American rock album
POPULARITY
3 episodes with Hot Rats
2 episodes with Hot Rats
3 episodes with Hot Rats
3 episodes with Hot Rats
3 episodes with Hot Rats
2 episodes with Hot Rats
2 episodes with Hot Rats
3 episodes with Hot Rats
Dans le Pop-Rock Station du 13 janvier Marjorie Hache nous plonge dans deux heures de rock et pop alternatif. Les nouveautés mettent en avant Mogwai avec "Fanzine Made of Flesh", extrait de leur prochain album "The Bad Fire", ainsi que Sharon Van Etten et les Lambrini Girls, dont l'album "Who Let The Dogs Out" est à l'honneur cette semaine. En live, Johnny Cash revit avec une performance historique à la prison de Folsom, et la reprise du jour est signée Hot Rats, réinterprétant le classique "Fight For Your Right To Party" des Beastie Boys. Le long format explore l'héritage des Super Furry Animals et leur titre "Do or Die", inspiré par Mahatma Gandhi. Une soirée qui se termine en douceur avec Ethel Cain et son goth-rock hypnotique. La playlist de l'émission : The Cure - A Fragile Thing Visage - Fade To Grey Johnny Cash - Folsom Prison Blues Alanis Morissette - Reasons I Drink Mogwai - Fanzine made of Flesh Fleetwood Mac - Big Love R.E.M. - Imitation Of Life Lambrini Girls - Company Culture Jimi Hendrix - Foxy Lady Cymande - Only One Way (Feat. Celeste) Bruce Springsteen - Because The Night Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory - Afterlife The Hotrats - (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right To Party ! Weezer - Hash Pipe Nirvana - Breed Orla Gartland - Late To The Party (Feat. Declan Mckenna) Creedence Clearwater Revival - Born On The Bayou The Heavy - Heavy For You Guns N' Roses - Its So Easy (Live Era '87-'93) Thin Lizzy - The Boys Are Back In Town Jane's Addiction - Just Because Girlpuppy - Champ The Clash - Lost In The Supermarket Franz Ferdinand - Walk Away Super Furry Animal - Do Or Die Editors - Papillon Amyl And The Sniffers - Jerkin' Ethel Cain - Punish
Show #1068 Memorial For Beardo 2023 Last week on September 17 it was 7 years ago that Beardo, founder of Bandana Blues, passed away. So this episode is an eclectic mix of music dedicated to Beardo. 01. Jimmy Thackery with the Cate Brothers - Arky Shuffle (5:37) (In The Natural State, Rykodisc, 2006) 02. Steve Miller Band - Blues Without Blame (5:50) (Rock Love, Capitol Records, 1971) 03. Matt Schofield - Djam (5:59) (Siftin' Thru Ashes, Nugene Records, 2005) 04. Savoy Brown - Time Does Tell (5:28) (Street Corner Talking, Deram Records, 1971) 05. MonkeyJunk - The Marrinator (5:13) (To Behold, Stony Plain Records, 2011) 06. Frank Zappa - Peaches En Regalia (3:38) (Hot Rats, Bizarre/Reprise Records, 1969) 07. Paul Butterfield - Screamin' (4:38) (The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Elektra Records, 1965) 08. Charles Brown - Hard Times [1951] (3:12) (Cool Blues Singer, Saga Blues Records, 2005) 09. Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated - Blue Mink (3:32) (Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated, Ace Of Clubs Records, 1965) 10. Slo Leak - Sold For Parts (4:20) (New Century Blues, Icon Records, 2008) 11. Zoot Money's Big Roll Band - Zoot's Suit (3:29) (45 RPM Single, Decca Records, 1964) 12. Jeff Pevar - Stalagmite St. Blues (3:14) (From The Core, Pet Peev Music, 2012) 13. Albert Castiglia - Sleepless Nights (5:00) (Solid Ground, Ruf Records, 2014) 14. Ronnie Earl & the Broadcasters - Blues For The West Side (3:34) (Still River, Audioquest Records, 1994) 15. Magnus Berg - Drifting (3:48) (Cut Me Loose, Screen Door Records, 2014) 16. Jason Ricci & New Blood - Dodecahedron (5:16) (Rocket Number 9, Eclecto Groove, 2007) 17. Danny Gatton & Joey DeFrancesco - Big Mo (4:43) (Relentless, Big Mo Records, 1994) 18. Al Basile - Reality Show (5:38) (The Goods, Sweetspot Records, 2011) 19. Buddy Whittington - Greenwood (4:09) (Buddy Whittington, self-release, 2007) 20. Oz Noy - Damn This Groove (feat. Dweezil Zappa) (5:49) (Who Gives A Funk, Abstract Logix, 2016) 21. Bugs Henderson - Blues In Reverse (8:28) (Years In The Jungle, Trigger/Taxim Records, 1993) Bandana Blues is and will always be a labor of love. Please help Spinner deal with the costs of hosting & bandwidth. Visit www.bandanablues.com and hit the tipjar. Any amount is much appreciated, no matter how small. Thank you.
Homenaje a David Bowie en forma de curiosas y clásicas versiones en esta ensalada de rock’n’roll con sabor a camaleón.Playlist;(sintonía) THE NEANDERTHALS “Space oddity”CAPSULA “Five years”ROBYN HITCHCOCK “Life in Mars”THE MUFFS “Changes”THE POLECATS “John I’m only dancing”THE REVEREND SHAWN AMOS “The Jean Gennie”NIRVANA “The man who sold the world”LUNA “Starman”LUNA “Letter to Hermione”THE SURFRAJETTES “Surfrajette City”BLONDIE “Heroes”THE HOT RATS “Queen bitch”CHEAP TRICK “Rebel rebel”LOW CUT CONNIE “Diamond Dogs”Escuchar audio
Start Artist Song Time Album Year 0:00:15 Frank Zappa Peaches En Regalia 3:24 Hot Rats [2012 Remaster] 1969 0:05:40 Frank Zappa Inca Roads 8:44 One Size Fits All [2012 Remaster] 1975 0:14:25 Frank Zappa Joe's Garage 6:08 Joe's Garage [2012 Remaster] 1979 0:20:18 Frank Zappa Hot Plate Heaven At The Green Hotel 6:41 1988: Broadway […]
We asked what bit you? Yasmin Clydsdale calls in ahead of Origin and Year of the Song is back for another week!Subscribe on LiSTNR: https://play.listnr.com/podcast/nick-jess-and-duckoSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
In this episode we review I Could Live In Hope by Low, No.1 In Heaven by Sparks, and Hot Rats by Frank Zappa. Join us as we explore 90's Slowcore, Electronic Disco Rock, and Orchestra-infused Jazz-Rock!
Episode 2 is interesting. Rob Dahlgren presents Led Zeppelin II and Jimmy McCaffrey presents Frank Zappa - Hot Rats. We learn a little more about how we're gonna do this. Talk collecting. Interesting couple of albums. Please fill out the listening form when you listen. It really helps!! you can find it here: https://forms.gle/2WXJPtia9giMkgVh9 Discogs is here: https://www.discogs.com You can join us and interact with us: In the "I've Got That On Vinyl" Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/684186180585840 On Twitter: @IGTOVPodcast On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/igtovpodcast/ Or email us anytime at IGTOVpod@gmail.com Intro and Outtro music by MIshka Shubaly: http://www.mishkashubaly.com
Matt unleashes his most horrific, merciless collection of scary songs for the true Halloween aficionado. Thomas didn't get the memo with his segment, and instead celebrates both his love of Hot Rats and his frustration with Frank Zappa... Click here for the LMO survey! https://www.niagaramoonmusic.com/ https://www.thinlear.com/ X / Twitter: https://twitter.com/losingmyopinion IG: https://www.instagram.com/losingmyopinion/ Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/losingmyopinion
This week we covered the late, great Frank Zappa listening to Hot Rats, Over-Nite Sensation, Apostrophe, and Sheik Yerbouti. There is no doubt that Frank Zappa influenced the prog-rock scene, his style cannot be matched. Title music, artwork, and contributions by Rob Fortune Direction by Jack Falcon Editing by JoMo
Ahmet Zappa, son of Frank Zappa, talks about one of his favorite bands, Kiss, and his friendship with Ozzy Osbourne. Ahmet helped put together the lost Frank Zappa album, "Funky Nothingness" out now. It's a sequel to the iconic "Hot Rats" (1969). The 2LP set comes on black 180g audiophile vinyl.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Host Scott M. Graves sat down with Dan Cummings and old pal Steven Harnois from PermaGrin, the fantasmic music project that originated as a pandemic project which has resulted in the album, ‘Ode to Entropy. We entice you to listen in with four aural excerpts from said album. From the moment I heard this album I was enthralled and wrote a friend, ‘Brah, it's like these dudes went to sleep with Hot Rats and The Grand Wazoo on repeat and then woke up the next day to the rest of their lives…' We hope our interview with Perma Grin represents a new start for you, too. Listen in and let us know what you think in the comments.
Whistling, clicking our heels, swinging round lampposts and lobbing the odd shiny florin to a flaxen-haired child, this week's free-wheeling navigation of the rock and roll boulevard alights upon the following hot topics … … why Indie music is like student drama. … what the Beatles achieved in “the 585 most productive minutes in the history of recorded music" (aka the recording of Please Please Me) and the albums released the same day every decade after. … Death & Vanilla, Frightened Rabbit and – to deafening applause – the welcome return of the Stackwaddy game. … albums performed as ‘plays' (by musicians who didn't make them). A band featuring Clem Burke and Glen Matlock has just toured playing Lust For Life in its entirety. What others would work as well? The Band's second album? Liege & Lief? The Ramones? Hot Rats? … unappetising song titles. … what Bob Dylan did so “my mother would finally think I'm somebody”. And how his Mum reacted to his success. … and why bands end sets with Country Roads, Mustang Sally and Twist And Shout.Grab your EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal by going to https://nordvpn.com/yourear to get up a Huge Discount off your NordVPN Plan + 4 months for free! It's completely risk free with Nord's 30 day money-back guarantee!-----------Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon to receive early and ad-free access to all our content!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Whistling, clicking our heels, swinging round lampposts and lobbing the odd shiny florin to a flaxen-haired child, this week's free-wheeling navigation of the rock and roll boulevard alights upon the following hot topics … … why Indie music is like student drama. … what the Beatles achieved in “the 585 most productive minutes in the history of recorded music" (aka the recording of Please Please Me) and the albums released the same day every decade after. … Death & Vanilla, Frightened Rabbit and – to deafening applause – the welcome return of the Stackwaddy game. … albums performed as ‘plays' (by musicians who didn't make them). A band featuring Clem Burke and Glen Matlock has just toured playing Lust For Life in its entirety. What others would work as well? The Band's second album? Liege & Lief? The Ramones? Hot Rats? … unappetising song titles. … what Bob Dylan did so “my mother would finally think I'm somebody”. And how his Mum reacted to his success. … and why bands end sets with Country Roads, Mustang Sally and Twist And Shout.Grab your EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal by going to https://nordvpn.com/yourear to get up a Huge Discount off your NordVPN Plan + 4 months for free! It's completely risk free with Nord's 30 day money-back guarantee!-----------Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon to receive early and ad-free access to all our content!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Whistling, clicking our heels, swinging round lampposts and lobbing the odd shiny florin to a flaxen-haired child, this week's free-wheeling navigation of the rock and roll boulevard alights upon the following hot topics … … why Indie music is like student drama. … what the Beatles achieved in “the 585 most productive minutes in the history of recorded music" (aka the recording of Please Please Me) and the albums released the same day every decade after. … Death & Vanilla, Frightened Rabbit and – to deafening applause – the welcome return of the Stackwaddy game. … albums performed as ‘plays' (by musicians who didn't make them). A band featuring Clem Burke and Glen Matlock has just toured playing Lust For Life in its entirety. What others would work as well? The Band's second album? Liege & Lief? The Ramones? Hot Rats? … unappetising song titles. … what Bob Dylan did so “my mother would finally think I'm somebody”. And how his Mum reacted to his success. … and why bands end sets with Country Roads, Mustang Sally and Twist And Shout.Grab your EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal by going to https://nordvpn.com/yourear to get up a Huge Discount off your NordVPN Plan + 4 months for free! It's completely risk free with Nord's 30 day money-back guarantee!-----------Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon to receive early and ad-free access to all our content!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Whistling, clicking our heels, swinging round lampposts and lobbing the odd shiny florin to a flaxen-haired child, this week's free-wheeling navigation of the rock and roll boulevard alights upon the following hot topics … … why Indie music is like student drama. … what the Beatles achieved in “the 585 most productive minutes in the history of recorded music" (aka the recording of Please Please Me) and the albums released the same day every decade after. … Death & Vanilla, Frightened Rabbit and – to deafening applause – the welcome return of the Stackwaddy game. … albums performed as ‘plays' (by musicians who didn't make them). A band featuring Clem Burke and Glen Matlock has just toured playing Lust For Life in its entirety. What others would work as well? The Band's second album? Liege & Lief? The Ramones? Hot Rats? … unappetising song titles. … what Bob Dylan did so “my mother would finally think I'm somebody”. And how his Mum reacted to his success. … and why bands end sets with Country Roads, Mustang Sally and Twist And Shout.Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early and ad-free access to every future Word Podcast!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Whistling, clicking our heels, swinging round lampposts and lobbing the odd shiny florin to a flaxen-haired child, this week's free-wheeling navigation of the rock and roll boulevard alights upon the following hot topics … … why Indie music is like student drama. … what the Beatles achieved in “the 585 most productive minutes in the history of recorded music" (aka the recording of Please Please Me) and the albums released the same day every decade after. … Death & Vanilla, Frightened Rabbit and – to deafening applause – the welcome return of the Stackwaddy game. … albums performed as ‘plays' (by musicians who didn't make them). A band featuring Clem Burke and Glen Matlock has just toured playing Lust For Life in its entirety. What others would work as well? The Band's second album? Liege & Lief? The Ramones? Hot Rats? … unappetising song titles. … what Bob Dylan did so “my mother would finally think I'm somebody”. And how his Mum reacted to his success. … and why bands end sets with Country Roads, Mustang Sally and Twist And Shout.Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early and ad-free access to every future Word Podcast!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Whistling, clicking our heels, swinging round lampposts and lobbing the odd shiny florin to a flaxen-haired child, this week's free-wheeling navigation of the rock and roll boulevard alights upon the following hot topics … … why Indie music is like student drama. … what the Beatles achieved in “the 585 most productive minutes in the history of recorded music" (aka the recording of Please Please Me) and the albums released the same day every decade after. … Death & Vanilla, Frightened Rabbit and – to deafening applause – the welcome return of the Stackwaddy game. … albums performed as ‘plays' (by musicians who didn't make them). A band featuring Clem Burke and Glen Matlock has just toured playing Lust For Life in its entirety. What others would work as well? The Band's second album? Liege & Lief? The Ramones? Hot Rats? … unappetising song titles. … what Bob Dylan did so “my mother would finally think I'm somebody”. And how his Mum reacted to his success. … and why bands end sets with Country Roads, Mustang Sally and Twist And Shout.Subscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early and ad-free access to every future Word Podcast!: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Num programa bastante esquizofrénico analisamos o hip hop gourmet de Kendrick Lamar, com o seu novo disco, "Mr Morale & The Big Steppers", o rock experimentalista de Frank Zappa com "Hot Rats" e por fim um documentário que tem como pano de fundo os National - "Mistaken for Strangers". Isto é o Rádio Clube Altamont de Julho, parceria Futura Rádio de Autor com Altamont.pt.
Voor deze Platenbazen special zijn Nina en Nina op bezoek gegaan bij Rogier Oostlander van Rush Hour in Amsterdam. Met deze muziekarcheoloog hebben we gegraven door decennia aan muziek, haalden we jeugdherinneringen op en hebben we het onder andere over Kanye West (zonder zijn muziek te draaien?), rustig worden van Shoegaze en de diepe band die je krijgt door 1 album door het wekenlang achter elkaar te draaien. Ga er lekker voor zitten of neem ons mee op je wandeling, en hopelijk wil je hierna door naar de Platenzaak! Muziek die in deze aflevering werd gedraaid: 1. Frank Zappa - Peaches En Regalia (van het album "Hot Rats" uit 1969) 2. Justin Townes Earle - The Saint of Lost Causes (origineel van het album "The Saint of Lost Causes" uit 2019 - hier van een Record Store Day Release uit 2021) 3. Klangstof - New Congress, New Father (van het album "The Noise You Make Is Silent" uit 2020") 4. Nico - These Days (van het album "Chelsea Girl" uit 1967) 5. Junie Morrison - Suzie Thundertussy (van het album "Suzie Super Groupie" uit 1976) 6. Prince - Colonized Mind (van het album "LOtUSFLOW3R" uit 2009) 7. Drexciya - Bubble Metropolis (van het album "Drexciya2" uit 1993) 8. My Bloody Valentine - To Here Knows When (van het album "Loveless" uit 1991) 9. Sonic Youth - Kool Thing (van het album "Hits Are For Squares" uit 2010) 10. Santana - Oye Como Va (van het album "Abraxas" uit 1998) 11. David Sylvian - Nostalgia (van het album "Brilliant Trees" uit 1984) Handige links: Vriend van de Show - Via Vriend van de Show kun je ons steunen met een donatie, spraakberichten achterlaten, en als Vriend van de show heb je toegang tot oude bonusafleveringen. De Platencast op Instagram
This season on the Burning Ambulance Podcast, we're going to have a single subject we're going to be exploring through all ten episodes, and that subject is fusion.Fusion, of course, is a term that means different things to different people. When most people hear it, they probably think of bands from the 1970s like the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, and Weather Report: groups that were formed by ex members of Miles Davis's band that played extremely complex compositions that were sometimes closer to progressive rock than to jazz, but which still left room for extended improvisation. What's interesting about that positioning is that it's very easy to draw lines between that stuff and the music being made by Yes, King Crimson, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and Santana, all of which gets filed under just plain rock. And if you extend the boundaries out just a little bit further, you get to the music Latin artists like Eddie Palmieri, Ray Barretto, and the Fania All-Stars were making at the same time. Or think about some of the really adventurous funk and R&B that was being made by Earth, Wind & Fire, Parliament and Funkadelic, the Ohio Players, Slave, the Isley Brothers... This is what's so interesting to me about fusion, is that at its best it's about all kinds of musical boundaries being knocked down.I recently spent some time listening to a whole bunch of albums by keyboardist George Duke, released on the MPS label between about 1971 and 1976. Duke was a really fascinating figure, because he traveled between worlds to really unprecedented degree. He had his own trio in the late 60s, and somehow or other hooked up with electric violinist Jean-Luc Ponty. They made an album together, and the gigs they played in L.A. brought them to the attention of Frank Zappa and Cannonball Adderley, two people who couldn't have been doing more different things. But Zappa hired Ponty to play on Hot Rats, and then wrote and produced an entire album, King Kong, on which Ponty played Zappa's compositions, and George Duke was the keyboardist on that record. And after that, both Zappa and Cannonball Adderley – who, don't forget, had Joe Zawinul in his band before that, who composed “In A Silent Way” and played with Miles Davis, and formed Weather Report with Wayne Shorter – both Adderley and Zappa wanted George Duke in their bands. He wound up taking both gigs, doing two years with Zappa, then two years with Adderley, then going back to Zappa's band for three or four more years. He had left the group by 1975, though, so he was not part of the concerts recorded for the album Zappa In New York. But Randy Brecker was.Brecker and his brother, saxophonist Michael Brecker, who died in 2007, worked together in dozens if not hundreds of contexts from the late Sixties to the Nineties. They were both part of that Zappa concert, which was related to their being part of the Saturday Night Live band at the time; they played on a million recording sessions for everyone from Aerosmith to Bette Midler to Aretha Franklin to Lou Reed to Dire Straits to Donald Fagen. They were part of drummer Billy Cobham's band in the early to mid '70s, playing on Crosswinds and Total Eclipse and Shabazz and A Funky Thide Of Sings. And right around that same time, they formed the Brecker Brothers band and made a string of albums for Arista that were extremely successful. Now, what matters for the purposes of this introduction is that the side of fusion the Brecker Brothers represented was very different from the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, Weather Report side. That was, for lack of a better term, white fusion. It was marketed to white rock audiences. Those bands toured with rock bands. They played arena concerts. Lenny White talked about it in the previous episode of this podcast — the members of Return to Forever hung out with members of Yes. On the other side of the coin, there was black and Latin fusion. Like I said above, there was some incredibly challenging music being made under the headings of salsa and Latin jazz in the 70s – you should check out the episode of this podcast where I interviewed Eddie Palmieri to hear more about that, as well as the episode with Billy Cobham, where he talks about performing with the Fania All-Stars. There are funk records that are every bit as complex as prog rock. Jazz artists like Donald Byrd and Freddie Hubbard, George Duke and even Joe Henderson were all making records that can really only be described as fusion in the early 70s, and that's without even getting into what Miles Davis was doing, particularly with his live band from 1973 to 1975. But except for George Duke, who actually had Frank Zappa cut a couple of guitar solos on his 1974 album Feel, they were drawing more from funk than from rock, and they were marketed more to black audiences than white. And as Randy Brecker explains in this interview, that was where the Brecker Brothers fell. They had more success on black radio and on the R&B chart than in the rock world. Now, eventually, that more funk-oriented, R&B-oriented side of fusion slid in an explicitly commercial, radio-friendly direction, and a lot of it ended up as smooth jazz. Which is to some degree why the term is vilified in some quarters today. But that doesn't take anything away from the good stuff, and Randy Brecker has been involved with some very good records over the years.This was a really fun conversation that went in some very interesting directions. I hope you enjoy listening to it.Music in this episode: The Brecker Brothers, “Some Skunk Funk” (Heavy Metal Be-Bop)Billy Cobham, “Taurian Matador” (Shabazz)The Brecker Brothers, “Sneakin' Up Behind You” (The Brecker Brothers)
This season on the Burning Ambulance Podcast, we're going to have a single subject we're going to be exploring through all ten episodes, and that subject is fusion.Fusion, of course, is a term that means different things to different people. When most people hear it, they probably think of bands from the 1970s like the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, and Weather Report: groups that were formed by ex members of Miles Davis's band that played extremely complex compositions that were sometimes closer to progressive rock than to jazz, but which still left room for extended improvisation. What's interesting about that positioning is that it's very easy to draw lines between that stuff and the music being made by Yes, King Crimson, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and Santana, all of which gets filed under just plain rock. And if you extend the boundaries out just a little bit further, you get to the music Latin artists like Eddie Palmieri, Ray Barretto, and the Fania All-Stars were making at the same time. Or think about some of the really adventurous funk and R&B that was being made by Earth, Wind & Fire, Parliament and Funkadelic, the Ohio Players, Slave, the Isley Brothers... This is what's so interesting to me about fusion, is that at its best it's about all kinds of musical boundaries being knocked down.I recently spent some time listening to a whole bunch of albums by keyboardist George Duke, released on the MPS label between about 1971 and 1976. Duke was a really fascinating figure, because he traveled between worlds to really unprecedented degree. He had his own trio in the late 60s, and somehow or other hooked up with electric violinist Jean-Luc Ponty. They made an album together, and the gigs they played in L.A. brought them to the attention of Frank Zappa and Cannonball Adderley, two people who couldn't have been doing more different things. But Zappa hired Ponty to play on Hot Rats, and then wrote and produced an entire album, King Kong, on which Ponty played Zappa's compositions, and George Duke was the keyboardist on that record. And after that, both Zappa and Cannonball Adderley – who, don't forget, had Joe Zawinul in his band before that, who composed “In A Silent Way” and played with Miles Davis, and formed Weather Report with Wayne Shorter – both Adderley and Zappa wanted George Duke in their bands. He wound up taking both gigs, doing two years with Zappa, then two years with Adderley, then going back to Zappa's band for three or four more years. He had left the group by 1975, though, so he was not part of the concerts recorded for the album Zappa In New York. But Randy Brecker was.Brecker and his brother, saxophonist Michael Brecker, who died in 2007, worked together in dozens if not hundreds of contexts from the late Sixties to the Nineties. They were both part of that Zappa concert, which was related to their being part of the Saturday Night Live band at the time; they played on a million recording sessions for everyone from Aerosmith to Bette Midler to Aretha Franklin to Lou Reed to Dire Straits to Donald Fagen. They were part of drummer Billy Cobham's band in the early to mid '70s, playing on Crosswinds and Total Eclipse and Shabazz and A Funky Thide Of Sings. And right around that same time, they formed the Brecker Brothers band and made a string of albums for Arista that were extremely successful. Now, what matters for the purposes of this introduction is that the side of fusion the Brecker Brothers represented was very different from the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, Weather Report side. That was, for lack of a better term, white fusion. It was marketed to white rock audiences. Those bands toured with rock bands. They played arena concerts. Lenny White talked about it in the previous episode of this podcast — the members of Return to Forever hung out with members of Yes. On the other side of the coin, there was black and Latin fusion. Like I said above, there was some incredibly challenging music being made under the headings of salsa and Latin jazz in the 70s – you should check out the episode of this podcast where I interviewed Eddie Palmieri to hear more about that, as well as the episode with Billy Cobham, where he talks about performing with the Fania All-Stars. There are funk records that are every bit as complex as prog rock. Jazz artists like Donald Byrd and Freddie Hubbard, George Duke and even Joe Henderson were all making records that can really only be described as fusion in the early 70s, and that's without even getting into what Miles Davis was doing, particularly with his live band from 1973 to 1975. But except for George Duke, who actually had Frank Zappa cut a couple of guitar solos on his 1974 album Feel, they were drawing more from funk than from rock, and they were marketed more to black audiences than white. And as Randy Brecker explains in this interview, that was where the Brecker Brothers fell. They had more success on black radio and on the R&B chart than in the rock world. Now, eventually, that more funk-oriented, R&B-oriented side of fusion slid in an explicitly commercial, radio-friendly direction, and a lot of it ended up as smooth jazz. Which is to some degree why the term is vilified in some quarters today. But that doesn't take anything away from the good stuff, and Randy Brecker has been involved with some very good records over the years.This was a really fun conversation that went in some very interesting directions. I hope you enjoy listening to it.Music in this episode: The Brecker Brothers, “Some Skunk Funk” (Heavy Metal Be-Bop)Billy Cobham, “Taurian Matador” (Shabazz)The Brecker Brothers, “Sneakin' Up Behind You” (The Brecker Brothers)
On this first ALL HAT recording of Leighton Night, we're joined by Fantoons writer/director David Calcano (@Fantoons) for a lovely chat about David's career, the death of Blockbuster, Doctor Who, Frank Zappa, how good Brian looks in a hat, and more! Follow us on Twitter at @leightonnight and on Instagram at @leighton_night. You can find Brian on Twitter/Instagram at @bwecht, and Leighton at @graylish (Twitter)/@buttchamps (Instagram).
Cannabis-- Law-- Debt-- Ceilings-- plus Chris brings up the New "Regan Republicanism" and the anniversary of Zappa's 1969 album Hot Rats. Jon looks at law enforcement, vaccines, secessionists, and this year's class of inductees at the Mascot Hall of Fame. #AmericasPodcast
Musik auf Vinyl, das ist haptischer Hörgenuss und entschleunigendes Hobby zugleich. Gut, wenn man diese Leidenschaft mit Gleichgesinnten teilen kann. Der Magdeburger Plattenladen „Hot Rats“ bietet dafür Raum und Zeit. Damals in den 90ern begann alles mit einem improvisierten „Musikshop“, mittlerweile gehört der Laden zum Urgestein der lokalen Musikkultur. Gründer und Ex-Ladeninhaber Franz Jeske plaudert mit Nachfolger André Schellenberg über alte Zeiten und die Zukunft.
Matters of high import thrashed out this week include Dylan's Shadow Kingdom livestream, the Thunder Road lyric farrago, Apple Venus and Wasp Star - separated at birth!, the best reggae album ever, laughter on records, underwhelming follow-up albums and why Hot Rats makes the perfect crime thriller soundtrack. Supporting cast includes Kevin Turvey, Philip Glass, Brian Auger's Oblivion Express and Dave "Bucket" Colwell of Humble Pie.Support Word In Your Ear on Patreon and gain access to hours of extra content: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Tras la disolución de los Mothers Of Invention originales, Franz Zappa se embarcó en otra serie de proyectos entre los que sobresale el álbum Hot Rats, uno de los más populares de toda su carrera. A partir de estas grabaciones se iría formando una nueva banda de corta trayectoria, la Hot Rats Band, que sería el germen de la agrupación con la que giraría durante los años 70 y 71, con los cantantes de "The Turtles": Flo & Eddie. Un nuevo diálogo abierto entre Jose Funes y Fran Macías. Repertorio: 1. Peaches en Regalia - Hot Rats 2. It Must Be A Camel - Hot Rats 3. Aybe Sea/Litlle House I Used To Live In (introducción) - Burnt Weeny Sandwich 4. Twenty Small Cigars - Chunga's Revenge 5. Sharleena - The Lost Episodes 6. Woderful Wino - The Mothers 70 7. The Clap (Chunga's Revenge) - Road Tapes, Venue. 3 8. She Painted up Her Face/Janet's Big Dance Number/Half a Dozen Provocative Squats/Mysterioso/Shove It Right In - 200 Motels 9. Latex Solar Beef/Willy The Pimp pt.1/Willy The Pimp pt.2 - Fillmore East, June 1971 10. Magdalena - Just Another Band From L.A. 11. Who Are The Brain Police - Carnegie Hall 12. Happy Together - Fillmore East, June 1971 La serie Frank Zappa: La serie Frank Zappa: 1ª parte (65/67) https://go.ivoox.com/rf/68864164 2ª parte (68-69) https://go.ivoox.com/rf/70936141 3ª parte (69-71) https://go.ivoox.com/rf/73425372 4ª parte (1972) https://go.ivoox.com/rf/75053528 5ª parte (73-74) https://go.ivoox.com/rf/77109860 6ª parte (75-76) https://go.ivoox.com/rf/81409176
Matters of high import thrashed out this week include Dylan's Shadow Kingdom livestream, the Thunder Road lyric farrago, Apple Venus and Wasp Star - separated at birth!, the best reggae album ever, laughter on records, underwhelming follow-up albums and why Hot Rats makes the perfect crime thriller soundtrack. Supporting cast includes Kevin Turvey, Philip Glass, Brian Auger's Oblivion Express and Dave "Bucket" Colwell of Humble Pie.Support Word In Your Ear on Patreon and gain access to hours of extra content: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Matters of high import thrashed out this week include Dylan's Shadow Kingdom livestream, the Thunder Road lyric farrago, Apple Venus and Wasp Star - separated at birth!, the best reggae album ever, laughter on records, underwhelming follow-up albums and why Hot Rats makes the perfect crime thriller soundtrack. Supporting cast includes Kevin Turvey, Philip Glass, Brian Auger's Oblivion Express and Dave "Bucket" Colwell of Humble Pie.Support Word In Your Ear on Patreon and gain access to hours of extra content: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Arstist Song Time Album Year The Beatles A Day In The Life 5:28 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band 1967 Pink Floyd Astronomy Domine (Live) 8:17 Ummagumma (2011 remaster) 1969 Genesis Silent Sun 2:10 From Genesis To Revelation (1) 1969 Frank Zappa Little Umbrellas 3:01 Hot Rats [2012 Remaster] 1969 Renaissance Wanderer 3:57 Renaissance 1969 […]
Visionner l'épisode. / Diffusion : 15 septembre 2020 Mathieu se sent mieux depuis qu'il changé ses freins et a appris des nouvelles gammes à la guitare et Philippe va bien mais ils ne savent pas trop comment partir l'épisode parce que d'habitude c'est Djee qui fait ça et là il est pas là parce qu'il a peut-être la COVID. (0:00) On présente Dustin (le chien de Ti-Dej), Philippe suggère que la présente pandémie est moins pire qu'une invasion d'insectes puis on parle de consommation de momies et du déboulonnage de la statue de MacDonald (10:00). On réitère que c'est vraiment pas si facile que ça faire un podcast et se demande ce que ça ferait si les gens qui militent pour pas porter de masques et aller au Jack Saloon se battaient pour mettre fin au capitalisme (25:00). On discute des aspirants chefs du PQ et d'impôts (39:00). Les gars annoncent que c'est un épisode spécial JF alias le grand soleil bleu de Philippe, se demandent ce qu'il fait, dressent une liste de remplaçant potentiels en cas où il ne pourrait plus faire le podcast et un cabot fait plusieurs interventions notables (53:20). On creep le mur Facebook d'Hubert Reeves, les gars songent à élever un bébé Djee ensemble et dressent la liste de ses défauts et qualités (1:14:00). Philippe parle de la Bible de Jefferson, on se rappelle les quelques colères nécessaires de JF et les colères des gars qui l'étaient moins puis Mathieu nous parle un peu de l'album Hot Rats de Frank Zappa (1:26:00). Les gars présentent un slideshow musical en noir et blanc très touchant, Philippe parle de ses tartes dont celle qu'il a fait pour JF qu'on finit par entâmer sans lui (Dustin y goûte en premier.) (1:36:00). SCOOP Sans JF y'a pu rien qui fait du sens. Les gars devraient commencer à travailler sur un album lorsque l'écriture du livre de Philippe sera terminée. Mathieu et Macauley Culkin ont le même âge et les 2 vieillissent pareil comme vous autres. Citations notables ♫ Livin' lovin', préposé aux bénéficiaire. ♫ - Philippe, 7:40 Le salaire minimum en art c'est zéro dollars. - Philippe, 9:50 C'tait pas mauvais là, la sauterelle BBQ. Ça goûtait l'barbecue. - Philippe, 15:20 Faites vos propres bustes! - Mathieu, 21:15 Notre société est genre rendue à Windows XP. - Philippe, 36:20 Eille les politiciens, voulez-vous faire un peu de bungee dans l'Vieux-Port? - Philippe, 41:45 JF est une recette un ingrédient. C'est JF. - Mathieu, 57:50 C'qui s'rait tough avec Gino, c'est ça, ce serait de comme de pas le frapper, mettons. - Philippe, 1:11:00 J'adore faire des tartes. Je vous recommande fortement de faire des tartes. - Philippe, 1:45:40 https://www.patreon.com/tumeniaises pour + de 70 heures de contenu exclusif
Hot Rats es el segundo álbum en solitario Frank Zappa, lanzado en octubre de 1969. Fue el primer proyecto de grabación de Zappa después de la disolución de la versión original de Mothers of Invention. Cuenta con el trabajo de varios artistas además de Zappa, incluyendo un ex miembro de Mothers of Invention, Capitán Beefheart y Don "Sugarcane" Harris. Cinco de las seis canciones son instrumentales; la otra, "Willie el Pimp", cuenta con la voz de Beefheart. En sus notas originales de la manga, Zappa describió el álbum como "una película para tus oídos".
Hosts Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot discuss the life and career of Frank Zappa with actor and documentarian Alex Winter, director of ZAPPA. They also review the new album by Viagra Boys. Become a member on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/soundopinionsMake a donation via PayPal: https://bit.ly/36zIhZK Record a Voice Memo: https://www.micdropp.com/studio/5febf006eba45/ Featured Songs:Frank Zappa, "Peaches en Regalia," Hot Rats, Bizarre, 1969Viagra Boys, "I Feel Alive," Welfare Jazz, Year0001, 2021Viagra Boys, "Ain't Nice," Welfare Jazz, Year0002, 2021Viagra Boys, "Into the Sun," Welfare Jazz, Year0003, 2021Viagra Boys, "Creatures," Welfare Jazz, Year0004, 2021Viagra Boys, "In Spite of Ourselves (feat. Amy Taylor)," Welfare Jazz, Year0005, 2021Frank Zappa, "Valley Girl (feat. Moon Zappa)," Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch, Barking Pumpkin, 1982Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention, "Camarillo Brillo," Over-Nite Sensation, DiscReet, 1973Frank Zappa, "Willie the Pimp," Hot Rats, Bizarre, 1969Frank Zappa and Ensemble Modern, "Dog Breath Variations," The Yellow Shark, Barking Pumpkin, 1993Edgard Varèse, "Poème électronique," Music of Edgard Varèse, Columbia, 1960The Mothers of Invention, "Trouble Every Day," Freak Out, Verve, 1966Frank Zappa, "The Black Page, No. 2 (Live)," Baby Snakes, Barking Pumpkin, 1983The Mothers of Invention, "Didja Get Any Onya," Weasels Rip My Flesh, Bizarre, 1970John Carpenter, "Halloween Theme," Halloween (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), Columbia, 1979
Two of the best selling albums of 2020 were from Taylor Swift. Hosts Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot talk with music critic Kristin Stahlke about Swift's remarkable year and what led to it. They also review a new album from singer-songwriter Jazmine Sullivan, bid farewell to New York Dolls guitarist Sylvain Sylvain and discuss Phil Spector. Become a member on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/soundopinionsMake a donation via PayPal: https://bit.ly/36zIhZK Record a Voice Memo: https://www.micdropp.com/studio/5febf006eba45/ Featured Songs:Taylor Swift, "dorothea," evermore, Republic, 2020The Ronettes, "Be My Baby," (Single), Phillies, 1963Darlene Love, "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)," (Live on Late Night with David Letterman), Unreleased, 1986Ike and Tina Turner, "River Deep - Mountain High," River Deep - Mountain High, London, 1966New York Dolls, "Trash," New York Dolls, Mercury, 1973David Johansen, "Frenchette," David Johansen, Columbia, 1978Jazmine Sullivan, "Lost One," Heaux Tales, RCA, 2021Jazmine Sullivan, "Pick Up Your Feelings," Heaux Tales, RCA, 2021Jazmine Sullivan, "Antoinette's Tale," Heaux Tales, RCA, 2021Jazmine Sullivan, "The Other Side," Heaux Tales, RCA, 2021Taylor Swift, "champagne problems," evermore, Republic, 2020Taylor Swift, "this is me trying," folklore, Republic, 2020Taylor Swift, "the 1," folklore, Republic, 2020Taylor Swift, "willow," evermore, Republic, 2020Taylor Swift, "exile (feat. Bon Iver)," folklore, Republic, 2020Taylor Swift, "closure," evermore, Republic, 2020Taylor Swift, "This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things," reputation, Big Machine, 2017Taylor Swift, "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," Red, Big Machine, 2012Taylor Swift, "no body, no crime (feat. HAIM)," evermore, Republic, 2020Taylor Swift, "august," folklore, Republic, 2020Taylor Swift, "marjorie," evermore, Republic, 2020Taylor Swift, "mirrorball," folklore, Republic, 2020Taylor Swift, "gold rush," evermore, Republic, 2020Frank Zappa, "Peaches en Regalia," Hot Rats, Reprise, 1969
Part 1 with Guitar legend, EVH friend, Frank Zappa son and Reward Music Founder Dweezil Zappa who sits down in Studio 2 at Sunset Sound where Van Halen tracked and mixed the first 5 albums. DZ discusses first jamming/meeting with EVH at age 12 at the Zappa compound with Donn Landee tracking. That encounter turned into a 40 year friendship. We discuss Fair Warning being his favorite album as well some unknown writing methods for that album. Dweezil also discusses Frank Zappa's Hot Rats album (which was tracked in 69' at Sunset Sound), his fathers music and what he was like at home. Lastly DZ educates us on his groundbreaking new platform Reward Music which is the wave of the future for Artists to interact with their fans. This is part 1 of a 2 part episode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLTK8DZwEwU&feature=youtu.be Part 2 Coming Tmrw 12/20 6:30am PST Thank you DZ Dweezil Zappa: https://www.dweezilzappa.com Reward Music: https://www.rewardmusic.com Host/editor: Drew Dempsey https://www.instagram.com/dfdproductions/
Part 1 with Guitar legend, EVH friend, Frank Zappa son and Reward Music Founder Dweezil Zappa who sits down in Studio 2 at Sunset Sound where Van Halen tracked and mixed the first 5 albums. DZ discusses first jamming/meeting with EVH at age 12 at the Zappa compound with Donn Landee tracking. That encounter turned into a 40 year friendship. We discuss Fair Warning being his favorite album as well some unknown writing methods for that album. Dweezil also discusses Frank Zappa's Hot Rats album (which was tracked in 69' at Sunset Sound), his fathers music and what he was like at home. Lastly DZ educates us on his groundbreaking new platform Reward Music which is the wave of the future for Artists to interact with their fans. This is part 1 of a 2 part episode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLTK8DZwEwU&feature=youtu.be Part 2 Coming Tmrw 12/20 6:30am PST Thank you DZ Dweezil Zappa: https://www.dweezilzappa.com Reward Music: https://www.rewardmusic.com Host/editor: Drew Dempsey https://www.instagram.com/dfdproductions/ #eddievanhalen #vanhalen #frankzappa
Jazzvaneio 03, Imersão em quatro atos: Álbuns Década de 70Ato Primeiro: Introdução aos 70 e Mahavishnu Orchestra “Inner Mounting Flame”Primeiro de quatro PodCast que propõem uma desafiadora imersão aos anos 70. Visualizamos aqui o contexto do Jazz na década, sua “permeabilidade” artística e capacidade de transformação como propulsores de uma “nova” e inspiradora era musical. Em “choque” adentramos no período com o avassalador e não menos perturbador “Inner Mounting Flame” de um ainda jovem e espiritual John Mclaughlin e seu Mahavishnu Orchestra. Inconsequente, esta obra não deixou pedra sobre pedra ou indiferença pelo caminho. Estamos em 1971...Respiremos!!Album: Mahavishnu Orchestra “Inner Mounting Flame” 1971 - Columbiahttp://www.mahavishnuorchestra.com/Ato gravado no dia 10 de Setembro de 2020Poema inspirado em “A Lotus On Irish Streams”: “Esta obra é para mim um poema, uma chama de profunda e desconhecida nostalgia e tristeza. É um lamento prostrado invocado pela observação da beleza ao diluir-se, um pranto interior oco ao desaparecer de uma inspiração no horizonte e a desconexão eterna de duas mãos entrelaçadas nas memórias do tempo. O lamurio se concebe num sublime conjunto de tranças e danças em trio de piano/teclado, guitarra acústica e violino. Deixo ao ouvinte a batuta interpretativa aqui, não tenho a audácia de dizer nada mais ante tamanha sensibilidade” Marcelo Linuesa Outras Referências Artísticas e “culturais” (por ordem de menção): George Martin (Produtor Musical), Phil Spector (Produtor Musical), Beatles (Banda de Rock), Jimi Hendrix (Músico), The Who (Banda de Rock), Rolling Stones (Banda de Rock), Miles Davis (Músico), Frank Zappa (Músico), Igor Stravinsky (Músico), Gustav Mahler (Músico), Claude Debussy (Músico), Arnold Schoenberg (Músico), Alban Berg (Compositor), Edgard Varèse (Músico), Joao Gilberto (Músico), Stan Getz (Músico), Leonard Bernstein (Músico), West Side Story (Musical composto por Leonard Bernstein e libreto de Arthur Laurents), Al di Meola (Músico), Mainstream (no contexto da música, são trabalhos reconhecidos como “convencionais”, de grande popularidade e sucesso econômico), Yes (Banda de Rock), Billboard (classificação de álbums e músicas baseada em estatísticas de vendas e popularidade), Genesis (Banda de Rock), King Crimson (Banda de Rock), Don Puluse (Engenheiro de Som), Pro Tools (estação de trabajo de áudio digital), Disney (Multinacional norte-americana de Entretenimento), Tony Williams (Músico), In a Silent Way (Álbum do Miles Davis), Bitches Brew (Álbum do Miles Davis), Live-Evil (Álbum do Miles Davis), (Álbum do Miles Davis), On the Corner (Álbum do Miles Davis), My Goal is Beyond (Álbum do John McLaughlin, Sri Chinmoy (Líder espiritual Indiano), Dreams (Banda de Jazz), Randy Brecker (Músico), Michael Brecker (Músico), John Abercrombie (Músico), Sarah Vaughan (Músico), Elvin Jones (Músico), Jeremy Steig (Músico), The Flock (Banda de Rock), The Flock (Álbum do The Flock), Dinosaur Swamps (Álbum do The Flock), Larry Coryell (Músico), Joe Zawinul (Músico), John Coltrane (Músico), Charles Mingus (Músico), Islands (Álbum do King Crimson), Carlos Santana (Músico), Red (Álbum do King Crimson) e Hot Rats (Álbum do Frank Zappa).Contato: info@jazzvaneio.com
Well, we went a little long discussing "Unstable" the Season 11 premiere. Strap in for a wild ride through one of the most problematic episodes of SVU that the Munchie boys have covered. There are magical autistics, jaunty pimps, the worst of all bad cops who are bad, and plenty of weepy victims populating this insane romp which features quite possibly the best guest performance we've seen (Mahershala Ali). Needless to say, we had a whole lot to talk about. Enjoy! Music: Divorcio Suave - “Munchy Business” 12:17 - The Velvet Underground - "The Gift" from White Light/White Heat (1968) 18:05 - Andy Capp - "The Law (Part 1)" from "The Law" (1970) 45:38 - Syl Johnson - "Is It Because I'm Black" from Is It Because I'm Black (1969) 59:21 - Amy Grant - "Maybe An Angel" from Sister Kate (1989) 1:01:05 - Frank Zappa - "Willie The Pimp" from Hot Rats (1969) 1:18:04 - Childish Gambino - "This Is America" from This Is America (2018) Next Week’s Episode: Season 13, Episode 23 “Rhodium Nights”
Esta semana en nuestro podcast de música, revisamos álbumes de aniversario como "Hot Rats" de Frank Zappa, "In Rainbows" de Radiohead y "Black Market Music" de Placebo. Nuestro especial de artista de la semana se centra en la carrera de Talking Heads, mientras que en discos nuevos conversamos sobre “Ohms” de Deftones, “Breach” de Fenne Lily y “Ultra Mono” de IDLES.
Show #860 Memorial for Beardo 2020 Spinner put together another memorial show for Beardo because this week on september 17 it is 3 year ago that his dear friend and partner at Bandana Blues suddenly passed away. 01. B.B. King - 3 O'Clock Blues [1951] (3:01) (Bill Wyman's Blues Odyssey, Document Records, 2001) 02. Jimmy Smith (ft. B.B. King) 3 O'Clock Blues (4:33) (Dot Com Blues, Blue Thumb Records, 2000) 03. Rob Lutes - Spence (4:10) (Walk In The Dark, Full Zoo Records, 2017) 04. FreeWorld - Shrimp 'N' Grits (4:16) (What It Is, Swirldisc, 2017) 05. Albert Castiglia- Unhappy House Of Blues (5:44) (Up All Night, Ruf Records, 2017) 06. Walter 'Wolfman' Washington - Good And Juicy [1981] (4:09) (Rainin' In My Life, Maison De Soul, 1987) 07. John Scofield - Let The Cat Out (5:37) (Groove Elation, Blue Note Records, 1995) 08. Coco Montoya - Let Truth Be Told (5:06) (Hard Truth, Alligator Records, 2017) 09. J.J. Vicars - Stinky Twinky Remix (2:49) (Irreverent Dissident, Annie Gator Records, 2017) 10. Gordon Meier Blues Experience - In The Open (4:58) (Magic Kingdom, Reverberocket Records, 2017) 11. Bobby Messano - Unconventional Wisdom (4:32) (Bad Movie, The Prince Frog Record Company, 2017) 12. Rick Holmstrom - Tutwiler (4:23) (Late In The Night, MC Records, 2007) 13. Lew Jetton & 61 South - Will I Go To Hell (4:10) (Palestine Blues, Coffee Street Records, 2017) 14. Johnny A. - Oh Yeah (4:09) (Sometime Tuesday Morning, Aglaophone Records, 1999) 15. Joakim Tinderholt & His Band - I Quit (3:09) (Hold On, Rhythm Bomb Records, 2017) 16. Oz Noy - Whole Tone Blues (7:28) (Asian Twistz, Abstract Logix, 2015) 17. Thorbjørn Risager & The Black Tornado - Lay My Burden Down (5:26) (Change My Game, Ruf Records, 2017) 18. Frank Zappa - It Must Be A Camel (5:13) (Hot Rats, Bizarre Records, 1969) 19. Elmore James - Dust My Broom [1951] (2:45) (Bill Wyman's Blues Odyssey, Document Records, 2001) 20. Griffin Brothers Orchestra - Shuffle Bug [1951] (2:43) (Riffin' With The Griffin Brothers Orchestra, Ace Records, 1985) Bandana Blues is and will always be a labor of love. Please help Spinner deal with the costs of hosting & bandwidth. Visit www.bandanablues.com and hit the tipjar. Any amount is much appreciated, no matter how small. Thank you.
Gavin discusses another round of Cure covers. This edition includes covers by Separate, Hot Rats, Ok Go, Oscar Isaac, Jim Smart, Puddles Pity Party, Tony Hawk, Ryan Adams, Whores, Jonah and many more, including an entire segment devoted to Hardcore Cure covers courtesy of Chaz.
SZRH Episode #8 of the Deep Dive podcasts, originally streamed from www.montcoradio.com on March 6, 2020. This is Part III of 3. This is the big climax with rehearsal tracks, workout sections and the released tracks of the entire 1969 album with commentary and anecdotes from Jeff Allen. Length: 01:18:48
SZRH Episode #8 of the Deep Dive podcasts, originally streamed from www.montcoradio.com on March 6, 2020. This is Part II of 3. It's selections of rehearsals, workout sections and the released tracks of the entire album with commentary and anecdotes from Jeff Allen. Length: 00:34:08
SZRH Episode #8 of the Deep Dive podcasts, originally streamed from www.montcoradio.com on Feb 28, 2020. This is Part I of 3. It's selections of rehearsals, workout sections and the released tracks of the entire album with commentary and anecdotes from Jeff Allen. Length: 01:01:51
Introducing "Viral or Eyeroll" (A Greg Loman Production), Hygiene Tips for Podcasters & Musicians, Zappa's Hot Rats Turns 50 Greg brings us a brand new show, "Viral or Eyeroll", wherein Greg reads Jay & Nick a story and they have to guess whether it's true or completely made up...he's had this one on the back burner for a little while and brought it out at just the right time! This one was a lot of fun, hope you enjoy! Clip: Deltron - Virus Jay has developed a comprehensive list of hygiene tips and tricks that Podcasters & Musicians can use to keep safe during a worldwide pandemic. They have not been sanctioned by anyone or anything, but they're worth considering...considering might be too strong a word, entertaining? Yeah, they're worth entertaining. Clip: Jimmy Page & The Black Crowes - Sick Again Nick just wants to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Frank Zappa's "Hot Rats" and his way of dealing with the anxiety we're all feeling is to completely change the subject and talk about something else.... but also we find a way to turn it into a nice conversation about the creativity that emerges during stressful times. [LA Times] Clip: Frank Zappa - Peaches En Regalia We hope you're all safe and find some cool new hobbies in the next couple months, we'll see you next Thursday!
My passions English teaching, music and movie reviews and sport
My review of Hot Rats by Frank Zappa released in 1969
Note: This is a new version because I uploaded the wrong file originally Episode seventy-one of A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs continues our look at British music TV by looking at the first time it affected American R&B, and is also our final look at Johnny Otis. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Short Shorts” by the Royal Teens, a group whose members went on to be far more important than one might expect. Also, this is the first of hopefully many podcasts to come where Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. Much of the information on Otis comes from Midnight at the Barrelhouse: The Johnny Otis Story by George Lipsitz. I’ve also referred extensively to two books by Otis himself, Listen to the Lambs, and Upside Your Head! Rhythm and Blues on Central Avenue. I’ve used two main books on the British side of things: Pete Frame’s The Restless Generation is the best book available looking at British 50s rock and roll from a historical perspective. Be warned, though — his jokey and irreverent style can, when dealing with people like Larry Parnes (who was gay and Jewish) very occasionally tip over into reinforcing homophobic and anti-semitic stereotypes for an easy laugh. Billy Bragg’s Roots, Radicals, and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World is one of the best books I’ve read on music at all, and talks about the problems between the musicians’ unions. This three-CD set provides a great overview of Otis’ forties and fifties work, both as himself and with other artists. Many of the titles will be very familiar to listeners of this podcast. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript And so we come to our last look at Johnny Otis, one of those people who has been turning up throughout the early episodes of the podcast. Indeed, he may continue to appear intermittently until at least the late sixties, as an influence and occasional collaborator. But the days of his influence on rock and roll music more or less came to an end with the rise of the rockabillies in the mid fifties, and from this point on he was not really involved in the mainstream of rock and roll. But in one of those curious events that happens sometimes, just as Otis was coming to the end of the run of hits he produced or arranged or performed on for other people, and the run of discoveries that changed music, he had a rock and roll hit under his own name for the first and only time. And that hit was because of the Six-Five Special, the British TV show we talked about last week: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, “Willie and the Hand Jive”] The way this podcast works, telling stories chronologically and introducing new artists as they come along, can sometimes make it seem like the music business in the fifties was in a constant state of revolution, with a new year zero coming up every year or two. “First-wave rockabilly is *so* January through August 1956, we’re into late 1958 and everything’s prototype soul now, granddad!” But of course the majority of the podcast so far has looked at a very small chunk of time, concentrating on the mid 1950s, and plenty of people who were making hits in 1955 were still having very active careers as of 1958, and that’s definitely the case for Johnny Otis. While he didn’t have that many big hits after rockabilly took over from R&B as the predominant form of rock and roll music, he was still making important records. For example, in 1957 he produced and co-wrote “Lonely, Lonely Nights” for Little Julian Herrera and the Tigers, which became a local hit, and which he thought at the time was the first big record to feature a Chicano singer. We’re going to talk about the Chicano identity in future episodes of the show, but Chicano (or Chicana or Chicanx) is a term that is usually used for Americans of Mexican origin. It can be both an ethnic and a cultural identifier, and it has also been used in the past as a racial slur. It’s still seen as that by some people, but it’s also the chosen identifier for a lot of people who reject other labels like Hispanic or Latino. To the best of my knowledge, it’s a word that is considered acceptable and correct for white people to use when talking about people who identify that way — which, to be clear, not all Americans of Mexican descent do, by any means — but I’m very happy to have feedback about this from people who are affected by the word. And Little Julian Herrera did identify that way, and he became a hero among the Chicano population in LA when “Lonely Lonely Nights” came out on Dig Records, a label Otis owned: [Excerpt: Little Julian Herrera and the Tigers, “Lonely, Lonely Nights”] But it turned out shortly afterwards that Herrera wasn’t exactly what he seemed. Police came to Otis’ door, and told him that the person he knew as Julian Herrera was wanted on charges of rape. And not only that, his birth name was Ron Gregory, and he was of Jewish ethnicity, and from a Hungarian-American family from Massachusetts. Apparently at some point he had run away from home and travelled to LA, where he had been taken in by a Mexican-American woman who had raised him as if he were her own son. That was pretty much the end of Little Julian Herrera’s career — and indeed shortly after that, Dig Records itself closed down, and Otis had no record contract. But then fate intervened, in the form of Mickey Katz. Mickey Katz was a comedian, who is now probably best known for his famous family — his son is Joel Grey, the star of Cabaret, while his granddaughter, Jennifer Grey, starred in Dirty Dancing and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Katz’s comedy consisted of him performing parodies of currently-popular songs, giving them new lyrics referencing Jewish culture. A typical example is his version of “Sixteen Tons”, making it about working at a deli instead of down a mine: [Excerpt: Mickey Katz, “Sixteen Tons”] Even though Katz’s music was about as far from Otis’ as one can imagine, Katz had been a serious musician before he went into comedy, and when he went to see Otis perform live, he recognised his talent as a bandleader, and called his record label, urging them to sign him. Katz was on Capitol, one of the biggest labels in the country, and so for the first time in many years, Otis had guaranteed major-label distribution for his records. In October 1957, Capitol took the unusual step of releasing four Johnny Otis singles at the same time, each of them featuring a different vocalist from his large stable of performers. None did especially well on the American charts at the time, but one, featuring Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy, would have a major impact on Otis’ career. Marie Adams was someone who had been on the R&B scene for many years, and had been working with Otis in his show since 1953. She’d been born Ollie Marie Givens, but dropped the Ollie early on. She was a shy woman, who had to be pushed by her husband to audition for Don Robey at Peacock Records. Robey had challenged her to sing along with Dinah Washington’s record “Harbor Lights”: [Excerpt: Dinah Washington, “Harbor Lights”] When she’d proved she could sing that, Robey signed her, hoping that he’d have a second Big Mama Thornton on his hands. And her first single seemed to confirm him in that hope — “I’m Gonna Play the Honky Tonks” went to number three on the R&B chart and became one of the biggest hit records Peacock had ever released: [Excerpt: Marie Adams, “I’m Gonna Play the Honky Tonks”] But her later career with Peacock was less successful. The follow-up was a version of Johnny Ace’s “My Song”, which seems to have been chosen more because Don Robey owned the publishing than because the song and arrangement were a good fit for her voice, and it didn’t do anything much commercially: [Excerpt: Marie Adams, “My Song” Like many of Peacock’s artists who weren’t selling wonderfully she was handed over to Johnny Otis to produce, in the hopes that he could get her making hits. Sadly, he couldn’t, and her final record for Peacock came in 1955, when Otis produced her on one of many records recorded to cash in on Johnny Ace’s death, “In Memory”: [Excerpt: Marie Adams, “In Memory”] But that did so poorly that it’s never had an official rerelease, not even on a digital compilation I have which has half a dozen other tributes to Ace on it by people like Vanetta Dillard and Linda Hayes. Adams was dropped by her record label, but she was impressive enough as a vocalist that Otis — who always had an ear for great singing — kept her in his band, as the lead singer of a vocal trio, the Three Tons of Joy, who were so called because they were all extremely fat. (I say this not as a criticism of them. I’m fat myself and absolutely fat-positive. Fat isn’t a term of abuse in my book). There seems to be some debate about the identity of the other two in the Three Tons of Joy. I’ve seen reliable sources refer to them as two sisters, Sadie and Francine McKinley, and as *Adams’* two sisters, Doris and Francine, and have no way of determining which of these is correct. The three of them would do synchronised dancing, even when they weren’t singing, and they remained with Otis’ show until 1960. And so when Capitol came to release its first batch of Johnny Otis records, one of them had vocals by Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy. The song in question was “Ma! He’s Making Eyes At Me”, a vaudeville song which dated back to 1921, and had originally sounded like this: [Excerpt: Billy Jones, “Ma! She’s Making Eyes at Me”] In the hands of the Otis band and the Three Tons of Joy, it was transformed into something that owed more to Ruth Brown (especially with Marie Adams’ pronunciation of “mama”) than to any of the other performers who had recorded versions of the song over the decades: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis and his Orchestra with Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy: “Ma, He’s Making Eyes At Me”] In the US, that did nothing at all on the charts, but for some reason it took off massively in the UK, and went to number two on the pop charts over here. It was so successful, in fact, that there were plans for a Johnny Otis Show tour of the UK in 1958. Those plans failed, because of something I’ve not mentioned in this podcast before, but which radically shaped British music culture, and to a lesser extent American music culture, for decades. Both the American Federation of Musicians and their British equivalent, the Musicians’ Union, had since the early 1930s had a mutual protectionist agreement which prevented musicians from one of the countries playing in the other. After the Duke Ellington band toured the UK in 1933, the ban came into place on both sides. Certain individual non-instrumental performers from one country could perform in the other, but only if they employed musicians from the other country. So for example Glenn Miller got his first experience of putting together a big band because Ray Noble, a British bandleader, had had hits in the US in the mid thirties. Noble and his vocalist Al Bowlly were allowed to travel to the US, but Noble’s band wasn’t, and so he had to get an American musician, Miller, to put together a new band. Similarly, when Johnnie Ray had toured the UK in the early fifties, he’d had to employ British musicians, and when Lonnie Donegan had toured the US on the back of “Rock Island Line”‘s success, he was backed by Johnny Burnette and the Rock and Roll Trio — Donegan was allowed to sing, but not allowed to play guitar. In 1955, the two unions finally came to a one-in-one-out agreement, which would last for the next few decades, where musicians from each country could tour, but only as a like-for-like swap. So Louis Armstrong was allowed to tour the UK, but only on condition that Freddie Randall, a trumpet player from Devon, got to tour the US. Stan Kenton’s band toured the UK, while the Ted Heath Orchestra (which was not, I should point out, led by the Prime Minister of the same name) toured the US. We can argue over whether Freddie Randall was truly an adequate substitute for Louis Armstrong, but I’m sure you can see the basic idea. The union was making sure that Armstrong wasn’t taking a job that would otherwise have gone to a British trumpeter. Similarly, when Bill Haley and the Comets became the first American rock and roll group to tour the UK, in 1957, Lonnie Donegan was allowed to tour the US again, and this time he could play his guitar. The Three Tons of Joy went over to the UK to appear on the Six-Five Special, backed by British musicians and to scout out some possible tour venues with Otis’ manager, but the plans fell through because of the inability to find a British group who could reasonably do a swap with Otis’ band. They came back to the US, and cut a follow-up to “Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me”, with vocals by Marie and Johnny Otis: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis and Marie Adams, “Bye Bye Baby”] That’s an example of what Johnny Otis meant when he said later that he didn’t like most of his Capitol recordings, because he was being pushed too far in a commercial rock and roll direction, while he saw himself as far closer in spirit to Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, or Louis Jordan than to Elvis Presley or Buddy Holly. The song is just an endless litany of the titles of recentish rock and roll hits, with little to recommend it. It made the top twenty in the UK, mostly on the strength of people having bought the previous single. The record after that was an attempt to capitalise on “Ma! He’s Making Eyes At Me” — it was another oldie, this time from 1916, and another song about making eyes at someone. Surely it would give them another UK hit, right?: [Excerpt: Marie Adams, “What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For?”] Sadly, it sank without a trace — at least until it was picked up by Emile Ford and the Checkmates, who released a soundalike cover version, which became the last British number one of the fifties and first of the sixties, and was also the first number one hit by a black British artist and the first record by a black British person to sell a million copies: [Excerpt: Emile Ford and the Checkmates, “What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For?”] We’ll be hearing more from Ford’s co-producer on that record, a young engineer named Joe Meek, later in the series. But Otis had another idea for how to crack the British market. While the Three Tons of Joy had been performing on Six-Five Special, they had seen the British audiences doing a weird dance that only used their arms. It was a dance that was originally popularised by a British group that was so obscure that they never made a record, and the only trace they left on posterity was this dance and three photos, all taken on the same night by, of all people, Ken Russell. From those photos, the Bell Cats were one of the many British bands trying to sound like Bill Haley and the Comets. Their regular gig was at a coffee house called The Cat’s Whisker, where they were popular enough that the audience were packed in like sardines — the venue was so often dangerously overcrowded that the police eventually shut it down, and the owner reopened it as the first Angus Steak House, an infamous London restaurant chain. In those Bell Cats performances, the audience were packed so tightly that they couldn’t dance properly, and so a new dance developed among the customers, and spread — a dance where you only moved your hands. The hand jive. That dance spread to the audiences of the Six-Five Special, so much that Don Lang and his Frantic Five released “Six-Five Hand Jive” in March 1958: [Excerpt: Don Lang and His Frantic Five, “Six-Five Hand Jive”] Oddly, despite Six-Five Special not being shown in Sweden, that song saw no less than three Swedish soundalike cover versions, from (and I apologise if I mangle these names) Inger Bergrenn, Towa Carson, and the Monn-Keys. The Three Tons of Joy demonstrated the hand jive to Otis, and he decided to write a song about the dance. There was a fad for dance songs in 1958, and he believed that writing a song about a dance that was popular in Britain, where he’d just had a big hit — and namechecking those other dances, like the Walk and the Stroll — could lead to a hit followup to “Ma He’s Making Eyes At Me”. The dance also appealed to Otis because, oddly, it was very reminiscent of some of the moves that black American people would do when performing “Hambone”, the folk dance-cum-song-cum-game that we discussed way back in episode thirty, and which inspired Bo Diddley’s song “Bo Didlley”. Otis coupled lyrics about hand-jiving to the Bo Diddley rhythm — though he would always claim, for the rest of his life, that he’d heard that rhythm from convicts on a chain gang before Diddley ever made a record: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, “Willie and the Hand Jive”] Surprisingly, the record did nothing at all commercially in the UK. In fact, its biggest impact over here was that it inspired another famous dance. Cliff Richard cut his own version of “Willie and the Hand Jive” in 1959: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard and the Shadows, “Willie and the Hand Jive”] His backing band, the Shadows, were looking for a way to liven up the visual presentation of that song when they performed it live, and they decided that moving in unison would work well for the song, and worked out a few dance steps. The audience reaction was so great that they started doing it on every song. The famous — or infamous — Shadows Walk had developed. But while “Willie and the Hand Jive” didn’t have any success in the UK, in the US it became Otis’ only top ten pop hit, and his first R&B top ten hit as a performer in six years, reaching number nine on the pop charts and number one on the R&B charts. This was despite several radio stations banning it, as they assumed the “hand jive” was a reference to masturbation — even though on Otis’ TV shows and his stage performances, the Three Tons of Joy would demonstrate the dance as Otis sang. As late as the nineties, Otis was still having to deal with questions about whether “Willie and the Hand Jive” had some more lascivious meaning. Of course, with him now being on a major label, he had to do follow-ups to his big hit, like “Willie Did The Cha-Cha”: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, “Willie Did The Cha-Cha”] But chart success remained elusive, and nothing he did after this point got higher than number fifty-two on the pop charts. The music industry was slowly moving away from the kind of music that Otis had always made — as genres got narrower, his appreciation for all forms of black American music meant that he no longer appealed to people who wanted one specific style of music. He was also becoming increasingly involved in the civil rights movement, writing a weekly newspaper column decrying racism, helping his friend Mervyn Dymally who became the joint first black person elected to statewide office in the USA since the reconstruction, and working with Malcolm X and others. He had to deal with crosses burning on his lawn, and with death threats to his family — while Otis was white, his wife was black. The result was that Otis recorded and toured only infrequently during the sixties, and at one point was making so little as a musician that his wife became the main breadwinner of the family while he was a stay-at-home father. After the Watts riots in 1965, which we’ll talk about much more when we get to that time period, Otis wrote the book Listen to the Lambs, a combination political essay, autobiography, and mixture of eyewitness accounts of the riots that made a radical case that the first priority for the black community in which he lived wasn’t so much social integration, which he believed impossible in the short term due to white racism, as economic equality — he thought it was in the best interests, not only of black people but of white people as well, if black people were made equal economic participants in America as rapidly as humanly possible, and if they should be given economic and political control over their own lives and destinies. The book is fierce in its anger at systemic racism, at colonialism, at anglocentric beauty standards that made black people hate their own bodies and faces, at police brutality, at the war in Vietnam, and at the systemic inequalities keeping black people down. And over and again he makes one point, and I’ll quote from the book here: “A newborn Negro baby has less chance of survival than a white. A Negro baby will have its life ended seven years sooner. This is not some biological phenomenon linked to skin colour, like sickle-cell anaemia; this is a national crime, linked to a white-supremacist way of life and compounded by indifference”. Just to remind you, the word he uses there was the correct word for black people at the time he was writing. Some of the book is heartrending, like the description from a witness — Otis gives over thirty pages of the book to the voices of black witnesses of the riots — talking about seeing white police officers casually shoot black teenagers on the street and make bullseye signals to their friends as if they’d been shooting tin cans. Some is, more than fifty years later, out of date or “of its time”, but the sad thing is that so many of the arguments are as timely now as they were then. Otis wrote a follow-up, Upside Your Head, in the early nineties inspired by the LA riots that followed the Rodney King beating, and no doubt were he alive today he would be completing the trilogy. But while politics had become Otis’ main occupation, he hadn’t stopped making music altogether, and in the late sixties he was contacted by Frank Zappa, who was such a fan of Otis that he copied his trademark beard from Otis. Otis and Zappa worked together in a casual way, with Otis mostly helping Zappa get in touch with musicians he knew who Zappa wanted to work with, like Don “Sugarcane” Harris. Otis also conducted the Mothers of Invention in the studio on a few songs while Zappa was in the control room, helping him get the greasy fifties sound he wanted on songs like “Holiday in Berlin”: [Excerpt: The Mothers of Invention, “Holiday in Berlin, Full Blown”] Apparently while they were recording that, Otis was clapping his hands in the face of the bass player, Roy Estrada, who didn’t like it at all. Given what I know of Estrada that’s a good thing. Otis’ teenage son Shuggie also played with Zappa, playing bass on “Son of Mr. Green Genes” from Zappa’s Hot Rats album. Zappa then persuaded a small blues label, Kent Records, which was owned by two other veterans of the fifties music industry, the Bihari brothers, to sign Otis to make an album. “Cold Shot” by the New Johnny Otis Show featured a core band of just three people — Otis himself on piano and drums, Delmar “Mighty Mouth” Evans on vocals, and Shuggie playing all the guitar and bass parts. Shuggie was only fifteen at the time, but had been playing with his father’s band since he was eleven, often wearing false moustaches and sunglasses to play in venues serving alcohol. The record brought Otis his first R&B hit since “Willie and the Hand Jive”, more than a decade earlier, “Country Girl”: [Excerpt: The Johnny Otis Show, “Country Girl”] Around the same time, that trio also recorded another album, called “For Adults Only”, under the name Snatch and the Poontangs, and with a cover drawn by Otis in a spot-on imitation of the style of Robert Crumb. For obvious reasons I won’t be playing any of that record here, but even that had a serious sociological purpose along with the obscene humour — Otis wanted to preserve bits of black folklore. Songs like “The Signifying Monkey” had been performed for years, and had even been recorded by people like Chuck Berry and Willie Dixon, but they’d always stripped out the sexual insults that make up much of the piece’s appeal. Otis would in later years laugh that he’d received accusations of obscenity for “Roll With Me Henry” and for “Willie and the Hand Jive”, but nobody had seemed bothered in the slightest by the records of Snatch and the Poontangs with their constant sexual insults. “Cold Shot” caused a career renaissance for Otis, and he put together a new lineup of the Johnny Otis Show, one that would feature as many as possible of the veteran musicians who he thought deserved exposure to a new audience. Probably the highest point of Otis’ later career was a 1970 performance at the Monterey Jazz Festival, where his band featured, along with Johnny and Shuggie, Esther Phillips, Big Joe Turner, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Roy Milton, Pee Wee Crayton, Ivory Joe Hunter, and Roy Brown: [Excerpt: The Johnny Otis Show featuring Roy Brown, “Good Rocking Tonight”] That performance was released as a live album, and Clint Eastwood featured footage of that show — the band performing “Willie and the Hand Jive” — in his classic film Play Misty For Me. It was probably the greatest example of Otis’ belief that all the important strands of black American music shared a commonality and could work in combination with each other. For the next few decades, Otis combined touring with as many of his old collaborators as possible — Marie Adams, for example, rejoined the band in 1972 — with having his own radio show in which he told people about black musical history and interviewed as many old musicians as he could, writing more books, including a cookbook and a collection of his art, running an organic apple juice company and food store, painting old blues artists in a style equally inspired by African art and Picasso, and being the pastor of a Pentecostal church — but one with a theology so broadminded that it was not only LGBT-affirming but had Buddhist and Jewish congregants. He ran Blues Spectrum Records in the seventies, which put out late-career recordings by people like Charles Brown, Big Joe Turner, and Louis Jordan, some of them their last ever recordings. And he lectured in the history of black music at Berkeley. Johnny Otis died in 2012, aged ninety, having achieved more than most of us could hope to achieve if we lived five times that long, and having helped many, many more people to make the most of their talents. He died three days before the discovery of whom he was most proud, Etta James, and she overshadowed him in the obituaries, as he would have wanted.
Note: This is a new version because I uploaded the wrong file originally Episode seventy-one of A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs continues our look at British music TV by looking at the first time it affected American R&B, and is also our final look at Johnny Otis. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on “Short Shorts” by the Royal Teens, a group whose members went on to be far more important than one might expect. Also, this is the first of hopefully many podcasts to come where Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ —-more—- Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. Much of the information on Otis comes from Midnight at the Barrelhouse: The Johnny Otis Story by George Lipsitz. I’ve also referred extensively to two books by Otis himself, Listen to the Lambs, and Upside Your Head! Rhythm and Blues on Central Avenue. I’ve used two main books on the British side of things: Pete Frame’s The Restless Generation is the best book available looking at British 50s rock and roll from a historical perspective. Be warned, though — his jokey and irreverent style can, when dealing with people like Larry Parnes (who was gay and Jewish) very occasionally tip over into reinforcing homophobic and anti-semitic stereotypes for an easy laugh. Billy Bragg’s Roots, Radicals, and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World is one of the best books I’ve read on music at all, and talks about the problems between the musicians’ unions. This three-CD set provides a great overview of Otis’ forties and fifties work, both as himself and with other artists. Many of the titles will be very familiar to listeners of this podcast. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript And so we come to our last look at Johnny Otis, one of those people who has been turning up throughout the early episodes of the podcast. Indeed, he may continue to appear intermittently until at least the late sixties, as an influence and occasional collaborator. But the days of his influence on rock and roll music more or less came to an end with the rise of the rockabillies in the mid fifties, and from this point on he was not really involved in the mainstream of rock and roll. But in one of those curious events that happens sometimes, just as Otis was coming to the end of the run of hits he produced or arranged or performed on for other people, and the run of discoveries that changed music, he had a rock and roll hit under his own name for the first and only time. And that hit was because of the Six-Five Special, the British TV show we talked about last week: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, “Willie and the Hand Jive”] The way this podcast works, telling stories chronologically and introducing new artists as they come along, can sometimes make it seem like the music business in the fifties was in a constant state of revolution, with a new year zero coming up every year or two. “First-wave rockabilly is *so* January through August 1956, we’re into late 1958 and everything’s prototype soul now, granddad!” But of course the majority of the podcast so far has looked at a very small chunk of time, concentrating on the mid 1950s, and plenty of people who were making hits in 1955 were still having very active careers as of 1958, and that’s definitely the case for Johnny Otis. While he didn’t have that many big hits after rockabilly took over from R&B as the predominant form of rock and roll music, he was still making important records. For example, in 1957 he produced and co-wrote “Lonely, Lonely Nights” for Little Julian Herrera and the Tigers, which became a local hit, and which he thought at the time was the first big record to feature a Chicano singer. We’re going to talk about the Chicano identity in future episodes of the show, but Chicano (or Chicana or Chicanx) is a term that is usually used for Americans of Mexican origin. It can be both an ethnic and a cultural identifier, and it has also been used in the past as a racial slur. It’s still seen as that by some people, but it’s also the chosen identifier for a lot of people who reject other labels like Hispanic or Latino. To the best of my knowledge, it’s a word that is considered acceptable and correct for white people to use when talking about people who identify that way — which, to be clear, not all Americans of Mexican descent do, by any means — but I’m very happy to have feedback about this from people who are affected by the word. And Little Julian Herrera did identify that way, and he became a hero among the Chicano population in LA when “Lonely Lonely Nights” came out on Dig Records, a label Otis owned: [Excerpt: Little Julian Herrera and the Tigers, “Lonely, Lonely Nights”] But it turned out shortly afterwards that Herrera wasn’t exactly what he seemed. Police came to Otis’ door, and told him that the person he knew as Julian Herrera was wanted on charges of rape. And not only that, his birth name was Ron Gregory, and he was of Jewish ethnicity, and from a Hungarian-American family from Massachusetts. Apparently at some point he had run away from home and travelled to LA, where he had been taken in by a Mexican-American woman who had raised him as if he were her own son. That was pretty much the end of Little Julian Herrera’s career — and indeed shortly after that, Dig Records itself closed down, and Otis had no record contract. But then fate intervened, in the form of Mickey Katz. Mickey Katz was a comedian, who is now probably best known for his famous family — his son is Joel Grey, the star of Cabaret, while his granddaughter, Jennifer Grey, starred in Dirty Dancing and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Katz’s comedy consisted of him performing parodies of currently-popular songs, giving them new lyrics referencing Jewish culture. A typical example is his version of “Sixteen Tons”, making it about working at a deli instead of down a mine: [Excerpt: Mickey Katz, “Sixteen Tons”] Even though Katz’s music was about as far from Otis’ as one can imagine, Katz had been a serious musician before he went into comedy, and when he went to see Otis perform live, he recognised his talent as a bandleader, and called his record label, urging them to sign him. Katz was on Capitol, one of the biggest labels in the country, and so for the first time in many years, Otis had guaranteed major-label distribution for his records. In October 1957, Capitol took the unusual step of releasing four Johnny Otis singles at the same time, each of them featuring a different vocalist from his large stable of performers. None did especially well on the American charts at the time, but one, featuring Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy, would have a major impact on Otis’ career. Marie Adams was someone who had been on the R&B scene for many years, and had been working with Otis in his show since 1953. She’d been born Ollie Marie Givens, but dropped the Ollie early on. She was a shy woman, who had to be pushed by her husband to audition for Don Robey at Peacock Records. Robey had challenged her to sing along with Dinah Washington’s record “Harbor Lights”: [Excerpt: Dinah Washington, “Harbor Lights”] When she’d proved she could sing that, Robey signed her, hoping that he’d have a second Big Mama Thornton on his hands. And her first single seemed to confirm him in that hope — “I’m Gonna Play the Honky Tonks” went to number three on the R&B chart and became one of the biggest hit records Peacock had ever released: [Excerpt: Marie Adams, “I’m Gonna Play the Honky Tonks”] But her later career with Peacock was less successful. The follow-up was a version of Johnny Ace’s “My Song”, which seems to have been chosen more because Don Robey owned the publishing than because the song and arrangement were a good fit for her voice, and it didn’t do anything much commercially: [Excerpt: Marie Adams, “My Song” Like many of Peacock’s artists who weren’t selling wonderfully she was handed over to Johnny Otis to produce, in the hopes that he could get her making hits. Sadly, he couldn’t, and her final record for Peacock came in 1955, when Otis produced her on one of many records recorded to cash in on Johnny Ace’s death, “In Memory”: [Excerpt: Marie Adams, “In Memory”] But that did so poorly that it’s never had an official rerelease, not even on a digital compilation I have which has half a dozen other tributes to Ace on it by people like Vanetta Dillard and Linda Hayes. Adams was dropped by her record label, but she was impressive enough as a vocalist that Otis — who always had an ear for great singing — kept her in his band, as the lead singer of a vocal trio, the Three Tons of Joy, who were so called because they were all extremely fat. (I say this not as a criticism of them. I’m fat myself and absolutely fat-positive. Fat isn’t a term of abuse in my book). There seems to be some debate about the identity of the other two in the Three Tons of Joy. I’ve seen reliable sources refer to them as two sisters, Sadie and Francine McKinley, and as *Adams’* two sisters, Doris and Francine, and have no way of determining which of these is correct. The three of them would do synchronised dancing, even when they weren’t singing, and they remained with Otis’ show until 1960. And so when Capitol came to release its first batch of Johnny Otis records, one of them had vocals by Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy. The song in question was “Ma! He’s Making Eyes At Me”, a vaudeville song which dated back to 1921, and had originally sounded like this: [Excerpt: Billy Jones, “Ma! She’s Making Eyes at Me”] In the hands of the Otis band and the Three Tons of Joy, it was transformed into something that owed more to Ruth Brown (especially with Marie Adams’ pronunciation of “mama”) than to any of the other performers who had recorded versions of the song over the decades: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis and his Orchestra with Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy: “Ma, He’s Making Eyes At Me”] In the US, that did nothing at all on the charts, but for some reason it took off massively in the UK, and went to number two on the pop charts over here. It was so successful, in fact, that there were plans for a Johnny Otis Show tour of the UK in 1958. Those plans failed, because of something I’ve not mentioned in this podcast before, but which radically shaped British music culture, and to a lesser extent American music culture, for decades. Both the American Federation of Musicians and their British equivalent, the Musicians’ Union, had since the early 1930s had a mutual protectionist agreement which prevented musicians from one of the countries playing in the other. After the Duke Ellington band toured the UK in 1933, the ban came into place on both sides. Certain individual non-instrumental performers from one country could perform in the other, but only if they employed musicians from the other country. So for example Glenn Miller got his first experience of putting together a big band because Ray Noble, a British bandleader, had had hits in the US in the mid thirties. Noble and his vocalist Al Bowlly were allowed to travel to the US, but Noble’s band wasn’t, and so he had to get an American musician, Miller, to put together a new band. Similarly, when Johnnie Ray had toured the UK in the early fifties, he’d had to employ British musicians, and when Lonnie Donegan had toured the US on the back of “Rock Island Line”‘s success, he was backed by Johnny Burnette and the Rock and Roll Trio — Donegan was allowed to sing, but not allowed to play guitar. In 1955, the two unions finally came to a one-in-one-out agreement, which would last for the next few decades, where musicians from each country could tour, but only as a like-for-like swap. So Louis Armstrong was allowed to tour the UK, but only on condition that Freddie Randall, a trumpet player from Devon, got to tour the US. Stan Kenton’s band toured the UK, while the Ted Heath Orchestra (which was not, I should point out, led by the Prime Minister of the same name) toured the US. We can argue over whether Freddie Randall was truly an adequate substitute for Louis Armstrong, but I’m sure you can see the basic idea. The union was making sure that Armstrong wasn’t taking a job that would otherwise have gone to a British trumpeter. Similarly, when Bill Haley and the Comets became the first American rock and roll group to tour the UK, in 1957, Lonnie Donegan was allowed to tour the US again, and this time he could play his guitar. The Three Tons of Joy went over to the UK to appear on the Six-Five Special, backed by British musicians and to scout out some possible tour venues with Otis’ manager, but the plans fell through because of the inability to find a British group who could reasonably do a swap with Otis’ band. They came back to the US, and cut a follow-up to “Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me”, with vocals by Marie and Johnny Otis: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis and Marie Adams, “Bye Bye Baby”] That’s an example of what Johnny Otis meant when he said later that he didn’t like most of his Capitol recordings, because he was being pushed too far in a commercial rock and roll direction, while he saw himself as far closer in spirit to Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, or Louis Jordan than to Elvis Presley or Buddy Holly. The song is just an endless litany of the titles of recentish rock and roll hits, with little to recommend it. It made the top twenty in the UK, mostly on the strength of people having bought the previous single. The record after that was an attempt to capitalise on “Ma! He’s Making Eyes At Me” — it was another oldie, this time from 1916, and another song about making eyes at someone. Surely it would give them another UK hit, right?: [Excerpt: Marie Adams, “What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For?”] Sadly, it sank without a trace — at least until it was picked up by Emile Ford and the Checkmates, who released a soundalike cover version, which became the last British number one of the fifties and first of the sixties, and was also the first number one hit by a black British artist and the first record by a black British person to sell a million copies: [Excerpt: Emile Ford and the Checkmates, “What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For?”] We’ll be hearing more from Ford’s co-producer on that record, a young engineer named Joe Meek, later in the series. But Otis had another idea for how to crack the British market. While the Three Tons of Joy had been performing on Six-Five Special, they had seen the British audiences doing a weird dance that only used their arms. It was a dance that was originally popularised by a British group that was so obscure that they never made a record, and the only trace they left on posterity was this dance and three photos, all taken on the same night by, of all people, Ken Russell. From those photos, the Bell Cats were one of the many British bands trying to sound like Bill Haley and the Comets. Their regular gig was at a coffee house called The Cat’s Whisker, where they were popular enough that the audience were packed in like sardines — the venue was so often dangerously overcrowded that the police eventually shut it down, and the owner reopened it as the first Angus Steak House, an infamous London restaurant chain. In those Bell Cats performances, the audience were packed so tightly that they couldn’t dance properly, and so a new dance developed among the customers, and spread — a dance where you only moved your hands. The hand jive. That dance spread to the audiences of the Six-Five Special, so much that Don Lang and his Frantic Five released “Six-Five Hand Jive” in March 1958: [Excerpt: Don Lang and His Frantic Five, “Six-Five Hand Jive”] Oddly, despite Six-Five Special not being shown in Sweden, that song saw no less than three Swedish soundalike cover versions, from (and I apologise if I mangle these names) Inger Bergrenn, Towa Carson, and the Monn-Keys. The Three Tons of Joy demonstrated the hand jive to Otis, and he decided to write a song about the dance. There was a fad for dance songs in 1958, and he believed that writing a song about a dance that was popular in Britain, where he’d just had a big hit — and namechecking those other dances, like the Walk and the Stroll — could lead to a hit followup to “Ma He’s Making Eyes At Me”. The dance also appealed to Otis because, oddly, it was very reminiscent of some of the moves that black American people would do when performing “Hambone”, the folk dance-cum-song-cum-game that we discussed way back in episode thirty, and which inspired Bo Diddley’s song “Bo Didlley”. Otis coupled lyrics about hand-jiving to the Bo Diddley rhythm — though he would always claim, for the rest of his life, that he’d heard that rhythm from convicts on a chain gang before Diddley ever made a record: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, “Willie and the Hand Jive”] Surprisingly, the record did nothing at all commercially in the UK. In fact, its biggest impact over here was that it inspired another famous dance. Cliff Richard cut his own version of “Willie and the Hand Jive” in 1959: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard and the Shadows, “Willie and the Hand Jive”] His backing band, the Shadows, were looking for a way to liven up the visual presentation of that song when they performed it live, and they decided that moving in unison would work well for the song, and worked out a few dance steps. The audience reaction was so great that they started doing it on every song. The famous — or infamous — Shadows Walk had developed. But while “Willie and the Hand Jive” didn’t have any success in the UK, in the US it became Otis’ only top ten pop hit, and his first R&B top ten hit as a performer in six years, reaching number nine on the pop charts and number one on the R&B charts. This was despite several radio stations banning it, as they assumed the “hand jive” was a reference to masturbation — even though on Otis’ TV shows and his stage performances, the Three Tons of Joy would demonstrate the dance as Otis sang. As late as the nineties, Otis was still having to deal with questions about whether “Willie and the Hand Jive” had some more lascivious meaning. Of course, with him now being on a major label, he had to do follow-ups to his big hit, like “Willie Did The Cha-Cha”: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, “Willie Did The Cha-Cha”] But chart success remained elusive, and nothing he did after this point got higher than number fifty-two on the pop charts. The music industry was slowly moving away from the kind of music that Otis had always made — as genres got narrower, his appreciation for all forms of black American music meant that he no longer appealed to people who wanted one specific style of music. He was also becoming increasingly involved in the civil rights movement, writing a weekly newspaper column decrying racism, helping his friend Mervyn Dymally who became the joint first black person elected to statewide office in the USA since the reconstruction, and working with Malcolm X and others. He had to deal with crosses burning on his lawn, and with death threats to his family — while Otis was white, his wife was black. The result was that Otis recorded and toured only infrequently during the sixties, and at one point was making so little as a musician that his wife became the main breadwinner of the family while he was a stay-at-home father. After the Watts riots in 1965, which we’ll talk about much more when we get to that time period, Otis wrote the book Listen to the Lambs, a combination political essay, autobiography, and mixture of eyewitness accounts of the riots that made a radical case that the first priority for the black community in which he lived wasn’t so much social integration, which he believed impossible in the short term due to white racism, as economic equality — he thought it was in the best interests, not only of black people but of white people as well, if black people were made equal economic participants in America as rapidly as humanly possible, and if they should be given economic and political control over their own lives and destinies. The book is fierce in its anger at systemic racism, at colonialism, at anglocentric beauty standards that made black people hate their own bodies and faces, at police brutality, at the war in Vietnam, and at the systemic inequalities keeping black people down. And over and again he makes one point, and I’ll quote from the book here: “A newborn Negro baby has less chance of survival than a white. A Negro baby will have its life ended seven years sooner. This is not some biological phenomenon linked to skin colour, like sickle-cell anaemia; this is a national crime, linked to a white-supremacist way of life and compounded by indifference”. Just to remind you, the word he uses there was the correct word for black people at the time he was writing. Some of the book is heartrending, like the description from a witness — Otis gives over thirty pages of the book to the voices of black witnesses of the riots — talking about seeing white police officers casually shoot black teenagers on the street and make bullseye signals to their friends as if they’d been shooting tin cans. Some is, more than fifty years later, out of date or “of its time”, but the sad thing is that so many of the arguments are as timely now as they were then. Otis wrote a follow-up, Upside Your Head, in the early nineties inspired by the LA riots that followed the Rodney King beating, and no doubt were he alive today he would be completing the trilogy. But while politics had become Otis’ main occupation, he hadn’t stopped making music altogether, and in the late sixties he was contacted by Frank Zappa, who was such a fan of Otis that he copied his trademark beard from Otis. Otis and Zappa worked together in a casual way, with Otis mostly helping Zappa get in touch with musicians he knew who Zappa wanted to work with, like Don “Sugarcane” Harris. Otis also conducted the Mothers of Invention in the studio on a few songs while Zappa was in the control room, helping him get the greasy fifties sound he wanted on songs like “Holiday in Berlin”: [Excerpt: The Mothers of Invention, “Holiday in Berlin, Full Blown”] Apparently while they were recording that, Otis was clapping his hands in the face of the bass player, Roy Estrada, who didn’t like it at all. Given what I know of Estrada that’s a good thing. Otis’ teenage son Shuggie also played with Zappa, playing bass on “Son of Mr. Green Genes” from Zappa’s Hot Rats album. Zappa then persuaded a small blues label, Kent Records, which was owned by two other veterans of the fifties music industry, the Bihari brothers, to sign Otis to make an album. “Cold Shot” by the New Johnny Otis Show featured a core band of just three people — Otis himself on piano and drums, Delmar “Mighty Mouth” Evans on vocals, and Shuggie playing all the guitar and bass parts. Shuggie was only fifteen at the time, but had been playing with his father’s band since he was eleven, often wearing false moustaches and sunglasses to play in venues serving alcohol. The record brought Otis his first R&B hit since “Willie and the Hand Jive”, more than a decade earlier, “Country Girl”: [Excerpt: The Johnny Otis Show, “Country Girl”] Around the same time, that trio also recorded another album, called “For Adults Only”, under the name Snatch and the Poontangs, and with a cover drawn by Otis in a spot-on imitation of the style of Robert Crumb. For obvious reasons I won’t be playing any of that record here, but even that had a serious sociological purpose along with the obscene humour — Otis wanted to preserve bits of black folklore. Songs like “The Signifying Monkey” had been performed for years, and had even been recorded by people like Chuck Berry and Willie Dixon, but they’d always stripped out the sexual insults that make up much of the piece’s appeal. Otis would in later years laugh that he’d received accusations of obscenity for “Roll With Me Henry” and for “Willie and the Hand Jive”, but nobody had seemed bothered in the slightest by the records of Snatch and the Poontangs with their constant sexual insults. “Cold Shot” caused a career renaissance for Otis, and he put together a new lineup of the Johnny Otis Show, one that would feature as many as possible of the veteran musicians who he thought deserved exposure to a new audience. Probably the highest point of Otis’ later career was a 1970 performance at the Monterey Jazz Festival, where his band featured, along with Johnny and Shuggie, Esther Phillips, Big Joe Turner, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Roy Milton, Pee Wee Crayton, Ivory Joe Hunter, and Roy Brown: [Excerpt: The Johnny Otis Show featuring Roy Brown, “Good Rocking Tonight”] That performance was released as a live album, and Clint Eastwood featured footage of that show — the band performing “Willie and the Hand Jive” — in his classic film Play Misty For Me. It was probably the greatest example of Otis’ belief that all the important strands of black American music shared a commonality and could work in combination with each other. For the next few decades, Otis combined touring with as many of his old collaborators as possible — Marie Adams, for example, rejoined the band in 1972 — with having his own radio show in which he told people about black musical history and interviewed as many old musicians as he could, writing more books, including a cookbook and a collection of his art, running an organic apple juice company and food store, painting old blues artists in a style equally inspired by African art and Picasso, and being the pastor of a Pentecostal church — but one with a theology so broadminded that it was not only LGBT-affirming but had Buddhist and Jewish congregants. He ran Blues Spectrum Records in the seventies, which put out late-career recordings by people like Charles Brown, Big Joe Turner, and Louis Jordan, some of them their last ever recordings. And he lectured in the history of black music at Berkeley. Johnny Otis died in 2012, aged ninety, having achieved more than most of us could hope to achieve if we lived five times that long, and having helped many, many more people to make the most of their talents. He died three days before the discovery of whom he was most proud, Etta James, and she overshadowed him in the obituaries, as he would have wanted.
Note: This is a new version because I uploaded the wrong file originally Episode seventy-one of A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs continues our look at British music TV by looking at the first time it affected American R&B, and is also our final look at Johnny Otis. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Short Shorts" by the Royal Teens, a group whose members went on to be far more important than one might expect. Also, this is the first of hopefully many podcasts to come where Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ ----more---- Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. Much of the information on Otis comes from Midnight at the Barrelhouse: The Johnny Otis Story by George Lipsitz. I've also referred extensively to two books by Otis himself, Listen to the Lambs, and Upside Your Head! Rhythm and Blues on Central Avenue. I've used two main books on the British side of things: Pete Frame's The Restless Generation is the best book available looking at British 50s rock and roll from a historical perspective. Be warned, though -- his jokey and irreverent style can, when dealing with people like Larry Parnes (who was gay and Jewish) very occasionally tip over into reinforcing homophobic and anti-semitic stereotypes for an easy laugh. Billy Bragg's Roots, Radicals, and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World is one of the best books I've read on music at all, and talks about the problems between the musicians' unions. This three-CD set provides a great overview of Otis' forties and fifties work, both as himself and with other artists. Many of the titles will be very familiar to listeners of this podcast. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript And so we come to our last look at Johnny Otis, one of those people who has been turning up throughout the early episodes of the podcast. Indeed, he may continue to appear intermittently until at least the late sixties, as an influence and occasional collaborator. But the days of his influence on rock and roll music more or less came to an end with the rise of the rockabillies in the mid fifties, and from this point on he was not really involved in the mainstream of rock and roll. But in one of those curious events that happens sometimes, just as Otis was coming to the end of the run of hits he produced or arranged or performed on for other people, and the run of discoveries that changed music, he had a rock and roll hit under his own name for the first and only time. And that hit was because of the Six-Five Special, the British TV show we talked about last week: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, "Willie and the Hand Jive"] The way this podcast works, telling stories chronologically and introducing new artists as they come along, can sometimes make it seem like the music business in the fifties was in a constant state of revolution, with a new year zero coming up every year or two. "First-wave rockabilly is *so* January through August 1956, we're into late 1958 and everything's prototype soul now, granddad!" But of course the majority of the podcast so far has looked at a very small chunk of time, concentrating on the mid 1950s, and plenty of people who were making hits in 1955 were still having very active careers as of 1958, and that's definitely the case for Johnny Otis. While he didn't have that many big hits after rockabilly took over from R&B as the predominant form of rock and roll music, he was still making important records. For example, in 1957 he produced and co-wrote "Lonely, Lonely Nights" for Little Julian Herrera and the Tigers, which became a local hit, and which he thought at the time was the first big record to feature a Chicano singer. We're going to talk about the Chicano identity in future episodes of the show, but Chicano (or Chicana or Chicanx) is a term that is usually used for Americans of Mexican origin. It can be both an ethnic and a cultural identifier, and it has also been used in the past as a racial slur. It's still seen as that by some people, but it's also the chosen identifier for a lot of people who reject other labels like Hispanic or Latino. To the best of my knowledge, it's a word that is considered acceptable and correct for white people to use when talking about people who identify that way -- which, to be clear, not all Americans of Mexican descent do, by any means -- but I'm very happy to have feedback about this from people who are affected by the word. And Little Julian Herrera did identify that way, and he became a hero among the Chicano population in LA when "Lonely Lonely Nights" came out on Dig Records, a label Otis owned: [Excerpt: Little Julian Herrera and the Tigers, "Lonely, Lonely Nights"] But it turned out shortly afterwards that Herrera wasn't exactly what he seemed. Police came to Otis' door, and told him that the person he knew as Julian Herrera was wanted on charges of rape. And not only that, his birth name was Ron Gregory, and he was of Jewish ethnicity, and from a Hungarian-American family from Massachusetts. Apparently at some point he had run away from home and travelled to LA, where he had been taken in by a Mexican-American woman who had raised him as if he were her own son. That was pretty much the end of Little Julian Herrera's career -- and indeed shortly after that, Dig Records itself closed down, and Otis had no record contract. But then fate intervened, in the form of Mickey Katz. Mickey Katz was a comedian, who is now probably best known for his famous family -- his son is Joel Grey, the star of Cabaret, while his granddaughter, Jennifer Grey, starred in Dirty Dancing and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Katz's comedy consisted of him performing parodies of currently-popular songs, giving them new lyrics referencing Jewish culture. A typical example is his version of "Sixteen Tons", making it about working at a deli instead of down a mine: [Excerpt: Mickey Katz, "Sixteen Tons"] Even though Katz's music was about as far from Otis' as one can imagine, Katz had been a serious musician before he went into comedy, and when he went to see Otis perform live, he recognised his talent as a bandleader, and called his record label, urging them to sign him. Katz was on Capitol, one of the biggest labels in the country, and so for the first time in many years, Otis had guaranteed major-label distribution for his records. In October 1957, Capitol took the unusual step of releasing four Johnny Otis singles at the same time, each of them featuring a different vocalist from his large stable of performers. None did especially well on the American charts at the time, but one, featuring Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy, would have a major impact on Otis' career. Marie Adams was someone who had been on the R&B scene for many years, and had been working with Otis in his show since 1953. She'd been born Ollie Marie Givens, but dropped the Ollie early on. She was a shy woman, who had to be pushed by her husband to audition for Don Robey at Peacock Records. Robey had challenged her to sing along with Dinah Washington's record "Harbor Lights": [Excerpt: Dinah Washington, "Harbor Lights"] When she'd proved she could sing that, Robey signed her, hoping that he'd have a second Big Mama Thornton on his hands. And her first single seemed to confirm him in that hope -- "I'm Gonna Play the Honky Tonks" went to number three on the R&B chart and became one of the biggest hit records Peacock had ever released: [Excerpt: Marie Adams, "I'm Gonna Play the Honky Tonks"] But her later career with Peacock was less successful. The follow-up was a version of Johnny Ace's "My Song", which seems to have been chosen more because Don Robey owned the publishing than because the song and arrangement were a good fit for her voice, and it didn't do anything much commercially: [Excerpt: Marie Adams, "My Song" Like many of Peacock's artists who weren't selling wonderfully she was handed over to Johnny Otis to produce, in the hopes that he could get her making hits. Sadly, he couldn't, and her final record for Peacock came in 1955, when Otis produced her on one of many records recorded to cash in on Johnny Ace's death, "In Memory": [Excerpt: Marie Adams, "In Memory"] But that did so poorly that it's never had an official rerelease, not even on a digital compilation I have which has half a dozen other tributes to Ace on it by people like Vanetta Dillard and Linda Hayes. Adams was dropped by her record label, but she was impressive enough as a vocalist that Otis -- who always had an ear for great singing -- kept her in his band, as the lead singer of a vocal trio, the Three Tons of Joy, who were so called because they were all extremely fat. (I say this not as a criticism of them. I'm fat myself and absolutely fat-positive. Fat isn't a term of abuse in my book). There seems to be some debate about the identity of the other two in the Three Tons of Joy. I've seen reliable sources refer to them as two sisters, Sadie and Francine McKinley, and as *Adams'* two sisters, Doris and Francine, and have no way of determining which of these is correct. The three of them would do synchronised dancing, even when they weren't singing, and they remained with Otis' show until 1960. And so when Capitol came to release its first batch of Johnny Otis records, one of them had vocals by Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy. The song in question was "Ma! He's Making Eyes At Me", a vaudeville song which dated back to 1921, and had originally sounded like this: [Excerpt: Billy Jones, "Ma! She's Making Eyes at Me"] In the hands of the Otis band and the Three Tons of Joy, it was transformed into something that owed more to Ruth Brown (especially with Marie Adams' pronunciation of "mama") than to any of the other performers who had recorded versions of the song over the decades: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis and his Orchestra with Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy: "Ma, He's Making Eyes At Me"] In the US, that did nothing at all on the charts, but for some reason it took off massively in the UK, and went to number two on the pop charts over here. It was so successful, in fact, that there were plans for a Johnny Otis Show tour of the UK in 1958. Those plans failed, because of something I've not mentioned in this podcast before, but which radically shaped British music culture, and to a lesser extent American music culture, for decades. Both the American Federation of Musicians and their British equivalent, the Musicians' Union, had since the early 1930s had a mutual protectionist agreement which prevented musicians from one of the countries playing in the other. After the Duke Ellington band toured the UK in 1933, the ban came into place on both sides. Certain individual non-instrumental performers from one country could perform in the other, but only if they employed musicians from the other country. So for example Glenn Miller got his first experience of putting together a big band because Ray Noble, a British bandleader, had had hits in the US in the mid thirties. Noble and his vocalist Al Bowlly were allowed to travel to the US, but Noble's band wasn't, and so he had to get an American musician, Miller, to put together a new band. Similarly, when Johnnie Ray had toured the UK in the early fifties, he'd had to employ British musicians, and when Lonnie Donegan had toured the US on the back of "Rock Island Line"'s success, he was backed by Johnny Burnette and the Rock and Roll Trio -- Donegan was allowed to sing, but not allowed to play guitar. In 1955, the two unions finally came to a one-in-one-out agreement, which would last for the next few decades, where musicians from each country could tour, but only as a like-for-like swap. So Louis Armstrong was allowed to tour the UK, but only on condition that Freddie Randall, a trumpet player from Devon, got to tour the US. Stan Kenton's band toured the UK, while the Ted Heath Orchestra (which was not, I should point out, led by the Prime Minister of the same name) toured the US. We can argue over whether Freddie Randall was truly an adequate substitute for Louis Armstrong, but I'm sure you can see the basic idea. The union was making sure that Armstrong wasn't taking a job that would otherwise have gone to a British trumpeter. Similarly, when Bill Haley and the Comets became the first American rock and roll group to tour the UK, in 1957, Lonnie Donegan was allowed to tour the US again, and this time he could play his guitar. The Three Tons of Joy went over to the UK to appear on the Six-Five Special, backed by British musicians and to scout out some possible tour venues with Otis' manager, but the plans fell through because of the inability to find a British group who could reasonably do a swap with Otis' band. They came back to the US, and cut a follow-up to "Ma, He's Making Eyes at Me", with vocals by Marie and Johnny Otis: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis and Marie Adams, "Bye Bye Baby"] That's an example of what Johnny Otis meant when he said later that he didn't like most of his Capitol recordings, because he was being pushed too far in a commercial rock and roll direction, while he saw himself as far closer in spirit to Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, or Louis Jordan than to Elvis Presley or Buddy Holly. The song is just an endless litany of the titles of recentish rock and roll hits, with little to recommend it. It made the top twenty in the UK, mostly on the strength of people having bought the previous single. The record after that was an attempt to capitalise on "Ma! He's Making Eyes At Me" -- it was another oldie, this time from 1916, and another song about making eyes at someone. Surely it would give them another UK hit, right?: [Excerpt: Marie Adams, "What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For?"] Sadly, it sank without a trace -- at least until it was picked up by Emile Ford and the Checkmates, who released a soundalike cover version, which became the last British number one of the fifties and first of the sixties, and was also the first number one hit by a black British artist and the first record by a black British person to sell a million copies: [Excerpt: Emile Ford and the Checkmates, "What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For?"] We'll be hearing more from Ford's co-producer on that record, a young engineer named Joe Meek, later in the series. But Otis had another idea for how to crack the British market. While the Three Tons of Joy had been performing on Six-Five Special, they had seen the British audiences doing a weird dance that only used their arms. It was a dance that was originally popularised by a British group that was so obscure that they never made a record, and the only trace they left on posterity was this dance and three photos, all taken on the same night by, of all people, Ken Russell. From those photos, the Bell Cats were one of the many British bands trying to sound like Bill Haley and the Comets. Their regular gig was at a coffee house called The Cat's Whisker, where they were popular enough that the audience were packed in like sardines -- the venue was so often dangerously overcrowded that the police eventually shut it down, and the owner reopened it as the first Angus Steak House, an infamous London restaurant chain. In those Bell Cats performances, the audience were packed so tightly that they couldn't dance properly, and so a new dance developed among the customers, and spread -- a dance where you only moved your hands. The hand jive. That dance spread to the audiences of the Six-Five Special, so much that Don Lang and his Frantic Five released "Six-Five Hand Jive" in March 1958: [Excerpt: Don Lang and His Frantic Five, "Six-Five Hand Jive"] Oddly, despite Six-Five Special not being shown in Sweden, that song saw no less than three Swedish soundalike cover versions, from (and I apologise if I mangle these names) Inger Bergrenn, Towa Carson, and the Monn-Keys. The Three Tons of Joy demonstrated the hand jive to Otis, and he decided to write a song about the dance. There was a fad for dance songs in 1958, and he believed that writing a song about a dance that was popular in Britain, where he'd just had a big hit -- and namechecking those other dances, like the Walk and the Stroll -- could lead to a hit followup to "Ma He's Making Eyes At Me". The dance also appealed to Otis because, oddly, it was very reminiscent of some of the moves that black American people would do when performing "Hambone", the folk dance-cum-song-cum-game that we discussed way back in episode thirty, and which inspired Bo Diddley's song "Bo Didlley". Otis coupled lyrics about hand-jiving to the Bo Diddley rhythm -- though he would always claim, for the rest of his life, that he'd heard that rhythm from convicts on a chain gang before Diddley ever made a record: [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, "Willie and the Hand Jive"] Surprisingly, the record did nothing at all commercially in the UK. In fact, its biggest impact over here was that it inspired another famous dance. Cliff Richard cut his own version of "Willie and the Hand Jive" in 1959: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard and the Shadows, "Willie and the Hand Jive"] His backing band, the Shadows, were looking for a way to liven up the visual presentation of that song when they performed it live, and they decided that moving in unison would work well for the song, and worked out a few dance steps. The audience reaction was so great that they started doing it on every song. The famous -- or infamous -- Shadows Walk had developed. But while "Willie and the Hand Jive" didn't have any success in the UK, in the US it became Otis' only top ten pop hit, and his first R&B top ten hit as a performer in six years, reaching number nine on the pop charts and number one on the R&B charts. This was despite several radio stations banning it, as they assumed the "hand jive" was a reference to masturbation -- even though on Otis' TV shows and his stage performances, the Three Tons of Joy would demonstrate the dance as Otis sang. As late as the nineties, Otis was still having to deal with questions about whether "Willie and the Hand Jive" had some more lascivious meaning. Of course, with him now being on a major label, he had to do follow-ups to his big hit, like "Willie Did The Cha-Cha": [Excerpt: Johnny Otis, "Willie Did The Cha-Cha"] But chart success remained elusive, and nothing he did after this point got higher than number fifty-two on the pop charts. The music industry was slowly moving away from the kind of music that Otis had always made -- as genres got narrower, his appreciation for all forms of black American music meant that he no longer appealed to people who wanted one specific style of music. He was also becoming increasingly involved in the civil rights movement, writing a weekly newspaper column decrying racism, helping his friend Mervyn Dymally who became the joint first black person elected to statewide office in the USA since the reconstruction, and working with Malcolm X and others. He had to deal with crosses burning on his lawn, and with death threats to his family -- while Otis was white, his wife was black. The result was that Otis recorded and toured only infrequently during the sixties, and at one point was making so little as a musician that his wife became the main breadwinner of the family while he was a stay-at-home father. After the Watts riots in 1965, which we'll talk about much more when we get to that time period, Otis wrote the book Listen to the Lambs, a combination political essay, autobiography, and mixture of eyewitness accounts of the riots that made a radical case that the first priority for the black community in which he lived wasn't so much social integration, which he believed impossible in the short term due to white racism, as economic equality -- he thought it was in the best interests, not only of black people but of white people as well, if black people were made equal economic participants in America as rapidly as humanly possible, and if they should be given economic and political control over their own lives and destinies. The book is fierce in its anger at systemic racism, at colonialism, at anglocentric beauty standards that made black people hate their own bodies and faces, at police brutality, at the war in Vietnam, and at the systemic inequalities keeping black people down. And over and again he makes one point, and I'll quote from the book here: "A newborn Negro baby has less chance of survival than a white. A Negro baby will have its life ended seven years sooner. This is not some biological phenomenon linked to skin colour, like sickle-cell anaemia; this is a national crime, linked to a white-supremacist way of life and compounded by indifference". Just to remind you, the word he uses there was the correct word for black people at the time he was writing. Some of the book is heartrending, like the description from a witness -- Otis gives over thirty pages of the book to the voices of black witnesses of the riots -- talking about seeing white police officers casually shoot black teenagers on the street and make bullseye signals to their friends as if they'd been shooting tin cans. Some is, more than fifty years later, out of date or "of its time", but the sad thing is that so many of the arguments are as timely now as they were then. Otis wrote a follow-up, Upside Your Head, in the early nineties inspired by the LA riots that followed the Rodney King beating, and no doubt were he alive today he would be completing the trilogy. But while politics had become Otis' main occupation, he hadn't stopped making music altogether, and in the late sixties he was contacted by Frank Zappa, who was such a fan of Otis that he copied his trademark beard from Otis. Otis and Zappa worked together in a casual way, with Otis mostly helping Zappa get in touch with musicians he knew who Zappa wanted to work with, like Don "Sugarcane" Harris. Otis also conducted the Mothers of Invention in the studio on a few songs while Zappa was in the control room, helping him get the greasy fifties sound he wanted on songs like "Holiday in Berlin": [Excerpt: The Mothers of Invention, "Holiday in Berlin, Full Blown"] Apparently while they were recording that, Otis was clapping his hands in the face of the bass player, Roy Estrada, who didn't like it at all. Given what I know of Estrada that's a good thing. Otis' teenage son Shuggie also played with Zappa, playing bass on "Son of Mr. Green Genes" from Zappa's Hot Rats album. Zappa then persuaded a small blues label, Kent Records, which was owned by two other veterans of the fifties music industry, the Bihari brothers, to sign Otis to make an album. "Cold Shot" by the New Johnny Otis Show featured a core band of just three people -- Otis himself on piano and drums, Delmar "Mighty Mouth" Evans on vocals, and Shuggie playing all the guitar and bass parts. Shuggie was only fifteen at the time, but had been playing with his father's band since he was eleven, often wearing false moustaches and sunglasses to play in venues serving alcohol. The record brought Otis his first R&B hit since "Willie and the Hand Jive", more than a decade earlier, "Country Girl": [Excerpt: The Johnny Otis Show, "Country Girl"] Around the same time, that trio also recorded another album, called "For Adults Only", under the name Snatch and the Poontangs, and with a cover drawn by Otis in a spot-on imitation of the style of Robert Crumb. For obvious reasons I won't be playing any of that record here, but even that had a serious sociological purpose along with the obscene humour -- Otis wanted to preserve bits of black folklore. Songs like "The Signifying Monkey" had been performed for years, and had even been recorded by people like Chuck Berry and Willie Dixon, but they'd always stripped out the sexual insults that make up much of the piece's appeal. Otis would in later years laugh that he'd received accusations of obscenity for "Roll With Me Henry" and for "Willie and the Hand Jive", but nobody had seemed bothered in the slightest by the records of Snatch and the Poontangs with their constant sexual insults. "Cold Shot" caused a career renaissance for Otis, and he put together a new lineup of the Johnny Otis Show, one that would feature as many as possible of the veteran musicians who he thought deserved exposure to a new audience. Probably the highest point of Otis' later career was a 1970 performance at the Monterey Jazz Festival, where his band featured, along with Johnny and Shuggie, Esther Phillips, Big Joe Turner, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Roy Milton, Pee Wee Crayton, Ivory Joe Hunter, and Roy Brown: [Excerpt: The Johnny Otis Show featuring Roy Brown, "Good Rocking Tonight"] That performance was released as a live album, and Clint Eastwood featured footage of that show -- the band performing "Willie and the Hand Jive" -- in his classic film Play Misty For Me. It was probably the greatest example of Otis' belief that all the important strands of black American music shared a commonality and could work in combination with each other. For the next few decades, Otis combined touring with as many of his old collaborators as possible -- Marie Adams, for example, rejoined the band in 1972 -- with having his own radio show in which he told people about black musical history and interviewed as many old musicians as he could, writing more books, including a cookbook and a collection of his art, running an organic apple juice company and food store, painting old blues artists in a style equally inspired by African art and Picasso, and being the pastor of a Pentecostal church -- but one with a theology so broadminded that it was not only LGBT-affirming but had Buddhist and Jewish congregants. He ran Blues Spectrum Records in the seventies, which put out late-career recordings by people like Charles Brown, Big Joe Turner, and Louis Jordan, some of them their last ever recordings. And he lectured in the history of black music at Berkeley. Johnny Otis died in 2012, aged ninety, having achieved more than most of us could hope to achieve if we lived five times that long, and having helped many, many more people to make the most of their talents. He died three days before the discovery of whom he was most proud, Etta James, and she overshadowed him in the obituaries, as he would have wanted.
Frank Zappa released the album "Hot Rats" in 1969, about a month after Dweezil Zappa was born. The album was actually dedicated TO Dweezil. Theis edition of KVC-Arts has David Fleming in conversation with Dweezil about his latest tour, "Hot Rats Live & Other Hot Stuff 1969," which ahas a few stops in this region. We'll also hear about some of Dweezil's earlier recordings, video, and a bit of TV work as well.
Où l'on écoute du Groucho, tendance Zappa. Références du morceau : «Peaches En Regalia», Frank Zappa(composition Frank Zappa) 1969. Quelques liens vers des morceaux incontournables de Frank Zappa :- «Who Are The Brain Police», sur l’album Freak Out! (1966), The Mothers Of Invention- «Concentration Moon», sur l’album We’re Only In It For The Money (1967), The Mothers Of Invention- «Son Of Mr Green Genes», sur l’album Hot Rats (1969)- «Willie the Pimp», sur l’album Hot Rats (1969)- «Transylvania Boogie», sur l’album Chunga’s Revenge (1970)- «Penguin In Bondage», sur le live Roxy & Elsewhere (1974), avec les Mothers Of Invention- «Inca Roads», sur l’album One size Fits All (1975), avec les Mothers Of Invention- «The Torture Never Stops», sur le live Zappa In New York (1978), version studio sur Zoot Allures (1976)- «I’m The Slime», sur le live Zappa In New York (1978), version studio sur Over-Nite Sensation (1973)- «Bobby Brown Goes Down», version live, version studio sur l’album Sheik Yerbouti (1979)- «Valley Girl», sur l’album Ship Arriving too Late To Save A Drowning Witch (1982).
We're a little podcast with our hair gassed back! Yes folks, the ZappaCast returns with that grooviest of groovies, Vaultmeister Joe Travers, as he and Scott discuss THE HOT RATS SESSIONS, a massive 6-CD box set that has just been released! Get yours now! Over two hours of your questions answered and more! The is a big one folks, so come in and enjoy!The official Frank Zappa websiteHost: Scott ParkerProduced by Scott Parker in cooperation with The Zappa Family TrustContact ZappaCast: moi1969@snet.net
Frank Zappa's masterpiece 'Hot Rats' is 50 years old and today we explore the history and legacy of this pivotal LP with Ahmet Zappa and Joe 'Vaultmeister' Travers, as well as discuss the Hot Rats Sessions Box Set, Frank's vinyl and lots more Zappa talk. FZ fans rejoice! If you like records, just starting a collection or are an uber-nerd with a house-full of vinyl, this is the podcast for you. Nate Goyer is The Vinyl Guide and discusses all things music and record-related.
Een podcast volledig in het teken van Dweezil Zappa! Het album Hot Rats van legende Frank Zappa kwam 50 jaar geleden uit en is voor velen een klassieker geworden. Wie dit jaar ook zijn 50e verjaardag viert is Dweezil Zappa, Franks zoon. Het album werd destijds aan hem opgedragen en dat was reden genoeg voor Dweezil om dit najaar met zijn eigen band tijdens een aantal concerten het volledige album live uit te voeren. Meer info: nposoulenjazz.nl.
Een podcast volledig in het teken van Dweezil Zappa! Het album Hot Rats van legende Frank Zappa kwam 50 jaar geleden uit en is voor velen een klassieker geworden. Wie dit jaar ook zijn 50e verjaardag viert is Dweezil Zappa, Franks zoon. Het album werd destijds aan hem opgedragen en dat was reden genoeg voor Dweezil om dit najaar met zijn eigen band tijdens een aantal concerten het volledige album live uit te voeren. Meer info: nposoulenjazz.nl.
In this episode, Aaron goes into Frank Zappa's (nearly) all instrumental classic album Hot Rats- in celebration of its 50th.
Фрэнсис «Фрэнк» Винсент Заппа - американский вокалист, гитарист, клавишник, ударник, композитор, аранжировщик, автор текстов, продюсер, сценарист и режиссер. Вероятно это далеко не все, что умел и успел за свою жизнь Заппа, и сегодня именно он станет героем программы "Everyday People". В этом году его дебютному сольному альбому под названием "Hot Rats" исполняется 50 лет, и мы с радостью приобщаемся к празднованию.
Hot Rats' genius lies in the way it fuses the compositional sophistication of jazz with rock's down-and-dirty attitude -- there's a real looseness and grit to the three lengthy jams. Frank is out there but some of the group don't know that they want to be there. We also end with a Zappa True/False.
Episode Supported by Ned! www.helloned.com/BRAINSKULL Use Code “BRAINSKULL” for 15% off your first order w/ FREE SHIPPING Dweezil Zappa is one of the greatest guitarists alive today. The level of detail he and his band puts into their performances is proof alone that live music is far from dead. Dweezil’s upcoming tour celebrates the 50th anniversary of the release of his father Frank Zappa’s album “Hot Rats”. Anyone who listens to this podcast regularly knows that I bring up Frank Zappa pretty much every episode, and while it’s tough to pick a favorite record, Hot Rats is definitely up there. It showcases some of Frank’s most intriguing orchestration and album production. Peaches En Regalia, Willie the Pimp, Son of Mr. Green Genes, Little Umbrellas, The Gumbo Variations, It Must Be a Camel, and more during “Hot Rats Live plus Other Hot Stuff”! I’ve had the chance to see Dweezil in concert twice and he really does the impossible. Surrounded by the most talented musicians available, he continues to honor his father's music and displays it in a fresh context for new audiences who were born too late! As if all that wasn’t impressive enough, Dweezil is also scheduled to perform with Experience Hendrix Tour this fall. Get tickets to upcoming performances by going to: http://www.dweezilzappa.com Links mentioned in this episode: http://rainbowbrainskull.com http://raminnazer.com This podcast was recorded remotely via Zencastr.
THE SUMMIT #3- The R4 Summit welcomes back regular guest co-pilot "Superlistener" Sam George as they analyze Frank Zappa's 1969 album Hot Rats! Rock on! Contact Aaron, Shannon, and Ray at ridiculousrockrecords@gmail.com , and also on the Ridiculous Rock Record Reviews Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/R4podcast/?eid=ARCYMDlvHG9PZlnOrs4TZEV8VdNzpX1mgh1vD_edb8qtMSbIrDA7a0kxtDTp-Jqx_3nqZg77SkgHxchQ
Show #769 Beardo's Birthday Bash 2018 A show to celebrate Beardo's Birthday, with dedications of a couple of faithful listeners and some musical choices made by Spinner. A Bandana Blues episode Beardo would have liked. Spinner hopes you will too. 01. Paul Monday - Tired Of This Life I'm Living [1951] (3:18) (Boogie Uproar-Gems From The Peacock Vaults, One Day Music, 2014) 02. The Nighthawks - Yeah Man (5:26) (Live In Europe, CrossCut, 1987) 03. Eddie Hinton - Yeah Man (4:05) (Very Extremely Dangerous, Capricorn, 1978) 04. Turnip Greens - Gather My Bones (5:02) (Carry Me Down The Aisle, Black & Tan Records, 2006) 05. The Blues Project - Who Do You Love? (5:20) (Live At The Cafe Au Go Go, Verve/Folkways, 1966) 06. Mike Bloomfield & Al Kooper - Really (5:19) (Super Session, Columbia, 1968) 07. Mark Hummel & Stackhouse - Can't Judge Nobody (8:32) (Live @ Blues Moose Café Groesbeek NL, Oct 14 2018) 08. Toots Thielemans - Blues Talk (2:15) (The Salient One, ABC, 1973) 09. Jimi Hendrix - Who Knows (9:26) (Band Of Gypsys, Polydor, 1970) 10. Walter Brown & Jay McShann's Orchestra - ABC Blues [1951] (2:49) (Boogie Uproar-Gems From The Peacock Vaults, One Day Music, 2014) 11. B.B. King - Friends (5:38) (Live & Well, MCA Records, 1969) 12. Nick Jameson - In The Blue (6:59) (Already Free, Bearsville, 1977) 13. Paul Butterfield's Better Days - Broke My Baby's Heart (Paul Butterfield's Better Days, Bearsville, 1973) 14. Paul deLay Band - Ocean of Tears (4:56) (Ocean of Tears, Evidence, 1996) 15. John & the Sisters - Burning At The Feet Of The Lord (8:15) (The Future Of The Blues, NorthernBlues, 2006) 16. Imperial Crowns - Big Boy (3:40) (Imperial Crowns, Me & My, 2000) 17. Dr. John - My Buddy (4:01) (Trippin' Live, Eagle, 1997) 18. Jerry Jeff Walker - My Buddy (3:43) (A Man Must Carry On, MCA, 1977) 19. Frank Zappa - The Gumbo Variations (12:42) (Hot Rats, Bizarre, 1969) Bandana Blues is and will always be a labor of love. Please help me deal with the costs of hosting & bandwidth. Visit www.bandanablues.com and hit the tipjar. Any amount is much appreciated, no matter how small. Thank you.
Hello! This is the last show of July and it's been a scorcher over here on the east coast of the USA....but thanks to air conditioning we managed not to wilt. SET 1: Starting us off is the Jefferson Airplane with a Marty Balin penned song: "3/5th of a mile in 10 seconds". A live cut off of BLESS IT'S POINTED LITTLE HEAD. The Smoke has us flying with a slightly different delivery system LSD with "My friend Jack"...killer stuff from 1966. Big Joe Turner lets everyone know he doesn't need that hallucinogenic sh*t...all he needs is his "Boogie woogie country girl" played from the original source...78rpm...you betcha! Keeping with slabs of wax we switch gears and throw a 45rpm on the table with a great Beatles cover by Boxer..."Hey bulldog". SET 2: Gram Parsons keeps the 45rpm vibe going with his early band The International Submarine Band and what I consider their finest moment: "Sum Up Broke". I have no idea what they mean by that but it's a great single. Teleporting Gram 3 years into the future The Flying Buritto Brothers with "Christine's Tune". Interverntion Records remixed and released THE GUILDED PALACE OF SIN this year and it's a winner! Christine is Christine Fahr who can be seen on the cover of the LP and she's also the ghoulish looking babe on the cover of HOT RATS looking out from behind a gravestone. The Onion Radio News checks in just before south African musician and activist John Kongos rips with "He's gonna step on you again". And back to the USA with Erin McKeown and a nice ditty called "Cinematic" offa her 4th LP GRAND. SET 3: Schoolboy Cleve and his drinkin' buddies Lightnin' Slim and Polka Dot Slim mash it up with a very hard to find and great 45rpm "She's Gone" from 1954. Hop back on a plane to Canada where The Ugly Ducklings reside and "Just in case you wonder"...great stuff north of the border from 1966. The Kinks with Dave Davies handling the vocals with "Love me till the sun shines". One of my all time favs! The Byrds can't do anything wrong as far as I'm concerned …."It won't be wrong" from 1965. SET 4: Romeo Nelson with a 78 recorded in the late 20's and "Head Rag Hop"...Jesus God! I love this record! The Belltones lettin' everyone know about a "Swingin' little chickie" before Jackie Lee Cochran with one of the all time great grinders "Georgia Lee Brown" and we finish up with The Royal Teens' "Sham Rock"...That's it for this month...I'll be back next week as long as the creek don't rise and the good lord's willin'...…..
In today's VINYL VIBRATIONS podcast, we look at Part 2 of our program on the subject of SYMPHONIC ROCK. In Part one we focused on some of the vinyl records that featured a rock music format, and featured or incorporatedconcerto3-4 a symphonic or chamber accompanyment - produced on vinyl records. We heard Moody Blues, Yes, Led Zepplin, Tommy, Frank Zappa, and Jan Hammer / Jerry Goodman. Today we continue our exploration into artists that either dabbled in symphonic arrangement, or artists that infused their rock or pop sound with classical music orchestra sounds: 1 Twenty Small Cigars, album "King Kong, Jean-Luc Ponty plays the music of Frank Zappa" 2 Vision Is A Naked Sword, album Apocalypse, Mahavishnu Orchestra w London Symphony Orch, Michael Tilson Thomas Cond. 3 Concerto for Jazz Rock Orch, Mvt 1, album Journey To Love Nemperor 1975 composed conducted arranged Stanley Clarke, 4 Concerto for Jazz Rock Orch, Mvts 3+4, album Journey To Love Nemperor 1975 composed conducted arranged Stanley Clarke, 5 The Dick Hyman Concerto Electro, Mvt 1, album Concerto Electro, Composer Arranger Pianist Dick Hyman 6 King Kong, album "King Kong, Jean-Luc Ponty plays the music of Frank Zappa" 7 Overture, album Child is Father to the Man, Blood Sweat & Tears, BS&T String Ensemble, M1 Jean-Luc Ponty and his solo album, featuring the electric violin and the Frank Zappa composition and arrangement of Twenty Small Cigars, from the album King Kong, Jean-Luc Ponty plays the music of Frank Zappa, or just … King Kong. Composed for Jean Luc Ponty and this solo album, by World Pacific Jazz Records. The King Kong album was released 1970 Liberty Records label. Compositions and recording were completed in 1969. There are five parts on Twenty Small Cigars. Noteably, there is no guitar part. Piano or electric piano George Duke Alto & Tenor sax Ernie Watts Drums John Guerin Bass Wilton Felder Jean-Luc Ponty electric violin Ponty was born in France in 1942 was about 27 at the time of this production. This was his 9th release in a long list of albums - - about 40 to date. His collaborations with FZ included these FZ albums - maybe you recognize the album titles - Hot Rats, Over-Nite Sensation, Piquantique, Apostrophe - - were albums on which Ponty played with FZ between 1969 and 1981. Also Ponty collaborated with Mahavishnu Orchestra, albums Apocalypse and Visions, 2 albums by the MO, in the 1970s, featuring Jean-Luc Ponty. M2 Vision Is A Naked Sword. Album Apocalypse, Artist is the Mahavishnu Orchestra w the London Symphony Orchestra, Michael Tilson Thomas Cond. Composed by John McLaughlin. Produced George Martin. Featuring JLP on electric violin and electric baritone violin, And Mahavishnu (aka John McLaughlin) on guitars. And the LSO ( I count 6 LSO performers including KB, viola, violin2, cello, drum and bass parts) with Michael Tilson Thomas conducting, produced in 1974 CBS M3 Concerto for Jazz Rock Orch, Mvt 1, album Journey To Love, composed conducted arranged Stanley Clarke, Produced on Nemperor 1975. One of those movements in this case the first, that seemed to jump out of the stereo, a stereo possessed. So peaceful, contemplative, driven by the drone of the high "G" note. That surreal opening sound. Starry-like. -Stanley Clarke Piccolo bass with synth, acoustic bass, hand bells, organ, -George Duke mini Moog, organ, string ensemble, acoustic piano, -Steve Gadd drums, percussion -David Sancious electric guitar M4 Concerto for Jazz Rock Orch, Mvts 3+4, Album Journey To Love, composed conducted arranged Stanley Clark, produced on Nemperor in1975. Now on Movement 3 the energy level is much higher. A great transition into longer notes and the power of the David Sancious electric guitar lead part. A cooling off movement - movement 4 -- drifts off into an "A"-note" drone. -Stanley Clarke Piccolo bass with synth, acoustic bass, hand bells, organ, -George Duke mini Moog,
Join cult indie-pop songwriter Marc With a C as he chronicles a legendary artist’s catalogue album by album. With Discography you'll walk in a novice, and come out well-informed and with a new favorite record or two. And if you’re a longtime fan, we’ll go deep enough that you’ll be brimming with new factoids and perspectives.For this maiden voyage, Marc takes on Frank Zappa.Zappa is one of the most revered American musicians of all-time, and with 100+ records to his name, one of the most impenetrable. What’s more, Zappa claimed that all of the 63 or so albums released in his lifetime can be listened to end-to-end to create one gigantic song. Can that possibly be true? We’re going to find out as over this 6-part weekly podcast event Marc travels from 1966’s Freak Out! to 1994’s Civilization Phase III, offering up the world’s first review of Frank Zappa’s career-spanning song.If you're unfamiliar with Zappa's rather bizarre take on American life, these episodes will allow you to walk away a certified expert. We'll be covering a multitude of artists and genres on this show, but his catalog might just be the most timely one we could've picked to kick things off. Now, more than ever, the virtues and values of Zappa need to be extolled. Now, more than ever, it's time to Freak Out.This episode's discography:0:00 - An Intro to Frank Zappa | 9:24 - Freak Out! (1966) | 15:15 - Absolutely Free (1967) | 20:53 - Lumpy Gravy (1967) | 25:36 - We're Only In It For The Money (1968) | 30:44 - Cruisin' With Ruben & The Jets (1968) | 37:34 - Uncle Meat (1969) | 48:00 - Mothermania (1969) | 53:40 - Hot Rats (1969) | 1:00:40 - Burnt Weeny Sandwich (1970) | 1:06:30 - Weasels Ripped My Flesh (1970) | 1:14:00 - Chunga's Revenge (1970) | 1:21:50 - Fillmore East - June - 1971 (1971) | 1:31:22 - Outro See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
Bernardo Nunes, PhD believes that applying behavioral sciences to startups is the fastest way to get entrepreneurs up and running in a fast-changing world. At Growth Academy in Amsterdam, the students work in small teams over three months to build a company with the help of sophisticated machine learning tools as well as knowledgeable coaches and teachers. In our conversation with Bernardo, we spoke at length about the ethics and regulations surrounding data privacy, how an article in The New York Times featuring David Laibson, PhD got Bernardo started down this path and how Frank Zappa's 3-song "Hot Rats" album would be his go-to for desert island listening. We had an important discussion about the interplay between policy and marketing and how they influence each other. There is some background noise occasionally but we don't think it inhibits the quality of the interview. We hope you enjoy it. Music: Theme song "Everywhere You Go" by Tim Houlihan and transitional music "Transfiguration" by Jon James. Used by permission.
14e émission de la 33e session... Cette semaine, départ boppy puis transition vers jazz aux saveurs rock ! En musique: Woody Shaw sur l'album The Moontrane (Muse, 1975); Rich Halley 5 sur l'album The Outlier (Pine Eagle, 2016); Dave Douglas sur l'album Dark Territory (Greenleaf, 2016); FAIL BETTER! sur l'album OWT (NoBusiness, 2016); Frank Zappa sur l'album Hot Rats (Bizarre, 1969); Masahiko Sato sur l'album Belladona (Cinevox, 1975)...
SHOW INFORMATION: www.TonyTrombo.com NEW!: Talking Zappa APP for Android! Click here: www.TalkingZappa.info . My guest for this show is the great artist Cal Schenkel. He provided artwork, graphics, and/or design for Cruising with Ruben & the Jets, Uncle Meat, Hot Rats, Burnt Weeny Sandwich, Chunga's Revenge, Fillmore East - June 1971, 200 Motels, Just Another Band from L.A., Waka/Jawaka, The Grand Wazoo, Over-Nite Sensation, Apostrophe ('), Roxy & Elsewhere, One Size Fits All, Bongo Fury, Zoot Allures, Tinseltown Rebellion, the Does Humor Belong in Music?, The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life, Playground Psychotics, Ahead of Their Time, Cheap Thrills, Mystery Disc, Son of Cheep Thrills, Threesome No. 1 slipcase art, and Threesome No. 2 slipcase art. The artwork for Burnt Weeny Sandwich was originally done for an Eric Dolphy album.
ILLUMINATIONS (PAINTED PLATES). XOÁN ABELEIRA comparte su experiencia de traductor de este libro de RIMBAUD, fundacional de la contemporaneidad y del futuro."Musical plates": FRANK ZAPPA, 'HOT RATS'.
1001 discos que hay que escuchar antes de morir, volumen 2, v2012 El Sonidos y Sonados y este segundo volumen nos lleva primero al 1969 y unos de los grandes discos del Sr. Francis Vincent Zappa, su “Hot Rats” disco con muchas influencias sobre todo jazzísticas. Mas tarde dos ex Free, un ex Mott The […]
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