Podcast appearances and mentions of Frankie Lymon

American singer (1942-1968)

  • 81PODCASTS
  • 146EPISODES
  • 53mAVG DURATION
  • 1EPISODE EVERY OTHER WEEK
  • Apr 19, 2025LATEST
Frankie Lymon

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Best podcasts about Frankie Lymon

Latest podcast episodes about Frankie Lymon

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THE SPLENDID BOHEMIANS PRESENT "DOUBLE TROUBLE." MYSTERIOUS, SWINGIN' RHYTHMS CONJURED BY BENNY GOODMAN AND LITTLE JOEY AND THE FLIPS, DOUBLE DOWN!!

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Play Episode Listen Later Apr 19, 2025 10:15


What is it about a swing rhythm that sets hearts a flutter? It's a universal truth. It may have started as an African secret formula, but it was co-opted and catapulted into white western culture by some hip caucasian standard bearers.Here we'll examine the psycho-physical connection through two seemingly unrelated musical delicacies: one by the undisputed titan of respectable jazz, and the other by a racially mixed group of Philadelphia teens who barely made it out before the doo-wop death spiral. Bongo Stomp, from 1962, by Little Joey and the Flips, doesn't even feature real bongos (the drummer Jeff Leonard is simulating the jungle signature on his toms). But, it definitely swings. The other showcases legendary stickman, Gene Krupa, who showed the world his undeniable big swinging dick energy. BENNY GOODMAN1938 was ground zero, the big bang, the crossroads of Jazz and its soon to be birthed step-child, Rock n Roll. Benny Goodman and his band played Carnegie Hall and made history. First as a cultural event, and later, when the live recording was released in 1950 as a double album which sold over a million copies. Bei Mir Bist Du Schöen is a defiantly wonderful conglomeration of Yiddish lyrics delivered by Martha Tilton- (remember, simultaneously, Hitler was ramping up his power in Europe) - and, an irresistible swing rhythm smoothly rendered - which breaks into a kind of super charged klezmer section. It must have been startling in 1938, and it hasn't lost its power to captivate almost 100 years later. LITTLE JOEY AND THE FLIPSBy 1962, Doo-Wop was about to be consigned to the dust bin of History, along with the crooners that had dominated the previous decade. The British Invasion was about to begin, which would turn the record business on its head. But, just prior to that cataclysm, Joseph Hall and his 4 Pendleton wearing compadres arrive, dip dip dipping their striped hearts out, and they release this anomaly on Joy Records, which makes it to 33 on the charts. This was followed by only a couple more tries… then, oblivion. Maybe it was that swinging “bongo” break that lifted the Frankie Lymon-esque knock-off to its catchy heights? 

Total Michigan
Michigan's Rock and Roll Legends Museum: The Heart of Rock and Roll is still beatin'

Total Michigan

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 11, 2025 26:00 Transcription Available


Gary Johnson, a lifelong educator and music historian, is the founder of the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends Hall of Fame and the curator of a stunning exhibit at the Historical Museum of Bay County. From teaching Michigan's first junior high rock history class to curating world-class displays, Gary's passion for rock and roll has inspired generations.Key Topics Discussed:The founding and evolution of the Michigan Rock and Roll Legends Hall of FameIconic Michigan artists featured in the Hall of Fame, from Motown legends to garage rock iconsHow Gary designed and installed museum exhibits using original posters, memorabilia, and rare artifactsThe deep connection between cars, music, and Michigan cultureBehind-the-scenes stories like the infamous “Fake Zombies” scandal and the influence of Frankie Lymon on Motown artistsExhibit Location:Historical Museum of Bay CountyAddress: 321 Washington Avenue, Bay City, MI(Located next to Bay City's historic City Hall building)Website:www.michiganrockandrolllegends.comFacebook: Michigan Rock and Roll LegendsMuseum Website:Historical Museum of Bay County

Country Bunker Medicine Show
Martedì 1 Aprile 2025

Country Bunker Medicine Show

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 1, 2025 42:18


April Fool’s Day – Marty Robbins Why Do Fools Fall In Love – Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers Fish – Craig Campbell April’s Fool – Joel Hofmann Band Fish Song – Nitty Gritty Dirt Band Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Is In) – Kenny Rogers & The First Edition Fish & Whistle – Jolie Blue Fools Hall of Fame – Johnny Cash Poor Little Fool – Ricky Nelson Big Fish – Jesse Daniel April Fool – Zoe Muth

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Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne and Anne Dudley salute Amy

Add to Playlist

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 14, 2025 42:43


Concertina and melodeon player Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne and composer and arranger Anne Dudley contribute to the next five tracks on the playlist. Alongside Jeffrey Boakye and Anna Phoebe, they take us on a journey from the elegant vocals of Amy Winehouse to a Japanese folk tune about hardworking fishermen.Producer: Jerome Weatherald Presented with musical direction by Jeffrey Boakye and Anna PhoebeThe five tracks in this week's playlist:Love is a Losing Game by Amy Winehouse Sarabande by Claude Debussy Lambada by Pinduca The Bristol Sailorman/Will the Waggoner by John Kirkpatrick (Cohen) Kaigara Bushi by MitsuneOther music in this episode:Why Do Fools Fall In Love by Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers There is no Greater Love by Billie Holiday (There is) No Greater Love by Amy Winehouse Love is a Losing Game (Demo) by Amy Winehouse Gymnopédie by Erik Satie Lambada by Kaoma

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Maya Youssef and Ben Gernon take us to Syria and Hamburg

Add to Playlist

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 7, 2025 42:04


British-Syrian Maya Youssef - virtuoso player of the Middle Eastern stringed instrument the qanun - and conductor Ben Gernon, join Jeffrey Boakye and Anna Phoebe to add five more tracks to the playlist. Starting by the dock of the bay, they travel to Damascus, Hamburg and land on a 1950s familiar pop classic sung by a 14-year-old.Producer: Jerome Weatherald Presented with musical direction by Jeffrey Boakye and Anna PhoebeThe five tracks in this week's playlist:(Sitting on) the Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding The Waves of the Sea by Lena Shamamyan Mache dich auf! Werde Licht! (Arise! Let there be light!) by Felix Mendelssohn Blank Space (Taylor's Version) by Taylor Swift Why Do Fools Fall In Love by Frankie Lymon & The TeenagersOther music in this episode:Parisienne Walkways by Gary Moore Sweet Child O'Mine by Guns N' Roses Hard to Handle by Otis Redding Blank Space by Taylor Swift

Andrew's Daily Five
Guess the Year (Billy Mac & Dave): Episode 4

Andrew's Daily Five

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 10, 2025 35:52


Send us a textWelcome to Guess the Year! This is an interactive, competitive podcast series where you will be able to play along and compete against your fellow listeners. Here is how the scoring works:10 points: Get the year dead on!7 points: 1-2 years off4 points: 3-5 years off1 point: 6-10 years offGuesses can be emailed to drandrewmay@gmail.com or texted using the link at the top of the show notes (please leave your name).I will read your scores out before the next episode, along with the scores of your fellow listeners! Please email your guesses to Andrew no later than 12pm EST on the day the next episode posts if you want them read out on the episode (e.g., if an episode releases on Monday, then I need your guesses by 12pm EST on Wednesday; if an episode releases on Friday, then I need your guesses by 12 pm EST on Monday). Note: If you don't get your scores in on time, they will still be added to the overall scores I am keeping. So they will count for the final scores - in other words, you can catch up if you get behind, you just won't have your scores read out on the released episode. All I need is your guesses (e.g., Song 1 - 19xx, Song 2 - 20xx, Song 3 - 19xx, etc.). Please be honest with your guesses! Best of luck!!The answers to today's ten songs can be found below. If you are playing along, don't scroll down until you have made your guesses. .....Have you made your guesses yet? If so, you can scroll down and look at the answers......Okay, answers coming. Don't peek if you haven't made your guesses yet!.....Intro song: Drunk in Love by Beyonce (feat. Jay-Z) (2013)Song 1: Your Wildest Dreams by The Moody Blues (1986)Song 2: Pony by Ginuwine (1996)Song 3: Cannonball by The Breeders (1993)Song 4: Broken Bones by KALEO (2016)Song 5: Say Something by Justin Timberlake (feat. Chris Stapleton) (2018)Song 6: The Rainbow by Ben Kweller (2012)Song 7: Ahead of Time by Just Jinger (1997)Song 8: Try Again by Aaliyah (2000)Song 9: Fever by Little Willie John (1956)Song 10: Why Do Fools Fall in Love by Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers (1956)

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HOTEL BOHEMIA PRESENTS "ALAN FREED'S BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS "- IN 2014, THE ROCK HALL OF FAME REMOVED FREED'S ASHES FROM DISPLAY- IT WAS THE FINAL INDIGNATION IN A LIFE DEVOTED TO THE MUSIC AND PHRASE HE SO SUCCESSFULLY POPULARIZED,

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Play Episode Listen Later Feb 10, 2025 29:09


“Rock 'n roll is really swing with a modern name,” Freed once said. “It began on the levees and plantations, took in folk songs, and features blues and rhythm. It's the rhythm that gets to the kids – they're starved of music they can dance to, after all those years of crooners.”HISTORICAL ALAN FREED MOMENTS:Freed moved to WINS in New York in 1954 where his late night radio show became known as Alan Freed's Rock 'n' Roll Party. His popularity was immediate and so was the criticism.In July 1957, Freed was given his own nationally televisedrock 'n roll dance show billed as “The Big Beat" on ABC-TV. The show featured a mix of pop and R&B acts. Early reviews for the national show were good, but it was cancelled abruptly after Frankie Lymon, one of the show's black performers, was shown on air dancing with a white girl.The biracial dance scene enraged ABC's Southern affiliates and the network cancelled the show despite its growing popularity.Freed was featured in five of the earliest rock 'n' roll movies – Rock Around the Clock and Rock, Rock, Rock in 1956; Mister Rock And Roll and Don't Knock the Rock in 1957 and Go Johnny Go in 1958.Freed was initially interred in New York, the city where he died at 43 in 1965. His family moved his remains to Cleveland years later and then to the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame Museum 12 years ago, his son Lance Freed said.“I thought this was the last move, but then I got this call to move him,” Freed said. “He said, ‘You've got to come pick him up.' ““The museum world is moving away from exhibiting remains” since ashes don't help tell a story, he was told.Bullshit. The Hall's Board simply felt human remains did not belong where they could depress those paying for admission.Alan Freed Urned His Right To Remain In The Home That  Utilized His Rock and Roll Signature As It's Way Of Earning Millions Upon Millions Of Dollars.PLEASE VISIT THE ALAN FREED ARCHIVES AT:https://www.alanfreed.com/wp/archives/

Essential Tremors
Laraaji (Big Ears Festival performer)

Essential Tremors

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 31, 2024 21:59


First coming to international attention after Brian Eno heard him playing in Washington Square Park in New York City in 1979, Laraaji’s calm, meditative, and deeply spiritual work was widely heard for the first time when his Ambient 3: Day of Radiance, record was released by Eno in 1980 as the third in his “Ambient” series. A collection of his early, previously unreleased work, Segue to Infinity, was released by Numero Group in October of 2023. Laraaji will perform at the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville in March of 2025, and in this episode talks about how songs by Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers, Frank Sinatra, and Pharrell Williams were formative for him.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

History & Factoids about today
Sept 30-Chewing Gum, Johnny Mathis, Greg Brady, Marty Stuart, Jenna Elfman, T-Pain, Howdy Doody, The Flintstones

History & Factoids about today

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 30, 2024 13:17


National chewing gum day. Entertainment from 1996. Howdy Doodiy went off the air- Flintstones debuted, 1st time Ether was used, 1st execution by the Pilgrams. Todays birthdays - Buddy Rich, Angie Dickinson, Johnny Mathis, Frankie Lymon, Deborah Allen, Barry Williams, Fran Drescher, Marty Stuart, Jenna Elfman, T Pain. James dean died.Intro - Pour some sugar on me - Def Leppard    http://defleppard.com/Choo'n gum - Teresa BrewerMacarena - Los Del RioLiving in a moment - Ty HerndonHowdy Doody Tv themeFlintstones TV themeBirthdays - In da club - 50 Cent     http://50cent.com/Drum solo by Buddy RichChances are - Johnny MathisWhy do fools fall in love - Frankie Lymon & the TeenagersBaby I lied - Deborah AllenTime to change - Brady kidsHillbilly rock - Marty StuartI'm in love with a stripper - T PainExit - It's not love - Dokken      http://dokken.net/

Big Time Talker with Burke Allen — by SpeakerMatch
Radio, Rockets, and 1950s Tunes: A Special Crossover with The October Sky Minute

Big Time Talker with Burke Allen — by SpeakerMatch

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 24, 2024 28:00


This week, Burke teams up with Jim O'Cain and Hal Bryan from the October Sky Minute Podcast. In this special crossover episode, they dive into 1950s music, radio, and the cultural impact of October Sky. Burke shares his unique perspective as Homer Hickam's manager while the group explores West Virginia's vibrant music scene and radio's pivotal role in small-town America.   Enjoy Burke's personal stories from his radio DJ days, a discussion on the Grand Ole Opry's influence on country music, and reflections on 1958's nostalgic sound. The conversation also touches on October Sky's lasting legacy, with touching anecdotes about Homer Hickam's interactions with fans and the contributions of legendary artists like The Platters and Frankie Lymon.   Don't miss this unique collaboration with music, memories, and behind-the-scenes insights into a beloved American classic.   Learn more about The October Sky Minute on its website: https://octoberskyminute.com/cm/ The Big Time Talker Podcast is sponsored by SpeakerMatch.  

Building Abundant Success!!© with Sabrina-Marie
Episode 2512: Charlie Ingui of The Soul Survivor's ~ "Expressway to Your Heart", Philadelphia International's #1 Major Music Hit Breakthru

Building Abundant Success!!© with Sabrina-Marie

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 17, 2024 46:16


Gamble & Huff, Philadelphia International Rock & Soul ClassicCharlie Ingui,  Original Lead Vocalist still records & tours  go check him out! ~ thesoulsurvivors.comR.I.P. Ritchie Ingui, original vocal half of the Soul Survivors. He transitioned in early 2017.Original group member Kenny Jeremiah Transitioned in December of 2020.Memorable Intro, AWESOME Classic Hit, a Kenny Gamble &Leon Huff hit that Helped launch the Legendary Philadelphia International Record Label.I am a Music Lover of All Styles, Generations. This Week I Flashback.......The Soul Survivors, originally from New York City, grew up listening to the R & B groups of the 1950's. The sounds of groups like the Moonglows, Heartbeats, and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers had a great influence on brothers Charlie and Rich Ingui. With various street corner groups, they developed their vocal skills. While in high school, Charlie joined the vocal group from Queens, N.Y. the Dedications. When, a year later the group's lead singer decided to leave, brother Rich was recruited. While performing at clubs in the New York area, they found themselves at the mercy of various house bands and decided to find a group of musicians who would become permanent members of the group therefore creating a self contained unit. The group would be renamed THE SOUL SURVIVORS.Shortly thereafter, the group began to build a strong following, playing venues in Atlantic City and Philadelphia. Enjoying great success in Philadelphia, they attracted the attention of record producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. Into the recording studio they went, emerging with " Expressway To Your Heart " a song that would climb to #3 on Billboard's R&B chart and #4 on it's Top 100 list. The success of " Expressway " became Gamble and Huff's first "crossover" hit when it began to be played on both black and white radio stations. It's success enabled Gamble and Huff to reach the large audiences they sought in order to bring their " Sound Of Philadelphia " to the mass Market. In polls taken by both the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia's City Paper, " Expressway" was voted the number one record ever to come out of Philadelphia. "Expressway " was followed by two other chart records, "Explosion In My Soul" and " Mission Impossible". Their first album, released in 1968, was " When The Whistle Blows ". A second LP, on Atco Records, called "Take Another Look" appeared in 1969.During this time, the group toured extensively throughout the U.S. appearing with many different types of artists...everyone from Jackie Wilson, Smokey Robinson and The Miracles to Janis Joplin, the Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield, Sly and the Family Stone and countless others. In 1974, the Soul Survivors reunited with Gamble and Huff to record their self titled album "The Soul Survivors" on TSOP Records. It was written and performed in a style that would define the unique sound of The Soul Survivors.The album produced "City Of Brotherly Love" which would show up on Billboard's R&B Top 100 and become the group's fourth charted outing.© 2024 All Rights Reserved© 2024 Building Abundant Success!!Join Me on ~ iHeart Media @ https://tinyurl.com/iHeartBASSpot Me on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/yxuy23baAmazon Music ~ https://tinyurl.com/AmzBASAudacy:  https://tinyurl.com/BASAud

PJC Media
A Tribute to Frankie Beverly of Maze

PJC Media

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 14, 2024 68:00


The soulful singer known as Frankie Beverly was born on Dec 6, 1946 and passed away on Sept 10, 2024. He left us a soundtrack of soul hits that we can trace all the way back to the 70's. He was known for his distinctivesmooth baritone voice and charismatic stage presence. Frankie Beverly was born Howard Stanley Beverly but changed his name in honor of his idol Frankie Lymon. He formed Maze originally called Raw Soul in his hometown of Philadelphia in 1970. Frankie Beverly's signature style was his all white linen outfits with his signature baseball cap. We have this show in his honor. Good music never dies

The True Story of the Fake Zombies
Frank Lymon's Tombstone Blues

The True Story of the Fake Zombies

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 12, 2024 18:01 Transcription Available


In a story full of artifacts from music's past, one looms larger than any other. Doo-wop legend Frankie Lymon's tombstone lives in Bay City, Michigan. Here's how it got there.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Joe Stilgoe and Gabriella Swallow on Beethoven, Doo-wop and Mambo

Add to Playlist

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 6, 2024 42:35


Cellist Gabriella Swallow and singer, pianist and songwriter Joe Stilgoe join Anna Phoebe and Jeffrey Boakye as they add the next five tracks, taking us from a pioneering use of a vocoder for a Stanley Kubrick soundtrack to a Grace Jones synth hit, via some early American Doo-wop.Producer: Jerome Weatherald Presented with musical direction by Jeffrey Boakye and Anna PhoebeThe five tracks in this week's playlist:March – from A Clockwork Orange by Beethoven, Wendy Carlos & Rachel Elkind This Night by Billy Joel When You Dance by The Turbans Gopher by Yma Sumac Slave to the Rhythm by Grace JonesOther music in this episode:Night Boat to Cairo by Madness Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger by Daft Punk The Shining - Main Title, by Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind Piano Sonata No.8 by Bach, played by Alfred Brendel Why do Fools Fall in Love by Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers The Shoop Shoop Song (It's in His Kiss) by Betty Everett Street Hassle by Lou Reed Dance at the Gym from West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein

Unveiling the Legends: Dolls of the 60s & 70s
Ronnie Spector: Rock-and-roll's Original Bad Girl

Unveiling the Legends: Dolls of the 60s & 70s

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 6, 2024 66:13


“She loves attention - she'd sing to a pineapple.” - La La Brooks of The Crystals, on today's Doll: Ronnie SpectorRonnie needs no introduction. With her sister Estelle and her cousin Nedra, Ronnie broke down barriers and paved the way as pop music royalty and rock-and-roll's original bad girl. The fabulous Ronettes even boasted the likes of the Beatles AND Rolling Stones in their leagues of fans! But Ronnie's story is just as much of survival as it is of rock-and-roll. Neither would've been possible without her fiery unbreakable spirit. Hear about Ronnie's 5-decade career of “mascara, miniskirts, and madness” on today's episode of the Dolls Podcast, available wherever you stream your podcasts

All Time Top Ten
Episode 629 - Top Ten Songs For "Fools" Part 1 w/Ryan Stockstad

All Time Top Ten

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 12, 2024 58:52


In this modern world, it's a struggle to get by enough as it is without some damn fool in your face every waking moment. Fortunately we know the best way to deal with fools. Much like paranoia, the cure is through laughs and of course music. Our good friend and fellow music nerd Ryan Stockstad knows this all too well, and was nice enough to join the pod for TOP TEN SONGS FOR "FOOLS", our favorite songs that have the word "Fool" in the title. Picks 10-6 are featured here in Part 1.Ryan is always up to fun stuff on YouTube and other places. Follow his Instagram for all things Stockstad:https://www.instagram.com/hollywoodpsychic/All hail the beloved Patreon people! These upstanding citizens put their money where their mouth is and keep the show afloat by contributing $5 a month. In return they're rewarded with a monthly bonus episode using our patented Emergency Pod format, our improv game where we pull a playlist out of our butts in real time. On August 1st we released an all-new Emergency Pod episode with the always affable Dustin Prince. Get this and every episode weve done, plus a new one every month, Find out more at:https://www.patreon.com/alltimetoptenChat with us! On Facebook! Get more involved in the ATTT cinematic universe by chatting with us on the Facebook Music Chat Group. Start a conversation about music!https://www.facebook.com/groups/940749894391295

Building Abundant Success!!© with Sabrina-Marie
Episode 2476: Charlie Ingui ~ Original Lead Vocalist of The Soul Survivor's ~ "Expressway to Your Heart", Philadelphia International's #1 Breakthru

Building Abundant Success!!© with Sabrina-Marie

Play Episode Listen Later May 19, 2024 46:16


Gamble & Huff, Philadelphia International Rock & Soul ClassicCharlie Ingui,  Original Lead Vocalist still records & tours  go check him out! ~ thesoulsurvivors.comR.I.P. Ritchie Ingui, original vocal half of the Soul Survivors. He transitioned in early 2017.Original group member Kenny Jeremiah Transitioned in December of 2020.Memorable Intro, AWESOME Classic Hit, a Kenny Gamble &Leon Huff hit that Helped launch the Legendary Philadelphia International Record Label.I am a Music Lover of All Styles, Generations. This Week I Flashback.......The Soul Survivors, originally from New York City, grew up listening to the R & B groups of the 1950's. The sounds of groups like the Moonglows, Heartbeats, and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers had a great influence on brothers Charlie and Rich Ingui. With various street corner groups, they developed their vocal skills. While in high school, Charlie joined the vocal group from Queens, N.Y. the Dedications. When, a year later the group's lead singer decided to leave, brother Rich was recruited. While performing at clubs in the New York area, they found themselves at the mercy of various house bands and decided to find a group of musicians who would become permanent members of the group therefore creating a self contained unit. The group would be renamed THE SOUL SURVIVORS.Shortly thereafter, the group began to build a strong following, playing venues in Atlantic City and Philadelphia. Enjoying great success in Philadelphia, they attracted the attention of record producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. Into the recording studio they went, emerging with " Expressway To Your Heart " a song that would climb to #3 on Billboard's R&B chart and #4 on it's Top 100 list. The success of " Expressway " became Gamble and Huff's first "crossover" hit when it began to be played on both black and white radio stations. It's success enabled Gamble and Huff to reach the large audiences they sought in order to bring their " Sound Of Philadelphia " to the mass Market. In polls taken by both the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia's City Paper, " Expressway" was voted the number one record ever to come out of Philadelphia. "Expressway " was followed by two other chart records, "Explosion In My Soul" and " Mission Impossible". Their first album, released in 1968, was " When The Whistle Blows ". A second LP, on Atco Records, called "Take Another Look" appeared in 1969.During this time, the group toured extensively throughout the U.S. appearing with many different types of artists...everyone from Jackie Wilson, Smokey Robinson and The Miracles to Janis Joplin, the Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield, Sly and the Family Stone and countless others. In 1974, the Soul Survivors reunited with Gamble and Huff to record their self titled album "The Soul Survivors" on TSOP Records. It was written and performed in a style that would define the unique sound of The Soul Survivors.The album produced "City Of Brotherly Love" which would show up on Billboard's R&B Top 100 and become the group's fourth charted outing.© 2024 All Rights Reserved© 2024 Building Abundant Success!!Join Me on ~ iHeart Media @ https://tinyurl.com/iHeartBASSpot Me on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/yxuy23baAmazon Music ~ https://tinyurl.com/AmzBASAudacy:  https://tinyurl.com/BASAud

Death By Music Podcast
6.4 - Frankie Lymon (The Teenagers)

Death By Music Podcast

Play Episode Play 30 sec Highlight Listen Later Apr 3, 2024 63:08


Suggested by Rob - Frankie Lymon was only 15 years old when he struck it big with rock and roll group The Teenagers - he went from one of the biggest acts in the world to a harrowing addiction, losing his life at the young age of 25. Listen to the accompanying playlist on Spotify at https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3wq9qgwt0s0df6aWrMiByz?si=6fbdb57c3a284e99 .deathbypodcastteam@gmail.comSupport the show

Un Dernier Disque avant la fin du monde
Ronnie Spector & The Ronnettes - Be my Baby

Un Dernier Disque avant la fin du monde

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 24, 2024 66:56


Aujourd'hui, nous allons parler du disque qui, plus que tout autre, a assuré la place de Phil Spector dans l'histoire de la musique populaire - un disque qui a changé la vie de plusieurs personnes qui l'ont écouté pour le meilleur, qui a changé la vie de sa chanteuse pour le pire, et qui possède l'intro de batterie la plus imitée de tous les temps. Nous allons nous pencher sur un chef d'oeuvre intemporel, sur une intro de batterie reconnaissable entre mille : "Be My Baby" des Ronettes The Ronettes, "Be My Baby" Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, "Why Do Fools Fall In Love ?" Ronnie and the Relatives, "I Want a Boy" Ronnie and the Relatives, "I'm Gonna Quit While I'm Ahead" Joey Dee and the Starliters, "The Peppermint Twist" Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, "Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah". Connie Francis, "Second-Hand Love" Veronica, "Why Don't They Let Us Fall In Love ?" The Crystals, "The Twist"The Crystals, " The Wah-Watusi "Jeff Barry, "It's Called Rock and Roll" Sam Cooke, "Teenage Sonata" Ray Peterson, "Tell Laura I Love Her" Ellie Gaye, "Silly, Isn't It ?" Jay and the Americans, "This is It" Darlene Love, "(Today I Met) The Boy I'm Gonna Marry" Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans, "Why Do Lovers Break Each Others' Hearts ?" Ellie Greenwich "Doo Wah Diddy Diddy (demo)" The Ronettes, "Be My Baby"" The Ronettes" (The Wrecking Crew), Tedesco and Pitman". The Ronettes, "Baby I Love You" The Ronettes Featuring Veronica, "Walking in the Rain" The Ronettes, "I Can Hear Music" Ronnie Spector, "Try Some, Buy Some" Southside Johnny and the Asbury Dukes, "You Mean So Much To Me" Ronnie Spector et le E-Street Band, "Say Goodbye to Hollywood" Eddie Money, "Take Me Home Tonight"

Building Abundant Success!!© with Sabrina-Marie
Episode 2420: Charlie Ingui of The Soul Survivor's ~ "Expressway to Your Heart", Philadelphia International's #1 Major Music Hit Breakthru

Building Abundant Success!!© with Sabrina-Marie

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 14, 2023 46:16


Gamble & Huff, Philadelphia International Rock & Soul ClassicCharlie Ingui,  Original Lead Vocalist still records & tours  go check him out! ~ thesoulsurvivors.comR.I.P. Ritchie Ingui, original vocal half of the Soul Survivors. He transitioned in early 2017.Original group member Kenny Jeremiah Transitioned in December of 2020.Memorable Intro, AWESOME Classic Hit, a Kenny Gamble &Leon Huff hit that Helped launch the Legendary Philadelphia International Record Label.I am a Music Lover of All Styles, Generations. This Week I Flashback.......The Soul Survivors, originally from New York City, grew up listening to the R & B groups of the 1950's. The sounds of groups like the Moonglows, Heartbeats, and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers had a great influence on brothers Charlie and Rich Ingui. With various street corner groups, they developed their vocal skills. While in high school, Charlie joined the vocal group from Queens, N.Y. the Dedications. When, a year later the group's lead singer decided to leave, brother Rich was recruited. While performing at clubs in the New York area, they found themselves at the mercy of various house bands and decided to find a group of musicians who would become permanent members of the group therefore creating a self contained unit. The group would be renamed THE SOUL SURVIVORS.Shortly thereafter, the group began to build a strong following, playing venues in Atlantic City and Philadelphia. Enjoying great success in Philadelphia, they attracted the attention of record producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. Into the recording studio they went, emerging with " Expressway To Your Heart " a song that would climb to #3 on Billboard's R&B chart and #4 on it's Top 100 list. The success of " Expressway " became Gamble and Huff's first "crossover" hit when it began to be played on both black and white radio stations. It's success enabled Gamble and Huff to reach the large audiences they sought in order to bring their " Sound Of Philadelphia " to the mass Market. In polls taken by both the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia's City Paper, " Expressway" was voted the number one record ever to come out of Philadelphia. "Expressway " was followed by two other chart records, "Explosion In My Soul" and " Mission Impossible". Their first album, released in 1968, was " When The Whistle Blows ". A second LP, on Atco Records, called "Take Another Look" appeared in 1969.During this time, the group toured extensively throughout the U.S. appearing with many different types of artists...everyone from Jackie Wilson, Smokey Robinson and The Miracles to Janis Joplin, the Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield, Sly and the Family Stone and countless others. In 1974, the Soul Survivors reunited with Gamble and Huff to record their self titled album "The Soul Survivors" on TSOP Records. It was written and performed in a style that would define the unique sound of The Soul Survivors.The album produced "City Of Brotherly Love" which would show up on Billboard's R&B Top 100 and become the group's fourth charted outing.The Soul Survivors recorded new music and covers several years ago, most recently working with David Uosikkinen of The Hooters and his project "In the Pocket" which is paying tribute to the vast catalog of music created in Philadelphia.© 2023 All Rights Reserved© 2023 Building Abundant Success!!Join Me on ~ iHeart Media @ https://tinyurl.com/iHeartBASSpot Me on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/yxuy23baAmazon Music ~ https://tinyurl.com/AmzBASAudacy:  https://tinyurl.com/BASAud

History & Factoids about today
Sept 30th-Chewing Gum, Johnny Mathis, Greg Brady, The Nanny, Marty Stuart, Jenna Elfman, T Pain

History & Factoids about today

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 30, 2023 13:44


National chewing gum day. Entertainment from 1963. Howdy Doodiy went off the air- Flintstones debuted, 1st time Ether was used, 1st execution by the Pilgrams. Todays birthdays - Buddy Rich, Angie Dickinson, Johnny Mathis, Frankie Lymon, Deborah Allen, Barry Williams, Fran Drescher, Marty Stuart, Jenna Elfman, T Pain. James dean died.Intro - Pour some sugar on me - Def Leppard http://defleppard.com/Choo'n gum - Teresa BrewerBlue velvet - Bobby VintonAbilene - George Hamilton IVHowdy Doody Tv themeFlintstones TV themeBirthdays - In da club - 50 Cent http://50cent.com/Drum solo by Buddy RichChances are - Johnny MathisWhy do fools fall in love - Frankie Lymon & the TeenagersBaby I lied - Deborah AllenTime to change - Brady kidsHillbilly rock - Marty StuartI'm in love with a stripper - T PainExit - It's not love - Dokken http://dokken.net/

Muzik Detention
Kings Of Pop

Muzik Detention

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 26, 2023 60:36


Long before Michael, Whitney & Prince there was Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson and Frankie Lymon. These were the first black entertainers to cross over the color barrier onto the whiter side of the Billboard Pop Charts. Sadly, each of these men met wrong doing and lost their lives. One is still a mystery. This story has a hooker, a hotel manager and an unarmed naked man who was shot several times, the mysterious part is that no one prosecuted for the obvious murder. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/strickland-media-group-in/message

Juke In The Back » Podcast Feed
Episode #687 – Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers

Juke In The Back » Podcast Feed

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 2, 2023 59:00


Air Week: July 3-9, 2023 Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers We throw the word “influential” around a lot on the Juke In The Back, but very few groups can actually claim to have started a sub-genre based on their lead singer. The Teenagers Feat. Frankie Lymon were the first of the “kiddie” lead groups to […]

Juke In The Back » Podcast Feed
Episode #687 – Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers

Juke In The Back » Podcast Feed

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 2, 2023 59:00


Air Week: July 3-9, 2023 Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers We throw the word “influential” around a lot on the Juke In The Back, but very few groups can actually claim to have started a sub-genre based on their lead singer. The Teenagers Feat. Frankie Lymon were the first of the “kiddie” lead groups to […]

Building Abundant Success!!© with Sabrina-Marie
Episode 2387: Charlie Ingui of The Soul Survivor's ~ "Expressway to Your Heart", Philadelphia International's #1 Major Music Hit Breakthru

Building Abundant Success!!© with Sabrina-Marie

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 3, 2023 46:16


Gamble & Huff, Philadelphia International Rock & Soul ClassicCharlie Ingui,  Original Lead Vocalist still records & tours  go check him out! ~ thesoulsurvivors.comR.I.P. Ritchie Ingui, original vocal half of the Soul Survivors. He transitioned in early 2017.Original group member Kenny Jeremiah Transitioned in December of 2020.Memorable Intro, AWESOME Classic Hit, a Kenny Gamble &Leon Huff hit that Helped launch the Legendary Philadelphia International Record Label.I am a Music Lover of All Styles, Generations. This Week I Flashback.......The Soul Survivors, originally from New York City, grew up listening to the R & B groups of the 1950's. The sounds of groups like the Moonglows, Heartbeats, and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers had a great influence on brothers Charlie and Rich Ingui. With various street corner groups, they developed their vocal skills. While in high school, Charlie joined the vocal group from Queens, N.Y. the Dedications. When, a year later the group's lead singer decided to leave, brother Rich was recruited. While performing at clubs in the New York area, they found themselves at the mercy of various house bands and decided to find a group of musicians who would become permanent members of the group therefore creating a self contained unit. The group would be renamed THE SOUL SURVIVORS.Shortly thereafter, the group began to build a strong following, playing venues in Atlantic City and Philadelphia. Enjoying great success in Philadelphia, they attracted the attention of record producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. Into the recording studio they went, emerging with " Expressway To Your Heart " a song that would climb to #3 on Billboard's R&B chart and #4 on it's Top 100 list. The success of " Expressway " became Gamble and Huff's first "crossover" hit when it began to be played on both black and white radio stations. It's success enabled Gamble and Huff to reach the large audiences they sought in order to bring their " Sound Of Philadelphia " to the mass Market. In polls taken by both the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia's City Paper, " Expressway" was voted the number one record ever to come out of Philadelphia. "Expressway " was followed by two other chart records, "Explosion In My Soul" and " Mission Impossible". Their first album, released in 1968, was " When The Whistle Blows ". A second LP, on Atco Records, called "Take Another Look" appeared in 1969.During this time, the group toured extensively throughout the U.S. appearing with many different types of artists...everyone from Jackie Wilson, Smokey Robinson and The Miracles to Janis Joplin, the Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield, Sly and the Family Stone and countless others. In 1974, the Soul Survivors reunited with Gamble and Huff to record their self titled album "The Soul Survivors" on TSOP Records. It was written and performed in a style that would define the unique sound of The Soul Survivors.The album produced "City Of Brotherly Love" which would show up on Billboard's R&B Top 100 and become the group's fourth charted outing.Through the years, the Soul Survivors have continued to provide audiences with high energy performances and music that is timeless and authentic ,appearing with 60's contemporaries Felix Cavaliere's Rascals. the Turtles,the Association, as well as fellow TSOP artists Harold Melvin's Bluenotes,Billy Paul, the Intruders, Russell Thompkins' Stylistics and others.The group's CD is called " Heart Full of Soul ", produced by Grammy nominated producers Jimmy Bralower and Johnny Gale.The Soul Survivors recorded new music and covers several years ago, most recently working with David Uosikkinen of The Hooters and his project "In the Pocket" which is paying tribute to the vast catalog of music created in Philadelphia.© 2023 All Rights Reserved© 2023 Building Abundant Success!!Join Me on ~ iHeart Media @ https://tinyurl.com/iHeartBASSpot Me on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/yxuy23baAmazon Music ~ https://tinyurl.com/AmzBASAudacy:  https://tinyurl.com/BASAud

Rock N Roll Pantheon
Prisoners of Rock and Roll -- The Smooth Sounds of Doo Wop

Rock N Roll Pantheon

Play Episode Listen Later May 9, 2023 84:20


Doo wop music. It's the harmonized sound of street corner serenades and teenage romance. The irresistible sound that makes you wanna snap your fingers, sway your hips, and sing along with those timeless harmonies. This music broke down racial barriers years before the civil rights movement, as millions of kids across the country just cared about listening to great music.  Some of the most popular groups of the era were Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, The Drifters, the Platters, Dion & The Belmonts, and more. There were also dozens of one hit wonders that you still hear today, like Earth Angel and Get A Job.  As the 1950s gave way to the 1960s, doo wop began to give way to other styles of music like rock and roll and soul. But it's legacy and the music lives on.  In this episode of Prisoners of Rock and Roll, we're looking at the history of doo wop music so gather ‘round that burning trash barrel out on the corner. We're going on a music journey that will have you singing “shoo be doo” in no time.  Hear More Check out the episode playlist. Get In Touch Check us out online, on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. or drops us an email at show@prisonersofrockandroll.com. Or if you're in Philadelphia, come visit our home base at McCusker's Tavern. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Prisoners of Rock and Roll
63 - The Smooth Sounds of Doo Wop

Prisoners of Rock and Roll

Play Episode Listen Later May 8, 2023 84:20


Doo wop music. It's the harmonized sound of street corner serenades and teenage romance. The irresistible sound that makes you wanna snap your fingers, sway your hips, and sing along with those timeless harmonies. This music broke down racial barriers years before the civil rights movement, as millions of kids across the country just cared about listening to great music.  Some of the most popular groups of the era were Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, The Drifters, the Platters, Dion & The Belmonts, and more. There were also dozens of one hit wonders that you still hear today, like Earth Angel and Get A Job.  As the 1950s gave way to the 1960s, doo wop began to give way to other styles of music like rock and roll and soul. But it's legacy and the music lives on.  In this episode of Prisoners of Rock and Roll, we're looking at the history of doo wop music so gather ‘round that burning trash barrel out on the corner. We're going on a music journey that will have you singing “shoo be doo” in no time.  Hear More Check out the episode playlist. Get In Touch Check us out online, on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. or drops us an email at show@prisonersofrockandroll.com. Or if you're in Philadelphia, come visit our home base at McCusker's Tavern. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Weekend Warrior with Dr. Robert Klapper

From grocery clerk to #1 song in the country.

Building Abundant Success!!© with Sabrina-Marie
Episode 2366: Charlie Ingui ~ The Soul Survivor's ~ "Expressway to Your Heart", Philadelphia International's #1 Major Music Hit Breakthru

Building Abundant Success!!© with Sabrina-Marie

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 29, 2023 46:16


Gamble & Huff, Philadelphia International Rock & Soul Classic Charlie Ingui,  Original Lead Vocalist still records & tours  go check him out! ~ thesoulsurvivors.comR.I.P. Ritchie Ingui, original vocal half of the Soul Survivors. He transitioned in early 2017.Original group member Kenny Jeremiah Transitioned in December of 2020. Memorable Intro, AWESOME Classic Hit, a Kenny Gamble &Leon Huff hit that Helped launch the Legendary Philadelphia International Record Label. I am a Music Lover of All Styles, Generations. This Week I Flashback.......The Soul Survivors, originally from New York City, grew up listening to the R & B groups of the 1950's. The sounds of groups like the Moonglows, Heartbeats, and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers had a great influence on brothers Charlie and Rich Ingui. With various street corner groups, they developed their vocal skills. While in high school, Charlie joined the vocal group from Queens, N.Y. the Dedications. When, a year later the group's lead singer decided to leave, brother Rich was recruited. While performing at clubs in the New York area, they found themselves at the mercy of various house bands and decided to find a group of musicians who would become permanent members of the group therefore creating a self contained unit. The group would be renamed THE SOUL SURVIVORS. Shortly thereafter, the group began to build a strong following, playing venues in Atlantic City and Philadelphia. Enjoying great success in Philadelphia, they attracted the attention of record producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. Into the recording studio they went, emerging with " Expressway To Your Heart " a song that would climb to #3 on Billboard's R&B chart and #4 on it's Top 100 list. The success of " Expressway " became Gamble and Huff's first "crossover" hit when it began to be played on both black and white radio stations. It's success enabled Gamble and Huff to reach the large audiences they sought in order to bring their " Sound Of Philadelphia " to the mass Market. In polls taken by both the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia's City Paper, " Expressway" was voted the number one record ever to come out of Philadelphia. "Expressway " was followed by two other chart records, "Explosion In My Soul" and " Mission Impossible". Their first album, released in 1968, was " When The Whistle Blows ". A second LP, on Atco Records, called "Take Another Look" appeared in 1969.During this time, the group toured extensively throughout the U.S. appearing with many different types of artists...everyone from Jackie Wilson, Smokey Robinson and The Miracles to Janis Joplin, the Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield, Sly and the Family Stone and countless others. In 1974, the Soul Survivors reunited with Gamble and Huff to record their self titled album "The Soul Survivors" on TSOP Records. It was written and performed in a style that would define the unique sound of The Soul Survivors.The album produced "City Of Brotherly Love" which would show up on Billboard's R&B Top 100 and become the group's fourth charted outing.Through the years, the Soul Survivors have continued to provide audiences with high energy performances and music that is timeless and authentic ,appearing with 60's contemporaries Felix Cavaliere's Rascals. the Turtles,the Association, as well as fellow TSOP artists Harold Melvin's Bluenotes,Billy Paul, the Intruders, Russell Thompkins' Stylistics and others.The group's CD is called " Heart Full of Soul ", produced by Grammy nominated producers Jimmy Bralower and Johnny Gale.The Soul Survivors recorded new music and covers several years ago, most recently working with David Uosikkinen of The Hooters and his project "In the Pocket" which is paying tribute to the vast catalog of music created in Philadelphia.© 2023 All Rights Reserved© 2023 Building Abundant Success!!Join Me on ~ iHeart Radio @ https://tinyurl.com/iHeartBASSpot Me on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/yxuy23baAmazon Music ~ https://tinyurl.com/AmzBAS Audacy:  https://tinyurl.com/BASAud

Music History Today
Music History Today Podcast February 28 - What Happened On February 28 In Music History - the Cavern Club, Frankie Lymon, Bobby Bloom, George Michael, & Ray Charles

Music History Today

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 28, 2023 14:00


The February 28 edition of the Music History Today podcast features the Cavern Club, Frankie Lymon, Bobby Bloom, George Michael, & Ray Charles ALL MY MUSIC HISTORY TODAY PODCAST LINKS - https://allmylinks.com/musichistorytoday CHECK OUT MY OTHER PODCAST, THE MUSIC HALLS OF FAME PODCAST: LINKS - https://allmylinks.com/musichallsoffamepodcast Anchor / Spotify link to THE MUSIC HALLS OF FAME PODCAST - https://anchor.fm/musichallsoffamepodcast --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/musichistorytodaypodcast/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/musichistorytodaypodcast/support

They Did Not Get The Memo
Frankie lymon goody goody on they did not get the memo

They Did Not Get The Memo

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 25, 2023 9:50


Frankie lymon was really interesting to look at and a great performer but they look like a little boy I wonder how old he was when he performed these songs but he is a great performer and I give him his credit --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/j-w54/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/j-w54/support

Horny Report
Premios Horny Report 2022

Horny Report

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 30, 2022 89:55


Los premios anuales menos cotizados. Mas grandes que nunca, con mas invitados que nunca, con mas raquetazos que nunca. Presentados por Frankie Lymon, el Doctor Jim Jones y Koki desde la Monumental de Barcelona. Dale Like Bro!

A History Of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs
Episode 156: “I Was Made to Love Her” by Stevie Wonder

A History Of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 25, 2022


Episode one hundred and fifty-six of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Was Made to Love Her", the early career of Stevie Wonder, and the Detroit riots of 1967. 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 "Groovin'" by the Young Rascals. 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 put together a Mixcloud playlist of all the recordings excerpted in this episode. The best value way to get all of Stevie Wonder's early singles is this MP3 collection, which has the original mono single mixes of fifty-five tracks for a very reasonable price. For those who prefer physical media, this is a decent single-CD collection of his early work at a very low price indeed. As well as the general Motown information listed below, I've also referred to Signed, Sealed, and Delivered: The Soulful Journey of Stevie Wonder by Mark Ribowsky, which rather astonishingly is the only full-length biography of Wonder, to Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul by Craig Werner, and to Detroit 67: The Year That Changed Soul by Stuart Cosgrove. For Motown-related information in this and other Motown episodes, I've used the following resources: Where Did Our Love Go? The Rise and Fall of the Motown Sound by Nelson George is an excellent popular history of the various companies that became Motown. To Be Loved by Berry Gordy is Gordy's own, understandably one-sided, but relatively well-written, autobiography. Women of Motown: An Oral History by Susan Whitall is a collection of interviews with women involved in Motown. I Hear a Symphony: Motown and Crossover R&B by J. Andrew Flory is an academic look at Motown. The Motown Encyclopaedia by Graham Betts is an exhaustive look at the people and records involved in Motown's thirty-year history. How Sweet It Is by Lamont Dozier and Scott B. Bomar is Dozier's autobiography, while Come and Get These Memories by Brian and Eddie Holland and Dave Thompson is the Holland brothers'. Standing in the Shadows of Motown: The Life and Music of Legendary Bassist James Jamerson by "Dr Licks" is a mixture of a short biography of the great bass player, and tablature of his most impressive bass parts. And Motown Junkies is an infrequently-updated blog looking at (so far) the first 694 tracks released on Motown singles. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A quick note before I begin -- this episode deals with disability and racism, and also deals from the very beginning with sex work and domestic violence. It also has some discussion of police violence and sexual assault. As always I will try to deal with those subjects as non-judgementally and sensitively as possible, but if you worry that anything about those subjects might disturb you, please check the transcript. Calvin Judkins was not a good man. Lula Mae Hardaway thought at first he might be, when he took her in, with her infant son whose father had left before the boy was born. He was someone who seemed, when he played the piano, to be deeply sensitive and emotional, and he even did the decent thing and married her when he got her pregnant. She thought she could save him, even though he was a street hustler and not even very good at it, and thirty years older than her -- she was only nineteen, he was nearly fifty. But she soon discovered that he wasn't interested in being saved, and instead he was interested in hurting her. He became physically and financially abusive, and started pimping her out. Lula would eventually realise that Calvin Judkins was no good, but not until she got pregnant again, shortly after the birth of her second son. Her third son was born premature -- different sources give different numbers for how premature, with some saying four months and others six weeks -- and while he apparently went by Stevland Judkins throughout his early childhood, the name on his birth certificate was apparently Stevland Morris, Lula having decided not to give another child the surname of her abuser, though nobody has ever properly explained where she got the surname "Morris" from. Little Stevland was put in an incubator with an oxygen mask, which saved the tiny child's life but destroyed his sight, giving him a condition called retinopathy of prematurity -- a condition which nowadays can be prevented and cured, but in 1951 was just an unavoidable consequence for some portion of premature babies. Shortly after the family moved from Saginaw to Detroit, Lula kicked Calvin out, and he would remain only a peripheral figure in his children's lives, but one thing he did do was notice young Stevland's interest in music, and on his increasingly infrequent visits to his wife and kids -- visits that usually ended with violence -- he would bring along toy instruments for the young child to play, like a harmonica and a set of bongos. Stevie was a real prodigy, and by the time he was nine he had a collection of real musical instruments, because everyone could see that the kid was something special. A neighbour who owned a piano gave it to Stevie when she moved out and couldn't take it with her. A local Lions Club gave him a drum kit at a party they organised for local blind children, and a barber gave him a chromatic harmonica after seeing him play his toy one. Stevie gave his first professional performance when he was eight. His mother had taken him to a picnic in the park, and there was a band playing, and the little boy got as close to the stage as he could and started dancing wildly. The MC of the show asked the child who he was, and he said "My name is Stevie, and I can sing and play drums", so of course they got the cute kid up on stage behind the drum kit while the band played Johnny Ace's "Pledging My Love": [Excerpt: Johnny Ace, "Pledging My Love"] He did well enough that they paid him seventy-five cents -- an enormous amount for a small child at that time -- though he was disappointed afterwards that they hadn't played something faster that would really allow him to show off his drumming skills. After that he would perform semi-regularly at small events, and always ask to be paid in quarters rather than paper money, because he liked the sound of the coins -- one of his party tricks was to be able to tell one coin from another by the sound of them hitting a table. Soon he formed a duo with a neighbourhood friend, John Glover, who was a couple of years older and could play guitar while Stevie sang and played harmonica and bongos. The two were friends, and both accomplished musicians for their age, but that wasn't the only reason Stevie latched on to Glover. Even as young as he was, he knew that Motown was soon going to be the place to be in Detroit if you were a musician, and Glover had an in -- his cousin was Ronnie White of the Miracles. Stevie and John performed as a duo everywhere they could and honed their act, performing particularly at the talent shows which were such an incubator of Black musical talent at the time, and they also at this point seem to have got the attention of Clarence Paul, but it was White who brought the duo to Motown. Stevie and John first played for White and Bobby Rodgers, another of the Miracles, then when they were impressed they took them through the several layers of Motown people who would have to sign off on signing a new act. First they were taken to see Brian Holland, who was a rising star within Motown as "Please Mr. Postman" was just entering the charts. They impressed him with a performance of the Miracles song "Bad Girl": [Excerpt: The Miracles, "Bad Girl"] After that, Stevie and John went to see Mickey Stevenson, who was at first sceptical, thinking that a kid so young -- Stevie was only eleven at the time -- must be some kind of novelty act rather than a serious musician. He said later "It was like, what's next, the singing mouse?" But Stevenson was won over by the child's talent. Normally, Stevenson had the power to sign whoever he liked to the label, but given the extra legal complications involved in signing someone under-age, he had to get Berry Gordy's permission. Gordy didn't even like signing teenagers because of all the extra paperwork that would be involved, and he certainly wasn't interested in signing pre-teens. But he came down to the studio to see what Stevie could do, and was amazed, not by his singing -- Gordy didn't think much of that -- but by his instrumental ability. First Stevie played harmonica and bongos as proficiently as an adult professional, and then he made his way around the studio playing on every other instrument in the place -- often only a few notes, but competent on them all. Gordy decided to sign the duo -- and the initial contract was for an act named "Steve and John" -- but it was soon decided to separate them. Glover would be allowed to hang around Motown while he was finishing school, and there would be a place for him when he finished -- he later became a staff songwriter, working on tracks for the Four Tops and the Miracles among others, and he would even later write a number one hit, "You Don't Have to be a Star (to be in My Show)" for Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr -- but they were going to make Stevie a star right now. The man put in charge of that was Clarence Paul. Paul, under his birth name of Clarence Pauling, had started his career in the "5" Royales, a vocal group he formed with his brother Lowman Pauling that had been signed to Apollo Records by Ralph Bass, and later to King Records. Paul seems to have been on at least some of the earliest recordings by the group, so is likely on their first single, "Give Me One More Chance": [Excerpt: The "5" Royales, "Give Me One More Chance"] But Paul was drafted to go and fight in the Korean War, and so wasn't part of the group's string of hit singles, mostly written by his brother Lowman, like "Think", which later became better known in James Brown's cover version, or "Dedicated to the One I Love", later covered by the Shirelles, but in its original version dominated by Lowman's stinging guitar playing: [Excerpt: The "5" Royales, "Dedicated to the One I Love"] After being discharged, Clarence had shortened his name to Clarence Paul, and had started recording for all the usual R&B labels like Roulette and Federal, with little success: [Excerpt: Clarence Paul, "I'm Gonna Love You, Love You Til I Die"] He'd also co-written "I Need Your Lovin'", which had been an R&B hit for Roy Hamilton: [Excerpt: Roy Hamilton, "I Need Your Lovin'"] Paul had recently come to work for Motown – one of the things Berry Gordy did to try to make his label more attractive was to hire the relatives of R&B stars on other labels, in the hopes of getting them to switch to Motown – and he was the new man on the team, not given any of the important work to do. He was working with acts like Henry Lumpkin and the Valladiers, and had also been the producer of "Mind Over Matter", the single the Temptations had released as The Pirates in a desperate attempt to get a hit: [Excerpt: The Pirates, "Mind Over Matter"] Paul was the person you turned to when no-one else was interested, and who would come up with bizarre ideas. A year or so after the time period we're talking about, it was him who produced an album of country music for the Supremes, before they'd had a hit, and came up with "The Man With the Rock and Roll Banjo Band" for them: [Excerpt: The Supremes, "The Man With The Rock and Roll Banjo Band"] So, Paul was the perfect person to give a child -- by this time twelve years old -- who had the triple novelties of being a multi-instrumentalist, a child, and blind. Stevie started spending all his time around the Motown studios, partly because he was eager to learn everything about making records and partly because his home life wasn't particularly great and he wanted to be somewhere else. He earned the affection and irritation, in equal measure, of people at Motown both for his habit of wandering into the middle of sessions because he couldn't see the light that showed that the studio was in use, and for his practical joking. He was a great mimic, and would do things like phoning one of the engineers and imitating Berry Gordy's voice, telling the engineer that Stevie would be coming down, and to give him studio equipment to take home. He'd also astonish women by complimenting them, in detail, on their dresses, having been told in advance what they looked like by an accomplice. But other "jokes" were less welcome -- he would regularly sexually assault women working at Motown, grabbing their breasts or buttocks and then claiming it was an accident because he couldn't see what he was doing. Most of the women he molested still speak of him fondly, and say everybody loved him, and this may even be the case -- and certainly I don't think any of us should be judged too harshly for what we did when we were twelve -- but this kind of thing led to a certain amount of pressure to make Stevie's career worth the extra effort he was causing everyone at Motown. Because Berry Gordy was not impressed with Stevie's vocals, the decision was made to promote him as a jazz instrumentalist, and so Clarence Paul insisted that his first release be an album, rather than doing what everyone would normally do and only put out an album after a hit single. Paul reasoned that there was no way on Earth they were going to be able to get a hit single with a jazz instrumental by a twelve-year-old kid, and eventually persuaded Gordy of the wisdom of this idea. So they started work on The Jazz Soul of Little Stevie, released under his new stagename of Little Stevie Wonder, supposedly a name given to him after Berry Gordy said "That kid's a wonder!", though Mickey Stevenson always said that the name came from a brainstorming session between him and Clarence Paul. The album featured Stevie on harmonica, piano, and organ on different tracks, but on the opening track, "Fingertips", he's playing the bongos that give the track its name: [Excerpt: Little Stevie Wonder, "Fingertips (studio version)"] The composition of that track is credited to Paul and the arranger Hank Cosby, but Beans Bowles, who played flute on the track, always claimed that he came up with the melody, and it seems quite likely to me that most of the tracks on the album were created more or less as jam sessions -- though Wonder's contributions were all overdubbed later. The album sat in the can for several months -- Berry Gordy was not at all sure of its commercial potential. Instead, he told Paul to go in another direction -- focusing on Wonder's blindness, he decided that what they needed to do was create an association in listeners' minds with Ray Charles, who at this point was at the peak of his commercial power. So back into the studio went Wonder and Paul, to record an album made up almost entirely of Ray Charles covers, titled Tribute to Uncle Ray. (Some sources have the Ray Charles tribute album recorded first -- and given Motown's lax record-keeping at this time it may be impossible to know for sure -- but this is the way round that Mark Ribowsky's biography of Wonder has it). But at Motown's regular quality control meeting it was decided that there wasn't a single on the album, and you didn't release an album like that without having a hit single first. By this point, Clarence Paul was convinced that Berry Gordy was just looking for excuses not to do anything with Wonder -- and there may have been a grain of truth to that. There's some evidence that Gordy was worried that the kid wouldn't be able to sing once his voice broke, and was scared of having another Frankie Lymon on his hands. But the decision was made that rather than put out either of those albums, they would put out a single. The A-side was a song called "I Call it Pretty Music But the Old People Call it the Blues, Part 1", which very much played on Wonder's image as a loveable naive kid: [Excerpt: Little Stevie Wonder, "I Call it Pretty Music But the Old People Call it the Blues, Part 1"] The B-side, meanwhile, was part two -- a slowed-down, near instrumental, version of the song, reframed as an actual blues, and as a showcase for Wonder's harmonica playing rather than his vocals. The single wasn't a hit, but it made number 101 on the Billboard charts, just missing the Hot One Hundred, which for the debut single of a new artist wasn't too bad, especially for Motown at this point in time, when most of its releases were flopping. That was good enough that Gordy authorised the release of the two albums that they had in the can. The next single, "Little Water Boy", was a rather baffling duet with Clarence Paul, which did nothing at all on the charts. [Excerpt: Clarence Paul and Little Stevie Wonder, "Little Water Boy"] After this came another flop single, written by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Janie Bradford, before the record that finally broke Little Stevie Wonder out into the mainstream in a big way. While Wonder hadn't had a hit yet, he was sent out on the first Motortown Revue tour, along with almost every other act on the label. Because he hadn't had a hit, he was supposed to only play one song per show, but nobody had told him how long that song should be. He had quickly become a great live performer, and the audiences were excited to watch him, so when he went into extended harmonica solos rather than quickly finishing the song, the audience would be with him. Clarence Paul, who came along on the tour, would have to motion to the onstage bandleader to stop the music, but the bandleader would know that the audiences were with Stevie, and so would just keep the song going as long as Stevie was playing. Often Paul would have to go on to the stage and shout in Wonder's ear to stop playing -- and often Wonder would ignore him, and have to be physically dragged off stage by Paul, still playing, causing the audience to boo Paul for stopping him from playing. Wonder would complain off-stage that the audience had been enjoying it, and didn't seem to get it into his head that he wasn't the star of the show, that the audiences *were* enjoying him, but were *there* to see the Miracles and Mary Wells and the Marvelettes and Marvin Gaye. This made all the acts who had to go on after him, and who were running late as a result, furious at him -- especially since one aspect of Wonder's blindness was that his circadian rhythms weren't regulated by sunlight in the same way that the sighted members of the tour's were. He would often wake up the entire tour bus by playing his harmonica at two or three in the morning, while they were all trying to sleep. Soon Berry Gordy insisted that Clarence Paul be on stage with Wonder throughout his performance, ready to drag him off stage, so that he wouldn't have to come out onto the stage to do it. But one of the first times he had done this had been on one of the very first Motortown Revue shows, before any of his records had come out. There he'd done a performance of "Fingertips", playing the flute part on harmonica rather than only playing bongos throughout as he had on the studio version -- leaving the percussion to Marvin Gaye, who was playing drums for Wonder's set: [Excerpt: Little Stevie Wonder, "Fingertips (Parts 1 & 2)"] But he'd extended the song with a little bit of call-and-response vocalising: [Excerpt: Little Stevie Wonder, "Fingertips (Parts 1 & 2)"] After the long performance ended, Clarence Paul dragged Wonder off-stage and the MC asked the audience to give him a round of applause -- but then Stevie came running back on and carried on playing: [Excerpt: Little Stevie Wonder, "Fingertips (Parts 1 & 2)"] By this point, though, the musicians had started to change over -- Mary Wells, who was on after Wonder, was using different musicians from his, and some of her players were already on stage. You can hear Joe Swift, who was playing bass for Wells, asking what key he was meant to be playing in: [Excerpt: Little Stevie Wonder, "Fingertips (Parts 1 & 2)"] Eventually, after six and a half minutes, they got Wonder off stage, but that performance became the two sides of Wonder's next single, with "Fingertips Part 2", the part with the ad lib singing and the false ending, rather than the instrumental part one, being labelled as the side the DJs should play. When it was released, the song started a slow climb up the charts, and by August 1963, three months after it came out, it was at number one -- only the second ever Motown number one, and the first ever live single to get there. Not only that, but Motown released a live album -- Recorded Live, the Twelve-Year-Old Genius (though as many people point out he was thirteen when it was released -- he was twelve when it was recorded though) and that made number one on the albums chart, becoming the first Motown album ever to do so. They followed up "Fingertips" with a similar sounding track, "Workout, Stevie, Workout", which made number thirty-three. After that, his albums -- though not yet his singles -- started to be released as by "Stevie Wonder" with no "Little" -- he'd had a bit of a growth spurt and his voice was breaking, and so marketing him as a child prodigy was not going to work much longer and they needed to transition him into a star with adult potential. In the Motown of 1963 that meant cutting an album of standards, because the belief at the time in Motown was that the future for their entertainers was doing show tunes at the Copacabana. But for some reason the audience who had wanted an R&B harmonica instrumental with call-and-response improvised gospel-influenced yelling was not in the mood for a thirteen year old singing "Put on a Happy Face" and "When You Wish Upon a Star", and especially not when the instrumental tracks were recorded in a key that suited him at age twelve but not thirteen, so he was clearly straining. "Fingertips" being a massive hit also meant Stevie was now near the top of the bill on the Motortown Revue when it went on its second tour. But this actually put him in a precarious position. When he had been down at the bottom of the bill and unknown, nobody expected anything from him, and he was following other minor acts, so when he was surprisingly good the audiences went wild. Now, near the top of the bill, he had to go on after Marvin Gaye, and he was not nearly so impressive in that context. The audiences were polite enough, but not in the raptures he was used to. Although Stevie could still beat Gaye in some circumstances. At Motown staff parties, Berry Gordy would always have a contest where he'd pit two artists against each other to see who could win the crowd over, something he thought instilled a fun and useful competitive spirit in his artists. They'd alternate songs, two songs each, and Gordy would decide on the winner based on audience response. For the 1963 Motown Christmas party, it was Stevie versus Marvin. Wonder went first, with "Workout, Stevie, Workout", and was apparently impressive, but then Gaye topped him with a version of "Hitch-Hike". So Stevie had to top that, and apparently did, with a hugely extended version of "I Call it Pretty Music", reworked in the Ray Charles style he'd used for "Fingertips". So Marvin Gaye had to top that with the final song of the contest, and he did, performing "Stubborn Kind of Fellow": [Excerpt: Marvin Gaye, "Stubborn Kind of Fellow"] And he was great. So great, it turned the crowd against him. They started booing, and someone in the audience shouted "Marvin, you should be ashamed of yourself, taking advantage of a little blind kid!" The crowd got so hostile Berry Gordy had to stop the performance and end the party early. He never had another contest like that again. There were other problems, as well. Wonder had been assigned a tutor, a young man named Ted Hull, who began to take serious control over his life. Hull was legally blind, so could teach Wonder using Braille, but unlike Wonder had some sight -- enough that he was even able to get a drivers' license and a co-pilot license for planes. Hull was put in loco parentis on most of Stevie's tours, and soon became basically inseparable from him, but this caused a lot of problems, not least because Hull was a conservative white man, while almost everyone else at Motown was Black, and Stevie was socially liberal and on the side of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam movements. Hull started to collaborate on songwriting with Wonder, which most people at Motown were OK with but which now seems like a serious conflict of interest, and he also started calling himself Stevie's "manager" -- which did *not* impress the people at Motown, who had their own conflict of interest because with Stevie, like with all their artists, they were his management company and agents as well as his record label and publishers. Motown grudgingly tolerated Hull, though, mostly because he was someone they could pass Lula Mae Hardaway to to deal with her complaints. Stevie's mother was not very impressed with the way that Motown were handling her son, and would make her opinion known to anyone who would listen. Hull and Hardaway did not get on at all, but he could be relied on to save the Gordy family members from having to deal with her. Wonder was sent over to Europe for Christmas 1963, to perform shows at the Paris Olympia and do some British media appearances. But both his mother and Hull had come along, and their clear dislike for each other was making him stressed. He started to get pains in his throat whenever he sang -- pains which everyone assumed were a stress reaction to the unhealthy atmosphere that happened whenever Hull and his mother were in the same room together, but which later turned out to be throat nodules that required surgery. Because of this, his singing was generally not up to standard, which meant he was moved to a less prominent place on the bill, which in turn led to his mother accusing the Gordy family of being against him and trying to stop him becoming a star. Wonder started to take her side and believe that Motown were conspiring against him, and at one point he even "accidentally" dropped a bottle of wine on Ted Hull's foot, breaking one of his toes, because he saw Hull as part of the enemy that was Motown. Before leaving for those shows, he had recorded the album he later considered the worst of his career. While he was now just plain Stevie on albums, he wasn't for his single releases, or in his first film appearance, where he was still Little Stevie Wonder. Berry Gordy was already trying to get a foot in the door in Hollywood -- by the end of the decade Motown would be moving from Detroit to LA -- and his first real connections there were with American International Pictures, the low-budget film-makers who have come up a lot in connection with the LA scene. AIP were the producers of the successful low-budget series of beach party films, which combined appearances by teen heartthrobs Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello in swimsuits with cameo appearances by old film stars fallen on hard times, and with musical performances by bands like the Bobby Fuller Four. There would be a couple of Motown connections to these films -- most notably, the Supremes would do the theme tune for Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine -- but Muscle Beach Party was to be the first. Most of the music for Muscle Beach Party was written by Brian Wilson, Roger Christian, and Gary Usher, as one might expect for a film about surfing, and was performed by Dick Dale and the Del-Tones, the film's major musical guests, with Annette, Frankie, and Donna Loren [pron Lorren] adding vocals, on songs like "Muscle Bustle": [Excerpt: Donna Loren with Dick Dale and the Del-Tones, "Muscle Bustle"] The film followed the formula in every way -- it also had a cameo appearance by Peter Lorre, his last film appearance before his death, and it featured Little Stevie Wonder playing one of the few songs not written by the surf and car writers, a piece of nothing called "Happy Street". Stevie also featured in the follow-up, Bikini Beach, which came out a little under four months later, again doing a single number, "Happy Feelin'". To cash in on his appearances in these films, and having tried releasing albums of Little Stevie as jazz multi-instrumentalist, Ray Charles tribute act, live soulman and Andy Williams-style crooner, they now decided to see if they could sell him as a surf singer. Or at least, as Motown's idea of a surf singer, which meant a lot of songs about the beach and the sea -- mostly old standards like "Red Sails in the Sunset" and "Ebb Tide" -- backed by rather schlocky Wrecking Crew arrangements. And this is as good a place as any to take on one of the bits of disinformation that goes around about Motown. I've addressed this before, but it's worth repeating here in slightly more detail. Carol Kaye, one of the go-to Wrecking Crew bass players, is a known credit thief, and claims to have played on hundreds of records she didn't -- claims which too many people take seriously because she is a genuine pioneer and was for a long time undercredited on many records she *did* play on. In particular, she claims to have played on almost all the classic Motown hits that James Jamerson of the Funk Brothers played on, like the title track for this episode, and she claims this despite evidence including notarised statements from everyone involved in the records, the release of session recordings that show producers talking to the Funk Brothers, and most importantly the evidence of the recordings themselves, which have all the characteristics of the Detroit studio and sound like the Funk Brothers playing, and have absolutely nothing in common, sonically, with the records the Wrecking Crew played on at Gold Star, Western, and other LA studios. The Wrecking Crew *did* play on a lot of Motown records, but with a handful of exceptions, mostly by Brenda Holloway, the records they played on were quickie knock-off album tracks and potboiler albums made to tie in with film or TV work -- soundtracks to TV specials the acts did, and that kind of thing. And in this case, the Wrecking Crew played on the entire Stevie at the Beach album, including the last single to be released as by "Little Stevie Wonder", "Castles in the Sand", which was arranged by Jack Nitzsche: [Excerpt: Little Stevie Wonder, "Castles in the Sand"] Apparently the idea of surfin' Stevie didn't catch on any more than that of swingin' Stevie had earlier. Indeed, throughout 1964 and 65 Motown seem to have had less than no idea what they were doing with Stevie Wonder, and he himself refers to all his recordings from this period as an embarrassment, saving particular scorn for the second single from Stevie at the Beach, "Hey Harmonica Man", possibly because that, unlike most of his other singles around this point, was a minor hit, reaching number twenty-nine on the charts. Motown were still pushing Wonder hard -- he even got an appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in May 1964, only the second Motown act to appear on it after the Marvelettes -- but Wonder was getting more and more unhappy with the decisions they were making. He loathed the Stevie at the Beach album -- the records he'd made earlier, while patchy and not things he'd chosen, were at least in some way related to his musical interests. He *did* love jazz, and he *did* love Ray Charles, and he *did* love old standards, and the records were made by his friend Clarence Paul and with the studio musicians he'd grown to know in Detroit. But Stevie at the Beach was something that was imposed on Clarence Paul from above, it was cut with unfamiliar musicians, Stevie thought the films he was appearing in were embarrassing, and he wasn't even having much commercial success, which was the whole point of these compromises. He started to get more rebellious against Paul in the studio, though many of these decisions weren't made by Paul, and he would complain to anyone who would listen that if he was just allowed to do the music he wanted to sing, the way he wanted to sing it, he would have more hits. But for nine months he did basically no singing other than that Ed Sullivan Show appearance -- he had to recover from the operation to remove the throat nodules. When he did return to the studio, the first single he cut remained unreleased, and while some stuff from the archives was released between the start of 1964 and March 1965, the first single he recorded and released after the throat nodules, "Kiss Me Baby", which came out in March, was a complete flop. That single was released to coincide with the first Motown tour of Europe, which we looked at in the episode on "Stop! In the Name of Love", and which was mostly set up to promote the Supremes, but which also featured Martha and the Vandellas, the Miracles, and the Temptations. Even though Stevie had not had a major hit in eighteen months by this point, he was still brought along on the tour, the only solo artist to be included -- at this point Gordy thought that solo artists looked outdated compared to vocal groups, in a world dominated by bands, and so other solo artists like Marvin Gaye weren't invited. This was a sign that Gordy was happier with Stevie than his recent lack of chart success might suggest. One of the main reasons that Gordy had been in two minds about him was that he'd had no idea if Wonder would still be able to sing well after his voice broke. But now, as he was about to turn fifteen, his adult voice had more or less stabilised, and Gordy knew that he was capable of having a long career, if they just gave him the proper material. But for now his job on the tour was to do his couple of hits, smile, and be on the lower rungs of the ladder. But even that was still a prominent place to be given the scaled-down nature of this bill compared to the Motortown Revues. While the tour was in England, for example, Dusty Springfield presented a TV special focusing on all the acts on the tour, and while the Supremes were the main stars, Stevie got to do two songs, and also took part in the finale, a version of "Mickey's Monkey" led by Smokey Robinson but with all the performers joining in, with Wonder getting a harmonica solo: [Excerpt: Smokey Robinson and the Motown acts, "Mickey's Monkey"] Sadly, there was one aspect of the trip to the UK that was extremely upsetting for Wonder. Almost all the media attention he got -- which was relatively little, as he wasn't a Supreme -- was about his blindness, and one reporter in particular convinced him that there was an operation he could have to restore his sight, but that Motown were preventing him from finding out about it in order to keep his gimmick going. He was devastated about this, and then further devastated when Ted Hull finally convinced him that it wasn't true, and that he'd been lied to. Meanwhile other newspapers were reporting that he *could* see, and that he was just feigning blindness to boost his record sales. After the tour, a live recording of Wonder singing the blues standard "High Heeled Sneakers" was released as a single, and barely made the R&B top thirty, and didn't hit the top forty on the pop charts. Stevie's initial contract with Motown was going to expire in the middle of 1966, so there was a year to get him back to a point where he was having the kind of hits that other Motown acts were regularly getting at this point. Otherwise, it looked like his career might end by the time he was sixteen. The B-side to "High Heeled Sneakers" was another duet with Clarence Paul, who dominates the vocal sound for much of it -- a version of Willie Nelson's country classic "Funny How Time Slips Away": [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder and Clarence Paul, "Funny How Time Slips Away"] There are a few of these duet records scattered through Wonder's early career -- we'll hear another one a little later -- and they're mostly dismissed as Paul trying to muscle his way into a revival of his own recording career as an artist, and there may be some truth in that. But they're also a natural extension of the way the two of them worked in the studio. Motown didn't have the facilities to give Wonder Braille lyric sheets, and Paul didn't trust him to be able to remember the lyrics, so often when they made a record, Paul would be just off-mic, reciting the lyrics to Wonder fractionally ahead of him singing them. So it was more or less natural that this dynamic would leak out onto records, but not everyone saw it that way. But at the same time, there has been some suggestion that Paul was among those manoeuvring to get rid of Wonder from Motown as soon as his contract was finished -- despite the fact that Wonder was the only act Paul had worked on any big hits for. Either way, Paul and Wonder were starting to chafe at working with each other in the studio, and while Paul remained his on-stage musical director, the opportunity to work on Wonder's singles for what would surely be his last few months at Motown was given to Hank Cosby and Sylvia Moy. Cosby was a saxophone player and staff songwriter who had been working with Wonder and Paul for years -- he'd co-written "Fingertips" and several other tracks -- while Moy was a staff songwriter who was working as an apprentice to Cosby. Basically, at this point, nobody else wanted the job of writing for Wonder, and as Moy was having no luck getting songs cut by any other artists and her career was looking about as dead as Wonder's, they started working together. Wonder was, at this point, full of musical ideas but with absolutely no discipline. He's said in interviews that at this point he was writing a hundred and fifty songs a month, but these were often not full songs -- they were fragments, hooks, or a single verse, or a few lines, which he would pass on to Moy, who would turn his ideas into structured songs that fit the Motown hit template, usually with the assistance of Cosby. Then Cosby would come up with an arrangement, and would co-produce with Mickey Stevenson. The first song they came up with in this manner was a sign of how Wonder was looking outside the world of Motown to the rock music that was starting to dominate the US charts -- but which was itself inspired by Motown music. We heard in the last episode on the Rolling Stones how "Nowhere to Run" by the Vandellas: [Excerpt: Martha and the Vandellas, "Nowhere to Run"] had inspired the Stones' "Satisfaction": [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"] And Wonder in turn was inspired by "Satisfaction" to come up with his own song -- though again, much of the work making it into an actual finished song was done by Sylvia Moy. They took the four-on-the-floor beat and basic melody of "Satisfaction" and brought it back to Motown, where those things had originated -- though they hadn't originated with Stevie, and this was his first record to sound like a Motown record in the way we think of those things. As a sign of how, despite the way these stories are usually told, the histories of rock and soul were completely and complexly intertwined, that four-on-the-floor beat itself was a conscious attempt by Holland, Dozier, and Holland to appeal to white listeners -- on the grounds that while Black people generally clapped on the backbeat, white people didn't, and so having a four-on-the-floor beat wouldn't throw them off. So Cosby, Moy, and Wonder, in trying to come up with a "Satisfaction" soundalike were Black Motown writers trying to copy a white rock band trying to copy Black Motown writers trying to appeal to a white rock audience. Wonder came up with the basic chorus hook, which was based around a lot of current slang terms he was fond of: [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "Uptight"] Then Moy, with some assistance from Cosby, filled it out into a full song. Lyrically, it was as close to social comment as Motown had come at this point -- Wonder was, like many of his peers in soul music, interested in the power of popular music to make political statements, and he would become a much more political artist in the next few years, but at this point it's still couched in the acceptable boy-meets-girl romantic love song that Motown specialised in. But in 1965 a story about a boy from the wrong side of the tracks dating a rich girl inevitably raised the idea that the boy and girl might be of different races -- a subject that was very, very, controversial in the mid-sixties. [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "Uptight"] "Uptight" made number three on the pop charts and number one on the R&B charts, and saved Stevie Wonder's career. And this is where, for all that I've criticised Motown in this episode, their strategy paid off. Mickey Stevenson talked a lot about how in the early sixties Motown didn't give up on artists -- if someone had potential but was not yet having hits or finding the right approach, they would keep putting out singles in a holding pattern, trying different things and seeing what would work, rather than toss them aside. It had already worked for the Temptations and the Supremes, and now it had worked for Stevie Wonder. He would be the last beneficiary of this policy -- soon things would change, and Motown would become increasingly focused on trying to get the maximum returns out of a small number of stars, rather than building careers for a range of artists -- but it paid off brilliantly for Wonder. "Uptight" was such a reinvention of Wonder's career, sound, and image that many of his fans consider it the real start of his career -- everything before it only counting as prologue. The follow-up, "Nothing's Too Good For My Baby", was an "Uptight" soundalike, and as with Motown soundalike follow-ups in general, it didn't do quite as well, but it still made the top twenty on the pop chart and got to number four on the R&B chart. Stevie Wonder was now safe at Motown, and so he was going to do something no other Motown act had ever done before -- he was going to record a protest song and release it as a single. For about a year he'd been ending his shows with a version of Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind", sung as a duet with Clarence Paul, who was still his on stage bandleader even though the two weren't working together in the studio as much. Wonder brought that into the studio, and recorded it with Paul back as the producer, and as his duet partner. Berry Gordy wasn't happy with the choice of single, but Wonder pushed, and Gordy knew that Wonder was on a winning streak and gave in, and so "Blowin' in the Wind" became Stevie Wonder's next single: [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder and Clarence Paul, "Blowin' in the Wind"] "Blowin' in the Wind" made the top ten, and number one on the R&B charts, and convinced Gordy that there was some commercial potential in going after the socially aware market, and over the next few years Motown would start putting out more and more political records. Because Motown convention was to have the producer of a hit record produce the next hit for that artist, and keep doing so until they had a flop, Paul was given the opportunity to produce the next single. "A Place in the Sun" was another ambiguously socially-aware song, co-written by the only white writer on Motown staff, Ron Miller, who happened to live in the same building as Stevie's tutor-cum-manager Ted Hull. "A Place in the Sun" was a pleasant enough song, inspired by "A Change is Gonna Come", but with a more watered-down, generic, message of hope, but the record was lifted by Stevie's voice, and again made the top ten. This meant that Paul and Miller, and Miller's writing partner Bryan Mills, got to work on his next  two singles -- his 1966 Christmas song "Someday at Christmas", which made number twenty-four, and the ballad "Travellin' Man" which made thirty-two. The downward trajectory with Paul meant that Wonder was soon working with other producers again. Harvey Fuqua and Johnny Bristol cut another Miller and Mills song with him, "Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday": [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday"] But that was left in the can, as not good enough to release, and Stevie was soon back working with Cosby. The two of them had come up with an instrumental together in late 1966, but had not been able to come up with any words for it, so they played it for Smokey Robinson, who said their instrumental sounded like circus music, and wrote lyrics about a clown: [Excerpt: The Miracles, "The Tears of a Clown"] The Miracles cut that as album filler, but it was released three years later as a single and became the Miracles' only number one hit with Smokey Robinson as lead singer. So Wonder and Cosby definitely still had their commercial touch, even if their renewed collaboration with Moy, who they started working with again, took a while to find a hit. To start with, Wonder returned to the idea of taking inspiration from a hit by a white British group, as he had with "Uptight". This time it was the Beatles, and the track "Michelle", from the Rubber Soul album: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Michelle"] Wonder took the idea of a song with some French lyrics, and a melody with some similarities to the Beatles song, and came up with "My Cherie Amour", which Cosby and Moy finished off. [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "My Cherie Amour"] Gordy wouldn't allow that to be released, saying it was too close to "Michelle" and people would think it was a rip-off, and it stayed in the vaults for several years. Cosby also produced a version of a song Ron Miller had written with Orlando Murden, "For Once in My Life", which pretty much every other Motown act was recording versions of -- the Four Tops, the Temptations, Billy Eckstine, Martha and the Vandellas and Barbra McNair all cut versions of it in 1967, and Gordy wouldn't let Wonder's version be put out either. So they had to return to the drawing board. But in truth, Stevie Wonder was not the biggest thing worrying Berry Gordy at this point. He was dealing with problems in the Supremes, which we'll look at in a future episode -- they were about to get rid of Florence Ballard, and thus possibly destroy one of the biggest acts in the world, but Gordy thought that if they *didn't* get rid of her they would be destroying themselves even more certainly. Not only that, but Gordy was in the midst of a secret affair with Diana Ross, Holland, Dozier, and Holland were getting restless about their contracts, and his producers kept bringing him unlistenable garbage that would never be a hit. Like Norman Whitfield, insisting that this track he'd cut with Marvin Gaye, "I Heard it Through the Grapevine", should be a single. Gordy had put his foot down about that one too, just like he had about "My Cherie Amour", and wouldn't allow it to be released. Meanwhile, many of the smaller acts on the label were starting to feel like they were being ignored by Gordy, and had formed what amounted to a union, having regular meetings at Clarence Paul's house to discuss how they could pressure the label to put the same effort into their careers as into those of the big stars. And the Funk Brothers, the musicians who played on all of Motown's hits, were also getting restless -- they contributed to the arrangements, and they did more for the sound of the records than half the credited producers; why weren't they getting production credits and royalties? Harvey Fuqua had divorced Gordy's sister Gwen, and so became persona non grata at the label and was in the process of leaving Motown, and so was Mickey Stevenson, Gordy's second in command, because Gordy wouldn't give him any stock in the company. And Detroit itself was on edge. The crime rate in the city had started to go up, but even worse, the *perception* of crime was going up. The Detroit News had been running a campaign to whip up fear, which it called its Secret Witness campaign, and running constant headlines about rapes, murders, and muggings. These in turn had led to increased calls for more funds for the police, calls which inevitably contained a strong racial element and at least implicitly linked the perceived rise in crime to the ongoing Civil Rights movement. At this point the police in Detroit were ninety-three percent white, even though Detroit's population was over thirty percent Black. The Mayor and Police Commissioner were trying to bring in some modest reforms, but they weren't going anywhere near fast enough for the Black population who felt harassed and attacked by the police, but were still going too fast for the white people who were being whipped up into a state of terror about supposedly soft-on-crime policies, and for the police who felt under siege and betrayed by the politicians. And this wasn't the only problem affecting the city, and especially affecting Black people. Redlining and underfunded housing projects meant that the large Black population was being crammed into smaller and smaller spaces with fewer local amenities. A few Black people who were lucky enough to become rich -- many of them associated with Motown -- were able to move into majority-white areas, but that was just leading to white flight, and to an increase in racial tensions. The police were on edge after the murder of George Overman Jr, the son of a policeman, and though they arrested the killers that was just another sign that they weren't being shown enough respect. They started organising "blu flu"s -- the police weren't allowed to strike, so they'd claim en masse that they were off sick, as a protest against the supposed soft-on-crime administration. Meanwhile John Sinclair was organising "love-ins", gatherings of hippies at which new bands like the MC5 played, which were being invaded by gangs of bikers who were there to beat up the hippies. And the Detroit auto industry was on its knees -- working conditions had got bad enough that the mostly Black workforce organised a series of wildcat strikes. All in all, Detroit was looking less and less like somewhere that Berry Gordy wanted to stay, and the small LA subsidiary of Motown was rapidly becoming, in his head if nowhere else, the more important part of the company, and its future. He was starting to think that maybe he should leave all these ungrateful people behind in their dangerous city, and move the parts of the operation that actually mattered out to Hollywood. Stevie Wonder was, of course, one of the parts that mattered, but the pressure was on in 1967 to come up with a hit as big as his records from 1965 and early 66, before he'd been sidetracked down the ballad route. The song that was eventually released was one on which Stevie's mother, Lula Mae Hardaway, had a co-writing credit: [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "I Was Made to Love Her"] "I Was Made to Love Her" was inspired by Wonder's first love, a girl from the same housing projects as him, and he talked about the song being special to him because it was true, saying it "kind of speaks of my first love to a girl named Angie, who was a very beautiful woman... Actually, she was my third girlfriend but my first love. I used to call Angie up and, like, we would talk and say, 'I love you, I love you,' and we'd talk and we'd both go to sleep on the phone. And this was like from Detroit to California, right? You know, mother said, 'Boy, what you doing - get off the phone!' Boy, I tell you, it was ridiculous." But while it was inspired by her, like with many of the songs from this period, much of the lyric came from Moy -- her mother grew up in Arkansas, and that's why the lyric started "I was born in Little Rock", as *her* inspiration came from stories told by her parents. But truth be told, the lyrics weren't particularly detailed or impressive, just a standard story of young love. Rather what mattered in the record was the music. The song was structured differently from many Motown records, including most of Wonder's earlier ones. Most Motown records had a huge amount of dynamic variation, and a clear demarcation between verse and chorus. Even a record like "Dancing in the Street", which took most of its power from the tension and release caused by spending most of the track on one chord, had the release that came with the line "All we need is music", and could be clearly subdivided into different sections. "I Was Made to Love Her" wasn't like that. There was a tiny section which functioned as a middle eight -- and which cover versions like the one by the Beach Boys later that year tend to cut out, because it disrupts the song's flow: [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "I Was Made to Love Her"] But other than that, the song has no verse or chorus, no distinct sections, it's just a series of lyrical couplets over the same four chords, repeating over and over, an incessant groove that could really go on indefinitely: [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "I Was Made to Love Her"] This is as close as Motown had come at this point to the new genre of funk, of records that were just staying with one groove throughout. It wasn't a funk record, not yet -- it was still a pop-soul record, But what made it extraordinary was the bass line, and this is why I had to emphasise earlier that this was a record by the Funk Brothers, not the Wrecking Crew, no matter how much some Crew members may claim otherwise. As on most of Cosby's sessions, James Jamerson was given free reign to come up with his own part with little guidance, and what he came up with is extraordinary. This was at a time when rock and pop basslines were becoming a little more mobile, thanks to the influence of Jamerson in Detroit, Brian Wilson in LA, and Paul McCartney in London.  But for the most part, even those bass parts had been fairly straightforward technically -- often inventive, but usually just crotchets and quavers, still keeping rhythm along with the drums rather than in dialogue with them, roaming free rhythmically. Jamerson had started to change his approach, inspired by the change in studio equipment. Motown had upgraded to eight-track recording in 1965, and once he'd become aware of the possibilities, and of the greater prominence that his bass parts could have if they were recorded on their own track, Jamerson had become a much busier player. Jamerson was a jazz musician by inclination, and so would have been very aware of John Coltrane's legendary "sheets of sound", in which Coltrane would play fast arpeggios and scales, in clusters of five and seven notes, usually in semiquaver runs (though sometimes in even smaller fractions -- his solo in Miles Davis' "Straight, No Chaser" is mostly semiquavers but has a short passage in hemidemisemiquavers): [Excerpt: Miles Davis, "Straight, No Chaser"] Jamerson started to adapt the "sheets of sound" style to bass playing, treating the bass almost as a jazz solo instrument -- though unlike Coltrane he was also very, very concerned with creating something that people could tap their feet to. Much like James Brown, Jamerson was taking jazz techniques and repurposing them for dance music. The most notable example of that up to this point had been in the Four Tops' "Bernadette", where there are a few scuffling semiquaver runs thrown in, and which is a much more fluid part than most of his playing previously: [Excerpt: The Four Tops, "Bernadette"] But on "Bernadette", Jamerson had been limited by Holland, Dozier, and Holland, who liked him to improvise but around a framework they created. Cosby, on the other hand, because he had been a Funk Brother himself, was much more aware of the musicians' improvisational abilities, and would largely give them a free hand. This led to a truly remarkable bass part on "I Was Made to Love Her", which is somewhat buried in the single mix, but Marcus Miller did an isolated recreation of the part for the accompanying CD to a book on Jamerson, Standing in the Shadows of Motown, and listening to that you can hear just how inventive it is: [Excerpt: Marcus Miller, "I Was Made to Love Her"] This was exciting stuff -- though much less so for the touring musicians who went on the road with the Motown revues while Jamerson largely stayed in Detroit recording. Jamerson's family would later talk about him coming home grumbling because complaints from the touring musicians had been brought to him, and he'd been asked to play less difficult parts so they'd find it easier to replicate them on stage. "I Was Made to Love Her" wouldn't exist without Stevie Wonder, Hank Cosby, Sylvia Moy, or Lula Mae Hardaway, but it's James Jamerson's record through and through: [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "I Was Made to Love Her"] It went to number two on the charts, sat between "Light My Fire" at number one, and "All You Need is Love" at number three, with the Beatles song soon to overtake it and make number one itself. But within a few weeks of "I Was Made to Love Her" reaching its chart peak, things in Detroit would change irrevocably. On the 23rd of July, the police busted an illegal drinking den. They thought they were only going to get about twenty-five people there, but there turned out to be a big party on. They tried to arrest seventy-four people, but their wagon wouldn't fit them all in so they had to call reinforcements and make the arrestees wait around til more wagons arrived. A crowd of hundreds gathered while they were waiting. Someone threw a brick at a squad car window, a rumour went round that the police had bayonetted someone, and soon the city was in flames. Riots lasted for days, with people burning down and looting businesses, but what really made the situation bad was the police's overreaction. They basically started shooting at young Black men, using them as target practice, and later claiming they were snipers, arsonists, and looters -- but there were cases like the Algiers Motel incident, where the police raided a motel where several Black men, including the members of the soul group The Dramatics, were hiding out along with a few white women. The police sexually assaulted the women, and then killed three of the men for associating with white women, in what was described as a "lynching with bullets". The policemen in question were later acquitted of all charges. The National Guard were called in, as were Federal troops -- the 82nd Airborne Division, and the 101st Airborne from Clarksville, the division in which Jimi Hendrix had recently served. After four days of rioting, one of the bloodiest riots in US history was at an end, with forty-three people dead (of whom thirty-three were Black and only one was a policeman). Official counts had 1,189 people injured, and over 7,200 arrests, almost all of them of Black people. A lot of the histories written later say that Black-owned businesses were spared during the riots, but that wasn't really the case. For example, Joe's Record Shop, owned by Joe Von Battle, who had put out the first records by C.L. Franklin and his daughter Aretha, was burned down, destroying not only the stock of records for sale but the master tapes of hundreds of recordings of Black artists, many of them unreleased and so now lost forever. John Lee Hooker, one of the artists whose music Von Battle had released, soon put out a song, "The Motor City is Burning", about the events: [Excerpt: John Lee Hooker, "The Motor City is Burning"] But one business that did remain unburned was Motown, with the Hitsville studio going untouched by flames and unlooted. Motown legend has this being down to the rioters showing respect for the studio that had done so much for Detroit, but it seems likely to have just been luck. Although Motown wasn't completely unscathed -- a National Guard tank fired a shell through the building, leaving a gigantic hole, which Berry Gordy saw as soon as he got back from a business trip he'd been on during the rioting. That was what made Berry Gordy decide once and for all that things needed to change. Motown owned a whole row of houses near the studio, which they used as additional office space and for everything other than the core business of making records. Gordy immediately started to sell them, and move the admin work into temporary rented space. He hadn't announced it yet, and it would be a few years before the move was complete, but from that moment on, the die was cast. Motown was going to leave Detroit and move to Hollywood.

christmas tv love music women california history black europe hollywood earth uk man england fall change british french western detroit mayors wind blues sun vietnam run standing miracles tribute straight beatles beach dancing tears arkansas cd monkeys burning boy official shadows rolling stones federal pirates sand holland stones workout morris dedicated bob dylan supreme billboard sunsets djs civil rights riots satisfaction paul mccartney mills signed temptations stevie wonder aretha franklin my life jimi hendrix james brown motown beach boys national guard hull stevenson sealed marvin gaye someday paris olympics willie nelson cosby glover little rock miles davis roulette tilt ray charles diana ross korean war castles mixcloud airborne rock music motor city gold star john coltrane postman braille brian wilson supremes grapevine mind over matter smokey robinson airborne divisions copacabana gordy licks curtis mayfield clarksville all you need redlining saginaw coltrane blowin wrecking crew groovin dusty springfield aip andy williams fingertips detroit news gonna come four tops dozier john lee hooker ed sullivan show police commissioners mc5 berry gordy peter lorre lions club happy face dick dale marcus miller one i love hardaway lyrically rubber soul light my fire i heard no chaser moy dramatics american soul vandellas shirelles john glover hitchhike uptight royales ron miller annette funicello john sinclair lowman lamont dozier frankie avalon record shop dave thompson mary wells johnny ace marvelettes funk brothers jamerson travellin carol kaye young rascals brian holland frankie lymon billy eckstine james jamerson roger christian when you wish upon nelson george uncle ray to be loved king records ebb tide jazz soul motown sound how sweet it is bryan mills marilyn mccoo my show american international pictures i was made hitsville little stevie wonder lorren billy davis jr where did our love go i call bobby fuller four stuart cosgrove algiers motel bikini machine bikini beach red sails del tones joe swift muscle beach party donna loren craig werner mickey stevenson scott b bomar tilt araiza
Unscene Culture Classics
Episode 023 Why Do Fools Fall in Love - Sister Wives

Unscene Culture Classics

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 15, 2022 49:07


Shawn loves musicals, romance, and people crying, so it is time for Bradley to try out Why Do Fools Fall in Love. The movie stars Larenz Tate as Frankie Lymon and explores his life through the lens of 3 women claiming to be his wife. Let's see if this movie deserves more credit, or should remain Unscene.We discussThe best and worst parts of the movieMarriage LegitimacyDogs in Black MoviesMusic RightsAnd moreWhat did you think of the movie? Email us at UnsceneCC@gmail.com to let us know your thoughts on Why Do Fools Fall in Love and what other movies we should include in our journey!Enjoyed the episode? Let us know by leaving a review!

History & Factoids about today
Sept 30th-Chewing Gum, Johnny Mathis, T-Pain, Greg Brady, the Flintstones, Marty Stuart, Jenna Elfman

History & Factoids about today

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 30, 2022 13:00


Chewing Gum Day, Pop Culture 2011, James Dean died, 1st 747, Howdie Doodie goes off the air, the flintstones come on. Todays birthdays - Jenna Elfman, Frankie Lymon, Buddy Rich, Angie Dickinson, Deborah Allen, Fran Drescher, Marty Stuart, Johnny Mathis, Barry Williams, T-Pain

Siempre Pa'lante! Always Forward
2 - King of Latin Soul feat. Joe Bataan

Siempre Pa'lante! Always Forward

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 23, 2022 54:17


Bienvenido mi gente! to Season 2 of Siempre Pa'lante! Always Forward. I'm your host, Giraldo Luis Alvaré. Gracias for listening. In this episode, our guest has dedicated his life to music for more than 50 years. He is a self-taught musician who has earned every accolade that has come his way. From El Barrio in Nueva York to entertaining millions of fans around the world, Please welcome, the King of Latin Soul, Joe Bataan. Gracias for listening. Don't forget to rate, review, follow, subscribe, like and share. Check out my Linktree for more info. Aguacate! https://linktr.ee/sp.alwaysforward SPECIAL GUEST Joe Bataan Musician, Band Leader, Singer & Songwriter Joe Bataan site | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Youtube Joe Bataan site - https://www.joebataanmusic.com/ FB - https://www.facebook.com/joe.bataan IG - https://www.instagram.com/therealjoebataan/?hl=en Twitter - https://twitter.com/JOE_BATAAN YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3hEeXdGmXCK19HNso5epoA/featured NOTABLE MENTIONS El Barrio, New York, Nueva York, Streetology, Afro-Filipino, Puerto Ricans, Portoros, Spofford, Bridges Detention Center, Spirit, Health, Knowledge, Three notches above the rest, The Godfather, Machiavelli Theory, Latin Soul, Cinderella Story, Peace, Joe Cuba, Shaft, Isaac Hayes, La Lupe, Tito Puente, Triad, C Major, D Minor, E Minor, Ralfi Pagan, Saint Cecilia's Church, Saint Cecilia, Patron Saint of Music, Our Father, Lord's Prayer, Shanghai, Australia, Japan, France, Germany, Mother's Day, Marshall & Wendell Piano, West Coast, La Raza, Ballads, Uptempo, Davinci Code, James Brown, Smokey Robinson, Frankie Lymon, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Nat King Cole, Sammy Davis Jr., George Washington, Roosevelt, Pedro Albizu Campus, Cha-Cha-Cha, Mary Wells, Hector Rivera, Johnny Colon, Boogaloo, Ordinary Guy, Ricardo Ray, Chicago, R&B, Ghetto Records, Drug Story, Gypsy Women, Cotique Records, Morris Levy, Jerry Masucci, Boricua Theatre, Dick (Ricardo) Sugar, Johnny Pacheco, Red Garter, Marvin Gaye, Our Latin Thing, Fania, Sweet Soul, St. Latin's Day Massacre, Shea Stadium, Yankee Stadium, SalSoul, Rap-O-Clap-O, RCA Records, Larry Levan, Paradise Garage, El Avion, The Riot, Grace, Mercy, Peace --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/spalwaysforward/support

Rock N Roll Pantheon
Rock's Backpages E131: Robert Gordon on Memphis + Stax + ZZ Top + Robert Johnson

Rock N Roll Pantheon

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 16, 2022 78:57


In this episode we welcome the very engaging Robert Gordon "all the way from" his hometown of Memphis and ask him to talk about the music of his city from Sun and Stax to Alex Chilton and Big Star.Robert tells us about his childhood, along with the blues epiphany that was watching Furry Lewis support the Rolling Stones on the Memphis leg of their 1975 U.S. tour. Moving on to Stax, we look back at a great 1988 interview Robert did with the Memphis Horns' Andrew Love and Wayne Jackson — and then forward to the Wattstax festival, staged in L.A. 50 years ago this summer.Clips from the week's new audio interview — Tony Scherman asking Billy Gibbons about Robert Johnson — afford us the perfect excuse not just to discuss ZZ Top and their imminent new album but to revisit our guest's exhaustive 1991 essay on the "plundering" of Delta blues legend Johnson's estate.Mark talks us through a selection of newly-added library pieces about Frankie Lymon, Alma Cogan, San Francisco's Trips festival, Syreeta, Gang of Four and Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy. In the absence of a vacationing Jasper, Barney wraps things up with quotes from articles about rock scribe R(ichard) Meltzer, the Specials and — circling back to Stax — Booker T. Jones recalling co-writing Albert King's brooding 'Born Under a Bad Sign' with William Bell...Many thanks to special guest Robert Gordon; the 25th anniversary edition of It Came From Memphis is published by Third Man Books and available now. Visit his website at therobertgordon.com.Pieces discussed: The Memphis Horns, The plundering of Robert Johnson, It Came From Memphis, Wattstax, Wattstax, Wattstax, Billy Gibbons audio, Frankie Lymon, Andrew Loog Oldham, Syreeta, Punk magazine, XTC, Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy, Alma Cogan, Trips Festival, Sly Stone, Gang of Four, Richard Meltzer, The Specials and Booker T. Jones.

Rock's Backpages
E131: Robert Gordon on Memphis + Stax + ZZ Top + Robert Johnson

Rock's Backpages

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 11, 2022 78:57


In this episode we welcome the very engaging Robert Gordon "all the way from" his hometown of Memphis and ask him to talk about the music of his city from Sun and Stax to Alex Chilton and Big Star.Robert tells us about his childhood, along with the blues epiphany that was watching Furry Lewis support the Rolling Stones on the Memphis leg of their 1975 U.S. tour. Moving on to Stax, we look back at a great 1988 interview Robert did with the Memphis Horns' Andrew Love and Wayne Jackson — and then forward to the Wattstax festival, staged in L.A. 50 years ago this summer.Clips from the week's new audio interview — Tony Scherman asking Billy Gibbons about Robert Johnson — afford us the perfect excuse not just to discuss ZZ Top and their imminent new album but to revisit our guest's exhaustive 1991 essay on the "plundering" of Delta blues legend Johnson's estate.Mark talks us through a selection of newly-added library pieces about Frankie Lymon, Alma Cogan, San Francisco's Trips festival, Syreeta, Gang of Four and Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy. In the absence of a vacationing Jasper, Barney wraps things up with quotes from articles about rock scribe R(ichard) Meltzer, the Specials and — circling back to Stax — Booker T. Jones recalling co-writing Albert King's brooding 'Born Under a Bad Sign' with William Bell...Many thanks to special guest Robert Gordon; the 25th anniversary edition of It Came From Memphis is published by Third Man Books and available now. Visit his website at therobertgordon.com.Pieces discussed: The Memphis Horns, The plundering of Robert Johnson, It Came From Memphis, Wattstax, Wattstax, Wattstax, Billy Gibbons audio, Frankie Lymon, Andrew Loog Oldham, Syreeta, Punk magazine, XTC, Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy, Alma Cogan, Trips Festival, Sly Stone, Gang of Four, Richard Meltzer, The Specials and Booker T. Jones.

Celebrity Underrated
114: Accidental Demise - The Frankie Lymon Story

Celebrity Underrated

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 5, 2022 39:53


Celebrity Underrated chronicles the lives and deaths of entertainers, sports figures, world leaders, and others both famous and infamous. The channel highlights their background and upbringing, their rise to fame, their trials and tribulations, and the often mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of the deceased. Donate to Cash App: https://cash.me/$celebrityunderrated Exclusive Content: https://www.patreon.com/celebrityunde... Clothing Store:  teespring.com/stores/celebrity-underr... Business Inquiries: celebrityunderratedtv@gmail.com https://twitter.com/celebrityunderrated https://www.instagram.com/celebrityun...

Building Abundant Success!!© with Sabrina-Marie
Episode 2276: Charlie Ingui of The Soul Suvivors ~ "Expressway to Your Heart", Philadelphia International's #1 Major Music Hit Breakthru Pt 1

Building Abundant Success!!© with Sabrina-Marie

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 2, 2022 43:41


Gamble & Huff, Philadelphia International Rock & Soul Classic  Charlie Ingui,  Original Lead Vocalist still records & tours  go check him out! ~ thesoulsurvivors.comR.I.P. Ritchie Ingui, original vocal half of the Soul Survivors. He transitioned in early 2017.Original group member Kenny Jeremiah Transitioned in December of 2020. Memorable Intro, AWESOME Classic Hit, a Kenny Gamble &Leon Huff hit that Helped launch the Legendary Philadelphia International Record Label. I am a Music Lover of All Styles, Generations. This Week I Flashback....... The Soul Survivors, originally from New York City, grew up listening to the R & B groups of the 1950's. The sounds of groups like the Moonglows, Heartbeats, and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers had a great influence on brothers Charlie and Rich Ingui. With various street corner groups, they developed their vocal skills. While in high school, Charlie joined the vocal group from Queens, N.Y. the Dedications. When, a year later the group's lead singer decided to leave, brother Rich was recruited. While performing at clubs in the New York area, they found themselves at the mercy of various house bands and decided to find a group of musicians who would become permanent members of the group therefore creating a self contained unit. The group would be renamed THE SOUL SURVIVORS. Shortly thereafter, the group began to build a strong following, playing venues in Atlantic City and Philadelphia. Enjoying great success in Philadelphia, they attracted the attention of record producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. Into the recording studio they went, emerging with " Expressway To Your Heart " a song that would climb to #3 on Billboard's R&B chart and #4 on it's Top 100 list. The success of " Expressway " became Gamble and Huff's first "crossover" hit when it began to be played on both black and white radio stations. It's success enabled Gamble and Huff to reach the large audiences they sought in order to bring their " Sound Of Philadelphia " to the mass Market. In polls taken by both the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia's City Paper, " Expressway" was voted the number one record ever to come out of Philadelphia. "Expressway " was followed by two other chart records, "Explosion In My Soul" and " Mission Impossible". Their first album, released in 1968, was " When The Whistle Blows ". A second LP, on Atco Records, called "Take Another Look" appeared in 1969. During this time, the group toured extensively throughout the U.S. appearing with many different types of artists...everyone from Jackie Wilson, Smokey Robinson and The Miracles to Janis Joplin, the Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield, Sly and the Family Stone and countless others. In 1974, the Soul Survivors reunited with Gamble and Huff to record their self titled album "The Soul Survivors" on TSOP Records. It was written and performed in a style that would define the unique sound of The Soul Survivors.The album produced "City Of Brotherly Love" which would show up on Billboard's R&B Top 100 and become the group's fourth charted outing. Through the years, the Soul Survivors have continued to provide audiences with high energy performances and music that is timeless and authentic ,appearing with 60's contemporaries Felix Cavaliere's Rascals. the Turtles,the Association, as well as fellow TSOP artists Harold Melvin's Bluenotes,Billy Paul, the Intruders, Russell Thompkins' Stylistics and others. The group's CD is called " Heart Full of Soul ", produced by Grammy nominated producers Jimmy Bralower and Johnny Gale.The Soul Survivors recorded new music and covers several years ago, most recently working with David Uosikkinen of The Hooters and his project "In the Pocket" which is paying tribute to the vast catalog of music created in Philadelphia.© 2022 All Rights Reserved© 2022 Building Abundant Success!!Join Me on ~ iHeart Radio @ https://tinyurl.com/iHeartBASSpot Me on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/yxuy23baAmazon Music ~ https://tinyurl.com/AmzBAS 

Deep Dive Divas
009: Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers

Deep Dive Divas

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 21, 2022 49:20


I SAW THE GAME. Discography Developing Diva: Canid Support the Show DDD Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers Playlist Citations: Altman, Billy. "Brooklyn: A State of Mind." Workman Publishing. January 1, 2001. 158. Diana. "Frankie Lymon Was Scandalous: Dancing With A White Girl." Oldies Music Blog. January 3, 2014. Fontenot, Robert. "Doo-Wop's Boy Band: Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers." liveabout. May 24, 2019. Goldberg, Marv. "The Teenagers." Unca Marvy's. February 10, 2005. Johnson, Gary. "Frankie Lymon's Tombstone." Michigan Rock and Roll Legends. March 24, 2021. Kinnon, Joy Bennett. "Why Do Fools Fall In Love? Widow recalls life with Frankie Lymon." Ebony. December 1998. MacGregor, Jeff. "Teen Idol Frankie Lymon's Tragic Rise and Fall Tells the Truth About 1950s America." Smithsonian Magazine. January 2018. Myers, Marc. "Moondog's Final Sign Off." Wall Street Journal. January 19, 2015. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Ian Talks Comedy
Kenny Vance

Ian Talks Comedy

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 29, 2022 61:47


Mr. Vance joined James Stephens and I to discuss the ubiquity of "Eddie and the Cruisers"; his early influences; Alan Freed; rock 'n' roll; Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers; buying 45's; being one of the first modern "teenagers"; singing doo wop on the corner; Brill Building; doo wop and rap being music movements that started on the street; Jay and the Americans opens for The Beatles and The Rolling Stones; Jay and the Americans were one of three American bands that survived the British invasion (with The Beach Boys and The Four Seasons); "This Magic Moment", their biggest hit was in 1969; Steely Dan started as their backup band; performed as musical guest on SNL in 1977 singing "The Performer"; hiring Leon Pendarvis to the band; writing the new opening and closing themes; putting together a new SNL band; Eric Mercury; performing on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson in 1962; Captain Beefheart; James Brown; Woody Allen; Tracey Ullman; Rachel Sweet and Hairspray; Animal House, recording "Louie, Louie" with John Belushi

Chubstep
#354: Steed Palomino and the Stepagers

Chubstep

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 21, 2022 39:24


Jrad and Steed are back to discuss why commercial spokespeople annoy them, the wild 3 marriage love life and posthumus legal issues of Frankie Lymon in ‘Chubistory', if American men are becoming weak, if taller people like milk more, a large lame ruby in ‘Tanzania News', celebrities that have an erotic past, finding out you're not as attractive as you thought, and ‘Joanne Brown is Here' in the ‘Jeff Goldblum Movie Review'

Five Song Mixtape
Don't be a Square. Time for the 50's

Five Song Mixtape

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 18, 2022 85:52


Welcome to the Five Song Mixtape! This week we discuss the mixtape titled “Don't be a Square. Time for the 50's” by RJ. You can find the playlist by following our account on Spotify @FiveSongMixtape or you can find us on Instagram @FiveSongMixtape. We would love to hear your thoughts on the playlist and please give us a rating via iTunes to help spread the word!“Don't be a Square. Time for the 50's” by RJ 1. “Lovers Who Wander” by Dion2. “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” by Frankie Lymon, The Teenagers3. “Rockin' Robin” by Bobby Day4. “Yakety Yak” by The Coasters5. “Ling Ting Tong” by The Five Keys See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Deeper Roots Radio Podcast
Episode 113: Fool's Day

Deeper Roots Radio Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 2, 2022 118:24


It's a fool's paradise for all of us as April Fool's Day lands on a day where Deeper Roots debuts a new episode. So why not take advantage, I say! We'll fill the airwaves today with songs about fools today and add a garnish of novelty to keep the show moving on notes that are as light as air. Foolish hearts, king of fools, poor little fools, and fools who fall in love. We'll be featuring a blend of country from Charlie Rich and Dwight Yoakam, blues with Etta James and Delbert McClinton, vocals from The Cadillacs and Frankie Lymon, and the so many more on this April Fool's Day, 2022. Come on along…and don't forget that tomorrow is the annual April Fool's Day Parade in Occidental, home to KOWS.

Andrew's Daily Five
The Greatest Songs of the 50's: Episode 17

Andrew's Daily Five

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 22, 2022 12:03


#20-16Intro/Outro: Move It by Cliff Richard & the Drifters20. Mack the Knife by Bobby Darin19. Peggy Sue by Buddy Holly18. Wake Up Little Susie by The Everly Brothers17. That'll Be the Day by The Crickets16. Why Do Fools Fall in Love by Frankie Lymon & the TeenagersVote on your favorite song from today's episodeVote on your favorite song from Week 3

Music History Today
Music History Today Podcast February 28

Music History Today

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 28, 2022 12:02


The February 28 edition of the Music History Today podcast features the Cavern Club, Frankie Lymon, Bobby Bloom, George Michael, & Ray Charles ALL MY LINKS - https://allmylinks.com/musichistorytoday --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/musichistorytodaypodcast/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/musichistorytodaypodcast/support

Michigan Music History Podcast -- MMHP989
Michigan Music History Podcast Episode 16 Dr. J Delivers a Rock Hall Update, Summer Music and Jim McCarty

Michigan Music History Podcast -- MMHP989

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 19, 2021 34:01


Just before he hit the road for his second trip away from the Podcast, Dr. J wanted to give an update on where the Rock and Roll Legends Hall of Fame is at as they begin movement forward in Bay City, MI. He also discusses his new book (!) on Frankie Lymon and giving the Rock Legends Award to Jim McCarty at Scotty's Sandbar in July 2021.

American Graffiti: One Song at a Time

“Why Do Fools Fall In Love” by Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers plays as Curt spies his dream girl and Milner picks up a passenger. Chris Henry from Apollo 13 Minute joins Tierney to talk about his own cruising days and get romantic about machines.Come hang out at Mel's Listeners' Drive In on Facebook and @vcrprivileges on Twitter and InstagramArtwork by Alex RobinsonMusic by Chris Frain

Andrew's Daily Five
Andrew's Daily Five, Ep. 68

Andrew's Daily Five

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 25, 2021 12:49


#165-161Intro/Outro: It's Only Rock and Roll by The Rolling Stones165. On Top of the World by Imagine Dragons164. What Would You Say by Dave Matthews Band (4)163. The Joker by Steve Miller Band162. Why Do Fools Fall in Love by Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers161. Since I've Been Loving You by Led Zeppelin (2)Balderdash alertBonus excerpt: Clapping Music by Steve ReichBonus excerpt: The Letter by The MedallionsGenre update:Rock - 116Alternative - 82R&B - 27Folk - 24Hip-Hop/Rap - 23Country - 15Blues - 13Pop - 10Punk - 6Grunge - 5Disco - 3Jazz - 3Reggae - 3New Wave - 3Bluegrass - 2Electronic - 2Ska - 1World - 1Heavy Metal - 1