, both clearly deeply uncomfortable, trying to be funny and impress the other, but neither actually wanting to be there: [Excerpt Dylan and Lennon conversation] 33) Part of the reason Dylan wanted to go home was that he had a whole new lifestyle. Up until 1964 he had been very much a city person, but as he had grown more famous, he'd found New York stifling. Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul, and Mary had a cabin in Woodstock, where he'd grown up, and after Dylan had spent a month there in summer 1964, he'd fallen in love with the area. Albert Grossman had also bought a home there, on Yarrow's advice, and had given Dylan free run of the place, and Dylan had decided he wanted to move there permanently and bought his own home there. He had also married, to Sara Lowndes (whose name is, as far as I can tell, pronounced "Sarah" even though it's spelled "Sara"), and she had given birth to his first child (and he had adopted her child from her previous marriage). Very little is actually known about Sara, who unlike many other partners of rock stars at this point seemed positively to detest the limelight, and whose privacy Dylan has continued to respect even after the end of their marriage in the late seventies, but it's apparent that the two were very much in love, and that Dylan wanted to be back with his wife and kids, in the country, not going from one strange city to another being asked insipid questions and having abuse screamed at him. He was also tired of the pressure to produce work constantly. He'd signed a contract for a novel, called Tarantula, which he'd written a draft of but was unhappy with, and he'd put out two single albums and a double-album in a little over a year -- all of them considered among the greatest albums ever made. He could only keep up this rate of production and performance with a large intake of speed, and he was sometimes staying up for four days straight to do so. After the European leg of the tour, Dylan was meant to take some time to finish overdubs on Blonde on Blonde, edit the film of the tour for a TV special, with his friend Howard Alk, and proof the galleys for Tarantula, before going on a second world tour in the autumn. That world tour never happened. Dylan was in a motorcycle accident near his home, and had to take time out to recover. There has been a lot of discussion as to how serious the accident actually was, because Dylan's manager Albert Grossman was known to threaten to break contracts by claiming his performers were sick, and because Dylan essentially disappeared from public view for the next eighteen months. Every possible interpretation of the events has been put about by someone, from Dylan having been close to death, to the entire story being put up as a fake. As Dylan is someone who is far more protective of his privacy than most rock stars, it's doubtful we'll ever know the precise truth, but putting together the various accounts Dylan's injuries were bad but not life-threatening, but they acted as a wake-up call -- if he carried on living like he had been, how much longer could he continue? in his sort-of autobiography, Chronicles, Dylan described this period, saying "I had been in a motorcycle accident and I'd been hurt, but I recovered. Truth was that I wanted to get out of the rat race. Having children changed my life and segregated me from just about everybody and everything that was going on. Outside of my family, nothing held any real interest for me and I was seeing everything through different glasses." All his forthcoming studio and tour dates were cancelled, and Dylan took the time out to recover, and to work on his film, Eat the Document. But it's clear that nobody was sure at first exactly how long Dylan's hiatus from touring was going to last. As it turned out, he wouldn't do another tour until the mid-seventies, and would barely even play any one-off gigs in the intervening time. But nobody knew that at the time, and so to be on the safe side the Hawks were being kept on a retainer. They'd always intended to work on their own music anyway -- they didn't just want to be anyone's backing band -- so they took this time to kick a few ideas around, but they were hamstrung by the fact that it was difficult to find rehearsal space in New York City, and they didn't have any gigs. Their main musical work in the few months between summer 1966 and spring 1967 was some recordings for the soundtrack of a film Peter Yarrow was making. You Are What You Eat is a bizarre hippie collage of a film, documenting the counterculture between 1966 when Yarrow started making it and 1968 when it came out. Carl Franzoni, one of the leaders of the LA freak movement that we've talked about in episodes on the Byrds, Love, and the Mothers of Invention, said of the film “If you ever see this movie you'll understand what ‘freaks' are. It'll let you see the L.A. freaks, the San Francisco freaks, and the New York freaks. It was like a documentary and it was about the makings of what freaks were about. And it had a philosophy, a very definite philosophy: that you are free-spirited, artistic." It's now most known for introducing the song "My Name is Jack" by John Simon, the film's music supervisor: [Excerpt: John Simon, "My Name is Jack"] That song would go on to be a top ten hit in the UK for Manfred Mann: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "My Name is Jack"] The Hawks contributed backing music for several songs for the film, in which they acted as backing band for another old Greenwich Village folkie who had been friends with Yarrow and Dylan but who was not yet the star he would soon become, Tiny Tim: [Excerpt: Tiny Tim, "Sonny Boy"] This was their first time playing together properly since the end of the European tour, and Sid Griffin has noted that these Tiny Tim sessions are the first time you can really hear the sound that the group would develop over the next year, and which would characterise them for their whole career. Robertson, Danko, and Manuel also did a session, not for the film with another of Grossman's discoveries, Carly Simon, playing a version of "Baby Let Me Follow You Down", a song they'd played a lot with Dylan on the tour that spring. That recording has never been released, and I've only managed to track down a brief clip of it from a BBC documentary, with Simon and an interviewer talking over most of the clip (so this won't be in the Mixcloud I put together of songs): [Excerpt: Carly Simon, "Baby Let Me Follow You Down"] That recording is notable though because as well as Robertson, Danko, and Manuel, and Dylan's regular studio keyboard players Al Kooper and Paul Griffin, it also features Levon Helm on drums, even though Helm had still not rejoined the band and was at the time mostly working in New Orleans. But his name's on the session log, so he must have m
A theme show once again, this week with the telephone as our muse. Songs about the most important of communication devices which has fused with social media to the benefit, and equal detriment, of all mankind. From the early call from Bell to Watson to the proverbial football that our fearless leader carries around to make the one call to eradicate or, better yet, save mankind. This week we'll visit the long lost guide known as the “operator” and the equally antiquated term “dial” with music from country, pop, soul, and rock archives of yesterday. Kick back and be entertained by the sounds of Brenda Lee, Sister Wynona Carr, Stonewall Jackson, Loretta Lynn & Ernest Tubb, and Bill Fury in a collection of the very best from multiple genres here on Sonoma County Community Radio, broadcasting in West County on 92.5 FM and streaming to all mankind on kowsfm.com/listen. Drop in why don't you?
I'm thinking it was Valentines Day that got me thinking about today show in particular. In our country music history there has been so many different ways that love has been expressed so I did a lot of soul searching in hopes that I could get a cross section that included many of the aspects of this thing called love. SONNY JAMES, JOHNNY CASH, STONEWALL JACKSON , MARTY ROBBINS, JIM REEVES, BUCK OWENS , GEORGE JONES, JOSH TURNER and even ERNEST TUBB and LORETTA, all join in . Hope you'll join too and share.
National pizza day. Pop culture from 2000. Volleyball invented, Worlds fastest yodeler, Opium banned. Todays birthdays - William Henry Harrison, Carmen Miranda, Ernest Tubb, Joe Pesci, Bobby Lewis, Judith Light, Carol King, Holly Johnson, Travis Tritt, Tom Hiddleston, Michael B. Jorda. Bill Haley died.
The boys are back! We're doing some more classic mixes this season, and had a big plan to start it off right by doing another power hour with our bud Dave Lynch. Unfortunately, a couple of us were ridiculously hungover at the time of recording and were in no shape for such a feat, so the three of us instead recover and listen to the drinking songs we picked. And it's a good thing we didn't do a power hour, because these are not fun-time songs. Most of them are, in fact, about the sadder elements of drinking, from Kendrick Lamar's ominous warnings to Ernest Tubb's old-timey country binge drinking. But we do still find time for some Bad Bunny bangers and ICP favorites, along with a recommended spirit for each track.
For all our true dyed in the wool country fans , I truly believe you're gonna love this one as much as I enjoyed putting it together. The more I researched, the more I came to believe that this artist, Jimmy Rogers, was the most influential in the early times and even to this day, the most influential in making country music what it is today. HANK SNOW, ERNEST TUBB, TOM T HALL, JACK GREENE, LEFTY FRIZZELL , MERLE HAGGARD and CAL SMITH are all in todays show attesting to the fact . Of course I've got JIMMY ROGER'S originals here too. Take a walk way down memory lane my friends. I think you'll hear what I mean. Life is good.
Musicians include: Hank Thompson, Hank Williams, Hank Locklin, Ernest Tubb, Little Jimmy Dickens, Eddie Arnold and Flatt & Scruggs. Music includes: Send Me The Pillow, Foggy Mountain Breakdown, Slipping Around, Lovesick Blues and Mule Train.
Dianne Sherrill grew up in Alabama in a Christian home where her Daddy brought her up believing in Bear Bryant, Jesus Christ and Ernest Tubb! She has lived in Nashville for over 50 years and is well known as a Singer and "The Entertainer's Entertainer"! Dianne started her career in 1970 on the stage of Printers Alley, which lead her to Television and movie roles. She was introduced by Ernest Tubb on her very first performance of "The Grand Ole Opry". This lead to many more Opry appearances. Dianne also performed with George Jones and recorded with Waylon Jennings. She was honored as the winner of the 2019 R.O.P.E. Entertainer of The Year Award. She currently serves on the Board of The Music City Christian Fellowship. When you meet Dianne in person, you feel like you have known her for years! Dive one in to another great episode on the Be a Dreamcatcher Podcast today! Follow your host Jessie Lynn®: Facebook: @JessieLynn.OfficialPage Instagram: @JessieLynn_Official Twitter: @JessieLynnJL Follow the Be a Dreamcatcher Podcast: Facebook: @BeaDreamcatcherPodcast Instagram: @BeaDreamcatcherPodcast
Aretha Franklin "Don't Play That Song"Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee (with Lightin' Hopkins) "Everybody's Blues"Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee "Trouble In Mind"Cat Power "Do the Romp"Paul Westerberg "Knockin on Mine"Justin Townes Earle "Far From Me"Nina Simone "Revolution (Pts. 1 and 2)"Cory Branan "You Make Me"The Handsome Family "The Bottomless Hole"Songs: Ohia "Farewell Transmission"Bob Dylan "Meet Me In the Morning"Bob Dylan "Gotta Serve Somebody"George Jones & Ernest Tubb "Half a Mind"Woody Guthrie "Going Down the Road"Etta James "Almost Persuaded"Margo Price "Twinkle Twinkle"Millie Jackson "If Loving You Is Wrong I Don't Want to Be Right"Arthur Conley "Shake, Rattle & Roll"Wilson Pickett "Mini-Skirt Minnie"Gladys Knight & The Pips "Midnight Train to Georgia"Bonnie Raitt "I Thank You"Ted Hawkins "There Stands The Glass"Vic Chesnutt "Guilty By Association"Candi Staton "I'm Just a Prisoner (Of Your Good Lovin')"Solomon Burke "Proud Mary"Patterson Hood "Heat Lighting Rumbles In the Distance"Centro-matic "Iso-Residue"Counting Crows "Omaha"Pedro The Lion "First Drum Set"Mos Def "Close Edge"M. Ward "Never Had Nobody Like You"Bettye Swann "Stand By Your Man"Craig Finn "This is What It Looks Like"Widespread Panic "Contentment Blues"Buddy Guy "She's Got The Devil In Her"Waylon Jennings "Midnight Rider"Mildred Anderson "Cool Kind of Poppa (Good Kind Daddy)"Lucinda Williams "It's Nobody's Fault But Mine"Grateful Dead "Cold Rain and Snow"Little Milton "That's What Love Will Make You Do"Steve Earle "Feel Alright"Naomi Shelton & the Gospel Queens "What Have You Done?"Jason Isbell "Hurricanes and Hand Grenades"David Ramirez "That Ain't Love"
TALK ABOUT TRADITIONAL COUNRY, WELL,,,, HERE IT IS MY FRIENDS. ERNEST TUBB,RAY PRICE THEN AND RAY PRICE NOW. HOW ABOUT GEORGE JONES AND OF COURSE HANK WILLIAMS, STONEWALL JACKSON AND PORTER WAGONER. EVEN EARLY MARTY ROBBINS AND WILF CARTER. AN IN DEPTH INTERVIEW WITH ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS WOUNDED WARRIOR, OUR FRIEND AND BROTHER, THE "BURNT COMMEDIAN" BOBBY HENLINE. I BELIEVE YOU'LL NOT FORGET HIS WORDS. THERE'S A COUPLE MORE SURPRISES SO STAY TUNED. DON'T FORGET TO CHECK "LIKE" AND SHARE WITH SOMEONE YOU LOVE. LIFE IS GOOD.
The biggest names in Hollywood and Broadway recorded for AFRS during the war years, The American Forces Network can trace its origins back to May 26, 1942, when the War Department established the Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS). The U.S. Army began broadcasting from London during World War II, using equipment and studio facilities borrowed from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The first transmission to U.S. troops began at 5:45 p.m. on July 4, 1943, and included less than five hours of recorded shows, a BBC news and sports broadcast. That day, Corporal Syl Binkin became the first U.S. Military broadcasters heard over the air. The signal was sent from London via telephone lines to five regional transmitters to reach U.S. troops in the United Kingdom as they prepared for the inevitable invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe. Fearing competition for civilian audiences the BBC initially tried to impose restrictions on AFN broadcasts within Britain (transmissions were only allowed from American Bases outside London and were limited to 50 watts of transmission power) and a minimum quota of British produced programming had to be carried. Nevertheless AFN programmes were widely enjoyed by the British civilian listeners who could receive them and once AFN operations transferred to continental Europe (shortly after D-Day) AFN were able to broadcast with little restriction with programmes available to civilian audiences across most of Europe (including Britain) after dark. As D-Day approached, the network joined with the BBC and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to develop programs especially for the Allied Expeditionary Forces. Mobile stations, complete with personnel, broadcasting equipment, and a record library were deployed to broadcast music and news to troops in the field. The mobile stations reported on front line activities and fed the news reports back to studio locations in London. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Entertainment Radio Stations Live 24/7 Sherlock Holmes/CBS Radio Mystery Theater https://live365.com/station/Sherlock-Holmes-Classic-Radio--a91441 https://live365.com/station/CBS-Radio-Mystery-Theater-a57491 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
A very special episode with the amazing country music icon, Jeannie Seely. Jeannie is just the nicest person to talk to, and we are honored to have her as our guest for this really fun chat. She tells us about her roots in music, how she ended up in Nashville by way of California, and shares many great stories about meeting and working with various artists, and some of her most enduring friendships. Jeannie shares with us the story of purchasing her first car, to appearing on the Opry stage somewhere just shy of 3000 times and much much more. A mutual friend, former podcast guest, and one of Jeannie's cowriting partners, the equally talented and interesting Bobby Tomberlin, commented to us recently, "Jeannie is such a treasure." We agree wholeheartedly. Thank you to Jeannie for her time, and graciousness. We know you will enjoy this great episode. Jeannie's Bio (edited): Jeannie Seely will celebrate 55 years as a member of the Grand Ole Opry on Sept 16, 2022. Her recent album, "An American Classic", was released by Curb Records and produced by Don Cusic. The album includes collaborations with Bill Anderson, Rhonda Vincent, Steve Wariner, Lorrie Morgan, The Whites, Vince Gill and more. The project includes her duet with Willie Nelson, “Not A Dry Eye In The House”, is currently at radio and was previously released digitally on her 80th birthday. Jeannie has achieved chart topping songs as a solo artist, as a duet partner, and as a songwriter. From her 1966 Top 10 Billboard album “The Seely Style” to her most recent self–produced album, “Written In Song,” a CD project with 14 tracks all co-written or self-penned by Seely and recorded by Country Music Hall of Famers and Country music legends; Ernest Tubb, Dottie West, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Faron Young, Jack Greene, Little Jimmy Dickens, Chris LeDoux, Ray Price and more. Jeannie's recordings have spanned six decades and provided enjoyment to country music fans all around the world. Many of the songs were recorded by Hall of Fame members. Jeannie earned a Grammy for her recording of “Don't Touch Me” in 1967. Seely is a weekly on-air host on SiriusXM Willie's Roadhouse, where she shares personal memories and fun stories about the songs she spins. 2018 Seely was honored to receive recognition and a star on the famed Music City Walk of Fame and recognized for ranking #2 in Billboard's Top TV Songs Chart for January 2018 for her song “Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand),” written in 1964 and recorded by Irma Thomas. Early in her career, Jeannie's deeply moving vocals earned her the nickname of “Miss Country Soul”– a title that's still used today. Jeannie's biggest dream came true when she was inducted as a member of the world-famous Grand Ole Opry, becoming the first Pennsylvania native to do so. A country music legend and trailblazer, her perseverance over many years earned Seely the honor of being the first female to regularly host segments of the weekly Opry and is credited for changing the image of Opry by being the first to wear a mini-skirt on the Opry stage. Jeannie works tirelessly behind the scenes in the music industry on behalf of fellow artists and musicians. Known for her quick wit and humor, she documented some of her 'sayings” in her book, Pieces Of A Puzzled Mind, which is a unique collection of witticisms. Jeannie Seely has also starred in several major stage productions.
Nick pulled together a list of music news articles detailing the various types of responses artists, and the companies that represent them, have had to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine. It's not heavy on discussion, nor is it a topic we usually discuss, but Nick felt like it was too important not to acknowledge...even for a music podcast.Song: Tigran Hamasyan- “De-Dah”Greg has uncovered 3 undiscussed DJ Cummerbund gems and that means it's time for “Bangers & Mashups” Round 5! We listen to three increasingly complicated mashups that Greg (we all) believe are genuinely impressive works of art. Anyone that believes “Black Hole Sun” & “Kiss From A Rose” fit together is an interesting character to follow!Songs:DJ Cumberbund - “It's Not Unusual Dammit”DJ Cumberbund - “Get Away”DJ Cumberbund - “Kiss From A Sun”Jay was saddened to read that the Ernest Tubb Record Shop has been sold, along with the building that it's occupied since 1951. First opened in 1947 by Ernest Tubb, it helped spread country music by offering a catalog version mailed for record collectors across the country. Ultimately the new ownership, which took over in 2020, couldn't find a way to keep the store afloat while sitting in a greatly appreciated building on Music Row in Nashville. We discuss where things stands and why this store is such an important piece of American music history.Song: David Bromberg - “Sharon”
So many times I've found myself wondering how different artists get involved in projects together and in this show I've managed to string together a common denominator for a few. So my friends, Ive started out with the question what do Ernest Tubb, Loretta Lyn, Randy travis and Nat Stuckey have in common. And thats just for starters. Tune in and you'll find the answer to this question and a few others. Enjoy and share with someone you love. Go to winradionetwork.com to tune in to past podcasts. Life is good.
In this new segment, we'll follow Bill north to Alaska, see his gigs and wild times at the Penguin Club in Anchorage, the Yukon's notorious Kopper King, and a host of other clubs in Juneau, Fairbanks, and Portland Oregon. We'll once again meet Bobby Bare, along with Charlie Rich and even Ernest Tubb. We witness the sad demise of the 8-door Chrysler limousine, and we'll hear Bill's foray into radio and television broadcasting.
Do you remember when we were kids ? Do you remember when we only had black and white TV? Well for those of you that are in my age bracket , you're gonna get a big flashback in time in this episode. Believe it or not you're gonna hear Gene Autry, Red Foley and Ernest Tubb along with Ray Price wishing he was eighteen again. Roger miller sings about the "Good Ole Days and talk about cowboys,,,,, listen to Willy, Waylon and Johnny. I'm thinkin you'll enjoy the closing too. Be sure to share.
So many requests for more Grande Ole Opry so what the heck,,,,here ya have it. The original artists like Deford Bailey, Uncle Dave Macon along with Ernest Tubb , Bill Monroe , Little Jimmy Dickens, Porter and Dolly and so many of my Grande Ole Opry friends. You're gonna love ❤️ love ❤️ love ❤️ 'em. Be sure to share.
I didn't know Evelyn back in 1933 during the height of the depression, but I know she witnessed the Second World War unfold on the radio like most Americans. By the time she was twelve, the whole thing was over, so I doubt she would have paid it much mind if her brothers hadn't enlisted. Days were taken up with chores mostly, but she found time to play like most kids. Her family was poor, but if you asked Evelyn how much money they had, she'd tell you they were rich. She'd probably even tell you to mind your own business if you asked too many questions. The smell of tobacco often penetrated the air in our small community. Sometimes you'd hear a car or two out on the road, but mostly things were placid aside from the sounds of lively animals. Folks conversed with each other and knew when someone was unwell or having a challenging time. People offered to help, but no one ever asked for it. It was a time when all anyone had was one another. No one ever went hungry because that wasn't allowed in Salem. Like any little girl her age, she loved playing with her dolls and inviting friends over for make-believe tea. Evelyn wasn't afraid to get dirty while outrunning the boys through the woods and swinging from grapevines into a creek. She didn't care for The Shadow or Flash Gordon, but she did adore Little Orphan Annie. It's when the radio brought every American together at the same time in their living rooms, and it was special. On occasion, she'd have popcorn using the leftover grease on top of the stove. Evelyn was aware of Glenn Miller and Frank Sinatra, but those weren't her favorites. This little girl was dazzled by Ernest Tubb, Hank Williams, and Eddy Arnold. Those country girl roots were apparent whenever she'd tune in to the Opry on Saturday night and thumb through ragged magazines with pictures of the performers who left her star-struck. It was a sensational escape from many of the hardships of growing up around Bend Road. Most of her clothes were homemade, hand-me-downs, or both. She didn't mind because she didn't know any different. Everyone else did the same thing anyway. Cora, her mother, cut her hair and taught her how to cook and tend to the chickens. No one had it easy, but Evelyn refused to let it crush her spirit. Her struggles only managed to make her stronger by feeding her motivation. Evelyn is full of hope, with countless seasons waiting for her arrival. She daydreams of places to investigate, hearts to break, and the man she will love someday. She fantasizes about a pretty dress and putting on makeup before the dance. Curiosity bubbles inside of her chest while her imagination creates whole worlds inside of her innocent mind. Behind her sweet sapphire eyes rests a warrior ready to challenge life's catastrophes and celebrate in its joy.
In honor of it being spooky season, I thought I would tell you some country music ghost stories. The history of country music goes way back so there are lots of dead people and old buildings so of course there are going to be ghosts. And surprisingly some of our favorite country stars have either had their own run ins with the spirit world OR have stuck around to haunt us themselves. Follow me @brentsnydermusic everywhere and the show @rootoftheboot on Instagram. Full webisodes of this podcast are available at YouTube.com/brentsnydermusic Visit goldandivy.com and use code BOOT 15 for 15% of your entire purchase. Visit neoncowboys.com and use code BRENTSNYDER for 10% off your order. Use this link, https://amzn.to/3phfF1b for a HUGE discount on the book, Country Music: An Illustrated History. For links to the source material for this episode, visit YouTube.com/brentsnydermusic or rootoftheboot.com
Country music legend Ernest Tubb started his own record store in 1947 and it has become a landmark in Nashville, Tennessee. Goldmine's anonymous recon agent, Dr. Disc, reviews the Ernest Tubb Record Shop and tells Goldmine Podcast listeners what makes it so unique.This show is part of Pantheon Podcasts.
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