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Play Episode Listen Later Nov 21, 2023

Episode 170 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Astral Weeks", the early solo career of Van Morrison, and the death of Bert Berns. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-minute bonus episode available, on "Stoned Soul Picnic" by Laura Nyro. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Errata At one point I, ridiculously, misspeak the name of Charles Mingus' classic album. Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is not about dinner ladies. Also, I say Warren Smith Jr is on "Slim Slow Slider" when I meant to say Richard Davis (Smith is credited in some sources, but I only hear acoustic guitar, bass, and soprano sax on the finished track). Resources As usual, I've created Mixcloud playlists, with full versions of all the songs excerpted in this episode. As there are so many Van Morrison songs in this episode, the Mixcloud is split into three parts, one, two, and three. The information about Bert Berns comes from Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues by Joel Selvin. I've used several biographies of Van Morrison. Van Morrison: Into the Music by Ritchie Yorke is so sycophantic towards Morrison that the word “hagiography” would be, if anything, an understatement. Van Morrison: No Surrender by Johnny Rogan, on the other hand, is the kind of book that talks in the introduction about how the author has had to avoid discussing certain topics because of legal threats from the subject. Howard deWitt's Van Morrison: Astral Weeks to Stardom is over-thorough in the way some self-published books are, while Clinton Heylin's Can You Feel the Silence? is probably the best single volume on the artist. Information on Woodstock comes from Small Town Talk by Barney Hoskyns. Ryan Walsh's Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 is about more than Astral Weeks, but does cover Morrison's period in and around Boston in more detail than anything else. The album Astral Weeks is worth hearing in its entirety. Not all of the music on The Authorized Bang Collection is as listenable, but it's the most complete collection available of everything Morrison recorded for Bang. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before we start, a quick warning -- this episode contains discussion of organised crime activity, and of sudden death. It also contains excerpts of songs which hint at attraction to underage girls and discuss terminal illness. If those subjects might upset you, you might want to read the transcript rather than listen to the episode. Anyway, on with the show. Van Morrison could have been the co-writer of "Piece of My Heart". Bert Berns was one of the great collaborators in the music business, and almost every hit he ever had was co-written, and he was always on the lookout for new collaborators, and in 1967 he was once again working with Van Morrison, who he'd worked with a couple of years earlier when Morrison was still the lead singer of Them. Towards the beginning of 1967 he had come up with a chorus, but no verse. He had the hook, "Take another little piece of my heart" -- Berns was writing a lot of songs with "heart" in the title at the time -- and wanted Morrison to come up with a verse to go with it. Van Morrison declined. He wasn't interested in writing pop songs, or in collaborating with other writers, and so Berns turned to one of his regular collaborators, Jerry Ragavoy, and it was Ragavoy who added the verses to one of the biggest successes of Berns' career: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] The story of how Van Morrison came to make the album that's often considered his masterpiece is intimately tied up with the story we've been telling in the background for several episodes now, the story of Atlantic Records' sale to Warners, and the story of Bert Berns' departure from Atlantic. For that reason, some parts of the story I'm about to tell will be familiar to those of you who've been paying close attention to the earlier episodes, but as always I'm going to take you from there to somewhere we've never been before. In 1962, Bert Berns was a moderately successful songwriter, who had written or co-written songs for many artists, especially for artists on Atlantic Records. He'd written songs for Atlantic artists like LaVern Baker, and when Atlantic's top pop producers Leiber and Stoller started to distance themselves from the label in the early sixties, he had moved into production as well, writing and producing Solomon Burke's big hit "Cry to Me": [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "Cry to Me"] He was the producer and writer or co-writer of most of Burke's hits from that point forward, but at first he was still a freelance producer, and also produced records for Scepter Records, like the Isley Brothers' version of "Twist and Shout", another song he'd co-written, that one with Phil Medley. And as a jobbing songwriter, of course his songs were picked up by other producers, so Leiber and Stoller produced a version of his song "Tell Him" for the Exciters on United Artists: [Excerpt: The Exciters, "Tell Him"] Berns did freelance work for Leiber and Stoller as well as the other people he was working for. For example, when their former protege Phil Spector released his hit version of "Zip-a-Dee-Do-Dah", they got Berns to come up with a knockoff arrangement of "How Much is that Doggie in the Window?", released as by Baby Jane and the Rockabyes, with a production credit "Produced by Leiber and Stoller, directed by Bert Berns": [Excerpt: Baby Jane and the Rockabyes, "How Much is that Doggie in the Window?"] And when Leiber and Stoller stopped producing work for United Artists, Berns took over some of the artists they'd been producing for the label, like Marv Johnson, as well as producing his own new artists, like Garnet Mimms and the Enchanters, who had been discovered by Berns' friend Jerry Ragovoy, with whom he co-wrote their "Cry Baby": [Excerpt: Garnet Mimms and the Enchanters, "Cry Baby"] Berns was an inveterate collaborator. He was one of the few people to get co-writing credits with Leiber and Stoller, and he would collaborate seemingly with everyone who spoke to him for five minutes. He would also routinely reuse material, cutting the same songs time and again with different artists, knowing that a song must be a hit for *someone*. One of his closest collaborators was Jerry Wexler, who also became one of his best friends, even though one of their earliest interactions had been when Wexler had supervised Phil Spector's production of Berns' "Twist and Shout" for the Top Notes, a record that Berns had thought had butchered the song. Berns was, in his deepest bones, a record man. Listening to the records that Berns made, there's a strong continuity in everything he does. There's a love there of simplicity -- almost none of his records have more than three chords. He loved Latin sounds and rhythms -- a love he shared with other people working in Brill Building R&B at the time, like Leiber and Stoller and Spector -- and great voices in emotional distress. There's a reason that the records he produced for Solomon Burke were the first R&B records to be labelled "soul". Berns was one of those people for whom feel and commercial success are inextricable. He was an artist -- the records he made were powerfully expressive -- but he was an artist for whom the biggest validation was *getting a hit*. Only a small proportion of the records he made became hits, but enough did that in the early sixties he was a name that could be spoken of in the same breath as Leiber and Stoller, Spector, and Bacharach and David. And Atlantic needed a record man. The only people producing hits for the label at this point were Leiber and Stoller, and they were in the process of stopping doing freelance work and setting up their own label, Red Bird, as we talked about in the episode on the Shangri-Las. And anyway, they wanted more money than they were getting, and Jerry Wexler was never very keen on producers wanting money that could have gone to the record label. Wexler decided to sign Bert Berns up as a staff producer for Atlantic towards the end of 1963, and by May 1964 it was paying off. Atlantic hadn't been having hits, and now Berns had four tracks he wrote and produced for Atlantic on the Hot One Hundred, of which the highest charting was "My Girl Sloopy" by the Vibrations: [Excerpt: The Vibrations, "My Girl Sloopy"] Even higher on the charts though was the Beatles' version of "Twist and Shout". That record, indeed, had been successful enough in the UK that Berns had already made exploratory trips to the UK and produced records for Dick Rowe at Decca, a partnership we heard about in the episode on "Here Comes the Night". Berns had made partnerships there which would have vast repercussions for the music industry in both countries, and one of them was with the arranger Mike Leander, who was the uncredited arranger for the Drifters session for "Under the Boardwalk", a song written by Artie Resnick and Kenny Young and produced by Berns, recorded the day after the group's lead singer Rudy Lewis died of an overdose: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Under the Boardwalk"] Berns was making hits on a regular basis by mid-1964, and the income from the label's new success allowed Jerry Wexler and the Ertegun brothers to buy out their other partners -- Ahmet Ertegun's old dentist, who had put up some of the initial money, and Miriam Bienstock, the ex-wife of their initial partner Herb Abramson, who'd got Abramson's share in the company after the divorce, and who was now married to Freddie Bienstock of Hill and Range publishing. Wexler and the Erteguns now owned the whole label. Berns also made regular trips to the UK to keep up his work with British musicians, and in one of those trips, as we heard in the episode on "Here Comes the Night", he produced several tracks for the group Them, including that track, written by Berns: [Excerpt: Them, "Here Comes the Night"] And a song written by the group's lead singer Van Morrison, "Gloria": [Excerpt: Them, "Gloria"] But Berns hadn't done much other work with them, because he had a new project. Part of the reason that Wexler and the Erteguns had gained total control of Atlantic was because, in a move pushed primarily by Wexler, they were looking at selling it. They'd already tried to merge with Leiber and Stoller's Red Bird Records, but lost the opportunity after a disastrous meeting, but they were in negotiations with several other labels, negotiations which would take another couple of years to bear fruit. But they weren't planning on getting out of the record business altogether. Whatever deal they made, they'd remain with Atlantic, but they were also planning on starting another label. Bert Berns had seen how successful Leiber and Stoller were with Red Bird, and wanted something similar. Wexler and the Erteguns didn't want to lose their one hit-maker, so they came up with an offer that would benefit all of them. Berns' publishing contract had just ended, so they would set up a new publishing company, WEB IV, named after the initials Wexler, Ertegun, and Berns, and the fact that there were four of them. Berns would own fifty percent of that, and the other three would own the other half. And they were going to start up a new label, with seventeen thousand dollars of the Atlantic partners' money. That label would be called Bang -- for Bert, Ahmet, Neshui, and Gerald -- and would be a separate company from Atlantic, so not affected by any sale. Berns would continue as a staff producer for Atlantic for now, but he'd have "his own" label, which he'd have a proper share in, and whether he was making hits for Atlantic or Bang, his partners would have a share of the profits. The first two records on Bang were "Shake and Jerk" by Billy Lamont, a track that they licensed from elsewhere and which didn't do much, and a more interesting track co-written by Berns. Bob Feldman, Richard Gottehrer, and Jerry Goldstein were Brill Building songwriters who had become known for writing "My Boyfriend's Back", a hit for the Angels, a couple of years earlier: [Excerpt: The Angels, "My Boyfriend's Back"] With the British invasion, the three of them had decided to create their own foreign beat group. As they couldn't do British accents, they pretended to be Australian, and as the Strangeloves -- named after the Stanley Kubrick film Dr Strangelove -- they released one flop single. They cut another single, a version of "Bo Diddley", but the label they released their initial record through didn't want it. They then took the record to Atlantic, where Jerry Wexler said that they weren't interested in releasing some white men singing "Bo Diddley". But Ahmet Ertegun suggested they bring the track to Bert Berns to see what he thought. Berns pointed out that if they changed the lyrics and melody, but kept the same backing track, they could claim the copyright in the resulting song themselves. He worked with them on a new lyric, inspired by the novel Candy, a satirical pornographic novel co-written by Terry Southern, who had also co-written the screenplay to Dr Strangelove. Berns supervised some guitar overdubs, and the result went to number eleven: [Excerpt: The Strangeloves, "I Want Candy"] Berns had two other songs on the hot one hundred when that charted, too -- Them's version of "Here Comes the Night", and the version of Van McCoy's song "Baby I'm Yours" he'd produced for Barbara Lewis. Three records on the charts on three different labels. But despite the sheer number of charting records he'd had, he'd never had a number one, until the Strangeloves went on tour. Before the tour they'd cut a version of "My Girl Sloopy" for their album -- Berns always liked to reuse material -- and they started performing the song on the tour. The Dave Clark Five, who they were supporting, told them it sounded like a hit and they were going to do their own version when they got home. Feldman, Gottehrer, and Goldstein decided *they* might as well have the hit with it as anyone else. Rather than put it out as a Strangeloves record -- their own record was still rising up the charts, and there's no reason to be your own competition -- they decided to get a group of teenage musicians who supported them on the last date of the tour to sing new vocals to the backing track from the Strangeloves album. The group had been called Rick and the Raiders, but they argued so much that the Strangeloves nicknamed them the Hatfields and the McCoys, and when their version of "My Girl Sloopy", retitled "Hang on Sloopy", came out, it was under the band name The McCoys: [Excerpt: The McCoys, "Hang on Sloopy"] Berns was becoming a major success, and with major success in the New York music industry in the 1960s came Mafia involvement. We've talked a fair bit about Morris Levy's connection with the mob in many previous episodes, but mob influence was utterly pervasive throughout the New York part of the industry, and so for example Richard Gottehrer of the Strangeloves used to call Sonny Franzese of the Colombo crime family "Uncle John", they were so close. Franzese was big in the record business too, even after his conviction for bank robbery. Berns, unlike many of the other people in the industry, had no scruples at all about hanging out with Mafiosi. indeed his best friend in the mid sixties was Tommy Eboli, a member of the Genovese crime family who had been in the mob since the twenties, starting out working for "Lucky" Luciano. Berns was not himself a violent man, as far as anyone can tell, but he liked the glamour of hanging out with organised crime figures, and they liked hanging out with someone who was making so many hit records. And so while Leiber and Stoller, for example, ended up selling Red Bird Records to George Goldner for a single dollar in order to get away from the Mafiosi who were slowly muscling in on the label, Berns had no problems at all in keeping his own label going. Indeed, he would soon be doing so without the involvement of Atlantic Records. Berns' final work for Atlantic was in June 1966, when he cut a song he had co-written with Jeff Barry for the Drifters, inspired by the woman who would soon become Atlantic's biggest star: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Aretha"] The way Berns told the story in public, there was no real bad blood between him, Wexler, and the Erteguns -- he'd just decided to go his own way, and he said “I will always be grateful to them for the help they've given me in getting Bang started,” The way Berns' wife would later tell the story, Jerry Wexler had suggested that rather than Berns owning fifty percent of Web IV, they should start to split everything four ways, and she had been horrified by this suggestion, kicked up a stink about it, and Wexler had then said that either Berns needed to buy the other three out, or quit and give them everything, and demanded Berns pay them three hundred thousand dollars. According to other people, Berns decided he wanted one hundred percent control of Web IV, and raised a breach of contract lawsuit against Atlantic, over the usual royalty non-payments that were endemic in the industry at that point. When Atlantic decided to fight the lawsuit rather than settle, Berns' mob friends got involved and threatened to break the legs of Wexler's fourteen-year-old daughter, and the mob ended up with full control of Bang records, while Berns had full control of his publishing company. Given later events, and in particular given the way Wexler talked about Berns until the day he died, with a vitriol that he never used about any of the other people he had business disputes with, it seems likely to me that the latter story is closer to the truth than the former. But most people involved weren't talking about the details of what went on, and so Berns still retained his relationships with many of the people in the business, not least of them Jeff Barry, so when Barry and Ellie Greenwich had a new potential star, it was Berns they thought to bring him to, even though the artist was white and Berns had recently given an interview saying that he wanted to work with more Black artists, because white artists simply didn't have soul. Barry and Greenwich's marriage was breaking up at the time, but they were still working together professionally, as we discussed in the episode on "River Deep, Mountain High", and they had been the main production team at Red Bird. But with Red Bird in terminal decline, they turned elsewhere when they found a potential major star after Greenwich was asked to sing backing vocals on one of his songwriting demos. They'd signed the new songwriter, Neil Diamond, to Leiber and Stoller's company Trio Music at first, but they soon started up their own company, Tallyrand Music, and signed Diamond to that, giving Diamond fifty percent of the company and keeping twenty-five percent each for themselves, and placed one of his songs with Jay and the Americans in 1965: [Excerpt: Jay and the Americans, "Sunday and Me"] That record made the top twenty, and had established Diamond as a songwriter, but he was still not a major performer -- he'd released one flop single on Columbia Records before meeting Barry and Greenwich. But they thought he had something, and Bert Berns agreed. Diamond was signed to Bang records, and Berns had a series of pre-production meetings with Barry and Greenwich before they took Diamond into the studio -- Barry and Greenwich were going to produce Diamond for Bang, as they had previously produced tracks for Red Bird, but they were going to shape the records according to Berns' aesthetic. The first single released from Diamond's first session, "Solitary Man", only made number fifty-five, but it was the first thing Diamond had recorded to make the Hot One Hundred at all: [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Solitary Man"] The second single, though, was much more Bert Berns' sort of thing -- a three-chord song that sounded like it could have been written by Berns himself, especially after Barry and Greenwich had added the Latin-style horns that Berns loved so much. Indeed according to some sources, Berns did make a songwriting suggestion -- Diamond's song had apparently been called "Money Money", and Berns had thought that was a ridiculous title, and suggested calling it "Cherry Cherry" instead: [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Cherry Cherry"] That became Diamond's first top ten hit. While Greenwich had been the one who had discovered Diamond, and Barry and Greenwich were the credited producers on all Diamond's records as a result, Diamond soon found himself collaborating far more with Barry than with Greenwich, so for example the first number one he wrote, for the Monkees rather than himself, ended up having its production just credited to Barry. That record used a backing track recorded in New York by the same set of musicians used on most Bang records, like Al Gorgoni on lead guitar and Russ Savakus on bass: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "I'm a Believer"] Neil Diamond was becoming a solid hit-maker, but he started rubbing up badly against Berns. Berns wanted hits and only hits, and Diamond thought of himself as a serious artist. The crisis came when two songs were under contention for Diamond's next single in late 1967, after he'd had a whole run of hits for the label. The song Diamond wanted to release, "Shilo", was deeply personal to him: [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Shilo"] But Bert Berns had other ideas. "Shilo" didn't sound like a hit, and he knew a hit when he heard one. No, the clear next single, the only choice, was "Kentucky Woman": [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Kentucky Woman"] But Berns tried to compromise as best he could. Diamond's contract was up for renewal, and you don't want to lose someone who has had, as Diamond had at that point, five top twenty hits in a row, and who was also writing songs like "I'm a Believer" and "Red Red Wine". He told Diamond that he'd let "Shilo" come out as a single if Diamond signed an extension to his contract. Diamond said that not only was he not going to do that, he'd taken legal advice and discovered that there were problems with his contract which let him record for other labels -- the word "exclusive" had been missed out of the text, among other things. He wasn't going to be recording for Bang at all any more. The lawsuits over this would stretch out for a decade, and Diamond would eventually win, but the first few months were very, very difficult for Diamond. When he played the Bitter End, a club in New York, stink bombs were thrown into the audience. The Bitter End's manager was assaulted and severely beaten. Diamond moved his wife and child out of Manhattan, borrowed a gun, and after his last business meeting with Berns was heard talking about how he needed to contact the District Attorney and hire a bodyguard. Of the many threats that were issued against Diamond, though, the least disturbing was probably the threat Berns made to Diamond's career. Berns pointed out to Diamond in no uncertain terms that he didn't need Diamond anyway -- he already had someone he could replace Diamond with, another white male solo singer with a guitar who could churn out guaranteed hits. He had Van Morrison: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl"] When we left Van Morrison, Them had just split up due to the problems they had been having with their management team. Indeed, the problems Morrison was having with his managers seem curiously similar to the issues that Diamond was having with Bert Berns -- something that could possibly have been a warning sign to everyone involved, if any of them had known the full details of everyone else's situation. Sadly for all of them, none of them did. Them had had some early singles success, notably with the tracks Berns had produced for them, but Morrison's opinion of their second album, Them Again, was less than complimentary, and in general that album is mostly only remembered for the version of Bob Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue", which is one of those cover versions that inspires subsequent covers more than the original ever did: [Excerpt: Them, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue"] Them had toured the US around the time of the release of that album, but that tour had been a disaster. The group had gained a reputation for incredible live shows, including performances at the Whisky A-Go-Go with the Doors and Captain Beefheart as their support acts, but during the tour Van Morrison had decided that Phil Solomon, the group's manager, was getting too much money -- Morrison had agreed to do the tour on a salary, rather than a percentage, but the tour had been more successful than he'd expected, and Solomon was making a great deal of money off the tour, money that Morrison believed rightfully belonged to him. The group started collecting the money directly from promoters, and got into legal trouble with Solomon as a result. The tour ended with the group having ten thousand dollars that Solomon believed -- quite possibly correctly -- that he was owed. Various gangsters whose acquaintance the group had made offered to have the problem taken care of, but they decided instead to come to a legal agreement -- they would keep the money, and in return Solomon, whose production company the group were signed to, would get to keep all future royalties from the Them tracks. This probably seemed a good idea at the time, when the idea of records earning royalties for sixty or more years into the future seemed ridiculous, but Morrison in particular came to regret the decision bitterly. The group played one final gig when they got back to Belfast, but then split up, though a version of the group led by the bass player Alan Henderson continued performing for a few years to no success. Morrison put together a band that played a handful of gigs under the name Them Again, with little success, but he already had his eyes set on a return to the US. In Morrison's eyes, Bert Berns had been the only person in the music industry who had really understood him, and the two worked well together. He had also fallen in love with an American woman, Janet Planet, and wanted to find some way to be with her. As Morrison said later “I had a couple of other offers but I thought this was the best one, seeing as I wanted to come to America anyway. I can't remember the exact details of the deal. It wasn't really that spectacular, money-wise, I don't think. But it was pretty hard to refuse from the point of view that I really respected Bert as a producer. I'd rather have worked with Bert than some other guy with a bigger record company. From that angle, it was spectacular because Bert was somebody that I wanted to work with.” There's little evidence that Morrison did have other offers -- he was already getting a reputation as someone who it was difficult to work with -- but he and Berns had a mutual respect, and on January the ninth, 1967, he signed a contract with Bang records. That contract has come in for a lot of criticism over the years, but it was actually, *by the standards in operation in the music business in 1967*, a reasonably fair one. The contract provided that, for a $2,500 a year advance, Bang would record twelve sides in the first year, with an option for up to fifty more that year, and options for up to four more years on the same terms. Bang had the full ownership of the masters and the right to do what they wanted with them. According to at least one biographer, Morrison added clauses requiring Bang to actually record the twelve sides a year, and to put out at least three singles and one album per year while the contract was in operation. He also added one other clause which seems telling -- "Company agrees that Company will not make any reference to the name THEM on phonograph records, or in advertising copy in connection with the recording of Artist." Morrison was, at first, extremely happy with Berns. The problems started with their first session: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl (takes 1-6)"] When Morrison had played the songs he was working on for Berns, Berns had remarked that they sounded great with just Morrison and his guitar, so Morrison was surprised when he got into the studio to find the whole standard New York session crew there -- the same group of session players who were playing for everyone from the Monkees to Laura Nyro, from Neil Diamond to the Shangri-Las -- along with the Sweet Inspirations to provide backing vocals. As he described it later "This fellow Bert, he made it the way he wanted to, and I accepted that he was producing it... I'd write a song and bring it into the group and we'd sit there and bash it around and that's all it was -- they weren't playing the songs, they were just playing whatever it was. They'd say 'OK, we got drums so let's put drums on it,' and they weren't thinking about the song, all they were thinking about was putting drums on it... But it was my song, and I had to watch it go down." The first song they cut was "Brown-Eyed Girl", a song which Morrison has said was originally a calypso, and was originally titled "Brown-skinned Girl", though he's differed in interviews as to whether Berns changed the lyric or if he just decided to sing it differently without thinking about it in the session. Berns turned "Brown-Eyed Girl" into a hit single, because that was what he tended to do with songs, and the result sounds a lot like the kind of record that Bang were releasing for Neil Diamond: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl"] Morrison has, in later years, expressed his distaste for what was done to the song, and in particular he's said that the backing vocal part by the Sweet Inspirations was added by Berns and he disliked it: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl"] Morrison has been very dismissive of "Brown-Eyed Girl" over the years, but he seems not to have disliked it at the time, and the song itself is one that has stood the test of time, and is often pointed to by other songwriters as a great example of the writer's craft. I remember reading one interview with Randy Newman -- sadly, while I thought it was in Paul Zollo's "Songwriters on Songwriting" I just checked that and it's not, so I can't quote it precisely -- in which he says that he often points to the line "behind the stadium with you" as a perfect piece of writing, because it's such a strangely specific detail that it convinces you that it actually happened, and that means you implicitly believe the rest of the song. Though it should be made very clear here that Morrison has always said, over and over again, that nothing in his songs is based directly on his own experiences, and that they're all products of his imagination and composites of people he's known. This is very important to note before we go any further, because "Brown-Eyed Girl" is one of many songs from this period in Morrison's career which imply that their narrator has an attraction to underage girls -- in this case he remembers "making love in the green grass" in the distant past, while he also says "saw you just the other day, my how you have grown", and that particular combination is not perhaps one that should be dwelt on too closely. But there is of course a very big difference between a songwriter treating a subject as something that is worth thinking about in the course of a song and writing about their own lives, and that can be seen on one of the other songs that Morrison recorded in these sessions, "T.B. Sheets": [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "T.B. Sheets"] It seems very unlikely indeed that Van Morrison actually had a lover die of tuberculosis, as the lover in the song does, and while a lot of people seem convinced that it's autobiographical, simply because of the intensity of the performance (Morrison apparently broke down in tears after recording it), nobody has ever found anyone in Morrison's life who fits the story in the song, and he's always ridiculed such suggestions. What is true though is that "T.B. Sheets" is evidence against another claim that Morrison has made in the past - that on these initial sessions the eight songs recorded were meant to be the A and B sides of four singles and there was no plan of making an album. It is simply not plausible at all to suggest that "T.B. Sheets" -- a slow blues about terminal illness, that lasts nearly ten minutes -- was ever intended as a single. It wouldn't have even come close to fitting on one side of a forty-five. It was also presumably at this time that Berns brought up the topic of "Piece of My Heart". When Berns signed Erma Franklin, it was as a way of getting at Jerry Wexler, who had gone from being his closest friend to someone he wasn't on speaking terms with, by signing the sister of his new signing Aretha. Morrison, of course, didn't co-write it -- he'd already decided that he didn't play well with others -- but it's tempting to think about how the song might have been different had Morrison written it. The song in some ways seems a message to Wexler -- haven't you had enough from me already? -- but it's also notable how many songs Berns was writing with the word "heart" in the chorus, given that Berns knew he was on borrowed time from his own heart condition. As an example, around the same time he and Jerry Ragavoy co-wrote "Piece of My Heart", they also co-wrote another song, "Heart Be Still", a flagrant lift from "Peace Be Still" by Aretha Franklin's old mentor Rev. James Cleveland, which they cut with Lorraine Ellison: [Excerpt: Lorraine Ellison, "Heart Be Still"] Berns' heart condition had got much worse as a result of the stress from splitting with Atlantic, and he had started talking about maybe getting open-heart surgery, though that was still very new and experimental. One wonders how he must have felt listening to Morrison singing about watching someone slowly dying. Morrison has since had nothing but negative things to say about the sessions in March 1967, but at the time he seemed happy. He returned to Belfast almost straight away after the sessions, on the understanding that he'd be back in the US if "Brown-Eyed Girl" was a success. He wrote to Janet Planet in San Francisco telling her to listen to the radio -- she'd know if she heard "Brown-Eyed Girl" that he would be back on his way to see her. She soon did hear the song, and he was soon back in the US: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl"] By August, "Brown-Eyed Girl" had become a substantial hit, making the top ten, and Morrison was back in the States. He was starting to get less happy with Berns though. Bang had put out the eight tracks he'd recorded in March as an album, titled Blowin' Your Mind, and Morrison thought that the crass pseudo-psychedelia of the title, liner notes, and cover was very inappropriate -- Morrison has never been a heavy user of any drugs other than alcohol, and didn't particularly want to be associated with them. He also seems to have not realised that every track he recorded in those initial sessions would be on the album, which many people have called one of the great one-sided albums of all time -- side A, with "Brown-Eyed Girl", "He Ain't Give You None" and the extended "T.B. Sheets" tends to get far more love than side B, with five much lesser songs on it. Berns held a party for Morrison on a cruise around Manhattan, but it didn't go well -- when the performer Tiny Tim tried to get on board, Carmine "Wassel" DeNoia, a mobster friend of Berns' who was Berns' partner in a studio they'd managed to get from Atlantic as part of the settlement when Berns left, was so offended by Tim's long hair and effeminate voice and mannerisms that he threw him overboard into the harbour. DeNoia was meant to be Morrison's manager in the US, working with Berns, but he and Morrison didn't get on at all -- at one point DeNoia smashed Morrison's acoustic guitar over his head, and only later regretted the damage he'd done to a nice guitar. And Morrison and Berns weren't getting on either. Morrison went back into the studio to record four more songs for a follow-up to "Brown-Eyed Girl", but there was again a misunderstanding. Morrison thought he'd been promised that this time he could do his songs the way he wanted, but Berns was just frustrated that he wasn't coming up with another "Brown-Eyed Girl", but was instead coming up with slow songs about trans women. Berns overdubbed party noises and soul backing vocals onto "Madame George", possibly in an attempt to copy the Beach Boys' Party! album with its similar feel, but it was never going to be a "Barbara Ann": [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Madame George (Bang version)"] In the end, Berns released one of the filler tracks from Blowin' Your Mind, "Ro Ro Rosey", as the next single, and it flopped. On December the twenty-ninth, Berns had a meeting with Neil Diamond, the meeting after which Diamond decided he needed to get a bodyguard. After that, he had a screaming row over the phone with Van Morrison, which made Berns ill with stress. The next day, he died of a heart attack. Berns' widow Ilene, who had only just given birth to a baby a couple of weeks earlier, would always blame Morrison for pushing her husband over the edge. Neither Van Morrison nor Jerry Wexler went to the funeral, but Neil Diamond did -- he went to try to persuade Ilene to let him out of his contract now Berns was dead. According to Janet Planet later, "We were at the hotel when we learned that Bert had died. We were just mortified, because things had been going really badly, and Van felt really bad, because I guess they'd parted having had some big fight or something... Even though he did love Bert, it was a strange relationship that lived and died in the studio... I remember we didn't go to the funeral, which probably was a mistake... I think [Van] had a really bad feeling about what was going to happen." But Morrison has later mostly talked about the more practical concerns that came up, which were largely the same as the ones Neil Diamond had, saying in 1997 "I'd signed a contract with Bert Berns for management, production, agency and record company, publishing, the whole lot -- which was professional suicide as any lawyer will tell you now... Then the whole thing blew up. Bert Berns died and I was left broke." This was the same mistake, essentially, that he'd made with Phil Solomon, and in order to get out of it, it turned out he was going to have to do much the same for a third time. But it was the experience with Berns specifically that traumatised Morrison enough that twenty-five years later he would still be writing songs about it, like "Big Time Operators": [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Big Time Operators"] The option to renew Morrison's contracts with Berns' companies came on the ninth of January 1968, less than two weeks after Berns' death. After his death, Berns' share of ownership in his companies had passed to his widow, who was in a quandary. She had two young children, one of whom was only a few weeks old, and she needed an income after their father had died. She was also not well disposed at all towards Morrison, who she blamed for causing her husband's death. By all accounts the amazing thing is that Berns lived as long as he did given his heart condition and the state of medical science at the time, but it's easy to understand her thinking. She wanted nothing to do with Morrison, and wanted to punish him. On the other hand, her late husband's silent partners didn't want to let their cash cow go. And so Morrison came under a huge amount of pressure in very different directions. From one side, Carmine DiNoia was determined to make more money off Morrison, and Morrison has since talked about signing further contracts at this point with a gun literally to his head, and his hotel room being shot up. But on the other side, Ilene Berns wanted to destroy Morrison's career altogether. She found out that Bert Berns hadn't got Morrison the proper work permits and reported him to the immigration authorities. Morrison came very close to being deported, but in the end he managed to escape deportation by marrying Janet Planet. The newly-married couple moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to get away from New York and the mobsters, and to try to figure out the next steps in Morrison's career. Morrison started putting together a band, which he called The Van Morrison Controversy, and working on new songs. One of his earliest connections in Massachusetts was the lead singer of a band called the Hallucinations, who he met in a bar where he was trying to get a gig: [Excerpt: The Hallucinations, "Messin' With the Kid"] The Hallucinations' lead singer was called Peter Wolf, and would much later go on to become well-known as the singer with the J. Geils Band. He and Morrison became acquaintances, and later became closer friends when they realised they had another connection -- Wolf had a late-night radio show under the name Woofa Goofa, and he'd been receiving anonymous requests for obscure blues records from a fan of the show. Morrison had been the one sending in the requests, not realising his acquaintance was the DJ. Before he got his own band together, Morrison actually guested with the Hallucinations at one show they did in May 1968, supporting John Lee Hooker. The Hallucinations had been performing "Gloria" since Them's single had come out, and they invited Morrison to join them to perform it on stage. According to Wolf, Morrison was very drunk and ranted in cod-Japanese for thirty-five minutes, and tried to sing a different song while the band played "Gloria". The audience were apparently unimpressed, even though Wolf shouted at them “Don't you know who this man is? He wrote the song!” But in truth, Morrison was sick of "Gloria" and his earlier work, and was trying to push his music in a new direction. He would later talk about having had an epiphany after hearing one particular track on the radio: [Excerpt: The Band, "I Shall Be Released"] Like almost every musician in 1968, Morrison was hit like a lightning bolt by Music From Big Pink, and he decided that he needed to turn his music in the same direction. He started writing the song "Brand New Day", which would later appear on his album Moondance, inspired by the music on the album. The Van Morrison Controversy started out as a fairly straightforward rock band, with guitarist John Sheldon, bass player Tom Kielbania, and drummer Joey Bebo. Sheldon was a novice, though his first guitar teacher was the singer James Taylor, but the other two were students at Berklee, and very serious musicians. Morrison seems to have had various managers involved in rapid succession in 1968, including one who was himself a mobster, and another who was only known as Frank, but one of these managers advanced enough money that the musicians got paid every gig. These musicians were all interested in kinds of music other than just straight rock music, and as well as rehearsing up Morrison's hits and his new songs, they would also jam with him on songs from all sorts of other genres, particularly jazz and blues. The band worked up the song that would become "Domino" based on Sheldon jamming on a Bo Diddley riff, and another time the group were rehearsing a Grant Green jazz piece, "Lazy Afternoon": [Excerpt: Grant Green, "Lazy Afternoon"] Morrison started messing with the melody, and that became his classic song "Moondance": [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Moondance"] No recordings of this electric lineup of the group are known to exist, though the backing musicians remember going to a recording studio called Ace recordings at one point and cutting some demos, which don't seem to circulate. Ace was a small studio which, according to all the published sources I've read, was best known for creating song poems, though it was a minor studio even in the song-poem world. For those who don't know, song poems were essentially a con aimed at wannabe songwriters who knew nothing about the business -- companies would advertise you too could become a successful, rich, songwriter if you sent in your "song poems", because anyone who knew the term "lyric" could be presumed to know too much about the music business to be useful. When people sent in their lyrics, they'd then be charged a fee to have them put out on their very own record -- with tracks made more or less on a conveyor belt with quick head arrangements, sung by session singers who were just handed a lyric sheet and told to get on with it. And thus were created such classics prized by collectors as "I Like Yellow Things", "Jimmy Carter Says 'Yes'", and "Listen Mister Hat". Obviously, for the most part these song poems did not lead to the customers becoming the next Ira Gershwin, but oddly even though Ace recordings is not one of the better-known song poem studios, it seems to have produced an actual hit song poem -- one that I don't think has ever before been identified as such until I made a connection, hence me going on this little tangent. Because in researching this episode I noticed something about its co-owner, Milton Yakus', main claim to fame. He co-wrote the song "Old Cape Cod", and to quote that song's Wikipedia page "The nucleus of the song was a poem written by Boston-area housewife Claire Rothrock, for whom Cape Cod was a favorite vacation spot. "Old Cape Cod" and its derivatives would be Rothrock's sole evident songwriting credit. She brought her poem to Ace Studios, a Boston recording studio owned by Milton Yakus, who adapted the poem into the song's lyrics." And while Yakus had written other songs, including songs for Patti Page who had the hit with "Old Cape Cod", apparently Page recorded that song after Rothrock brought her the demo after a gig, rather than getting it through any formal channels. It sounds to me like the massive hit and classic of the American songbook "Old Cape Cod" started life as a song-poem -- and if you're familiar with the form, it fits the genre perfectly: [Excerpt: Patti Page, "Old Cape Cod"] The studio was not the classiest of places, even if you discount the song-poems. Its main source of income was from cutting private records with mobsters' wives and mistresses singing (and dealing with the problems that came along when those records weren't successful) and it also had a sideline in bugging people's cars to see if their spouses were cheating, though Milton Yakus' son Shelly, who got his start at his dad's studio, later became one of the most respected recording engineers in the industry -- and indeed had already worked as assistant engineer on Music From Big Pink. And there was actually another distant connection to Morrison's new favourite band on these sessions. For some reason -- reports differ -- Bebo wasn't considered suitable for the session, and in his place was the one-handed drummer Victor "Moulty" Moulton, who had played with the Barbarians, who'd had a minor hit with "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl?" a couple of years earlier: [Excerpt: The Barbarians, "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl?"] A later Barbarians single, in early 1966, had featured Moulty telling his life story, punctuated by the kind of three-chord chorus that would have been at home on a Bert Berns single: [Excerpt: The Barbarians, "Moulty"] But while that record was credited to the Barbarians, Moulton was the only Barbarian on the track, with the instruments and backing vocals instead being provided by Levon and the Hawks. Shortly after the Ace sessions, the Van Morrison Controversy fell apart, though nobody seems to know why. Depending on which musician's story you listen to, either Morrison had a dream that he should get rid of all electric instruments and only use acoustic players, or there was talk of a record deal but the musicians weren't good enough, or the money from the mysterious manager (who may or may not have been the one who was a mobster) ran out. Bebo went back to university, and Sheldon left soon after, though Sheldon would remain in the music business in one form or another. His most prominent credit has been writing a couple of songs for his old friend James Taylor, including the song "Bittersweet" on Taylor's platinum-selling best-of, on which Sheldon also played guitar: [Excerpt: James Taylor, "Bittersweet"] Morrison and Kielbania continued for a while as a duo, with Morrison on acoustic guitar and Kielbania on double bass, but they were making very different music. Morrison's biggest influence at this point, other than The Band, was King Pleasure, a jazz singer who sang in the vocalese style we've talked about before -- the style where singers would sing lyrics to melodies that had previously been improvised by jazz musicians: [Excerpt: King Pleasure, "Moody's Mood for Love"] Morrison and Kielbania soon decided that to make the more improvisatory music they were interested in playing, they wanted another musician who could play solos. They ended up with John Payne, a jazz flute and saxophone player whose biggest inspiration was Charles Lloyd. This new lineup of the Van Morrison Controversy -- acoustic guitar, double bass, and jazz flute -- kept gigging around Boston, though the sound they were creating was hardly what the audiences coming to see the man who'd had that "Brown-Eyed Girl" hit the year before would have expected -- even when they did "Brown-Eyed Girl", as the one live recording of that line-up, made by Peter Wolf, shows: [Excerpt: The Van Morrison Controversy, "Brown-Eyed Girl (live in Boston 1968)"] That new style, with melodic bass underpinning freely extemporising jazz flute and soulful vocals, would become the basis of the album that to this day is usually considered Morrison's best. But before that could happen, there was the matter of the contracts to be sorted out. Warner-Reprise Records were definitely interested. Warners had spent the last few years buying up smaller companies like Atlantic, Autumn Records, and Reprise, and the label was building a reputation as the major label that would give artists the space and funding they needed to make the music they wanted to make. Idiosyncratic artists with difficult reputations (deserved or otherwise), like Neil Young, Randy Newman, Van Dyke Parks, the Grateful Dead, and Joni Mitchell, had all found homes on the label, which was soon also to start distributing Frank Zappa, the Beach Boys, and Captain Beefheart. A surly artist who wants to make mystical acoustic songs with jazz flute accompaniment was nothing unusual for them, and once Joe Smith, the man who had signed the Grateful Dead, was pointed in Morrison's direction by Andy Wickham, an A&R man working for the label, everyone knew that Morrison would be a perfect fit. But Morrison was still under contract to Bang records and Web IV, and those contracts said, among other things, that any other label that negotiated with Morrison would be held liable for breach of contract. Warners didn't want to show their interest in Morrison, because a major label wanting to sign him would cause Bang to raise the price of buying him out of his contract. Instead they got an independent production company to sign him, with a nod-and-wink understanding that they would then license the records to Warners. The company they chose was Inherit Productions, the production arm of Schwaid-Merenstein, a management company set up by Bob Schwaid, who had previously worked in Warners' publishing department, and record producer Lewis Merenstein. Merenstein came to another demo session at Ace Recordings, where he fell in love with the new music that Morrison was playing, and determined he would do everything in his power to make the record into the masterpiece it deserved to be. He and Morrison were, at least at this point, on exactly the same page, and bonded over their mutual love of King Pleasure. Morrison signed to Schwaid-Merenstein, just as he had with Bert Berns and before him Phil Solomon, for management, record production, and publishing. Schwaid-Merenstein were funded by Warners, and would license any recordings they made to Warners, once the contractual situation had been sorted out. The first thing to do was to negotiate the release from Web IV, the publishing company owned by Ilene Berns. Schwaid negotiated that, and Morrison got released on four conditions -- he had to make a substantial payment to Web IV, if he released a single within a year he had to give Web IV the publishing, any album he released in the next year had to contain at least two songs published by Web IV, and he had to give Web IV at least thirty-six new songs to publish within the next year. The first two conditions were no problem at all -- Warners had the money to buy the contract out, and Merenstein's plans for the first album didn't involve a single anyway. It wouldn't be too much of a hardship to include a couple of Web IV-published tracks on the album -- Morrison had written two songs, "Beside You" and "Madame George", that had already been published and that he was regularly including in his live sets. As for the thirty-six new songs... well, that all depended on what you called a song, didn't it? [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Ring Worm"] Morrison went into a recording studio and recorded thirty-one ostensible songs, most of them lasting one minute to within a few seconds either way, in which he strummed one or two chords and spoke-sang whatever words came into his head -- for example one song, "Here Comes Dumb George", just consists of the words "Here Comes Dumb George" repeated over and over. Some of the 'songs', like "Twist and Shake" and "Hang on Groovy", are parodying Bert Berns' songwriting style; others, like "Waiting for My Royalty Check", "Blowin' Your Nose", and "Nose in Your Blow", are attacks on Bang's business practices. Several of the songs, like "Hold on George", "Here Comes Dumb George", "Dum Dum George", and "Goodbye George" are about a man called George who seems to have come to Boston to try and fail to make a record with Morrison. And “Want a Danish” is about wanting a Danish pastry. But in truth, this description is still making these "songs" sound more coherent than they are. The whole recording is of no musical merit whatsoever, and has absolutely nothing in it which could be considered to have any commercial potential at all. Which is of course the point -- just to show utter contempt to Ilene Berns and her company. The other problem that needed to be solved was Bang Records itself, which was now largely under the control of the mob. That was solved by Joe Smith. As Smith told the story "A friend of mine who knew some people said I could buy the contract for $20,000. I had to meet somebody in a warehouse on the third floor on Ninth Avenue in New York. I walked up there with twenty thousand-dollar bills -- and I was terrified. I was terrified I was going to give them the money, get a belt on the head and still not wind up with the contract. And there were two guys in the room. They looked out of central casting -- a big wide guy and a tall, thin guy. They were wearing suits and hats and stuff. I said 'I'm here with the money. You got the contract?' I remember I took that contract and ran out the door and jumped from the third floor to the second floor, and almost broke my leg to get on the street, where I could get a cab and put the contract in a safe place back at Warner Brothers." But the problem was solved, and Lewis Merenstein could get to work translating the music he'd heard Morrison playing into a record. He decided that Kielbania and Payne were not suitable for the kind of recording he wanted -- though they were welcome to attend the sessions in case the musicians had any questions about the songs, and thus they would get session pay. Kielbania was, at first, upset by this, but he soon changed his mind when he realised who Merenstein was bringing in to replace him on bass for the session. Richard Davis, the bass player -- who sadly died two months ago as I write this -- would later go on to play on many classic rock records by people like Bruce Springsteen and Laura Nyro, largely as a result of his work for Morrison, but at the time he was known as one of the great jazz bass players, most notably having played on Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch: [Excerpt: Eric Dolphy, "Hat and Beard"] Kielbania could see the wisdom of getting in one of the truly great players for the album, and he was happy to show Davis the parts he'd been playing on the songs live, which Davis could then embellish -- Davis later always denied this, but it's obvious when listening to the live recordings that Kielbania played on before these sessions that Davis is playing very similar lines. Warren Smith Jr, the vibraphone player, had played with great jazz musicians like Charles Mingus and Herbie Mann, as well as backing Lloyd Price, Aretha Franklin, and Janis Joplin. Connie Kay, the drummer, was the drummer for the Modern Jazz Quartet and had also played sessions with everyone from Ruth Brown to Miles Davis. And Jay Berliner, the guitarist, had played on records like Charles Mingus' classic The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady: [Excerpt: Charles Mingus: "Mode D - Trio and Group Dancers, Mode F - Single Solos & Group Dance"] There was also a flute player whose name nobody now remembers. Although all of these musicians were jobbing session musicians -- Berliner came to the first session for the album that became Astral Weeks straight from a session recording a jingle for Pringles potato chips -- they were all very capable of taking a simple song and using it as an opportunity for jazz improvisation. And that was what Merenstein asked them to do. The songs that Morrison was writing were lyrically oblique, but structurally they were very simple -- surprisingly so when one is used to listening to the finished album. Most of the songs were, harmonically, variants of the standard blues and R&B changes that Morrison was used to playing. "Cyprus Avenue" and "The Way Young Lovers Do", for example, are both basically twelve-bar blueses -- neither is *exactly* a standard twelve-bar blues, but both are close enough that they can be considered to fit the form. Other than what Kielbania and Payne showed the musicians, they received no guidance from Morrison, who came in, ran through the songs once for them, and then headed to the vocal booth. None of the musicians had much memory of Morrison at all -- Jay Berliner said “This little guy walks in, past everybody, disappears into the vocal booth, and almost never comes out, even on the playbacks, he stayed in there." While Richard Davis later said “Well, I was with three of my favorite fellas to play with, so that's what made it beautiful. We were not concerned with Van at all, he never spoke to us.” The sound of the basic tracks on Astral Weeks is not the sound of a single auteur, as one might expect given its reputation, it's the sound of extremely good jazz musicians improvising based on the instructions given by Lewis Merenstein, who was trying to capture the feeling he'd got from listening to Morrison's live performances and demos. And because these were extremely good musicians, the album was recorded extremely quickly. In the first session, they cut four songs. Two of those were songs that Morrison was contractually obliged to record because of his agreement with Web IV -- "Beside You" and "Madame George", two songs that Bert Berns had produced, now in radically different versions: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Madame George"] The third song, "Cyprus Avenue", is the song that has caused most controversy over the years, as it's another of the songs that Morrison wrote around this time that relate to a sexual or romantic interest in underage girls. In this case, the reasoning might have been as simple as that the song is a blues, and Morrison may have been thinking about a tradition of lyrics like this in blues songs like "Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl". Whatever the cause though, the lyrics have, to put it mildly, not aged well at all: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Cyprus Avenue"] That song would be his standard set-closer for live performances for much of the seventies. For the fourth and final song, though, they chose to record what would become the title track for the album, "Astral Weeks", a song that was a lot more elliptical, and which seems in part to be about Morrison's longing for Janet Planet from afar, but also about memories of childhood, and also one of the first songs to bring in Morrison's fascination with the occult and spirituality, something that would be a recurring theme throughout his work, as the song was partly inspired by paintings by a friend of Morrison's which suggested to him the concept of astral travel: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Astral Weeks"] Morrison had a fascination with the idea of astral travel, as he had apparently had several out-of-body experiences as a child, and wanted to find some kind of explanation for them. Most of the songs on the album came, by Morrison's own account, as a kind of automatic writing, coming through him rather than being consciously written, and there's a fascination throughout with, to use the phrase from "Madame George", "childhood visions". The song is also one of the first songs in Morrison's repertoire to deliberately namecheck one of his idols, something else he would do often in future, when he talks about "talking to Huddie Leadbelly". "Astral Weeks" was a song that Morrison had been performing live for some time, and Payne had always enjoyed doing it. Unlike Kielbania he had no compunction about insisting that he was good enough to play on the record, and he eventually persuaded the session flute player to let him borrow his instrument, and Payne was allowed to play on the track: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Astral Weeks"] Or at least that's how the story is usually told -- Payne is usually credited for playing on "Madame George" too, even though everyone agrees that "Astral Weeks" was the last song of the night, but people's memories can fade over time. Either way, Payne's interplay with Jay Berliner on the guitar became such a strong point of the track that there was no question of bringing the unknown session player back -- Payne was going to be the woodwind player for the rest of the album: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Astral Weeks"] There was then a six-day break between sessions, during which time Payne and Kielbania went to get initiated into Scientology -- a religion with which Morrison himself would experiment a little over a decade later -- though they soon decided that it wasn't worth the cost of the courses they'd have to take, and gave up on the idea the same week. The next session didn't go so well. Jay Berliner was unavailable, and so Barry Kornfeld, a folkie who played with people like Dave Van Ronk, was brought in to replace him. Kornfeld was perfectly decent in the role, but they'd also brought in a string section, with the idea of recording some of the songs which needed string parts live. But the string players they brought in were incapable of improvising, coming from a classical rather than jazz tradition, and the only track that got used on the finished album was "The Way Young Lovers Do", by far the most conventional song on the album, a three-minute soul ballad structured as a waltz twelve-bar blues, where the strings are essentially playing the same parts that a horn section would play on a record by someone like Solomon Burke: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "The Way Young Lovers Do"] It was decided that any string or horn parts on the rest of the album would just be done as overdubs. It was two weeks before the next and final session for the album, and that featured the return of Jay Berliner on guitar. The session started with "Sweet Thing" and "Ballerina", two songs that Morrison had been playing live for some time, and which were cut in relatively quick order. They then made attempts at two more songs that didn't get very far, "Royalty", and "Going Around With Jesse James", before Morrison, stuck for something to record, pulled out a new lyric he'd never performed live, "Slim Slow Slider". The whole band ran through the song once, but then Merenstein decided to pare the arrangement down to just Morrison, Payne (on soprano sax rather than on flute), and Warren Smith Jr: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Slim Slow Slider"] That track was the only one where, after the recording, Merenstein didn't compliment the performance, remaining silent instead – Payne said “Maybe everyone was just tired, or maybe they were moved by it.” It seems likely it was the latter. The track eventually got chosen as the final track of the album, because Merenstein felt that it didn't fit conceptually with anything else -- and it's definitely a more negative track than the oth

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Episode 168: “I Say a Little Prayer” by Aretha Franklin

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 28, 2023

Episode 168 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Say a Little Prayer”, and the interaction of the sacred, political, and secular in Aretha Franklin's life and work. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-five-minute bonus episode available, on "Abraham, Martin, and John" by Dion. 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/ Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by Aretha Franklin. Even splitting it into multiple parts would have required six or seven mixes. My main biographical source for Aretha Franklin is Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin by David Ritz, and this is where most of the quotes from musicians come from. Information on C.L. Franklin came from Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America by Nick Salvatore. Country Soul by Charles L Hughes is a great overview of the soul music made in Muscle Shoals, Memphis, and Nashville in the sixties. Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The Southern Dream Of Freedom is possibly less essential, but still definitely worth reading. Information about Martin Luther King came from Martin Luther King: A Religious Life by Paul Harvey. I also referred to Burt Bacharach's autobiography Anyone Who Had a Heart, Carole King's autobiography A Natural Woman, and Soul Serenade: King Curtis and his Immortal Saxophone by Timothy R. Hoover. For information about Amazing Grace I also used Aaron Cohen's 33 1/3 book on the album. The film of the concerts is also definitely worth watching. And the Aretha Now album is available in this five-album box set for a ludicrously cheap price. But it's actually worth getting this nineteen-CD set with her first sixteen Atlantic albums and a couple of bonus discs of demos and outtakes. There's barely a duff track in the whole nineteen discs. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A quick warning before I begin. This episode contains some moderate references to domestic abuse, death by cancer, racial violence, police violence, and political assassination. Anyone who might be upset by those subjects might want to check the transcript rather than listening to the episode. Also, as with the previous episode on Aretha Franklin, this episode presents something of a problem. Like many people in this narrative, Franklin's career was affected by personal troubles, which shaped many of her decisions. But where most of the subjects of the podcast have chosen to live their lives in public and share intimate details of every aspect of their personal lives, Franklin was an extremely private person, who chose to share only carefully sanitised versions of her life, and tried as far as possible to keep things to herself. This of course presents a dilemma for anyone who wants to tell her story -- because even though the information is out there in biographies, and even though she's dead, it's not right to disrespect someone's wish for a private life. I have therefore tried, wherever possible, to stay away from talk of her personal life except where it *absolutely* affects the work, or where other people involved have publicly shared their own stories, and even there I've tried to keep it to a minimum. This will occasionally lead to me saying less about some topics than other people might, even though the information is easily findable, because I don't think we have an absolute right to invade someone else's privacy for entertainment. When we left Aretha Franklin, she had just finally broken through into the mainstream after a decade of performing, with a version of Otis Redding's song "Respect" on which she had been backed by her sisters, Erma and Carolyn. "Respect", in Franklin's interpretation, had been turned from a rather chauvinist song about a man demanding respect from his woman into an anthem of feminism, of Black power, and of a new political awakening. For white people of a certain generation, the summer of 1967 was "the summer of love". For many Black people, it was rather different. There's a quote that goes around (I've seen it credited in reliable sources to both Ebony and Jet magazine, but not ever seen an issue cited, so I can't say for sure where it came from) saying that the summer of 67 was the summer of "'retha, Rap, and revolt", referring to the trifecta of Aretha Franklin, the Black power leader Jamil Abdullah al-Amin (who was at the time known as H. Rap Brown, a name he later disclaimed) and the rioting that broke out in several major cities, particularly in Detroit: [Excerpt: John Lee Hooker, "The Motor City is Burning"] The mid sixties were, in many ways, the high point not of Black rights in the US -- for the most part there has been a lot of progress in civil rights in the intervening decades, though not without inevitable setbacks and attacks from the far right, and as movements like the Black Lives Matter movement have shown there is still a long way to go -- but of *hope* for Black rights. The moral force of the arguments made by the civil rights movement were starting to cause real change to happen for Black people in the US for the first time since the Reconstruction nearly a century before. But those changes weren't happening fast enough, and as we heard in the episode on "I Was Made to Love Her", there was not only a growing unrest among Black people, but a recognition that it was actually possible for things to change. A combination of hope and frustration can be a powerful catalyst, and whether Franklin wanted it or not, she was at the centre of things, both because of her newfound prominence as a star with a hit single that couldn't be interpreted as anything other than a political statement and because of her intimate family connections to the struggle. Even the most racist of white people these days pays lip service to the memory of Dr Martin Luther King, and when they do they quote just a handful of sentences from one speech King made in 1963, as if that sums up the full theological and political philosophy of that most complex of men. And as we discussed the last time we looked at Aretha Franklin, King gave versions of that speech, the "I Have a Dream" speech, twice. The most famous version was at the March on Washington, but the first time was a few weeks earlier, at what was at the time the largest civil rights demonstration in American history, in Detroit. Aretha's family connection to that event is made clear by the very opening of King's speech: [Excerpt: Martin Luther King, "Original 'I Have a Dream' Speech"] So as summer 1967 got into swing, and white rock music was going to San Francisco to wear flowers in its hair, Aretha Franklin was at the centre of a very different kind of youth revolution. Franklin's second Atlantic album, Aretha Arrives, brought in some new personnel to the team that had recorded Aretha's first album for Atlantic. Along with the core Muscle Shoals players Jimmy Johnson, Spooner Oldham, Tommy Cogbill and Roger Hawkins, and a horn section led by King Curtis, Wexler and Dowd also brought in guitarist Joe South. South was a white session player from Georgia, who had had a few minor hits himself in the fifties -- he'd got his start recording a cover version of "The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor", the Big Bopper's B-side to "Chantilly Lace": [Excerpt: Joe South, "The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor"] He'd also written a few songs that had been recorded by people like Gene Vincent, but he'd mostly become a session player. He'd become a favourite musician of Bob Johnston's, and so he'd played guitar on Simon and Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme albums: [Excerpt: Simon and Garfunkel, "I am a Rock"] and bass on Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, with Al Kooper particularly praising his playing on "Visions of Johanna": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Visions of Johanna"] South would be the principal guitarist on this and Franklin's next album, before his own career took off in 1968 with "Games People Play": [Excerpt: Joe South, "Games People Play"] At this point, he had already written the other song he's best known for, "Hush", which later became a hit for Deep Purple: [Excerpt: Deep Purple, "Hush"] But he wasn't very well known, and was surprised to get the call for the Aretha Franklin session, especially because, as he put it "I was white and I was about to play behind the blackest genius since Ray Charles" But Jerry Wexler had told him that Franklin didn't care about the race of the musicians she played with, and South settled in as soon as Franklin smiled at him when he played a good guitar lick on her version of the blues standard "Going Down Slow": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Going Down Slow"] That was one of the few times Franklin smiled in those sessions though. Becoming an overnight success after years of trying and failing to make a name for herself had been a disorienting experience, and on top of that things weren't going well in her personal life. Her marriage to her manager Ted White was falling apart, and she was performing erratically thanks to the stress. In particular, at a gig in Georgia she had fallen off the stage and broken her arm. She soon returned to performing, but it meant she had problems with her right arm during the recording of the album, and didn't play as much piano as she would have previously -- on some of the faster songs she played only with her left hand. But the recording sessions had to go on, whether or not Aretha was physically capable of playing piano. As we discussed in the episode on Otis Redding, the owners of Atlantic Records were busily negotiating its sale to Warner Brothers in mid-1967. As Wexler said later “Everything in me said, Keep rolling, keep recording, keep the hits coming. She was red hot and I had no reason to believe that the streak wouldn't continue. I knew that it would be foolish—and even irresponsible—not to strike when the iron was hot. I also had personal motivation. A Wall Street financier had agreed to see what we could get for Atlantic Records. While Ahmet and Neshui had not agreed on a selling price, they had gone along with my plan to let the financier test our worth on the open market. I was always eager to pump out hits, but at this moment I was on overdrive. In this instance, I had a good partner in Ted White, who felt the same. He wanted as much product out there as possible." In truth, you can tell from Aretha Arrives that it's a record that was being thought of as "product" rather than one being made out of any kind of artistic impulse. It's a fine album -- in her ten-album run from I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You through Amazing Grace there's not a bad album and barely a bad track -- but there's a lack of focus. There are only two originals on the album, neither of them written by Franklin herself, and the rest is an incoherent set of songs that show the tension between Franklin and her producers at Atlantic. Several songs are the kind of standards that Franklin had recorded for her old label Columbia, things like "You Are My Sunshine", or her version of "That's Life", which had been a hit for Frank Sinatra the previous year: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "That's Life"] But mixed in with that are songs that are clearly the choice of Wexler. As we've discussed previously in episodes on Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett, at this point Atlantic had the idea that it was possible for soul artists to cross over into the white market by doing cover versions of white rock hits -- and indeed they'd had some success with that tactic. So while Franklin was suggesting Sinatra covers, Atlantic's hand is visible in the choices of songs like "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and "96 Tears": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "96 Tears'] Of the two originals on the album, one, the hit single "Baby I Love You" was written by Ronnie Shannon, the Detroit songwriter who had previously written "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Baby I Love You"] As with the previous album, and several other songs on this one, that had backing vocals by Aretha's sisters, Erma and Carolyn. But the other original on the album, "Ain't Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around)", didn't, even though it was written by Carolyn: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Ain't Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around)"] To explain why, let's take a little detour and look at the co-writer of the song this episode is about, though we're not going to get to that for a little while yet. We've not talked much about Burt Bacharach in this series so far, but he's one of those figures who has come up a few times in the periphery and will come up again, so here is as good a time as any to discuss him, and bring everyone up to speed about his career up to 1967. Bacharach was one of the more privileged figures in the sixties pop music field. His father, Bert Bacharach (pronounced the same as his son, but spelled with an e rather than a u) had been a famous newspaper columnist, and his parents had bought him a Steinway grand piano to practice on -- they pushed him to learn the piano even though as a kid he wasn't interested in finger exercises and Debussy. What he was interested in, though, was jazz, and as a teenager he would often go into Manhattan and use a fake ID to see people like Dizzy Gillespie, who he idolised, and in his autobiography he talks rapturously of seeing Gillespie playing his bent trumpet -- he once saw Gillespie standing on a street corner with a pet monkey on his shoulder, and went home and tried to persuade his parents to buy him a monkey too. In particular, he talks about seeing the Count Basie band with Sonny Payne on drums as a teenager: [Excerpt: Count Basie, "Kid From Red Bank"] He saw them at Birdland, the club owned by Morris Levy where they would regularly play, and said of the performance "they were just so incredibly exciting that all of a sudden, I got into music in a way I never had before. What I heard in those clubs really turned my head around— it was like a big breath of fresh air when somebody throws open a window. That was when I knew for the first time how much I loved music and wanted to be connected to it in some way." Of course, there's a rather major problem with this story, as there is so often with narratives that musicians tell about their early career. In this case, Birdland didn't open until 1949, when Bacharach was twenty-one and stationed in Germany for his military service, while Sonny Payne didn't join Basie's band until 1954, when Bacharach had been a professional musician for many years. Also Dizzy Gillespie's trumpet bell only got bent on January 6, 1953. But presumably while Bacharach was conflating several memories, he did have some experience in some New York jazz club that led him to want to become a musician. Certainly there were enough great jazz musicians playing the clubs in those days. He went to McGill University to study music for two years, then went to study with Darius Milhaud, a hugely respected modernist composer. Milhaud was also one of the most important music teachers of the time -- among others he'd taught Stockhausen and Xenakkis, and would go on to teach Philip Glass and Steve Reich. This suited Bacharach, who by this point was a big fan of Schoenberg and Webern, and was trying to write atonal, difficult music. But Milhaud had also taught Dave Brubeck, and when Bacharach rather shamefacedly presented him with a composition which had an actual tune, he told Bacharach "Never be ashamed of writing a tune you can whistle". He dropped out of university and, like most men of his generation, had to serve in the armed forces. When he got out of the army, he continued his musical studies, still trying to learn to be an avant-garde composer, this time with Bohuslav Martinů and later with Henry Cowell, the experimental composer we've heard about quite a bit in previous episodes: [Excerpt: Henry Cowell, "Aeolian Harp and Sinister Resonance"] He was still listening to a lot of avant garde music, and would continue doing so throughout the fifties, going to see people like John Cage. But he spent much of that time working in music that was very different from the avant-garde. He got a job as the band leader for the crooner Vic Damone: [Excerpt: Vic Damone. "Ebb Tide"] He also played for the vocal group the Ames Brothers. He decided while he was working with the Ames Brothers that he could write better material than they were getting from their publishers, and that it would be better to have a job where he didn't have to travel, so he got himself a job as a staff songwriter in the Brill Building. He wrote a string of flops and nearly hits, starting with "Keep Me In Mind" for Patti Page: [Excerpt: Patti Page, "Keep Me In Mind"] From early in his career he worked with the lyricist Hal David, and the two of them together wrote two big hits, "Magic Moments" for Perry Como: [Excerpt: Perry Como, "Magic Moments"] and "The Story of My Life" for Marty Robbins: [Excerpt: "The Story of My Life"] But at that point Bacharach was still also writing with other writers, notably Hal David's brother Mack, with whom he wrote the theme tune to the film The Blob, as performed by The Five Blobs: [Excerpt: The Five Blobs, "The Blob"] But Bacharach's songwriting career wasn't taking off, and he got himself a job as musical director for Marlene Dietrich -- a job he kept even after it did start to take off. Part of the problem was that he intuitively wrote music that didn't quite fit into standard structures -- there would be odd bars of unusual time signatures thrown in, unusual harmonies, and structural irregularities -- but then he'd take feedback from publishers and producers who would tell him the song could only be recorded if he straightened it out. He said later "The truth is that I ruined a lot of songs by not believing in myself enough to tell these guys they were wrong." He started writing songs for Scepter Records, usually with Hal David, but also with Bob Hilliard and Mack David, and started having R&B hits. One song he wrote with Mack David, "I'll Cherish You", had the lyrics rewritten by Luther Dixon to make them more harsh-sounding for a Shirelles single -- but the single was otherwise just Bacharach's demo with the vocals replaced, and you can even hear his voice briefly at the beginning: [Excerpt: The Shirelles, "Baby, It's You"] But he'd also started becoming interested in the production side of records more generally. He'd iced that some producers, when recording his songs, would change the sound for the worse -- he thought Gene McDaniels' version of "Tower of Strength", for example, was too fast. But on the other hand, other producers got a better sound than he'd heard in his head. He and Hilliard had written a song called "Please Stay", which they'd given to Leiber and Stoller to record with the Drifters, and he thought that their arrangement of the song was much better than the one he'd originally thought up: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Please Stay"] He asked Leiber and Stoller if he could attend all their New York sessions and learn about record production from them. He started doing so, and eventually they started asking him to assist them on records. He and Hilliard wrote a song called "Mexican Divorce" for the Drifters, which Leiber and Stoller were going to produce, and as he put it "they were so busy running Redbird Records that they asked me to rehearse the background singers for them in my office." [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Mexican Divorce"] The backing singers who had been brought in to augment the Drifters on that record were a group of vocalists who had started out as members of a gospel group called the Drinkard singers: [Excerpt: The Drinkard Singers, "Singing in My Soul"] The Drinkard Singers had originally been a family group, whose members included Cissy Drinkard, who joined the group aged five (and who on her marriage would become known as Cissy Houston -- her daughter Whitney would later join the family business), her aunt Lee Warrick, and Warrick's adopted daughter Judy Clay. That group were discovered by the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, and spent much of the fifties performing with gospel greats including Jackson herself, Clara Ward, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. But Houston was also the musical director of a group at her church, the Gospelaires, which featured Lee Warrick's two daughters Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick (for those who don't know, the Warwick sisters' birth name was Warrick, spelled with two rs. A printing error led to it being misspelled the same way as the British city on a record label, and from that point on Dionne at least pronounced the w in her misspelled name). And slowly, the Gospelaires rather than the Drinkard Singers became the focus, with a lineup of Houston, the Warwick sisters, the Warwick sisters' cousin Doris Troy, and Clay's sister Sylvia Shemwell. The real change in the group's fortunes came when, as we talked about a while back in the episode on "The Loco-Motion", the original lineup of the Cookies largely stopped working as session singers to become Ray Charles' Raelettes. As we discussed in that episode, a new lineup of Cookies formed in 1961, but it took a while for them to get started, and in the meantime the producers who had been relying on them for backing vocals were looking elsewhere, and they looked to the Gospelaires. "Mexican Divorce" was the first record to feature the group as backing vocalists -- though reports vary as to how many of them are on the record, with some saying it's only Troy and the Warwicks, others saying Houston was there, and yet others saying it was all five of them. Some of these discrepancies were because these singers were so good that many of them left to become solo singers in fairly short order. Troy was the first to do so, with her hit "Just One Look", on which the other Gospelaires sang backing vocals: [Excerpt: Doris Troy, "Just One Look"] But the next one to go solo was Dionne Warwick, and that was because she'd started working with Bacharach and Hal David as their principal demo singer. She started singing lead on their demos, and hoping that she'd get to release them on her own. One early one was "Make it Easy On Yourself", which was recorded by Jerry Butler, formerly of the Impressions. That record was produced by Bacharach, one of the first records he produced without outside supervision: [Excerpt: Jerry Butler, "Make it Easy On Yourself"] Warwick was very jealous that a song she'd sung the demo of had become a massive hit for someone else, and blamed Bacharach and David. The way she tells the story -- Bacharach always claimed this never happened, but as we've already seen he was himself not always the most reliable of narrators of his own life -- she got so angry she complained to them, and said "Don't make me over, man!" And so Bacharach and David wrote her this: [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "Don't Make Me Over"] Incidentally, in the UK, the hit version of that was a cover by the Swinging Blue Jeans: [Excerpt: The Swinging Blue Jeans, "Don't Make Me Over"] who also had a huge hit with "You're No Good": [Excerpt: The Swinging Blue Jeans, "You're No Good"] And *that* was originally recorded by *Dee Dee* Warwick: [Excerpt: Dee Dee Warwick, "You're No Good"] Dee Dee also had a successful solo career, but Dionne's was the real success, making the names of herself, and of Bacharach and David. The team had more than twenty top forty hits together, before Bacharach and David had a falling out in 1971 and stopped working together, and Warwick sued both of them for breach of contract as a result. But prior to that they had hit after hit, with classic records like "Anyone Who Had a Heart": [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "Anyone Who Had a Heart"] And "Walk On By": [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "Walk On By"] With Doris, Dionne, and Dee Dee all going solo, the group's membership was naturally in flux -- though the departed members would occasionally join their former bandmates for sessions, and the remaining members would sing backing vocals on their ex-members' records. By 1965 the group consisted of Cissy Houston, Sylvia Shemwell, the Warwick sisters' cousin Myrna Smith, and Estelle Brown. The group became *the* go-to singers for soul and R&B records made in New York. They were regularly hired by Leiber and Stoller to sing on their records, and they were also the particular favourites of Bert Berns. They sang backing vocals on almost every record he produced. It's them doing the gospel wails on "Cry Baby" by Garnet Mimms: [Excerpt: Garnet Mimms, "Cry Baby"] And they sang backing vocals on both versions of "If You Need Me" -- Wilson Pickett's original and Solomon Burke's more successful cover version, produced by Berns: [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "If You Need Me"] They're on such Berns records as "Show Me Your Monkey", by Kenny Hamber: [Excerpt: Kenny Hamber, "Show Me Your Monkey"] And it was a Berns production that ended up getting them to be Aretha Franklin's backing group. The group were becoming such an important part of the records that Atlantic and BANG Records, in particular, were putting out, that Jerry Wexler said "it was only a matter of common decency to put them under contract as a featured group". He signed them to Atlantic and renamed them from the Gospelaires to The Sweet Inspirations. Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham wrote a song for the group which became their only hit under their own name: [Excerpt: The Sweet Inspirations, "Sweet Inspiration"] But to start with, they released a cover of Pops Staples' civil rights song "Why (Am I treated So Bad)": [Excerpt: The Sweet Inspirations, "Why (Am I Treated So Bad?)"] That hadn't charted, and meanwhile, they'd all kept doing session work. Cissy had joined Erma and Carolyn Franklin on the backing vocals for Aretha's "I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You"] Shortly after that, the whole group recorded backing vocals for Erma's single "Piece of My Heart", co-written and produced by Berns: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] That became a top ten record on the R&B charts, but that caused problems. Aretha Franklin had a few character flaws, and one of these was an extreme level of jealousy for any other female singer who had any level of success and came up in the business after her. She could be incredibly graceful towards anyone who had been successful before her -- she once gave one of her Grammies away to Esther Phillips, who had been up for the same award and had lost to her -- but she was terribly insecure, and saw any contemporary as a threat. She'd spent her time at Columbia Records fuming (with some justification) that Barbra Streisand was being given a much bigger marketing budget than her, and she saw Diana Ross, Gladys Knight, and Dionne Warwick as rivals rather than friends. And that went doubly for her sisters, who she was convinced should be supporting her because of family loyalty. She had been infuriated at John Hammond when Columbia had signed Erma, thinking he'd gone behind her back to create competition for her. And now Erma was recording with Bert Berns. Bert Berns who had for years been a colleague of Jerry Wexler and the Ertegun brothers at Atlantic. Aretha was convinced that Wexler had put Berns up to signing Erma as some kind of power play. There was only one problem with this -- it simply wasn't true. As Wexler later explained “Bert and I had suffered a bad falling-out, even though I had enormous respect for him. After all, he was the guy who brought over guitarist Jimmy Page from England to play on our sessions. Bert, Ahmet, Nesuhi, and I had started a label together—Bang!—where Bert produced Van Morrison's first album. But Bert also had a penchant for trouble. He courted the wise guys. He wanted total control over every last aspect of our business dealings. Finally it was too much, and the Erteguns and I let him go. He sued us for breach of contract and suddenly we were enemies. I felt that he signed Erma, an excellent singer, not merely for her talent but as a way to get back at me. If I could make a hit with Aretha, he'd show me up by making an even bigger hit on Erma. Because there was always an undercurrent of rivalry between the sisters, this only added to the tension.” There were two things that resulted from this paranoia on Aretha's part. The first was that she and Wexler, who had been on first-name terms up to that point, temporarily went back to being "Mr. Wexler" and "Miss Franklin" to each other. And the second was that Aretha no longer wanted Carolyn and Erma to be her main backing vocalists, though they would continue to appear on her future records on occasion. From this point on, the Sweet Inspirations would be the main backing vocalists for Aretha in the studio throughout her golden era [xxcut line (and when the Sweet Inspirations themselves weren't on the record, often it would be former members of the group taking their place)]: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Ain't Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around)"] The last day of sessions for Aretha Arrives was July the twenty-third, 1967. And as we heard in the episode on "I Was Made to Love Her", that was the day that the Detroit riots started. To recap briefly, that was four days of rioting started because of a history of racist policing, made worse by those same racist police overreacting to the initial protests. By the end of those four days, the National Guard, 82nd Airborne Division, and the 101st Airborne from Clarksville were all called in to deal with the violence, which left forty-three dead (of whom thirty-three were Black and only one was a police officer), 1,189 people were injured, and over 7,200 arrested, almost all of them Black. Those days in July would be a turning point for almost every musician based in Detroit. In particular, the police had murdered three members of the soul group the Dramatics, in a massacre of which the author John Hersey, who had been asked by President Johnson to be part of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders but had decided that would compromise his impartiality and did an independent journalistic investigation, said "The episode contained all the mythic themes of racial strife in the United States: the arm of the law taking the law into its own hands; interracial sex; the subtle poison of racist thinking by “decent” men who deny they are racists; the societal limbo into which, ever since slavery, so many young black men have been driven by our country; ambiguous justice in the courts; and the devastation in both black and white human lives that follows in the wake of violence as surely as ruinous and indiscriminate flood after torrents" But these were also the events that radicalised the MC5 -- the group had been playing a gig as Tim Buckley's support act when the rioting started, and guitarist Wayne Kramer decided afterwards to get stoned and watch the fires burning down the city through a telescope -- which police mistook for a rifle, leading to the National Guard knocking down Kramer's door. The MC5 would later cover "The Motor City is Burning", John Lee Hooker's song about the events: [Excerpt: The MC5, "The Motor City is Burning"] It would also be a turning point for Motown, too, in ways we'll talk about in a few future episodes. And it was a political turning point too -- Michigan Governor George Romney, a liberal Republican (at a time when such people existed) had been the favourite for the Republican Presidential candidacy when he'd entered the race in December 1966, but as racial tensions ramped up in Detroit during the early months of 1967 he'd started trailing Richard Nixon, a man who was consciously stoking racists' fears. President Johnson, the incumbent Democrat, who was at that point still considering standing for re-election, made sure to make it clear to everyone during the riots that the decision to call in the National Guard had been made at the State level, by Romney, rather than at the Federal level. That wasn't the only thing that removed the possibility of a Romney presidency, but it was a big part of the collapse of his campaign, and the, as it turned out, irrevocable turn towards right-authoritarianism that the party took with Nixon's Southern Strategy. Of course, Aretha Franklin had little way of knowing what was to come and how the riots would change the city and the country over the following decades. What she was primarily concerned about was the safety of her father, and to a lesser extent that of her sister-in-law Earline who was staying with him. Aretha, Carolyn, and Erma all tried to keep in constant touch with their father while they were out of town, and Aretha even talked about hiring private detectives to travel to Detroit, find her father, and get him out of the city to safety. But as her brother Cecil pointed out, he was probably the single most loved man among Black people in Detroit, and was unlikely to be harmed by the rioters, while he was too famous for the police to kill with impunity. Reverend Franklin had been having a stressful time anyway -- he had recently been fined for tax evasion, an action he was convinced the IRS had taken because of his friendship with Dr King and his role in the civil rights movement -- and according to Cecil "Aretha begged Daddy to move out of the city entirely. She wanted him to find another congregation in California, where he was especially popular—or at least move out to the suburbs. But he wouldn't budge. He said that, more than ever, he was needed to point out the root causes of the riots—the economic inequality, the pervasive racism in civic institutions, the woefully inadequate schools in inner-city Detroit, and the wholesale destruction of our neighborhoods by urban renewal. Some ministers fled the city, but not our father. The horror of what happened only recommitted him. He would not abandon his political agenda." To make things worse, Aretha was worried about her father in other ways -- as her marriage to Ted White was starting to disintegrate, she was looking to her father for guidance, and actually wanted him to take over her management. Eventually, Ruth Bowen, her booking agent, persuaded her brother Cecil that this was a job he could do, and that she would teach him everything he needed to know about the music business. She started training him up while Aretha was still married to White, in the expectation that that marriage couldn't last. Jerry Wexler, who only a few months earlier had been seeing Ted White as an ally in getting "product" from Franklin, had now changed his tune -- partly because the sale of Atlantic had gone through in the meantime. He later said “Sometimes she'd call me at night, and, in that barely audible little-girl voice of hers, she'd tell me that she wasn't sure she could go on. She always spoke in generalities. She never mentioned her husband, never gave me specifics of who was doing what to whom. And of course I knew better than to ask. She just said that she was tired of dealing with so much. My heart went out to her. She was a woman who suffered silently. She held so much in. I'd tell her to take as much time off as she needed. We had a lot of songs in the can that we could release without new material. ‘Oh, no, Jerry,' she'd say. ‘I can't stop recording. I've written some new songs, Carolyn's written some new songs. We gotta get in there and cut 'em.' ‘Are you sure?' I'd ask. ‘Positive,' she'd say. I'd set up the dates and typically she wouldn't show up for the first or second sessions. Carolyn or Erma would call me to say, ‘Ree's under the weather.' That was tough because we'd have asked people like Joe South and Bobby Womack to play on the sessions. Then I'd reschedule in the hopes she'd show." That third album she recorded in 1967, Lady Soul, was possibly her greatest achievement. The opening track, and second single, "Chain of Fools", released in November, was written by Don Covay -- or at least it's credited as having been written by Covay. There's a gospel record that came out around the same time on a very small label based in Houston -- "Pains of Life" by Rev. E. Fair And The Sensational Gladys Davis Trio: [Excerpt: Rev. E. Fair And The Sensational Gladys Davis Trio, "Pains of Life"] I've seen various claims online that that record came out shortly *before* "Chain of Fools", but I can't find any definitive evidence one way or the other -- it was on such a small label that release dates aren't available anywhere. Given that the B-side, which I haven't been able to track down online, is called "Wait Until the Midnight Hour", my guess is that rather than this being a case of Don Covay stealing the melody from an obscure gospel record he'd have had little chance to hear, it's the gospel record rewriting a then-current hit to be about religion, but I thought it worth mentioning. The song was actually written by Covay after Jerry Wexler asked him to come up with some songs for Otis Redding, but Wexler, after hearing it, decided it was better suited to Franklin, who gave an astonishing performance: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Chain of Fools"] Arif Mardin, the arranger of the album, said of that track “I was listed as the arranger of ‘Chain of Fools,' but I can't take credit. Aretha walked into the studio with the chart fully formed inside her head. The arrangement is based around the harmony vocals provided by Carolyn and Erma. To add heft, the Sweet Inspirations joined in. The vision of the song is entirely Aretha's.” According to Wexler, that's not *quite* true -- according to him, Joe South came up with the guitar part that makes up the intro, and he also said that when he played what he thought was the finished track to Ellie Greenwich, she came up with another vocal line for the backing vocals, which she overdubbed. But the core of the record's sound is definitely pure Aretha -- and Carolyn Franklin said that there was a reason for that. As she said later “Aretha didn't write ‘Chain,' but she might as well have. It was her story. When we were in the studio putting on the backgrounds with Ree doing lead, I knew she was singing about Ted. Listen to the lyrics talking about how for five long years she thought he was her man. Then she found out she was nothing but a link in the chain. Then she sings that her father told her to come on home. Well, he did. She sings about how her doctor said to take it easy. Well, he did too. She was drinking so much we thought she was on the verge of a breakdown. The line that slew me, though, was the one that said how one of these mornings the chain is gonna break but until then she'll take all she can take. That summed it up. Ree knew damn well that this man had been doggin' her since Jump Street. But somehow she held on and pushed it to the breaking point." [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Chain of Fools"] That made number one on the R&B charts, and number two on the hot one hundred, kept from the top by "Judy In Disguise (With Glasses)" by John Fred and his Playboy Band -- a record that very few people would say has stood the test of time as well. The other most memorable track on the album was the one chosen as the first single, released in September. As Carole King told the story, she and Gerry Goffin were feeling like their career was in a slump. While they had had a huge run of hits in the early sixties through 1965, they had only had two new hits in 1966 -- "Goin' Back" for Dusty Springfield and "Don't Bring Me Down" for the Animals, and neither of those were anything like as massive as their previous hits. And up to that point in 1967, they'd only had one -- "Pleasant Valley Sunday" for the Monkees. They had managed to place several songs on Monkees albums and the TV show as well, so they weren't going to starve, but the rise of self-contained bands that were starting to dominate the charts, and Phil Spector's temporary retirement, meant there simply wasn't the opportunity for them to place material that there had been. They were also getting sick of travelling to the West Coast all the time, because as their children were growing slightly older they didn't want to disrupt their lives in New York, and were thinking of approaching some of the New York based labels and seeing if they needed songs. They were particularly considering Atlantic, because soul was more open to outside songwriters than other genres. As it happened, though, they didn't have to approach Atlantic, because Atlantic approached them. They were walking down Broadway when a limousine pulled up, and Jerry Wexler stuck his head out of the window. He'd come up with a good title that he wanted to use for a song for Aretha, would they be interested in writing a song called "Natural Woman"? They said of course they would, and Wexler drove off. They wrote the song that night, and King recorded a demo the next morning: [Excerpt: Carole King, "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman (demo)"] They gave Wexler a co-writing credit because he had suggested the title. King later wrote in her autobiography "Hearing Aretha's performance of “Natural Woman” for the first time, I experienced a rare speechless moment. To this day I can't convey how I felt in mere words. Anyone who had written a song in 1967 hoping it would be performed by a singer who could take it to the highest level of excellence, emotional connection, and public exposure would surely have wanted that singer to be Aretha Franklin." She went on to say "But a recording that moves people is never just about the artist and the songwriters. It's about people like Jerry and Ahmet, who matched the songwriters with a great title and a gifted artist; Arif Mardin, whose magnificent orchestral arrangement deserves the place it will forever occupy in popular music history; Tom Dowd, whose engineering skills captured the magic of this memorable musical moment for posterity; and the musicians in the rhythm section, the orchestral players, and the vocal contributions of the background singers—among them the unforgettable “Ah-oo!” after the first line of the verse. And the promotion and marketing people helped this song reach more people than it might have without them." And that's correct -- unlike "Chain of Fools", this time Franklin did let Arif Mardin do most of the arrangement work -- though she came up with the piano part that Spooner Oldham plays on the record. Mardin said that because of the song's hymn-like feel they wanted to go for a more traditional written arrangement. He said "She loved the song to the point where she said she wanted to concentrate on the vocal and vocal alone. I had written a string chart and horn chart to augment the chorus and hired Ralph Burns to conduct. After just a couple of takes, we had it. That's when Ralph turned to me with wonder in his eyes. Ralph was one of the most celebrated arrangers of the modern era. He had done ‘Early Autumn' for Woody Herman and Stan Getz, and ‘Georgia on My Mind' for Ray Charles. He'd worked with everyone. ‘This woman comes from another planet' was all Ralph said. ‘She's just here visiting.'” [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman"] By this point there was a well-functioning team making Franklin's records -- while the production credits would vary over the years, they were all essentially co-productions by the team of Franklin, Wexler, Mardin and Dowd, all collaborating and working together with a more-or-less unified purpose, and the backing was always by the same handful of session musicians and some combination of the Sweet Inspirations and Aretha's sisters. That didn't mean that occasional guests couldn't get involved -- as we discussed in the Cream episode, Eric Clapton played guitar on "Good to Me as I am to You": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Good to Me as I am to You"] Though that was one of the rare occasions on one of these records where something was overdubbed. Clapton apparently messed up the guitar part when playing behind Franklin, because he was too intimidated by playing with her, and came back the next day to redo his part without her in the studio. At this point, Aretha was at the height of her fame. Just before the final batch of album sessions began she appeared in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, and she was making regular TV appearances, like one on the Mike Douglas Show where she duetted with Frankie Valli on "That's Life": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin and Frankie Valli, "That's Life"] But also, as Wexler said “Her career was kicking into high gear. Contending and resolving both the professional and personal challenges were too much. She didn't think she could do both, and I didn't blame her. Few people could. So she let the personal slide and concentrated on the professional. " Her concert promoter Ruth Bowen said of this time "Her father and Dr. King were putting pressure on her to sing everywhere, and she felt obligated. The record company was also screaming for more product. And I had a mountain of offers on my desk that kept getting higher with every passing hour. They wanted her in Europe. They wanted her in Latin America. They wanted her in every major venue in the U.S. TV was calling. She was being asked to do guest appearances on every show from Carol Burnett to Andy Williams to the Hollywood Palace. She wanted to do them all and she wanted to do none of them. She wanted to do them all because she's an entertainer who burns with ambition. She wanted to do none of them because she was emotionally drained. She needed to go away and renew her strength. I told her that at least a dozen times. She said she would, but she didn't listen to me." The pressures from her father and Dr King are a recurring motif in interviews with people about this period. Franklin was always a very political person, and would throughout her life volunteer time and money to liberal political causes and to the Democratic Party, but this was the height of her activism -- the Civil Rights movement was trying to capitalise on the gains it had made in the previous couple of years, and celebrity fundraisers and performances at rallies were an important way to do that. And at this point there were few bigger celebrities in America than Aretha Franklin. At a concert in her home town of Detroit on February the sixteenth, 1968, the Mayor declared the day Aretha Franklin Day. At the same show, Billboard, Record World *and* Cash Box magazines all presented her with plaques for being Female Vocalist of the Year. And Dr. King travelled up to be at the show and congratulate her publicly for all her work with his organisation, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Backstage at that show, Dr. King talked to Aretha's father, Reverend Franklin, about what he believed would be the next big battle -- a strike in Memphis: [Excerpt, Martin Luther King, "Mountaintop Speech" -- "And so, as a result of this, we are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy—what is the other bread?—Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart's bread. As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain. We are choosing these companies because they haven't been fair in their hiring policies; and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying, they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men who are on strike. And then they can move on downtown and tell Mayor Loeb to do what is right."] The strike in question was the Memphis Sanitation Workers' strike which had started a few days before. The struggle for Black labour rights was an integral part of the civil rights movement, and while it's not told that way in the sanitised version of the story that's made it into popular culture, the movement led by King was as much about economic justice as social justice -- King was a democratic socialist, and believed that economic oppression was both an effect of and cause of other forms of racial oppression, and that the rights of Black workers needed to be fought for. In 1967 he had set up a new organisation, the Poor People's Campaign, which was set to march on Washington to demand a program that included full employment, a guaranteed income -- King was strongly influenced in his later years by the ideas of Henry George, the proponent of a universal basic income based on land value tax -- the annual building of half a million affordable homes, and an end to the war in Vietnam. This was King's main focus in early 1968, and he saw the sanitation workers' strike as a major part of this campaign. Memphis was one of the most oppressive cities in the country, and its largely Black workforce of sanitation workers had been trying for most of the 1960s to unionise, and strike-breakers had been called in to stop them, and many of them had been fired by their white supervisors with no notice. They were working in unsafe conditions, for utterly inadequate wages, and the city government were ardent segregationists. After two workers had died on the first of February from using unsafe equipment, the union demanded changes -- safer working conditions, better wages, and recognition of the union. The city council refused, and almost all the sanitation workers stayed home and stopped work. After a few days, the council relented and agreed to their terms, but the Mayor, Henry Loeb, an ardent white supremacist who had stood on a platform of opposing desegregation, and who had previously been the Public Works Commissioner who had put these unsafe conditions in place, refused to listen. As far as he was concerned, he was the only one who could recognise the union, and he wouldn't. The workers continued their strike, marching holding signs that simply read "I am a Man": [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "Blowing in the Wind"] The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the NAACP had been involved in organising support for the strikes from an early stage, and King visited Memphis many times. Much of the time he spent visiting there was spent negotiating with a group of more militant activists, who called themselves The Invaders and weren't completely convinced by King's nonviolent approach -- they believed that violence and rioting got more attention than non-violent protests. King explained to them that while he had been persuaded by Gandhi's writings of the moral case for nonviolent protest, he was also persuaded that it was pragmatically necessary -- asking the young men "how many guns do we have and how many guns do they have?", and pointing out as he often did that when it comes to violence a minority can't win against an armed majority. Rev Franklin went down to Memphis on the twenty-eighth of March to speak at a rally Dr. King was holding, but as it turned out the rally was cancelled -- the pre-rally march had got out of hand, with some people smashing windows, and Memphis police had, like the police in Detroit the previous year, violently overreacted, clubbing and gassing protestors and shooting and killing one unarmed teenage boy, Larry Payne. The day after Payne's funeral, Dr King was back in Memphis, though this time Rev Franklin was not with him. On April the third, he gave a speech which became known as the "Mountaintop Speech", in which he talked about the threats that had been made to his life: [Excerpt: Martin Luther King, "Mountaintop Speech": “And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."] The next day, Martin Luther King was shot dead. James Earl Ray, a white supremacist, pled guilty to the murder, and the evidence against him seems overwhelming from what I've read, but the King family have always claimed that the murder was part of a larger conspiracy and that Ray was not the gunman. Aretha was obviously distraught, and she attended the funeral, as did almost every other prominent Black public figure. James Baldwin wrote of the funeral: "In the pew directly before me sat Marlon Brando, Sammy Davis, Eartha Kitt—covered in black, looking like a lost, ten-year-old girl—and Sidney Poitier, in the same pew, or nearby. Marlon saw me, and nodded. The atmosphere was black, with a tension indescribable—as though something, perhaps the heavens, perhaps the earth, might crack. Everyone sat very still. The actual service sort of washed over me, in waves. It wasn't that it seemed unreal; it was the most real church service I've ever sat through in my life, or ever hope to sit through; but I have a childhood hangover thing about not weeping in public, and I was concentrating on holding myself together. I did not want to weep for Martin, tears seemed futile. But I may also have been afraid, and I could not have been the only one, that if I began to weep I would not be able to stop. There was more than enough to weep for, if one was to weep—so many of us, cut down, so soon. Medgar, Malcolm, Martin: and their widows, and their children. Reverend Ralph David Abernathy asked a certain sister to sing a song which Martin had loved—“Once more,” said Ralph David, “for Martin and for me,” and he sat down." Many articles and books on Aretha Franklin say that she sang at King's funeral. In fact she didn't, but there's a simple reason for the confusion. King's favourite song was the Thomas Dorsey gospel song "Take My Hand, Precious Lord", and indeed almost his last words were to ask a trumpet player, Ben Branch, if he would play the song at the rally he was going to be speaking at on the day of his death. At his request, Mahalia Jackson, his old friend, sang the song at his private funeral, which was not filmed, unlike the public part of the funeral that Baldwin described. Four months later, though, there was another public memorial for King, and Franklin did sing "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" at that service, in front of King's weeping widow and children, and that performance *was* filmed, and gets conflated in people's memories with Jackson's unfilmed earlier performance: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord (at Martin Luther King Memorial)"] Four years later, she would sing that at Mahalia Jackson's funeral. Through all this, Franklin had been working on her next album, Aretha Now, the sessions for which started more or less as soon as the sessions for Lady Soul had finished. The album was, in fact, bookended by deaths that affected Aretha. Just as King died at the end of the sessions, the beginning came around the time of the death of Otis Redding -- the sessions were cancelled for a day while Wexler travelled to Georgia for Redding's funeral, which Franklin was too devastated to attend, and Wexler would later say that the extra emotion in her performances on the album came from her emotional pain at Redding's death. The lead single on the album, "Think", was written by Franklin and -- according to the credits anyway -- her husband Ted White, and is very much in the same style as "Respect", and became another of her most-loved hits: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Think"] But probably the song on Aretha Now that now resonates the most is one that Jerry Wexler tried to persuade her not to record, and was only released as a B-side. Indeed, "I Say a Little Prayer" was a song that had already once been a hit after being a reject. Hal David, unlike Burt Bacharach, was a fairly political person and inspired by the protest song movement, and had been starting to incorporate his concerns about the political situation and the Vietnam War into his lyrics -- though as with many such writers, he did it in much less specific ways than a Phil Ochs or a Bob Dylan. This had started with "What the World Needs Now is Love", a song Bacharach and David had written for Jackie DeShannon in 1965: [Excerpt: Jackie DeShannon, "What the "World Needs Now is Love"] But he'd become much more overtly political for "The Windows of the World", a song they wrote for Dionne Warwick. Warwick has often said it's her favourite of her singles, but it wasn't a big hit -- Bacharach blamed himself for that, saying "Dionne recorded it as a single and I really blew it. I wrote a bad arrangement and the tempo was too fast, and I really regret making it the way I did because it's a good song." [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "The Windows of the World"] For that album, Bacharach and David had written another track, "I Say a Little Prayer", which was not as explicitly political, but was intended by David to have an implicit anti-war message, much like other songs of the period like "Last Train to Clarksville". David had sons who were the right age to be drafted, and while it's never stated, "I Say a Little Prayer" was written from the perspective of a woman whose partner is away fighting in the war, but is still in her thoughts: [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "I Say a Little Prayer"] The recording of Dionne Warwick's version was marked by stress. Bacharach had a particular way of writing music to tell the musicians the kind of feel he wanted for the part -- he'd write nonsense words above the stave, and tell the musicians to play the parts as if they were singing those words. The trumpet player hired for the session, Ernie Royal, got into a row with Bacharach about this unorthodox way of communicating musical feeling, and the track ended up taking ten takes (as opposed to the normal three for a Bacharach session), with Royal being replaced half-way through the session. Bacharach was never happy with the track even after all the work it had taken, and he fought to keep it from being released at all, saying the track was taken at too fast a tempo. It eventually came out as an album track nearly eighteen months after it was recorded -- an eternity in 1960s musical timescales -- and DJs started playing it almost as soon as it came out. Scepter records rushed out a single, over Bacharach's objections, but as he later said "One thing I love about the record business is how wrong I was. Disc jockeys all across the country started playing the track, and the song went to number four on the charts and then became the biggest hit Hal and I had ever written for Dionne." [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "I Say a Little Prayer"] Oddly, the B-side for Warwick's single, "Theme From the Valley of the Dolls" did even better, reaching number two. Almost as soon as the song was released as a single, Franklin started playing around with the song backstage, and in April 1968, right around the time of Dr. King's death, she recorded a version. Much as Burt Bacharach had been against releasing Dionne Warwick's version, Jerry Wexler was against Aretha even recording the song, saying later “I advised Aretha not to record it. I opposed it for two reasons. First, to cover a song only twelve weeks after the original reached the top of the charts was not smart business. You revisit such a hit eight months to a year later. That's standard practice. But more than that, Bacharach's melody, though lovely, was peculiarly suited to a lithe instrument like Dionne Warwick's—a light voice without the dark corners or emotional depths that define Aretha. Also, Hal David's lyric was also somewhat girlish and lacked the gravitas that Aretha required. “Aretha usually listened to me in the studio, but not this time. She had written a vocal arrangement for the Sweet Inspirations that was undoubtedly strong. Cissy Houston, Dionne's cousin, told me that Aretha was on the right track—she was seeing this song in a new way and had come up with a new groove. Cissy was on Aretha's side. Tommy Dowd and Arif were on Aretha's side. So I had no choice but to cave." It's quite possible that Wexler's objections made Franklin more, rather than less, determined to record the song. She regarded Warwick as a hated rival, as she did almost every prominent female singer of her generation and younger ones, and would undoubtedly have taken the implication that there was something that Warwick was simply better at than her to heart. [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer"] Wexler realised as soon as he heard it in the studio that Franklin's version was great, and Bacharach agreed, telling Franklin's biographer David Ritz “As much as I like the original recording by Dionne, there's no doubt that Aretha's is a better record. She imbued the song with heavy soul and took it to a far deeper place. Hers is the definitive version.” -- which is surprising because Franklin's version simplifies some of Bacharach's more unusual chord voicings, something he often found extremely upsetting. Wexler still though thought there was no way the song would be a hit, and it's understandable that he thought that way. Not only had it only just been on the charts a few months earlier, but it was the kind of song that wouldn't normally be a hit at all, and certainly not in the kind of rhythmic soul music for which Franklin was known. Almost everything she ever recorded is in simple time signatures -- 4/4, waltz time, or 6/8 -- but this is a Bacharach song so it's staggeringly metrically irregular. Normally even with semi-complex things I'm usually good at figuring out how to break it down into bars, but here I actually had to purchase a copy of the sheet music in order to be sure I was right about what's going on. I'm going to count beats along with the record here so you can see what I mean. The verse has three bars of 4/4, one bar of 2/4, and three more bars of 4/4, all repeated: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer" with me counting bars over verse] While the chorus has a bar of 4/4, a bar of 3/4 but with a chord change half way through so it sounds like it's in two if you're paying attention to the harmonic changes, two bars of 4/4, another waltz-time bar sounding like it's in two, two bars of four, another bar of three sounding in two, a bar of four, then three more bars of four but the first of those is *written* as four but played as if it's in six-eight time (but you can keep the four/four pulse going if you're counting): [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer" with me counting bars over verse] I don't expect you to have necessarily followed that in great detail, but the point should be clear -- this was not some straightforward dance song. Incidentally, that bar played as if it's six/eight was something Aretha introduced to make the song even more irregular than how Bacharach wrote it. And on top of *that* of course the lyrics mixed the secular and the sacred, something that was still taboo in popular music at that time -- this is only a couple of years after Capitol records had been genuinely unsure about putting out the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows", and Franklin's gospel-inflected vocals made the religious connection even more obvious. But Franklin was insistent that the record go out as a single, and eventually it was released as the B-side to the far less impressive "The House That Jack Built". It became a double-sided hit, with the A-side making number two on the R&B chart and number seven on the Hot One Hundred, while "I Say a Little Prayer" made number three on the R&B chart and number ten overall. In the UK, "I Say a Little Prayer" made number four and became her biggest ever solo UK hit. It's now one of her most-remembered songs, while the A-side is largely forgotten: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer"] For much of the

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you are my sunshine my sweet lord aaron cohen this girl mardin precious memories bernard purdie norman greenbaum jackie deshannon henry george cashbox gerry goffin loserville say a little prayer bernard edwards darius milhaud never grow old webern jerry butler betty shabazz so fine tom dowd ahmet ertegun esther phillips fillmore west james cleveland mike douglas show milhaud in love with you jerry wexler vandross medgar david ritz bob johnston arif mardin john hersey i was made ted white wait until joe south new africa edwin hawkins peter guralnick make me over play that song pops staples ralph burns champion jack dupree lady soul ellie greenwich morris levy spooner oldham henry cowell jesus yes brook benton rap brown you make me feel like a natural woman chuck rainey john fred don covay charles cooke bert berns how i got over soul stirrers thomas dorsey i never loved henry stone baby i love you way i love you civil disorders will you love me tomorrow hollywood palace larry payne harlem square club gospel music workshop gene mcdaniels fruitgum company savoy records ertegun judy clay national advisory commission charles l hughes tilt araiza

Episode 166: “Crossroads” by Cream

Afternoon Drive with John Maytham

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 2, 2023

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

united states america god tv love american new york death live history texas canada black world thanksgiving chicago europe art power uk house mother england woman water british germany san francisco sound club european home green depression fire spiritual sales devil european union army south detroit tales irish african bbc new orleans band grammy temple blues mexican stone union wolf britain sony atlantic mothers beatles animal oxford bond mississippi arkansas greece cd columbia boy manchester shadows rolling stones sitting recording scottish thompson searching delta rappers released san antonio richmond i am politicians preaching waters david bowie stones phantom delight swing clock crossroads bob dylan beck escaping organisation bottle compare trio paramount musicians wheels invention disc bach goodbye range lament cream reaction armstrong elvis presley arabic pink floyd jamaican biography handy orchestras communists circles watts great depression steady powerhouses hurry davies aretha franklin sixteen wills afro shines pig jimi hendrix monty python hammond smithsonian vernon leases fleetwood mac vain excerpt cambridge university dobbs black swan kinks mick jagger eric clapton toad library of congress dada patton substitute zimmerman carnegie hall ozzy osbourne empress george harrison mclaughlin red hot rollin badge rod stewart whites bee gees tilt mccormick ray charles tulips johnson johnson castles mixcloud quartets emi louis armstrong chuck berry monkees keith richards showbiz robert johnson velvet underground louis blues partly rock music elektra garfunkel jimi herbie hancock jimmy page crawling muddy waters creme lockwood ciro smokey robinson savages my mind royal albert hall hard days walkin charlie watts ma rainey otis redding jethro tull carry on ramblin spoonful muppet show your love seaman fillmore brian jones columbia records drinkin debbie reynolds peter sellers clapton tiny tim dodds joe smith howlin sittin all you need buddy guy terry jones charters wexler yardbirds korner pete townshend wardlow steve winwood john lee hooker john hammond glenn miller peter green hollies benny goodman manchester metropolitan university sgt pepper john mclaughlin django reinhardt paul jones michael palin tomorrow night auger bessie smith buffalo springfield decca wilson pickett mick fleetwood leadbelly strange brew mike taylor ginger baker manfred mann smithsonian institute john mayall be true ornette coleman marchetti rory gallagher canned heat delta blues beano brian epstein robert spencer claud jack bruce willie brown bill wyman gene autry fats waller gamblin polydor white room hold your hand american blacks dinah washington clarksdale alan lomax blues festival 10cc melody maker godley macclesfield tin pan alley reading festival lonnie johnson dave davies ian stewart willie dixon chicago blues my face western swing nems bob wills dave stevens phil ochs continental europe your baby son house wrapping paper chicken shack john entwistle booker t jones sweet home chicago dave thompson ten years after jimmie rodgers mellotron chris winter rock around go now octet pete brown chris barber tommy johnson country blues andy white love me do dave clark five spencer davis group john fahey tamla paul scott bluesbreakers albert hammond motherless child brian auger mighty quinn al wilson mayall peter ward winwood streatham big bill broonzy preachin mitch ryder t bone walker jon landau charlie christian paul dean joe boyd ben palmer skip james so glad lavere georgie fame james chapman roger dean one o chris welch charley patton sonny terry tom dowd ahmet ertegun john mcvie blind lemon jefferson merseybeat are you being served memphis blues mike vernon jerry wexler jeff beck group lonnie donegan parnes john carson chattanooga choo choo brownie mcghee i saw her standing there chatmon gail collins fiddlin billy j kramer bill oddie bert williams robert jr bonzo dog doo dah band blind blake mcvie peter guralnick disraeli gears screaming lord sutch robert stigwood wythenshawe lady soul uncle dave macon noel redding those were tony palmer sir douglas quintet chas chandler devil blues charlie patton leroy smith paramount records paul nicholas noah johnson parchman farm bonzo dog band cross road blues terry scott elijah wald hoochie coochie man klaus voorman johnny shines i wanna be your man mike jagger instant party train it america rca dust my broom mike vickers manchester college smokestack lightnin songsters radio corporation ertegun bobby graham bruce conforth stephen dando collins christmas pantomime before elvis beer it davey graham new york mining disaster chris stamp victor military band tilt araiza

South African Tourism Celebrates Jazz Legend Hugh Masekela's Induction into the Ertegun Hall of Fame through Event at Dizzy's Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 21, 2023 7:19

Guest: Mabusha Masekela joins John from New York to end the week in celebration of an event held at Jazz at Lincoln Center to celebrate the induction of Hugh Masekela into the Ertegun Hall of Fame.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

new york club hall of fame event jazz south africans tourism celebrates lincoln center dizzy hugh masekela jazz at lincoln center ertegun

"Jamaica Say You Will"

The 1937 Flood Watch Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 3, 2023 6:37

Jackson Browne has always called the first song on his 1972 self-titled debut album a kind of modern fable.His inspiration for “Jamaica Say You Will" was a girl who worked in an organic food orchard on California's Zuma Beach, across the street from the Pacific Ocean, "like the Garden of Eden,” Browne once told an interviewer, “and she was a kind of Eden-like girl, too.”In the lyric, the girl leaves with her father to sail out into the world, “but my ship had not found the sea, as it were," Browne told Uncut magazine. “I wanted to have the cocoon of this relationship to just stay insulated from the world, but she was ready to move out into the world.”The song was a lament for the time he sheltered in that love affair. “I realized,” he added, “I'd been writing about the relationship I'd just left, not this new one I was in. So I learned something about myself and maybe found more closure or solace. … It's odd that that's exactly how songs come into being."The Song that Birthed a Label“Jamaica,” which Browne wrote when he was 20 in 1969, also played a big part in creating a new record label. In 1970, after listening to a demo of the song, artist manager David Geffen signed Browne and began looking for a record contract for him. Ultimately, after he couldn't get a deal anywhere else, Geffen co-founded Asylum Records in 1971 with Elliot Roberts.The story goes that Geffen had pitched Browne to Atlantic Records president Ahmet Ertegun, saying, "You'll make a lot of money." To that, Ertegun reportedly replied, "You know what, David? I have a lot of money. Why don't you start a record company and then you'll have a lot of money." A deal then was struck in which Ertegun put up the initial funds and Atlantic Records distributed Asylum Records with the profits split 50/50. Jackson Browne was one of first artists Geffen signed for Asylum, of course; he was quickly joined on the new label that same year by Linda Ronstadt, John David Souther, David Blue, Joni Mitchell, Glenn Frey and others.CoversBut many people became familiar with “Jamaica Say You Will” even before they heard Jackson Browne's Asylum recording of it.That's because the song was released by The Byrds on their Byrdmaniax album for Columbia the year before Browne's debut.And after that, the song was covered in 1972 by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and by Tom Rush and then by Joe Cocker in 1975. The TV TreatmentThe tune even has had its television moment. In 1992, it was heard playing on the radio at the end of “The Wonder Years” episode "The Lake" from Season 5.(TV's time machine slipped a little, though. The episode's story line was set in August 1971, but that was several months before the Browne album was released.)Our Take on the TuneIn music, newness is often a magical ingredient, and everything about this song is new for us.Its Flood connection started a few weeks ago when Charlie brought home yet another new guitar, this time a sweet little Gretsch resonator that he intends to keep in one open tuning or another. Recently, playing around in open D, Bowen landed on “Jamaica,” which just seemed to lay so easily on the strings. The song was unfamiliar to Danny and Randy, but — true to their Flood nature — they took to it right away, immediately finding ways to enrich it. Just listen to Dan's smart, beautiful solos and to Randy's gorgeous harmonies on the choruses.Sure, our arrangement is still evolving, but we wanted to share it with you all while it still has that lovely new song smell. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit 1937flood.substack.com

022 It's Time To Speak Up with Dorothy Carvello

We Are The Unheard

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 16, 2022 53:08

In this episode Dorothy talks about her book “Anything For A Hit” and the abuse she faced being the first female A&R executive as Atlantic Records. She tells me about her amazing Face The Music Now Foundation that she has set up to support women and artists that have suffered abuse in the industry and how she plans to take down the abusers that are still running this Music Industry! “Yeah, the main purpose. And the reason why I wrote this book was because I have been unheard my whole life. And when you feel marginalised, strictly based on your gender and told that you know, you have a big mouth you don't like, you know, for just really sticking up for yourself and not wanting to take abuse. That was the reason why I wrote the book and basically, being fired from every job in the music business for not engaging in illegal or inappropriate activity, for complaining about the way the men were treating me and other women and artists as well.” ABOUT THE GUEST - DOROTHY CARVELLO Dorothy Carvello began her career in 1987. She was the first female A&R executive at Atlantic Records, and one of the few in the room at RCA and Columbia. But before that, she was secretary to Ahmet Ertegun, Atlantic's infamous president, who signed acts like Aretha Franklin and Led Zeppelin, negotiated distribution deals with Mick Jagger, and added Neil Young to Crosby, Stills & Nash. The stories she tells about the kingmakers of the music industry are outrageous, but it is her sinuous friendship with Ahmet that frames her narrative. He was notoriously abusive, sexually harassing Dorothy on a daily basis. Still, when he neared his end, sad and alone, Dorothy had no hatred toward him—only a strange kind of loyalty. In her book Dorothy reveals how she flipped the script and showed Ertegun and every other man who tried to control her that a woman can be just as willing to do what it takes to get a hit. Featuring never-before-heard stories about artists like Michael Jackson, Madonna, Steven Tyler, Bon Jovi, INXS, Marc Anthony, Phil Collins, and many more, Dorothy's book is a must-read for anyone who has ever wondered what it's really like to be a woman in a male-dominated industry. CONNECT WITH DOROTHY: Website: https://anythingforahitbook.com Website: https://facethemusicnow.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dcarvello/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/dorothycarvello ABOUT THE HOST - EVE HORNE Eve Horne is an Award Winning Singer, songwriter, producer, sound engineer, podcast producer and more recently, a creative transformational coach, Mentor and Advisor. She has over 20 years experience in the Music Industry and is founder of PeakMusicUK and the UNHEARD Campaign which demands equality for women in the Music Industry. Eve helps women to realign their vision and realise their potential through her unique programme that combines creativity and mental well-being. Eve is passionate about unlocking the ‘forgotten you' and clearing those subconscious blocks so that each woman can remember her worth, regain her confidence and achieve inner success. Eve is also co-author of children's book “How Nova Got The star In Her Eye” a beautiful children's picture book about an interracial, same sex couple and their journey to becoming a family! A book can help educate all families! https://amzn.to/3wz9NSw If you need a podcast producer, need mentoring 1-2-1 training or advice on singing, songwriting or production, or you are curious about my Rewire program to build confidence. Reconnect you to your younger self reignite, your passion and realign your journey, you can book a complimentary 30 minute call via my website www.peakmusic.uk. If you want to get back on track, feel free to give me a call today. And let's get chatting. Also, if you would like to support the We Are The Unheard campaign to help young women get trained in songwriting and music production, please grab yourself a T-shirt here: https://www.peakmusic.uk/about-4 CONNECT WITH EVE: https://www.facebook.com/WeAreTheUnheardPodcastGroup https://www.linkedin.com https://www.facebook.com/wearepeakmusicUK https://www.facebook.com/EveHorne https://www.instagram.com/WeAreTheUnheard https://www.instagram.com/EveHorne https://www.instagram.com/PeakMusicUK https://www.joinclubhouse.com/@evehorne https://www.youtube.com/PeakMusicUK https://linktr.ee/PEAKMusicUK Sontronics Podcast Pro Mic: https://amzn.to/3yhUWvH RED https://amzn.to/2WIiSuy GOLD https://amzn.to/2WDiqgV GREEN https://amzn.to/3rK9l1o SILVER https://amzn.to/3rO8DA4 BLUE https://amzn.to/3ym3sds PURPLE HOSTED BY: Eve Horne

Episode 149: “Respect” by Aretha Franklin

Deeper Roots Radio Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 22, 2022

Episode 149 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Respect", and the journey of Aretha Franklin from teenage gospel singer to the Queen of Soul. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifteen-minute bonus episode available, on "I'm Just a Mops" by the Mops. 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, people may be interested in a Facebook discussion group for the podcast, run by a friend of mine (I'm not on FB myself) which can be found at https://www.facebook.com/groups/293630102611672/ Errata I say "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby to a Dixie Melody" instead of "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody". Also I say Spooner Oldham co-wrote "Do Right Woman". I meant Chips Moman. Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by Aretha Franklin. My main biographical source for Aretha Franklin is Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin by David Ritz, and this is where most of the quotes from musicians come from. I also relied heavily on I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You by Matt Dobkin. Information on C.L. Franklin came from Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America by Nick Salvatore. Rick Hall's The Man From Muscle Shoals: My Journey from Shame to Fame contains his side of the story. Country Soul by Charles L Hughes is a great overview of the soul music made in Muscle Shoals, Memphis, and Nashville in the sixties. Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The Southern Dream Of Freedom is possibly less essential, but still definitely worth reading. And the I Never Loved a Man album is available in this five-album box set for a ludicrously cheap price. But it's actually worth getting this nineteen-CD set with her first sixteen Atlantic albums and a couple of bonus discs of demos and outtakes. There's barely a duff track in the whole nineteen discs. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start this episode, I have to say that there are some things people may want to be aware of before listening to this. This episode has to deal, at least in passing, with subjects including child sexual abuse, intimate partner abuse, racism, and misogyny. I will of course try to deal with those subjects as tactfully as possible, but those of you who may be upset by those topics may want to check the episode transcript before or instead of listening. Those of you who leave comments or send me messages saying "why can't you just talk about the music instead of all this woke virtue-signalling?" may also want to skip this episode. You can go ahead and skip all the future ones as well, I won't mind. And one more thing to say before I get into the meat of the episode -- this episode puts me in a more difficult position than most other episodes of the podcast have. When I've talked about awful things that have happened in the course of this podcast previously, I have either been talking about perpetrators -- people like Phil Spector or Jerry Lee Lewis who did truly reprehensible things -- or about victims who have talked very publicly about the abuse they've suffered, people like Ronnie Spector or Tina Turner, who said very clearly "this is what happened to me and I want it on the public record". In the case of Aretha Franklin, she has been portrayed as a victim *by others*, and there are things that have been said about her life and her relationships which suggest that she suffered in some very terrible ways. But she herself apparently never saw herself as a victim, and didn't want some aspects of her private life talking about. At the start of David Ritz's biography of her, which is one of my main sources here, he recounts a conversation he had with her: "When I mentioned the possibility of my writing an independent biography, she said, “As long as I can approve it before it's published.” “Then it wouldn't be independent,” I said. “Why should it be independent?” “So I can tell the story from my point of view.” “But it's not your story, it's mine.” “You're an important historical figure, Aretha. Others will inevitably come along to tell your story. That's the blessing and burden of being a public figure.” “More burden than blessing,” she said." Now, Aretha Franklin is sadly dead, but I think that she still deserves the basic respect of being allowed privacy. So I will talk here about public matters, things she acknowledged in her own autobiography, and things that she and the people around her did in public situations like recording studios and concert venues. But there are aspects to the story of Aretha Franklin as that story is commonly told, which may well be true, but are of mostly prurient interest, don't add much to the story of how the music came to be made, and which she herself didn't want people talking about. So there will be things people might expect me to talk about in this episode, incidents where people in her life, usually men, treated her badly, that I'm going to leave out. That information is out there if people want to look for it, but I don't see myself as under any obligation to share it. That's not me making excuses for people who did inexcusable things, that's me showing some respect to one of the towering artistic figures of the latter half of the twentieth century. Because, of course, respect is what this is all about: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Respect"] One name that's come up a few times in this podcast, but who we haven't really talked about that much, is Bobby "Blue" Bland. We mentioned him as the single biggest influence on the style of Van Morrison, but Bland was an important figure in the Memphis music scene of the early fifties, which we talked about in several early episodes. He was one of the Beale Streeters, the loose aggregation of musicians that also included B.B. King and Johnny Ace, he worked with Ike Turner, and was one of the key links between blues and soul in the fifties and early sixties, with records like "Turn on Your Love Light": [Excerpt: Bobby "Blue" Bland, "Turn on Your Love Light"] But while Bland was influenced by many musicians we've talked about, his biggest influence wasn't a singer at all. It was a preacher he saw give a sermon in the early 1940s. As he said decades later: "Wasn't his words that got me—I couldn't tell you what he talked on that day, couldn't tell you what any of it meant, but it was the way he talked. He talked like he was singing. He talked music. The thing that really got me, though, was this squall-like sound he made to emphasize a certain word. He'd catch the word in his mouth, let it roll around and squeeze it with his tongue. When it popped on out, it exploded, and the ladies started waving and shouting. I liked all that. I started popping and shouting too. That next week I asked Mama when we were going back to Memphis to church. “‘Since when you so keen on church?' Mama asked. “‘I like that preacher,' I said. “‘Reverend Franklin?' she asked. “‘Well, if he's the one who sings when he preaches, that's the one I like.'" Bland was impressed by C.L. Franklin, and so were other Memphis musicians. Long after Franklin had moved to Detroit, they remembered him, and Bland and B.B. King would go to Franklin's church to see him preach whenever they were in the city. And Bland studied Franklin's records. He said later "I liked whatever was on the radio, especially those first things Nat Cole did with his trio. Naturally I liked the blues singers like Roy Brown, the jump singers like Louis Jordan, and the ballad singers like Billy Eckstine, but, brother, the man who really shaped me was Reverend Franklin." Bland would study Franklin's records, and would take the style that Franklin used in recorded sermons like "The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest": [Excerpt: C.L. Franklin, "The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest"] And you can definitely hear that preaching style on records like Bland's "I Pity the Fool": [Excerpt: Bobby "Blue" Bland, "I Pity the Fool"] But of course, that wasn't the only influence the Reverend C.L. Franklin had on the course of soul music. C.L. Franklin had grown up poor, on a Mississippi farm, and had not even finished grade school because he was needed to work behind the mule, ploughing the farm for his stepfather. But he had a fierce intelligence and became an autodidact, travelling regularly to the nearest library, thirty miles away, on a horse-drawn wagon, and reading everything he could get his hands on. At the age of sixteen he received what he believed to be a message from God, and decided to become an itinerant preacher. He would travel between many small country churches and build up audiences there -- and he would also study everyone else preaching there, analysing their sermons, seeing if he could anticipate their line of argument and get ahead of them, figuring out the structure. But unlike many people in the conservative Black Baptist churches of the time, he never saw the spiritual and secular worlds as incompatible. He saw blues music and Black church sermons as both being part of the same thing -- a Black culture and folklore that was worthy of respect in both its spiritual and secular aspects. He soon built up a small circuit of local churches where he would preach occasionally, but wasn't the main pastor at any of them. He got married aged twenty, though that marriage didn't last, and he seems to have been ambitious for a greater respectability. When that marriage failed, in June 1936, he married Barbara Siggers, a very intelligent, cultured, young single mother who had attended Booker T Washington High School, the best Black school in Memphis, and he adopted her son Vaughn. While he was mostly still doing churches in Mississippi, he took on one in Memphis as well, in an extremely poor area, but it gave him a foot in the door to the biggest Black city in the US. Barbara would later be called "one of the really great gospel singers" by no less than Mahalia Jackson. We don't have any recordings of Barbara singing, but Mahalia Jackson certainly knew what she was talking about when it came to great gospel singers: [Excerpt: Mahalia Jackson, "Precious Lord, Take My Hand"] Rev. Franklin was hugely personally ambitious, and he also wanted to get out of rural Mississippi, where the Klan were very active at this time, especially after his daughter Erma was born in 1938. They moved to Memphis in 1939, where he got a full-time position at New Salem Baptist Church, where for the first time he was able to earn a steady living from just one church and not have to tour round multiple churches. He soon became so popular that if you wanted to get a seat for the service at noon, you had to turn up for the 8AM Sunday School or you'd be forced to stand. He also enrolled for college courses at LeMoyne College. He didn't get a degree, but spent three years as a part-time student studying theology, literature, and sociology, and soon developed a liberal theology that was very different from the conservative fundamentalism he'd grown up in, though still very much part of the Baptist church. Where he'd grown up with a literalism that said the Bible was literally true, he started to accept things like evolution, and to see much of the Bible as metaphor. Now, we talked in the last episode about how impossible it is to get an accurate picture of the lives of religious leaders, because their life stories are told by those who admire them, and that's very much the case for C.L. Franklin. Franklin was a man who had many, many, admirable qualities -- he was fiercely intelligent, well-read, a superb public speaker, a man who was by all accounts genuinely compassionate towards those in need, and he became one of the leaders of the civil rights movement and inspired tens of thousands, maybe even millions, of people, directly and indirectly, to change the world for the better. He also raised several children who loved and admired him and were protective of his memory. And as such, there is an inevitable bias in the sources on Franklin's life. And so there's a tendency to soften the very worst things he did, some of which were very, very bad. For example in Nick Salvatore's biography of him, he talks about Franklin, in 1940, fathering a daughter with someone who is described as "a teenager" and "quite young". No details of her age other than that are given, and a few paragraphs later the age of a girl who was then sixteen *is* given, talking about having known the girl in question, and so the impression is given that the girl he impregnated was also probably in her late teens. Which would still be bad, but a man in his early twenties fathering a child with a girl in her late teens is something that can perhaps be forgiven as being a different time. But while the girl in question may have been a teenager when she gave birth, she was *twelve years old* when she became pregnant, by C.L. Franklin, the pastor of her church, who was in a position of power over her in multiple ways. Twelve years old. And this is not the only awful thing that Franklin did -- he was also known to regularly beat up women he was having affairs with, in public. I mention this now because everything else I say about him in this episode is filtered through sources who saw these things as forgivable character flaws in an otherwise admirable human being, and I can't correct for those biases because I don't know the truth. So it's going to sound like he was a truly great man. But bear those facts in mind. Barbara stayed with Franklin for the present, after discovering what he had done, but their marriage was a difficult one, and they split up and reconciled a handful of times. They had three more children together -- Cecil, Aretha, and Carolyn -- and remained together as Franklin moved on first to a church in Buffalo, New York, and then to New Bethel Church, in Detroit, on Hastings Street, a street which was the centre of Black nightlife in the city, as immortalised in John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillun": [Excerpt: John Lee Hooker, "Boogie Chillen"] Before moving to Detroit, Franklin had already started to get more political, as his congregation in Buffalo had largely been union members, and being free from the worst excesses of segregation allowed him to talk more openly about civil rights, but that only accelerated when he moved to Detroit, which had been torn apart just a couple of years earlier by police violence against Black protestors. Franklin had started building a reputation when in Memphis using radio broadcasts, and by the time he moved to Detroit he was able to command a very high salary, and not only that, his family were given a mansion by the church, in a rich part of town far away from most of his congregation. Smokey Robinson, who was Cecil Franklin's best friend and a frequent visitor to the mansion through most of his childhood, described it later, saying "Once inside, I'm awestruck -- oil paintings, velvet tapestries, silk curtains, mahogany cabinets filled with ornate objects of silver and gold. Man, I've never seen nothing like that before!" He made a lot of money, but he also increased church attendance so much that he earned that money. He had already been broadcasting on the radio, but when he started his Sunday night broadcasts in Detroit, he came up with a trick of having his sermons run long, so the show would end before the climax. People listening decided that they would have to start turning up in person to hear the end of the sermons, and soon he became so popular that the church would be so full that crowds would have to form on the street outside to listen. Other churches rescheduled their services so they wouldn't clash with Franklin's, and most of the other Black Baptist ministers in the city would go along to watch him preach. In 1948 though, a couple of years after moving to Detroit, Barbara finally left her husband. She took Vaughn with her and moved back to Buffalo, leaving the four biological children she'd had with C.L. with their father. But it's important to note that she didn't leave her children -- they would visit her on a regular basis, and stay with her over school holidays. Aretha later said "Despite the fact that it has been written innumerable times, it is an absolute lie that my mother abandoned us. In no way, shape, form, or fashion did our mother desert us." Barbara's place in the home was filled by many women -- C.L. Franklin's mother moved up from Mississippi to help him take care of the children, the ladies from the church would often help out, and even stars like Mahalia Jackson would turn up and cook meals for the children. There were also the women with whom Franklin carried on affairs, including Anna Gordy, Ruth Brown, and Dinah Washington, the most important female jazz and blues singer of the fifties, who had major R&B hits with records like her version of "Cold Cold Heart": [Excerpt: Dinah Washington, "Cold Cold Heart"] Although my own favourite record of hers is "Big Long Slidin' Thing", which she made with arranger Quincy Jones: [Excerpt: Dinah Washington, "Big Long Slidin' Thing"] It's about a trombone. Get your minds out of the gutter. Washington was one of the biggest vocal influences on young Aretha, but the single biggest influence was Clara Ward, another of C.L. Franklin's many girlfriends. Ward was the longest-lasting of these, and there seems to have been a lot of hope on both her part and Aretha's that she and Rev. Franklin would marry, though Franklin always made it very clear that monogamy wouldn't suit him. Ward was one of the three major female gospel singers of the middle part of the century, and possibly even more technically impressive as a vocalist than the other two, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Mahalia Jackson. Where Jackson was an austere performer, who refused to perform in secular contexts at all for most of her life, and took herself and her music very seriously, and Tharpe was a raunchier, funnier, more down-to-earth performer who was happy to play for blues audiences and even to play secular music on occasion, Ward was a *glamorous* performer, who wore sequined dresses and piled her hair high on her head. Ward had become a singer in 1931 when her mother had what she later talked about as a religious epiphany, and decided she wasn't going to be a labourer any more, she was going to devote her life to gospel music. Ward's mother had formed a vocal group with her two daughters, and Clara quickly became the star and her mother's meal ticket -- and her mother was very possessive of that ticket, to the extent that Ward, who was a bisexual woman who mostly preferred men, had more relationships with women, because her mother wouldn't let her be alone with the men she was attracted to. But Ward did manage to keep a relationship going with C.L. Franklin, and Aretha Franklin talked about the moment she decided to become a singer, when she saw Ward singing "Peace in the Valley" at a funeral: [Excerpt: Clara Ward, "Peace in the Valley"] As well as looking towards Ward as a vocal influence, Aretha was also influenced by her as a person -- she became a mother figure to Aretha, who would talk later about watching Ward eat, and noting her taking little delicate bites, and getting an idea of what it meant to be ladylike from her. After Ward's death in 1973, a notebook was found in which she had written her opinions of other singers. For Aretha she wrote “My baby Aretha, she doesn't know how good she is. Doubts self. Some day—to the moon. I love that girl.” Ward's influence became especially important to Aretha and her siblings after their mother died of a heart attack a few years after leaving her husband, when Aretha was ten, and Aretha, already a very introverted child, became even more so. Everyone who knew Aretha said that her later diva-ish reputation came out of a deep sense of insecurity and introversion -- that she was a desperately private, closed-off, person who would rarely express her emotions at all, and who would look away from you rather than make eye contact. The only time she let herself express emotions was when she performed music. And music was hugely important in the Franklin household. Most preachers in the Black church at that time were a bit dismissive of gospel music, because they thought the music took away from their prestige -- they saw it as a necessary evil, and resented it taking up space when their congregations could have been listening to them. But Rev. Franklin was himself a rather good singer, and even made a few gospel records himself in 1950, recording for Joe Von Battle, who owned a record shop on Hastings Street and also put out records by blues singers: [Excerpt: C.L. Franklin, "I Am Climbing Higher Mountains" ] The church's musical director was James Cleveland, one of the most important gospel artists of the fifties and sixties, who sang with groups like the Caravans: [Excerpt: The Caravans, "What Kind of Man is This?" ] Cleveland, who had started out in the choir run by Thomas Dorsey, the writer of “Take My Hand Precious Lord” and “Peace in the Valley”, moved in with the Franklin family for a while, and he gave the girls tips on playing the piano -- much later he would play piano on Aretha's album Amazing Grace, and she said of him “He showed me some real nice chords, and I liked his deep, deep sound”. Other than Clara Ward, he was probably the single biggest musical influence on Aretha. And all the touring gospel musicians would make appearances at New Bethel Church, not least of them Sam Cooke, who first appeared there with the Highway QCs and would continue to do so after joining the Soul Stirrers: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers, "Touch the Hem of his Garment"] Young Aretha and her older sister Erma both had massive crushes on Cooke, and there were rumours that he had an affair with one or both of them when they were in their teens, though both denied it. Aretha later said "When I first saw him, all I could do was sigh... Sam was love on first hearing, love at first sight." But it wasn't just gospel music that filled the house. One of the major ways that C.L. Franklin's liberalism showed was in his love of secular music, especially jazz and blues, which he regarded as just as important in Black cultural life as gospel music. We already talked about Dinah Washington being a regular visitor to the house, but every major Black entertainer would visit the Franklin residence when they were in Detroit. Both Aretha and Cecil Franklin vividly remembered visits from Art Tatum, who would sit at the piano and play for the family and their guests: [Excerpt: Art Tatum, "Tiger Rag"] Tatum was such a spectacular pianist that there's now a musicological term, the tatum, named after him, for the smallest possible discernible rhythmic interval between two notes. Young Aretha was thrilled by his technique, and by that of Oscar Peterson, who also regularly came to the Franklin home, sometimes along with Ella Fitzgerald. Nat "King" Cole was another regular visitor. The Franklin children all absorbed the music these people -- the most important musicians of the time -- were playing in their home, and young Aretha in particular became an astonishing singer and also an accomplished pianist. Smokey Robinson later said: “The other thing that knocked us out about Aretha was her piano playing. There was a grand piano in the Franklin living room, and we all liked to mess around. We'd pick out little melodies with one finger. But when Aretha sat down, even as a seven-year-old, she started playing chords—big chords. Later I'd recognize them as complex church chords, the kind used to accompany the preacher and the solo singer. At the time, though, all I could do was view Aretha as a wonder child. Mind you, this was Detroit, where musical talent ran strong and free. Everyone was singing and harmonizing; everyone was playing piano and guitar. Aretha came out of this world, but she also came out of another far-off magical world none of us really understood. She came from a distant musical planet where children are born with their gifts fully formed.” C.L. Franklin became more involved in the music business still when Joe Von Battle started releasing records of his sermons, which had become steadily more politically aware: [Excerpt: C.L. Franklin, "Dry Bones in the Valley"] Franklin was not a Marxist -- he was a liberal, but like many liberals was willing to stand with Marxists where they had shared interests, even when it was dangerous. For example in 1954, at the height of McCarthyism, he had James and Grace Lee Boggs, two Marxist revolutionaries, come to the pulpit and talk about their support for the anti-colonial revolution in Kenya, and they sold four hundred copies of their pamphlet after their talk, because he saw that the struggle of Black Africans to get out from white colonial rule was the same struggle as that of Black Americans. And Franklin's powerful sermons started getting broadcast on the radio in areas further out from Detroit, as Chess Records picked up the distribution for them and people started playing the records on other stations. People like future Congressman John Lewis and the Reverend Jesse Jackson would later talk about listening to C.L. Franklin's records on the radio and being inspired -- a whole generation of Black Civil Rights leaders took their cues from him, and as the 1950s and 60s went on he became closer and closer to Martin Luther King in particular. But C.L. Franklin was always as much an ambitious showman as an activist, and he started putting together gospel tours, consisting mostly of music but with himself giving a sermon as the headline act. And he became very, very wealthy from these tours. On one trip in the south, his car broke down, and he couldn't find a mechanic willing to work on it. A group of white men started mocking him with racist terms, trying to provoke him, as he was dressed well and driving a nice car (albeit one that had broken down). Rather than arguing with them, he walked to a car dealership, and bought a new car with the cash that he had on him. By 1956 he was getting around $4000 per appearance, roughly equivalent to $43,000 today, and he was making a *lot* of appearances. He also sold half a million records that year. Various gospel singers, including the Clara Ward Singers, would perform on the tours he organised, and one of those performers was Franklin's middle daughter Aretha. Aretha had become pregnant when she was twelve, and after giving birth to the child she dropped out of school, but her grandmother did most of the child-rearing for her, while she accompanied her father on tour. Aretha's first recordings, made when she was just fourteen, show what an astonishing talent she already was at that young age. She would grow as an artist, of course, as she aged and gained experience, but those early gospel records already show an astounding maturity and ability. It's jaw-dropping to listen to these records of a fourteen-year-old, and immediately recognise them as a fully-formed Aretha Franklin. [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "There is a Fountain Filled With Blood"] Smokey Robinson's assessment that she was born with her gifts fully formed doesn't seem like an exaggeration when you hear that. For the latter half of the fifties, Aretha toured with her father, performing on the gospel circuit and becoming known there. But the Franklin sisters were starting to get ideas about moving into secular music. This was largely because their family friend Sam Cooke had done just that, with "You Send Me": [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "You Send Me"] Aretha and Erma still worshipped Cooke, and Aretha would later talk about getting dressed up just to watch Cooke appear on the TV. Their brother Cecil later said "I remember the night Sam came to sing at the Flame Show Bar in Detroit. Erma and Ree said they weren't going because they were so heartbroken that Sam had recently married. I didn't believe them. And I knew I was right when they started getting dressed about noon for the nine o'clock show. Because they were underage, they put on a ton of makeup to look older. It didn't matter 'cause Berry Gordy's sisters, Anna and Gwen, worked the photo concession down there, taking pictures of the party people. Anna was tight with Daddy and was sure to let my sisters in. She did, and they came home with stars in their eyes.” Moving from gospel to secular music still had a stigma against it in the gospel world, but Rev. Franklin had never seen secular music as sinful, and he encouraged his daughters in their ambitions. Erma was the first to go secular, forming a girl group, the Cleo-Patrettes, at the suggestion of the Four Tops, who were family friends, and recording a single for Joe Von Battle's J-V-B label, "No Other Love": [Excerpt: The Cleo-Patrettes, "No Other Love"] But the group didn't go any further, as Rev. Franklin insisted that his eldest daughter had to finish school and go to university before she could become a professional singer. Erma missed other opportunities for different reasons, though -- Berry Gordy, at this time still a jobbing songwriter, offered her a song he'd written with his sister and Roquel Davis, but Erma thought of herself as a jazz singer and didn't want to do R&B, and so "All I Could Do Was Cry" was given to Etta James instead, who had a top forty pop hit with it: [Excerpt: Etta James, "All I Could Do Was Cry"] While Erma's move into secular music was slowed by her father wanting her to have an education, there was no such pressure on Aretha, as she had already dropped out. But Aretha had a different problem -- she was very insecure, and said that church audiences "weren't critics, but worshippers", but she was worried that nightclub audiences in particular were just the kind of people who would just be looking for flaws, rather than wanting to support the performer as church audiences did. But eventually she got up the nerve to make the move. There was the possibility of her getting signed to Motown -- her brother was still best friends with Smokey Robinson, while the Gordy family were close to her father -- but Rev. Franklin had his eye on bigger things. He wanted her to be signed to Columbia, which in 1960 was the most prestigious of all the major labels. As Aretha's brother Cecil later said "He wanted Ree on Columbia, the label that recorded Mahalia Jackson, Duke Ellington, Johnny Mathis, Tony Bennett, Percy Faith, and Doris Day. Daddy said that Columbia was the biggest and best record company in the world. Leonard Bernstein recorded for Columbia." They went out to New York to see Phil Moore, a legendary vocal coach and arranger who had helped make Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge into stars, but Moore actually refused to take her on as a client, saying "She does not require my services. Her style has already been developed. Her style is in place. It is a unique style that, in my professional opinion, requires no alteration. It simply requires the right material. Her stage presentation is not of immediate concern. All that will come later. The immediate concern is the material that will suit her best. And the reason that concern will not be easily addressed is because I can't imagine any material that will not suit her." That last would become a problem for the next few years, but the immediate issue was to get someone at Columbia to listen to her, and Moore could help with that -- he was friends with John Hammond. Hammond is a name that's come up several times in the podcast already -- we mentioned him in the very earliest episodes, and also in episode ninety-eight, where we looked at his signing of Bob Dylan. But Hammond was a legend in the music business. He had produced sessions for Bessie Smith, had discovered Count Basie and Billie Holiday, had convinced Benny Goodman to hire Charlie Christian and Lionel Hampton, had signed Pete Seeger and the Weavers to Columbia, had organised the Spirituals to Swing concerts which we talked about in the first few episodes of this podcast, and was about to put out the first album of Robert Johnson's recordings. Of all the executives at Columbia, he was the one who had the greatest eye for talent, and the greatest understanding of Black musical culture. Moore suggested that the Franklins get Major Holley to produce a demo recording that he could get Hammond to listen to. Major Holley was a family friend, and a jazz bassist who had played with Oscar Peterson and Coleman Hawkins among others, and he put together a set of songs for Aretha that would emphasise the jazz side of her abilities, pitching her as a Dinah Washington style bluesy jazz singer. The highlight of the demo was a version of "Today I Sing the Blues", a song that had originally been recorded by Helen Humes, the singer who we last heard of recording “Be Baba Leba” with Bill Doggett: [Excerpt: Helen Humes, "Today I Sing the Blues"] That original version had been produced by Hammond, but the song had also recently been covered by Aretha's idol, Sam Cooke: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "Today I Sing the Blues"] Hammond was hugely impressed by the demo, and signed Aretha straight away, and got to work producing her first album. But he and Rev. Franklin had different ideas about what Aretha should do. Hammond wanted to make a fairly raw-sounding bluesy jazz album, the kind of recording he had produced with Bessie Smith or Billie Holiday, but Rev. Franklin wanted his daughter to make music that would cross over to the white pop market -- he was aiming for the same kind of audience that Nat "King" Cole or Harry Belafonte had, and he wanted her recording standards like "Over the Rainbow". This showed a lack of understanding on Rev. Franklin's part of how such crossovers actually worked at this point. As Etta James later said, "If you wanna have Black hits, you gotta understand the Black streets, you gotta work those streets and work those DJs to get airplay on Black stations... Or looking at it another way, in those days you had to get the Black audience to love the hell outta you and then hope the love would cross over to the white side. Columbia didn't know nothing 'bout crossing over.” But Hammond knew they had to make a record quickly, because Sam Cooke had been working on RCA Records, trying to get them to sign Aretha, and Rev. Franklin wanted an album out so they could start booking club dates for her, and was saying that if they didn't get one done quickly he'd take up that offer, and so they came up with a compromise set of songs which satisfied nobody, but did produce two R&B top ten hits, "Won't Be Long" and Aretha's version of "Today I Sing the Blues": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Today I Sing the Blues"] This is not to say that Aretha herself saw this as a compromise -- she later said "I have never compromised my material. Even then, I knew a good song from a bad one. And if Hammond, one of the legends of the business, didn't know how to produce a record, who does? No, the fault was with promotion." And this is something important to bear in mind as we talk about her Columbia records. Many, *many* people have presented those records as Aretha being told what to do by producers who didn't understand her art and were making her record songs that didn't fit her style. That's not what's happening with the Columbia records. Everyone actually involved said that Aretha was very involved in the choices made -- and there are some genuinely great tracks on those albums. The problem is that they're *unfocused*. Aretha was only eighteen when she signed to the label, and she loved all sorts of music -- blues, jazz, soul, standards, gospel, middle-of-the-road pop music -- and wanted to sing all those kinds of music. And she *could* sing all those kinds of music, and sing them well. But it meant the records weren't coherent. You didn't know what you were getting, and there was no artistic personality that dominated them, it was just what Aretha felt like recording. Around this time, Aretha started to think that maybe her father didn't know what he was talking about when it came to popular music success, even though she idolised him in most areas, and she turned to another figure, who would soon become both her husband and manager. Ted White. Her sister Erma, who was at that time touring with Lloyd Price, had introduced them, but in fact Aretha had first seen White years earlier, in her own house -- he had been Dinah Washington's boyfriend in the fifties, and her first sight of him had been carrying a drunk Washington out of the house after a party. In interviews with David Ritz, who wrote biographies of many major soul stars including both Aretha Franklin and Etta James, James had a lot to say about White, saying “Ted White was famous even before he got with Aretha. My boyfriend at the time, Harvey Fuqua, used to talk about him. Ted was supposed to be the slickest pimp in Detroit. When I learned that Aretha married him, I wasn't surprised. A lot of the big-time singers who we idolized as girls—like Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan—had pimps for boyfriends and managers. That was standard operating procedure. My own mother had made a living turning tricks. When we were getting started, that way of life was part of the music business. It was in our genes. Part of the lure of pimps was that they got us paid." She compared White to Ike Turner, saying "Ike made Tina, no doubt about it. He developed her talent. He showed her what it meant to be a performer. He got her famous. Of course, Ted White was not a performer, but he was savvy about the world. When Harvey Fuqua introduced me to him—this was the fifties, before he was with Aretha—I saw him as a super-hip extra-smooth cat. I liked him. He knew music. He knew songwriters who were writing hit songs. He had manners. Later, when I ran into him and Aretha—this was the sixties—I saw that she wasn't as shy as she used to be." White was a pimp, but he was also someone with music business experience -- he owned an unsuccessful publishing company, and also ran a chain of jukeboxes. He was also thirty, while Aretha was only eighteen. But White didn't like the people in Aretha's life at the time -- he didn't get on well with her father, and he also clashed with John Hammond. And Aretha was also annoyed at Hammond, because her sister Erma had signed to Epic, a Columbia subsidiary, and was releasing her own singles: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Hello Again"] Aretha was certain that Hammond had signed Erma, even though Hammond had nothing to do with Epic Records, and Erma had actually been recommended by Lloyd Price. And Aretha, while for much of her career she would support her sister, was also terrified that her sister might have a big hit before her and leave Aretha in her shadow. Hammond was still the credited producer on Aretha's second album, The Electrifying Aretha Franklin, but his lack of say in the sessions can be shown in the choice of lead-off single. "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody" was originally recorded by Al Jolson in 1918: [Excerpt: Al Jolson, "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody"] Rev. Franklin pushed for the song, as he was a fan of Jolson -- Jolson, oddly, had a large Black fanbase, despite his having been a blackface performer, because he had *also* been a strong advocate of Black musicians like Cab Calloway, and the level of racism in the media of the twenties through forties was so astonishingly high that even a blackface performer could seem comparatively OK. Aretha's performance was good, but it was hardly the kind of thing that audiences were clamouring for in 1961: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody"] That single came out the month after _Down Beat_ magazine gave Aretha the "new-star female vocalist award", and it oddly made the pop top forty, her first record to do so, and the B-side made the R&B top ten, but for the next few years both chart success and critical acclaim eluded her. None of her next nine singles would make higher than number eighty-six on the Hot One Hundred, and none would make the R&B charts at all. After that transitional second album, she was paired with producer Bob Mersey, who was precisely the kind of white pop producer that one would expect for someone who hoped for crossover success. Mersey was the producer for many of Columbia's biggest stars at the time -- people like Barbra Streisand, Andy Williams, Julie Andrews, Patti Page, and Mel Tormé -- and it was that kind of audience that Aretha wanted to go for at this point. To give an example of the kind of thing that Mersey was doing, just the month before he started work on his first collaboration with Aretha, _The Tender, the Moving, the Swinging Aretha Franklin_, his production of Andy Williams singing "Moon River" was released: [Excerpt: Andy Williams, "Moon River"] This was the kind of audience Aretha was going for when it came to record sales – the person she compared herself to most frequently at this point was Barbra Streisand – though in live performances she was playing with a small jazz group in jazz venues, and going for the same kind of jazz-soul crossover audience as Dinah Washington or Ray Charles. The strategy seems to have been to get something like the success of her idol Sam Cooke, who could play to soul audiences but also play the Copacabana, but the problem was that Cooke had built an audience before doing that -- she hadn't. But even though she hadn't built up an audience, musicians were starting to pay attention. Ted White, who was still in touch with Dinah Washington, later said “Women are very catty. They'll see a girl who's dressed very well and they'll say, Yeah, but look at those shoes, or look at that hairdo. Aretha was the only singer I've ever known that Dinah had no negative comments about. She just stood with her mouth open when she heard Aretha sing.” The great jazz vocalist Carmen McRea went to see Aretha at the Village Vanguard in New York around this time, having heard the comparisons to Dinah Washington, and met her afterwards. She later said "Given how emotionally she sang, I expected her to have a supercharged emotional personality like Dinah. Instead, she was the shyest thing I've ever met. Would hardly look me in the eye. Didn't say more than two words. I mean, this bitch gave bashful a new meaning. Anyway, I didn't give her any advice because she didn't ask for any, but I knew goddamn well that, no matter how good she was—and she was absolutely wonderful—she'd have to make up her mind whether she wanted to be Della Reese, Dinah Washington, or Sarah Vaughan. I also had a feeling she wouldn't have minded being Leslie Uggams or Diahann Carroll. I remember thinking that if she didn't figure out who she was—and quick—she was gonna get lost in the weeds of the music biz." So musicians were listening to Aretha, even if everyone else wasn't. The Tender, the Moving, the Swinging Aretha Franklin, for example, was full of old standards like "Try a Little Tenderness": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Try a Little Tenderness"] That performance inspired Otis Redding to cut his own version of that song a few years later: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Try a Little Tenderness"] And it might also have inspired Aretha's friend and idol Sam Cooke to include the song in his own lounge sets. The Tender, the Moving, the Swinging Aretha Franklin also included Aretha's first original composition, but in general it wasn't a very well-received album. In 1963, the first cracks started to develop in Aretha's relationship with Ted White. According to her siblings, part of the strain was because Aretha's increasing commitment to the civil rights movement was costing her professional opportunities. Her brother Cecil later said "Ted White had complete sway over her when it came to what engagements to accept and what songs to sing. But if Daddy called and said, ‘Ree, I want you to sing for Dr. King,' she'd drop everything and do just that. I don't think Ted had objections to her support of Dr. King's cause, and he realized it would raise her visibility. But I do remember the time that there was a conflict between a big club gig and doing a benefit for Dr. King. Ted said, ‘Take the club gig. We need the money.' But Ree said, ‘Dr. King needs me more.' She defied her husband. Maybe that was the start of their marital trouble. Their thing was always troubled because it was based on each of them using the other. Whatever the case, my sister proved to be a strong soldier in the civil rights fight. That made me proud of her and it kept her relationship with Daddy from collapsing entirely." In part her increasing activism was because of her father's own increase in activity. The benefit that Cecil is talking about there is probably one in Chicago organised by Mahalia Jackson, where Aretha headlined on a bill that also included Jackson, Eartha Kitt, and the comedian Dick Gregory. That was less than a month before her father organised the Detroit Walk to Freedom, a trial run for the more famous March on Washington a few weeks later. The Detroit Walk to Freedom was run by the Detroit Council for Human Rights, which was formed by Rev. Franklin and Rev. Albert Cleage, a much more radical Black nationalist who often differed with Franklin's more moderate integrationist stance. They both worked together to organise the Walk to Freedom, but Franklin's stance predominated, as several white liberal politicians, like the Mayor of Detroit, Jerome Cavanagh, were included in the largely-Black March. It drew crowds of 125,000 people, and Dr. King called it "one of the most wonderful things that has happened in America", and it was the largest civil rights demonstration in American history up to that point. King's speech in Detroit was recorded and released on Motown Records: [Excerpt: Martin Luther King, "Original 'I Have a Dream' Speech”] He later returned to the same ideas in his more famous speech in Washington. During that civil rights spring and summer of 1963, Aretha also recorded what many think of as the best of her Columbia albums, a collection of jazz standards called Laughing on the Outside, which included songs like "Solitude", "Ol' Man River" and "I Wanna Be Around": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Wanna Be Around"] The opening track, "Skylark", was Etta James' favourite ever Aretha Franklin performance, and is regarded by many as the definitive take on the song: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Skylark"] Etta James later talked about discussing the track with the great jazz singer Sarah Vaughan, one of Aretha's early influences, who had recorded her own version of the song: "Sarah said, ‘Have you heard of this Aretha Franklin girl?' I said, ‘You heard her do “Skylark,” didn't you?' Sarah said, ‘Yes, I did, and I'm never singing that song again.” But while the album got noticed by other musicians, it didn't get much attention from the wider public. Mersey decided that a change in direction was needed, and they needed to get in someone with more of a jazz background to work with Aretha. He brought in pianist and arranger Bobby Scott, who had previously worked with people like Lester Young, and Scott said of their first meeting “My first memory of Aretha is that she wouldn't look at me when I spoke. She withdrew from the encounter in a way that intrigued me. At first I thought she was just shy—and she was—but I also felt her reading me...For all her deference to my experience and her reluctance to speak up, when she did look me in the eye, she did so with a quiet intensity before saying, ‘I like all your ideas, Mr. Scott, but please remember I do want hits.'” They started recording together, but the sides they cut wouldn't be released for a few years. Instead, Aretha and Mersey went in yet another direction. Dinah Washington died suddenly in December 1963, and given that Aretha was already being compared to Washington by almost everyone, and that Washington had been a huge influence on her, as well as having been close to both her father and her husband/manager, it made sense to go into the studio and quickly cut a tribute album, with Aretha singing Washington's hits: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Cold Cold Heart"] Unfortunately, while Washington had been wildly popular, and one of the most important figures in jazz and R&B in the forties and fifties, her style was out of date. The tribute album, titled Unforgettable, came out in February 1964, the same month that Beatlemania hit the US. Dinah Washington was the past, and trying to position Aretha as "the new Dinah Washington" would doom her to obscurity. John Hammond later said "I remember thinking that if Aretha never does another album she will be remembered for this one. No, the problem was timing. Dinah had died, and, outside the black community, interest in her had waned dramatically. Popular music was in a radical and revolutionary moment, and that moment had nothing to do with Dinah Washington, great as she was and will always be.” At this point, Columbia brought in Clyde Otis, an independent producer and songwriter who had worked with artists like Washington and Sarah Vaughan, and indeed had written one of the songs on Unforgettable, but had also worked with people like Brook Benton, who had a much more R&B audience. For example, he'd written "Baby, You Got What It Takes" for Benton and Washington to do as a duet: [Excerpt: Brook Benton and Dinah Washington, "Baby, You Got What it Takes"] In 1962, when he was working at Mercury Records before going independent, Otis had produced thirty-three of the fifty-one singles the label put out that year that had charted. Columbia had decided that they were going to position Aretha firmly in the R&B market, and assigned Otis to do just that. At first, though, Otis had no more luck with getting Aretha to sing R&B than anyone else had. He later said "Aretha, though, couldn't be deterred from her determination to beat Barbra Streisand at Barbra's own game. I kept saying, ‘Ree, you can outsing Streisand any day of the week. That's not the point. The point is to find a hit.' But that summer she just wanted straight-up ballads. She insisted that she do ‘People,' Streisand's smash. Aretha sang the hell out of it, but no one's gonna beat Barbra at her own game." But after several months of this, eventually Aretha and White came round to the idea of making an R&B record. Otis produced an album of contemporary R&B, with covers of music from the more sophisticated end of the soul market, songs like "My Guy", "Every Little Bit Hurts", and "Walk on By", along with a few new originals brought in by Otis. The title track, "Runnin' Out of Fools", became her biggest hit in three years, making number fifty-seven on the pop charts and number thirty on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Runnin' Out of Fools"] After that album, they recorded another album with Otis producing, a live-in-the-studio jazz album, but again nobody involved could agree on a style for her. By this time it was obvious that she was unhappy with Columbia and would be leaving the label soon, and they wanted to get as much material in the can as they could, so they could continue releasing material after she left. But her working relationship with Otis was deteriorating -- Otis and Ted White did not get on, Aretha and White were having their own problems, and Aretha had started just not showing up for some sessions, with nobody knowing where she was. Columbia passed her on to yet another producer, this time Bob Johnston, who had just had a hit with Patti Page, "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte": [Excerpt: Patti Page, "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte"] Johnston was just about to hit an incredible hot streak as a producer. At the same time as his sessions with Aretha, he was also producing Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, and just after the sessions finished he'd go on to produce Simon & Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence album. In the next few years he would produce a run of classic Dylan albums like Blonde on Blonde, John Wesley Harding, and New Morning, Simon & Garfunkel's follow up Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme, Leonard Cohen's first three albums, and Johnny Cash's comeback with the Live at Folsom Prison album and its follow up At San Quentin. He also produced records for Marty Robbins, Flatt & Scruggs, the Byrds, and Burl Ives during that time period. But you may notice that while that's as great a run of records as any producer was putting out at the time, it has little to do with the kind of music that Aretha Franklin was making then, or would become famous with. Johnston produced a string-heavy session in which Aretha once again tried to sing old standards by people like Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern. She then just didn't turn up for some more sessions, until one final session in August, when she recorded songs like "Swanee" and "You Made Me Love You". For more than a year, she didn't go into a studio. She also missed many gigs and disappeared from her family's life for periods of time. Columbia kept putting out records of things she'd already recorded, but none of them had any success at all. Many of the records she'd made for Columbia had been genuinely great -- there's a popular perception that she was being held back by a record company that forced her to sing material she didn't like, but in fact she *loved* old standards, and jazz tunes, and contemporary pop at least as much as any other kind of music. Truly great musicians tend to have extremely eclectic tastes, and Aretha Franklin was a truly great musician if anyone was. Her Columbia albums are as good as any albums in those genres put out in that time period, and she remained proud of them for the rest of her life. But that very eclecticism had meant that she hadn't established a strong identity as a performer -- everyone who heard her records knew she was a great singer, but nobody knew what "an Aretha Franklin record" really meant -- and she hadn't had a single real hit, which was the thing she wanted more than anything. All that changed when in the early hours of the morning, Jerry Wexler was at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals recording a Wilson Pickett track -- from the timeline, it was probably the session for "Mustang Sally", which coincidentally was published by Ted White's publishing company, as Sir Mack Rice, the writer, was a neighbour of White and Franklin, and to which Aretha had made an uncredited songwriting contribution: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Mustang Sally"] Whatever the session, it wasn't going well. Percy Sledge, another Atlantic artist who recorded at Muscle Shoals, had turned up and had started winding Pickett up, telling him he sounded just like James Brown. Pickett *hated* Brown -- it seems like almost every male soul singer of the sixties hated James Brown -- and went to physically attack Sledge. Wexler got between the two men to protect his investments in them -- both were the kind of men who could easily cause some serious damage to anyone they hit -- and Pickett threw him to one side and charged at Sledge. At that moment the phone went, and Wexler yelled at the two of them to calm down so he could talk on the phone. The call was telling him that Aretha Franklin was interested in recording for Atlantic. Rev. Louise Bishop, later a Democratic politician in Pennsylvania, was at this time a broadcaster, presenting a radio gospel programme, and she knew Aretha. She'd been to see her perform, and had been astonished by Aretha's performance of a recent Otis Redding single, "Respect": [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Respect"] Redding will, by the way, be getting his own episode in a few months' time, which is why I've not covered the making of that record here. Bishop thought that Aretha did the song even better than Redding -- something Bishop hadn't thought possible. When she got talking to Aretha after the show, she discovered that her contract with Columbia was up, and Aretha didn't really know what she was going to do -- maybe she'd start her own label or something. She hadn't been into the studio in more than a year, but she did have some songs she'd been working on. Bishop was good friends with Jerry Wexler, and she knew that he was a big fan of Aretha's, and had been saying for a while that when her contract was up he'd like to sign her. Bishop offered to make the connection, and then went back home and phoned Wexler's wife, waking her up -- it was one in the morning by this point, but Bishop was accustomed to phoning Wexler late at night when it was something important. Wexler's wife then phoned him in Muscle Shoals, and he phoned Bishop back and made the arrangements to meet up. Initially, Wexler wasn't thinking about producing Aretha himself -- this was still the period when he and the Ertegun brothers were thinking of selling Atlantic and getting out of the music business, and so while he signed her to the label he was originally going to hand her over to Jim Stewart at Stax to record, as he had with Sam and Dave. But in a baffling turn of events, Jim Stewart didn't actually want to record her, and so Wexler determined that he had better do it himself. And he didn't want to do it with slick New York musicians -- he wanted to bring out the gospel sound in her voice, and he thought the best way to do that was with musicians from what Charles Hughes refers to as "the country-soul triangle" of Nashville, Memphis, and Muscle Shoals. So he booked a week's worth of sessions at FAME studios, and got in FAME's regular rhythm section, plus a couple of musicians from American Recordings in Memphis -- Chips Moman and Spooner Oldham. Oldham's friend and songwriting partner Dan Penn came along as well -- he wasn't officially part of the session, but he was a fan of Aretha's and wasn't going to miss this. Penn had been the first person that Rick Hall, the owner of FAME, had called when Wexler had booked the studio, because Hall hadn't actually heard of Aretha Franklin up to that point, but didn't want to let Wexler know that. Penn had assured him that Aretha was one of the all-time great talents, and that she just needed the right production to become massive. As Hall put it in his autobiography, "Dan tended in those days to hate anything he didn't write, so I figured if he felt that strongly about her, then she was probably going to be a big star." Charlie Chalmers, a horn player who regularly played with these musicians, was tasked with putting together a horn section. The first song they recorded that day was one that the musicians weren't that impressed with at first. "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)" was written by a songwriter named Ronnie Shannon, who had driven from Georgia to Detroit hoping to sell his songs to Motown. He'd popped into a barber's shop where Ted White was having his hair cut to ask for directions to Motown, and White had signed him to his own publishing company and got him to write songs for Aretha. On hearing the demo, the musicians thought that the song was mediocre and a bit shapeless: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You) (demo)"] But everyone there was agreed that Aretha herself was spectacular. She didn't speak much to the musicians, just went to the piano and sat down and started playing, and Jerry Wexler later compared her playing to Thelonius Monk (who was indeed one of the jazz musicians who had influenced her). While Spooner Oldham had been booked to play piano, it was quickly decided to switch him to electric piano and organ, leaving the acoustic piano for Aretha to play, and she would play piano on all the sessions Wexler produced for her in future. Although while Wexler is the credited producer (and on this initial session Rick Hall at FAME is a credited co-producer), everyone involved, including Wexler, said that the musicians were taking their cues from Aretha rather than anyone else. She would outline the arrangements at the piano, and everyone else would fit in with what she was doing, coming up with head arrangements directed by her. But Wexler played a vital role in mediating between her and the musicians and engineering staff, all of whom he knew and she didn't. As Rick Hall said "After her brief introduction by Wexler, she said very little to me or anyone else in the studio other than Jerry or her husband for the rest of the day. I don't think Aretha and I ever made eye contact after our introduction, simply because we were both so totally focused on our music and consumed by what we were doing." The musicians started working on "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)", and at first found it difficult to get the groove, but then Oldham came up with an electric piano lick which everyone involved thought of as the key that unlocked the song for them: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)"] After that, they took a break. Most of them were pleased with the track, though Rick Hall wasn't especially happy. But then Rick Hall wasn't especially happy about anything at that point. He'd always used mono for his recordings until then, but had been basically forced to install at least a two-track system by Tom Dowd, Atlantic's chief engineer, and was resentful of this imposition. During the break, Dan Penn went off to finish a song he and Spooner Oldham had been writing, which he hoped Aretha would record at the session: [Excerpt: Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham, "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man"] They had the basic structure of the song down, but hadn't quite finished the middle eight, and both Jerry Wexler and Aretha Franklin chipped in uncredited lyrical contributions -- Aretha's line was "as long as we're together baby, you'd better show some respect to me". Penn, Oldham, Chips Moman, Roger Hawkins, and Tommy Cogbill started cutting a backing track for the song, with Penn singing lead initially with the idea that Aretha would overdub her vocal. But while they were doing this, things had been going wrong with the other participants. All the FAME and American rhythm section players were white, as were Wexler, Hall, and Dowd, and Wexler had been very aware of this, and of the fact that they were recording in Alabama, where Aretha and her husband might not feel totally safe, so he'd specifically requested that the horn section at least contain some Black musicians. But Charlie Chalmers hadn't been able to get any of the Black musicians he would normally call when putting together a horn section, and had ended up with an all-white horn section as well, including one player, a trumpet player called Ken Laxton, who had a reputation as a good player but had never worked with any of the other musicians there -- he was an outsider in a group of people who regularly worked together and had a pre-existing relationship. As the two outsiders, Laxton and Ted White had, at first, bonded, and indeed had started drinking vodka together, passing a bottle between themselves, in a way that Rick Hall would normally not allow in a session -- at the time, the county the studio was in was still a dry county. But as Wexler said, “A redneck patronizing a Black man is a dangerous camaraderie,” and White and Laxton soon had a major falling out. Everyone involved tells a different story about what it was that caused them to start rowing, though it seems to have been to do with Laxton not showing the proper respect for Aretha, or even actually sexually assaulting her -- Dan Penn later said “I always heard he patted her on the butt or somethin', and what would have been wrong with that anyway?”, which says an awful lot about the attitudes of these white Southern men who thought of themselves as very progressive, and were -- for white Southern men in early 1967. Either way, White got very, very annoyed, and insisted that Laxton get fired from the session, which he was, but that still didn't satisfy White, and he stormed off to the motel, drunk and angry. The rest of them finished cutting a basic track for "Do Right Woman", but nobody was very happy with it. Oldham said later “She liked the song but hadn't had time to practice it or settle into it I remember there was Roger playing the drums and Cogbill playing the bass. And I'm on these little simplistic chords on organ, just holding chords so the song would be understood. And that was sort of where it was left. Dan had to sing the vocal, because she didn't know the song, in the wrong key for him. That's what they left with—Dan singing the wrong-key vocal and this little simplistic organ and a bass and a drum. We had a whole week to do everything—we had plenty of time—so there was no hurry to do anything in particular.” Penn was less optimistic, saying "But as I rem

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Episode 105: The House That Ruth Built

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 5, 2022 118:10

The decade of the fifties found the sounds of rhythm and blues being best represented on the Atlantic Records label. Founded in 1947 by Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson, the catalog of artists and the quality of production were unparalleled for their time. And while Ertegun's biography is subtitled “The House That Ertegun Built”, the performers were also undisputed heavyweights: Big Joe Turner, Ray Charles, Clyde McPhatter, and Lavern Baker to name a few. Things, however, exploded when a lady dubbed “Miss Rhythm” arrived with “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean” leading to another moniker: “The House That Ruth Built”. This week's show will feature some of the great tracks from Ruth Brown and the many contemporaries who made the label synonymous with R&B well into the seventies and beyond. Tune in for a special treat. Rock, rhythm, and dynamite doo wop from the Atlantic vaults on a Friday morning.

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Soulbeat: Resumen III (20/12/21)

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 20, 2021

Tercer resumen dedicado a la etiqueta de Abramson, Ertegun y Wexler. Con José Manuel Corrales.

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Soulbeat: El adiós de Ertegun (30/08/21)

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 30, 2021

El jueves 14 de diciembre de 2006, Ahmet Munir Ertegun, uno de los hombres del disco más grande que jamás haya vivido, murió a la edad de ochenta y tres años. Con José Manuel Corrales.

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Soulbeat: Kid Rock (23/08/21)

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 23, 2021

En 1998, a la edad de setenta y cinco años, Ertegun se enamoró perdidamente de un músico que llamó su "joven Elvis". Con José Manuel Corrales.

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Soulbeat: Nesuhi Ertegun (02/08/21)

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 2, 2021

Habiendo sido dejado atrás por el mercado del rock, el artista que Ertegun había respetado sobre todos los demás había vuelto a firmar con Atlantic en 1977. Con José Manuel Corrales.

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Soulbeat: Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame (12/07/21)

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 12, 2021

Ertegun aprovechó una entrega anual de premios de televisión y la transformó en una institución.

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Soulbeat: New York Cosmos (05/07/21)

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 5, 2021

Desde que los hermanos Ertegun habían jugado con un balón en los terrenos de la embajada turca cuando eran niños, ambos hermanos estaban locos por el fútbol.

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Soulbeat: George Trow (21/06/21)

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 21, 2021

El 2 de mayo de 1977, Trow se encontró con Ertegun en Studio 54. Jerry Greenberg, que para entonces había firmado a Chic y los Trammps en Atlantic y era un buen amigo del cofundador de Studio 54, Steve Rubell, le había preguntado a Ertegun si quería invertir en la sala.

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Episode 125: “Here Comes the Night” by Them

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 18, 2021

Episode 125 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Here Comes the Night", Them, the early career of Van Morrison, and the continuing success of Bert Berns. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-minute bonus episode available, on "Dirty Water" by the Standells. 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/ Resources As usual, I've created a Mixcloud playlist, with full versions of all the songs excerpted in this episode. The information about Bert Berns comes from Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues by Joel Selvin. I've used two biographies of Van Morrison. Van Morrison: Into the Music by Ritchie Yorke is so sycophantic towards Morrison that the word "hagiography" would be, if anything, an understatement. Van Morrison: No Surrender by Johnny Rogan, on the other hand, is the kind of book that talks in the introduction about how the author has had to avoid discussing certain topics because of legal threats from the subject. I also used information from the liner notes to The Complete Them 1964-1967, which as the title suggests is a collection of all the recordings the group made while Van Morrison was in the band. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we're going to take a look at a band whose lead singer, sadly, is more controversial now than he was at the period we're looking at. I would normally not want to explicitly talk about current events upfront at the start of an episode, but Van Morrison has been in the headlines in the last few weeks for promoting dangerous conspiracy theories about covid, and has also been accused of perpetuating antisemitic stereotypes with a recent single. So I would like to take this opportunity just to say that no positive comments I make about the Van Morrison of 1965 in this episode should be taken as any kind of approval of the Van Morrison of 2021 -- and this should also be taken as read for one of the similarly-controversial subjects of next week's episode... Anyway, that aside, today we're going to take a look at the first classic rock and roll records made by a band from Northern Ireland, and at the links between the British R&B scene and the American Brill Building. We're going to look at Van Morrison, Bert Berns, and "Here Comes the Night" by Them: [Excerpt: Them, "Here Comes the Night"] When we last looked at Bert Berns, he was just starting to gain some prominence in the East Coast recording scene with his productions for artists like Solomon Burke and the Isley Brothers. We've also, though it wasn't always made explicit, come across several of his productions when talking about other artists -- when Leiber and Stoller stopped working for Atlantic, Berns took over production of their artists, as well as all the other recordings he was making, and so many of the mid-sixties Drifters records we looked at in the episode on "Stand By Me" were Berns productions. But while he was producing soul classics in New York, Berns was also becoming aware of the new music coming from the United Kingdom -- in early 1963 he started receiving large royalty cheques for a cover version of his song "Twist and Shout" by some English band he'd never heard of. He decided that there was a market here for his songs, and made a trip to the UK, where he linked up with Dick Rowe at Decca. While most of the money Berns had been making from "Twist and Shout" had been from the Beatles' version, a big chunk of it had also come from Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, the band that Rowe had signed to Decca instead of the Beatles. After the Beatles became big, the Tremeloes used the Beatles' arrangement of "Twist and Shout", which had been released on an album and an EP but not a single, and had a top ten hit with their own version of it: [Excerpt: Brian Poole and the Tremeloes, "Twist and Shout"] Rowe was someone who kept an eye on the American market, and saw that Berns was a great source of potential hits. He brought Berns over to the UK, and linked him up with Larry Page, the manager who gave Rowe an endless supply of teen idols, and with Phil Solomon, an Irish manager who had been the publicist for the crooner Ruby Murray, and had recently brought Rowe the group The Bachelors, who had had a string of hits like "Charmaine": [Excerpt: The Bachelors, "Charmaine"] Page, Solomon, and Rowe were currently trying to promote something called "Brum Beat", as a Birmingham rival to Mersey beat, and so all the acts Berns worked with were from Birmingham. The most notable of these acts was one called Gerry Levene and the Avengers. Berns wrote and produced the B-side of that group's only single, with Levene backed by session musicians, but I've been unable to find a copy of that B-side anywhere in the digital domain. However, the A-side, which does exist and wasn't produced by Berns, is of some interest: [Excerpt: Gerry Levene and the Avengers, "Dr. Feelgood"] The lineup of the band playing on that included guitarist Roy Wood, who would go on to be one of the most important and interesting British musicians of the later sixties and early seventies, and drummer Graeme Edge, who went on to join the Moody Blues. Apparently at another point, their drummer was John Bonham. None of the tracks Berns recorded for Decca in 1963 had any real success, but Berns had made some useful contacts with Rowe and Solomon, and most importantly had met a British arranger, Mike Leander, who came over to the US to continue working with Berns, including providing the string arrangements for Berns' production of "Under the Boardwalk" for the Drifters: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Under the Boardwalk"] In May 1964, the month when that track was recorded, Berns was about the only person keeping Atlantic Records afloat -- we've already seen that they were having little success in the mid sixties, but in mid-May, even given the British Invasion taking over the charts, Berns had five records in the Hot One Hundred as either writer or producer -- the Beatles' version of "Twist and Shout" was the highest charting, but he also had hits with "One Way Love" by the Drifters: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "One Way Love"] "That's When it Hurts" by Ben E. King: [Excerpt: Ben E. King, "That's When it Hurts"] "Goodbye Baby (Baby Goodbye)" by Solomon Burke: [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "Goodbye Baby (Baby Goodbye)"] And "My Girl Sloopy" by the Vibrations: [Excerpt: The Vibrations, "My Girl Sloopy"] And a week after the production of "Under the Boardwalk", Berns was back in the studio with Solomon Burke, producing Burke's classic "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love", though that track would lead to a major falling-out with Burke, as Berns and Atlantic executive Jerry Wexler took co-writing credit they hadn't earned on Burke's song -- Berns was finally at the point in his career where he was big enough that he could start stealing Black men's credits rather than having to earn them for himself: [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love"] Not everything was a hit, of course -- he wrote a dance track with Mike Leander, "Show Me Your Monkey", which was definitely not a big hit -- but he had a strike rate that most other producers and writers would have killed for. And he was also having hits in the UK with the new British Invasion bands -- the Animals had made a big hit from "Baby Let Me Take You Home", the old folk tune that Berns had rewritten for Hoagy Lands. And he was still in touch with Phil Solomon and Dick Rowe, both of whom came over to New York for Berns' wedding in July. It might have been while they were at the wedding that they first suggested to Berns that he might be interested in producing a new band that Solomon was managing, named Them, and in particular their lead singer, Van Morrison. Van Morrison was always a misfit, from his earliest days. He grew up in Belfast, a city that is notoriously divided along sectarian lines between a Catholic minority who (for the most part) want a united Ireland, and a Presbyterian majority who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK. But in a city where the joke goes that a Jewish person would be asked "but are you a Catholic Jew or a Protestant Jew?", Morrison was raised as a Jehovah's Witness, and for the rest of his life he would be resistant to fitting into any of the categories anyone tried to put him in, both for good and ill. While most of the musicians from the UK we've looked at so far have been from middle-class backgrounds, and generally attended art school, Morrison had gone to a secondary modern school, and left at fourteen to become a window cleaner. But he had an advantage that many of his contemporaries didn't -- he had relatives living in America and Canada, and his father had once spent a big chunk of time working in Detroit, where at one point the Morrison family planned to move. This exposed Morrison senior to all sorts of music that would not normally be heard in the UK, and he returned with a fascination for country and blues music, and built up a huge record collection. Young Van Morrison was brought up listening to Hank Williams, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Jimmie Rodgers, Louis Jordan, Jelly Roll Morton, and his particular favourite, Lead Belly. The first record he bought with his own money was "Hootin' Blues" by the Sonny Terry Trio: [Excerpt: The Sonny Terry Trio, "Hootin' Blues"] Like everyone, Van Morrison joined a skiffle group, but he became vastly more ambitious in 1959 when he visited a relative in Canada. His aunt smuggled him into a nightclub where an actual American rock and roll group were playing -- Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks: [Excerpt: Ronnie Hawkins, "Mary Lou"] Hawkins had been inspired to get into the music business by his uncle Delmar, a fiddle player whose son, Dale Hawkins, we looked at back in episode sixty-three. His band, the Hawks, had a reputation as the hottest band in Canada -- at this point they were still all Americans, but other than their drummer Levon Helm they would soon be replaced one by one with Canadian musicians, starting with bass player Robbie Robertson. Morrison was enthused and decided he was going to become a professional musician. He already played a bit of guitar, but started playing the saxophone too, as that was an instrument that would be more likely to get him work at this point. He joined a showband called the Monarchs, as saxophone player and occasional vocalist. Showbands were a uniquely Irish phenomenon -- they were eight- or nine-piece groups, rhythm sections with a small horn section and usually a couple of different singers, who would play every kind of music for dancing, ranging from traditional pop to country and western to rock and roll, and would also perform choreographed dance routines and comedy sketches. The Monarchs were never a successful band, but they managed to scrape a living playing the Irish showband circuit, and in the early sixties they travelled to Germany, where audiences of Black American servicemen wanted them to play more soulful music like songs by Ray Charles, an opportunity Morrison eagerly grabbed. It was also a Black American soldier who introduced Morrison to the music of Bobby Bland, whose "Turn on Your Love Light" was soon introduced to the band's set: [Excerpt Bobby "Blue" Bland, "Turn on Your Love Light"] But they were still mostly having to play chart hits by Billy J Kramer or Gerry and the Pacemakers, and Morrison was getting frustrated. The Monarchs did get a chance to record a single in Germany, as Georgie and the Monarchs, with another member, George Jones (not the famous country singer) singing lead, but the results were not impressive: [Excerpt: Georgie and the Monarchs, "O Twingy Baby"] Morrison moved between several different showbands, but became increasingly dissatisfied with what he was doing. Then another showband he was in, the Manhattan Showband, briefly visited London, and Morrison and several of his bandmates went to a club called Studio 51, run by Ken Colyer. There they saw a band called The Downliners Sect, who had hair so long that the Manhattan members at first thought they were a girl group, until their lead singer came on stage wearing a deerstalker hat. The Downliners Sect played exactly the kind of aggressive R&B that Morrison thought he should be playing: [Excerpt: The Downliners Sect, "Be a Sect Maniac"] Morrison asked if he could sit in with the group on harmonica, but was refused -- and this was rather a pattern with the Downliners Sect, who had a habit of attracting harmonica players who wanted to be frontmen. Both Rod Stewart and Steve Marriott did play harmonica with the group for a while, and wanted to join full-time, but were refused as they clearly wanted to be lead singers and the group didn't need another one of them. On returning to Belfast, Morrison decided that he needed to start his own R&B band, and his own R&B club night. At first he tried to put together a sort of supergroup of showband regulars, but most of the musicians he approached weren't interested in leaving their steady gigs. Eventually, he joined a band called the Gamblers, led by guitarist and vocalist Billy Harrison. The Gamblers had started out as an instrumental group, playing rock and roll in the style of Johnny and the Hurricanes, but they'd slowly been moving in a more R&B direction, and playing Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley material. Morrison joined the group on saxophone and vocals -- trading off leads with Harrison -- and the group renamed themselves after a monster movie from a few years before: [Excerpt: THEM! trailer] The newly renamed Them took up a regular gig at the Maritime Hotel, a venue which had previously attracted a trad jazz crowd, and quickly grew a substantial local following. Van Morrison later often said that their residency at the Maritime was the only time Them were any good, but that period was remarkably short -- three months after their first gig, the group had been signed to a management, publishing, and production deal with Philip Solomon, who called in Dick Rowe to see them in Belfast. Rowe agreed to the same kind of licensing deal with Solomon that Andrew Oldham had already got from him for the Stones -- Them would record for Solomon's company, and Decca would license the recordings. This also led to the first of the many, many, lineup changes that would bedevil the group for its short existence -- between 1964 and 1966 there were eighteen different members of the group. Eric Wrixon, the keyboard player, was still at school, and his parents didn't think he should become a musician, so while he came along to the first recording session, he didn't sign the contract because he wasn't allowed to stay with the group once his next term at school started. However, he wasn't needed -- while Them's guitarist and bass player were allowed to play on the records, Dick Rowe brought in session keyboard player Arthur Greenslade and drummer Bobby Graham -- the same musicians who had augmented the Kinks on their early singles -- to play with them. The first single, a cover version of Slim Harpo's "Don't Start Crying Now", did precisely nothing commercially: [Excerpt: Them, "Don't Start Crying Now"] The group started touring the UK, now as Decca recording artistes, but they almost immediately started to have clashes with their management. Phil Solomon was not used to aggressive teenage R&B musicians, and didn't appreciate things like them just not turning up for one gig they were booked for, saying to them "The Bachelors never missed a date in their lives. One of them even had an accident on their way to do a pantomime in Bristol and went on with his leg in plaster and twenty-one stitches in his head." Them were not particularly interested in performing in pantomimes in Bristol, or anywhere else, but the British music scene was still intimately tied in with the older showbiz tradition, and Solomon had connections throughout that industry -- as well as owning a publishing and production company he was also a major shareholder in Radio Caroline, one of the pirate radio stations that broadcast from ships anchored just outside British territorial waters to avoid broadcasting regulations, and his father was a major shareholder in Decca itself. Given Solomon's connections, it wasn't surprising that Them were chosen to be one of the Decca acts produced by Bert Berns on his next UK trip in August 1964. The track earmarked for their next single was their rearrangement of "Baby Please Don't Go", a Delta blues song that had originally been recorded in 1935 by Big Joe Williams and included on the Harry Smith Anthology: [Excerpt: Big Joe Williams' Washboard Blues Singers , "Baby Please Don't Go"] though it's likely that Them had learned it from Muddy Waters' version, which is much closer to theirs: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "Baby Please Don't Go"] Bert Berns helped the group tighten up their arrangement, which featured a new riff thought up by Billy Harrison, and he also brought in a session guitarist, Jimmy Page, to play rhythm guitar. Again he used a session drummer, this time Andy White who had played on "Love Me Do". Everyone agreed that the result was a surefire hit: [Excerpt: Them, "Baby Please Don't Go"] At the session with Berns, Them cut several other songs, including some written by Berns, but it was eventually decided that the B-side should be a song of Morrison's, written in tribute to his dead cousin Gloria, which they'd recorded at their first session with Dick Rowe: [Excerpt: Them, "Gloria"] "Baby Please Don't Go" backed with "Gloria" was one of the great double-sided singles of the sixties, but it initially did nothing on the charts, and the group were getting depressed at their lack of success, Morrison and Harrison were constantly arguing as each thought of himself as the leader of the group, and the group's drummer quit in frustration. Pat McAuley, the group's new keyboard player, switched to drums, and brought in his brother Jackie to replace him on keyboards. To make matters worse, while "Baby Please Don't Go" had flopped, the group had hoped that their next single would be one of the songs they'd recorded with Berns, a Berns song called "Here Comes the Night". Unfortunately for them, Berns had also recorded another version of it for Decca, this one with Lulu, a Scottish singer who had recently had a hit with a cover of the Isley Brothers' "Shout!", and her version was released as a single: [Excerpt: Lulu, "Here Comes the Night"] Luckily for Them, though unluckily for Lulu, her record didn't make the top forty, so there was still the potential for Them to release their version of it. Phil Solomon hadn't given up on "Baby Please Don't Go", though, and he began a media campaign for the record. He moved the group into the same London hotel where Jimmy Savile was staying -- Savile is now best known for his monstrous crimes, which I won't go into here except to say that you shouldn't google him if you don't know about them, but at the time he was Britain's most popular DJ, the presenter of Top of the Pops, the BBC's major TV pop show, and a columnist in a major newspaper. Savile started promoting Them, and they would later credit him with a big part of their success. But Solomon was doing a lot of other things to promote the group as well. He part-owned Radio Caroline, and so "Baby Please Don't Go" went into regular rotation on the station. He called in a favour with the makers of Ready Steady Go! and got "Baby Please Don't Go" made into the show's new theme tune for two months, and soon the record, which had been a flop on its first release, crawled its way up into the top ten. For the group's next single, Decca put out their version of "Here Comes the Night", and that was even more successful, making it all the way to number two on the charts, and making the American top thirty: [Excerpt: Them, "Here Comes the Night"] As that was at its chart peak, the group also performed at the NME Poll-Winners' Party at Wembley Stadium, a show hosted by Savile and featuring The Moody Blues, Freddie and the Dreamers, Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, Herman's Hermits, Cilla Black, Donovan, The Searchers, Dusty Springfield, The Animals,The Kinks, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles, among others. Even on that bill, reviewers singled out Them's seven-minute performance of Bobby Bland's "Turn on Your Love Light" for special praise, though watching the video of it it seems a relatively sloppy performance. But the group were already starting to fall apart. Jackie McAuley was sacked from the group shortly after that Wembley show -- according to some of the group, because of his use of amphetamines, but it's telling that when the Protestant bass player Alan Henderson told the Catholic McAuley he was out of the group, he felt the need to emphasise that "I've got nothing against" -- and then use a term that's often regarded as an anti-Catholic slur... On top of this, the group were also starting to get a bad reputation among the press -- they would simply refuse to answer questions, or answer them in monosyllables, or just swear at journalists. Where groups like the Rolling Stones carefully cultivated a "bad boy" image, but were doing so knowingly and within carefully delineated limits, Them were just unpleasant and rude because that's who they were. Bert Berns came back to the UK to produce a couple of tracks for the group's first album, but he soon had to go back to America, as he had work to do there -- he'd just started up his own label, a rival to Red Bird, called BANG, which stood for Bert, Ahmet, Neshui, Gerald -- Berns had co-founded it with the Ertegun brothers and Jerry Wexler, though he soon took total control over it. BANG had just scored a big hit with "I Want Candy" by the Strangeloves, a song Berns had co-written: [Excerpt: The Strangeloves, "I Want Candy"] And the Strangeloves in turn had discovered a singer called Rick Derringer, and Bang put out a single by him under the name "The McCoys", using a backing track Berns had produced as a Strangeloves album track, their version of his earlier hit "My Girl Sloopy". The retitled "Hang on Sloopy" went to number one: [Excerpt: The McCoys, "Hang on Sloopy"] Berns was also getting interested in signing a young Brill Building songwriter named Neil Diamond... The upshot was that rather than continuing to work with Berns, Them were instead handed over to Tommy Scott, an associate of Solomon's who'd sung backing vocals on "Here Comes the Night", but who was best known for having produced "Terry" by Twinkle: [Excerpt: Twinkle, "Terry"] The group were not impressed with Scott's productions, and their next two singles flopped badly, not making the charts at all. Billy Harrison and Morrison were becoming less and less able to tolerate each other, and eventually Morrison and Henderson forced Harrison out. Pat McAuley quit two weeks later, The McAuley brothers formed their own rival lineup of Them, which initially also featured Billy Harrison, though he soon left, and they got signed to a management contract with Reg Calvert, a rival of Solomon's who as well as managing several pop groups also owned Radio City, a pirate station that was in competition with Radio Caroline. Calvert registered the trademark in the name Them, something that Solomon had never done for the group, and suddenly there was a legal dispute over the name. Solomon retaliated by registering trademarks for the names "The Fortunes" and "Pinkerton's Assorted Colours" -- two groups Calvert managed -- and putting together rival versions of those groups. However the problem soon resolved itself, albeit tragically -- Calvert got into a huge row with Major Oliver Smedley, a failed right-libertarian politician who, when not co-founding the Institute for Economic Affairs and quitting the Liberal Party for their pro-European stance and left-wing economics, was one of Solomon's co-directors of Radio Caroline. Smedley shot Calvert, killing him, and successfully pled self-defence at his subsequent trial. The jury let Smedley off after only a minute of deliberation, and awarded Smedley two hundred and fifty guineas to pay for his costs. The McAuley brothers' group renamed themselves to Them Belfast -- and the word beginning with g that some Romany people regard as a slur for their ethnic group -- and made some records, mostly only released in Sweden, produced by Kim Fowley, who would always look for any way to cash in on a hit record, and wrote "Gloria's Dream" for them: [Excerpt: Them Belfast G***ies, "Gloria's Dream"] Morrison and Henderson continued their group, and had a surprise hit in the US when Decca issued "Mystic Eyes", an album track they'd recorded for their first album, as a single in the US, and it made the top forty: [Excerpt: Them, "Mystic Eyes"] On the back of that, Them toured the US, and got a long residency at the Whisky a Go-Go in LA, where they were supported by a whole string of the Sunset Strip's most exciting new bands -- Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, The Association, Buffalo Springfield, and the Doors. The group became particularly friendly with the Doors, with the group's new guitarist getting thrown out of clubs with Jim Morrison for shouting "Johnny Rivers is a wanker!" at Rivers while Rivers was on stage, and Jim Morrison joining them on stage for duets, though the Doors were staggered at how much the Belfast group could drink -- their drink bill for their first week at the Whisky A Go-Go was $5400. And those expenses caused problems, because Van Morrison agreed before the tour started that he would be on a fixed salary, paid by Phil Solomon, and Solomon would get all the money from the promoters. But then Morrison found out how much Solomon was making, and decided that it wasn't fair that Solomon would get all that money when Morrison was only getting the comparatively small amount he'd agreed to. When Tommy Scott, who Solomon had sent over to look after the group on tour, tried to collect the takings from the promoters, he was told "Van Morrison's already taken the money". Solomon naturally dropped the group, who continued touring the US without any management, and sued them. Various Mafia types offered to take up the group's management contract, and even to have Solomon murdered, but the group ended up just falling apart. Van Morrison quit the group, and Alan Henderson struggled on for another five years with various different lineups of session men, recording albums as Them which nobody bought. He finally stopped performing as Them in 1972. He reunited with Billy Harrison and Eric Wrixon, the group's original keyboardist, in 1979, and they recorded another album and toured briefly. Wrixon later formed another lineup of Them, which for a while included Billy Harrison, and toured with that group, billed as Them The Belfast Blues Band, until Wrixon's death in 2015. Morrison, meanwhile, had other plans. Now that Them's two-year contract with Solomon was over, he wanted to have the solo career people had been telling him he deserved. And he knew how he was going to do it. All along, he'd thought that Bert Berns had been the only person in the music industry who understood him as an artist, and now of course Berns had his own record label. Van Morrison was going to sign to BANG Records, and he was going to work again with Bert Berns, the man who was making hits for everyone he worked with. But the story of "Brown-Eyed Girl", and Van Morrison going solo, and the death of Bert Berns, is a story for another time...

america tv love music american new york history canada black english uk british americans germany canadian dj european ireland united kingdom night detroit jewish institute irish bbc blues sweden witness britain animals atlantic manhattan catholic beatles hurricanes studio avengers hang rolling stones scottish delta birmingham doors rock and roll east coast bang whiskey rhythm hurts twist rivers henderson hawks northern ireland burke morrison bachelors belfast black americans herman pops jehovah dreamers go go protestant wembley kinks del mar rod stewart tilt presbyterian maritime ray charles vibrations mixcloud chuck berry jim morrison van morrison fortunes rock music neil diamond wembley stadium jimmy page muddy waters atlantic records stand by me sunset strip liberal party monarchs british invasion boardwalk calvert isley brothers hank williams drifters pinkerton gamblers searchers pacemakers twinkle ahmet george jones moody blues larry page robbie robertson dusty springfield bo diddley pirate radio john bonham hermits radio city ben e king captain beefheart redbird stoller buffalo springfield decca sister rosetta tharpe leadbelly economic affairs mccoys jimmy savile levon helm smedley dirty water magic band berns cilla black leiber solomon burke romany louis jordan jimmie rodgers rick derringer jelly roll morton savile dirty business roy wood johnny rivers whisky a go go brown eyed girl ronnie hawkins andy white love me do brill building radio caroline levene georgie fame kim fowley joel selvin steve marriott jerry wexler everybody needs somebody standells brian poole bobby bland billy j kramer slim harpo i want candy tremeloes baby please don american rock and roll blue flames one way love bert berns graeme edge alan henderson big joe williams dale hawkins andrew oldham british r tommy scott ruby murray ertegun bobby graham tilt araiza

6: Rock Conversations featuring Dorothy Carvello

Rock Conversations

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 15, 2021 36:02

Dorothy Carvello started her career in the music business in 1987, when she became an assistant to Ahmet Ertegun, the legendary head of Atlantic Records. And what a ride that began! Dorothy shares some of her many colorful stories about Ertegun, Michael Hutchence of INXS, David Geffen and Aerosmith, among others. She's the author of "Anything for a Hit" (Chicago Review Press). www.anythingforahitbook.com

conversations rock aerosmith atlantic records inxs michael hutchence david geffen ahmet ertegun ertegun

Soulbeat: Bill Graham (14/06/21)

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 14, 2021

Wexler envió una carta a Ertegun el 3 de mayo de 1975, en la que decía: “Bajo ninguna circunstancia, Ahmet, puedo ser tu empleado. Esa es mi última palabra".

bob dylan esa bajo carlos santana dire straits ahmet wexler bill graham joe turner ertegun soulbeat

Soulbeat: Asylum (24/05/21)

Play Episode Listen Later May 24, 2021

Mon, 24 May 2021 23:30:00 +0200 Canal Extremadura http://www.canalextremadura.es/audio/soulbeat-asylum-240521 http://www.canalextremadura.es/audio/soulbeat-asylum-240521 Ertegun comenzó a explicar que no tenía control sobre lo que grababan los Rolling Stones y que Mick Jagger no era racista.

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Soulbeat: Los Stones (12/04/21)

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 12, 2021

Mon, 12 Apr 2021 23:30:00 +0200 Canal Extremadura http://www.canalextremadura.es/audio/soulbeat-los-stones-120421 http://www.canalextremadura.es/audio/soulbeat-los-stones-120421 Ertegun había conocido a la banda por primera vez el 23 de octubre de 1964, en el apartamento del fotógrafo Jerry Schatzberg.

stones led zeppelin ray charles bobby darin bill graham jerry schatzberg ertegun soulbeat

Soulbeat: CSN&Y (15/03/21)

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 15, 2021

Mon, 15 Mar 2021 23:30:00 +0100 Canal Extremadura http://www.canalextremadura.es/audio/soulbeat-csny-150321 http://www.canalextremadura.es/audio/soulbeat-csny-150321 Después de que Ertegun convenció a David Geffen de que era la mejor persona para llevar a CS&N, le dijo a Clive Davis que había cambiado de opinión y le pidió liberar a Crosby y Nash de sus contratos.

despu cs jimi hendrix clive davis david geffen bill graham moby grape ertegun soulbeat

Soulbeat: Crosby, Stills & Nash (08/03/21)

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 8, 2021

Mon, 08 Mar 2021 23:30:00 +0100 Canal Extremadura http://www.canalextremadura.es/audio/soulbeat-crosby-stills-nash-080321 http://www.canalextremadura.es/audio/soulbeat-crosby-stills-nash-080321 Ertegun y Wexler ofrecieron a los nuevos propietarios 40 millones de dólares para volver a comprar Atlantic y fueron rechazados.

atlantic aretha franklin buddy holly wexler gary cooper judy collins crosby stills fred zinnemann ertegun soulbeat

Soulbeat: For What It's Worth (22/02/21)

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 22, 2021

En un negocio donde todas las credenciales eran personales y un gran negocio podía depender de lo bueno que fuera un ejecutivo de la industria, Ertegun estableció inmediatamente sus credenciales sentándose con la banda en la oficina de Greene and Stone para poder decirles por qué deberían firmar con Atlantic.

stone atlantic greene neil young iron butterfly richie furay moby grape ertegun soulbeat

Soulbeat: Buffalo Springfield (15/02/21)

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 15, 2021

Charlie Greene y Brian Stone estaban tratando de hablar con Ertegun sobre un nuevo grupo muy talentoso que estaban dirigiendo.

andy warhol jackie kennedy buffalo springfield dr. john charlie greene mac rebennack ertegun soulbeat

Soulbeat: Mica Ertegun (18/01/21)

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 18, 2021

La noche en que Ahmet Ertegun conoció a su futura esposa a través de amigos mutuos en Bon Soir, un pequeño cabaret, lleno de gente famosa en la calle 8 en Greenwich Village, el matrimonio era lo último en lo que pensaba.

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Soulbeat - Ray Charles (26/10/20)

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 26, 2020

Cuando Ray Charles entró en el estudio en mayo de 1953, Ertegun asumió un papel mucho más activo en el proceso de grabación.

ray charles greta garbo ruth brown tom dowd doc pomus ertegun soulbeat

Soulbeat - Professor Longhair (19/10/20)

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 19, 2020

Ertegun informó al hombre nacido como Henry Roeland Byrd que ahora iba a grabar para Atlantic. "Lo siento mucho pero firmé con Mercury la semana pasada. Pero firmé con ellos como Roeland Byrd. Contigo puedo ser el Profesor Longhair".

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Soulbeat - Ertegun & Abramson (05/10/20)

TrueFire Live: Guitar Lessons + Q&As

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 5, 2020

En 1948, Atlantic tuvo cierto éxito con dos temas instrumentales de jazz, "Old Black Magic" de Tiny Grimes y "The Spider" de Joe Morris, quien también grabó "Lowe Groovin", que luego se convirtió en el tema principal del DJ de radio de R&B de Washington Jack Lowe Endler.

dj atlantic spider abramson tyrone power joe morris vernon duke leonard chess ertegun stick mcghee soulbeat

Scott Sharrard - Souther Roots Licks & Creative Approaches Guitar Lessons, Performance & Interview

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 4, 2020 77:35

Scott Sharrard talks about his Souther Roots Licks & Creative Approaches guitar lessons available on TrueFire, performs, and answers questions. To learn more and watch the video from this live session, please visit truefire.com/live.About Scott:Scott Sharrard is best known as lead guitarist and bandleader to the late Gregg Allman. But his personal artistic journey – which includes singing, songwriting, producing and arranging – began long before he first teamed up with the rock icon.It’s a mission that resumes with “Saving Grace,” Sharrard’s fifth [or sixth?] album -- and his first since Allman’s death.“Gregg had a pure passion and heart,” Sharrard says of his friend, “especially when it came to being a musician. That authenticity and dedication is a daily inspiration, and I will always carry that with me onstage and in the studio.”“Saving Grace,” with the blues at its core, bears a distinctly southern spirit, seamlessly assimilating the sounds of American roots music that Sharrard has long embraced. Sessions took place in Memphis and at the historic FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Half the album employs the Hi Rhythm Section, the other The Swampers of Muscle Shoals.“These guys are legends and heroes of ours who have played on so many life-changing records,” Sharrard says. “This record was steeped in the best the South has to offer. We cut the rhythm section and lead vocals all live on the floor, direct to tape. Old school. We let the songs and the band speak. We also had some of the best barbecue and soul food you could ever imagine, and a lot of laughs and good times with our heroes. How can you lose?”‘All those cats schooled me…’Sharrard’s travels to the heart of the American South began in his native Milwaukee. He was born December 28, 1976 – the day his hero Freddie King died – and was a club fixture in Brewtown long before he could legally take a drink.“Milwaukee at that time was an oasis for a whole group of musical masters,” Sharrard recalls. “Mel Rhyne, Buddy Miles, Hubert Sumlin, Luther Allison, Clyde Stubblefield… They were our local bar bands! All those cats schooled me in different ways, backstage, on gigs and at jams.”Sharrard was 15 when his father took him to a local blues joint called the Up and Under Pub. There he sat in with singer/guitarist (and local one-named legend) Stokes, who would become his mentor. Another was powerhouse “Chitlin’ Circuit” singer and guitarist Willie Higgins.Sharrard soon graduated to occasional dates in Chicago, with tutelage coming via jams alongside two fabled Muddy Waters sidemen, drummer Willie “Big Eyes” Smith and pianist Pinetop Perkins.Big Apple, not Big EasyThen came a chance 1996 move to New York City. The 20-year-old Sharrard, eager to bolt Milwaukee, had his mind on New Orleans. But his friend Sean Dixon, with whom he had a band called The Chesterfields, had found a rent-controlled apartment in the East Village.“That settled it,” Sharrard remembers with a laugh. “I became a New York City resident for the first time. My next-door neighbor was Allen Ginsberg, who was already one of my literary heroes at that time. I used to eat at Mee’s Chinese restaurant sitting across from Allen. It was our corner restaurant with a cheap dinner special. He’d always order the ginger fish and write! … It was like a dream, really. All those giant buildings spreading into infinity. It was so overwhelming.”Sharrard had been in the Big Apple but a year when he met iconic Atlantic Records executive Ahmet Ertegun, who mentored The Chesterfields and gave the young guitar-slinger some sage advice.“Ahmet told me that you must do it all – and well – if you want to survive as a musician,” Sharrard remembers. “He told me to get it all together: writing, singing, producing, playing, arranging. He convinced me to work twice as hard because around 2000 he saw the end of the music business as we knew it. He felt no one was around to support artists like back in the heyday of the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies.”The Chesterfields cut three albums and toured nationally before Sharrard began to chart his own course. A series of releases followed, including “Dawnbreaker” (2005), “Analog/Monolog” (2008) and “Ante Up” (2009).Ertegun wasn’t the only legend with Sharrard on his radar back then: The young guitarist also forged a relationship with Levon Helm – performing with The Band drummer about a dozen times, including his final gig just before his death in April of 2012.Sharrard remains close with Helm’s daughter, Amy, and a host of other artists on the Woodstock scene.Preparation meets opportunityIt was through Amy’s then-husband, multi-instrumentalist Jay Collins – already a member of Allman’s band – that Sharrard embarked on the collaboration of a lifetime. In the fall of 2008, Sharrard began a nearly decade-long run with the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer.“I grew up on the music of the Allman Brothers,” says Sharrard. “I consider first hearing them to be the ‘Big Bang’ moment for me as a pre-teen. I’ve always been chasing what I like to call ‘Real Rock and Roll,’ a blend of blues, jazz, soul, country and folk – with the central goal being to create an original sound of your own. In that respect, working with Gregg just solidified everything I’ve believed since I was a kid.”Sharrard joined the Gregg Allman Band as a touring guitarist and later became Musical Director.The fruitful partnership ended with the 69-year-old Allman’s death on May 27, 2017. But not before Allman covered Sharrard’s “Love Like Kerosene” on 2015’s “Gregg Allman Live: Back to Macon, GA,” and again on Allman’s eighth and final solo album, the posthumous, GRAMMY-nominated “Southern Blood” (Rounder Records, 2017).Another “Southern Blood” track, the unforgettable farewell “My Only True Friend” – co-written by Sharrard and Allman – earned a GRAMMY nomination for Americana Song of the Year.Sharrard’s deep respect for Allman factored heavily into the 2018 release date for “Saving Grace.” Tracking was completed in December of 2016. But Sharrard – knowing Allman’s health was failing and that “Southern Blood” would be his last hurrah – chose to delay its unveiling.He’s now begun a new chapter with an album he consciously wanted to summarize the last 20 years of his work – and one that showcases the totality of his artistry: as guitarist, singer, songwriter, producer, arranger and bandleader.In short, he says, it’s rock n’ roll rooted in everything else.“I basically have a rock ’n’ roll band,” Sharrard explains. “When I was growing up, I loved bands like Little Feat, Led Zeppelin and the Allmans. They would explore so many styles and experiment. That’s something I have always tried to embrace, and that’s how I want to present my music today. This is what I tried to do with Gregg. Now I’m continuing that as a solo artist.”Scott has recently joined the legendary band Little Feat as a guitarist/vocalist. He will be releasing his 6th solo album in Spring 2020.

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Scott Sharrard - Southern Roots Guitar Lessons, Performances, & Interview

TrueFire Live: Guitar Lessons + Q&As

Play Episode Listen Later May 24, 2020 86:46

Scott Sharrard discusses his Southern Roots guitar lessons available on TrueFire, performs, and answers questions. To learn more and watch the video from this live session, please visit truefire.com/live.About Scott: Scott Sharrard is best known as lead guitarist and bandleader to the late Gregg Allman. But his personal artistic journey – which includes singing, songwriting, producing and arranging – began long before he first teamed up with the rock icon.It’s a mission that resumes with “Saving Grace,” Sharrard’s fifth [or sixth?] album -- and his first since Allman’s death.“Gregg had a pure passion and heart,” Sharrard says of his friend, “especially when it came to being a musician. That authenticity and dedication is a daily inspiration, and I will always carry that with me onstage and in the studio.”“Saving Grace,” with the blues at its core, bears a distinctly southern spirit, seamlessly assimilating the sounds of American roots music that Sharrard has long embraced. Sessions took place in Memphis and at the historic FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Half the album employs the Hi Rhythm Section, the other The Swampers of Muscle Shoals.“These guys are legends and heroes of ours who have played on so many life-changing records,” Sharrard says. “This record was steeped in the best the South has to offer. We cut the rhythm section and lead vocals all live on the floor, direct to tape. Old school. We let the songs and the band speak. We also had some of the best barbecue and soul food you could ever imagine, and a lot of laughs and good times with our heroes. How can you lose?”‘All those cats schooled me…’Sharrard’s travels to the heart of the American South began in his native Milwaukee. He was born December 28, 1976 – the day his hero Freddie King died – and was a club fixture in Brewtown long before he could legally take a drink.“Milwaukee at that time was an oasis for a whole group of musical masters,” Sharrard recalls. “Mel Rhyne, Buddy Miles, Hubert Sumlin, Luther Allison, Clyde Stubblefield… They were our local bar bands! All those cats schooled me in different ways, backstage, on gigs and at jams.”Sharrard was 15 when his father took him to a local blues joint called the Up and Under Pub. There he sat in with singer/guitarist (and local one-named legend) Stokes, who would become his mentor. Another was powerhouse “Chitlin’ Circuit” singer and guitarist Willie Higgins.Sharrard soon graduated to occasional dates in Chicago, with tutelage coming via jams alongside two fabled Muddy Waters sidemen, drummer Willie “Big Eyes” Smith and pianist Pinetop Perkins.Big Apple, not Big EasyThen came a chance 1996 move to New York City. The 20-year-old Sharrard, eager to bolt Milwaukee, had his mind on New Orleans. But his friend Sean Dixon, with whom he had a band called The Chesterfields, had found a rent-controlled apartment in the East Village.“That settled it,” Sharrard remembers with a laugh. “I became a New York City resident for the first time. My next-door neighbor was Allen Ginsberg, who was already one of my literary heroes at that time. I used to eat at Mee’s Chinese restaurant sitting across from Allen. It was our corner restaurant with a cheap dinner special. He’d always order the ginger fish and write! … It was like a dream, really. All those giant buildings spreading into infinity. It was so overwhelming.”Sharrard had been in the Big Apple but a year when he met iconic Atlantic Records executive Ahmet Ertegun, who mentored The Chesterfields and gave the young guitar-slinger some sage advice.“Ahmet told me that you must do it all – and well – if you want to survive as a musician,” Sharrard remembers. “He told me to get it all together: writing, singing, producing, playing, arranging. He convinced me to work twice as hard because around 2000 he saw the end of the music business as we knew it. He felt no one was around to support artists like back in the heyday of the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies.”The Chesterfields cut three albums and toured nationally before Sharrard began to chart his own course. A series of releases followed, including “Dawnbreaker” (2005), “Analog/Monolog” (2008) and “Ante Up” (2009).Ertegun wasn’t the only legend with Sharrard on his radar back then: The young guitarist also forged a relationship with Levon Helm – performing with The Band drummer about a dozen times, including his final gig just before his death in April of 2012.Sharrard remains close with Helm’s daughter, Amy, and a host of other artists on the Woodstock scene.Preparation meets opportunityIt was through Amy’s then-husband, multi-instrumentalist Jay Collins – already a member of Allman’s band – that Sharrard embarked on the collaboration of a lifetime. In the fall of 2008, Sharrard began a nearly decade-long run with the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer.“I grew up on the music of the Allman Brothers,” says Sharrard. “I consider first hearing them to be the ‘Big Bang’ moment for me as a pre-teen. I’ve always been chasing what I like to call ‘Real Rock and Roll,’ a blend of blues, jazz, soul, country and folk – with the central goal being to create an original sound of your own. In that respect, working with Gregg just solidified everything I’ve believed since I was a kid.”Sharrard joined the Gregg Allman Band as a touring guitarist and later became Musical Director.The fruitful partnership ended with the 69-year-old Allman’s death on May 27, 2017. But not before Allman covered Sharrard’s “Love Like Kerosene” on 2015’s “Gregg Allman Live: Back to Macon, GA,” and again on Allman’s eighth and final solo album, the posthumous, GRAMMY-nominated “Southern Blood” (Rounder Records, 2017).Another “Southern Blood” track, the unforgettable farewell “My Only True Friend” – co-written by Sharrard and Allman – earned a GRAMMY nomination for Americana Song of the Year.Sharrard’s deep respect for Allman factored heavily into the 2018 release date for “Saving Grace.” Tracking was completed in December of 2016. But Sharrard – knowing Allman’s health was failing and that “Southern Blood” would be his last hurrah – chose to delay its unveiling.He’s now begun a new chapter with an album he consciously wanted to summarize the last 20 years of his work – and one that showcases the totality of his artistry: as guitarist, singer, songwriter, producer, arranger and bandleader.In short, he says, it’s rock n’ roll rooted in everything else.“I basically have a rock ’n’ roll band,” Sharrard explains. “When I was growing up, I loved bands like Little Feat, Led Zeppelin and the Allmans. They would explore so many styles and experiment. That’s something I have always tried to embrace, and that’s how I want to present my music today. This is what I tried to do with Gregg. Now I’m continuing that as a solo artist.”Scott has recently joined the legendary band Little Feat as a guitarist/vocalist. He will be releasing his 6th solo album in Spring 2020.

Episode 75: “There Goes My Baby” by the Drifters

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 23, 2020

Episode seventy-five of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “There Goes My Baby” by the Drifters, and how a fake record label, a band sacked for drunkenness, and a kettledrum player who couldn’t play led to a genre-defining hit. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Rebel Rouser” by Duane Eddy 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/ —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. I’m not going to recommend a compilation this week, for reasons I mention in the episode itself. There are plenty available, none of them as good as they should be. The episode on the early career of the Drifters is episode seventeen. My main resource in putting this episode together was Marv Goldberg’s website, and his excellent articles on both the early- and late-period Drifters, Bill Pinkney’s later Original Drifters, the Five Crowns, and Ben E. King. Lonely Avenue, a biography of Doc Pomus by Alex Halberstadt, helped me with the information on Pomus. Hound Dog: The Leiber and Stoller Autobiography by Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, and David Ritz tells Leiber and Stoller’s side of the story well. And Bill Millar’s book on the Drifters, while it is more a history of 50s vocal group music generally using them as a focus than a biography of the group, contains some interesting material. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A quick note about this one, before I start. As we’ll see in this episode, there have been many, many, lineups of the Drifters over the years, with many different people involved. One problem with that is that there have been lots of compilations put out under the Drifters name, featuring rerecorded versions of their hits, often involving nobody who was on the original record. Indeed, there have been so many of these compilations, and people putting together hits compilations, even for major labels, have been so sloppy, that I can’t find a single compilation of the Drifters’ recordings that doesn’t have one or two dodgy remakes on replacing the originals. I’ve used multiple sources for the recordings I’m excerpting here, and in most cases I’m pretty sure that the tracks I’m excerpting are the original versions. But particularly when it comes to songs that aren’t familiar, I may have ended up using a rerecording rather than the original. Anyway, on with the story… [Excerpt: The Drifters, “There Goes My Baby”] It’s been more than a year since we last properly checked in with the Drifters, one of the great R&B vocal groups of all time, so I’ll quickly bring you up to speed — if you want to hear the full story so far, episode seventeen, on “Money Honey”, gives you all the details. The Drifters had originally formed as the backing group for Clyde McPhatter, who had been the lead singer of Billy Ward and the Dominoes in the early fifties, when that group had had their biggest success. The original lineup of the group had all been sacked before they even released a record, and then a couple of members of the lineup who recorded their first big hits became ill or died, but the group had released two massive hits — “Money Honey” and “Such a Night”, both with McPhatter on lead vocals: [Excerpt: Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters, “Such a Night”] But then McPhatter had been drafted, and the group’s manager, George Treadwell, had got in a member of the original lineup, David Baughan, to replace McPhatter, as Baughan could sound a little like McPhatter. When McPhatter was discharged from the army, he decided to sell the group name to Treadwell, and the Drifters became employees of Treadwell, to be hired and fired at his discretion. This group went through several lineup changes, some of which we’ll look at later in this episode, but they kept making records that sounded a bit like the ones they’d been making with Clyde McPhatter, even after Baughan also left the group. But there was a big difference behind the scenes. Those early records had been produced by Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler, and had usually been arranged by Jesse Stone, the man who’d written “Money Honey” and many other early rock and roll hits, like “Shake, Rattle, and Roll”. But a little while after Baughan left the group, Ertegun and Wexler asked Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller to start working with them. Leiber and Stoller, you might remember, were working with a *lot* of people at the time. They’d come over to Atlantic Records with a non-exclusive contract to write and produce for the label, and while their main project at Atlantic was with the Coasters, they were also producing records for people like Ruth Brown, as well as also working on records for Elvis and others at RCA. But they took on the Drifters as well, and started producing a string of minor hits for them, including “Ruby Baby” and “Fools Fall In Love”. Those hits went top ten on the R&B chart, but did little or nothing in the pop market. [Excerpt: The Drifters, “Fools Fall In Love”] That song, which had Johnny Moore on lead vocals, was the last big hit for what we can think of as the “original” Drifters in some form. It came out in March 1957, and for the rest of the year they kept releasing singles, but nothing made the R&B charts at all, though a few did make the lower reaches of the Hot One Hundred. Throughout 1957, the group had been gaining and losing members. Bill Pinkney, who had been chosen by the other group members to be essentially their shop steward, had gone to Treadwell and asked for a raise in late 1956, and been promptly fired. He’d formed a group called the Flyers, with a new singer called Bobby Hendricks on lead. The Flyers recorded one single, “My Only Desire”: [Excerpt: the Flyers, “My Only Desire”] But then Tommy Evans, Pinkney’s replacement in the group, was fired, and Pinkney was brought back into the group. Hendricks thought that was the end of his career, but then a few days later Pinkney phoned him up — Johnny Moore was getting drafted, and Hendricks was brought into the group to take Moore’s place. But almost immediately after Hendricks joined the group, Pinkney once again asked for a raise, and was kicked out and Evans brought back in. Pinkney went off and made a record for Sam Phillips, with backing music overdubbed by Bill Justis: [Excerpt: Bill Pinkney, “After the Hop”] The group kept changing lineups, and there was only one session in 1958, which led to a horrible version of “Moonlight Bay”. Apparently, the session was run by Leiber and Stoller as an experiment (they would occasionally record old standards with the Coasters, so presumably they were seeing if the same thing would work with the Drifters), and several of the group’s members were drunk when they recorded it. They decided at the session that it was not going to be released, but then the next thing the group knew, it was out as their next single, with overdubs by a white vocal group, making it sound nothing like the Drifters at all: [Excerpt: The Drifters “Moonlight Bay”] Bobby Hendricks hated that recording session so much that he quit the group and went solo, going over to Sue Records, where he joined up with another former Drifter, Jimmy Oliver. Oliver wrote a song for Hendricks, “Itchy Twitchy Feeling”, and the Coasters sang the backup vocals for him, uncredited. That track went to number five on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: Bobby Hendricks, “Itchy Twitchy Feeling”] By this time, the Drifters were down to just three people — Gerhart Thrasher, Jimmy Milner, and Tommy Evans. They no longer had a lead singer, but they had a week’s worth of shows they were contracted to do, at the Harlem Apollo, on a show hosted by the DJ Doctor Jive. That show was headlined by Ray Charles, and also featured the Cookies, Solomon Burke, and a minor group called the Crowns, among several other acts. Treadwell was desperate, so he called Hendricks and Oliver and got them to return to the group just for one week, so they would have a lead vocalist. They both did return, though just as a favour. Then, at the end of the week’s residency, one of the group members got drunk and started shouting abuse at Doctor Jive, and at the owner of the Apollo. George Treadwell had had enough. He fired the entire group. Tommy Evans went on to join Charlie Fuqua’s version of the Ink Spots, and Bill Pinkney decided he wanted to get the old group back together. He got a 1955 lineup of the Drifters together — Pinkney, David Baughan, Gerhart Thrasher, and Andrew Thrasher. That group toured as The Original Drifters, and the group under that name would consist almost entirely of ex-members of the Drifters, with some coming or going, until 1968, when most of the group retired, while Pinkney carried on leading a group under that name until his death in 2007. But they couldn’t use that name on records. Instead they made records as the Harmony Grits: [Excerpt: The Harmony Grits, “I Could Have Told You”] and with ex-Drifter Johnny Moore singing lead, as a solo artist under the name Johnny Darrow: [Excerpt: Johnny Darrow, “Chew Tobacco Rag”] And with Bobby Hendricks singing lead, as the Sprites: [Excerpt: The Sprites, “My Picture”] But the reason they couldn’t call themselves the Drifters on their records is that George Treadwell owned the name, and he had hired a totally different group to tour and record under that name. The Crowns had their basis in a group called the Harmonaires, a street-corner group in New York. They had various members at first, but by the time they changed their name to the Five Crowns, they had stabilised on a lineup of Dock Green, Yonkie Paul, and three brothers — Papa, Nicky, and Sonny Boy Clark. The group were managed by Lover Patterson, who they believed was the manager of the Orioles, but was actually the Orioles’ valet. Nonetheless, Patterson did manage to get them signed to a small record label, Rainbow Records, where they released “You’re My Inspiration” in 1952: [Excerpt: The Five Crowns, “You’re My Inspiration”] The record label sent out a thousand copies of that single to one of their distributors, right at the point a truckers’ strike was called, and ended up having to send another thousand out by plane. That kind of thing sums up the kind of luck the Five Crowns would have for the next few years. Nothing they put out on Rainbow Records was any kind of a success, and in 1953 the group became the first act on a new label, Old Town Records — they actually met the owner of the label, Hy Weiss, in a waiting room, while they were waiting to audition for a different label. On Old Town they put out a couple of singles, starting with “You Could Be My Love”: [Excerpt: The Five Crowns, “You Could Be My Love”] But none of these singles were hits either, and the group were doing so badly that when Nicky Clark left the group, they couldn’t get another singer in to replace him at first — Lover Patterson stood on stage and mimed while the four remaining members sang, so there would still be five people in the Five Crowns. By 1955, the group had re-signed to Rainbow Records, now on their Riviera subsidiary, and they had gone through several further lineup changes. They now consisted of Yonkie Paul, Richard Lewis, Jesse Facing, Dock Green, and Bugeye Bailey. They put out one record on Riviera, “You Came To Me”: [Excerpt: The Five Crowns, “You Came to Me”] The group broke up shortly after that, and Dock Green put together a totally new lineup of the Five Crowns. That group signed to one of George Goldner’s labels, Gee, and released another single, and then they broke up. Green got together *another* lineup of the Five Crowns, made another record on another label, and then that group broke up too. They spent nearly two years without making a record, with constantly shifting lineups as people kept leaving and rejoining, and by the time they went into a studio again, they consisted of Charlie Thomas, Dock Green, Papa Clark, Elsbeary Hobbs, and a new tenor singer called Benjamin Earl Nelson, who hadn’t sung professionally before joining the group — he’d been working in a restaurant owned by his father, and Lover Patterson had heard him singing to himself while he was working and asked him to join the group. This lineup of the group, who were now calling themselves the Crowns rather than the Five Crowns, finally got a contract with a record label… or at least, it was sort of a record label. We’ve talked about Doc Pomus before, back in November, but as a brief recap — Pomus was a blues singer and songwriter, a white Jewish paraplegic whose birth name was Jerome Felder, who had become a blues shouter in the late forties: [Excerpt: Doc Pomus, “Send for the Doctor”] He had been working as a professional songwriter for a decade or so, and had written songs for people like Ray Charles, but the music he loved was hard bluesy R&B, and he didn’t understand the new rock and roll music at all. Other than writing “Young Blood”, which Leiber and Stoller had rewritten and made into a hit for the Coasters, he hadn’t written anything successful in quite some time. He’d recently started writing with a much younger man, Mort Shuman, who did understand rock and roll, and we heard one of the results of that last week — “Teenager in Love” by Dion and the Belmonts, which would be the start of a string of hits for them: [Excerpt: Dion and the Belmonts, “Teenager in Love”] But in 1958, that had not yet been released. Pomus’ wife had a baby on the way, and he was desperate for money. He was so desperate, he got involved in a scam. An old girlfriend introduced him to an acquaintance, a dance instructor named Fred Huckman. Huckman had recently married a rich old widow, and he wanted to get away from her during the day to sleep with other people. So Huckman decided he was going to become the owner of a record label, using his wife’s money to fund an office. The label was named R&B Records at Doc’s suggestion, and Doc was going to be the company’s president, while Mort was going to be the company’s shipping clerk. The company would have offices in 1650 Broadway, one of the buildings that these days gets lumped in when people talk about “the Brill Building”, though the actual Brill Building itself was a little way down the street at 1619. 1650 was still a prime music business location though, and the company’s office would let both Doc and Mort go and try to sell their songs to publishing companies and record labels. And they’d need to do this because R&B Records wasn’t going to put out any records at all. Doc and Mort’s actual job was that one of them had to be in the office at all times, so when Huckman’s wife phoned up, they could tell her that he’d just popped out, or was in a meeting, or something so she didn’t find out about his affairs. They lived off the scam for a little while, while writing songs, but eventually they started to get bored of doing nothing all day. And then Lucky Patterson brought the Crowns in. They didn’t realise that R&B Records wasn’t a real record label, and Pomus decided to audition them. When he did, he was amazed at how good they sounded. He decided that R&B Records was *going* to be a real record label, no matter what Huckman thought. He and Shuman wrote them a single in the style of the Coasters, and they got in the best session musicians in New York — people like King Curtis and Mickey Baker, who were old friends of Pomus — to play on it: [Excerpt: The Crowns, “Kiss and Make Up”] At first that record was completely unsuccessful, but then, rather amazingly, it started to climb in the charts, at least in Pittsburgh, where it became a local number one. It started to do better elsewhere as well, and it looked like the Crowns could have a promising career. And then one day Mrs. Huckman showed up at the office. Pomus tried to tell her that her husband had gone out and would be back later, but she insisted on waiting in the office, silently, all day. R&B Records closed the next day. But “Kiss and Make Up” had been a big enough success that the Crowns had ended up on that Doctor Jive show with the Drifters. And then when George Treadwell fired the Drifters, he immediately hired the Crowns — or at least, he hired four of them. Papa Clark had a drinking problem, and Treadwell was fed up of dealing with drunk singers. So from this point on the Drifters were Charlie Thomas, Dock Green, Elsbeary Hobbs, and Benjamin Nelson, who decided that he was going to take on a stage name and call himself Ben E. King. This new lineup of the group went out on tour for almost a year before going into the studio, and they were abysmal failures. Everywhere they went, promoters advertised their shows with photos of the old group, and then this new group of people came on stage looking and sounding nothing like the original Drifters. They were booed everywhere they went. They even caused problems for the other acts — at one show they nearly killed Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. Hawkins used to pop out of a coffin while performing “I Put A Spell on You”: [Excerpt: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “I Put a Spell on You”] The group were sometimes asked to carry the coffin onto the stage with Hawkins inside it, and one night Charlie Thomas accidentally nudged something and heard a click. What he didn’t realise was that Hawkins put matchbooks in the gap in the coffin lid, to stop it closing all the way — Thomas had knocked the coffin properly shut. The music started, and Hawkins tried to open the coffin, and couldn’t. He kept pushing, and the coffin wouldn’t open. Eventually, he rocked the coffin so hard that it fell off its stand and popped open, but if it hadn’t opened there was a very real danger that Hawkins could have asphyxiated. But something else happened on that tour — Ben E. King wrote a song called “There Goes My Baby”, which the group started to perform live. As they originally did it, it was quite a fast song, but when they finally got off the tour and went into the studio, Leiber and Stoller, who were going to be the producers for this new group just like they had been for the old group, decided to slow it down. They also decided that this was going to be a chance for them to experiment with some totally new production ideas. Stoller had become infatuated with a style called baion, a Brazillian musical style that is based on the same tresillo rhythm that a lot of New Orleans R&B is based on. If you don’t remember the tresillo rhythm, we talked about it a lot in episodes on Fats Domino and others, but it’s that “bom [pause] bom-bom [pause] bom [pause] bom-bom” rhythm. We’ve always been calling it the tresillo, but when people talk about the Drifters’ music they always follow Stoller’s lead and call it the baion rhythm, so that’s what we’ll do in future. They decided to use that rhythm, and also to use strings, which very few people had used on a rock and roll record before — this is an idea that several people seemed to have simultaneously, as we saw last week with Buddy Holly doing the same thing. It may, indeed, be that Leiber and Stoller had heard “It Doesn’t Matter Any More” and taken inspiration from it — Holly had died just over a month before the recording session for “There Goes My Baby”, and his single hit the top forty the same week that “There Goes My Baby” was recorded. Stoller sketched out some string lines, which were turned into full arrangements by an old classmate of his, Stan Applebaum, who had previously arranged for Lucky Millinder, and who had written a hit for Sarah Vaughan, who was married to Treadwell. Charlie Thomas was meant to sing lead on the track, but he just couldn’t get it right, and eventually it was decided to have King sing it instead, as he’d written the song. King tried to imitate the sound of Sam Cooke, but it came out sounding like no-one but King himself. Then, as a final touch, Leiber and Stoller decided to use a kettledrum on the track, rather than a normal drum kit. There was only one problem — the drummer they booked didn’t know how to change the pitch on the kettledrum using the foot pedal. So he just kept playing the same note throughout the song, even as the chords changed: [Excerpt: The Drifters, “There Goes My Baby”] When Leiber and Stoller took that to their bosses at Atlantic Records, they were horrified. Jerry Wexler said “It’s dog meat. You’ve wasted our money on an overpriced production that sounds like a radio caught between two stations. It’s a goddamn awful mess!” Ahmet Ertegun was a little more diplomatic, but still said that the record was unreleasable. But eventually he let them have a go at remixing it, and then the label stuck the record out, assuming it would do nothing. Instead, it went to number two on the charts, and became one of the biggest hits of 1959. Not only that, but it instantly opened up the possibilities for new ways of producing records. The new Drifters were a smash hit, and Leiber and Stoller were now as respected as producers as they already had been as songwriters. They got themselves a new office in the Brill Building, and they were on top of the world. But already there was a problem for the new Drifters, and that problem was named Lover Patterson. Rather than sign the Crowns to a management deal as a group, Patterson had signed them all as individuals, with separate contracts. And when he’d allowed George Treadwell to take over their management, he’d only sold the contracts for three of the four members. Ben E. King was still signed to Lover Patterson, rather than to George Treadwell. And Patterson decided that he was going to let King sing on the records, but he wasn’t going to let him tour with the group. So there was yet another lineup change for the Drifters, as they got in Johnnie Lee Williams to sing King’s parts on stage. Williams would sing one lead with the group in the studio, “If You Cry True Love, True Love”: [Excerpt: The Drifters, “If You Cry True Love, True Love”] But for the most part, King was the lead singer in the studio, and so there were five Drifters on the records, but only four on the road. But they were still having hits, and everybody seemed happy. And soon, they would all have the biggest hit of their careers, with a song that Doc Pomus had written with Mort Shuman, about his own wedding reception. We’ll hear more about that, and about Leiber and Stoller’s apprentice Phil Spector, when we return to the Drifters in a few weeks time.

love new york history babies doctors green night jewish broadway fall in love pittsburgh atlantic kiss elvis rock and roll teenagers apollo papa makeup evans shake cookies hop doc spell patterson hawkins true love excerpt mort flyers orioles tilt ray charles crowns mixcloud gee hendricks sam cooke riviera rock music rca youngblood buddy holly rattle atlantic records phil spector dominoes drifter jive drifters it doesn money honey wexler richard lewis coasters screamin sarah vaughan fats domino ben e king stoller brazillian shuman sam phillips treadwell leiber solomon burke jay hawkins pinkney ruth brown ink spots brill building belmonts king curtis ahmet ertegun charlie thomas jerry wexler mike stoller david ritz johnny moore billy ward jerry leiber jesse stone five crowns doc pomus clyde mcphatter new orleans r dock green moonlight bay ertegun mickey baker ruby baby andrew thrasher

Episode 75: “There Goes My Baby” by the Drifters

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 23, 2020

Episode seventy-five of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “There Goes My Baby” by the Drifters, and how a fake record label, a band sacked for drunkenness, and a kettledrum player who couldn’t play led to a genre-defining hit. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Rebel Rouser” by Duane Eddy 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/ —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. I’m not going to recommend a compilation this week, for reasons I mention in the episode itself. There are plenty available, none of them as good as they should be. The episode on the early career of the Drifters is episode seventeen. My main resource in putting this episode together was Marv Goldberg’s website, and his excellent articles on both the early- and late-period Drifters, Bill Pinkney’s later Original Drifters, the Five Crowns, and Ben E. King. Lonely Avenue, a biography of Doc Pomus by Alex Halberstadt, helped me with the information on Pomus. Hound Dog: The Leiber and Stoller Autobiography by Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, and David Ritz tells Leiber and Stoller’s side of the story well. And Bill Millar’s book on the Drifters, while it is more a history of 50s vocal group music generally using them as a focus than a biography of the group, contains some interesting material. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A quick note about this one, before I start. As we’ll see in this episode, there have been many, many, lineups of the Drifters over the years, with many different people involved. One problem with that is that there have been lots of compilations put out under the Drifters name, featuring rerecorded versions of their hits, often involving nobody who was on the original record. Indeed, there have been so many of these compilations, and people putting together hits compilations, even for major labels, have been so sloppy, that I can’t find a single compilation of the Drifters’ recordings that doesn’t have one or two dodgy remakes on replacing the originals. I’ve used multiple sources for the recordings I’m excerpting here, and in most cases I’m pretty sure that the tracks I’m excerpting are the original versions. But particularly when it comes to songs that aren’t familiar, I may have ended up using a rerecording rather than the original. Anyway, on with the story… [Excerpt: The Drifters, “There Goes My Baby”] It’s been more than a year since we last properly checked in with the Drifters, one of the great R&B vocal groups of all time, so I’ll quickly bring you up to speed — if you want to hear the full story so far, episode seventeen, on “Money Honey”, gives you all the details. The Drifters had originally formed as the backing group for Clyde McPhatter, who had been the lead singer of Billy Ward and the Dominoes in the early fifties, when that group had had their biggest success. The original lineup of the group had all been sacked before they even released a record, and then a couple of members of the lineup who recorded their first big hits became ill or died, but the group had released two massive hits — “Money Honey” and “Such a Night”, both with McPhatter on lead vocals: [Excerpt: Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters, “Such a Night”] But then McPhatter had been drafted, and the group’s manager, George Treadwell, had got in a member of the original lineup, David Baughan, to replace McPhatter, as Baughan could sound a little like McPhatter. When McPhatter was discharged from the army, he decided to sell the group name to Treadwell, and the Drifters became employees of Treadwell, to be hired and fired at his discretion. This group went through several lineup changes, some of which we’ll look at later in this episode, but they kept making records that sounded a bit like the ones they’d been making with Clyde McPhatter, even after Baughan also left the group. But there was a big difference behind the scenes. Those early records had been produced by Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler, and had usually been arranged by Jesse Stone, the man who’d written “Money Honey” and many other early rock and roll hits, like “Shake, Rattle, and Roll”. But a little while after Baughan left the group, Ertegun and Wexler asked Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller to start working with them. Leiber and Stoller, you might remember, were working with a *lot* of people at the time. They’d come over to Atlantic Records with a non-exclusive contract to write and produce for the label, and while their main project at Atlantic was with the Coasters, they were also producing records for people like Ruth Brown, as well as also working on records for Elvis and others at RCA. But they took on the Drifters as well, and started producing a string of minor hits for them, including “Ruby Baby” and “Fools Fall In Love”. Those hits went top ten on the R&B chart, but did little or nothing in the pop market. [Excerpt: The Drifters, “Fools Fall In Love”] That song, which had Johnny Moore on lead vocals, was the last big hit for what we can think of as the “original” Drifters in some form. It came out in March 1957, and for the rest of the year they kept releasing singles, but nothing made the R&B charts at all, though a few did make the lower reaches of the Hot One Hundred. Throughout 1957, the group had been gaining and losing members. Bill Pinkney, who had been chosen by the other group members to be essentially their shop steward, had gone to Treadwell and asked for a raise in late 1956, and been promptly fired. He’d formed a group called the Flyers, with a new singer called Bobby Hendricks on lead. The Flyers recorded one single, “My Only Desire”: [Excerpt: the Flyers, “My Only Desire”] But then Tommy Evans, Pinkney’s replacement in the group, was fired, and Pinkney was brought back into the group. Hendricks thought that was the end of his career, but then a few days later Pinkney phoned him up — Johnny Moore was getting drafted, and Hendricks was brought into the group to take Moore’s place. But almost immediately after Hendricks joined the group, Pinkney once again asked for a raise, and was kicked out and Evans brought back in. Pinkney went off and made a record for Sam Phillips, with backing music overdubbed by Bill Justis: [Excerpt: Bill Pinkney, “After the Hop”] The group kept changing lineups, and there was only one session in 1958, which led to a horrible version of “Moonlight Bay”. Apparently, the session was run by Leiber and Stoller as an experiment (they would occasionally record old standards with the Coasters, so presumably they were seeing if the same thing would work with the Drifters), and several of the group’s members were drunk when they recorded it. They decided at the session that it was not going to be released, but then the next thing the group knew, it was out as their next single, with overdubs by a white vocal group, making it sound nothing like the Drifters at all: [Excerpt: The Drifters “Moonlight Bay”] Bobby Hendricks hated that recording session so much that he quit the group and went solo, going over to Sue Records, where he joined up with another former Drifter, Jimmy Oliver. Oliver wrote a song for Hendricks, “Itchy Twitchy Feeling”, and the Coasters sang the backup vocals for him, uncredited. That track went to number five on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: Bobby Hendricks, “Itchy Twitchy Feeling”] By this time, the Drifters were down to just three people — Gerhart Thrasher, Jimmy Milner, and Tommy Evans. They no longer had a lead singer, but they had a week’s worth of shows they were contracted to do, at the Harlem Apollo, on a show hosted by the DJ Doctor Jive. That show was headlined by Ray Charles, and also featured the Cookies, Solomon Burke, and a minor group called the Crowns, among several other acts. Treadwell was desperate, so he called Hendricks and Oliver and got them to return to the group just for one week, so they would have a lead vocalist. They both did return, though just as a favour. Then, at the end of the week’s residency, one of the group members got drunk and started shouting abuse at Doctor Jive, and at the owner of the Apollo. George Treadwell had had enough. He fired the entire group. Tommy Evans went on to join Charlie Fuqua’s version of the Ink Spots, and Bill Pinkney decided he wanted to get the old group back together. He got a 1955 lineup of the Drifters together — Pinkney, David Baughan, Gerhart Thrasher, and Andrew Thrasher. That group toured as The Original Drifters, and the group under that name would consist almost entirely of ex-members of the Drifters, with some coming or going, until 1968, when most of the group retired, while Pinkney carried on leading a group under that name until his death in 2007. But they couldn’t use that name on records. Instead they made records as the Harmony Grits: [Excerpt: The Harmony Grits, “I Could Have Told You”] and with ex-Drifter Johnny Moore singing lead, as a solo artist under the name Johnny Darrow: [Excerpt: Johnny Darrow, “Chew Tobacco Rag”] And with Bobby Hendricks singing lead, as the Sprites: [Excerpt: The Sprites, “My Picture”] But the reason they couldn’t call themselves the Drifters on their records is that George Treadwell owned the name, and he had hired a totally different group to tour and record under that name. The Crowns had their basis in a group called the Harmonaires, a street-corner group in New York. They had various members at first, but by the time they changed their name to the Five Crowns, they had stabilised on a lineup of Dock Green, Yonkie Paul, and three brothers — Papa, Nicky, and Sonny Boy Clark. The group were managed by Lover Patterson, who they believed was the manager of the Orioles, but was actually the Orioles’ valet. Nonetheless, Patterson did manage to get them signed to a small record label, Rainbow Records, where they released “You’re My Inspiration” in 1952: [Excerpt: The Five Crowns, “You’re My Inspiration”] The record label sent out a thousand copies of that single to one of their distributors, right at the point a truckers’ strike was called, and ended up having to send another thousand out by plane. That kind of thing sums up the kind of luck the Five Crowns would have for the next few years. Nothing they put out on Rainbow Records was any kind of a success, and in 1953 the group became the first act on a new label, Old Town Records — they actually met the owner of the label, Hy Weiss, in a waiting room, while they were waiting to audition for a different label. On Old Town they put out a couple of singles, starting with “You Could Be My Love”: [Excerpt: The Five Crowns, “You Could Be My Love”] But none of these singles were hits either, and the group were doing so badly that when Nicky Clark left the group, they couldn’t get another singer in to replace him at first — Lover Patterson stood on stage and mimed while the four remaining members sang, so there would still be five people in the Five Crowns. By 1955, the group had re-signed to Rainbow Records, now on their Riviera subsidiary, and they had gone through several further lineup changes. They now consisted of Yonkie Paul, Richard Lewis, Jesse Facing, Dock Green, and Bugeye Bailey. They put out one record on Riviera, “You Came To Me”: [Excerpt: The Five Crowns, “You Came to Me”] The group broke up shortly after that, and Dock Green put together a totally new lineup of the Five Crowns. That group signed to one of George Goldner’s labels, Gee, and released another single, and then they broke up. Green got together *another* lineup of the Five Crowns, made another record on another label, and then that group broke up too. They spent nearly two years without making a record, with constantly shifting lineups as people kept leaving and rejoining, and by the time they went into a studio again, they consisted of Charlie Thomas, Dock Green, Papa Clark, Elsbeary Hobbs, and a new tenor singer called Benjamin Earl Nelson, who hadn’t sung professionally before joining the group — he’d been working in a restaurant owned by his father, and Lover Patterson had heard him singing to himself while he was working and asked him to join the group. This lineup of the group, who were now calling themselves the Crowns rather than the Five Crowns, finally got a contract with a record label… or at least, it was sort of a record label. We’ve talked about Doc Pomus before, back in November, but as a brief recap — Pomus was a blues singer and songwriter, a white Jewish paraplegic whose birth name was Jerome Felder, who had become a blues shouter in the late forties: [Excerpt: Doc Pomus, “Send for the Doctor”] He had been working as a professional songwriter for a decade or so, and had written songs for people like Ray Charles, but the music he loved was hard bluesy R&B, and he didn’t understand the new rock and roll music at all. Other than writing “Young Blood”, which Leiber and Stoller had rewritten and made into a hit for the Coasters, he hadn’t written anything successful in quite some time. He’d recently started writing with a much younger man, Mort Shuman, who did understand rock and roll, and we heard one of the results of that last week — “Teenager in Love” by Dion and the Belmonts, which would be the start of a string of hits for them: [Excerpt: Dion and the Belmonts, “Teenager in Love”] But in 1958, that had not yet been released. Pomus’ wife had a baby on the way, and he was desperate for money. He was so desperate, he got involved in a scam. An old girlfriend introduced him to an acquaintance, a dance instructor named Fred Huckman. Huckman had recently married a rich old widow, and he wanted to get away from her during the day to sleep with other people. So Huckman decided he was going to become the owner of a record label, using his wife’s money to fund an office. The label was named R&B Records at Doc’s suggestion, and Doc was going to be the company’s president, while Mort was going to be the company’s shipping clerk. The company would have offices in 1650 Broadway, one of the buildings that these days gets lumped in when people talk about “the Brill Building”, though the actual Brill Building itself was a little way down the street at 1619. 1650 was still a prime music business location though, and the company’s office would let both Doc and Mort go and try to sell their songs to publishing companies and record labels. And they’d need to do this because R&B Records wasn’t going to put out any records at all. Doc and Mort’s actual job was that one of them had to be in the office at all times, so when Huckman’s wife phoned up, they could tell her that he’d just popped out, or was in a meeting, or something so she didn’t find out about his affairs. They lived off the scam for a little while, while writing songs, but eventually they started to get bored of doing nothing all day. And then Lucky Patterson brought the Crowns in. They didn’t realise that R&B Records wasn’t a real record label, and Pomus decided to audition them. When he did, he was amazed at how good they sounded. He decided that R&B Records was *going* to be a real record label, no matter what Huckman thought. He and Shuman wrote them a single in the style of the Coasters, and they got in the best session musicians in New York — people like King Curtis and Mickey Baker, who were old friends of Pomus — to play on it: [Excerpt: The Crowns, “Kiss and Make Up”] At first that record was completely unsuccessful, but then, rather amazingly, it started to climb in the charts, at least in Pittsburgh, where it became a local number one. It started to do better elsewhere as well, and it looked like the Crowns could have a promising career. And then one day Mrs. Huckman showed up at the office. Pomus tried to tell her that her husband had gone out and would be back later, but she insisted on waiting in the office, silently, all day. R&B Records closed the next day. But “Kiss and Make Up” had been a big enough success that the Crowns had ended up on that Doctor Jive show with the Drifters. And then when George Treadwell fired the Drifters, he immediately hired the Crowns — or at least, he hired four of them. Papa Clark had a drinking problem, and Treadwell was fed up of dealing with drunk singers. So from this point on the Drifters were Charlie Thomas, Dock Green, Elsbeary Hobbs, and Benjamin Nelson, who decided that he was going to take on a stage name and call himself Ben E. King. This new lineup of the group went out on tour for almost a year before going into the studio, and they were abysmal failures. Everywhere they went, promoters advertised their shows with photos of the old group, and then this new group of people came on stage looking and sounding nothing like the original Drifters. They were booed everywhere they went. They even caused problems for the other acts — at one show they nearly killed Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. Hawkins used to pop out of a coffin while performing “I Put A Spell on You”: [Excerpt: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “I Put a Spell on You”] The group were sometimes asked to carry the coffin onto the stage with Hawkins inside it, and one night Charlie Thomas accidentally nudged something and heard a click. What he didn’t realise was that Hawkins put matchbooks in the gap in the coffin lid, to stop it closing all the way — Thomas had knocked the coffin properly shut. The music started, and Hawkins tried to open the coffin, and couldn’t. He kept pushing, and the coffin wouldn’t open. Eventually, he rocked the coffin so hard that it fell off its stand and popped open, but if it hadn’t opened there was a very real danger that Hawkins could have asphyxiated. But something else happened on that tour — Ben E. King wrote a song called “There Goes My Baby”, which the group started to perform live. As they originally did it, it was quite a fast song, but when they finally got off the tour and went into the studio, Leiber and Stoller, who were going to be the producers for this new group just like they had been for the old group, decided to slow it down. They also decided that this was going to be a chance for them to experiment with some totally new production ideas. Stoller had become infatuated with a style called baion, a Brazillian musical style that is based on the same tresillo rhythm that a lot of New Orleans R&B is based on. If you don’t remember the tresillo rhythm, we talked about it a lot in episodes on Fats Domino and others, but it’s that “bom [pause] bom-bom [pause] bom [pause] bom-bom” rhythm. We’ve always been calling it the tresillo, but when people talk about the Drifters’ music they always follow Stoller’s lead and call it the baion rhythm, so that’s what we’ll do in future. They decided to use that rhythm, and also to use strings, which very few people had used on a rock and roll record before — this is an idea that several people seemed to have simultaneously, as we saw last week with Buddy Holly doing the same thing. It may, indeed, be that Leiber and Stoller had heard “It Doesn’t Matter Any More” and taken inspiration from it — Holly had died just over a month before the recording session for “There Goes My Baby”, and his single hit the top forty the same week that “There Goes My Baby” was recorded. Stoller sketched out some string lines, which were turned into full arrangements by an old classmate of his, Stan Applebaum, who had previously arranged for Lucky Millinder, and who had written a hit for Sarah Vaughan, who was married to Treadwell. Charlie Thomas was meant to sing lead on the track, but he just couldn’t get it right, and eventually it was decided to have King sing it instead, as he’d written the song. King tried to imitate the sound of Sam Cooke, but it came out sounding like no-one but King himself. Then, as a final touch, Leiber and Stoller decided to use a kettledrum on the track, rather than a normal drum kit. There was only one problem — the drummer they booked didn’t know how to change the pitch on the kettledrum using the foot pedal. So he just kept playing the same note throughout the song, even as the chords changed: [Excerpt: The Drifters, “There Goes My Baby”] When Leiber and Stoller took that to their bosses at Atlantic Records, they were horrified. Jerry Wexler said “It’s dog meat. You’ve wasted our money on an overpriced production that sounds like a radio caught between two stations. It’s a goddamn awful mess!” Ahmet Ertegun was a little more diplomatic, but still said that the record was unreleasable. But eventually he let them have a go at remixing it, and then the label stuck the record out, assuming it would do nothing. Instead, it went to number two on the charts, and became one of the biggest hits of 1959. Not only that, but it instantly opened up the possibilities for new ways of producing records. The new Drifters were a smash hit, and Leiber and Stoller were now as respected as producers as they already had been as songwriters. They got themselves a new office in the Brill Building, and they were on top of the world. But already there was a problem for the new Drifters, and that problem was named Lover Patterson. Rather than sign the Crowns to a management deal as a group, Patterson had signed them all as individuals, with separate contracts. And when he’d allowed George Treadwell to take over their management, he’d only sold the contracts for three of the four members. Ben E. King was still signed to Lover Patterson, rather than to George Treadwell. And Patterson decided that he was going to let King sing on the records, but he wasn’t going to let him tour with the group. So there was yet another lineup change for the Drifters, as they got in Johnnie Lee Williams to sing King’s parts on stage. Williams would sing one lead with the group in the studio, “If You Cry True Love, True Love”: [Excerpt: The Drifters, “If You Cry True Love, True Love”] But for the most part, King was the lead singer in the studio, and so there were five Drifters on the records, but only four on the road. But they were still having hits, and everybody seemed happy. And soon, they would all have the biggest hit of their careers, with a song that Doc Pomus had written with Mort Shuman, about his own wedding reception. We’ll hear more about that, and about Leiber and Stoller’s apprentice Phil Spector, when we return to the Drifters in a few weeks time.

love new york history babies doctors green nashville night jewish broadway fall in love pittsburgh atlantic kiss elvis rock and roll teenagers apollo papa makeup evans shake cookies hop bob dylan doc spell elvis presley patterson hawkins true love excerpt mort tom petty flyers orioles george harrison tilt ray charles crowns mixcloud gee hendricks sam cooke riviera rock music rca youngblood buddy holly rattle atlantic records phil spector roy orbison dominoes drifter jive drifters it doesn money honey wexler richard lewis coasters everly brothers screamin sarah vaughan fats domino weavers ben e king stoller brazillian jeff lynne shuman sam phillips treadwell chet atkins leiber solomon burke jay hawkins pinkney ruth brown bob moore ink spots brill building belmonts king curtis ahmet ertegun charlie thomas jerry wexler mike stoller david ritz johnny moore billy ward jerry leiber jesse stone five crowns doc pomus monument records clyde mcphatter new orleans r fred foster dock green moonlight bay ertegun ruby baby mickey baker andrew thrasher nashville a team

Episode 75: "There Goes My Baby" by the Drifters

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 23, 2020 34:50

Episode seventy-five of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "There Goes My Baby" by the Drifters, and how a fake record label, a band sacked for drunkenness, and a kettledrum player who couldn't play led to a genre-defining hit. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Rebel Rouser" by Duane Eddy 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/ ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. I'm not going to recommend a compilation this week, for reasons I mention in the episode itself. There are plenty available, none of them as good as they should be. The episode on the early career of the Drifters is episode seventeen. My main resource in putting this episode together was Marv Goldberg's website, and his excellent articles on both the early- and late-period Drifters, Bill Pinkney's later Original Drifters, the Five Crowns, and Ben E. King. Lonely Avenue, a biography of Doc Pomus by Alex Halberstadt, helped me with the information on Pomus. Hound Dog: The Leiber and Stoller Autobiography by Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, and David Ritz tells Leiber and Stoller's side of the story well. And Bill Millar's book on the Drifters, while it is more a history of 50s vocal group music generally using them as a focus than a biography of the group, contains some interesting material. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A quick note about this one, before I start. As we'll see in this episode, there have been many, many, lineups of the Drifters over the years, with many different people involved. One problem with that is that there have been lots of compilations put out under the Drifters name, featuring rerecorded versions of their hits, often involving nobody who was on the original record. Indeed, there have been so many of these compilations, and people putting together hits compilations, even for major labels, have been so sloppy, that I can't find a single compilation of the Drifters' recordings that doesn't have one or two dodgy remakes on replacing the originals. I've used multiple sources for the recordings I'm excerpting here, and in most cases I'm pretty sure that the tracks I'm excerpting are the original versions. But particularly when it comes to songs that aren't familiar, I may have ended up using a rerecording rather than the original. Anyway, on with the story... [Excerpt: The Drifters, "There Goes My Baby"] It's been more than a year since we last properly checked in with the Drifters, one of the great R&B vocal groups of all time, so I'll quickly bring you up to speed -- if you want to hear the full story so far, episode seventeen, on "Money Honey", gives you all the details. The Drifters had originally formed as the backing group for Clyde McPhatter, who had been the lead singer of Billy Ward and the Dominoes in the early fifties, when that group had had their biggest success. The original lineup of the group had all been sacked before they even released a record, and then a couple of members of the lineup who recorded their first big hits became ill or died, but the group had released two massive hits -- "Money Honey" and "Such a Night", both with McPhatter on lead vocals: [Excerpt: Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters, "Such a Night"] But then McPhatter had been drafted, and the group's manager, George Treadwell, had got in a member of the original lineup, David Baughan, to replace McPhatter, as Baughan could sound a little like McPhatter. When McPhatter was discharged from the army, he decided to sell the group name to Treadwell, and the Drifters became employees of Treadwell, to be hired and fired at his discretion. This group went through several lineup changes, some of which we'll look at later in this episode, but they kept making records that sounded a bit like the ones they'd been making with Clyde McPhatter, even after Baughan also left the group. But there was a big difference behind the scenes. Those early records had been produced by Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler, and had usually been arranged by Jesse Stone, the man who'd written "Money Honey" and many other early rock and roll hits, like "Shake, Rattle, and Roll". But a little while after Baughan left the group, Ertegun and Wexler asked Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller to start working with them. Leiber and Stoller, you might remember, were working with a *lot* of people at the time. They'd come over to Atlantic Records with a non-exclusive contract to write and produce for the label, and while their main project at Atlantic was with the Coasters, they were also producing records for people like Ruth Brown, as well as also working on records for Elvis and others at RCA. But they took on the Drifters as well, and started producing a string of minor hits for them, including "Ruby Baby" and "Fools Fall In Love". Those hits went top ten on the R&B chart, but did little or nothing in the pop market. [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Fools Fall In Love"] That song, which had Johnny Moore on lead vocals, was the last big hit for what we can think of as the "original" Drifters in some form. It came out in March 1957, and for the rest of the year they kept releasing singles, but nothing made the R&B charts at all, though a few did make the lower reaches of the Hot One Hundred. Throughout 1957, the group had been gaining and losing members. Bill Pinkney, who had been chosen by the other group members to be essentially their shop steward, had gone to Treadwell and asked for a raise in late 1956, and been promptly fired. He'd formed a group called the Flyers, with a new singer called Bobby Hendricks on lead. The Flyers recorded one single, "My Only Desire": [Excerpt: the Flyers, "My Only Desire"] But then Tommy Evans, Pinkney's replacement in the group, was fired, and Pinkney was brought back into the group. Hendricks thought that was the end of his career, but then a few days later Pinkney phoned him up -- Johnny Moore was getting drafted, and Hendricks was brought into the group to take Moore's place. But almost immediately after Hendricks joined the group, Pinkney once again asked for a raise, and was kicked out and Evans brought back in. Pinkney went off and made a record for Sam Phillips, with backing music overdubbed by Bill Justis: [Excerpt: Bill Pinkney, "After the Hop"] The group kept changing lineups, and there was only one session in 1958, which led to a horrible version of "Moonlight Bay". Apparently, the session was run by Leiber and Stoller as an experiment (they would occasionally record old standards with the Coasters, so presumably they were seeing if the same thing would work with the Drifters), and several of the group's members were drunk when they recorded it. They decided at the session that it was not going to be released, but then the next thing the group knew, it was out as their next single, with overdubs by a white vocal group, making it sound nothing like the Drifters at all: [Excerpt: The Drifters "Moonlight Bay"] Bobby Hendricks hated that recording session so much that he quit the group and went solo, going over to Sue Records, where he joined up with another former Drifter, Jimmy Oliver. Oliver wrote a song for Hendricks, "Itchy Twitchy Feeling", and the Coasters sang the backup vocals for him, uncredited. That track went to number five on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: Bobby Hendricks, "Itchy Twitchy Feeling"] By this time, the Drifters were down to just three people -- Gerhart Thrasher, Jimmy Milner, and Tommy Evans. They no longer had a lead singer, but they had a week's worth of shows they were contracted to do, at the Harlem Apollo, on a show hosted by the DJ Doctor Jive. That show was headlined by Ray Charles, and also featured the Cookies, Solomon Burke, and a minor group called the Crowns, among several other acts. Treadwell was desperate, so he called Hendricks and Oliver and got them to return to the group just for one week, so they would have a lead vocalist. They both did return, though just as a favour. Then, at the end of the week's residency, one of the group members got drunk and started shouting abuse at Doctor Jive, and at the owner of the Apollo. George Treadwell had had enough. He fired the entire group. Tommy Evans went on to join Charlie Fuqua's version of the Ink Spots, and Bill Pinkney decided he wanted to get the old group back together. He got a 1955 lineup of the Drifters together -- Pinkney, David Baughan, Gerhart Thrasher, and Andrew Thrasher. That group toured as The Original Drifters, and the group under that name would consist almost entirely of ex-members of the Drifters, with some coming or going, until 1968, when most of the group retired, while Pinkney carried on leading a group under that name until his death in 2007. But they couldn't use that name on records. Instead they made records as the Harmony Grits: [Excerpt: The Harmony Grits, "I Could Have Told You"] and with ex-Drifter Johnny Moore singing lead, as a solo artist under the name Johnny Darrow: [Excerpt: Johnny Darrow, "Chew Tobacco Rag"] And with Bobby Hendricks singing lead, as the Sprites: [Excerpt: The Sprites, "My Picture"] But the reason they couldn't call themselves the Drifters on their records is that George Treadwell owned the name, and he had hired a totally different group to tour and record under that name. The Crowns had their basis in a group called the Harmonaires, a street-corner group in New York. They had various members at first, but by the time they changed their name to the Five Crowns, they had stabilised on a lineup of Dock Green, Yonkie Paul, and three brothers -- Papa, Nicky, and Sonny Boy Clark. The group were managed by Lover Patterson, who they believed was the manager of the Orioles, but was actually the Orioles' valet. Nonetheless, Patterson did manage to get them signed to a small record label, Rainbow Records, where they released "You're My Inspiration" in 1952: [Excerpt: The Five Crowns, "You're My Inspiration"] The record label sent out a thousand copies of that single to one of their distributors, right at the point a truckers' strike was called, and ended up having to send another thousand out by plane. That kind of thing sums up the kind of luck the Five Crowns would have for the next few years. Nothing they put out on Rainbow Records was any kind of a success, and in 1953 the group became the first act on a new label, Old Town Records -- they actually met the owner of the label, Hy Weiss, in a waiting room, while they were waiting to audition for a different label. On Old Town they put out a couple of singles, starting with "You Could Be My Love": [Excerpt: The Five Crowns, "You Could Be My Love"] But none of these singles were hits either, and the group were doing so badly that when Nicky Clark left the group, they couldn't get another singer in to replace him at first -- Lover Patterson stood on stage and mimed while the four remaining members sang, so there would still be five people in the Five Crowns. By 1955, the group had re-signed to Rainbow Records, now on their Riviera subsidiary, and they had gone through several further lineup changes. They now consisted of Yonkie Paul, Richard Lewis, Jesse Facing, Dock Green, and Bugeye Bailey. They put out one record on Riviera, "You Came To Me": [Excerpt: The Five Crowns, "You Came to Me"] The group broke up shortly after that, and Dock Green put together a totally new lineup of the Five Crowns. That group signed to one of George Goldner's labels, Gee, and released another single, and then they broke up. Green got together *another* lineup of the Five Crowns, made another record on another label, and then that group broke up too. They spent nearly two years without making a record, with constantly shifting lineups as people kept leaving and rejoining, and by the time they went into a studio again, they consisted of Charlie Thomas, Dock Green, Papa Clark, Elsbeary Hobbs, and a new tenor singer called Benjamin Earl Nelson, who hadn't sung professionally before joining the group -- he'd been working in a restaurant owned by his father, and Lover Patterson had heard him singing to himself while he was working and asked him to join the group. This lineup of the group, who were now calling themselves the Crowns rather than the Five Crowns, finally got a contract with a record label... or at least, it was sort of a record label. We've talked about Doc Pomus before, back in November, but as a brief recap -- Pomus was a blues singer and songwriter, a white Jewish paraplegic whose birth name was Jerome Felder, who had become a blues shouter in the late forties: [Excerpt: Doc Pomus, "Send for the Doctor"] He had been working as a professional songwriter for a decade or so, and had written songs for people like Ray Charles, but the music he loved was hard bluesy R&B, and he didn't understand the new rock and roll music at all. Other than writing "Young Blood", which Leiber and Stoller had rewritten and made into a hit for the Coasters, he hadn't written anything successful in quite some time. He'd recently started writing with a much younger man, Mort Shuman, who did understand rock and roll, and we heard one of the results of that last week -- "Teenager in Love" by Dion and the Belmonts, which would be the start of a string of hits for them: [Excerpt: Dion and the Belmonts, "Teenager in Love"] But in 1958, that had not yet been released. Pomus' wife had a baby on the way, and he was desperate for money. He was so desperate, he got involved in a scam. An old girlfriend introduced him to an acquaintance, a dance instructor named Fred Huckman. Huckman had recently married a rich old widow, and he wanted to get away from her during the day to sleep with other people. So Huckman decided he was going to become the owner of a record label, using his wife's money to fund an office. The label was named R&B Records at Doc's suggestion, and Doc was going to be the company's president, while Mort was going to be the company's shipping clerk. The company would have offices in 1650 Broadway, one of the buildings that these days gets lumped in when people talk about "the Brill Building", though the actual Brill Building itself was a little way down the street at 1619. 1650 was still a prime music business location though, and the company's office would let both Doc and Mort go and try to sell their songs to publishing companies and record labels. And they'd need to do this because R&B Records wasn't going to put out any records at all. Doc and Mort's actual job was that one of them had to be in the office at all times, so when Huckman's wife phoned up, they could tell her that he'd just popped out, or was in a meeting, or something so she didn't find out about his affairs. They lived off the scam for a little while, while writing songs, but eventually they started to get bored of doing nothing all day. And then Lucky Patterson brought the Crowns in. They didn't realise that R&B Records wasn't a real record label, and Pomus decided to audition them. When he did, he was amazed at how good they sounded. He decided that R&B Records was *going* to be a real record label, no matter what Huckman thought. He and Shuman wrote them a single in the style of the Coasters, and they got in the best session musicians in New York -- people like King Curtis and Mickey Baker, who were old friends of Pomus -- to play on it: [Excerpt: The Crowns, "Kiss and Make Up"] At first that record was completely unsuccessful, but then, rather amazingly, it started to climb in the charts, at least in Pittsburgh, where it became a local number one. It started to do better elsewhere as well, and it looked like the Crowns could have a promising career. And then one day Mrs. Huckman showed up at the office. Pomus tried to tell her that her husband had gone out and would be back later, but she insisted on waiting in the office, silently, all day. R&B Records closed the next day. But "Kiss and Make Up" had been a big enough success that the Crowns had ended up on that Doctor Jive show with the Drifters. And then when George Treadwell fired the Drifters, he immediately hired the Crowns -- or at least, he hired four of them. Papa Clark had a drinking problem, and Treadwell was fed up of dealing with drunk singers. So from this point on the Drifters were Charlie Thomas, Dock Green, Elsbeary Hobbs, and Benjamin Nelson, who decided that he was going to take on a stage name and call himself Ben E. King. This new lineup of the group went out on tour for almost a year before going into the studio, and they were abysmal failures. Everywhere they went, promoters advertised their shows with photos of the old group, and then this new group of people came on stage looking and sounding nothing like the original Drifters. They were booed everywhere they went. They even caused problems for the other acts -- at one show they nearly killed Screamin' Jay Hawkins. Hawkins used to pop out of a coffin while performing "I Put A Spell on You": [Excerpt: Screamin' Jay Hawkins, "I Put a Spell on You"] The group were sometimes asked to carry the coffin onto the stage with Hawkins inside it, and one night Charlie Thomas accidentally nudged something and heard a click. What he didn't realise was that Hawkins put matchbooks in the gap in the coffin lid, to stop it closing all the way -- Thomas had knocked the coffin properly shut. The music started, and Hawkins tried to open the coffin, and couldn't. He kept pushing, and the coffin wouldn't open. Eventually, he rocked the coffin so hard that it fell off its stand and popped open, but if it hadn't opened there was a very real danger that Hawkins could have asphyxiated. But something else happened on that tour -- Ben E. King wrote a song called "There Goes My Baby", which the group started to perform live. As they originally did it, it was quite a fast song, but when they finally got off the tour and went into the studio, Leiber and Stoller, who were going to be the producers for this new group just like they had been for the old group, decided to slow it down. They also decided that this was going to be a chance for them to experiment with some totally new production ideas. Stoller had become infatuated with a style called baion, a Brazillian musical style that is based on the same tresillo rhythm that a lot of New Orleans R&B is based on. If you don't remember the tresillo rhythm, we talked about it a lot in episodes on Fats Domino and others, but it's that "bom [pause] bom-bom [pause] bom [pause] bom-bom" rhythm. We've always been calling it the tresillo, but when people talk about the Drifters' music they always follow Stoller's lead and call it the baion rhythm, so that's what we'll do in future. They decided to use that rhythm, and also to use strings, which very few people had used on a rock and roll record before -- this is an idea that several people seemed to have simultaneously, as we saw last week with Buddy Holly doing the same thing. It may, indeed, be that Leiber and Stoller had heard "It Doesn't Matter Any More" and taken inspiration from it -- Holly had died just over a month before the recording session for "There Goes My Baby", and his single hit the top forty the same week that "There Goes My Baby" was recorded. Stoller sketched out some string lines, which were turned into full arrangements by an old classmate of his, Stan Applebaum, who had previously arranged for Lucky Millinder, and who had written a hit for Sarah Vaughan, who was married to Treadwell. Charlie Thomas was meant to sing lead on the track, but he just couldn't get it right, and eventually it was decided to have King sing it instead, as he'd written the song. King tried to imitate the sound of Sam Cooke, but it came out sounding like no-one but King himself. Then, as a final touch, Leiber and Stoller decided to use a kettledrum on the track, rather than a normal drum kit. There was only one problem -- the drummer they booked didn't know how to change the pitch on the kettledrum using the foot pedal. So he just kept playing the same note throughout the song, even as the chords changed: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "There Goes My Baby"] When Leiber and Stoller took that to their bosses at Atlantic Records, they were horrified. Jerry Wexler said “It’s dog meat. You've wasted our money on an overpriced production that sounds like a radio caught between two stations. It’s a goddamn awful mess!” Ahmet Ertegun was a little more diplomatic, but still said that the record was unreleasable. But eventually he let them have a go at remixing it, and then the label stuck the record out, assuming it would do nothing. Instead, it went to number two on the charts, and became one of the biggest hits of 1959. Not only that, but it instantly opened up the possibilities for new ways of producing records. The new Drifters were a smash hit, and Leiber and Stoller were now as respected as producers as they already had been as songwriters. They got themselves a new office in the Brill Building, and they were on top of the world. But already there was a problem for the new Drifters, and that problem was named Lover Patterson. Rather than sign the Crowns to a management deal as a group, Patterson had signed them all as individuals, with separate contracts. And when he'd allowed George Treadwell to take over their management, he'd only sold the contracts for three of the four members. Ben E. King was still signed to Lover Patterson, rather than to George Treadwell. And Patterson decided that he was going to let King sing on the records, but he wasn't going to let him tour with the group. So there was yet another lineup change for the Drifters, as they got in Johnnie Lee Williams to sing King's parts on stage. Williams would sing one lead with the group in the studio, "If You Cry True Love, True Love": [Excerpt: The Drifters, "If You Cry True Love, True Love"] But for the most part, King was the lead singer in the studio, and so there were five Drifters on the records, but only four on the road. But they were still having hits, and everybody seemed happy. And soon, they would all have the biggest hit of their careers, with a song that Doc Pomus had written with Mort Shuman, about his own wedding reception. We'll hear more about that, and about Leiber and Stoller's apprentice Phil Spector, when we return to the Drifters in a few weeks time.

love new york history babies green night jewish broadway fall in love pittsburgh atlantic kiss elvis rock and roll teenagers apollo papa makeup evans shake cookies doc spell patterson hawkins mort flyers orioles tilt ray charles crowns mixcloud gee hendricks sam cooke riviera rock music rca youngblood buddy holly rattle atlantic records phil spector dominoes drifter jive drifters it doesn money honey wexler richard lewis coasters screamin sarah vaughan fats domino ben e king stoller brazillian shuman sam phillips treadwell leiber solomon burke jay hawkins pinkney ruth brown ink spots brill building belmonts king curtis ahmet ertegun charlie thomas jerry wexler mike stoller david ritz johnny moore billy ward jerry leiber jesse stone five crowns doc pomus clyde mcphatter dock green moonlight bay ertegun ruby baby andrew thrasher mickey baker new orleans r b

AniTAY Podcast Season 04, Episode 13 - The Top 10 Waifus and Husbandos of 2019

AniTAY

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 18, 2019 110:08

The AniTAY podcast has returned for one final episode before the new year. It’s been a year of fantastic AniTAY highs and horrifying AniTAY lows on the podcast, but we aren’t done just yet! Today’s episode is chock full of terrible takes on the best looking anime people this year. We also talk some more about fall 2019 anime and kinksy is (regrettably) given time to share his least favorite anime of 2019. *This episode brought to you by Ertegun. This episode’s members: hybridmink, Requiem, Kinksy and Dilkokoro Itinerary Intro: 00:00 - 3:20 After School Dice Club: 3:21 - 6:51 High Score Girl S2: 6:52 - 11:37 Oresuki: 11:38 - 14:09 Ascendance of a Bookworm: 14:10 - 17:08 Inuyashiki: 17:09 - 22:43 Blade of the Immortal: 22:43 - 30:35 Gainax President Arrested: 30:36 - 33:22 Quintessential Quintuplets manga ending: 33:23 - 36:26 Top 100 Anime Titles of 2019 (as voted by Japan): 36:27 - 45:16 Playstation Commercial Scandal: 45:17 - 48:05 Top 5 Worst Anime of 2019: 48:06 - 53:11 Best Male Characters of 2019: 53:12 - 1:14:42 Best Female Characters of 2019: 1:14:43 - End Thanks to Thatsmapizza for their work editing this episode of the podcast!

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Episode 55: "Searchin'" by the Coasters

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 4, 2019 34:13

Episode fifty-five of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Searchin'" by The Coasters, and at the lineup changes and conflicts that led to them becoming the perfect vehicle for Leiber and Stoller. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Raunchy" by Bill Justis. ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. I've used multiple sources to piece together the information here. Marv Goldberg's page is always the go-to for fifties R&B groups, and his piece on the Robins is essential. Hound Dog: The Leiber and Stoller Autobiography by Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, and David Ritz tells Leiber and Stoller's side of the story well. Yakety Yak, I Fought Back: My Life With the Coasters by Carl and Veta Gardner is a self-published, rather short, autobiography, which gives Gardner's take on the formation of the Coasters. Those Hoodlum Friends is a Coasters fansite, with a very nineties aesthetic (frames! angelfire domain name! Actual information rather than pretty, empty, layouts!) Lonely Avenue, a biography of Doc Pomus by Alex Halberstadt, helped me with the information on Pomus. I Must Be Dreamin': The Robins on RCA, Crown, and Spark 1953-55 compiles all the material from the last couple of years of the Robins' career before Nunn and Gardner departed. And The Definitive Coasters is a double-CD set that has some overlap with the Robins CD, as it contains all the Robins tracks on Sparks, which were later reissued as Coasters tracks. But it also contains all the group's classic hits. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Erratum I call “Ding Dong Ding” “Ding A Ling”. Also at one point I say “sunk” when I mean “sank”, but didn't think it worth retaking to fix that. Transcript It's been a while since we last looked at the careers of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller -- the last we heard of them, they had just put out a hit record with "Riot in Cell Block Number Nine" by the Robins, and they had seen Elvis Presley put out a cover version of a song they had written for Big Mama Thornton, "Hound Dog". That hit record had caused a permanent breach between them and Johnny Otis, who had been credited as a co-writer on "Hound Dog" right up until the point it looked like becoming a big hit, but then had been eased out of the songwriting credits. But Leiber and Stoller were, with the help of Lester Sill, starting to establish themselves as some of the preeminent songwriters and producers in the R&B field. Their production career started as a result of the original "Hound Dog" -- Big Mama Thornton's version. That record had sold a million or so copies, according to the notoriously dodgy statistics of the time, but Leiber and Stoller had seen no money from it. Mike Stoller's father, Abe, had been furious at how little they'd made for writing it, and had suggested that they should form their own record company, so they could make sure that if they had any more hits they would get their fair share of the money. Lester Sill, their business associate, suggested that as well as a record company they should form a publishing company. Abe Stoller had recently inherited some money from his father, and while Sill was broke himself, he had a friend, Jack "Jake the Snake" Levy, who would happily chip in money for an equal share of the company. So they formed Spark Records and Quintet Publishing, with Leiber, Mike Stoller, and Sill handling the music side of the business and Jake the Snake and Abe Stoller providing the money, with each of the five partners having an equal share in the companies. The first record the new label put out was a record by a duo called Willy and Ruth, in the Gene and Eunice mould. The song was a Leiber and Stoller original -- as almost everything released on Spark was -- although it was based around the old "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It" melody: [Excerpt: Willy and Ruth, "Come a Little Bit Closer"] But the act that had the most success on Spark, and to which Leiber and Stoller were devoting the most attention, was the Robins. Now we've already talked, back in the episode on "The Wallflower" about one of the Robins' hits on Spark Records, "Riot in Cell Block Number Nine", but Leiber and Stoller did a lot more work with them than just that one hit. They'd worked with the group before forming Spark – indeed the very first song they'd had released was “That's What The Good Book Says” by the Robins – and were eager to sign them once they got their label up and running. While the Robins had started as a four-piece group, their lineup had slowly expanded. Grady Chapman had joined them as a fifth member in 1953, becoming their joint lead singer with Bobby Nunn, and singing leads on tracks like "Ten Days in Jail": [Excerpt: The Robins, "Ten Days in Jail"] But Chapman himself ended up in jail, and so they took on Carl Gardner as a lead vocalist in Chapman's place. Gardner didn't really want to be in a vocal group -- he was a solo singer, and had moved to LA to become a pop singer with the big bands. But Johnny Otis had explained to him that there was no longer much of a market for solo singers in the big band style, and that if he was going to make it as a singer in the current market he was going to have to join a vocal group. Gardner originally only joined for ten days, while Chapman was serving a short jail sentence, but then Chapman didn't come back straight away, and by the time he did Gardner was firmly established in the group, and the Robins became a sextet for a while. While Chapman was out of the group, the rest of them had recorded not only "Riot in Cell Block Number Nine", but also several other hits, most notably "Smokey Joe's Cafe", which featured Gardner on lead vocals, and was also written by Leiber and Stoller: [Excerpt: The Robins, "Smokey Joe's Cafe"] But when Chapman returned, Gardner and Chapman started sharing the lead vocals between them. But they only had one recording session where this was the case, before problems started to surface in the group. Gardner was, by his own account at least, far more ambitious than the rest of the group, who were quite reluctant to have any greater level of success than they were already getting, while Gardner wanted to become a major star. Gardner claimed in his autobiography that one of the reasons for this reluctance was that most of the Robins were also pimps, and were making more money from that than from singing, and that they didn't want to give up that money. Whatever the reason, there were tensions within the group, and not only about their relative levels of ambition. Gardner believed that R&B was going to be a passing fad, and was pushing for the group to go more in the big band style, which he was convinced was going to make a comeback. But there were other problems. Abe Stoller was disappointed to see that the venture he had invested in, which he'd believed was going to make everyone rich, was losing money like most other independent labels. Despite this, Leiber and Stoller continued to pump out great records for the Robins, including records like "The Hatchet Man", a response to Billy Ward and the Dominoes' "Sixty Minute Man": [Excerpt: The Robins, "The Hatchet Man"] Many of the other songs they recorded had a certain amount of social commentary mixed in with the humour, as in "Framed", which was for the time a rather pointed look at the way the law treated -- and still treats -- black men: [Excerpt: The Robins, "Framed"] But no matter how good the records they put out were, there was still the fact that the label wasn't bringing in money. And Leiber and Stoller were having other problems. Stoller's mother had died from what seemed to be suicide, while Leiber had been the driver in a car accident that had left one woman dead. Both were sunk in depression. But then Jerry Leiber bumped into Neshui Ertegun at the home of a mutual friend. Ertegun was an admirer of Leiber and Stoller's writing, and said he wanted to get to know Leiber better -- and invited Leiber along on his honeymoon. Ertegun was about to get married, and he was planning to spend much of his honeymoon playing tennis while his wife went swimming. He invited Leiber to join them on their honeymoon, so he would always have a tennis partner. The two quickly became good friends, and Ertegun made Leiber and Stoller a proposition. It was clear to Ertegun that Leiber and Stoller made great records, but that Spark Records had no understanding of how to get those records out to the public. So he put them in touch with his brother, Ahmet Ertegun, at Atlantic Records, who agreed to give Leiber and Stoller a freelance contract with Atlantic. They became, according to everything I've read, the first freelance production team *ever* in the US -- though I strongly suspect that that depends on how you define "freelance production team". They had contracts to make whatever records they wanted, independently of Atlantic's organisation, and Atlantic would then release and distribute those records on their new label, Atco. And they took the Robins with them – or at least some of the Robins. The group found out that it was losing two of its members in the middle of the session for the song that was going to be the follow-up to “Smokey Joe's Cafe”, "Cherry Lips": [Excerpt: The Robins, "Cherry Lips"] That song was going to be a lead vocal for Carl Gardner, but just as the session started, Leiber and Stoller walked in with some legal documents. No-one has ever been clear as to what exactly those documents were -- and Gardner later claimed that they were faked, while Leiber and Stoller always said that wasn't the case, and that Gardner had already signed to Atco -- but the documents were enough to extricate Gardner from the session. Grady Martin sang lead on the song instead. Carl Gardner and Bobby Nunn were now part of Leiber, Stoller, and Sill's new project with Atco. The rest of the Robins weren't There has been quite a bit of confusion as to exactly why Leiber and Stoller only wanted two of the Robins to come across with them. Carl Gardner claimed that Leiber and Stoller wanted to get him away from the rest of the group, who he and they considered unhealthy influences. Ty Terrell, one of the other Robins, always claimed that Leiber and Stoller wanted people who would be easier to control, and that they were paying Gardner and Nunn far less money than the other Robins wanted. And Leiber and Stoller claimed that they just thought the others weren't very good -- Mike Stoller said, "The Richard brothers and Ty Terrell didn't sing lead at all. They usually sang 'do-wah,' 'do-wah' and had their hands up in the air." I suspect, myself, that it's a combination of reasons, but whatever caused the split, Gardner and Nunn were off into the new group, leaving the other four to carry on without them. Without Gardner and Nunn, the Robins continued recording for several years, but stopped having hits. To add insult to injury, many of the Robins' last few singles on Spark were included on the first album by the new group, "the Coasters", listed as Coasters recordings. To this day, if you buy a Coasters compilation, you're likely to find "Riot in Cell Block #9" and "Smokey Joe's Cafe" on there. For their new group Gardner and Nunn teamed up with new singers Leon Hughes and Billy Guy, along with the guitarist Adolph Jacobs. Billy Guy had been part of a duo known as "Bip and Bop", who had recorded a "Ko Ko Mo" knock-off, "Ding a Ling", backed by "Johnny's Combo" -- the name Johnny Otis had used when backing Gene and Eunice on "Ko Ko Mo": [Excerpt: Bip and Bop", "Ding Dong Ding"] Hughes, meanwhile, had been one of the many, many, singers who had been in the stew of different groups that had formed the Hollywood Flames, the Penguins, and the Platters. He had been in the Hollywood Flames for a while, at a time when their lineup was in constant flux -- he had been in the group when Curtis Williams, who formed the Penguins, was still in the group, and when he left the Flames he was replaced by Gaynel Hodge, who had just quit the Platters. While he was in the Hollywood Flames, they recorded songs like this: [Excerpt: The Flames, "Keep on Smiling"] So this new group had the two strongest vocalists from the Robins, plus two other experienced singers. Carl Gardner was still in two minds about this, because he still wanted to be a solo artist, not part of a group, and when they came together he seems to have been under the impression that they were being formed as his backing group, rather than as a group that would include him as just one of the members. Lester Sill became the new group's manager, and largely took charge of their career. The group became known as "the Coasters", supposedly because they were from the West Coast but recording for a label on the East Coast. Carl Gardner would later claim that the group's name was his idea, and that it was originally intended that they be promoted as "Carl Gardner and the Coasters", but that when he saw the label on the first record he was horrified to see that it just said "the Coasters", with no mention of Gardner's name as the lead singer: [Excerpt: The Coasters, "Down in Mexico"] Everything seemed, at first, to be looking good for the Coasters. Carl Gardner was happy with the other members, as they seemed to be as hungry for success as he was, and they went out on tour, while Stoller went on holiday in Europe -- and the boat he was on sunk on the way back. He and his wife survived, however, and when he got off the rescue boat he was greeted by Leiber, who informed him that Elvis Presley had just recorded "Hound Dog", and they were going to make a lot of money as a result. But the distraction caused by that, and by the other factors in Leiber and Stoller's life, meant that for much of the rest of the year they were occupied with things other than the Coasters. The Coasters kept touring, and Leiber and Stoller relocated to New York, where they started making records for other Atlantic acts. They started a relationship with the Drifters that would last for years, and through many different lineups of the group. This one, by the Drifters' tenth lineup, became a top ten R&B single: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Fools Fall in Love"] They also recorded "Lucky Lips" with Ruth Brown: [Excerpt: Ruth Brown, "Lucky Lips"] That became her first single to hit the pop charts since "Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean", four years earlier. But Leiber and Stoller were still going through all sorts of personal problems, ping-ponging from coast to coast, and apart from each other for months at a time. At one point Leiber relocated again, to LA, and Stoller stayed behind in New York, playing piano on records like Big Joe Turner's "Teenage Letter"; [Excerpt: Big Joe Turner, "Teenage Letter"] But eventually they were together for long enough to write more songs for the Coasters. Their next work with the group was a double-sided smash hit. "Young Blood", was a collaboration with another writer. Doc Pomus' birth name was Jerome Felder, but he'd taken on his stage name when he decided to become a blues shouter in the style of Big Joe Turner or Jimmy Rushing. Pomus was not a normal blues shouter -- he was an extremely fat Jewish man, who used crutches to get around as his legs were paralysed with post-polio syndrome. Pomus had been recording for labels like Chess since 1944, and many of the records were very good: [Excerpt: Doc Pomus, "Send For the Doctor"] Pomus had become a central figure in the group of musicians around Atlantic Records, performing regularly with people like Mickey Baker, King Curtis, and the jazz vibraphone player Milt Jackson. But no matter how many records he made, he'd not had any success as a singer, and he'd fairly recently decided to move into songwriting instead. The year before, he'd written "Lonely Avenue", which had been a minor hit for Ray Charles: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, "Lonely Avenue"] But he didn't really understand this new rock and roll music -- he was a fan of jump blues, and swing bands like Count Basie's, not this newer music aimed at a younger audience, and so his songwriting hadn't been massively successful either. He was casting around for a songwriting partner who did understand the new music, so far without success. But Leiber and Stoller liked Pomus a lot -- not only did they like "Lonely Avenue" and the records he'd been making recently, but Stoller even had fond memories of a radio jingle Pomus had written and recorded for a pants shop in Brooklyn, which he remembered from growing up. Pomus had written a song called "Young Blood", which he thought had potential, but it wasn't quite right. Depending on what version of events you believe, Leiber and Stoller either radically reworked the song, or threw away everything except the title, which they thought had immense commercial potential, and wrote a whole new song around it. Either way, the song was a huge success, and Pomus was grateful for his share of the credit and royalties, while Leiber and Stoller were happy to give someone they admired a boost. [Excerpt: The Coasters, "Young Blood"] "Young Blood" was ostensibly the A-side of the single that resulted, but the record that actually made the biggest splash was the B-side, "Searchin'", which had Billy Guy singing lead. The song was one of Leiber and Stoller's best, and showed Leiber's sense of humour to its best effect, as Guy sang about how he was going to be a better detective than Charlie Chan or Sam Spade in tracking down his missing girlfriend: [Excerpt: The Coasters, "Searchin'"] On this session, Leon Hughes wasn't present -- I've not seen any explanation from anyone involved as to why he was absent, but his place was taken by Young Jessie. Young Jessie was a singer who had previously been a member of the Flairs, with Richard Berry, and had later recorded a handful of solo records for Modern Records, and had signed a contract with Leiber and Stoller. Around the time of the session Young Jessie released this, with Leiber and Stoller producing, for Atco: [Excerpt: Young Jessie, "Shuffle in the Gravel"] Despite what some people have said, Young Jessie never became a full-time member of the Coasters (though he did later tour with a group calling itself the Coasters, led by Leon Hughes) and the original lineup of the group continued touring for a while. After the success of "Searchin'" and "Young Blood", Atco released a series of flop singles, all of which were recorded by the original lineup, and all of which, like the hit, featured one side with a Carl Gardner lead vocal and the other with a Billy Guy lead. Some of these, like "Idol With the Golden Head", were classic Leiber and Stoller story songs along the lines of the earlier Robins records, but they didn't yet, quite, have the classic Coasters sound: [Excerpt: The Coasters, "Idol With the Golden Head"] But then, towards the end of the year, the group split up. It's hard to tell exactly what happened, as most of the stories about who left the group and why have been told by people who were involved, most of whom wanted to bolster their own later legal cases for ownership of the Coasters name. But whatever actually happened, Leon Hughes and Bobby Nunn were out of the group, suddenly. Depending on which version of the story you believe, they either got tired of the road and wanted to see their families, or they were sacked mid-tour because of their behaviour. For one recording session, Tommy Evans from the Drifters substituted for Hughes and Nunn, until Lester Sill went out and found two replacement members, Cornell Gunter and Dub Jones. We've met Gunter before -- he was part of the collection of singers who were all in half a dozen different groups, centered around Gaynel Hodge. He had been an early member of the Platters, and had also been in the Flairs with Richard Berry and Young Jessie, and had recorded a handful of solo singles: [Excerpt: Cornell Gunter, “Neighborhood Dance”] Gunter was also unusual for the time in being an out gay man, and was initially apprehensive about joining the group in case the other members were homophobic. For the time, they weren't especially -- Carl Gardner apparently felt the need to let Gunter know that he was straight himself and wouldn't be interested, but they took a live and let live attitude, and Gunter quickly became friendly with the rest of the group. Dub Jones, meanwhile, had been the bass singer for the Cadets, and had done the spoken-word vocals on their biggest hit, "Stranded in the Jungle": [Excerpt: The Cadets, "Stranded in the Jungle"] Jones would quickly become an integral part of the group's sound. This new lineup met for the first time on the plane to a gig in Hawaii, and Gardner at least was very worried that these new singers would not be able to fit in with the routines the others had already worked out. He had no need to worry. It only took one quick rehearsal before the show for Gunter and Jones to slot in perfectly, and the classic lineup of the Coasters was now in place. Leiber and Stoller loved working with the Coasters, but it had been almost a year since they'd written the group a hit at this point. "Hound Dog" had been a big enough success for Elvis that his management team wanted more from Leiber and Stoller, and fast, and most of their most commercial work in 1957 went to Elvis. But that changed in 1958, and the Coasters were the beneficiaries. We'll be picking up with Leiber, Stoller, and Elvis, in a few weeks' time. And a few weeks after that, we'll see what happened when they got back into the studio with the Coasters...

new york history europe hawaii jewish fall in love mama atlantic crown cd hole west coast elvis rock and roll east coast spark cafe snake depending riot hughes sparks chess flames elvis presley ding chapman gardner penguins stranded combo shuffle abe ling framed robins mixcloud rock music rca youngblood atlantic records bop dominoes platters gunter wallflower drifters nunn bip sill cadets ten days count basie raunchy coasters cell block stoller hound dog sam spade leiber big mama thornton smokey joe charlie chan atco searchin king curtis milt jackson richard berry big joe turner ahmet ertegun flairs hatchet man mike stoller david ritz yakety yak billy ward jerry leiber johnny otis doc pomus curtis williams jimmy rushing ertegun mickey baker carl gardner

Episode 55: “Searchin'” by the Coasters

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 4, 2019

Episode fifty-five of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Searchin'” by The Coasters, and at the lineup changes and conflicts that led to them becoming the perfect vehicle for Leiber and Stoller. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Raunchy” by Bill Justis. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. I’ve used multiple sources to piece together the information here. Marv Goldberg’s page is always the go-to for fifties R&B groups, and his piece on the Robins is essential. Hound Dog: The Leiber and Stoller Autobiography by Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, and David Ritz tells Leiber and Stoller’s side of the story well. Yakety Yak, I Fought Back: My Life With the Coasters by Carl and Veta Gardner is a self-published, rather short, autobiography, which gives Gardner’s take on the formation of the Coasters. Those Hoodlum Friends is a Coasters fansite, with a very nineties aesthetic (frames! angelfire domain name! Actual information rather than pretty, empty, layouts!) Lonely Avenue, a biography of Doc Pomus by Alex Halberstadt, helped me with the information on Pomus. I Must Be Dreamin’: The Robins on RCA, Crown, and Spark 1953-55 compiles all the material from the last couple of years of the Robins’ career before Nunn and Gardner departed. And The Definitive Coasters is a double-CD set that has some overlap with the Robins CD, as it contains all the Robins tracks on Sparks, which were later reissued as Coasters tracks. But it also contains all the group’s classic hits. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Erratum I call “Ding Dong Ding” “Ding A Ling”. Also at one point I say “sunk” when I mean “sank”, but didn’t think it worth retaking to fix that. Transcript It’s been a while since we last looked at the careers of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller — the last we heard of them, they had just put out a hit record with “Riot in Cell Block Number Nine” by the Robins, and they had seen Elvis Presley put out a cover version of a song they had written for Big Mama Thornton, “Hound Dog”. That hit record had caused a permanent breach between them and Johnny Otis, who had been credited as a co-writer on “Hound Dog” right up until the point it looked like becoming a big hit, but then had been eased out of the songwriting credits. But Leiber and Stoller were, with the help of Lester Sill, starting to establish themselves as some of the preeminent songwriters and producers in the R&B field. Their production career started as a result of the original “Hound Dog” — Big Mama Thornton’s version. That record had sold a million or so copies, according to the notoriously dodgy statistics of the time, but Leiber and Stoller had seen no money from it. Mike Stoller’s father, Abe, had been furious at how little they’d made for writing it, and had suggested that they should form their own record company, so they could make sure that if they had any more hits they would get their fair share of the money. Lester Sill, their business associate, suggested that as well as a record company they should form a publishing company. Abe Stoller had recently inherited some money from his father, and while Sill was broke himself, he had a friend, Jack “Jake the Snake” Levy, who would happily chip in money for an equal share of the company. So they formed Spark Records and Quintet Publishing, with Leiber, Mike Stoller, and Sill handling the music side of the business and Jake the Snake and Abe Stoller providing the money, with each of the five partners having an equal share in the companies. The first record the new label put out was a record by a duo called Willy and Ruth, in the Gene and Eunice mould. The song was a Leiber and Stoller original — as almost everything released on Spark was — although it was based around the old “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It” melody: [Excerpt: Willy and Ruth, “Come a Little Bit Closer”] But the act that had the most success on Spark, and to which Leiber and Stoller were devoting the most attention, was the Robins. Now we’ve already talked, back in the episode on “The Wallflower” about one of the Robins’ hits on Spark Records, “Riot in Cell Block Number Nine”, but Leiber and Stoller did a lot more work with them than just that one hit. They’d worked with the group before forming Spark – indeed the very first song they’d had released was “That’s What The Good Book Says” by the Robins – and were eager to sign them once they got their label up and running. While the Robins had started as a four-piece group, their lineup had slowly expanded. Grady Chapman had joined them as a fifth member in 1953, becoming their joint lead singer with Bobby Nunn, and singing leads on tracks like “Ten Days in Jail”: [Excerpt: The Robins, “Ten Days in Jail”] But Chapman himself ended up in jail, and so they took on Carl Gardner as a lead vocalist in Chapman’s place. Gardner didn’t really want to be in a vocal group — he was a solo singer, and had moved to LA to become a pop singer with the big bands. But Johnny Otis had explained to him that there was no longer much of a market for solo singers in the big band style, and that if he was going to make it as a singer in the current market he was going to have to join a vocal group. Gardner originally only joined for ten days, while Chapman was serving a short jail sentence, but then Chapman didn’t come back straight away, and by the time he did Gardner was firmly established in the group, and the Robins became a sextet for a while. While Chapman was out of the group, the rest of them had recorded not only “Riot in Cell Block Number Nine”, but also several other hits, most notably “Smokey Joe’s Cafe”, which featured Gardner on lead vocals, and was also written by Leiber and Stoller: [Excerpt: The Robins, “Smokey Joe’s Cafe”] But when Chapman returned, Gardner and Chapman started sharing the lead vocals between them. But they only had one recording session where this was the case, before problems started to surface in the group. Gardner was, by his own account at least, far more ambitious than the rest of the group, who were quite reluctant to have any greater level of success than they were already getting, while Gardner wanted to become a major star. Gardner claimed in his autobiography that one of the reasons for this reluctance was that most of the Robins were also pimps, and were making more money from that than from singing, and that they didn’t want to give up that money. Whatever the reason, there were tensions within the group, and not only about their relative levels of ambition. Gardner believed that R&B was going to be a passing fad, and was pushing for the group to go more in the big band style, which he was convinced was going to make a comeback. But there were other problems. Abe Stoller was disappointed to see that the venture he had invested in, which he’d believed was going to make everyone rich, was losing money like most other independent labels. Despite this, Leiber and Stoller continued to pump out great records for the Robins, including records like “The Hatchet Man”, a response to Billy Ward and the Dominoes’ “Sixty Minute Man”: [Excerpt: The Robins, “The Hatchet Man”] Many of the other songs they recorded had a certain amount of social commentary mixed in with the humour, as in “Framed”, which was for the time a rather pointed look at the way the law treated — and still treats — black men: [Excerpt: The Robins, “Framed”] But no matter how good the records they put out were, there was still the fact that the label wasn’t bringing in money. And Leiber and Stoller were having other problems. Stoller’s mother had died from what seemed to be suicide, while Leiber had been the driver in a car accident that had left one woman dead. Both were sunk in depression. But then Jerry Leiber bumped into Neshui Ertegun at the home of a mutual friend. Ertegun was an admirer of Leiber and Stoller’s writing, and said he wanted to get to know Leiber better — and invited Leiber along on his honeymoon. Ertegun was about to get married, and he was planning to spend much of his honeymoon playing tennis while his wife went swimming. He invited Leiber to join them on their honeymoon, so he would always have a tennis partner. The two quickly became good friends, and Ertegun made Leiber and Stoller a proposition. It was clear to Ertegun that Leiber and Stoller made great records, but that Spark Records had no understanding of how to get those records out to the public. So he put them in touch with his brother, Ahmet Ertegun, at Atlantic Records, who agreed to give Leiber and Stoller a freelance contract with Atlantic. They became, according to everything I’ve read, the first freelance production team *ever* in the US — though I strongly suspect that that depends on how you define “freelance production team”. They had contracts to make whatever records they wanted, independently of Atlantic’s organisation, and Atlantic would then release and distribute those records on their new label, Atco. And they took the Robins with them – or at least some of the Robins. The group found out that it was losing two of its members in the middle of the session for the song that was going to be the follow-up to “Smokey Joe’s Cafe”, “Cherry Lips”: [Excerpt: The Robins, “Cherry Lips”] That song was going to be a lead vocal for Carl Gardner, but just as the session started, Leiber and Stoller walked in with some legal documents. No-one has ever been clear as to what exactly those documents were — and Gardner later claimed that they were faked, while Leiber and Stoller always said that wasn’t the case, and that Gardner had already signed to Atco — but the documents were enough to extricate Gardner from the session. Grady Martin sang lead on the song instead. Carl Gardner and Bobby Nunn were now part of Leiber, Stoller, and Sill’s new project with Atco. The rest of the Robins weren’t There has been quite a bit of confusion as to exactly why Leiber and Stoller only wanted two of the Robins to come across with them. Carl Gardner claimed that Leiber and Stoller wanted to get him away from the rest of the group, who he and they considered unhealthy influences. Ty Terrell, one of the other Robins, always claimed that Leiber and Stoller wanted people who would be easier to control, and that they were paying Gardner and Nunn far less money than the other Robins wanted. And Leiber and Stoller claimed that they just thought the others weren’t very good — Mike Stoller said, “The Richard brothers and Ty Terrell didn’t sing lead at all. They usually sang ‘do-wah,’ ‘do-wah’ and had their hands up in the air.” I suspect, myself, that it’s a combination of reasons, but whatever caused the split, Gardner and Nunn were off into the new group, leaving the other four to carry on without them. Without Gardner and Nunn, the Robins continued recording for several years, but stopped having hits. To add insult to injury, many of the Robins’ last few singles on Spark were included on the first album by the new group, “the Coasters”, listed as Coasters recordings. To this day, if you buy a Coasters compilation, you’re likely to find “Riot in Cell Block #9” and “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” on there. For their new group Gardner and Nunn teamed up with new singers Leon Hughes and Billy Guy, along with the guitarist Adolph Jacobs. Billy Guy had been part of a duo known as “Bip and Bop”, who had recorded a “Ko Ko Mo” knock-off, “Ding a Ling”, backed by “Johnny’s Combo” — the name Johnny Otis had used when backing Gene and Eunice on “Ko Ko Mo”: [Excerpt: Bip and Bop”, “Ding Dong Ding”] Hughes, meanwhile, had been one of the many, many, singers who had been in the stew of different groups that had formed the Hollywood Flames, the Penguins, and the Platters. He had been in the Hollywood Flames for a while, at a time when their lineup was in constant flux — he had been in the group when Curtis Williams, who formed the Penguins, was still in the group, and when he left the Flames he was replaced by Gaynel Hodge, who had just quit the Platters. While he was in the Hollywood Flames, they recorded songs like this: [Excerpt: The Flames, “Keep on Smiling”] So this new group had the two strongest vocalists from the Robins, plus two other experienced singers. Carl Gardner was still in two minds about this, because he still wanted to be a solo artist, not part of a group, and when they came together he seems to have been under the impression that they were being formed as his backing group, rather than as a group that would include him as just one of the members. Lester Sill became the new group’s manager, and largely took charge of their career. The group became known as “the Coasters”, supposedly because they were from the West Coast but recording for a label on the East Coast. Carl Gardner would later claim that the group’s name was his idea, and that it was originally intended that they be promoted as “Carl Gardner and the Coasters”, but that when he saw the label on the first record he was horrified to see that it just said “the Coasters”, with no mention of Gardner’s name as the lead singer: [Excerpt: The Coasters, “Down in Mexico”] Everything seemed, at first, to be looking good for the Coasters. Carl Gardner was happy with the other members, as they seemed to be as hungry for success as he was, and they went out on tour, while Stoller went on holiday in Europe — and the boat he was on sunk on the way back. He and his wife survived, however, and when he got off the rescue boat he was greeted by Leiber, who informed him that Elvis Presley had just recorded “Hound Dog”, and they were going to make a lot of money as a result. But the distraction caused by that, and by the other factors in Leiber and Stoller’s life, meant that for much of the rest of the year they were occupied with things other than the Coasters. The Coasters kept touring, and Leiber and Stoller relocated to New York, where they started making records for other Atlantic acts. They started a relationship with the Drifters that would last for years, and through many different lineups of the group. This one, by the Drifters’ tenth lineup, became a top ten R&B single: [Excerpt: The Drifters, “Fools Fall in Love”] They also recorded “Lucky Lips” with Ruth Brown: [Excerpt: Ruth Brown, “Lucky Lips”] That became her first single to hit the pop charts since “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean”, four years earlier. But Leiber and Stoller were still going through all sorts of personal problems, ping-ponging from coast to coast, and apart from each other for months at a time. At one point Leiber relocated again, to LA, and Stoller stayed behind in New York, playing piano on records like Big Joe Turner’s “Teenage Letter”; [Excerpt: Big Joe Turner, “Teenage Letter”] But eventually they were together for long enough to write more songs for the Coasters. Their next work with the group was a double-sided smash hit. “Young Blood”, was a collaboration with another writer. Doc Pomus’ birth name was Jerome Felder, but he’d taken on his stage name when he decided to become a blues shouter in the style of Big Joe Turner or Jimmy Rushing. Pomus was not a normal blues shouter — he was an extremely fat Jewish man, who used crutches to get around as his legs were paralysed with post-polio syndrome. Pomus had been recording for labels like Chess since 1944, and many of the records were very good: [Excerpt: Doc Pomus, “Send For the Doctor”] Pomus had become a central figure in the group of musicians around Atlantic Records, performing regularly with people like Mickey Baker, King Curtis, and the jazz vibraphone player Milt Jackson. But no matter how many records he made, he’d not had any success as a singer, and he’d fairly recently decided to move into songwriting instead. The year before, he’d written “Lonely Avenue”, which had been a minor hit for Ray Charles: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, “Lonely Avenue”] But he didn’t really understand this new rock and roll music — he was a fan of jump blues, and swing bands like Count Basie’s, not this newer music aimed at a younger audience, and so his songwriting hadn’t been massively successful either. He was casting around for a songwriting partner who did understand the new music, so far without success. But Leiber and Stoller liked Pomus a lot — not only did they like “Lonely Avenue” and the records he’d been making recently, but Stoller even had fond memories of a radio jingle Pomus had written and recorded for a pants shop in Brooklyn, which he remembered from growing up. Pomus had written a song called “Young Blood”, which he thought had potential, but it wasn’t quite right. Depending on what version of events you believe, Leiber and Stoller either radically reworked the song, or threw away everything except the title, which they thought had immense commercial potential, and wrote a whole new song around it. Either way, the song was a huge success, and Pomus was grateful for his share of the credit and royalties, while Leiber and Stoller were happy to give someone they admired a boost. [Excerpt: The Coasters, “Young Blood”] “Young Blood” was ostensibly the A-side of the single that resulted, but the record that actually made the biggest splash was the B-side, “Searchin'”, which had Billy Guy singing lead. The song was one of Leiber and Stoller’s best, and showed Leiber’s sense of humour to its best effect, as Guy sang about how he was going to be a better detective than Charlie Chan or Sam Spade in tracking down his missing girlfriend: [Excerpt: The Coasters, “Searchin'”] On this session, Leon Hughes wasn’t present — I’ve not seen any explanation from anyone involved as to why he was absent, but his place was taken by Young Jessie. Young Jessie was a singer who had previously been a member of the Flairs, with Richard Berry, and had later recorded a handful of solo records for Modern Records, and had signed a contract with Leiber and Stoller. Around the time of the session Young Jessie released this, with Leiber and Stoller producing, for Atco: [Excerpt: Young Jessie, “Shuffle in the Gravel”] Despite what some people have said, Young Jessie never became a full-time member of the Coasters (though he did later tour with a group calling itself the Coasters, led by Leon Hughes) and the original lineup of the group continued touring for a while. After the success of “Searchin'” and “Young Blood”, Atco released a series of flop singles, all of which were recorded by the original lineup, and all of which, like the hit, featured one side with a Carl Gardner lead vocal and the other with a Billy Guy lead. Some of these, like “Idol With the Golden Head”, were classic Leiber and Stoller story songs along the lines of the earlier Robins records, but they didn’t yet, quite, have the classic Coasters sound: [Excerpt: The Coasters, “Idol With the Golden Head”] But then, towards the end of the year, the group split up. It’s hard to tell exactly what happened, as most of the stories about who left the group and why have been told by people who were involved, most of whom wanted to bolster their own later legal cases for ownership of the Coasters name. But whatever actually happened, Leon Hughes and Bobby Nunn were out of the group, suddenly. Depending on which version of the story you believe, they either got tired of the road and wanted to see their families, or they were sacked mid-tour because of their behaviour. For one recording session, Tommy Evans from the Drifters substituted for Hughes and Nunn, until Lester Sill went out and found two replacement members, Cornell Gunter and Dub Jones. We’ve met Gunter before — he was part of the collection of singers who were all in half a dozen different groups, centered around Gaynel Hodge. He had been an early member of the Platters, and had also been in the Flairs with Richard Berry and Young Jessie, and had recorded a handful of solo singles: [Excerpt: Cornell Gunter, “Neighborhood Dance”] Gunter was also unusual for the time in being an out gay man, and was initially apprehensive about joining the group in case the other members were homophobic. For the time, they weren’t especially — Carl Gardner apparently felt the need to let Gunter know that he was straight himself and wouldn’t be interested, but they took a live and let live attitude, and Gunter quickly became friendly with the rest of the group. Dub Jones, meanwhile, had been the bass singer for the Cadets, and had done the spoken-word vocals on their biggest hit, “Stranded in the Jungle”: [Excerpt: The Cadets, “Stranded in the Jungle”] Jones would quickly become an integral part of the group’s sound. This new lineup met for the first time on the plane to a gig in Hawaii, and Gardner at least was very worried that these new singers would not be able to fit in with the routines the others had already worked out. He had no need to worry. It only took one quick rehearsal before the show for Gunter and Jones to slot in perfectly, and the classic lineup of the Coasters was now in place. Leiber and Stoller loved working with the Coasters, but it had been almost a year since they’d written the group a hit at this point. “Hound Dog” had been a big enough success for Elvis that his management team wanted more from Leiber and Stoller, and fast, and most of their most commercial work in 1957 went to Elvis. But that changed in 1958, and the Coasters were the beneficiaries. We’ll be picking up with Leiber, Stoller, and Elvis, in a few weeks’ time. And a few weeks after that, we’ll see what happened when they got back into the studio with the Coasters…

love new york history europe mexico doctors hawaii jewish fall in love mama atlantic crown cd hole west coast elvis rock and roll jail east coast spark jungle cafe snake depending riot hughes sparks chess flames elvis presley ding chapman gardner levy penguins stranded combo shuffle smiling abe ling framed robins mixcloud gravel rock music rca youngblood atlantic records bop dominoes platters gunter wallflower drifters nunn bip sill cadets ten days count basie raunchy coasters cell block stoller hound dog sam spade leiber big mama thornton smokey joe atco charlie chan searchin king curtis milt jackson richard berry big joe turner ahmet ertegun flairs hatchet man mike stoller yakety yak david ritz billy ward jerry leiber johnny otis doc pomus curtis williams jimmy rushing little bit closer ertegun mickey baker carl gardner

Episode 55: “Searchin'” by the Coasters

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 4, 2019

Episode fifty-five of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Searchin'” by The Coasters, and at the lineup changes and conflicts that led to them becoming the perfect vehicle for Leiber and Stoller. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Raunchy” by Bill Justis. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. I’ve used multiple sources to piece together the information here. Marv Goldberg’s page is always the go-to for fifties R&B groups, and his piece on the Robins is essential. Hound Dog: The Leiber and Stoller Autobiography by Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, and David Ritz tells Leiber and Stoller’s side of the story well. Yakety Yak, I Fought Back: My Life With the Coasters by Carl and Veta Gardner is a self-published, rather short, autobiography, which gives Gardner’s take on the formation of the Coasters. Those Hoodlum Friends is a Coasters fansite, with a very nineties aesthetic (frames! angelfire domain name! Actual information rather than pretty, empty, layouts!) Lonely Avenue, a biography of Doc Pomus by Alex Halberstadt, helped me with the information on Pomus. I Must Be Dreamin’: The Robins on RCA, Crown, and Spark 1953-55 compiles all the material from the last couple of years of the Robins’ career before Nunn and Gardner departed. And The Definitive Coasters is a double-CD set that has some overlap with the Robins CD, as it contains all the Robins tracks on Sparks, which were later reissued as Coasters tracks. But it also contains all the group’s classic hits. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Erratum I call “Ding Dong Ding” “Ding A Ling”. Also at one point I say “sunk” when I mean “sank”, but didn’t think it worth retaking to fix that. Transcript It’s been a while since we last looked at the careers of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller — the last we heard of them, they had just put out a hit record with “Riot in Cell Block Number Nine” by the Robins, and they had seen Elvis Presley put out a cover version of a song they had written for Big Mama Thornton, “Hound Dog”. That hit record had caused a permanent breach between them and Johnny Otis, who had been credited as a co-writer on “Hound Dog” right up until the point it looked like becoming a big hit, but then had been eased out of the songwriting credits. But Leiber and Stoller were, with the help of Lester Sill, starting to establish themselves as some of the preeminent songwriters and producers in the R&B field. Their production career started as a result of the original “Hound Dog” — Big Mama Thornton’s version. That record had sold a million or so copies, according to the notoriously dodgy statistics of the time, but Leiber and Stoller had seen no money from it. Mike Stoller’s father, Abe, had been furious at how little they’d made for writing it, and had suggested that they should form their own record company, so they could make sure that if they had any more hits they would get their fair share of the money. Lester Sill, their business associate, suggested that as well as a record company they should form a publishing company. Abe Stoller had recently inherited some money from his father, and while Sill was broke himself, he had a friend, Jack “Jake the Snake” Levy, who would happily chip in money for an equal share of the company. So they formed Spark Records and Quintet Publishing, with Leiber, Mike Stoller, and Sill handling the music side of the business and Jake the Snake and Abe Stoller providing the money, with each of the five partners having an equal share in the companies. The first record the new label put out was a record by a duo called Willy and Ruth, in the Gene and Eunice mould. The song was a Leiber and Stoller original — as almost everything released on Spark was — although it was based around the old “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It” melody: [Excerpt: Willy and Ruth, “Come a Little Bit Closer”] But the act that had the most success on Spark, and to which Leiber and Stoller were devoting the most attention, was the Robins. Now we’ve already talked, back in the episode on “The Wallflower” about one of the Robins’ hits on Spark Records, “Riot in Cell Block Number Nine”, but Leiber and Stoller did a lot more work with them than just that one hit. They’d worked with the group before forming Spark – indeed the very first song they’d had released was “That’s What The Good Book Says” by the Robins – and were eager to sign them once they got their label up and running. While the Robins had started as a four-piece group, their lineup had slowly expanded. Grady Chapman had joined them as a fifth member in 1953, becoming their joint lead singer with Bobby Nunn, and singing leads on tracks like “Ten Days in Jail”: [Excerpt: The Robins, “Ten Days in Jail”] But Chapman himself ended up in jail, and so they took on Carl Gardner as a lead vocalist in Chapman’s place. Gardner didn’t really want to be in a vocal group — he was a solo singer, and had moved to LA to become a pop singer with the big bands. But Johnny Otis had explained to him that there was no longer much of a market for solo singers in the big band style, and that if he was going to make it as a singer in the current market he was going to have to join a vocal group. Gardner originally only joined for ten days, while Chapman was serving a short jail sentence, but then Chapman didn’t come back straight away, and by the time he did Gardner was firmly established in the group, and the Robins became a sextet for a while. While Chapman was out of the group, the rest of them had recorded not only “Riot in Cell Block Number Nine”, but also several other hits, most notably “Smokey Joe’s Cafe”, which featured Gardner on lead vocals, and was also written by Leiber and Stoller: [Excerpt: The Robins, “Smokey Joe’s Cafe”] But when Chapman returned, Gardner and Chapman started sharing the lead vocals between them. But they only had one recording session where this was the case, before problems started to surface in the group. Gardner was, by his own account at least, far more ambitious than the rest of the group, who were quite reluctant to have any greater level of success than they were already getting, while Gardner wanted to become a major star. Gardner claimed in his autobiography that one of the reasons for this reluctance was that most of the Robins were also pimps, and were making more money from that than from singing, and that they didn’t want to give up that money. Whatever the reason, there were tensions within the group, and not only about their relative levels of ambition. Gardner believed that R&B was going to be a passing fad, and was pushing for the group to go more in the big band style, which he was convinced was going to make a comeback. But there were other problems. Abe Stoller was disappointed to see that the venture he had invested in, which he’d believed was going to make everyone rich, was losing money like most other independent labels. Despite this, Leiber and Stoller continued to pump out great records for the Robins, including records like “The Hatchet Man”, a response to Billy Ward and the Dominoes’ “Sixty Minute Man”: [Excerpt: The Robins, “The Hatchet Man”] Many of the other songs they recorded had a certain amount of social commentary mixed in with the humour, as in “Framed”, which was for the time a rather pointed look at the way the law treated — and still treats — black men: [Excerpt: The Robins, “Framed”] But no matter how good the records they put out were, there was still the fact that the label wasn’t bringing in money. And Leiber and Stoller were having other problems. Stoller’s mother had died from what seemed to be suicide, while Leiber had been the driver in a car accident that had left one woman dead. Both were sunk in depression. But then Jerry Leiber bumped into Neshui Ertegun at the home of a mutual friend. Ertegun was an admirer of Leiber and Stoller’s writing, and said he wanted to get to know Leiber better — and invited Leiber along on his honeymoon. Ertegun was about to get married, and he was planning to spend much of his honeymoon playing tennis while his wife went swimming. He invited Leiber to join them on their honeymoon, so he would always have a tennis partner. The two quickly became good friends, and Ertegun made Leiber and Stoller a proposition. It was clear to Ertegun that Leiber and Stoller made great records, but that Spark Records had no understanding of how to get those records out to the public. So he put them in touch with his brother, Ahmet Ertegun, at Atlantic Records, who agreed to give Leiber and Stoller a freelance contract with Atlantic. They became, according to everything I’ve read, the first freelance production team *ever* in the US — though I strongly suspect that that depends on how you define “freelance production team”. They had contracts to make whatever records they wanted, independently of Atlantic’s organisation, and Atlantic would then release and distribute those records on their new label, Atco. And they took the Robins with them – or at least some of the Robins. The group found out that it was losing two of its members in the middle of the session for the song that was going to be the follow-up to “Smokey Joe’s Cafe”, “Cherry Lips”: [Excerpt: The Robins, “Cherry Lips”] That song was going to be a lead vocal for Carl Gardner, but just as the session started, Leiber and Stoller walked in with some legal documents. No-one has ever been clear as to what exactly those documents were — and Gardner later claimed that they were faked, while Leiber and Stoller always said that wasn’t the case, and that Gardner had already signed to Atco — but the documents were enough to extricate Gardner from the session. Grady Martin sang lead on the song instead. Carl Gardner and Bobby Nunn were now part of Leiber, Stoller, and Sill’s new project with Atco. The rest of the Robins weren’t There has been quite a bit of confusion as to exactly why Leiber and Stoller only wanted two of the Robins to come across with them. Carl Gardner claimed that Leiber and Stoller wanted to get him away from the rest of the group, who he and they considered unhealthy influences. Ty Terrell, one of the other Robins, always claimed that Leiber and Stoller wanted people who would be easier to control, and that they were paying Gardner and Nunn far less money than the other Robins wanted. And Leiber and Stoller claimed that they just thought the others weren’t very good — Mike Stoller said, “The Richard brothers and Ty Terrell didn’t sing lead at all. They usually sang ‘do-wah,’ ‘do-wah’ and had their hands up in the air.” I suspect, myself, that it’s a combination of reasons, but whatever caused the split, Gardner and Nunn were off into the new group, leaving the other four to carry on without them. Without Gardner and Nunn, the Robins continued recording for several years, but stopped having hits. To add insult to injury, many of the Robins’ last few singles on Spark were included on the first album by the new group, “the Coasters”, listed as Coasters recordings. To this day, if you buy a Coasters compilation, you’re likely to find “Riot in Cell Block #9” and “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” on there. For their new group Gardner and Nunn teamed up with new singers Leon Hughes and Billy Guy, along with the guitarist Adolph Jacobs. Billy Guy had been part of a duo known as “Bip and Bop”, who had recorded a “Ko Ko Mo” knock-off, “Ding a Ling”, backed by “Johnny’s Combo” — the name Johnny Otis had used when backing Gene and Eunice on “Ko Ko Mo”: [Excerpt: Bip and Bop”, “Ding Dong Ding”] Hughes, meanwhile, had been one of the many, many, singers who had been in the stew of different groups that had formed the Hollywood Flames, the Penguins, and the Platters. He had been in the Hollywood Flames for a while, at a time when their lineup was in constant flux — he had been in the group when Curtis Williams, who formed the Penguins, was still in the group, and when he left the Flames he was replaced by Gaynel Hodge, who had just quit the Platters. While he was in the Hollywood Flames, they recorded songs like this: [Excerpt: The Flames, “Keep on Smiling”] So this new group had the two strongest vocalists from the Robins, plus two other experienced singers. Carl Gardner was still in two minds about this, because he still wanted to be a solo artist, not part of a group, and when they came together he seems to have been under the impression that they were being formed as his backing group, rather than as a group that would include him as just one of the members. Lester Sill became the new group’s manager, and largely took charge of their career. The group became known as “the Coasters”, supposedly because they were from the West Coast but recording for a label on the East Coast. Carl Gardner would later claim that the group’s name was his idea, and that it was originally intended that they be promoted as “Carl Gardner and the Coasters”, but that when he saw the label on the first record he was horrified to see that it just said “the Coasters”, with no mention of Gardner’s name as the lead singer: [Excerpt: The Coasters, “Down in Mexico”] Everything seemed, at first, to be looking good for the Coasters. Carl Gardner was happy with the other members, as they seemed to be as hungry for success as he was, and they went out on tour, while Stoller went on holiday in Europe — and the boat he was on sunk on the way back. He and his wife survived, however, and when he got off the rescue boat he was greeted by Leiber, who informed him that Elvis Presley had just recorded “Hound Dog”, and they were going to make a lot of money as a result. But the distraction caused by that, and by the other factors in Leiber and Stoller’s life, meant that for much of the rest of the year they were occupied with things other than the Coasters. The Coasters kept touring, and Leiber and Stoller relocated to New York, where they started making records for other Atlantic acts. They started a relationship with the Drifters that would last for years, and through many different lineups of the group. This one, by the Drifters’ tenth lineup, became a top ten R&B single: [Excerpt: The Drifters, “Fools Fall in Love”] They also recorded “Lucky Lips” with Ruth Brown: [Excerpt: Ruth Brown, “Lucky Lips”] That became her first single to hit the pop charts since “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean”, four years earlier. But Leiber and Stoller were still going through all sorts of personal problems, ping-ponging from coast to coast, and apart from each other for months at a time. At one point Leiber relocated again, to LA, and Stoller stayed behind in New York, playing piano on records like Big Joe Turner’s “Teenage Letter”; [Excerpt: Big Joe Turner, “Teenage Letter”] But eventually they were together for long enough to write more songs for the Coasters. Their next work with the group was a double-sided smash hit. “Young Blood”, was a collaboration with another writer. Doc Pomus’ birth name was Jerome Felder, but he’d taken on his stage name when he decided to become a blues shouter in the style of Big Joe Turner or Jimmy Rushing. Pomus was not a normal blues shouter — he was an extremely fat Jewish man, who used crutches to get around as his legs were paralysed with post-polio syndrome. Pomus had been recording for labels like Chess since 1944, and many of the records were very good: [Excerpt: Doc Pomus, “Send For the Doctor”] Pomus had become a central figure in the group of musicians around Atlantic Records, performing regularly with people like Mickey Baker, King Curtis, and the jazz vibraphone player Milt Jackson. But no matter how many records he made, he’d not had any success as a singer, and he’d fairly recently decided to move into songwriting instead. The year before, he’d written “Lonely Avenue”, which had been a minor hit for Ray Charles: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, “Lonely Avenue”] But he didn’t really understand this new rock and roll music — he was a fan of jump blues, and swing bands like Count Basie’s, not this newer music aimed at a younger audience, and so his songwriting hadn’t been massively successful either. He was casting around for a songwriting partner who did understand the new music, so far without success. But Leiber and Stoller liked Pomus a lot — not only did they like “Lonely Avenue” and the records he’d been making recently, but Stoller even had fond memories of a radio jingle Pomus had written and recorded for a pants shop in Brooklyn, which he remembered from growing up. Pomus had written a song called “Young Blood”, which he thought had potential, but it wasn’t quite right. Depending on what version of events you believe, Leiber and Stoller either radically reworked the song, or threw away everything except the title, which they thought had immense commercial potential, and wrote a whole new song around it. Either way, the song was a huge success, and Pomus was grateful for his share of the credit and royalties, while Leiber and Stoller were happy to give someone they admired a boost. [Excerpt: The Coasters, “Young Blood”] “Young Blood” was ostensibly the A-side of the single that resulted, but the record that actually made the biggest splash was the B-side, “Searchin'”, which had Billy Guy singing lead. The song was one of Leiber and Stoller’s best, and showed Leiber’s sense of humour to its best effect, as Guy sang about how he was going to be a better detective than Charlie Chan or Sam Spade in tracking down his missing girlfriend: [Excerpt: The Coasters, “Searchin'”] On this session, Leon Hughes wasn’t present — I’ve not seen any explanation from anyone involved as to why he was absent, but his place was taken by Young Jessie. Young Jessie was a singer who had previously been a member of the Flairs, with Richard Berry, and had later recorded a handful of solo records for Modern Records, and had signed a contract with Leiber and Stoller. Around the time of the session Young Jessie released this, with Leiber and Stoller producing, for Atco: [Excerpt: Young Jessie, “Shuffle in the Gravel”] Despite what some people have said, Young Jessie never became a full-time member of the Coasters (though he did later tour with a group calling itself the Coasters, led by Leon Hughes) and the original lineup of the group continued touring for a while. After the success of “Searchin'” and “Young Blood”, Atco released a series of flop singles, all of which were recorded by the original lineup, and all of which, like the hit, featured one side with a Carl Gardner lead vocal and the other with a Billy Guy lead. Some of these, like “Idol With the Golden Head”, were classic Leiber and Stoller story songs along the lines of the earlier Robins records, but they didn’t yet, quite, have the classic Coasters sound: [Excerpt: The Coasters, “Idol With the Golden Head”] But then, towards the end of the year, the group split up. It’s hard to tell exactly what happened, as most of the stories about who left the group and why have been told by people who were involved, most of whom wanted to bolster their own later legal cases for ownership of the Coasters name. But whatever actually happened, Leon Hughes and Bobby Nunn were out of the group, suddenly. Depending on which version of the story you believe, they either got tired of the road and wanted to see their families, or they were sacked mid-tour because of their behaviour. For one recording session, Tommy Evans from the Drifters substituted for Hughes and Nunn, until Lester Sill went out and found two replacement members, Cornell Gunter and Dub Jones. We’ve met Gunter before — he was part of the collection of singers who were all in half a dozen different groups, centered around Gaynel Hodge. He had been an early member of the Platters, and had also been in the Flairs with Richard Berry and Young Jessie, and had recorded a handful of solo singles: [Excerpt: Cornell Gunter, “Neighborhood Dance”] Gunter was also unusual for the time in being an out gay man, and was initially apprehensive about joining the group in case the other members were homophobic. For the time, they weren’t especially — Carl Gardner apparently felt the need to let Gunter know that he was straight himself and wouldn’t be interested, but they took a live and let live attitude, and Gunter quickly became friendly with the rest of the group. Dub Jones, meanwhile, had been the bass singer for the Cadets, and had done the spoken-word vocals on their biggest hit, “Stranded in the Jungle”: [Excerpt: The Cadets, “Stranded in the Jungle”] Jones would quickly become an integral part of the group’s sound. This new lineup met for the first time on the plane to a gig in Hawaii, and Gardner at least was very worried that these new singers would not be able to fit in with the routines the others had already worked out. He had no need to worry. It only took one quick rehearsal before the show for Gunter and Jones to slot in perfectly, and the classic lineup of the Coasters was now in place. Leiber and Stoller loved working with the Coasters, but it had been almost a year since they’d written the group a hit at this point. “Hound Dog” had been a big enough success for Elvis that his management team wanted more from Leiber and Stoller, and fast, and most of their most commercial work in 1957 went to Elvis. But that changed in 1958, and the Coasters were the beneficiaries. We’ll be picking up with Leiber, Stoller, and Elvis, in a few weeks’ time. And a few weeks after that, we’ll see what happened when they got back into the studio with the Coasters…

love new york history europe mexico doctors nashville hawaii jewish fall in love mama atlantic crown cd hole west coast elvis rock and roll jail east coast spark jungle cafe snake depending bob dylan riot hughes sparks chess flames elvis presley ding chapman gardner levy penguins tom petty stranded combo shuffle smiling abe george harrison ling framed robins mixcloud gravel rock music rca youngblood atlantic records bop roy orbison dominoes platters gunter wallflower drifters nunn bip sill cadets ten days count basie raunchy coasters everly brothers cell block weavers stoller jeff lynne hound dog sam phillips sam spade chet atkins leiber big mama thornton smokey joe bob moore charlie chan atco searchin king curtis milt jackson richard berry big joe turner ahmet ertegun flairs hatchet man mike stoller david ritz yakety yak billy ward jerry leiber johnny otis doc pomus monument records curtis williams jimmy rushing little bit closer fred foster ertegun mickey baker nashville a team carl gardner

Episode 53: “I Put a Spell on You” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 21, 2019

Episode fifty-three of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Put a Spell on You” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, and the career of a man who had more than fifty more children than hit records. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Since I Met You Baby” by Ivory Joe Hunter —-more—- Erratum I only noticed while doing the final edit for this episode that I used the words “legitimate” and “illegitimate” to describe children, and that this usage could quite possibly be considered offensive, something I hadn’t realised when writing or recording it. I apologise if anyone does take offence. Resources No Mixcloud this week, as the episode is so heavy on Hawkins that it would violate Mixcloud’s terms and conditions. I tried to put together a Spotify playlist instead, but a few of the recordings I use here aren’t on Spotify. As I mention in the episode, I leaned very heavily on one book here, I Put a Spell on You: The Bizarre Life of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins by Steve Bergsman. There are many compilations of Hawkins’ work. This double-CD set containing all his work up to 1962 is as good as any and ridiculously cheap. Finally, you should also listen to this short audio documentary on the search for Jay’s kids, as it features interviews with a couple of them. They deserve to have their voices heard. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start, an acknowledgment. I like to acknowledge in the podcast when I’ve relied heavily on one source, and in this case the source I’m relying on most is Steve Bergsman’s book “I Put a Spell on You: The Bizarre Life of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins”. That book only came out this year, so it deserves the acknowledgment even more than normal. If you like this episode, you might well want to buy Mr. Bergsman’s book, which has a lot more information. There are a lot of one-hit wonders in the history of rock and roll. And most of those one-hit wonders might as well have had no hits for all the impact they actually made on the genre. Of the thousands of people who have hits, many of them drop off the mental radar as soon as their chart success ends. For every Beatles or Elvis there’s a Sam And The Womp or Simon Park Orchestra. But some one-hit wonders are different. Some one-hit wonders manage to get an entire career out of that one hit. And in the case of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, not only did he do that, but he created a stage show that would inspire every shock-rocker ever to wear makeup, and indirectly inspire a minor British political party. The one hit he recorded, meanwhile, was covered by everyone from Nina Simone to Marilyn Manson. [Excerpt: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “I Put A Spell On You”] It’s hard to separate truth from myth when it comes to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, not least because he was an inveterate liar. He always claimed, for example, that in his time in the army he had been captured by the Japanese and tortured for eighteen months. According to Army records, he joined the army in December 1945 and was honourably discharged in 1952. Given that World War II ended in September 1945, that would tend to suggest that his story about having been a Japanese prisoner of war was, perhaps, not one hundred percent truthful. And the same thing goes for almost everything he ever said. So anything you hear here is provisional. What we do know is that he seems to have grown up extremely resentful of women, particularly his mother. He was, depending on which version of the story you believe, the youngest of four or seven children, all from different fathers, and he, unlike his older siblings, was fostered from an early age. He resented his mother because of this, but does not seem to have been particularly bothered by the fact that his own prodigious fathering of children by multiple women, all of whom he abandoned, will have put those children in the same position. He variously claimed to have between fifty-seven and seventy-five children. Thirty-three have been traced, so this seems to be one of those rare occasions where he was telling the truth. So this is another of the all too many episodes where I have to warn listeners that we are dealing with someone who behaved appallingly towards women. I am not going to go into too many details here, but suffice to say that Hawkins was not an admirable man. Jalacey Hawkins was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and would often claim that he had musical training at the Ohio Conservatory of Music. This is, you will be shocked to hear, not true — not least because there was not, in fact, an Ohio Conservatory of Music for him to train at. Instead, he learned his trade as a musician in the armed forces, where he was not, in fact, sent into Japan in a combat role aged fourteen. Instead, he joined the Special Services, the people who put on shows for the rest of the military, and learned the saxophone. As well as his stories about being a prisoner of war, he also used to claim on a regular basis that the reason he’d loved being in the military so much was because you were allowed to kill people and wouldn’t get punished for it. History does not record exactly how many people his saxophone playing killed. After his discharge from the military in 1952, he abandoned his first wife and children — telling them he was popping to the shop and then not seeing them again for two years. Around this time he hooked up with Tiny Grimes, who is yet another person who often gets credited as the creator of the “first rock and roll record”, this one a 1946 song called “Tiny’s Boogie”: [Excerpt: Tiny Grimes, “Tiny’s Boogie”] Tiny Grimes was a strange figure who straddled the worlds of jazz and R&B, and who had played with great jazz figures like Charlie Parker and Art Tatum as an instrumentalist, but who as a singer was firmly in the rock and roll world. He had seen his greatest success with a rock and roll version of the old Scottish folk song “Loch Lomond” [Excerpt: Tiny Grimes “Loch Lomond”] As a result of that, he’d started performing in a kilt, and calling himself Tiny “Mac” Grimes and His Rocking Highlanders. Grimes first met Hawkins backstage at the Moondog Coronation Ball — a legendary gig put on by Alan Freed in 1952, which was the first big sign to Freed of just how successful rock and roll was going to become. At that show, so many more people tried to get in than the venue had capacity for — thanks, largely, to forged tickets being sold — that the show became dangerously overcrowded, and had to be cancelled after a single song from the first artist on the bill. So Grimes didn’t get to play that day, but Jalacey Hawkins, as he was still then known, managed to get himself backstage and meet Grimes. Hawkins did this through Freed, who Hawkins had got to know shortly after his discharge from the military. When he’d got back to Cleveland, he’d heard Freed on the radio and been amazed that they let a black man have his own show, so he’d gone down to the radio station to meet him, and been even more amazed to find out that the man who sounded black, and was playing black music, was in fact white. For decades afterwards, Hawkins would describe Freed as one of the very few white people in the world who actually cared about black people and black music. The two had struck up a friendship, and Hawkins had managed to get backstage at Freed’s show. When he did, he just went up to Grimes and asked for a job. Grimes gave him a job as a combination road manager and musician — Hawkins would play piano and saxophone, sing occasionally, and was also (according to Hawkins) Grimes’ valet and dog walker. Working with Grimes is where Hawkins first started performing outrageously on stage. Grimes’ band already dressed in Scottish clothing, and put on quite a bit of a show, but Hawkins pushed things a little further. He would, for example, come out on stage in his kilt and with tins of Carnation evaporated milk hanging on his chest as if they were breasts. He would then sing Ruth Brown’s hit “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean”. [Excerpt: Ruth Brown, “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean” According to Hawkins, Ruth Brown came to see the show at one point, and said of him “This is the only bitch who can sing my song better than me”. That doesn’t sound especially like Brown, it has to be said. Hawkins started recording with Grimes, and started to be billed as “Screamin’ Jay Hawkins” — a stage name which, again, he gave varying origins for. The most likely seems to be the one he gave in a documentary, in which he said that he couldn’t sing, but had to take lead vocals, so he decided to just scream everything, because at least that would be different. Quite how that tallies with his ability to sing better than Ruth Brown, it’s best not to wonder. Either way, his early recordings show him trying to fit into the standard R&B vocal styles of the time, rather than screaming. On his first record, with Grimes, he’s not the blues shouter that he had a reputation of being, and nor is he the screamer he would later become — instead he sounds like he’s imitating Clyde McPhatter’s singing on “The Bells” by Billy Ward and His Dominoes, but in a bass register somewhat reminiscent of Paul Robeson. Compare Hawkins here: [Excerpt: Tiny Grimes with Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “Why Did You Waste My Time?”] With McPhatter on the Billy Ward record: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and His Dominoes, “The Bells”] You can hear the resemblance there, I’m sure. At this point Hawkins had a certain amount of potential, but was just one of a million smooth blues singers, who relied more on stage gimmicks than on singing ability. But those stage gimmicks were making him a breakout star in Grimes’ band, and so at a recording session for Grimes, it was agreed that Hawkins could record a single of his own at the end of the session, if there was time. Hawkins’ attitude quickly caused problems for him, though. During the recording of “Screamin’ Blues”, which would have been his first single, he got into an argument with Ahmet Ertegun, who kept telling him to sing the song more smoothly, like Fats Domino. Accounts of what happened next vary — Hawkins’ most frequent version was that he ended up punching Ertegun, though other people just say that the two got into a screaming row. Either way, the session was abandoned, and Hawkins soon ended up out of Grimes’ band. He worked with a few different bands, before getting a big break as Fats Domino’s opening act. He only lasted a few weeks in that role — depending on who you asked, Domino either fired Hawkins for being vulgar on stage and screaming, as Domino claimed, or because he was jealous of Hawkins’ great leopardskin suit, as Hawkins would sometimes claim. Wynonie Harris saw something in Hawkins, and helped him get his first solo shows in New York, and on the back of these he made his first records as a solo artist, for the tiny label Timely Records, under his birth name, Jalacey Hawkins, and featuring Mickey Baker, who would play on most of his fifties sessions, on guitar: [Excerpt: Jalacey Hawkins, “Baptize Me in Wine”] But unfortunately, after two of these singles, Timely Records folded, and Hawkins had to find another label. He moved on to Grand Records, and started recording as Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. By this time, he had started using some of the gimmicks he would use in his stage show, though for the most part his act was still fairly tame by modern standards. He was also still, at least in the recording studio, making fairly standard jump blues records, like this one, the first he recorded as a solo artist under his stage name: [Excerpt, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “Take Me Back”] That was the only single that saw release from his time with Grand Records, and it’s not even certain that it was released until a year or so later — reports seem to vary about this. But it was while he was recording for Grand Records that he wrote the song that would bring him worldwide fame. It came about, as so much of Hawkins’ life did, from his mistreatment of a woman. He was playing a residency in Atlantic City, and he had a live-in girlfriend from Philadelphia. But, as was always the case with Hawkins, he was cheating on her with multiple other women. Eventually she figured this out, and walked into the bar in the middle of one of his sets, threw his keys onto the stage, and walked out, blowing him a kiss. He didn’t realise what had happened until he was talking to the barmaid later, and she explained to him that no, that meant his girlfriend was definitely leaving. He brooded over this for a day, and then had another conversation with the barmaid, and told her he was planning to go to Philadelphia to get the girl back. She said “so you think she’ll come back to you, do you?” and he replied “yes, I’ll get her back, even if I have to put a spell on her — that’s it! I’ll write a song about putting a spell on her, and she’ll realise how much I love her and come back!” Hawkins would later claim that when, two years later, the song was finally released, she did come back — not because of “I Put A Spell On You”, but because she loved the B-side, a song called “Little Demon”. As Hawkins told the story, she came back to him, they stayed together for four months, and then he dumped her. He hadn’t wanted her back because he loved her, he’d wanted her back so that he could be the one to do the dumping, not her. Whatever the truth of that last part, he recorded “I Put A Spell on You” some time around late 1954, but that version wouldn’t be released until decades later: [Excerpt: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “I Put A Spell on You (unreleased version)”] It’s a decent record, but there’s something missing, and for whatever reason, it never came out. Instead, he signed to yet another label, Mercury, which was at the time somewhere between a large independent label and a small major, and started putting out singles just as “Jay Hawkins”. By this time, he’d found a regular team of people to work with — Leroy Kirkland was the arranger, and Mickey Baker would play guitar, Sam “the Man” Taylor and Al Sears were on saxophone, and Panama Francis was on drums. That core team would work on everything he did for the next couple of years. It was while he was at Mercury that he hit on the style he would use from that point on, with a B-side called “(She Put The) Wamee (On Me)”, a song about voodoo and threatening to murder a woman who’d cast a spell on him that, in retrospect, has all the elements of Hawkins’ later hit in place, just with the wrong song: [Excerpt: Jay Hawkins, “(She Put The) Wamee (On Me)”] That was Hawkins’ first truly great record, but it was hidden away on a B-side and did nothing. After a couple more singles, Hawkins was once again dropped by his label — but once again, he moved on to a slightly bigger label, this time to OKeh, which was a subsidiary of Columbia, one of the biggest labels in the country. And in September 1956, he went into the studio to record his first single for them, which was to be a new version of “I Put a Spell on You”. But Arnold Maxim, the producer at the session, wanted something a bit different from Hawkins. He thought that everyone sounded a little too staid, a little too uptight, and he asked why they couldn’t sound in the studio like they did when they were having fun on stage and really cutting loose. Hawkins replied that when they were on stage everyone was usually so drunk they couldn’t *remember* what it was they’d been doing. So Maxim decided to order in some crates of beer and fried chicken, and told them “this isn’t a recording session, it’s a party. Have fun.” When they were drunk enough, he started recording, and the result was this: [Excerpt: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “I Put A Spell On You”] Now, in later years, Hawkins would try to claim that he had been tricked into that performance, and that he’d had to relearn the song from the record after the fact, because he couldn’t remember what it was he’d been doing. In truth, though, it’s not that different from a record like “(She Put the) Wamee (On Me)”, and it seems more than likely that this is yet more of Hawkins’ exaggeration. The record didn’t chart, because many radio stations refused to play it, but it nonetheless became a classic and reportedly sold over a million copies. This was in part due to the efforts of Alan Freed. Hawkins was already starting to play up his stage persona even more — wearing capes and bones through his nose, and trying to portray a voodoo image. But when he was booked as the headline act on a Christmas show Freed put together in 1956, Freed surprised him by telling him he’d had a great idea for the show — he’d got hold of a coffin, and Hawkins could start his performance by rising out of the coffin like a vampire or zombie. Hawkins was horrified. He told Freed that there was only one time a black man was ever getting into a coffin, and that was when he was never getting out again. Freed insisted, and eventually ended up paying Hawkins a large bonus — which Hawkins would later claim was multiple thousands of dollars, but which actually seems to have been about three hundred dollars, itself a lot of money in 1956. Hawkins eventually agreed, though he kept a finger between the coffin and the lid, so it couldn’t close completely on him. This was the start of Hawkins’ career as a shock-rocker, and he became known as “the black Vincent Price” for his stage shows which would include not only the coffin but also a skull on a stick with smoke coming out of it (the skull was named Henry) and a giant rubber snake. Many horror-themed rock acts of the future, such as Alice Cooper or the Cramps, would later use elements of Hawkins’ stage shows — and he would increasingly make music to match the show, so that he later recorded a song called “Constipation Blues”, which he would perform while sitting on a toilet on stage. But in 1957, neither he nor the record label seemed quite sure what they should do to follow up “I Put a Spell on You”. That record had traded heavily on its shock value, to the extent that OKeh’s trade ads contained the line “DJs be brave — if you get fired, we’ll get you a job!” however, only one DJ did get fired for playing it, one Bob Friesen. He contacted OKeh, but they didn’t get him a job — and eventually someone working for the company told Billboard this, Billboard publicised the story, and another station hired Friesen for the publicity that would get them. OKeh actually edited the single shortly after release, to get rid of some of the grunts at the end, which people variously described as “orgiastic” and “cannibalistic”, but it didn’t make the record any more palatable to the professionally outraged. But the next record went completely the other way — a cover version of the old standard “You Made Me Love You (I Didn’t Want to Do it)”: [Excerpt: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “You Made Me Love You (I Didn’t Want to Do It)”] I can see why they thought that was a good idea before recording it — Fats Domino had just had a massive hit with “Blueberry Hill”, another old standard done in a similar arrangement to the one on Hawkins’ record, but still… The next couple of records were more in the style one might expect from Hawkins, a track called “Frenzy”, and a great Leiber and Stoller swamp-rocker called “Alligator Wine”: [Excerpt: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “Alligator Wine”] But neither of those was a success either — partly because Hawkins went too far in the other direction. He had the opportunity to appear in Alan Freed’s film “Mister Rock and Roll” to promote “Frenzy”, but while every other act in the film performed in suits or were similarly well-dressed, Hawkins insisted on performing naked apart from a loincloth, with his hair sticking up, white face-paint, and carrying a spear and a shield — his idea of what a Mau Mau rebel in Kenya looked like (the Mau Mau fighters did not look like this). Or at least that was his later description of what he was wearing. Others who’ve seen the footage suggest it wasn’t quite that extreme, but still involved him being half-naked and looking like a “native”. Hawkins had already been getting a certain amount of criticism from the NAACP and other civil rights groups because they believed that he was making black people look bad by associating them with voodoo and cannibalism. Paramount Pictures decided that they didn’t particularly want to have their film picketed, and so removed Hawkins’ section from the film. Hawkins’ attitude to the NAACP was that as far as he was concerned the only thing they were doing for black people was trying to stop him earning a living, and he wanted nothing to do with them. (This was not a common attitude among black people at the time, as you might imagine.) And so, once again, things went to the other extreme. Hawkins put out his first album. It was called “At Home With Screamin’ Jay Hawkins”, had a cheery photo of Hawkins in a Santa hat on the cover, and mixed in his recent singles, a couple of new originals (including one called “Hong Kong” which is mostly just Hawkins making racist “ching chong” sounds) and… versions of “I Love Paris in the Springtime”, “Ol’ Man River”, and other extremely non-voodoo-shock-rock songs. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t a success. He was dropped by OKeh and moved to a tiny label, where he started recording more idiosyncratic material like “Armpit #6”: [Excerpt: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “Armpit #6”] But any chance of a comeback was pretty much destroyed when he was arrested in 1958 for possession of cannabis and statutory rape, after having had sex with a fifteen-year-old girl. After he got out of prison, he moved to Hawaii for a while, and became a performer again, although there was a temporary hiccup in his career when his girlfriend and singing partner stabbed him after she found out he’d married someone else without telling her. She presumably also didn’t know that he was still married to his first wife at the time. Hawkins’ career remained in the doldrums until 1965, when two things happened almost simultaneously. The first was that Nina Simone recorded a cover version of “I Put a Spell on You”, which made the top thirty in the US charts: [Excerpt: Nina Simone, “I Put a Spell on You”] The second was that Hawkins got rediscovered in the UK, in quite a big way. There was a club in Manchester called the Twisted Wheel, which was legendary in soul and R&B circles — to the extent that when I saw P.P. Arnold in its successor venue Night People two weeks ago, she kept referring to it as the Twisted Wheel, even though the original club closed down in 1971, because she had such strong memories of the original venue. And among the regular attendees of that club were a group of people who loved the few Screamin’ Jay Hawkins records they’d been able to get hold of. Hawkins had been popular enough that a British act, Screamin’ Lord Sutch and the Savages, had stolen his act wholesale, cape, coffin, and all: [Excerpt: Screamin’ Lord Sutch and the Savages, “Jack the Ripper”] Screamin’ Lord Sutch would later go on to form the Monster Raving Loony Party, a political party intended as a joke that still continues to field candidates at every election twenty years after Sutch’s death. But while people like Sutch had admired him, Hawkins was mostly a legend in British blues circles, someone about whom almost nothing was known. But then some of the Twisted Wheel people went to see Little Richard at the Oasis club, another famous Manchester venue, and got chatting to Don “Sugarcane” Harris, from the support act Don and Dewey. He mentioned that he’d recently seen Hawkins, and he was still doing the same show, and so the British blues and soul fans tracked him down and persuaded the promoter Don Arden to put on a tour of the UK, with Hawkins using the Twisted Wheel as his base. The tour wasn’t a commercial success, but it built Hawkins’ reputation in Britain to the point that it seemed like *every* beat group wanted to record “I Put a Spell on You”. Between 1965 and 1968, it was recorded by Manfred Mann, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, the Animals, Them (featuring Van Morrison) and Alan Price, who made the top ten in the UK with his version: [Excerpt: The Alan Price Set, “I Put a Spell on You”] Hawkins even got to record a second album, finally, in Abbey Road studios, and he started to tour Europe successfully and build up a major fanbase. But Hawkins’ self-destructive — and other-people-destructive — tendencies kicked in. The next few decades would follow a recurring pattern — Hawkins would get some big break, like opening for the Rolling Stones at Madison Square Garden, or recording an album with Keith Richards guesting, or finally getting to appear in a film. Every time, he would let his addictions to alcohol or codeine overtake him, or he would rip a friend off for a trifling sum of money, or he would just get married bigamously again. Much of the time, he was living in one-room apartments, sometimes with no electricity. He married six times in total, and was abusive towards at least some of his wives. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins died in 2000 after emergency surgery for an aneurysm. His fifth wife, one of the two who seem to have been actually important to him in some way, has dropped strong hints that he was killed by his sixth wife, who he had been claiming was poisoning him, though there’s no evidence for that other than that she was strongly disliked by many of the people around Hawkins. When he died, he was seventy, and his current wife was thirty-one. Many people claimed that they had visitations from Hawkins’ ghost in the days after his death, but the thing that seems to sum him up in the afterlife the most is his legacy to his family. He sold the rights to “I Put a Spell on You” shortly before his death, for twenty-five thousand dollars, which means his estate gets no songwriting royalties from his one big hit. He hadn’t made a will since the 1970s, and that will left most of his money to his second wife, Ginny, who most people seem to agree deserved it if anyone did — she was with him for sixteen years, and tolerated the worst of his behaviour. He also left an amount to a niece of his. As for his kids? Well, none of the seventy or however many illegitimate children he had saw a penny from his will. His three legitimate children, he left a dollar each. At least one of them, his daughter Sookie, didn’t get her dollar — it went to her cousin, who didn’t pass it on to her. And I think that means I should give Sookie the final word here, in a quote from the end of Steve Bergsman’s biography. “My father thought he was all that, but not to me. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins didn’t treat people right. He was a performer, but he didn’t treat people right.”

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Episode 53: "I Put a Spell on You" by Screamin' Jay Hawkins

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 21, 2019 40:23

Episode fifty-three of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "I Put a Spell on You" by Screamin' Jay Hawkins, and the career of a man who had more than fifty more children than hit records. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Since I Met You Baby" by Ivory Joe Hunter ----more---- Erratum I only noticed while doing the final edit for this episode that I used the words "legitimate" and "illegitimate" to describe children, and that this usage could quite possibly be considered offensive, something I hadn't realised when writing or recording it. I apologise if anyone does take offence. Resources No Mixcloud this week, as the episode is so heavy on Hawkins that it would violate Mixcloud's terms and conditions. I tried to put together a Spotify playlist instead, but a few of the recordings I use here aren't on Spotify. As I mention in the episode, I leaned very heavily on one book here, I Put a Spell on You: The Bizarre Life of Screamin' Jay Hawkins by Steve Bergsman. There are many compilations of Hawkins' work. This double-CD set containing all his work up to 1962 is as good as any and ridiculously cheap. Finally, you should also listen to this short audio documentary on the search for Jay's kids, as it features interviews with a couple of them. They deserve to have their voices heard. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start, an acknowledgment. I like to acknowledge in the podcast when I've relied heavily on one source, and in this case the source I'm relying on most is Steve Bergsman's book "I Put a Spell on You: The Bizarre Life of Screamin' Jay Hawkins". That book only came out this year, so it deserves the acknowledgment even more than normal. If you like this episode, you might well want to buy Mr. Bergsman's book, which has a lot more information. There are a lot of one-hit wonders in the history of rock and roll. And most of those one-hit wonders might as well have had no hits for all the impact they actually made on the genre. Of the thousands of people who have hits, many of them drop off the mental radar as soon as their chart success ends. For every Beatles or Elvis there's a Sam And The Womp or Simon Park Orchestra. But some one-hit wonders are different. Some one-hit wonders manage to get an entire career out of that one hit. And in the case of Screamin' Jay Hawkins, not only did he do that, but he created a stage show that would inspire every shock-rocker ever to wear makeup, and indirectly inspire a minor British political party. The one hit he recorded, meanwhile, was covered by everyone from Nina Simone to Marilyn Manson. [Excerpt: Screamin' Jay Hawkins, "I Put A Spell On You"] It's hard to separate truth from myth when it comes to Screamin' Jay Hawkins, not least because he was an inveterate liar. He always claimed, for example, that in his time in the army he had been captured by the Japanese and tortured for eighteen months. According to Army records, he joined the army in December 1945 and was honourably discharged in 1952. Given that World War II ended in September 1945, that would tend to suggest that his story about having been a Japanese prisoner of war was, perhaps, not one hundred percent truthful. And the same thing goes for almost everything he ever said. So anything you hear here is provisional. What we do know is that he seems to have grown up extremely resentful of women, particularly his mother. He was, depending on which version of the story you believe, the youngest of four or seven children, all from different fathers, and he, unlike his older siblings, was fostered from an early age. He resented his mother because of this, but does not seem to have been particularly bothered by the fact that his own prodigious fathering of children by multiple women, all of whom he abandoned, will have put those children in the same position. He variously claimed to have between fifty-seven and seventy-five children. Thirty-three have been traced, so this seems to be one of those rare occasions where he was telling the truth. So this is another of the all too many episodes where I have to warn listeners that we are dealing with someone who behaved appallingly towards women. I am not going to go into too many details here, but suffice to say that Hawkins was not an admirable man. Jalacey Hawkins was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and would often claim that he had musical training at the Ohio Conservatory of Music. This is, you will be shocked to hear, not true -- not least because there was not, in fact, an Ohio Conservatory of Music for him to train at. Instead, he learned his trade as a musician in the armed forces, where he was not, in fact, sent into Japan in a combat role aged fourteen. Instead, he joined the Special Services, the people who put on shows for the rest of the military, and learned the saxophone. As well as his stories about being a prisoner of war, he also used to claim on a regular basis that the reason he'd loved being in the military so much was because you were allowed to kill people and wouldn't get punished for it. History does not record exactly how many people his saxophone playing killed. After his discharge from the military in 1952, he abandoned his first wife and children -- telling them he was popping to the shop and then not seeing them again for two years. Around this time he hooked up with Tiny Grimes, who is yet another person who often gets credited as the creator of the "first rock and roll record", this one a 1946 song called "Tiny's Boogie": [Excerpt: Tiny Grimes, "Tiny's Boogie"] Tiny Grimes was a strange figure who straddled the worlds of jazz and R&B, and who had played with great jazz figures like Charlie Parker and Art Tatum as an instrumentalist, but who as a singer was firmly in the rock and roll world. He had seen his greatest success with a rock and roll version of the old Scottish folk song "Loch Lomond" [Excerpt: Tiny Grimes "Loch Lomond"] As a result of that, he'd started performing in a kilt, and calling himself Tiny "Mac" Grimes and His Rocking Highlanders. Grimes first met Hawkins backstage at the Moondog Coronation Ball -- a legendary gig put on by Alan Freed in 1952, which was the first big sign to Freed of just how successful rock and roll was going to become. At that show, so many more people tried to get in than the venue had capacity for -- thanks, largely, to forged tickets being sold -- that the show became dangerously overcrowded, and had to be cancelled after a single song from the first artist on the bill. So Grimes didn't get to play that day, but Jalacey Hawkins, as he was still then known, managed to get himself backstage and meet Grimes. Hawkins did this through Freed, who Hawkins had got to know shortly after his discharge from the military. When he'd got back to Cleveland, he'd heard Freed on the radio and been amazed that they let a black man have his own show, so he'd gone down to the radio station to meet him, and been even more amazed to find out that the man who sounded black, and was playing black music, was in fact white. For decades afterwards, Hawkins would describe Freed as one of the very few white people in the world who actually cared about black people and black music. The two had struck up a friendship, and Hawkins had managed to get backstage at Freed's show. When he did, he just went up to Grimes and asked for a job. Grimes gave him a job as a combination road manager and musician -- Hawkins would play piano and saxophone, sing occasionally, and was also (according to Hawkins) Grimes' valet and dog walker. Working with Grimes is where Hawkins first started performing outrageously on stage. Grimes' band already dressed in Scottish clothing, and put on quite a bit of a show, but Hawkins pushed things a little further. He would, for example, come out on stage in his kilt and with tins of Carnation evaporated milk hanging on his chest as if they were breasts. He would then sing Ruth Brown's hit "Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean". [Excerpt: Ruth Brown, "Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean" According to Hawkins, Ruth Brown came to see the show at one point, and said of him "This is the only bitch who can sing my song better than me". That doesn't sound especially like Brown, it has to be said. Hawkins started recording with Grimes, and started to be billed as "Screamin' Jay Hawkins" -- a stage name which, again, he gave varying origins for. The most likely seems to be the one he gave in a documentary, in which he said that he couldn't sing, but had to take lead vocals, so he decided to just scream everything, because at least that would be different. Quite how that tallies with his ability to sing better than Ruth Brown, it's best not to wonder. Either way, his early recordings show him trying to fit into the standard R&B vocal styles of the time, rather than screaming. On his first record, with Grimes, he's not the blues shouter that he had a reputation of being, and nor is he the screamer he would later become -- instead he sounds like he's imitating Clyde McPhatter's singing on "The Bells" by Billy Ward and His Dominoes, but in a bass register somewhat reminiscent of Paul Robeson. Compare Hawkins here: [Excerpt: Tiny Grimes with Screamin' Jay Hawkins, "Why Did You Waste My Time?"] With McPhatter on the Billy Ward record: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and His Dominoes, "The Bells"] You can hear the resemblance there, I'm sure. At this point Hawkins had a certain amount of potential, but was just one of a million smooth blues singers, who relied more on stage gimmicks than on singing ability. But those stage gimmicks were making him a breakout star in Grimes' band, and so at a recording session for Grimes, it was agreed that Hawkins could record a single of his own at the end of the session, if there was time. Hawkins' attitude quickly caused problems for him, though. During the recording of "Screamin' Blues", which would have been his first single, he got into an argument with Ahmet Ertegun, who kept telling him to sing the song more smoothly, like Fats Domino. Accounts of what happened next vary -- Hawkins' most frequent version was that he ended up punching Ertegun, though other people just say that the two got into a screaming row. Either way, the session was abandoned, and Hawkins soon ended up out of Grimes' band. He worked with a few different bands, before getting a big break as Fats Domino's opening act. He only lasted a few weeks in that role -- depending on who you asked, Domino either fired Hawkins for being vulgar on stage and screaming, as Domino claimed, or because he was jealous of Hawkins' great leopardskin suit, as Hawkins would sometimes claim. Wynonie Harris saw something in Hawkins, and helped him get his first solo shows in New York, and on the back of these he made his first records as a solo artist, for the tiny label Timely Records, under his birth name, Jalacey Hawkins, and featuring Mickey Baker, who would play on most of his fifties sessions, on guitar: [Excerpt: Jalacey Hawkins, "Baptize Me in Wine"] But unfortunately, after two of these singles, Timely Records folded, and Hawkins had to find another label. He moved on to Grand Records, and started recording as Screamin' Jay Hawkins. By this time, he had started using some of the gimmicks he would use in his stage show, though for the most part his act was still fairly tame by modern standards. He was also still, at least in the recording studio, making fairly standard jump blues records, like this one, the first he recorded as a solo artist under his stage name: [Excerpt, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, "Take Me Back"] That was the only single that saw release from his time with Grand Records, and it's not even certain that it was released until a year or so later -- reports seem to vary about this. But it was while he was recording for Grand Records that he wrote the song that would bring him worldwide fame. It came about, as so much of Hawkins' life did, from his mistreatment of a woman. He was playing a residency in Atlantic City, and he had a live-in girlfriend from Philadelphia. But, as was always the case with Hawkins, he was cheating on her with multiple other women. Eventually she figured this out, and walked into the bar in the middle of one of his sets, threw his keys onto the stage, and walked out, blowing him a kiss. He didn't realise what had happened until he was talking to the barmaid later, and she explained to him that no, that meant his girlfriend was definitely leaving. He brooded over this for a day, and then had another conversation with the barmaid, and told her he was planning to go to Philadelphia to get the girl back. She said "so you think she'll come back to you, do you?" and he replied "yes, I'll get her back, even if I have to put a spell on her -- that's it! I'll write a song about putting a spell on her, and she'll realise how much I love her and come back!" Hawkins would later claim that when, two years later, the song was finally released, she did come back -- not because of "I Put A Spell On You", but because she loved the B-side, a song called "Little Demon". As Hawkins told the story, she came back to him, they stayed together for four months, and then he dumped her. He hadn't wanted her back because he loved her, he'd wanted her back so that he could be the one to do the dumping, not her. Whatever the truth of that last part, he recorded "I Put A Spell on You" some time around late 1954, but that version wouldn't be released until decades later: [Excerpt: Screamin' Jay Hawkins, "I Put A Spell on You (unreleased version)"] It's a decent record, but there's something missing, and for whatever reason, it never came out. Instead, he signed to yet another label, Mercury, which was at the time somewhere between a large independent label and a small major, and started putting out singles just as "Jay Hawkins". By this time, he'd found a regular team of people to work with -- Leroy Kirkland was the arranger, and Mickey Baker would play guitar, Sam "the Man" Taylor and Al Sears were on saxophone, and Panama Francis was on drums. That core team would work on everything he did for the next couple of years. It was while he was at Mercury that he hit on the style he would use from that point on, with a B-side called "(She Put The) Wamee (On Me)", a song about voodoo and threatening to murder a woman who'd cast a spell on him that, in retrospect, has all the elements of Hawkins' later hit in place, just with the wrong song: [Excerpt: Jay Hawkins, "(She Put The) Wamee (On Me)"] That was Hawkins' first truly great record, but it was hidden away on a B-side and did nothing. After a couple more singles, Hawkins was once again dropped by his label -- but once again, he moved on to a slightly bigger label, this time to OKeh, which was a subsidiary of Columbia, one of the biggest labels in the country. And in September 1956, he went into the studio to record his first single for them, which was to be a new version of "I Put a Spell on You". But Arnold Maxim, the producer at the session, wanted something a bit different from Hawkins. He thought that everyone sounded a little too staid, a little too uptight, and he asked why they couldn't sound in the studio like they did when they were having fun on stage and really cutting loose. Hawkins replied that when they were on stage everyone was usually so drunk they couldn't *remember* what it was they'd been doing. So Maxim decided to order in some crates of beer and fried chicken, and told them "this isn't a recording session, it's a party. Have fun." When they were drunk enough, he started recording, and the result was this: [Excerpt: Screamin' Jay Hawkins, "I Put A Spell On You"] Now, in later years, Hawkins would try to claim that he had been tricked into that performance, and that he'd had to relearn the song from the record after the fact, because he couldn't remember what it was he'd been doing. In truth, though, it's not that different from a record like "(She Put the) Wamee (On Me)", and it seems more than likely that this is yet more of Hawkins' exaggeration. The record didn't chart, because many radio stations refused to play it, but it nonetheless became a classic and reportedly sold over a million copies. This was in part due to the efforts of Alan Freed. Hawkins was already starting to play up his stage persona even more -- wearing capes and bones through his nose, and trying to portray a voodoo image. But when he was booked as the headline act on a Christmas show Freed put together in 1956, Freed surprised him by telling him he'd had a great idea for the show -- he'd got hold of a coffin, and Hawkins could start his performance by rising out of the coffin like a vampire or zombie. Hawkins was horrified. He told Freed that there was only one time a black man was ever getting into a coffin, and that was when he was never getting out again. Freed insisted, and eventually ended up paying Hawkins a large bonus -- which Hawkins would later claim was multiple thousands of dollars, but which actually seems to have been about three hundred dollars, itself a lot of money in 1956. Hawkins eventually agreed, though he kept a finger between the coffin and the lid, so it couldn't close completely on him. This was the start of Hawkins' career as a shock-rocker, and he became known as "the black Vincent Price" for his stage shows which would include not only the coffin but also a skull on a stick with smoke coming out of it (the skull was named Henry) and a giant rubber snake. Many horror-themed rock acts of the future, such as Alice Cooper or the Cramps, would later use elements of Hawkins' stage shows -- and he would increasingly make music to match the show, so that he later recorded a song called "Constipation Blues", which he would perform while sitting on a toilet on stage. But in 1957, neither he nor the record label seemed quite sure what they should do to follow up "I Put a Spell on You". That record had traded heavily on its shock value, to the extent that OKeh's trade ads contained the line "DJs be brave -- if you get fired, we'll get you a job!" however, only one DJ did get fired for playing it, one Bob Friesen. He contacted OKeh, but they didn't get him a job -- and eventually someone working for the company told Billboard this, Billboard publicised the story, and another station hired Friesen for the publicity that would get them. OKeh actually edited the single shortly after release, to get rid of some of the grunts at the end, which people variously described as "orgiastic" and "cannibalistic", but it didn't make the record any more palatable to the professionally outraged. But the next record went completely the other way -- a cover version of the old standard "You Made Me Love You (I Didn't Want to Do it)": [Excerpt: Screamin' Jay Hawkins, "You Made Me Love You (I Didn't Want to Do It)"] I can see why they thought that was a good idea before recording it -- Fats Domino had just had a massive hit with "Blueberry Hill", another old standard done in a similar arrangement to the one on Hawkins' record, but still... The next couple of records were more in the style one might expect from Hawkins, a track called "Frenzy", and a great Leiber and Stoller swamp-rocker called "Alligator Wine": [Excerpt: Screamin' Jay Hawkins, "Alligator Wine"] But neither of those was a success either -- partly because Hawkins went too far in the other direction. He had the opportunity to appear in Alan Freed's film "Mister Rock and Roll" to promote "Frenzy", but while every other act in the film performed in suits or were similarly well-dressed, Hawkins insisted on performing naked apart from a loincloth, with his hair sticking up, white face-paint, and carrying a spear and a shield -- his idea of what a Mau Mau rebel in Kenya looked like (the Mau Mau fighters did not look like this). Or at least that was his later description of what he was wearing. Others who've seen the footage suggest it wasn't quite that extreme, but still involved him being half-naked and looking like a "native". Hawkins had already been getting a certain amount of criticism from the NAACP and other civil rights groups because they believed that he was making black people look bad by associating them with voodoo and cannibalism. Paramount Pictures decided that they didn't particularly want to have their film picketed, and so removed Hawkins' section from the film. Hawkins' attitude to the NAACP was that as far as he was concerned the only thing they were doing for black people was trying to stop him earning a living, and he wanted nothing to do with them. (This was not a common attitude among black people at the time, as you might imagine.) And so, once again, things went to the other extreme. Hawkins put out his first album. It was called "At Home With Screamin' Jay Hawkins", had a cheery photo of Hawkins in a Santa hat on the cover, and mixed in his recent singles, a couple of new originals (including one called "Hong Kong" which is mostly just Hawkins making racist "ching chong" sounds) and... versions of "I Love Paris in the Springtime", "Ol' Man River", and other extremely non-voodoo-shock-rock songs. Unsurprisingly, it wasn't a success. He was dropped by OKeh and moved to a tiny label, where he started recording more idiosyncratic material like "Armpit #6": [Excerpt: Screamin' Jay Hawkins, "Armpit #6"] But any chance of a comeback was pretty much destroyed when he was arrested in 1958 for possession of cannabis and statutory rape, after having had sex with a fifteen-year-old girl. After he got out of prison, he moved to Hawaii for a while, and became a performer again, although there was a temporary hiccup in his career when his girlfriend and singing partner stabbed him after she found out he'd married someone else without telling her. She presumably also didn't know that he was still married to his first wife at the time. Hawkins' career remained in the doldrums until 1965, when two things happened almost simultaneously. The first was that Nina Simone recorded a cover version of "I Put a Spell on You", which made the top thirty in the US charts: [Excerpt: Nina Simone, "I Put a Spell on You"] The second was that Hawkins got rediscovered in the UK, in quite a big way. There was a club in Manchester called the Twisted Wheel, which was legendary in soul and R&B circles -- to the extent that when I saw P.P. Arnold in its successor venue Night People two weeks ago, she kept referring to it as the Twisted Wheel, even though the original club closed down in 1971, because she had such strong memories of the original venue. And among the regular attendees of that club were a group of people who loved the few Screamin' Jay Hawkins records they'd been able to get hold of. Hawkins had been popular enough that a British act, Screamin' Lord Sutch and the Savages, had stolen his act wholesale, cape, coffin, and all: [Excerpt: Screamin' Lord Sutch and the Savages, "Jack the Ripper"] Screamin' Lord Sutch would later go on to form the Monster Raving Loony Party, a political party intended as a joke that still continues to field candidates at every election twenty years after Sutch's death. But while people like Sutch had admired him, Hawkins was mostly a legend in British blues circles, someone about whom almost nothing was known. But then some of the Twisted Wheel people went to see Little Richard at the Oasis club, another famous Manchester venue, and got chatting to Don "Sugarcane" Harris, from the support act Don and Dewey. He mentioned that he'd recently seen Hawkins, and he was still doing the same show, and so the British blues and soul fans tracked him down and persuaded the promoter Don Arden to put on a tour of the UK, with Hawkins using the Twisted Wheel as his base. The tour wasn't a commercial success, but it built Hawkins' reputation in Britain to the point that it seemed like *every* beat group wanted to record "I Put a Spell on You". Between 1965 and 1968, it was recorded by Manfred Mann, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, the Animals, Them (featuring Van Morrison) and Alan Price, who made the top ten in the UK with his version: [Excerpt: The Alan Price Set, "I Put a Spell on You"] Hawkins even got to record a second album, finally, in Abbey Road studios, and he started to tour Europe successfully and build up a major fanbase. But Hawkins' self-destructive -- and other-people-destructive -- tendencies kicked in. The next few decades would follow a recurring pattern -- Hawkins would get some big break, like opening for the Rolling Stones at Madison Square Garden, or recording an album with Keith Richards guesting, or finally getting to appear in a film. Every time, he would let his addictions to alcohol or codeine overtake him, or he would rip a friend off for a trifling sum of money, or he would just get married bigamously again. Much of the time, he was living in one-room apartments, sometimes with no electricity. He married six times in total, and was abusive towards at least some of his wives. Screamin' Jay Hawkins died in 2000 after emergency surgery for an aneurysm. His fifth wife, one of the two who seem to have been actually important to him in some way, has dropped strong hints that he was killed by his sixth wife, who he had been claiming was poisoning him, though there's no evidence for that other than that she was strongly disliked by many of the people around Hawkins. When he died, he was seventy, and his current wife was thirty-one. Many people claimed that they had visitations from Hawkins' ghost in the days after his death, but the thing that seems to sum him up in the afterlife the most is his legacy to his family. He sold the rights to "I Put a Spell on You" shortly before his death, for twenty-five thousand dollars, which means his estate gets no songwriting royalties from his one big hit. He hadn't made a will since the 1970s, and that will left most of his money to his second wife, Ginny, who most people seem to agree deserved it if anyone did -- she was with him for sixteen years, and tolerated the worst of his behaviour. He also left an amount to a niece of his. As for his kids? Well, none of the seventy or however many illegitimate children he had saw a penny from his will. His three legitimate children, he left a dollar each. At least one of them, his daughter Sookie, didn't get her dollar -- it went to her cousin, who didn't pass it on to her. And I think that means I should give Sookie the final word here, in a quote from the end of Steve Bergsman's biography. "My father thought he was all that, but not to me. Screamin' Jay Hawkins didn't treat people right. He was a performer, but he didn't treat people right."

christmas music new york spotify history europe uk japan british dj ohio philadelphia japanese army hawaii santa world war ii blues hong kong cleveland mama britain animals beatles cd columbia manchester rolling stones kenya scottish elvis rock and roll mercury billboard oasis djs thirty accounts spell madison square garden hawkins bells domino freed naacp excerpt grimes frenzy atlantic city alice cooper springtime marilyn manson nina simone dewey mixcloud little richard vincent price keith richards van morrison paramount pictures rock music abbey road cramps savages crazy world armpits charlie parker friesen screamin paul robeson fats domino stoller carnation manfred mann mau mau leiber jay hawkins special services sookie little demon art tatum ruth brown arthur brown blueberry hill night people alan freed i put a spell on you ahmet ertegun screamin' jay hawkins alan price billy ward okeh clyde mcphatter steve bergsman i love paris ertegun mickey baker don sugarcane harris

Episode 53: “I Put a Spell on You” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins

Nerdom and Other Nonsense Anime Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 21, 2019

Episode fifty-three of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Put a Spell on You” by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, and the career of a man who had more than fifty more children than hit records. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Since I Met You Baby” by Ivory Joe Hunter —-more—- Erratum I only noticed while doing the final edit for this episode that I used the words “legitimate” and “illegitimate” to describe children, and that this usage could quite possibly be considered offensive, something I hadn’t realised when writing or recording it. I apologise if anyone does take offence. Resources No Mixcloud this week, as the episode is so heavy on Hawkins that it would violate Mixcloud’s terms and conditions. I tried to put together a Spotify playlist instead, but a few of the recordings I use here aren’t on Spotify. As I mention in the episode, I leaned very heavily on one book here, I Put a Spell on You: The Bizarre Life of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins by Steve Bergsman. There are many compilations of Hawkins’ work. This double-CD set containing all his work up to 1962 is as good as any and ridiculously cheap. Finally, you should also listen to this short audio documentary on the search for Jay’s kids, as it features interviews with a couple of them. They deserve to have their voices heard. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start, an acknowledgment. I like to acknowledge in the podcast when I’ve relied heavily on one source, and in this case the source I’m relying on most is Steve Bergsman’s book “I Put a Spell on You: The Bizarre Life of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins”. That book only came out this year, so it deserves the acknowledgment even more than normal. If you like this episode, you might well want to buy Mr. Bergsman’s book, which has a lot more information. There are a lot of one-hit wonders in the history of rock and roll. And most of those one-hit wonders might as well have had no hits for all the impact they actually made on the genre. Of the thousands of people who have hits, many of them drop off the mental radar as soon as their chart success ends. For every Beatles or Elvis there’s a Sam And The Womp or Simon Park Orchestra. But some one-hit wonders are different. Some one-hit wonders manage to get an entire career out of that one hit. And in the case of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, not only did he do that, but he created a stage show that would inspire every shock-rocker ever to wear makeup, and indirectly inspire a minor British political party. The one hit he recorded, meanwhile, was covered by everyone from Nina Simone to Marilyn Manson. [Excerpt: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “I Put A Spell On You”] It’s hard to separate truth from myth when it comes to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, not least because he was an inveterate liar. He always claimed, for example, that in his time in the army he had been captured by the Japanese and tortured for eighteen months. According to Army records, he joined the army in December 1945 and was honourably discharged in 1952. Given that World War II ended in September 1945, that would tend to suggest that his story about having been a Japanese prisoner of war was, perhaps, not one hundred percent truthful. And the same thing goes for almost everything he ever said. So anything you hear here is provisional. What we do know is that he seems to have grown up extremely resentful of women, particularly his mother. He was, depending on which version of the story you believe, the youngest of four or seven children, all from different fathers, and he, unlike his older siblings, was fostered from an early age. He resented his mother because of this, but does not seem to have been particularly bothered by the fact that his own prodigious fathering of children by multiple women, all of whom he abandoned, will have put those children in the same position. He variously claimed to have between fifty-seven and seventy-five children. Thirty-three have been traced, so this seems to be one of those rare occasions where he was telling the truth. So this is another of the all too many episodes where I have to warn listeners that we are dealing with someone who behaved appallingly towards women. I am not going to go into too many details here, but suffice to say that Hawkins was not an admirable man. Jalacey Hawkins was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and would often claim that he had musical training at the Ohio Conservatory of Music. This is, you will be shocked to hear, not true — not least because there was not, in fact, an Ohio Conservatory of Music for him to train at. Instead, he learned his trade as a musician in the armed forces, where he was not, in fact, sent into Japan in a combat role aged fourteen. Instead, he joined the Special Services, the people who put on shows for the rest of the military, and learned the saxophone. As well as his stories about being a prisoner of war, he also used to claim on a regular basis that the reason he’d loved being in the military so much was because you were allowed to kill people and wouldn’t get punished for it. History does not record exactly how many people his saxophone playing killed. After his discharge from the military in 1952, he abandoned his first wife and children — telling them he was popping to the shop and then not seeing them again for two years. Around this time he hooked up with Tiny Grimes, who is yet another person who often gets credited as the creator of the “first rock and roll record”, this one a 1946 song called “Tiny’s Boogie”: [Excerpt: Tiny Grimes, “Tiny’s Boogie”] Tiny Grimes was a strange figure who straddled the worlds of jazz and R&B, and who had played with great jazz figures like Charlie Parker and Art Tatum as an instrumentalist, but who as a singer was firmly in the rock and roll world. He had seen his greatest success with a rock and roll version of the old Scottish folk song “Loch Lomond” [Excerpt: Tiny Grimes “Loch Lomond”] As a result of that, he’d started performing in a kilt, and calling himself Tiny “Mac” Grimes and His Rocking Highlanders. Grimes first met Hawkins backstage at the Moondog Coronation Ball — a legendary gig put on by Alan Freed in 1952, which was the first big sign to Freed of just how successful rock and roll was going to become. At that show, so many more people tried to get in than the venue had capacity for — thanks, largely, to forged tickets being sold — that the show became dangerously overcrowded, and had to be cancelled after a single song from the first artist on the bill. So Grimes didn’t get to play that day, but Jalacey Hawkins, as he was still then known, managed to get himself backstage and meet Grimes. Hawkins did this through Freed, who Hawkins had got to know shortly after his discharge from the military. When he’d got back to Cleveland, he’d heard Freed on the radio and been amazed that they let a black man have his own show, so he’d gone down to the radio station to meet him, and been even more amazed to find out that the man who sounded black, and was playing black music, was in fact white. For decades afterwards, Hawkins would describe Freed as one of the very few white people in the world who actually cared about black people and black music. The two had struck up a friendship, and Hawkins had managed to get backstage at Freed’s show. When he did, he just went up to Grimes and asked for a job. Grimes gave him a job as a combination road manager and musician — Hawkins would play piano and saxophone, sing occasionally, and was also (according to Hawkins) Grimes’ valet and dog walker. Working with Grimes is where Hawkins first started performing outrageously on stage. Grimes’ band already dressed in Scottish clothing, and put on quite a bit of a show, but Hawkins pushed things a little further. He would, for example, come out on stage in his kilt and with tins of Carnation evaporated milk hanging on his chest as if they were breasts. He would then sing Ruth Brown’s hit “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean”. [Excerpt: Ruth Brown, “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean” According to Hawkins, Ruth Brown came to see the show at one point, and said of him “This is the only bitch who can sing my song better than me”. That doesn’t sound especially like Brown, it has to be said. Hawkins started recording with Grimes, and started to be billed as “Screamin’ Jay Hawkins” — a stage name which, again, he gave varying origins for. The most likely seems to be the one he gave in a documentary, in which he said that he couldn’t sing, but had to take lead vocals, so he decided to just scream everything, because at least that would be different. Quite how that tallies with his ability to sing better than Ruth Brown, it’s best not to wonder. Either way, his early recordings show him trying to fit into the standard R&B vocal styles of the time, rather than screaming. On his first record, with Grimes, he’s not the blues shouter that he had a reputation of being, and nor is he the screamer he would later become — instead he sounds like he’s imitating Clyde McPhatter’s singing on “The Bells” by Billy Ward and His Dominoes, but in a bass register somewhat reminiscent of Paul Robeson. Compare Hawkins here: [Excerpt: Tiny Grimes with Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “Why Did You Waste My Time?”] With McPhatter on the Billy Ward record: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and His Dominoes, “The Bells”] You can hear the resemblance there, I’m sure. At this point Hawkins had a certain amount of potential, but was just one of a million smooth blues singers, who relied more on stage gimmicks than on singing ability. But those stage gimmicks were making him a breakout star in Grimes’ band, and so at a recording session for Grimes, it was agreed that Hawkins could record a single of his own at the end of the session, if there was time. Hawkins’ attitude quickly caused problems for him, though. During the recording of “Screamin’ Blues”, which would have been his first single, he got into an argument with Ahmet Ertegun, who kept telling him to sing the song more smoothly, like Fats Domino. Accounts of what happened next vary — Hawkins’ most frequent version was that he ended up punching Ertegun, though other people just say that the two got into a screaming row. Either way, the session was abandoned, and Hawkins soon ended up out of Grimes’ band. He worked with a few different bands, before getting a big break as Fats Domino’s opening act. He only lasted a few weeks in that role — depending on who you asked, Domino either fired Hawkins for being vulgar on stage and screaming, as Domino claimed, or because he was jealous of Hawkins’ great leopardskin suit, as Hawkins would sometimes claim. Wynonie Harris saw something in Hawkins, and helped him get his first solo shows in New York, and on the back of these he made his first records as a solo artist, for the tiny label Timely Records, under his birth name, Jalacey Hawkins, and featuring Mickey Baker, who would play on most of his fifties sessions, on guitar: [Excerpt: Jalacey Hawkins, “Baptize Me in Wine”] But unfortunately, after two of these singles, Timely Records folded, and Hawkins had to find another label. He moved on to Grand Records, and started recording as Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. By this time, he had started using some of the gimmicks he would use in his stage show, though for the most part his act was still fairly tame by modern standards. He was also still, at least in the recording studio, making fairly standard jump blues records, like this one, the first he recorded as a solo artist under his stage name: [Excerpt, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “Take Me Back”] That was the only single that saw release from his time with Grand Records, and it’s not even certain that it was released until a year or so later — reports seem to vary about this. But it was while he was recording for Grand Records that he wrote the song that would bring him worldwide fame. It came about, as so much of Hawkins’ life did, from his mistreatment of a woman. He was playing a residency in Atlantic City, and he had a live-in girlfriend from Philadelphia. But, as was always the case with Hawkins, he was cheating on her with multiple other women. Eventually she figured this out, and walked into the bar in the middle of one of his sets, threw his keys onto the stage, and walked out, blowing him a kiss. He didn’t realise what had happened until he was talking to the barmaid later, and she explained to him that no, that meant his girlfriend was definitely leaving. He brooded over this for a day, and then had another conversation with the barmaid, and told her he was planning to go to Philadelphia to get the girl back. She said “so you think she’ll come back to you, do you?” and he replied “yes, I’ll get her back, even if I have to put a spell on her — that’s it! I’ll write a song about putting a spell on her, and she’ll realise how much I love her and come back!” Hawkins would later claim that when, two years later, the song was finally released, she did come back — not because of “I Put A Spell On You”, but because she loved the B-side, a song called “Little Demon”. As Hawkins told the story, she came back to him, they stayed together for four months, and then he dumped her. He hadn’t wanted her back because he loved her, he’d wanted her back so that he could be the one to do the dumping, not her. Whatever the truth of that last part, he recorded “I Put A Spell on You” some time around late 1954, but that version wouldn’t be released until decades later: [Excerpt: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “I Put A Spell on You (unreleased version)”] It’s a decent record, but there’s something missing, and for whatever reason, it never came out. Instead, he signed to yet another label, Mercury, which was at the time somewhere between a large independent label and a small major, and started putting out singles just as “Jay Hawkins”. By this time, he’d found a regular team of people to work with — Leroy Kirkland was the arranger, and Mickey Baker would play guitar, Sam “the Man” Taylor and Al Sears were on saxophone, and Panama Francis was on drums. That core team would work on everything he did for the next couple of years. It was while he was at Mercury that he hit on the style he would use from that point on, with a B-side called “(She Put The) Wamee (On Me)”, a song about voodoo and threatening to murder a woman who’d cast a spell on him that, in retrospect, has all the elements of Hawkins’ later hit in place, just with the wrong song: [Excerpt: Jay Hawkins, “(She Put The) Wamee (On Me)”] That was Hawkins’ first truly great record, but it was hidden away on a B-side and did nothing. After a couple more singles, Hawkins was once again dropped by his label — but once again, he moved on to a slightly bigger label, this time to OKeh, which was a subsidiary of Columbia, one of the biggest labels in the country. And in September 1956, he went into the studio to record his first single for them, which was to be a new version of “I Put a Spell on You”. But Arnold Maxim, the producer at the session, wanted something a bit different from Hawkins. He thought that everyone sounded a little too staid, a little too uptight, and he asked why they couldn’t sound in the studio like they did when they were having fun on stage and really cutting loose. Hawkins replied that when they were on stage everyone was usually so drunk they couldn’t *remember* what it was they’d been doing. So Maxim decided to order in some crates of beer and fried chicken, and told them “this isn’t a recording session, it’s a party. Have fun.” When they were drunk enough, he started recording, and the result was this: [Excerpt: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “I Put A Spell On You”] Now, in later years, Hawkins would try to claim that he had been tricked into that performance, and that he’d had to relearn the song from the record after the fact, because he couldn’t remember what it was he’d been doing. In truth, though, it’s not that different from a record like “(She Put the) Wamee (On Me)”, and it seems more than likely that this is yet more of Hawkins’ exaggeration. The record didn’t chart, because many radio stations refused to play it, but it nonetheless became a classic and reportedly sold over a million copies. This was in part due to the efforts of Alan Freed. Hawkins was already starting to play up his stage persona even more — wearing capes and bones through his nose, and trying to portray a voodoo image. But when he was booked as the headline act on a Christmas show Freed put together in 1956, Freed surprised him by telling him he’d had a great idea for the show — he’d got hold of a coffin, and Hawkins could start his performance by rising out of the coffin like a vampire or zombie. Hawkins was horrified. He told Freed that there was only one time a black man was ever getting into a coffin, and that was when he was never getting out again. Freed insisted, and eventually ended up paying Hawkins a large bonus — which Hawkins would later claim was multiple thousands of dollars, but which actually seems to have been about three hundred dollars, itself a lot of money in 1956. Hawkins eventually agreed, though he kept a finger between the coffin and the lid, so it couldn’t close completely on him. This was the start of Hawkins’ career as a shock-rocker, and he became known as “the black Vincent Price” for his stage shows which would include not only the coffin but also a skull on a stick with smoke coming out of it (the skull was named Henry) and a giant rubber snake. Many horror-themed rock acts of the future, such as Alice Cooper or the Cramps, would later use elements of Hawkins’ stage shows — and he would increasingly make music to match the show, so that he later recorded a song called “Constipation Blues”, which he would perform while sitting on a toilet on stage. But in 1957, neither he nor the record label seemed quite sure what they should do to follow up “I Put a Spell on You”. That record had traded heavily on its shock value, to the extent that OKeh’s trade ads contained the line “DJs be brave — if you get fired, we’ll get you a job!” however, only one DJ did get fired for playing it, one Bob Friesen. He contacted OKeh, but they didn’t get him a job — and eventually someone working for the company told Billboard this, Billboard publicised the story, and another station hired Friesen for the publicity that would get them. OKeh actually edited the single shortly after release, to get rid of some of the grunts at the end, which people variously described as “orgiastic” and “cannibalistic”, but it didn’t make the record any more palatable to the professionally outraged. But the next record went completely the other way — a cover version of the old standard “You Made Me Love You (I Didn’t Want to Do it)”: [Excerpt: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “You Made Me Love You (I Didn’t Want to Do It)”] I can see why they thought that was a good idea before recording it — Fats Domino had just had a massive hit with “Blueberry Hill”, another old standard done in a similar arrangement to the one on Hawkins’ record, but still… The next couple of records were more in the style one might expect from Hawkins, a track called “Frenzy”, and a great Leiber and Stoller swamp-rocker called “Alligator Wine”: [Excerpt: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “Alligator Wine”] But neither of those was a success either — partly because Hawkins went too far in the other direction. He had the opportunity to appear in Alan Freed’s film “Mister Rock and Roll” to promote “Frenzy”, but while every other act in the film performed in suits or were similarly well-dressed, Hawkins insisted on performing naked apart from a loincloth, with his hair sticking up, white face-paint, and carrying a spear and a shield — his idea of what a Mau Mau rebel in Kenya looked like (the Mau Mau fighters did not look like this). Or at least that was his later description of what he was wearing. Others who’ve seen the footage suggest it wasn’t quite that extreme, but still involved him being half-naked and looking like a “native”. Hawkins had already been getting a certain amount of criticism from the NAACP and other civil rights groups because they believed that he was making black people look bad by associating them with voodoo and cannibalism. Paramount Pictures decided that they didn’t particularly want to have their film picketed, and so removed Hawkins’ section from the film. Hawkins’ attitude to the NAACP was that as far as he was concerned the only thing they were doing for black people was trying to stop him earning a living, and he wanted nothing to do with them. (This was not a common attitude among black people at the time, as you might imagine.) And so, once again, things went to the other extreme. Hawkins put out his first album. It was called “At Home With Screamin’ Jay Hawkins”, had a cheery photo of Hawkins in a Santa hat on the cover, and mixed in his recent singles, a couple of new originals (including one called “Hong Kong” which is mostly just Hawkins making racist “ching chong” sounds) and… versions of “I Love Paris in the Springtime”, “Ol’ Man River”, and other extremely non-voodoo-shock-rock songs. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t a success. He was dropped by OKeh and moved to a tiny label, where he started recording more idiosyncratic material like “Armpit #6”: [Excerpt: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, “Armpit #6”] But any chance of a comeback was pretty much destroyed when he was arrested in 1958 for possession of cannabis and statutory rape, after having had sex with a fifteen-year-old girl. After he got out of prison, he moved to Hawaii for a while, and became a performer again, although there was a temporary hiccup in his career when his girlfriend and singing partner stabbed him after she found out he’d married someone else without telling her. She presumably also didn’t know that he was still married to his first wife at the time. Hawkins’ career remained in the doldrums until 1965, when two things happened almost simultaneously. The first was that Nina Simone recorded a cover version of “I Put a Spell on You”, which made the top thirty in the US charts: [Excerpt: Nina Simone, “I Put a Spell on You”] The second was that Hawkins got rediscovered in the UK, in quite a big way. There was a club in Manchester called the Twisted Wheel, which was legendary in soul and R&B circles — to the extent that when I saw P.P. Arnold in its successor venue Night People two weeks ago, she kept referring to it as the Twisted Wheel, even though the original club closed down in 1971, because she had such strong memories of the original venue. And among the regular attendees of that club were a group of people who loved the few Screamin’ Jay Hawkins records they’d been able to get hold of. Hawkins had been popular enough that a British act, Screamin’ Lord Sutch and the Savages, had stolen his act wholesale, cape, coffin, and all: [Excerpt: Screamin’ Lord Sutch and the Savages, “Jack the Ripper”] Screamin’ Lord Sutch would later go on to form the Monster Raving Loony Party, a political party intended as a joke that still continues to field candidates at every election twenty years after Sutch’s death. But while people like Sutch had admired him, Hawkins was mostly a legend in British blues circles, someone about whom almost nothing was known. But then some of the Twisted Wheel people went to see Little Richard at the Oasis club, another famous Manchester venue, and got chatting to Don “Sugarcane” Harris, from the support act Don and Dewey. He mentioned that he’d recently seen Hawkins, and he was still doing the same show, and so the British blues and soul fans tracked him down and persuaded the promoter Don Arden to put on a tour of the UK, with Hawkins using the Twisted Wheel as his base. The tour wasn’t a commercial success, but it built Hawkins’ reputation in Britain to the point that it seemed like *every* beat group wanted to record “I Put a Spell on You”. Between 1965 and 1968, it was recorded by Manfred Mann, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, the Animals, Them (featuring Van Morrison) and Alan Price, who made the top ten in the UK with his version: [Excerpt: The Alan Price Set, “I Put a Spell on You”] Hawkins even got to record a second album, finally, in Abbey Road studios, and he started to tour Europe successfully and build up a major fanbase. But Hawkins’ self-destructive — and other-people-destructive — tendencies kicked in. The next few decades would follow a recurring pattern — Hawkins would get some big break, like opening for the Rolling Stones at Madison Square Garden, or recording an album with Keith Richards guesting, or finally getting to appear in a film. Every time, he would let his addictions to alcohol or codeine overtake him, or he would rip a friend off for a trifling sum of money, or he would just get married bigamously again. Much of the time, he was living in one-room apartments, sometimes with no electricity. He married six times in total, and was abusive towards at least some of his wives. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins died in 2000 after emergency surgery for an aneurysm. His fifth wife, one of the two who seem to have been actually important to him in some way, has dropped strong hints that he was killed by his sixth wife, who he had been claiming was poisoning him, though there’s no evidence for that other than that she was strongly disliked by many of the people around Hawkins. When he died, he was seventy, and his current wife was thirty-one. Many people claimed that they had visitations from Hawkins’ ghost in the days after his death, but the thing that seems to sum him up in the afterlife the most is his legacy to his family. He sold the rights to “I Put a Spell on You” shortly before his death, for twenty-five thousand dollars, which means his estate gets no songwriting royalties from his one big hit. He hadn’t made a will since the 1970s, and that will left most of his money to his second wife, Ginny, who most people seem to agree deserved it if anyone did — she was with him for sixteen years, and tolerated the worst of his behaviour. He also left an amount to a niece of his. As for his kids? Well, none of the seventy or however many illegitimate children he had saw a penny from his will. His three legitimate children, he left a dollar each. At least one of them, his daughter Sookie, didn’t get her dollar — it went to her cousin, who didn’t pass it on to her. And I think that means I should give Sookie the final word here, in a quote from the end of Steve Bergsman’s biography. “My father thought he was all that, but not to me. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins didn’t treat people right. He was a performer, but he didn’t treat people right.”

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Nerdom and Other Nonsense Anime Podcast #105 - A Savage Season of Unfortunate Locks

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 8, 2019

Kat, Leo and Bcom are back to review the 5th week of the Summer 2019 anime season! We kick things off with Kat ranting about her hilariously awful experience with Groupon customer service. Leo updates us on his continuing trouble with Remnant of the Ashes, and Bcom reviews then 1979 anime adaptation of Anne of Green Gables. Once we get into weekly anime, it’s time to get in running shape for the Dumbbell girls, which means working hamstrings and abdominal muscles, to embrace their inner Flo-Jo. Two of the Maidens have their eyes set on much older men in their savage seasons, which leads to some very awkward interactions, but the episode ends on a high note with one of the cutest anime confession scenes we’ve watched in a long time. We spend more time hyping up Demon Slayer ep. 19 than actually properly covering episode 18. We wrap up another disappointing episode of BEM with complaints about its directionless story and weak animation from Kat and Bcom. After the break, we get into a divisive episode of Dr. STONE, which had us arguing about whether or not the second half flashback was a waste of our time, and who we would choose to kill off between ourselves, our lovers, or our friends. Our Given segment becomes a storytelling session about our experiences with love at first sight. This week’s Demon Girl Next Door review is a shitshow of the highest order, which Bcom very professionally manages to soldier through. And finally, in Carole and Tuesday, Ertegun has to do some thinking about what he truly wants to be as an artist after tragically handing his financial portfolio over to a horny Pinocchio robot.Recorded August 28, 2019. Timestamps:0:20 - Nonsense (Kat’s Groupon nightmare, Leo finally beats the first boss of Remnant from the Ashes…for someone else, Bcom reviews the 1979 anime Anne of Green Gables)13:42 - How Heavy are the Dumbbells You Lift? (Ep. 5)25:33 - O Maidens in Your Savage Season (Ep. 5)47:22 - Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (Ep. 18)55:33 - BEM (Ep. 4)1:04:44 - Commercial Break1:07:51 - Dr. STONE (Ep. 5)1:20:32 - Given (Ep. 5)1:32:14 - The Demon Girl Next Door (Ep. 5)1:42:58 - Carole & Tuesday (Ep. 17)Check out our podcast network, Anime Radicals. Find out more at www.animeradicals.com.Twitter: https://twitter.com/NerdomandOtheriTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/nerdom-and-other-nonsense/id1203061952Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/Iuqfigskscnxqhhatxmfyrec7gi?t=Nerdom_and_Other_NonsenseStitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/nerdomandothernonsense/nerdom-and-other-nonsense-anime-podcastSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6LOseApaNZgoaZaqqpeNvIDiscord invite: https://discord.gg/REwr8uT

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Episode 32: “I Got A Woman” by Ray Charles

Play Episode Listen Later May 13, 2019

Welcome to episode thirty-two of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. This one looks at “I Got A Woman” by Ray Charles. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. For more on Charles Brown and Nat Cole, Patreon backers might want to listen to the Christmas Patreon-only episode. Most of the information here comes from Charles’ autobiography, Brother Ray, which gives a very clear view of his character, possibly not always in the ways he intended. All the Ray Charles music used in this podcast, and the Guitar Slim track, are on The Complete Swing Time and Atlantic Recordings. Charles’ work from 1955 through about 1965 covers more genres of American music than any other body of work I can think of, and does so wonderfully. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Let’s talk about melisma. One of the major things that you’ll notice about the singers we’ve covered so far is that most of them sound very different from anyone who’s been successful as a pure vocalist in the last few decades. There’s a reason for that. Among the pop songwriters of the thirties, forties, and fifties — not the writers of blues and country music so much, but the people writing Broadway musicals and the repertoire the crooners were singing — melisma was absolutely anathema. Melisma is a technical musical term, but it has a simple meaning — it’s when you sing multiple notes to the same syllable of lyric. This is something that has always existed since people started singing — for example, at the start of “The Star-Spangled Banner”, “Oh say…”, there are two notes on the syllable “oh”. That’s melisma. But among the songwriters who were registered with ASCAP in the middle of the last century, there was a strongly-held view that this was pure laziness. You wrote one syllable of lyric for one note of melody, and if you didn’t, you were doing something wrong. The lyricist Sammy Cahn used to talk about how he wrote the lyric to “Pocketful of Miracles” — “Practicality doesn’t interest me” — but then the composer wrote a melody with one more note per line than he’d written syllables for the lyric. Rather than let the song contain melisma, he did this: [Excerpt: Frank Sinatra, “Pocketful of Miracles”, with Sinatra singing “pee-racticality dee-oesn’t interest me”] That was the kind of thing songwriters would do to avoid even the hint of melisma. And singers were the same. If you listen to any of the great voices of the first part of the twentieth century — Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Tony Bennett — they will almost without exception hit the note dead on, one note per syllable. No ornamentation, no frills. There were a few outliers — Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, for example, would both use a little melisma (Holiday more than Ella) to ornament their sound — but generally that was what good singing *was*. You sang the notes, one note per syllable. And this was largely the case in the blues, as well as in the more upmarket styles. The rules weren’t stuck to quite as firmly there, but still, you’d mostly sing the song as it was written, and it would largely be written without melisma. There was one area where that was not the case – gospel, specifically black gospel. [Excerpt: Rosetta Tharpe, “Precious Lord, Take My Hand”] We looked at gospel already, of course, but we didn’t talk about this particular characteristic of the music. You see, in black gospel — and pretty much only in black gospel music, at the time we’re talking about — the use of melisma was how you conveyed emotion. You ornamented the notes, you’d sing more notes per syllable, and that was how you showed how moved you were by the spirit. And these days, that style is what people now think of as good or impressive singing. There are a *lot* of class and race issues around taste in this that I’m not going to unpick here — we’ve got a whole four hundred and sixty-eight more episodes in which to discuss these things, after all — but when you hear someone on The Voice or American Idol or The X Factor trying to impress with their vocals, it’s their command of melisma they’re trying to impress with. The more they can ornament the notes, the more they fit today’s standards of good singing. And that changed because, in the 1950s, there was a stream of black singers who came out of the gospel tradition and introduced its techniques into pop music. Before talking about that, it’s worth talking about the musical boundaries we’re going to be using in this series, because while it’s called “A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs”, I am not planning on using a narrow definition of “rock music”, because what counts as rock tends to be retroactively redefined to exclude branches of music where black people predominate. So for example, there’s footage of Mohammed Ali calling Sam Cooke “the greatest rock and roll singer in the world”, and at the time absolutely nobody would have questioned Cooke being called “rock and roll”, but these days he would only be talked about as a soul singer. And much of the music that we would now call “soul” was so influential on the music that we now call rock music that it’s completely ridiculous to even consider them separately until the late seventies at the earliest. So while we’re going to mostly look at music that has been labelled rock or rock and roll, don’t be surprised to find soul, funk, hip-hop, country, or any other genre that has influenced rock turning up. And especially don’t be surprised to see that happening if it was music that was thought of as rock and roll at the time, but has been retroactively relabelled. So today, we’re going to talk about a record that’s been widely credited as the first soul record, but which was released as rock and roll. And we’re going to talk about a musician who cut across all the boundaries that anyone tries to put on music, a man who was equally at home in soul, jazz, R&B, country, and rock and roll. We’re going to talk about the great Ray Charles. [Excerpt: Ray Charles, “I Got a Woman”] Ray Charles had an unusual upbringing — though perhaps one that’s not as unusual as people would like to think. As far as I can tell from his autobiography, he was the product of what we would now call a polyamorous relationship. His father was largely absent, but he was brought up by his mother, who he called “Mama”, and by his father’s wife, who he called “Mother”. Both women knew of, approved of, and liked each other, as far as young Ray was concerned. His given name was Ray Charles Robinson, but he changed it when he became a professional musician, due to the popularity of the boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, whose peak years were around the same time as Charles’ — he didn’t want to be confused with another, more famous, Ray Robinson. From a very young age, he was fascinated by the piano, and that fascination intensified when, before he reached adolescence, he became totally blind. That blindness would shape his life, even though — and perhaps because — he had a strong sense of independence. He wasn’t going to let his disability define him, and he often said that the three things that he didn’t want were a dog, a cane, and a guitar, because they were the things all blind men had. Now, I want to make it very clear that I’m not talking here about the rights and wrongs of Charles’ own attitude to his disability. I’m disabled myself, but his disability is not mine, and he is from another generation. I’m just stating what that attitude was, and how it affected his life and career. And the main thing it did was make him even more fiercely independent. He not only got about on his own without a cane or a dog, he also at one point even used to go riding a motorbike by himself. Other than his independence, the main thing everyone noted about the young Ray Charles Robinson was his proficiency on the piano, and by his late teens he was playing great jazz piano, inspired by Art Tatum, who like Ray was blind. Tatum was such a proficient pianist that there is a term in computational musicology, the tatum, meaning “the smallest time interval between successive notes in a rhythmic phrase”. [Excerpt; Art Tatum, “I Wish I Were Twins”] Charles never got quite that good, but he was inspired by Tatum’s musicality, and he became a serious student of the instrument, becoming a very respectable jazz pianist. When his mother died, when he was fifteen, Charles decided to leave school and set up on his own as a musician. Initially, he toured only round Georgia and Florida, and early on he made a handful of records. His very earliest recordings, oddly, sound a lot like his mature style — his first record, “Wondering and Wondering”, was almost fully-formed mature Ray Charles: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, “Wondering and Wondering”] But he soon changed his style to be more popular. He moved to the West Coast, and unsuccessfully auditioned to play piano with Lucky Millinder’s band, and would occasionally play jazz with Bumps Blackwell and Dizzy Gillespie. But while his association with Bumps Blackwell would continue long into the future, playing jazz wasn’t how Ray Charles was going to make his name. On the West Coast in the late forties and early fifties, the most popular style for black musicians was a particular kind of smooth blues, incorporating aspects of crooning alongside blues and jazz. Two of the biggest groups in the R&B field were the Nat “King” Cole Trio and Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers featuring Charles Brown. Both of these had very similar styles, featuring a piano player who sang smooth blues, with an electric guitarist and a bass player, and sometimes a drummer. We’ve heard Nat “King” Cole before, playing piano with Les Paul and Illinois Jacquet, but it’s still hard for modern listeners to remember that before his massive pop success with ballads like “Unforgettable”, Cole was making music which may not have been quite as successful commercially, but which was incredibly influential on the burgeoning rock music field. A typical example of the style is Cole’s version of “Route Sixty-Six”: [Excerpt: Nat “King” Cole Trio, “Route Sixty Six”] You’ll note, I hope, the similarity to the early recordings by the Chuck Berry Trio in particular — Berry would often say that while Louis Jordan music was the music he would play to try to make a living, Nat “King” Cole was the musician he most liked to listen to, and the Chuck Berry Trio was clearly an attempt to emulate this style. The other group I mentioned, The Three Blazers, were very much in the same style as the Nat Cole Trio, but were a couple of rungs down the entertainment ladder, and Charles Brown, their singer, would be another huge influence on Ray Charles early on. Charles formed his own trio, the McSon Trio (the “Son” came from the Robinson in his own name, the “Mc” from the guitarist’s name). [Excerpt: The McSon Trio “Don’t Put All Your Dreams In One Basket”] The McSon Trio quickly changed their name to the Ray Charles Trio, as their pianist and singer became the obvious star of the show. Charles soon tired of running his own trio, though, and went fully solo, travelling to gigs on his own and working with local pickup bands rather than having his own steady musicians. This also gave him the opportunity to collaborate with a wider variety of other musicians than having a fixed band would. Around this time Charles was introduced by Bumps Blackwell to Quincy Jones, with whom he would go on to collaborate in various ways for much of the rest of his career. But his most important collaboration in his early career was with the blues musician Lowell Fulson. Fulson was one of the pioneers of the smooth West Coast blues sound, and Charles became his pianist and musical director for a short time. Charles didn’t perform on many of Fulson’s sessions, but you can get an idea of the kind of thing that he would have been playing with Fulson from Fulson’s biggest record, “Reconsider Baby”, which came out shortly after Charles’ time with Fulson: [Excerpt: Lowell Fulson, “Reconsider Baby”] So Charles was splitting his time between making his own Nat Cole or Charles Brown style records, touring on his own, and touring with Fulson. He also worked on other records for other musicians. The most notable of these was a blues classic, by another of the greats of West Coast blues, “The Things That I Used To Do” by Guitar Slim. [Excerpt: “The Things That I Used To Do” by Guitar Slim] Slim was one of the great blues guitarists of the 1950s, and he was also one of the great showmen, whose performance style included things like a guitar cord that was allegedly three hundred and fifty feet long, so he could keep his guitar plugged into the amplifier but walk through the crowd and even out into the street, while still playing his guitar. Slim would later be a huge influence on musicians like Jimi Hendrix, but “The Things That I Used To Do”, his most famous record, is as much Charles’ record as it is Guitar Slim’s — Charles produced, arranged, and played piano, and the result sounds far more like the work that Charles was doing at the time than it does Guitar Slim’s other work, though it still has Slim’s recognisable guitar sound. He finally got the opportunity to stand out when he moved from Swing Time to Atlantic Records. While several of the Swing Time recordings were minor successes, people kept telling him how much he sounded like Nat Cole or Charles Brown. But he realised that it was unlikely that anyone was telling Nat Cole or Charles Brown how much they sounded like Ray Charles, and that he would never be in the first rank of musicians unless he got a style that was uniquely his. Everything changed with “Mess Around”, which was his first major venture into the Atlantic house style. “Mess Around” is credited to Ahmet Ertegun, the owner of Atlantic Records, as the writer, but it should really be credited as a traditional song arranged by Ray Charles, Jesse Stone, and Ertegun. Ertegun did contribute to the songwriting — rather surprisingly, given the habit of record executives of just taking credit for something that they had nothing to do with. Ertegun told Charles to play some piano in the style of Pete Johnson, and Charles responded by playing “Cow Cow Blues”, a 1928 song by Cow Cow Davenport: [Excerpt: Cow Cow Davenport, “Cow Cow Blues”] Ertegun came up with some new words for that, mostly based around traditional floating lyrics. Jesse Stone came up with an arrangement, and the result was titled “Mess Around”: [Excerpt: Ray Charles and his Orchestra, “Mess Around”] For his next few records, Charles was one of many artists making records with the standard Atlantic musicians and arrangers — the same people who were making records with Ruth Brown or LaVern Baker. By this point, he had gained enough confidence in the studio that he was able to sing like himself, not like Charles Brown or Nat Cole or anyone else. The music he was making was generic R&B, but it didn’t sound like anyone else at all: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, “It Should Have Been Me”] “Mess Around” and “It Should Have Been Me” were Charles’ two biggest hits to date, both making the top five on the R&B charts. His breakout, though, came with a song that he based around a gospel song. At this time, gospel music was not much of an influence on most of the rhythm and blues records that were charting, but as Charles would later say, “the church was something which couldn’t be taken out of my voice even if I had wanted to take it out. Once I decided to be natural, I was gone. It’s like Aretha: She could do “Stardust,” but if she did her thing on it, you’d hear the church all over the place.” Charles had now formed his own band, which was strongly influenced by Count Basie. The Count Basie band was, like Lionel Hampton’s, one of the bands that had most influenced early R&B, and its music was exactly the kind of combination of jump band and classy jazz that Charles liked: [Excerpt: Count Basie, “One O’Clock Jump”] Charles’ own band was modelled on the Basie band, though slimmed down because of the practicalities of touring with a big band in the fifties. He had three sax players, piano, bass, drums, two trumpets, and a trombone, and he added a girl group, called the Raelettes, who were mostly former members of a girl group called the Cookies (who would go on to have a few hits themselves over the years). Charles was now able to record his own band, rather than the Atlantic session musicians, and have them playing his own arrangements rather than Jesse Stone’s. And the first recording session he did with his own band produced his first number one. Charles’ trumpet player, Renald Richard, brought Charles a set of blues lyrics, and Charles set them to a gospel tune he’d been listening to. The Southern Tones were a gospel act recording for Duke Records, and they never had much success. They’d be almost forgotten now were it not for this one record: [Excerpt, The Southern Tones, “It Must Be Jesus”] Charles took that melody, and the lyrics that Renald Richard had given him, and created a record which was utterly unlike anything else that had ever been recorded. This was a new fusion of gospel, the blues, big band jazz, and early rock and roll. Nobody had ever done anything like it before. In the context of 1954, when every fusion of ideas from different musics, and every new musical experiment, was labeled “rock and roll”, this was definitely a rock and roll record, but in later decades they would say that this music had soul: [Excerpt, “I Got a Woman”, Ray Charles] That song was close enough to gospel to cause Charles some very real problems. Gospel singers who went over to making secular music were considered by their original fans to be going over to the side of the Devil. It wasn’t just that they were performing secular music — it was very specifically that they were using musical styles that were created in order to worship God, and turning them to secular purposes. And this criticism was applied, loudly, to Charles, even though he had never been a gospel singer. But while the gospel community was up in arms, people were listening. “I Got a Woman” went to number one on the R&B charts, and quickly entered the stage repertoire of another musician who had church music in his veins: [Excerpt, Elvis Presley, “I Got a Woman”] Even as it kicked off a whole new genre, “I Got A Woman” became a rock and roll standard. It would be covered by the Everly Brothers, the Beatles, the Monkees… Ray Charles was, in the minds of his detractors, debasing something holy, but those complaints didn’t stop Charles from continuing to rework gospel songs and turn them into rock and roll classics. For his next single, he took the old gospel song “This Little Light of Mine”: [Excerpt: Etta James, “This Little Light of Mine”] And reworked it into “This Little Girl of Mine”: [Excerpt: Ray Charles: “This Little Girl of Mine”] Ray Charles had hit on a formula that any other musician would have happily milked for decades. But Ray Charles wasn’t a musician who would stick to just one style of music. This wandering musical mind would ensure that for the next few years Ray Charles would be probably the most vital creative force in American music, but it also meant that he would swing wildly between commercial success and failure. After a run of huge hits in 1954, 55, and 56 — classic songs like “Hallelujah, I Love Her So”, “Drown in My Own Tears”, and “Lonely Avenue” — he hit a dry patch, with such less-than-stellar efforts as “My Bonnie” and “Swanee River Rock”. But you can’t keep a good man down for long, and when we next look at Ray Charles, in 1959, we’ll see him once again revolutionise both rock and roll and the music he invented, the music that we now call soul.

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Episode 32: “I Got A Woman” by Ray Charles

Play Episode Listen Later May 13, 2019

Welcome to episode thirty-two of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. This one looks at “I Got A Woman” by Ray Charles. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. For more on Charles Brown and Nat Cole, Patreon backers might want to listen to the Christmas Patreon-only episode. Most of the information here comes from Charles’ autobiography, Brother Ray, which gives a very clear view of his character, possibly not always in the ways he intended. All the Ray Charles music used in this podcast, and the Guitar Slim track, are on The Complete Swing Time and Atlantic Recordings. Charles’ work from 1955 through about 1965 covers more genres of American music than any other body of work I can think of, and does so wonderfully. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Let’s talk about melisma. One of the major things that you’ll notice about the singers we’ve covered so far is that most of them sound very different from anyone who’s been successful as a pure vocalist in the last few decades. There’s a reason for that. Among the pop songwriters of the thirties, forties, and fifties — not the writers of blues and country music so much, but the people writing Broadway musicals and the repertoire the crooners were singing — melisma was absolutely anathema. Melisma is a technical musical term, but it has a simple meaning — it’s when you sing multiple notes to the same syllable of lyric. This is something that has always existed since people started singing — for example, at the start of “The Star-Spangled Banner”, “Oh say…”, there are two notes on the syllable “oh”. That’s melisma. But among the songwriters who were registered with ASCAP in the middle of the last century, there was a strongly-held view that this was pure laziness. You wrote one syllable of lyric for one note of melody, and if you didn’t, you were doing something wrong. The lyricist Sammy Cahn used to talk about how he wrote the lyric to “Pocketful of Miracles” — “Practicality doesn’t interest me” — but then the composer wrote a melody with one more note per line than he’d written syllables for the lyric. Rather than let the song contain melisma, he did this: [Excerpt: Frank Sinatra, “Pocketful of Miracles”, with Sinatra singing “pee-racticality dee-oesn’t interest me”] That was the kind of thing songwriters would do to avoid even the hint of melisma. And singers were the same. If you listen to any of the great voices of the first part of the twentieth century — Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Tony Bennett — they will almost without exception hit the note dead on, one note per syllable. No ornamentation, no frills. There were a few outliers — Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, for example, would both use a little melisma (Holiday more than Ella) to ornament their sound — but generally that was what good singing *was*. You sang the notes, one note per syllable. And this was largely the case in the blues, as well as in the more upmarket styles. The rules weren’t stuck to quite as firmly there, but still, you’d mostly sing the song as it was written, and it would largely be written without melisma. There was one area where that was not the case – gospel, specifically black gospel. [Excerpt: Rosetta Tharpe, “Precious Lord, Take My Hand”] We looked at gospel already, of course, but we didn’t talk about this particular characteristic of the music. You see, in black gospel — and pretty much only in black gospel music, at the time we’re talking about — the use of melisma was how you conveyed emotion. You ornamented the notes, you’d sing more notes per syllable, and that was how you showed how moved you were by the spirit. And these days, that style is what people now think of as good or impressive singing. There are a *lot* of class and race issues around taste in this that I’m not going to unpick here — we’ve got a whole four hundred and sixty-eight more episodes in which to discuss these things, after all — but when you hear someone on The Voice or American Idol or The X Factor trying to impress with their vocals, it’s their command of melisma they’re trying to impress with. The more they can ornament the notes, the more they fit today’s standards of good singing. And that changed because, in the 1950s, there was a stream of black singers who came out of the gospel tradition and introduced its techniques into pop music. Before talking about that, it’s worth talking about the musical boundaries we’re going to be using in this series, because while it’s called “A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs”, I am not planning on using a narrow definition of “rock music”, because what counts as rock tends to be retroactively redefined to exclude branches of music where black people predominate. So for example, there’s footage of Mohammed Ali calling Sam Cooke “the greatest rock and roll singer in the world”, and at the time absolutely nobody would have questioned Cooke being called “rock and roll”, but these days he would only be talked about as a soul singer. And much of the music that we would now call “soul” was so influential on the music that we now call rock music that it’s completely ridiculous to even consider them separately until the late seventies at the earliest. So while we’re going to mostly look at music that has been labelled rock or rock and roll, don’t be surprised to find soul, funk, hip-hop, country, or any other genre that has influenced rock turning up. And especially don’t be surprised to see that happening if it was music that was thought of as rock and roll at the time, but has been retroactively relabelled. So today, we’re going to talk about a record that’s been widely credited as the first soul record, but which was released as rock and roll. And we’re going to talk about a musician who cut across all the boundaries that anyone tries to put on music, a man who was equally at home in soul, jazz, R&B, country, and rock and roll. We’re going to talk about the great Ray Charles. [Excerpt: Ray Charles, “I Got a Woman”] Ray Charles had an unusual upbringing — though perhaps one that’s not as unusual as people would like to think. As far as I can tell from his autobiography, he was the product of what we would now call a polyamorous relationship. His father was largely absent, but he was brought up by his mother, who he called “Mama”, and by his father’s wife, who he called “Mother”. Both women knew of, approved of, and liked each other, as far as young Ray was concerned. His given name was Ray Charles Robinson, but he changed it when he became a professional musician, due to the popularity of the boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, whose peak years were around the same time as Charles’ — he didn’t want to be confused with another, more famous, Ray Robinson. From a very young age, he was fascinated by the piano, and that fascination intensified when, before he reached adolescence, he became totally blind. That blindness would shape his life, even though — and perhaps because — he had a strong sense of independence. He wasn’t going to let his disability define him, and he often said that the three things that he didn’t want were a dog, a cane, and a guitar, because they were the things all blind men had. Now, I want to make it very clear that I’m not talking here about the rights and wrongs of Charles’ own attitude to his disability. I’m disabled myself, but his disability is not mine, and he is from another generation. I’m just stating what that attitude was, and how it affected his life and career. And the main thing it did was make him even more fiercely independent. He not only got about on his own without a cane or a dog, he also at one point even used to go riding a motorbike by himself. Other than his independence, the main thing everyone noted about the young Ray Charles Robinson was his proficiency on the piano, and by his late teens he was playing great jazz piano, inspired by Art Tatum, who like Ray was blind. Tatum was such a proficient pianist that there is a term in computational musicology, the tatum, meaning “the smallest time interval between successive notes in a rhythmic phrase”. [Excerpt; Art Tatum, “I Wish I Were Twins”] Charles never got quite that good, but he was inspired by Tatum’s musicality, and he became a serious student of the instrument, becoming a very respectable jazz pianist. When his mother died, when he was fifteen, Charles decided to leave school and set up on his own as a musician. Initially, he toured only round Georgia and Florida, and early on he made a handful of records. His very earliest recordings, oddly, sound a lot like his mature style — his first record, “Wondering and Wondering”, was almost fully-formed mature Ray Charles: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, “Wondering and Wondering”] But he soon changed his style to be more popular. He moved to the West Coast, and unsuccessfully auditioned to play piano with Lucky Millinder’s band, and would occasionally play jazz with Bumps Blackwell and Dizzy Gillespie. But while his association with Bumps Blackwell would continue long into the future, playing jazz wasn’t how Ray Charles was going to make his name. On the West Coast in the late forties and early fifties, the most popular style for black musicians was a particular kind of smooth blues, incorporating aspects of crooning alongside blues and jazz. Two of the biggest groups in the R&B field were the Nat “King” Cole Trio and Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers featuring Charles Brown. Both of these had very similar styles, featuring a piano player who sang smooth blues, with an electric guitarist and a bass player, and sometimes a drummer. We’ve heard Nat “King” Cole before, playing piano with Les Paul and Illinois Jacquet, but it’s still hard for modern listeners to remember that before his massive pop success with ballads like “Unforgettable”, Cole was making music which may not have been quite as successful commercially, but which was incredibly influential on the burgeoning rock music field. A typical example of the style is Cole’s version of “Route Sixty-Six”: [Excerpt: Nat “King” Cole Trio, “Route Sixty Six”] You’ll note, I hope, the similarity to the early recordings by the Chuck Berry Trio in particular — Berry would often say that while Louis Jordan music was the music he would play to try to make a living, Nat “King” Cole was the musician he most liked to listen to, and the Chuck Berry Trio was clearly an attempt to emulate this style. The other group I mentioned, The Three Blazers, were very much in the same style as the Nat Cole Trio, but were a couple of rungs down the entertainment ladder, and Charles Brown, their singer, would be another huge influence on Ray Charles early on. Charles formed his own trio, the McSon Trio (the “Son” came from the Robinson in his own name, the “Mc” from the guitarist’s name). [Excerpt: The McSon Trio “Don’t Put All Your Dreams In One Basket”] The McSon Trio quickly changed their name to the Ray Charles Trio, as their pianist and singer became the obvious star of the show. Charles soon tired of running his own trio, though, and went fully solo, travelling to gigs on his own and working with local pickup bands rather than having his own steady musicians. This also gave him the opportunity to collaborate with a wider variety of other musicians than having a fixed band would. Around this time Charles was introduced by Bumps Blackwell to Quincy Jones, with whom he would go on to collaborate in various ways for much of the rest of his career. But his most important collaboration in his early career was with the blues musician Lowell Fulson. Fulson was one of the pioneers of the smooth West Coast blues sound, and Charles became his pianist and musical director for a short time. Charles didn’t perform on many of Fulson’s sessions, but you can get an idea of the kind of thing that he would have been playing with Fulson from Fulson’s biggest record, “Reconsider Baby”, which came out shortly after Charles’ time with Fulson: [Excerpt: Lowell Fulson, “Reconsider Baby”] So Charles was splitting his time between making his own Nat Cole or Charles Brown style records, touring on his own, and touring with Fulson. He also worked on other records for other musicians. The most notable of these was a blues classic, by another of the greats of West Coast blues, “The Things That I Used To Do” by Guitar Slim. [Excerpt: “The Things That I Used To Do” by Guitar Slim] Slim was one of the great blues guitarists of the 1950s, and he was also one of the great showmen, whose performance style included things like a guitar cord that was allegedly three hundred and fifty feet long, so he could keep his guitar plugged into the amplifier but walk through the crowd and even out into the street, while still playing his guitar. Slim would later be a huge influence on musicians like Jimi Hendrix, but “The Things That I Used To Do”, his most famous record, is as much Charles’ record as it is Guitar Slim’s — Charles produced, arranged, and played piano, and the result sounds far more like the work that Charles was doing at the time than it does Guitar Slim’s other work, though it still has Slim’s recognisable guitar sound. He finally got the opportunity to stand out when he moved from Swing Time to Atlantic Records. While several of the Swing Time recordings were minor successes, people kept telling him how much he sounded like Nat Cole or Charles Brown. But he realised that it was unlikely that anyone was telling Nat Cole or Charles Brown how much they sounded like Ray Charles, and that he would never be in the first rank of musicians unless he got a style that was uniquely his. Everything changed with “Mess Around”, which was his first major venture into the Atlantic house style. “Mess Around” is credited to Ahmet Ertegun, the owner of Atlantic Records, as the writer, but it should really be credited as a traditional song arranged by Ray Charles, Jesse Stone, and Ertegun. Ertegun did contribute to the songwriting — rather surprisingly, given the habit of record executives of just taking credit for something that they had nothing to do with. Ertegun told Charles to play some piano in the style of Pete Johnson, and Charles responded by playing “Cow Cow Blues”, a 1928 song by Cow Cow Davenport: [Excerpt: Cow Cow Davenport, “Cow Cow Blues”] Ertegun came up with some new words for that, mostly based around traditional floating lyrics. Jesse Stone came up with an arrangement, and the result was titled “Mess Around”: [Excerpt: Ray Charles and his Orchestra, “Mess Around”] For his next few records, Charles was one of many artists making records with the standard Atlantic musicians and arrangers — the same people who were making records with Ruth Brown or LaVern Baker. By this point, he had gained enough confidence in the studio that he was able to sing like himself, not like Charles Brown or Nat Cole or anyone else. The music he was making was generic R&B, but it didn’t sound like anyone else at all: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, “It Should Have Been Me”] “Mess Around” and “It Should Have Been Me” were Charles’ two biggest hits to date, both making the top five on the R&B charts. His breakout, though, came with a song that he based around a gospel song. At this time, gospel music was not much of an influence on most of the rhythm and blues records that were charting, but as Charles would later say, “the church was something which couldn’t be taken out of my voice even if I had wanted to take it out. Once I decided to be natural, I was gone. It’s like Aretha: She could do “Stardust,” but if she did her thing on it, you’d hear the church all over the place.” Charles had now formed his own band, which was strongly influenced by Count Basie. The Count Basie band was, like Lionel Hampton’s, one of the bands that had most influenced early R&B, and its music was exactly the kind of combination of jump band and classy jazz that Charles liked: [Excerpt: Count Basie, “One O’Clock Jump”] Charles’ own band was modelled on the Basie band, though slimmed down because of the practicalities of touring with a big band in the fifties. He had three sax players, piano, bass, drums, two trumpets, and a trombone, and he added a girl group, called the Raelettes, who were mostly former members of a girl group called the Cookies (who would go on to have a few hits themselves over the years). Charles was now able to record his own band, rather than the Atlantic session musicians, and have them playing his own arrangements rather than Jesse Stone’s. And the first recording session he did with his own band produced his first number one. Charles’ trumpet player, Renald Richard, brought Charles a set of blues lyrics, and Charles set them to a gospel tune he’d been listening to. The Southern Tones were a gospel act recording for Duke Records, and they never had much success. They’d be almost forgotten now were it not for this one record: [Excerpt, The Southern Tones, “It Must Be Jesus”] Charles took that melody, and the lyrics that Renald Richard had given him, and created a record which was utterly unlike anything else that had ever been recorded. This was a new fusion of gospel, the blues, big band jazz, and early rock and roll. Nobody had ever done anything like it before. In the context of 1954, when every fusion of ideas from different musics, and every new musical experiment, was labeled “rock and roll”, this was definitely a rock and roll record, but in later decades they would say that this music had soul: [Excerpt, “I Got a Woman”, Ray Charles] That song was close enough to gospel to cause Charles some very real problems. Gospel singers who went over to making secular music were considered by their original fans to be going over to the side of the Devil. It wasn’t just that they were performing secular music — it was very specifically that they were using musical styles that were created in order to worship God, and turning them to secular purposes. And this criticism was applied, loudly, to Charles, even though he had never been a gospel singer. But while the gospel community was up in arms, people were listening. “I Got a Woman” went to number one on the R&B charts, and quickly entered the stage repertoire of another musician who had church music in his veins: [Excerpt, Elvis Presley, “I Got a Woman”] Even as it kicked off a whole new genre, “I Got A Woman” became a rock and roll standard. It would be covered by the Everly Brothers, the Beatles, the Monkees… Ray Charles was, in the minds of his detractors, debasing something holy, but those complaints didn’t stop Charles from continuing to rework gospel songs and turn them into rock and roll classics. For his next single, he took the old gospel song “This Little Light of Mine”: [Excerpt: Etta James, “This Little Light of Mine”] And reworked it into “This Little Girl of Mine”: [Excerpt: Ray Charles: “This Little Girl of Mine”] Ray Charles had hit on a formula that any other musician would have happily milked for decades. But Ray Charles wasn’t a musician who would stick to just one style of music. This wandering musical mind would ensure that for the next few years Ray Charles would be probably the most vital creative force in American music, but it also meant that he would swing wildly between commercial success and failure. After a run of huge hits in 1954, 55, and 56 — classic songs like “Hallelujah, I Love Her So”, “Drown in My Own Tears”, and “Lonely Avenue” — he hit a dry patch, with such less-than-stellar efforts as “My Bonnie” and “Swanee River Rock”. But you can’t keep a good man down for long, and when we next look at Ray Charles, in 1959, we’ll see him once again revolutionise both rock and roll and the music he invented, the music that we now call soul.

god american history mother voice woman gospel holiday devil songs broadway mama miracles atlantic beatles mine robinson west coast rock and roll wondering cookies frank sinatra american idol elvis presley orchestras slim hallelujah x factor jimi hendrix excerpt unforgettable stardust quincy jones cooke ray charles billie holiday mixcloud tony bennett monkees drown ella fitzgerald sam cooke bing crosby rock music star spangled banner atlantic records ascap practicality dizzy gillespie les paul count basie everly brothers take my hand mohammed ali lionel hampton mess around this little light swing time pocketful louis jordan charles brown basie art tatum precious lord ruth brown pete johnson sugar ray robinson one o ahmet ertegun lavern baker sammy cahn johnny moore jesse stone brother ray illinois jacquet lowell fulson ertegun reconsider baby

Episode 32: "I Got A Woman" by Ray Charles

Play Episode Listen Later May 13, 2019 33:32

Welcome to episode thirty-two of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. This one looks at "I Got A Woman" by Ray Charles. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. For more on Charles Brown and Nat Cole, Patreon backers might want to listen to the Christmas Patreon-only episode. Most of the information here comes from Charles' autobiography, Brother Ray, which gives a very clear view of his character, possibly not always in the ways he intended. All the Ray Charles music used in this podcast, and the Guitar Slim track, are on The Complete Swing Time and Atlantic Recordings. Charles' work from 1955 through about 1965 covers more genres of American music than any other body of work I can think of, and does so wonderfully. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Let's talk about melisma. One of the major things that you'll notice about the singers we've covered so far is that most of them sound very different from anyone who's been successful as a pure vocalist in the last few decades. There's a reason for that. Among the pop songwriters of the thirties, forties, and fifties -- not the writers of blues and country music so much, but the people writing Broadway musicals and the repertoire the crooners were singing -- melisma was absolutely anathema. Melisma is a technical musical term, but it has a simple meaning -- it's when you sing multiple notes to the same syllable of lyric. This is something that has always existed since people started singing -- for example, at the start of "The Star-Spangled Banner", "Oh say...", there are two notes on the syllable "oh". That's melisma. But among the songwriters who were registered with ASCAP in the middle of the last century, there was a strongly-held view that this was pure laziness. You wrote one syllable of lyric for one note of melody, and if you didn't, you were doing something wrong. The lyricist Sammy Cahn used to talk about how he wrote the lyric to "Pocketful of Miracles" -- "Practicality doesn't interest me" -- but then the composer wrote a melody with one more note per line than he'd written syllables for the lyric. Rather than let the song contain melisma, he did this: [Excerpt: Frank Sinatra, "Pocketful of Miracles", with Sinatra singing "pee-racticality dee-oesn't interest me"] That was the kind of thing songwriters would do to avoid even the hint of melisma. And singers were the same. If you listen to any of the great voices of the first part of the twentieth century -- Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Tony Bennett -- they will almost without exception hit the note dead on, one note per syllable. No ornamentation, no frills. There were a few outliers -- Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald, for example, would both use a little melisma (Holiday more than Ella) to ornament their sound -- but generally that was what good singing *was*. You sang the notes, one note per syllable. And this was largely the case in the blues, as well as in the more upmarket styles. The rules weren't stuck to quite as firmly there, but still, you'd mostly sing the song as it was written, and it would largely be written without melisma. There was one area where that was not the case – gospel, specifically black gospel. [Excerpt: Rosetta Tharpe, "Precious Lord, Take My Hand"] We looked at gospel already, of course, but we didn't talk about this particular characteristic of the music. You see, in black gospel -- and pretty much only in black gospel music, at the time we're talking about -- the use of melisma was how you conveyed emotion. You ornamented the notes, you'd sing more notes per syllable, and that was how you showed how moved you were by the spirit. And these days, that style is what people now think of as good or impressive singing. There are a *lot* of class and race issues around taste in this that I'm not going to unpick here -- we've got a whole four hundred and sixty-eight more episodes in which to discuss these things, after all -- but when you hear someone on The Voice or American Idol or The X Factor trying to impress with their vocals, it's their command of melisma they're trying to impress with. The more they can ornament the notes, the more they fit today's standards of good singing. And that changed because, in the 1950s, there was a stream of black singers who came out of the gospel tradition and introduced its techniques into pop music. Before talking about that, it's worth talking about the musical boundaries we're going to be using in this series, because while it's called "A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs", I am not planning on using a narrow definition of "rock music", because what counts as rock tends to be retroactively redefined to exclude branches of music where black people predominate. So for example, there's footage of Mohammed Ali calling Sam Cooke "the greatest rock and roll singer in the world", and at the time absolutely nobody would have questioned Cooke being called "rock and roll", but these days he would only be talked about as a soul singer. And much of the music that we would now call "soul" was so influential on the music that we now call rock music that it's completely ridiculous to even consider them separately until the late seventies at the earliest. So while we're going to mostly look at music that has been labelled rock or rock and roll, don't be surprised to find soul, funk, hip-hop, country, or any other genre that has influenced rock turning up. And especially don't be surprised to see that happening if it was music that was thought of as rock and roll at the time, but has been retroactively relabelled. So today, we're going to talk about a record that's been widely credited as the first soul record, but which was released as rock and roll. And we're going to talk about a musician who cut across all the boundaries that anyone tries to put on music, a man who was equally at home in soul, jazz, R&B, country, and rock and roll. We're going to talk about the great Ray Charles. [Excerpt: Ray Charles, “I Got a Woman”] Ray Charles had an unusual upbringing -- though perhaps one that's not as unusual as people would like to think. As far as I can tell from his autobiography, he was the product of what we would now call a polyamorous relationship. His father was largely absent, but he was brought up by his mother, who he called "Mama", and by his father's wife, who he called "Mother". Both women knew of, approved of, and liked each other, as far as young Ray was concerned. His given name was Ray Charles Robinson, but he changed it when he became a professional musician, due to the popularity of the boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, whose peak years were around the same time as Charles' -- he didn't want to be confused with another, more famous, Ray Robinson. From a very young age, he was fascinated by the piano, and that fascination intensified when, before he reached adolescence, he became totally blind. That blindness would shape his life, even though -- and perhaps because -- he had a strong sense of independence. He wasn't going to let his disability define him, and he often said that the three things that he didn't want were a dog, a cane, and a guitar, because they were the things all blind men had. Now, I want to make it very clear that I'm not talking here about the rights and wrongs of Charles' own attitude to his disability. I'm disabled myself, but his disability is not mine, and he is from another generation. I'm just stating what that attitude was, and how it affected his life and career. And the main thing it did was make him even more fiercely independent. He not only got about on his own without a cane or a dog, he also at one point even used to go riding a motorbike by himself. Other than his independence, the main thing everyone noted about the young Ray Charles Robinson was his proficiency on the piano, and by his late teens he was playing great jazz piano, inspired by Art Tatum, who like Ray was blind. Tatum was such a proficient pianist that there is a term in computational musicology, the tatum, meaning "the smallest time interval between successive notes in a rhythmic phrase". [Excerpt; Art Tatum, "I Wish I Were Twins"] Charles never got quite that good, but he was inspired by Tatum's musicality, and he became a serious student of the instrument, becoming a very respectable jazz pianist. When his mother died, when he was fifteen, Charles decided to leave school and set up on his own as a musician. Initially, he toured only round Georgia and Florida, and early on he made a handful of records. His very earliest recordings, oddly, sound a lot like his mature style -- his first record, "Wondering and Wondering", was almost fully-formed mature Ray Charles: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, "Wondering and Wondering"] But he soon changed his style to be more popular. He moved to the West Coast, and unsuccessfully auditioned to play piano with Lucky Millinder's band, and would occasionally play jazz with Bumps Blackwell and Dizzy Gillespie. But while his association with Bumps Blackwell would continue long into the future, playing jazz wasn't how Ray Charles was going to make his name. On the West Coast in the late forties and early fifties, the most popular style for black musicians was a particular kind of smooth blues, incorporating aspects of crooning alongside blues and jazz. Two of the biggest groups in the R&B field were the Nat "King" Cole Trio and Johnny Moore's Three Blazers featuring Charles Brown. Both of these had very similar styles, featuring a piano player who sang smooth blues, with an electric guitarist and a bass player, and sometimes a drummer. We've heard Nat "King" Cole before, playing piano with Les Paul and Illinois Jacquet, but it's still hard for modern listeners to remember that before his massive pop success with ballads like "Unforgettable", Cole was making music which may not have been quite as successful commercially, but which was incredibly influential on the burgeoning rock music field. A typical example of the style is Cole's version of "Route Sixty-Six": [Excerpt: Nat "King" Cole Trio, "Route Sixty Six"] You'll note, I hope, the similarity to the early recordings by the Chuck Berry Trio in particular -- Berry would often say that while Louis Jordan music was the music he would play to try to make a living, Nat "King" Cole was the musician he most liked to listen to, and the Chuck Berry Trio was clearly an attempt to emulate this style. The other group I mentioned, The Three Blazers, were very much in the same style as the Nat Cole Trio, but were a couple of rungs down the entertainment ladder, and Charles Brown, their singer, would be another huge influence on Ray Charles early on. Charles formed his own trio, the McSon Trio (the "Son" came from the Robinson in his own name, the "Mc" from the guitarist's name). [Excerpt: The McSon Trio "Don't Put All Your Dreams In One Basket"] The McSon Trio quickly changed their name to the Ray Charles Trio, as their pianist and singer became the obvious star of the show. Charles soon tired of running his own trio, though, and went fully solo, travelling to gigs on his own and working with local pickup bands rather than having his own steady musicians. This also gave him the opportunity to collaborate with a wider variety of other musicians than having a fixed band would. Around this time Charles was introduced by Bumps Blackwell to Quincy Jones, with whom he would go on to collaborate in various ways for much of the rest of his career. But his most important collaboration in his early career was with the blues musician Lowell Fulson. Fulson was one of the pioneers of the smooth West Coast blues sound, and Charles became his pianist and musical director for a short time. Charles didn't perform on many of Fulson's sessions, but you can get an idea of the kind of thing that he would have been playing with Fulson from Fulson's biggest record, "Reconsider Baby", which came out shortly after Charles' time with Fulson: [Excerpt: Lowell Fulson, "Reconsider Baby"] So Charles was splitting his time between making his own Nat Cole or Charles Brown style records, touring on his own, and touring with Fulson. He also worked on other records for other musicians. The most notable of these was a blues classic, by another of the greats of West Coast blues, "The Things That I Used To Do" by Guitar Slim. [Excerpt: "The Things That I Used To Do" by Guitar Slim] Slim was one of the great blues guitarists of the 1950s, and he was also one of the great showmen, whose performance style included things like a guitar cord that was allegedly three hundred and fifty feet long, so he could keep his guitar plugged into the amplifier but walk through the crowd and even out into the street, while still playing his guitar. Slim would later be a huge influence on musicians like Jimi Hendrix, but "The Things That I Used To Do", his most famous record, is as much Charles' record as it is Guitar Slim's -- Charles produced, arranged, and played piano, and the result sounds far more like the work that Charles was doing at the time than it does Guitar Slim's other work, though it still has Slim's recognisable guitar sound. He finally got the opportunity to stand out when he moved from Swing Time to Atlantic Records. While several of the Swing Time recordings were minor successes, people kept telling him how much he sounded like Nat Cole or Charles Brown. But he realised that it was unlikely that anyone was telling Nat Cole or Charles Brown how much they sounded like Ray Charles, and that he would never be in the first rank of musicians unless he got a style that was uniquely his. Everything changed with "Mess Around", which was his first major venture into the Atlantic house style. "Mess Around" is credited to Ahmet Ertegun, the owner of Atlantic Records, as the writer, but it should really be credited as a traditional song arranged by Ray Charles, Jesse Stone, and Ertegun. Ertegun did contribute to the songwriting -- rather surprisingly, given the habit of record executives of just taking credit for something that they had nothing to do with. Ertegun told Charles to play some piano in the style of Pete Johnson, and Charles responded by playing "Cow Cow Blues", a 1928 song by Cow Cow Davenport: [Excerpt: Cow Cow Davenport, "Cow Cow Blues"] Ertegun came up with some new words for that, mostly based around traditional floating lyrics. Jesse Stone came up with an arrangement, and the result was titled "Mess Around": [Excerpt: Ray Charles and his Orchestra, "Mess Around"] For his next few records, Charles was one of many artists making records with the standard Atlantic musicians and arrangers -- the same people who were making records with Ruth Brown or LaVern Baker. By this point, he had gained enough confidence in the studio that he was able to sing like himself, not like Charles Brown or Nat Cole or anyone else. The music he was making was generic R&B, but it didn't sound like anyone else at all: [Excerpt: Ray Charles, "It Should Have Been Me"] "Mess Around" and "It Should Have Been Me" were Charles' two biggest hits to date, both making the top five on the R&B charts. His breakout, though, came with a song that he based around a gospel song. At this time, gospel music was not much of an influence on most of the rhythm and blues records that were charting, but as Charles would later say, "the church was something which couldn’t be taken out of my voice even if I had wanted to take it out. Once I decided to be natural, I was gone. It’s like Aretha: She could do “Stardust,” but if she did her thing on it, you’d hear the church all over the place." Charles had now formed his own band, which was strongly influenced by Count Basie. The Count Basie band was, like Lionel Hampton's, one of the bands that had most influenced early R&B, and its music was exactly the kind of combination of jump band and classy jazz that Charles liked: [Excerpt: Count Basie, "One O'Clock Jump"] Charles' own band was modelled on the Basie band, though slimmed down because of the practicalities of touring with a big band in the fifties. He had three sax players, piano, bass, drums, two trumpets, and a trombone, and he added a girl group, called the Raelettes, who were mostly former members of a girl group called the Cookies (who would go on to have a few hits themselves over the years). Charles was now able to record his own band, rather than the Atlantic session musicians, and have them playing his own arrangements rather than Jesse Stone's. And the first recording session he did with his own band produced his first number one. Charles' trumpet player, Renald Richard, brought Charles a set of blues lyrics, and Charles set them to a gospel tune he'd been listening to. The Southern Tones were a gospel act recording for Duke Records, and they never had much success. They'd be almost forgotten now were it not for this one record: [Excerpt, The Southern Tones, "It Must Be Jesus"] Charles took that melody, and the lyrics that Renald Richard had given him, and created a record which was utterly unlike anything else that had ever been recorded. This was a new fusion of gospel, the blues, big band jazz, and early rock and roll. Nobody had ever done anything like it before. In the context of 1954, when every fusion of ideas from different musics, and every new musical experiment, was labeled "rock and roll", this was definitely a rock and roll record, but in later decades they would say that this music had soul: [Excerpt, "I Got a Woman", Ray Charles] That song was close enough to gospel to cause Charles some very real problems. Gospel singers who went over to making secular music were considered by their original fans to be going over to the side of the Devil. It wasn't just that they were performing secular music -- it was very specifically that they were using musical styles that were created in order to worship God, and turning them to secular purposes. And this criticism was applied, loudly, to Charles, even though he had never been a gospel singer. But while the gospel community was up in arms, people were listening. "I Got a Woman" went to number one on the R&B charts, and quickly entered the stage repertoire of another musician who had church music in his veins: [Excerpt, Elvis Presley, "I Got a Woman"] Even as it kicked off a whole new genre, "I Got A Woman" became a rock and roll standard. It would be covered by the Everly Brothers, the Beatles, the Monkees... Ray Charles was, in the minds of his detractors, debasing something holy, but those complaints didn't stop Charles from continuing to rework gospel songs and turn them into rock and roll classics. For his next single, he took the old gospel song "This Little Light of Mine": [Excerpt: Etta James, "This Little Light of Mine"] And reworked it into "This Little Girl of Mine": [Excerpt: Ray Charles: "This Little Girl of Mine"] Ray Charles had hit on a formula that any other musician would have happily milked for decades. But Ray Charles wasn't a musician who would stick to just one style of music. This wandering musical mind would ensure that for the next few years Ray Charles would be probably the most vital creative force in American music, but it also meant that he would swing wildly between commercial success and failure. After a run of huge hits in 1954, 55, and 56 -- classic songs like "Hallelujah, I Love Her So", "Drown in My Own Tears", and "Lonely Avenue" -- he hit a dry patch, with such less-than-stellar efforts as "My Bonnie" and "Swanee River Rock". But you can't keep a good man down for long, and when we next look at Ray Charles, in 1959, we'll see him once again revolutionise both rock and roll and the music he invented, the music that we now call soul.

god american history mother voice woman gospel holiday devil songs broadway mama miracles atlantic beatles robinson west coast rock and roll wondering cookies frank sinatra american idol elvis presley orchestras slim hallelujah x factor jimi hendrix excerpt unforgettable stardust quincy jones cooke ray charles billie holiday mixcloud tony bennett monkees drown ella fitzgerald sam cooke bing crosby rock music star spangled banner atlantic records nat king cole ascap dizzy gillespie les paul count basie everly brothers mohammed ali lionel hampton mess around this little light swing time pocketful louis jordan charles brown basie art tatum ruth brown precious lord pete johnson sugar ray robinson ahmet ertegun lavern baker sammy cahn johnny moore jesse stone brother ray illinois jacquet lowell fulson ertegun reconsider baby

“Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean” by Ruth Brown

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 31, 2018

Welcome to episode thirteen of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. Today we’re looking at “(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean” by Ruth Brown. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. I used a few books for this podcast. One I haven’t talked about before is Blue Rhythms: Six Lives in Rhythm and Blues by Chip Defaa. The information on “Drinking Wine Spo-De-O-Dee” comes in part from Unsung Heroes of Rock ‘n’ Roll by Nick Tosches. This book is considered a classic, but a word of caution — it was written in the 70s, and Tosches is clearly of the Lester Bangs/underground/gonzo school of rock journalism, which in modern terms means he’s a bit of an edgelord who’ll be needlessly offensive to get a laugh. Much of the information I’ve used comes from interviews with Ruth Brown and Ahmet Ertegun in Honkers & Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues by Arnold Shaw, one of the most important books on early 50s rhythm and blues. Ruth Brown also wrote an autobiography. And there are many good compilations of Brown’s R&B work — this one has most of the important records on it. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript While I’ve often made the point that fifties rhythm and blues is not the same thing as “the blues” as most people now think of it, there was still an obvious connection (as you’d expect from the name if nothing else) and sometimes the two would be more connected than you might think. So Ruth Brown, who was almost the epitome of a rhythm and blues singer, had her first hit on the pop charts with a song that couldn’t have been more blues inspired. For the story of “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean”, we have to go all the way back to Blind Lemon Jefferson in the 1920s. Jefferson was a country-blues picker who was one of the most remarkable guitarists of his generation — he was a blues man first and foremost, but his guitar playing influenced almost every country player who came later. Unfortunately, he recorded for Paramount Records, notoriously the label with the worst sound quality in the 20s and thirties (which, given the general sound quality of those early recordings, is saying something). One of his songs was “One Dime Blues”, which is a very typical example of his style: [excerpt “One Dime Blues” by Blind Lemon Jefferson] See what I mean both about the great guitar playing and about the really lousy sound quality? That song was later picked up by another great blind bluesman, Blind Willie McTell. McTell is an example of how white lovers of black music would manage to miss the point of the musicians they loved and try to turn them into something they’re not. A substantial proportion of McTell’s recordings were made by John and Alan Lomax, for the Library of Congress, but if you listen to those recordings you can hear the Lomaxes persuading McTell to play music that’s very different from the songs he normally played — while he was a commercial blues singer, they wanted him to perform traditional folk songs and to sing political protest material, and basically to be another Leadbelly (a singer he did resemble slightly as a musician, largely because they both played the twelve-string guitar). He said he didn’t know any protest songs, but he did play various folk songs for them, even though they weren’t in his normal repertoire. And this is a very important thing to realise about the way the white collectors of black music distorted it — and it’s something you should also pay attention to when I talk about this stuff. I am, after all, a white man who loves a lot of black music but is disconnected from the culture that created it, just like the Lomaxes. There’s a reason why I call this podcast “A History of Rock Music…” rather than “THE History of Rock Music…” — the very last thing I want to do is give the impression that my opinion is the definitive one and that I should have the final word about these things. But what the Lomaxes were doing, when they were collecting their recordings, was taking sophisticated entertainers, who made their living from playing to rather demanding crowds, and getting them to play music that the Lomaxes *thought* was typical black music, rather than the music that those musicians would normally play and that their audiences would normally listen to. So they got McTell to perform songs he knew, like “The Boll Weevil” and “Amazing Grace”, because they thought that those songs were what they should be collecting, rather than having him perform his own material. To put this into a context which may seem a little more obvious to my audience — imagine you’re a singer-songwriter in Britain in the present day. You’ve been playing the clubs for several years, you’ve got a repertoire of songs you’ve written which the audiences love. You get your big break with a record company, you go into the studio, and the producer insists on you singing “Itsy-Bitsy Spider” and a hymn you had to sing in school assembly like “All Things Bright and Beautiful”. You probably could perform those, but you’d be wondering why they wouldn’t let you sing your own songs, and what the audiences would think of you singing this kind of stuff, and who exactly was going to buy it. But on the other hand, money is money, and you give the people paying you what they want. This was the experience of a *lot* of black musicians in the thirties, forties, and fifties, having rich white men pay them to play music that they saw as unsophisticated. It’s something we’ll see particularly in the late fifties as musicians travel from the US to the UK, and people like Muddy Waters discovered that their English audiences didn’t want to see anyone playing electric guitars and doing solos — they thought of the blues as a kind of folk music, and so wanted to see a poor black sharecropper playing an acoustic guitar, and so that’s what he gave those audiences. But McTell’s version of “One Dime Blues”, retitled “Last Dime Blues”, wasn’t like that. That was the music he played normally, and it was a minor hit: [excerpt: “Last Dime Blues” by Blind Willie McTell] And that line we just heard, “Mama, don’t treat your daughter mean”, inspired one of the most important records in early rock and roll. Ruth Brown had run away from home when she was seventeen — she’d wanted to become a singer, and she eloped with a trumpet player, Jimmy Brown, who she married and whose name she kept even though the marriage didn’t last long. She quickly joined Lucky Millinder’s band, as so many early R&B stars we’ve discussed did, but that too didn’t last long. Millinder’s band, at the time, had two singers already, and the original plan was for Brown to travel with the band for a month and learn how they did things, and then to join them on stage. She did the travelling for a month part, but soon found herself kicked out when she got on stage. She did two songs with the band on her first night performing live with them, and apparently went down well with the audience, but that was all she was meant to do on that show, so one of the other musicians asked her to go and get the band members drinks from the bar, as they were still performing. She brought them all sodas on to the stage… and Millinder said “I hired a singer, not a waitress — you’re fired. And besides, you don’t sing well anyway”. She was fired that day, and she had no money — Millinder refused to pay her, arguing that she’d had free room and board from him for a month, so if anything she owed him money. She had no way to make her way home from Washington. She was stuck. But what should have been a terrible situation for her turned out to be the thing that changed her life. She got an audition with Blanche Calloway, Cab’s sister, who was running a club at the time. Well, I say Blanche Calloway was Cab’s sister, and that’s probably how most people today would think of her if they thought of her at all, but it would really be more appropriate to say Cab Calloway happened to be her brother. Blanche Calloway had herself had a successful singing career, starting before her brother’s career, and she’d recorded songs like this: [excerpt “Just a Crazy Song”: Blanche Calloway and her Joy Boys] That was recorded several months *before* her brother’s breakout hit “Minnie The Moocher”, which popularised the “Hi de hi, ho de ho” chorus. Blanche Calloway wasn’t the first person to sing that song – Bill “Bojangles” Robinson recorded it a month before, though in a very different style – but she’s clearly the one who gave Cab the idea. She was a successful bandleader before her brother, and her band, the Joy Boys, featured musicians like Cozy Cole and Ben Webster, who later became some of the most famous names in jazz. She was the first woman to lead an otherwise all-male band, and her band was regularly listed as one of the ten or so most influential bands of the early thirties. And that wasn’t her only achievement by any means — in later years she became prominent in the Democratic Party and as a civil rights activist, she started Afram, a cosmetic company that made makeup for black women and was one of the most popular brand names of the seventies, and she was the first black woman to vote in Florida, in 1958. But while her band was popular in the thirties, it eventually broke up. There are two stories about how her band split, and possibly both are true. One story is that the Mafia, who controlled live music in the thirties, decided that there wasn’t room for two bands led by a Calloway, and put their weight behind her brother, leaving her unable to get gigs. The other story is that while on tour in Mississippi, she used a public toilet that was designated whites-only, and while she was in jail for that one of the band members ran off with all the band’s money and so she couldn’t afford to pay them. Either way, Calloway had gone into club management instead, and that was what she was doing when Ruth Brown walked into her club, desperate for a job. Calloway said that the club didn’t really need any new singers at the time, but she was sympathetic enough with Brown’s plight — and impressed enough by her talent — that she agreed that Brown could continue to sing at her club until she’d earned her fare home. And it was at that club that Willis Conover came to see her. Conover was a fascinating figure — he presented the jazz programme on Voice of America, the radio station that broadcast propaganda to the Eastern bloc during the Cold War, but by doing so he managed to raise the profile of many of the greatest jazz musicians of the time. He was also a major figure in early science fiction fandom — a book of his correspondence with H.P. Lovecraft is now available. Conover was visiting the nightclub along with his friend Duke Ellington, and he was immediately impressed by Ruth Brown’s performance — impressed enough that he ran out to call Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson and tell them to sign her. Ertegun and Abramson were the founders of Atlantic Records, a new record label which had started up only a couple of years earlier. We’ve talked a bit about how the white backroom people in early R&B were usually those who were in some ways on the borderline between American conceptions of race — and this is something that will become even more important as the story goes on — but that was certainly true of Ahmet Ertegun. Ertegun was considered white by the then-prevailing standards in the US, but he was a Turkish Muslim, and so not part of what the white culture considered the default. He was also, though, extremely well off. His father had been the Turkish ambassador to the United States, and while young Ahmet had ostensibly been studying Medieval Philosophy at Georgetown University, in reality he was spending much of his time in Milt Gabler’s Commodore Music Shop. He and his brother Neshui had over fifteen thousand jazz records between them, and would travel to places like New Orleans and Harlem to see musicians. And so Ahmet decided he was going to set up his own record company, making jazz records. He got funding from his dentist, and took on Herb Abramson, one of the dentist’s proteges, as his partner in the firm. They soon switched from their initial plan of making jazz records to a new one of making blues and R&B, following the market. Atlantic’s first few records — while they were good ones, featuring people like Professor Longhair, weren’t especially successful, but then in 1949 they released “Drinking Wine Spo-De-O-Dee” by Sticks McGhee: [excerpt “Drinking Wine Spo-De-O-Dee”] That record is another of those which people refer to as “the first rock and roll record”, and it was pure good luck for Atlantic — McGhee had recorded an almost identical version two years earlier, for a label called Harlem Records. The song had originally been rather different — before McGhee recorded it for Harlem Records, instead of singing spo-de-o-dee he’d sung a four-syllable word, the first two syllables of which were mother and the latter two would get this podcast put in the adults-only section on iTunes; while instead of singing “mop mop” he’d sung “goddam”. Wisely, Harlem Records had got him to tone down the lyrics, but the record had started to take off only after the original label had gone out of business. Ertegun knew McGhee’s brother, the more famous blues musician Brownie McGhee, and called him up to get in touch with Sticks. They got Sticks to recut the record, sticking as closely as possible to his original, and rushed it out. The result was a massive success,and had cover versions by Lionel Hampton, Wynonie Harris, and many more musicians we’ve talked about here. Atlantic Records was on the map, and even though Sticks McGhee never had another hit, Atlantic now knew that the proto-rock-and-roll style of rhythm and blues was where its fortunes lay. So when Herb Abramson and Ahmet Ertegun saw Ruth Brown, they knew two things — firstly, this was a singer who had massive commercial potential, and secondly that if she was going to record for them, she’d have to change her style, from the torch songs she was singing to something more… spo-de-o-dee. Ruth Brown very nearly never made it to her first recording session at all. On her way to New York, with Blanche Calloway, who had become her manager, she ended up in a car crash and was in hospital for a year, turning twenty-one in hospital. She thought for a time that her chance had passed, but when she got well enough to use crutches she was invited along to a recording session. It wasn’t meant to be a session for her, it was just a way to ease her back into her career — Atlantic were going to show her what went on in a recording studio, so she would feel comfortable when it came to be time for her to actually make a record. The session was to record a few tracks for Cavalcade of Music, a radio show that profiled American composers. Eddie Condon’s band were recording the tracks, and all Brown was meant to do was watch. But then Ahmet Ertegun decided that while she was there, they might as well do a test recording of Brown, just to see whether her voice sounded decent when recorded. Herb Abramson — who would produce most of Brown’s early records — listed a handful of songs that she might know that they could do, and she said she knew Russ Morgan’s “So Long”. The band worked out a rough head arrangement of it, and they started recording. After a few bars, though, Sid Catlett, the drummer — one of the great jazz drummers, who had worked with Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, among others — stopped the session and said “Wait a minute. Let’s go back and do this right. The kid can *sing*!” And she certainly could. The record, which had originally been intended just as a test or, at best, as a track to stick in the package of tracks they were recording for Cavalcade of Music, was instead released as a single, by “Ruth Brown as heard with Eddie Condon’s NBC Television Orchestra” “So Long” became a hit, and the followup “Teardrops From My Eyes” was a bigger hit, reaching number one on the R&B charts and staying there for eleven weeks. “Teardrops From My Eyes” was an uptempo song, and not really the kind of thing Brown liked — she thought of herself primarily as a torch singer — but it can’t be denied that she had a skill with that kind of material, even if it wasn’t what she’d have been singing by choice: [excerpt: Ruth Brown “Teardrops From My Eyes”] While the song was picked for her by Abramson, who continued to be in charge of Brown’s recordings until he was drafted into the Korean War, the strategy behind it was one that Ertegun had always advocated — to take black musicians who played or sang the more “sophisticated” (I don’t know if you can hear those air quotes, but they’re there…) styles and to get them instead to record in funkier, more rhythm-oriented styles. It was a strategy Atlantic would use later with many of the artists that would become popular on the label in the 1950s. In the case of “Teardrops From My Eyes”, this required a lot of work — Brown spent a week rehearsing the song with Louis Toombs, the song’s writer, and working out the arrangement — and this was in a time when most hit records were either head arrangements worked out in half an hour in the studio or songs that had been honed by months of live performance. Spending a week working out a song for a recording was extremely unusual, but it was part of Atlantic’s ethos — making sure the musicians were totally comfortable with the song and with each other before recording. It was the same reason that for the next few decades vocalists on Atlantic also played instruments on their own recordings, even if they weren’t the best instrumentalists — the idea was that the singer should be intimately involved in the rhythm of the record. But it worked even better for Ruth Brown than for most of those artists. “Teardrops From My Eyes” became a million seller — Atlantic’s first. Or at least, it was promoted as having sold a million copies — Herb Abramson would later claim that all the record labels were vastly exaggerating their sales. But then, he had a motive to claim that, just as they had a motive to exaggerate – if the artists believed they sold a million copies, then they’d want a million copies’ worth of royalties. But Brown’s biggest hit was her third number one, “Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean”, which was also one of the few records she made to cross over to the pop charts, reaching number twenty-three. This was not a record that Brown thought at the time was particularly one of her best, but twenty years later in interviews she would talk about how she couldn’t do a show without playing it and that when she said her name people would ask “the Ruth Brown who sings ‘Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean’?” The song also made a difference to Brown because it meant she had to join the musicians’ union. Vocalists, unlike instrumentalists, didn’t have to be union members. But “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean” had a prominent tambourine part, which Brown played live. That made her an instrumentalist, not just a vocalist, and so Brown became a union member. [excerpt: “Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean”, Ruth Brown] Johnny Wallace and Herbert Lance wrote that song after hearing a blues singer playing out on the street in Atlanta. The song the blues singer was playing was almost certainly “Last Dime Blues”, and contained a line which they heard as “Mama, he treats your daughter mean”. Brown didn’t want to record the song originally — the way the song was originally presented to her was as a much slower blues — but Herb Abramson raised the tempo to something closer to that of “Teardrops From My Eyes”, turning it into a clear example of early rock and roll. You can hear the song’s influence, for example, in “Work With Me Annie” by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters from two years later: [Excerpt: “Work With Me Annie”, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters] But Brown always claimed that the reason for the song’s greater success than her other records was down to that tambourine — or more precisely because of the way she played the tambourine live, because she used a fluorescent painted tambourine which would shine when she hit it. That apparently got the audiences worked up and made it her most popular live song. Brown continued to have hit records into the sixties, though she never became one of the most well-known artists — in the seventies she used to talk about adults telling their children “she was our Aretha Franklin”, and this was probably true. Certainly she was the most successful female rhythm and blues artist of the fifties, and was popular enough that for a while Atlantic Records became known as “the house that Ruth Brown built”, but like many of the pioneers of the rock and roll era, she was largely (though far from completely) erased from the cultural memory in favour of a view that has prehistory start in 1954 with Elvis and history proper only arrive in 1962 with the Beatles. Partly, this was because in the mid fifties, just as rock and roll was becoming huge, she had children and scaled down her touring activities to take care of them, but it was also in part because Atlantic Records was expanding. When they only had one or two big stars, it was easy for them to give each of them the attention they needed, but as the label got bigger, their star acts would have the best material divided among themselves, and their hit rate — at least for those who didn’t write their own material — got lower. So by the early sixties, Ruth Brown was something of a has-been. But she got a second wind from the late seventies onwards, after she appeared in the stage musical Selma, playing the part of Mahalia Jackson. She became a star again — not a pop star as she had been in her first career, but a star of the musical stage, and of films and TV. And she used that fame to do something remarkable. She had been unhappy for years with Atlantic Records not paying her the money she was owed for royalties on her records — like most independent labels of the fifties, Atlantic had seemed to regard honouring its contracts with its artists and actually giving them money as a sort of optional extra. But unlike those other independent labels, Atlantic had remained successful, and indeed by the eighties it was a major label itself — it had been bought in 1967 by Warner Brothers and had become one of the biggest record labels in the world. And Ruth Brown wanted the money to which she was entitled, and began a campaign to get the royalties she was owed. But she didn’t just campaign for herself. As part of the agreement she eventually reached with Atlantic, not only did she get her own money back, but dozens of other rhythm and blues artists also got their money — and the Rhythm and Blues Foundation was founded with money donated by Atlantic as compensation for them. The Rhythm and Blues Foundation now provides grants to up-and-coming black musicians and gives cash awards to older musicians who’ve fallen on hard times — often because of the way labels like Atlantic have treated them. Now of course that’s not to say that the Rhythm and Blues Foundation fixed everything — it’s very clear that Atlantic continued (and continues) to underpay the artists on whose work they built a billion-dollar business, and that the Foundation is one of those organisations that exists as much to forestall litigation as anything else, but it’s still notable that when she had the opportunity to do something just for herself, Ruth Brown chose instead to also help her friends and colleagues. Maybe her time in the union paid off… Brown spent her last decades as an elder stateswoman of the rhythm and blues field, She died in 2006.

united states america tv music american new york history english uk rock washington voice foundation new orleans blues daughter mama britain atlantic beatles mississippi spending elvis rock and roll cold war rhythm mafia turkish democratic party georgetown university sticks amazing grace lovecraft aretha franklin treats wisely warner brothers excerpt library of congress korean war vocalists mixcloud louis armstrong unsung heroes partly rock music duke ellington muddy waters atlantic records cab calloway mcghee ahmet dizzy gillespie cavalcade benny goodman abramson mahalia jackson leadbelly cab calloway conover lionel hampton alan lomax ruth brown russ morgan ben webster itsy bitsy spider lester bangs professor longhair honkers blind willie mctell ahmet ertegun blues foundation blind lemon jefferson midnighters jimmy brown brownie mcghee medieval philosophy all things bright boll weevil paramount records afram eddie condon ertegun turkish muslim minnie the moocher mctell

"Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean" by Ruth Brown

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 31, 2018 32:59

Welcome to episode thirteen of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. Today we're looking at "(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean" by Ruth Brown. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. I used a few books for this podcast. One I haven't talked about before is Blue Rhythms: Six Lives in Rhythm and Blues by Chip Defaa. The information on "Drinking Wine Spo-De-O-Dee" comes in part from Unsung Heroes of Rock 'n' Roll by Nick Tosches. This book is considered a classic, but a word of caution -- it was written in the 70s, and Tosches is clearly of the Lester Bangs/underground/gonzo school of rock journalism, which in modern terms means he's a bit of an edgelord who'll be needlessly offensive to get a laugh. Much of the information I've used comes from interviews with Ruth Brown and Ahmet Ertegun in Honkers & Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues by Arnold Shaw, one of the most important books on early 50s rhythm and blues. Ruth Brown also wrote an autobiography. And there are many good compilations of Brown's R&B work -- this one has most of the important records on it. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript While I've often made the point that fifties rhythm and blues is not the same thing as "the blues" as most people now think of it, there was still an obvious connection (as you'd expect from the name if nothing else) and sometimes the two would be more connected than you might think. So Ruth Brown, who was almost the epitome of a rhythm and blues singer, had her first hit on the pop charts with a song that couldn't have been more blues inspired. For the story of "Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean", we have to go all the way back to Blind Lemon Jefferson in the 1920s. Jefferson was a country-blues picker who was one of the most remarkable guitarists of his generation -- he was a blues man first and foremost, but his guitar playing influenced almost every country player who came later. Unfortunately, he recorded for Paramount Records, notoriously the label with the worst sound quality in the 20s and thirties (which, given the general sound quality of those early recordings, is saying something). One of his songs was "One Dime Blues", which is a very typical example of his style: [excerpt "One Dime Blues" by Blind Lemon Jefferson] See what I mean both about the great guitar playing and about the really lousy sound quality? That song was later picked up by another great blind bluesman, Blind Willie McTell. McTell is an example of how white lovers of black music would manage to miss the point of the musicians they loved and try to turn them into something they're not. A substantial proportion of McTell's recordings were made by John and Alan Lomax, for the Library of Congress, but if you listen to those recordings you can hear the Lomaxes persuading McTell to play music that's very different from the songs he normally played -- while he was a commercial blues singer, they wanted him to perform traditional folk songs and to sing political protest material, and basically to be another Leadbelly (a singer he did resemble slightly as a musician, largely because they both played the twelve-string guitar). He said he didn't know any protest songs, but he did play various folk songs for them, even though they weren't in his normal repertoire. And this is a very important thing to realise about the way the white collectors of black music distorted it -- and it's something you should also pay attention to when I talk about this stuff. I am, after all, a white man who loves a lot of black music but is disconnected from the culture that created it, just like the Lomaxes. There's a reason why I call this podcast "A History of Rock Music..." rather than "THE History of Rock Music..." -- the very last thing I want to do is give the impression that my opinion is the definitive one and that I should have the final word about these things. But what the Lomaxes were doing, when they were collecting their recordings, was taking sophisticated entertainers, who made their living from playing to rather demanding crowds, and getting them to play music that the Lomaxes *thought* was typical black music, rather than the music that those musicians would normally play and that their audiences would normally listen to. So they got McTell to perform songs he knew, like "The Boll Weevil" and "Amazing Grace", because they thought that those songs were what they should be collecting, rather than having him perform his own material. To put this into a context which may seem a little more obvious to my audience -- imagine you're a singer-songwriter in Britain in the present day. You've been playing the clubs for several years, you've got a repertoire of songs you've written which the audiences love. You get your big break with a record company, you go into the studio, and the producer insists on you singing "Itsy-Bitsy Spider" and a hymn you had to sing in school assembly like "All Things Bright and Beautiful". You probably could perform those, but you'd be wondering why they wouldn't let you sing your own songs, and what the audiences would think of you singing this kind of stuff, and who exactly was going to buy it. But on the other hand, money is money, and you give the people paying you what they want. This was the experience of a *lot* of black musicians in the thirties, forties, and fifties, having rich white men pay them to play music that they saw as unsophisticated. It's something we'll see particularly in the late fifties as musicians travel from the US to the UK, and people like Muddy Waters discovered that their English audiences didn't want to see anyone playing electric guitars and doing solos -- they thought of the blues as a kind of folk music, and so wanted to see a poor black sharecropper playing an acoustic guitar, and so that's what he gave those audiences. But McTell's version of "One Dime Blues", retitled "Last Dime Blues", wasn't like that. That was the music he played normally, and it was a minor hit: [excerpt: “Last Dime Blues” by Blind Willie McTell] And that line we just heard, “Mama, don't treat your daughter mean”, inspired one of the most important records in early rock and roll. Ruth Brown had run away from home when she was seventeen -- she'd wanted to become a singer, and she eloped with a trumpet player, Jimmy Brown, who she married and whose name she kept even though the marriage didn't last long. She quickly joined Lucky Millinder's band, as so many early R&B stars we've discussed did, but that too didn't last long. Millinder's band, at the time, had two singers already, and the original plan was for Brown to travel with the band for a month and learn how they did things, and then to join them on stage. She did the travelling for a month part, but soon found herself kicked out when she got on stage. She did two songs with the band on her first night performing live with them, and apparently went down well with the audience, but that was all she was meant to do on that show, so one of the other musicians asked her to go and get the band members drinks from the bar, as they were still performing. She brought them all sodas on to the stage... and Millinder said "I hired a singer, not a waitress -- you're fired. And besides, you don't sing well anyway". She was fired that day, and she had no money -- Millinder refused to pay her, arguing that she'd had free room and board from him for a month, so if anything she owed him money. She had no way to make her way home from Washington. She was stuck. But what should have been a terrible situation for her turned out to be the thing that changed her life. She got an audition with Blanche Calloway, Cab's sister, who was running a club at the time. Well, I say Blanche Calloway was Cab's sister, and that's probably how most people today would think of her if they thought of her at all, but it would really be more appropriate to say Cab Calloway happened to be her brother. Blanche Calloway had herself had a successful singing career, starting before her brother's career, and she'd recorded songs like this: [excerpt "Just a Crazy Song": Blanche Calloway and her Joy Boys] That was recorded several months *before* her brother's breakout hit "Minnie The Moocher", which popularised the "Hi de hi, ho de ho" chorus. Blanche Calloway wasn't the first person to sing that song – Bill “Bojangles” Robinson recorded it a month before, though in a very different style – but she's clearly the one who gave Cab the idea. She was a successful bandleader before her brother, and her band, the Joy Boys, featured musicians like Cozy Cole and Ben Webster, who later became some of the most famous names in jazz. She was the first woman to lead an otherwise all-male band, and her band was regularly listed as one of the ten or so most influential bands of the early thirties. And that wasn't her only achievement by any means -- in later years she became prominent in the Democratic Party and as a civil rights activist, she started Afram, a cosmetic company that made makeup for black women and was one of the most popular brand names of the seventies, and she was the first black woman to vote in Florida, in 1958. But while her band was popular in the thirties, it eventually broke up. There are two stories about how her band split, and possibly both are true. One story is that the Mafia, who controlled live music in the thirties, decided that there wasn't room for two bands led by a Calloway, and put their weight behind her brother, leaving her unable to get gigs. The other story is that while on tour in Mississippi, she used a public toilet that was designated whites-only, and while she was in jail for that one of the band members ran off with all the band's money and so she couldn't afford to pay them. Either way, Calloway had gone into club management instead, and that was what she was doing when Ruth Brown walked into her club, desperate for a job. Calloway said that the club didn't really need any new singers at the time, but she was sympathetic enough with Brown's plight -- and impressed enough by her talent -- that she agreed that Brown could continue to sing at her club until she'd earned her fare home. And it was at that club that Willis Conover came to see her. Conover was a fascinating figure -- he presented the jazz programme on Voice of America, the radio station that broadcast propaganda to the Eastern bloc during the Cold War, but by doing so he managed to raise the profile of many of the greatest jazz musicians of the time. He was also a major figure in early science fiction fandom -- a book of his correspondence with H.P. Lovecraft is now available. Conover was visiting the nightclub along with his friend Duke Ellington, and he was immediately impressed by Ruth Brown's performance -- impressed enough that he ran out to call Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson and tell them to sign her. Ertegun and Abramson were the founders of Atlantic Records, a new record label which had started up only a couple of years earlier. We've talked a bit about how the white backroom people in early R&B were usually those who were in some ways on the borderline between American conceptions of race -- and this is something that will become even more important as the story goes on -- but that was certainly true of Ahmet Ertegun. Ertegun was considered white by the then-prevailing standards in the US, but he was a Turkish Muslim, and so not part of what the white culture considered the default. He was also, though, extremely well off. His father had been the Turkish ambassador to the United States, and while young Ahmet had ostensibly been studying Medieval Philosophy at Georgetown University, in reality he was spending much of his time in Milt Gabler's Commodore Music Shop. He and his brother Neshui had over fifteen thousand jazz records between them, and would travel to places like New Orleans and Harlem to see musicians. And so Ahmet decided he was going to set up his own record company, making jazz records. He got funding from his dentist, and took on Herb Abramson, one of the dentist's proteges, as his partner in the firm. They soon switched from their initial plan of making jazz records to a new one of making blues and R&B, following the market. Atlantic's first few records -- while they were good ones, featuring people like Professor Longhair, weren't especially successful, but then in 1949 they released "Drinking Wine Spo-De-O-Dee" by Sticks McGhee: [excerpt "Drinking Wine Spo-De-O-Dee"] That record is another of those which people refer to as "the first rock and roll record", and it was pure good luck for Atlantic -- McGhee had recorded an almost identical version two years earlier, for a label called Harlem Records. The song had originally been rather different -- before McGhee recorded it for Harlem Records, instead of singing spo-de-o-dee he'd sung a four-syllable word, the first two syllables of which were mother and the latter two would get this podcast put in the adults-only section on iTunes; while instead of singing "mop mop" he'd sung "goddam". Wisely, Harlem Records had got him to tone down the lyrics, but the record had started to take off only after the original label had gone out of business. Ertegun knew McGhee's brother, the more famous blues musician Brownie McGhee, and called him up to get in touch with Sticks. They got Sticks to recut the record, sticking as closely as possible to his original, and rushed it out. The result was a massive success,and had cover versions by Lionel Hampton, Wynonie Harris, and many more musicians we've talked about here. Atlantic Records was on the map, and even though Sticks McGhee never had another hit, Atlantic now knew that the proto-rock-and-roll style of rhythm and blues was where its fortunes lay. So when Herb Abramson and Ahmet Ertegun saw Ruth Brown, they knew two things -- firstly, this was a singer who had massive commercial potential, and secondly that if she was going to record for them, she'd have to change her style, from the torch songs she was singing to something more... spo-de-o-dee. Ruth Brown very nearly never made it to her first recording session at all. On her way to New York, with Blanche Calloway, who had become her manager, she ended up in a car crash and was in hospital for a year, turning twenty-one in hospital. She thought for a time that her chance had passed, but when she got well enough to use crutches she was invited along to a recording session. It wasn't meant to be a session for her, it was just a way to ease her back into her career -- Atlantic were going to show her what went on in a recording studio, so she would feel comfortable when it came to be time for her to actually make a record. The session was to record a few tracks for Cavalcade of Music, a radio show that profiled American composers. Eddie Condon's band were recording the tracks, and all Brown was meant to do was watch. But then Ahmet Ertegun decided that while she was there, they might as well do a test recording of Brown, just to see whether her voice sounded decent when recorded. Herb Abramson -- who would produce most of Brown's early records -- listed a handful of songs that she might know that they could do, and she said she knew Russ Morgan's "So Long". The band worked out a rough head arrangement of it, and they started recording. After a few bars, though, Sid Catlett, the drummer -- one of the great jazz drummers, who had worked with Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, among others -- stopped the session and said "Wait a minute. Let's go back and do this right. The kid can *sing*!" And she certainly could. The record, which had originally been intended just as a test or, at best, as a track to stick in the package of tracks they were recording for Cavalcade of Music, was instead released as a single, by "Ruth Brown as heard with Eddie Condon's NBC Television Orchestra" "So Long" became a hit, and the followup "Teardrops From My Eyes" was a bigger hit, reaching number one on the R&B charts and staying there for eleven weeks. "Teardrops From My Eyes" was an uptempo song, and not really the kind of thing Brown liked -- she thought of herself primarily as a torch singer -- but it can't be denied that she had a skill with that kind of material, even if it wasn't what she'd have been singing by choice: [excerpt: Ruth Brown "Teardrops From My Eyes"] While the song was picked for her by Abramson, who continued to be in charge of Brown's recordings until he was drafted into the Korean War, the strategy behind it was one that Ertegun had always advocated -- to take black musicians who played or sang the more "sophisticated" (I don't know if you can hear those air quotes, but they're there...) styles and to get them instead to record in funkier, more rhythm-oriented styles. It was a strategy Atlantic would use later with many of the artists that would become popular on the label in the 1950s. In the case of "Teardrops From My Eyes", this required a lot of work -- Brown spent a week rehearsing the song with Louis Toombs, the song's writer, and working out the arrangement -- and this was in a time when most hit records were either head arrangements worked out in half an hour in the studio or songs that had been honed by months of live performance. Spending a week working out a song for a recording was extremely unusual, but it was part of Atlantic's ethos -- making sure the musicians were totally comfortable with the song and with each other before recording. It was the same reason that for the next few decades vocalists on Atlantic also played instruments on their own recordings, even if they weren't the best instrumentalists -- the idea was that the singer should be intimately involved in the rhythm of the record. But it worked even better for Ruth Brown than for most of those artists. "Teardrops From My Eyes" became a million seller -- Atlantic's first. Or at least, it was promoted as having sold a million copies -- Herb Abramson would later claim that all the record labels were vastly exaggerating their sales. But then, he had a motive to claim that, just as they had a motive to exaggerate – if the artists believed they sold a million copies, then they'd want a million copies' worth of royalties. But Brown's biggest hit was her third number one, "Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean", which was also one of the few records she made to cross over to the pop charts, reaching number twenty-three. This was not a record that Brown thought at the time was particularly one of her best, but twenty years later in interviews she would talk about how she couldn't do a show without playing it and that when she said her name people would ask "the Ruth Brown who sings 'Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean'?" The song also made a difference to Brown because it meant she had to join the musicians' union. Vocalists, unlike instrumentalists, didn't have to be union members. But "Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean" had a prominent tambourine part, which Brown played live. That made her an instrumentalist, not just a vocalist, and so Brown became a union member. [excerpt: "Mama He Treats Your Daughter Mean", Ruth Brown] Johnny Wallace and Herbert Lance wrote that song after hearing a blues singer playing out on the street in Atlanta. The song the blues singer was playing was almost certainly “Last Dime Blues”, and contained a line which they heard as “Mama, he treats your daughter mean”. Brown didn't want to record the song originally -- the way the song was originally presented to her was as a much slower blues -- but Herb Abramson raised the tempo to something closer to that of "Teardrops From My Eyes", turning it into a clear example of early rock and roll. You can hear the song's influence, for example, in "Work With Me Annie" by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters from two years later: [Excerpt: "Work With Me Annie", Hank Ballard and the Midnighters] But Brown always claimed that the reason for the song's greater success than her other records was down to that tambourine -- or more precisely because of the way she played the tambourine live, because she used a fluorescent painted tambourine which would shine when she hit it. That apparently got the audiences worked up and made it her most popular live song. Brown continued to have hit records into the sixties, though she never became one of the most well-known artists -- in the seventies she used to talk about adults telling their children "she was our Aretha Franklin", and this was probably true. Certainly she was the most successful female rhythm and blues artist of the fifties, and was popular enough that for a while Atlantic Records became known as "the house that Ruth Brown built", but like many of the pioneers of the rock and roll era, she was largely (though far from completely) erased from the cultural memory in favour of a view that has prehistory start in 1954 with Elvis and history proper only arrive in 1962 with the Beatles. Partly, this was because in the mid fifties, just as rock and roll was becoming huge, she had children and scaled down her touring activities to take care of them, but it was also in part because Atlantic Records was expanding. When they only had one or two big stars, it was easy for them to give each of them the attention they needed, but as the label got bigger, their star acts would have the best material divided among themselves, and their hit rate -- at least for those who didn't write their own material -- got lower. So by the early sixties, Ruth Brown was something of a has-been. But she got a second wind from the late seventies onwards, after she appeared in the stage musical Selma, playing the part of Mahalia Jackson. She became a star again -- not a pop star as she had been in her first career, but a star of the musical stage, and of films and TV. And she used that fame to do something remarkable. She had been unhappy for years with Atlantic Records not paying her the money she was owed for royalties on her records -- like most independent labels of the fifties, Atlantic had seemed to regard honouring its contracts with its artists and actually giving them money as a sort of optional extra. But unlike those other independent labels, Atlantic had remained successful, and indeed by the eighties it was a major label itself -- it had been bought in 1967 by Warner Brothers and had become one of the biggest record labels in the world. And Ruth Brown wanted the money to which she was entitled, and began a campaign to get the royalties she was owed. But she didn't just campaign for herself. As part of the agreement she eventually reached with Atlantic, not only did she get her own money back, but dozens of other rhythm and blues artists also got their money -- and the Rhythm and Blues Foundation was founded with money donated by Atlantic as compensation for them. The Rhythm and Blues Foundation now provides grants to up-and-coming black musicians and gives cash awards to older musicians who've fallen on hard times -- often because of the way labels like Atlantic have treated them. Now of course that's not to say that the Rhythm and Blues Foundation fixed everything -- it's very clear that Atlantic continued (and continues) to underpay the artists on whose work they built a billion-dollar business, and that the Foundation is one of those organisations that exists as much to forestall litigation as anything else, but it's still notable that when she had the opportunity to do something just for herself, Ruth Brown chose instead to also help her friends and colleagues. Maybe her time in the union paid off... Brown spent her last decades as an elder stateswoman of the rhythm and blues field, She died in 2006.

united states america tv music american new york history english uk rock washington voice foundation new orleans blues daughter mama britain atlantic beatles mississippi spending elvis rock and roll cold war rhythm mafia turkish democratic party georgetown university sticks amazing grace lovecraft aretha franklin treats wisely warner brothers library of congress korean war vocalists mixcloud louis armstrong unsung heroes partly rock music duke ellington muddy waters atlantic records cab calloway mcghee ahmet dizzy gillespie cavalcade benny goodman abramson mahalia jackson leadbelly cab calloway conover lionel hampton alan lomax ruth brown russ morgan ben webster itsy bitsy spider lester bangs professor longhair blind willie mctell ahmet ertegun blues foundation blind lemon jefferson midnighters jimmy brown brownie mcghee medieval philosophy all things bright boll weevil paramount records afram eddie condon ertegun turkish muslim minnie the moocher mctell

Nada más que música - Soul-II

NADA MÁS QUE MÚSICA

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 14, 2018 34:02

Hace ya unas semanas tratamos brevemente el tema del Soul. Hoy iniciamos una mini serie de programas para abordar un estilo de música que merece mucha más atención de la que le dimos en su momento. Y, como no, nos situamos en la decada de los 60, … otra vez!!! En ese momento, sobre el año 1963, el término “rhytm’n blues” no significaba ni mucho menos lo mismo para los estadounidenses que para los Rolling Stones. Los bluesmen a los que estos idolatraban eran de una generación anterior. En Estados Unidos la urbana e inmaculada “Sherry”, de los Four Seasons, encabezaba la lista de “R&B” a finales de 1962, pese a tratarse de un dudua italoamericano puro y duro, y la razón era muy simple: a los adolescentes negros les gustaba ese sonido tanto como a los blancos. Los Four Seasons de Nueva Jersey, los Impressions de Chicago, los Miracles de Detroit, las Shirelles de Nueva York, todos ellos estaban guisando un estofado posrock’n’roll que daría paso a algo que, más tarde, se llamó SOUL. Si bien el uso de la palabra soul como denominación popular del género no se verificaría hasta la aparición en 1966 de “What is Soul”, el sencillo de Ben E. King, el sonido en sí ya se había introducido en la conciencia del pop en 1957, concretamente el día en que Sam Cooke cambió el espiritual negro por la música profana. Pero fue nuestro amigo Ben E. King el que perfiló con precisión el nuevo estilo. Esto es “What is Soul”. Sam Cooke no fue el primero que adjuró de la iglesia para derretir a las jovencitas: el primer guaperas del góspel de posguerra había sido Sonny Til, el líder de los Orioles, pero Cooke mezclaba como nadie la finura con el rugido del espiritual negro, y cantaba con intensidad y sin esfuerzo. Nació en Clarksdale (Misisipi) en 1931. Cuando tenía nueve años se unió al coro de sus hermanos y hermanas que acompañaban a su padre, pastor baptista, en sus viajes de predicación. Su decisión de abandonar la música religiosa en 1957 cayó muy mal en la feligresía. Así, su primer single “Lovable”, paso sin pena ni gloria y esto le hizo pensar si su decisión había sido acertada. Lo supo cuando publicó su segundo disco “You Send Me”. Éxito instantáneo, el sencillo se aupó al número uno y allí permaneció tres semanas, durante las cuales Cooke se convirtió en ídolo no solo de las chicas negras del Bronx, el público al que en principio se dirigía, sino también de las señoritas judías de Brooklyn. Los éxitos se sucedieron en cascada. Cooke no se explicaba su don: “Me pongo a cantar y me viene solo” declaró en cierta ocasión. Sea como fuese, en todas sus creaciones latía un trasfondo abrasivo que indicaba a las claras que, por mucha cara de bueno que tuviese, más valía no dejarlo a solas con la hermana pequeña de uno. Perfectamente podía haber hecho carrera como delincuente. Era, a un tiempo, ángel y diablo y en su música podemos apreciar al predicador fervoroso y al pecador arrepentido. Pero para todo el mundo era el chico de oro y siempre iba por delante del resto. Tras echar los cimientos de la música soul, fundó su propia discográfica, SAR, con brazo editorial incluido. Eran maniobras prácticamente inauditas en un artista de raza negra. En 1962 la música de Cook adquirió una nueva intensidad, como se aprecia en la cruda “Bring It Home To Me” Y es que, algo estaba cambiando. En ese año, el gobierno de Kennedy había obligado al Comité de Comercio Interestatal a dictar una nueva orden contra la segregación racial en virtud de la cual los pasajeros de los autobuses podían sentarse donde quisieran. Se retiraron de las estaciones los letreros de “blanco” y “negro”, y en los mostradores de las cafeterías se empezó a atender a los clientes con independencia del color de su piel. En septiembre un adolescente llamado James Meredith ganó un pleito y logró que lo admitiesen en la Universidad de Misisipi. Los disturbios subsiguientes se cobraron dos víctimas mortales, pero gracias a la escolta de una guardia armada, Meredith pudo asistir a clase. En la desgarrada “That’s Where It’s At” de 1963, resuenan el orgullo negro y las tribulaciones de la raza aunque, según Bob Stanley, nuestro biógrafo de cabecera, la letra no respondiese tanto al estado de la nación como a la vida del propio Cooke, que por aquel entonces se deshacía en jirones: su esposa Bárbara estaba perdiendo la cabeza por la afición del artista al alcohol y las mujeres, y ese verano, el hijo de ambos, se había ahogado en la piscina de la casa familiar. Una tragedia. Tenía para todo. El día 11 de diciembre de 1964 se lió con quien no debía, una prostituta que huyó con la ropa del cantante mientras él estaba en el baño. Medio desnudo y gritando como un poseso, Cooke asustó tanto a la dueña del motel que la mujer lo mató de un balazo. Nuestras felicitaciones a la asociación del rifle. Su último trabajo fue un sencillo en el que se incluía “A chage is gonna come”, una canción que Cooke compuso después de escuchar el “Blowin in the wind” de Bob Dylan y concluyó que debería escribir algo que reflejase su vida personal y la de sus amigos. La canción es un augurio entreverado de esperanza y optimismo. Es una pena que fuera su epitafio. Si Sam Cooke era la voz del soul, el sello Stax era el molde. Los hermanos Estelle y Jim Stewart fundaron este sello y se instalaron en el ruinoso cine Capitol. El puesto de palomitas de la entrada se convirtió en una tienda de discos llamada Satellite, con cuyos ingresos se sufragaba el estudio de grabación. El hijo de Estelle, Pachy, había estado ensayando con unos chicos del instituto, entre ellos el guitarrista Steve Cropper (apuntad este nombre) y el bajista Donald Dunn, alias “Pato Donald”, que se hacían llamar los Royal Spades y que experimentaban con el country, el R&B y el rockabilly, y que, a fuerza de ensayar, se convirtieron en un grupo conjuntado al máximo, capaz de acompañar a cualquier artista de paso. Y así fue como, un día, se presentó por allí Rufus Thomas, locutor de una emisora local: su hija Carla había compuesto una cancioncilla titulada “Gee Whiz” y quería grabarla. Una vez pasada por el tamiz de los Royal Spades, la canción llegó al top 10. Y es esta… Poco después, un instrumental de una sola nota, sucio y con predominio de metales, titulado “Last Night”, obra de los Royal Spades pero publicado con el nombre los Mar-Keys, llegó nada menos que al número dos. El sello Stax estaba en marcha. Los numerosos éxitos que acumularon en el año 1962 hicieron que el sello Stax se convirtiera en el sonido Memphis y, por ello, se ganó el derecho a colgar un letrero encima de la tienda de discos que rezaba “Souls-ville USA”. Uno de estos éxitos fue, sin lugar a dudas, su famoso “Green Onions”. Los músicos empezaron a demandar el estilo Stax y por el estudio terminó pasando gente como Sam & Dave, Otis Redding, Judy Clay, Eddie Floyd y Johnnie Taylor. El sonido Stax no tardó en hacerse más importante que el artista, y el sello se convirtió en el equivalente sureño de la factoría Spector. Pero no estaban solos. La otra discográfica que definió el floreciente género del soul fue la neoyorquina Atlantic Records. Uno de sus fundadores, el Sr. Ertegun, era un gran amante del blues y, justamente, del blues procedía Ray Charles. En sus comienzos Charles era un pianista dotado del don de imitar a sus ídolos: Louis Jordan, Nat King Cole o Charles Brown, pero cuando el Sr. Charles empezó a componer sus propias obras, y la discográfica había sabido esperar pacientemente, todo cambió. Compuso y grabó “I got a woman”, su primer sencillo con el sello que fue número uno de la lista de R&B en enero de 1955. Más tarde, esta canción conocería las versiones unos “desconocidos” tales como Elvis Presley o los Beatles. La bomba Ray Charles estalló en 1959, cuando el hombre compuso, sobre una sencilla pieza, concretamente una antífona, religiosa, de seis minutos de duración y que era mitad revival evangélico, mitad procacidad burdelera. Lo nunca visto!!! La pieza se llamaba, bueno, y se llama… “What’d I Say” Desde ese momento y hasta mediada la década de los 60 rara sería la estrella en ciernes, desde Stevie Wonder a los Searchers, que no citase entre sus influencias a Ray Charles: “el hermano Ray”, “el genio”, “el hermano número uno del soul”… etc. Convencido de sus dotes, el artista picó en otros géneros: primero grabó jazz instrumental; después coqueteó con el country en una revisión del clásico “Georgia on My Mind”, otro número uno en 1.960 En la canción, Ray se enfrenta a dos lealtades encontradas. El sur era su patria, pero en 1960 también era el campo de batalla por los derechos civiles de los negros. Dos años más tarde, Charles grabó un elepé entero con la misma temática. Hacía falta mucho valor para mezclar country y soul, pero también mucha sutileza. A estas alturas, el artista ya había dejado el sello Atlantis para aceptar una jugosa suma de ABC-Paramount. Sin nadie que le parara los pies, el hermano Ray se lanzó de cabeza al “countrypolitan” orquestal y firmó dos de los singles de más éxito en su trayectoria, “I can’t stop loving you” y “You don’t know me” A mediados de la década de 1960 Ray Charles ya había exprimido el truco del country hasta la última gota y perdió tanta credibilidad ante la crítica y los colegas del gremio que al terminar el decenio apenas se hablaba de él. Tal vez una de las estrellas de Atlantis más injustamente infravaloradas fue Bárbara Lewis. Nuestro amigo Bob Stanley, en su libro “La historia del pop moderno” dice de ella: “su voz de jade pulido en “Hello Stranger”, tema con ritmo de shuffle, a caballo entre la música de verbena y la de tocador: morirá feliz el afortunado a quien, siquiera una sola vez en su vida, le canten personalmente esta canción”. Bueno, pues esta es la canción… Pero el mayor fichaje del sello, en todos los sentidos, fue Aretha Franklin. Dueña de una voz capaz de reventar un micrófono a medio kilómetro, Aretha cantaba como una fuerza de la naturaleza. La futura dama del Soul ya había grabado algunos temas para el sello Columbia, pero Ertegun la animó y convenció para cambiar de sello discográfico y en Atlantic echó el resto. Aretha había nacido el 25 de marzo de 1942 en Memphis (Tennessee), y creció en Detroit. Es hija del predicador Clarence LeVaughn Franklin y la cantante de góspel Bárbara Franklin. Su madre abandonó a su familia cuando Aretha era una niña, y poco tiempo después, murió. Su padre vio pronto el talento de Aretha, por lo que quiso que tomara clases de piano, pero ella lo rechazó y prefirió aprender por sí sola con la ayuda de grabaciones. En este tiempo, permanecía en un tour itinerante de góspel, donde uno de los primeros temas que interpretó fue «Precious Lord». Los genios del góspel Clara Ward, James Cleveland y Mahalia Jackson eran íntimos de su familia, por lo que Aretha creció rodeada de ellos. Fue precoz en todos los aspectos de su vida. Con doce años tuvo a su primer hijo, y dos años después tuvo el segundo. Esto que suena es esa primera grabación con su grupo de góspel. Por cierto, ya me diréis si os suena… Cuando Aretha abandonó Columbia para fichar por la compañía discográfica Atlantic Records, el productor Jerry Wexler se propuso sacarle todo el soul que llevaba dentro. El primer single que grabó para Atlantic Records fue «I never loved a man (the way I love you)”. Este tema ha sido avalado por muchos críticos como una de las grandes canciones del soul, y la revista Rolling Stone escribió: «Franklin ha grabado su versión de la maravilla soul, un lamento sobre qué-mal-me-has-tratado, con la Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, unos chicos blancos de Alabama». El single irrumpió en todas las radios, pero aún lo haría con mucha más fuerza “Respect”, versión de la canción que Otis Redding había grabado en 1965 y con la que Aretha se consagraba definitivamente. La canción se grabó en los estudios de Atlantic, en Nueva York, el 14 de febrero de 1967. A la versión original de Redding se le añadió un puente y un solo de saxo, de la mano de King Curtis. El 10 de marzo de 1967 se editaba un álbum en el que Aretha también contribuyó como compositora con varios temas. Destacamos este "Dr. Feelgood (Love Is a Serious Business)". Un precioso blues. Ese mismo año, consiguió dos premios Grammy, siendo la segunda mujer en hacerlo. También en 1967, concretamente el 4 de agosto, editó un nuevo disco del que nos apetece destacar uno de sus temas. Se trata de “Satisfaction”, el éxito de los Rolling. Vamos a oir una versión, grabada en directo, en el Olimpia de Paris en el año 1968. Nos despedimos del programa de hoy y de nuestra admirada Aretha Franklin, ahora si, para siempre, porque como sabeis, Aretha Franklin falleció el pasado día 16 de agosto, a la edad de 76 años en su domicilio de Detroit. No obstante, su larga trayectoria profesional da para muchas más horas de programación, horas que le dedicaremos con muchísimo gusto. Cerramos pues este programa con su gran éxito "Chain of fools", un tema incluido en su disco Lady Soul, editado en 1.968, y con el que volvería a conocer el éxito masivo.

united states chicago soul alabama detroit sin nos respect grammy sea pero miracles atlantic beatles tambi cuando columbia cook rolling stones esto sr souls capitol era nuestro uno bronx hace rolling bob dylan tras chain impressions universidad tal satisfaction atlantis last night fue elvis presley nuestras satellites stevie wonder aretha franklin nueva york medio ese comit naci orioles four seasons cooke sar ray charles cerramos sam cooke redding en estados unidos atlantic records my mind otis redding nat king cole spector hac memphis tennessee searchers stax lovable blowin serious business destacamos mahalia jackson ben e king nadam convencido nueva jersey steve cropper shirelles hello stranger louis jordan charles brown green onions precious lord james meredith rufus thomas king curtis jim stewart pato donald johnnie taylor eddie floyd gee whiz misisipi sam dave james cleveland jerry wexler compuso bob stanley lady soul muscle shoals rhythm section ertegun judy clay

Nada más que música - Soul-II

NADA MÁS QUE MÚSICA

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 14, 2018 34:02

Hace ya unas semanas tratamos brevemente el tema del Soul. Hoy iniciamos una mini serie de programas para abordar un estilo de música que merece mucha más atención de la que le dimos en su momento. Y, como no, nos situamos en la decada de los 60, … otra vez!!! En ese momento, sobre el año 1963, el término “rhytm’n blues” no significaba ni mucho menos lo mismo para los estadounidenses que para los Rolling Stones. Los bluesmen a los que estos idolatraban eran de una generación anterior. En Estados Unidos la urbana e inmaculada “Sherry”, de los Four Seasons, encabezaba la lista de “R&B” a finales de 1962, pese a tratarse de un dudua italoamericano puro y duro, y la razón era muy simple: a los adolescentes negros les gustaba ese sonido tanto como a los blancos. Los Four Seasons de Nueva Jersey, los Impressions de Chicago, los Miracles de Detroit, las Shirelles de Nueva York, todos ellos estaban guisando un estofado posrock’n’roll que daría paso a algo que, más tarde, se llamó SOUL. Si bien el uso de la palabra soul como denominación popular del género no se verificaría hasta la aparición en 1966 de “What is Soul”, el sencillo de Ben E. King, el sonido en sí ya se había introducido en la conciencia del pop en 1957, concretamente el día en que Sam Cooke cambió el espiritual negro por la música profana. Pero fue nuestro amigo Ben E. King el que perfiló con precisión el nuevo estilo. Esto es “What is Soul”. Sam Cooke no fue el primero que adjuró de la iglesia para derretir a las jovencitas: el primer guaperas del góspel de posguerra había sido Sonny Til, el líder de los Orioles, pero Cooke mezclaba como nadie la finura con el rugido del espiritual negro, y cantaba con intensidad y sin esfuerzo. Nació en Clarksdale (Misisipi) en 1931. Cuando tenía nueve años se unió al coro de sus hermanos y hermanas que acompañaban a su padre, pastor baptista, en sus viajes de predicación. Su decisión de abandonar la música religiosa en 1957 cayó muy mal en la feligresía. Así, su primer single “Lovable”, paso sin pena ni gloria y esto le hizo pensar si su decisión había sido acertada. Lo supo cuando publicó su segundo disco “You Send Me”. Éxito instantáneo, el sencillo se aupó al número uno y allí permaneció tres semanas, durante las cuales Cooke se convirtió en ídolo no solo de las chicas negras del Bronx, el público al que en principio se dirigía, sino también de las señoritas judías de Brooklyn. Los éxitos se sucedieron en cascada. Cooke no se explicaba su don: “Me pongo a cantar y me viene solo” declaró en cierta ocasión. Sea como fuese, en todas sus creaciones latía un trasfondo abrasivo que indicaba a las claras que, por mucha cara de bueno que tuviese, más valía no dejarlo a solas con la hermana pequeña de uno. Perfectamente podía haber hecho carrera como delincuente. Era, a un tiempo, ángel y diablo y en su música podemos apreciar al predicador fervoroso y al pecador arrepentido. Pero para todo el mundo era el chico de oro y siempre iba por delante del resto. Tras echar los cimientos de la música soul, fundó su propia discográfica, SAR, con brazo editorial incluido. Eran maniobras prácticamente inauditas en un artista de raza negra. En 1962 la música de Cook adquirió una nueva intensidad, como se aprecia en la cruda “Bring It Home To Me” Y es que, algo estaba cambiando. En ese año, el gobierno de Kennedy había obligado al Comité de Comercio Interestatal a dictar una nueva orden contra la segregación racial en virtud de la cual los pasajeros de los autobuses podían sentarse donde quisieran. Se retiraron de las estaciones los letreros de “blanco” y “negro”, y en los mostradores de las cafeterías se empezó a atender a los clientes con independencia del color de su piel. En septiembre un adolescente llamado James Meredith ganó un pleito y logró que lo admitiesen en la Universidad de Misisipi. Los disturbios subsiguientes se cobraron dos víctimas mortales, pero gracias a la escolta de una guardia armada, Meredith pudo asistir a clase. En la desgarrada “That’s Where It’s At” de 1963, resuenan el orgullo negro y las tribulaciones de la raza aunque, según Bob Stanley, nuestro biógrafo de cabecera, la letra no respondiese tanto al estado de la nación como a la vida del propio Cooke, que por aquel entonces se deshacía en jirones: su esposa Bárbara estaba perdiendo la cabeza por la afición del artista al alcohol y las mujeres, y ese verano, el hijo de ambos, se había ahogado en la piscina de la casa familiar. Una tragedia. Tenía para todo. El día 11 de diciembre de 1964 se lió con quien no debía, una prostituta que huyó con la ropa del cantante mientras él estaba en el baño. Medio desnudo y gritando como un poseso, Cooke asustó tanto a la dueña del motel que la mujer lo mató de un balazo. Nuestras felicitaciones a la asociación del rifle. Su último trabajo fue un sencillo en el que se incluía “A chage is gonna come”, una canción que Cooke compuso después de escuchar el “Blowin in the wind” de Bob Dylan y concluyó que debería escribir algo que reflejase su vida personal y la de sus amigos. La canción es un augurio entreverado de esperanza y optimismo. Es una pena que fuera su epitafio. Si Sam Cooke era la voz del soul, el sello Stax era el molde. Los hermanos Estelle y Jim Stewart fundaron este sello y se instalaron en el ruinoso cine Capitol. El puesto de palomitas de la entrada se convirtió en una tienda de discos llamada Satellite, con cuyos ingresos se sufragaba el estudio de grabación. El hijo de Estelle, Pachy, había estado ensayando con unos chicos del instituto, entre ellos el guitarrista Steve Cropper (apuntad este nombre) y el bajista Donald Dunn, alias “Pato Donald”, que se hacían llamar los Royal Spades y que experimentaban con el country, el R&B y el rockabilly, y que, a fuerza de ensayar, se convirtieron en un grupo conjuntado al máximo, capaz de acompañar a cualquier artista de paso. Y así fue como, un día, se presentó por allí Rufus Thomas, locutor de una emisora local: su hija Carla había compuesto una cancioncilla titulada “Gee Whiz” y quería grabarla. Una vez pasada por el tamiz de los Royal Spades, la canción llegó al top 10. Y es esta… Poco después, un instrumental de una sola nota, sucio y con predominio de metales, titulado “Last Night”, obra de los Royal Spades pero publicado con el nombre los Mar-Keys, llegó nada menos que al número dos. El sello Stax estaba en marcha. Los numerosos éxitos que acumularon en el año 1962 hicieron que el sello Stax se convirtiera en el sonido Memphis y, por ello, se ganó el derecho a colgar un letrero encima de la tienda de discos que rezaba “Souls-ville USA”. Uno de estos éxitos fue, sin lugar a dudas, su famoso “Green Onions”. Los músicos empezaron a demandar el estilo Stax y por el estudio terminó pasando gente como Sam & Dave, Otis Redding, Judy Clay, Eddie Floyd y Johnnie Taylor. El sonido Stax no tardó en hacerse más importante que el artista, y el sello se convirtió en el equivalente sureño de la factoría Spector. Pero no estaban solos. La otra discográfica que definió el floreciente género del soul fue la neoyorquina Atlantic Records. Uno de sus fundadores, el Sr. Ertegun, era un gran amante del blues y, justamente, del blues procedía Ray Charles. En sus comienzos Charles era un pianista dotado del don de imitar a sus ídolos: Louis Jordan, Nat King Cole o Charles Brown, pero cuando el Sr. Charles empezó a componer sus propias obras, y la discográfica había sabido esperar pacientemente, todo cambió. Compuso y grabó “I got a woman”, su primer sencillo con el sello que fue número uno de la lista de R&B en enero de 1955. Más tarde, esta canción conocería las versiones unos “desconocidos” tales como Elvis Presley o los Beatles. La bomba Ray Charles estalló en 1959, cuando el hombre compuso, sobre una sencilla pieza, concretamente una antífona, religiosa, de seis minutos de duración y que era mitad revival evangélico, mitad procacidad burdelera. Lo nunca visto!!! La pieza se llamaba, bueno, y se llama… “What’d I Say” Desde ese momento y hasta mediada la década de los 60 rara sería la estrella en ciernes, desde Stevie Wonder a los Searchers, que no citase entre sus influencias a Ray Charles: “el hermano Ray”, “el genio”, “el hermano número uno del soul”… etc. Convencido de sus dotes, el artista picó en otros géneros: primero grabó jazz instrumental; después coqueteó con el country en una revisión del clásico “Georgia on My Mind”, otro número uno en 1.960 En la canción, Ray se enfrenta a dos lealtades encontradas. El sur era su patria, pero en 1960 también era el campo de batalla por los derechos civiles de los negros. Dos años más tarde, Charles grabó un elepé entero con la misma temática. Hacía falta mucho valor para mezclar country y soul, pero también mucha sutileza. A estas alturas, el artista ya había dejado el sello Atlantis para aceptar una jugosa suma de ABC-Paramount. Sin nadie que le parara los pies, el hermano Ray se lanzó de cabeza al “countrypolitan” orquestal y firmó dos de los singles de más éxito en su trayectoria, “I can’t stop loving you” y “You don’t know me” A mediados de la década de 1960 Ray Charles ya había exprimido el truco del country hasta la última gota y perdió tanta credibilidad ante la crítica y los colegas del gremio que al terminar el decenio apenas se hablaba de él. Tal vez una de las estrellas de Atlantis más injustamente infravaloradas fue Bárbara Lewis. Nuestro amigo Bob Stanley, en su libro “La historia del pop moderno” dice de ella: “su voz de jade pulido en “Hello Stranger”, tema con ritmo de shuffle, a caballo entre la música de verbena y la de tocador: morirá feliz el afortunado a quien, siquiera una sola vez en su vida, le canten personalmente esta canción”. Bueno, pues esta es la canción… Pero el mayor fichaje del sello, en todos los sentidos, fue Aretha Franklin. Dueña de una voz capaz de reventar un micrófono a medio kilómetro, Aretha cantaba como una fuerza de la naturaleza. La futura dama del Soul ya había grabado algunos temas para el sello Columbia, pero Ertegun la animó y convenció para cambiar de sello discográfico y en Atlantic echó el resto. Aretha había nacido el 25 de marzo de 1942 en Memphis (Tennessee), y creció en Detroit. Es hija del predicador Clarence LeVaughn Franklin y la cantante de góspel Bárbara Franklin. Su madre abandonó a su familia cuando Aretha era una niña, y poco tiempo después, murió. Su padre vio pronto el talento de Aretha, por lo que quiso que tomara clases de piano, pero ella lo rechazó y prefirió aprender por sí sola con la ayuda de grabaciones. En este tiempo, permanecía en un tour itinerante de góspel, donde uno de los primeros temas que interpretó fue «Precious Lord». Los genios del góspel Clara Ward, James Cleveland y Mahalia Jackson eran íntimos de su familia, por lo que Aretha creció rodeada de ellos. Fue precoz en todos los aspectos de su vida. Con doce años tuvo a su primer hijo, y dos años después tuvo el segundo. Esto que suena es esa primera grabación con su grupo de góspel. Por cierto, ya me diréis si os suena… Cuando Aretha abandonó Columbia para fichar por la compañía discográfica Atlantic Records, el productor Jerry Wexler se propuso sacarle todo el soul que llevaba dentro. El primer single que grabó para Atlantic Records fue «I never loved a man (the way I love you)”. Este tema ha sido avalado por muchos críticos como una de las grandes canciones del soul, y la revista Rolling Stone escribió: «Franklin ha grabado su versión de la maravilla soul, un lamento sobre qué-mal-me-has-tratado, con la Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, unos chicos blancos de Alabama». El single irrumpió en todas las radios, pero aún lo haría con mucha más fuerza “Respect”, versión de la canción que Otis Redding había grabado en 1965 y con la que Aretha se consagraba definitivamente. La canción se grabó en los estudios de Atlantic, en Nueva York, el 14 de febrero de 1967. A la versión original de Redding se le añadió un puente y un solo de saxo, de la mano de King Curtis. El 10 de marzo de 1967 se editaba un álbum en el que Aretha también contribuyó como compositora con varios temas. Destacamos este "Dr. Feelgood (Love Is a Serious Business)". Un precioso blues. Ese mismo año, consiguió dos premios Grammy, siendo la segunda mujer en hacerlo. También en 1967, concretamente el 4 de agosto, editó un nuevo disco del que nos apetece destacar uno de sus temas. Se trata de “Satisfaction”, el éxito de los Rolling. Vamos a oir una versión, grabada en directo, en el Olimpia de Paris en el año 1968. Nos despedimos del programa de hoy y de nuestra admirada Aretha Franklin, ahora si, para siempre, porque como sabeis, Aretha Franklin falleció el pasado día 16 de agosto, a la edad de 76 años en su domicilio de Detroit. No obstante, su larga trayectoria profesional da para muchas más horas de programación, horas que le dedicaremos con muchísimo gusto. Cerramos pues este programa con su gran éxito "Chain of fools", un tema incluido en su disco Lady Soul, editado en 1.968, y con el que volvería a conocer el éxito masivo.

united states chicago soul alabama detroit sin nos respect grammy sea pero miracles atlantic beatles tambi cuando columbia cook rolling stones esto sr souls capitol era nuestro uno bronx hace rolling bob dylan tras chain impressions universidad tal satisfaction atlantis last night fue elvis presley nuestras satellites stevie wonder aretha franklin nueva york medio ese comit naci orioles four seasons cooke sar ray charles cerramos sam cooke redding en estados unidos atlantic records my mind otis redding nat king cole spector hac memphis tennessee searchers stax lovable blowin serious business destacamos mahalia jackson ben e king nadam convencido nueva jersey steve cropper shirelles hello stranger louis jordan charles brown green onions precious lord james meredith rufus thomas king curtis jim stewart pato donald johnnie taylor eddie floyd gee whiz misisipi sam dave james cleveland jerry wexler compuso bob stanley lady soul muscle shoals rhythm section ertegun judy clay

Ahmet's House December 11, 2016

Ahmet's House

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 12, 2016 60:10

Ten Years Gone...in Memory of Ahmet Ertegun 1923-2006It's been ten long years since we lost"the greatest record man of all time". Tonight, in memory of Ahmet's passing on December 14, 2006 and in memory of his legacy we look back, we look forward and we say thank you, Mr. Ertegun. One dream, so fully lived.

memory ahmet ahmet ertegun ten years gone ertegun

Ahmet's House December 11, 2016

Ahmet's House

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 11, 2016 60:10

Ten Years Gone...in Memory of Ahmet Ertegun 1923-2006 It's been ten long years since we lost "the greatest record man of all time". Tonight, in memory of Ahmet's passing on December 14, 2006 and in memory of his legacy we look back, we look forward and we say thank you, Mr. Ertegun. One dream, so fully lived.

blues jazz memory classic rock atlantic records ahmet ahmet ertegun ten years gone ertegun wbkm

03 Lire Sade avec Rousseau

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 24, 2013 30:34

This lecture is in French. Third lecture in the Sade, l'inconnu? Nouvelles approaches critiques conference.

french literature sade nouvelles rousseau lire french literature marquis de sade #greatwriters ertegun

09 Le paradigme homosexuel chez Sade

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 22, 2013 34:25

This lecture is in French. Ninth and final part of the Sade, l'inconnu? Nouvelles approaches critiques conference.

french literature chez sade ninth nouvelles french literature paradigme marquis de sade homosexuel ertegun

07 Sade, homme de lettres

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 22, 2013 24:59

This lecture is in French. Seventh lecture in the Sade, l'inconnu? Nouvelles approaches critiques conference.

french literature seventh sade nouvelles homme lettres french literature marquis de sade #greatwriters ertegun

08 Obscenity off the Scene: Sade's La Philosophie dans le Boudoir

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 22, 2013 34:30

This lecture is in English. Eighth lecture in the Sade, l'inconnu? Nouvelles approaches critiques conference.

english literature philosophie sade eighth nouvelles boudoir obscenity french literature marquis de sade #greatwriters ertegun

06 Sade, nouvelle classique 'British'

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 22, 2013 28:01

This lecture in French. Sixth lecture in the Sade, l'inconnu? Nouvelles approaches critiques conference.

british french literature sixth nouvelle sade nouvelles classique french literature marquis de sade ertegun

05 Le libertinage du lecteur. La question de l'identification chez Sade

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 22, 2013 29:06

This lecture is in French. Fifth lecture in the Sade, l'inconnu? Nouvelles approaches critiques conference.

french literature chez identification sade nouvelles la question french literature lecteur marquis de sade libertinage ertegun

04 Sade subversif et immoral? Le préjugé de l'intentionnalité

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 22, 2013 29:34

This lecture is in French. Fourth lecture in the Sade, l'inconnu? Nouvelles approaches critiques conference.

french literature sade nouvelles le pr immoral french literature marquis de sade ertegun

02 Le personnage sadien: de l'histoire naturelle à la fiction romanesque

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 22, 2013 30:13

This lecture is in French. Second lecture of the Sade, l'inconnu? Nouvelles approaches critiques conference.

french fiction literature sade nouvelles personnage french literature romanesque marquis de sade histoire naturelle ertegun

01 L'Histoire de Juliette et le tournant fantastique

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 22, 2013 58:12

This lecture is in French. First lecture from the Sade, l'inconnu? Nouvelles approaches critiques conference.

french histoire sade nouvelles fantastique tournant marquis de sade ertegun

Ahmet's House May 12, 2013

Ahmet's House

Play Episode Listen Later May 13, 2013 57:24

A Night on the Town in Ahmet's House tonight!It's Mother's Day 2013 so while Tony is off today and busy taking the mother of his children out on the town...why not kick it into high style and live it up! We will be playing selections from"The Ertegun's New York! Cabaret music from the 1940's to '50s...its still Ahmet's kinda music! We will be back next week with another live show! Enjoy.

new york house mother night cabaret ahmet ertegun

European authors and Russian nuns. An Enlightened girl takes a monastic oath

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 3, 2012 35:37

8/8. Andrei Zorin (Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, Oxford) delivers a talk for "Was there a Russian Enlightenment?", a one-day seminar held at Ertegun House, Oxford in November 2012.

history russia girl european russian oxford humanities medieval oath enlightened nuns monastic modern languages ertegun

Intervention in space and affirmation of self: the ethics of improvement

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 3, 2012 34:00

7/8. Andreas Schönle (Queen Mary, University of London) delivers a talk for "Was there a Russian Enlightenment?", a one-day seminar held at Ertegun House, Oxford in November 2012.

university history space russia russian ethics oxford affirmations intervention humanities university of london queen mary ertegun

How Should Theatre Work? The Question of Audience

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 3, 2012 33:02

6/8. Alexei Evstratov (Université Paris-Sorbonne) delivers a talk for "Was there a Russian Enlightenment?", a one-day seminar held at Ertegun House, Oxford in November 2012.

history russia russian theater oxford audience humanities ertegun

The Enlightenment in the Correspondence of Catherine the Great and Friedrich Melchior Grimm

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 3, 2012 30:01

5/8. Kelsey Rubin-Detlev (Ertegun House, Oxford) delivers a talk for "Was there a Russian Enlightenment?", a one-day seminar held at Ertegun House, Oxford in November 2012.

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Voltaire in St Petersburg: The Voltaire Library and the Marginalia Project

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 3, 2012 30:45

4/8. Gillian Pink (Voltaire Foundation, Oxford) delivers a talk for "Was there a Russian Enlightenment?", a one-day seminar held at Ertegun House, Oxford in November 2012.

history project russia russian oxford library humanities voltaire st petersburg marginalia ertegun

Picking over the pieces, or Diderot in St. Petersburg: Zeitgeist? accident? or one more bit in a puzzle?

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 3, 2012 43:41

3/8. Marian Hobson (Queen Mary, University of London) delivers a talk for "Was there a Russian Enlightenment?", a one-day seminar held at Ertegun House, Oxford in November 2012.

university history russia russian oxford picking pieces accident puzzle humanities university of london zeitgeist st petersburg diderot ertegun

Religious dogma versus scientific progress: Enlightenment issues in 18th c. Russia

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 3, 2012 29:35

2/8. Alexander Iosad (Cantemir Institute, Oxford) delivers a talk for "Was there a Russian Enlightenment?", a one-day seminar held at Ertegun House, Oxford in November 2012.

history russia russian progress oxford religious enlightenment scientific humanities dogma ertegun

Was there a Russian Enlightenment? What's the problem and why does it matter?