Podcast appearances and mentions of Irma Thomas

James is running the show solo today, and he's got a box full of mid-tempo steppers, floaters, beat ballads, finger snappers, mellow grooves, and soulful tearjerkers. The Beat may not be as Driving as usual, but you'll still want to get out on the dance floor. You'll hear tunes from Arthur Alexander, Dee Dee Warwick, Jimmy Hughes, Irma Thomas, Chris Clark, James Carr, Jimmy Radcliffe, Barbara Mason, and more! -Originally broadcast June 8, 2025- Willie Mitchell / That Driving BeatJunior Walker & The All Stars / Pucker Up ButtercupThe Dells / There IsThe High Keyes featuring Troy Keyes / One Horse TownArthur Alexander / You Better Move OnMarvin Smith / Fading MemoriesDee Dee Warwick / Gotta Get a Hold of MyselfThe Extensions / I Want To KnowCarla Thomas / The Masquerade Is OverThe Dialtones / If You Don't Know, You Just Don't KnowJimmy Hughes / Time Will Bring You BackIrma Thomas / I Done Got Over ItBobby Scott / It's RealRay Pettis / Joining the CrowdThe Drifters / I've Got Sand in My ShoesChris Clark / Do Right Baby Do RightMary Wells / OperatorBarbara McNair / Here I Am BabyBaby Washington / I KnowThe Mad Lads / No Strings AttachedBilly Joe Royal / If It Wasn't For a WomanBetty Everett / You're No GoodJimmy Radcliffe / (There Goes) The Forgotten ManThe Sensations / I Won't Be HurtBobby Jones / You're A DevilJames Carr / Lover's CompetitionThe Superlatives / Lonely in a CrowdJimmy Gilford / HeartbreakerKetty Lester / Please Don't Cry AnymoreBobby Foster / Where Do You GoEsther Phillips / Don't Feel Rained OnGary Brown / Would You Laugh At MeRuby Johnson / Come To Me My DarlingBobby Moore & The Rhythm Aces / Searching For My LoveGeorge Jackson / Aretha, Sing One For MeBarbara Mason / Keep HimRuby Andrews / Casonova (Your Playing Days Are Over)Grady Chapman / Tell Me That You CareJan Bradley / The Brush Off Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Pacific St Blues & AmericanaJune 8, 2025  1. Booker T & the MGs / Time is Tight  2. Issac Hayes / Soulsville  3. Staple Singers / We The People 4. Sam & Dave / I Can't Stand Up (Elvis Costello)  5. Irma Thomas & Galatic / Where I Belong  6. Los Lobos / Love Special Delivery  7. Shaun Murphy / Man Size Job 8. Sheryl Crow / Digging in the Dirt  9. Chris Cain /Blues for My Dad 10. BB King / Bad Case of Love 11. Warren Haynes / This Life As We Know It 12. Marcus King Band / Wildflowers & Wine13. Bob Fox / Sally Wheatley14. Lindisfarne / Meet Me on the Corner15. Sting / All This Time 16. Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits) / Why Aye Man 17. Sue Foley / Freight Train18. Carolyn Wonderland / It Takes a Lot to Laugh, 19. Tiny Bradshaw / Train Kept a Rollin' 20. Johnny Winter / Silver Train 21. George Thorogood / Two Trains Running

Robert Mercurio, the distinguished bassist and producer of the renowned New Orleans funk ensemble Galactic, graces the Musicians Reveal podcast with Joe Kelley to discuss the intricacies of their latest album, a collaborative effort with the legendary Irma Thomas. Our dialogue delves into the profound impact of the New Orleans music scene on their careers and the invigorating experience of performing at the Jazz Fest. Mercurio elucidates the challenges and rewards of transitioning from a rigorous touring schedule to a more balanced lifestyle in the wake of the pandemic. The conversation further explores the collaborative spirit prevalent in New Orleans, highlighting the significance of preserving musical legacies through artistic partnerships. As we navigate this engaging discourse, we gain insight into the creative processes that underpin the making of their latest record, which promises to resonate with both longtime fans and new listeners alike.Takeaways: Robert Mercurio discusses the exhilarating yet exhausting nature of performing multiple shows at jazz festivals, emphasizing the physical toll it can take on musicians as they age. The conversation highlights the communal and supportive atmosphere of the New Orleans music scene, where established artists actively mentor younger musicians without a competitive edge. Mercurio explains the creative process behind their new album with Irma Thomas, detailing the transition from merely covering songs to creating original material inspired by their collaboration. The significance of preserving musical legacies through collaboration is emphasized, showcasing Galactic's dedication to working with legendary artists like Irma Thomas and the impact of her life experiences on their music. In this episode, Mercurio reflects on the evolution of Galactic's sound and the importance of adapting to different influences while ensuring authenticity in their music. The discussion touches on the challenges of balancing artistic integrity with audience expectations, particularly as Galactic explores new musical directions and collaborations. Links referenced in this episode:GalacticFunk.comTipitinasRecordClub.comCompanies mentioned in this episode: Galactic Irma Thomas Tipitina's Dragon Smoke Evan Neville Stanton Eric Lindell Rick Rubin Def Jam Records LL Cool J Bootsy Collins Bernard Odom James Brown Bad Brains Government Issue Dag Nasty Sex Pistols Cyril Neville Macy Gray Mavis Staples Frida Heady Wax Soul Life

Eighty four year-old Irma Thomas is the “Soul Queen of New Orleans.” Galactic is a band that’s spent the last three decades generating uncompromising funk music. Now, these cornerstones of the Crescent City are sharing a new collaboration — Audience With The Queen. Stewards of sonic heart that they are, Galactic fits perfectly alongside Thomas’ incomparable voice. And we expect “Where I Belong” will become a setlist staple for both artists.

Hola, gente. En este episodio la Wurli os trae unos cuantos bloques de novedades, entre las que quiero destacar los nuevos trabajos de Parker Millsap, una maravilla acústica, y el excelente álbum colaborativo entre la jam band de Nueva Orleans Galactic y la reina del southern soul, Irma Thomas. Pero hay mucho mas. Por aquí sonarán: Eddy Smith & The 507 - Rainey Street Daniel Romano The Outfit - Even If It's Obscure Daniel Romano The Outfit - Sweet Dew Of The Kingdom Joanne Shaw Taylor - Summer Love The Marcus King Band - Honky Tonk Hell Galactic & Irma Thomas - Where I Belong Galactic & Irma Thomas - People Parker Millsap & Lockeland Strings - Running On Time Parker Millsap & Lockeland Strings - Before The Curtain Closes Little Feat - Strike Up The Band Bywater Call - Sunshine Webb Wilder - Coupla Good Moves Jim Suhler & Monkey Beat - Dusty Groove Matt Schofield - Do Me Right Kashus Culpepper - Man Of His World Linn Holmes & Eric Gales - Whipping Post Anaut - Todo Lo Que Callo The King Flowers - The Elder Gracias por escuchar con cariño y dejar tu corazón en el audio, aunque no lo parezca, esta chorradita es importante. Apoya este proyecto desde 1,49€ al mes. Tan solo tienes que pulsar el botón azul que tienes en la cabecera de este canal Y gracias infinitas, ya que tu aportación permite mejorar cada programa. Este programa, como siempre, está dedicado especialmente a nuestros patrocinadores: La Última Frontera Radio, Yago Llopis, Joao Sampaio, RLP, Juan Carlos Acero, Mechimariani, Iñaki Del Olmo, L Ibiricu Traba, Nachoigs, Alfonso Ladrón, Javier Carmona, Ana López, Gustavo, Carmen Neke, Manuel García y Michel. ¡Qué la música os acompañe!

Ben and Robert sit down with lyricist Sean Carey, who worked on the album.  They discuss the process and experience of working with Irma Thomas.

Giro sorprendente y muy interesante en el sonido de Ona Mafalda: hoy escuchamos su nuevo single, 'Sedated', con una producción más rock y cañera. Además, te presentamos las últimas novedades de Galactic and Irma Thomas, Goose, Sexy Zebras y Melifluo, y cañonazos de Muse, The Hives, Biffy Clyro, Foals, Hole, Nirvana o The Smashing PumpkinsPlaylist:GORILLAZ - Dare (feat. Shaun Ryder)HAPPY MONDAYS - Kinky AfroBLACK GRAPE - Pimp WarsGALACTIC AND IRMA THOMAS - Lady LibertyGOOSE - ThatchSOULWAX - Too Many DJsOVERSEER - Velocity ShiftLOS INVADERS - Nellie LaRoyWISEMEN PROJECT - Mon Bébé (feat. Mira Paula)THE WEEKND - Wake Me Up (feat. Justice)CYCLE - Confusion!!! (DJ Nano Rmx)CYCLE - 100 vidasONA MAFALDA - SedatedWOLF ALICE - Giant PeachFOALS - InhalerMELIFLUO - Los monstruos interioresSEXY ZEBRAS - Vivito y coleandoVEINTIUNO - Perder los modalesNIÑOS BRAVOS - No quiero problemasTHE REYTONS - World's Greatest ActorKRAFTKLUB - Eure MädchenTHE HIVES - Try It AgainMUSE - StarlightBIFFY CLYRO - Black ChandelierTHE SMASHING PUMPKINS - Bullet With Butterfly WingsHOLE - Celebrity SkinNIRVANA - In BloomEscuchar audio

That Driving Beat is back with an action-packed show full of 1960s dance floor movers. We've got soul, rhythm & blues, pop, rock and more by Donald Height, Carl Carlton, Betty Wright, Gene Chandler, Swamp Dogg, Irma Thomas, and even one of the few tunes by Paul Anka that we've determined meets the requirements of That Driving Beat. -Originally broadcast May 4, 2025- Willie Mitchell / That Driving BeatThe O'Jay's / The ChoiceChis Bartley / The Sweetest Thing This Side Of HeavenThe Fasinations / You Gonna Be SorryChubby Checker / You Better Believe It BabyDonald Height / Talk of the GrapevineBill Coday / Get Your Lie StraightCarl Carlton / Hold on a Little LongerBaby Washington / Don't Let Me Lose This DreamSwamp Dogg / These Are Not My PeopleThe Violinaires / I Don't KnowDon Nero and the Full Flavour / Get Up And DanceBuster Benton / Good to the Last DropOtis Clay / It's Easier Said, Then DoneMamie Ree & Jake Porter / I Wake Up In The MorningJerry Lee Lewis / Memphis BeatThe Ideals / I Got Lucky (When I Found You)Betty Wright / When We Get Together AgainArthur K. Adams / I'm Lonely For YouSugar Pie De Santo / I Don't Wanna FussThe Ikettes / Not That I RecallBaby Ray / The House On Soul HillThe Chicago Loop / (When She Needs Good Lovin') She Comes To MeRay Charles and His Orchestra / I Don't Need No DoctorAndrew Tibbs / I Made A MistakePaul Anka / Every Night (Without You)Gene Chandler / No Peace, No SatisfactionKenny & The Accents / Good Soul Lovin'Guess Who? / Shakin' All OverThe Kitchen Cinq / Still In Love With You BabyThe Sir Douglas Quintet / In TimeBobby Moore / Chained To Your HeartIrma Thomas / Cheater ManSonny Hines / Nothing Like Your LoveThe In Crowd / Questions And AnswersSalt and Pepper / Rock Me In The CradleLee Rogers / You're the Cream of the CropLord Sitar / Black Is Black Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For Episode 76 of STARK REALITY PLAYLISTS, guest NANCY YAHIRO gives us a slamming playlist of Northern Soul, RnB, Funk, a little Hip Hop too, featuring tracks by Grady Tate, Edwin Starr, Irma Thomas, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Clarence Carter, Gangstarr and much more. She has very deep crates as to be expected after digging and DJing for so many years. For full track listing go to the STARK REALITY Episode 76 page on jasoncharles.net MUSIC Channel and click "See Playlist." Northern Spain-based selector and 45 digger Nancy Yahiro is a native of Southern California and first started DJing punk and soul at her college’s radio station (KUCI) in 1985. She became increasingly obsessed with soul 45s and started selling duplicates and becoming a record dealer. In 1997 Nancy started the Golden State Soul Society with Cid Hernandez and continued running it with Gabby Beeby until she moved to Italy. In Italy, Nancy started the Rimini Rare Soul Weekender and lived there for 11 years, DJed all over the country. She has also played records in the US, Argentina, UK, Germany, Spain, Sweden, etc etc. To hear Nancy's exclusive in-depth STARK REALITY Interview with Host James Dier aka $mall ¢hange, where she goes deep into her lifetime of 45 collecting and deejaying, her political activism on Israel, the apathy of the world and much more, go to Episode 75 of STARK REALITY on jasoncharles.net MUSIC Channel, or wherever you get your podcasts. For all of Host James Dier aka DJ $mall ¢hange's in-depth interviews and exclusive guest playlists, Subscribe to both STARK REALITY and STARK REALITY PLAYLISTS on Apple Podcasts, Mixcloud or live & direct on uptownradio.net / jasoncharles.net Podcast Network Music Channel's STARK REALITY Series PageSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

King Gizzard & The Lizard no han tardado en anunciar nuevo álbum (como es habitual en la carrera del grupo australiano): en junio lanzarán 'Phantom Island', disco del que hoy escuchamos un segundo adelanto, 'Deadstick', en el que se pueden escuchar esos arreglos orquestales que protagonizan el nuevo trabajo de la banda de Stu McKenzie. Además, te traemos las últimas novedades de Dinosaur Pile-Up, Anaut con Anni B Sweet, Litus junto a Andreu Buenafuente, Pablo Novoa y Oest de Franc, Galactic & Irma Thomas, Yawners y OK Go, entre otros.Playlist:DINOSAUR PILE-UP - Back FootDINOSAUR PILE-UP - My WayWEEZER - Hash PipeKINGS OF LEON - MustangMOTHER MOTHER - Make BelieveKING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD - Flight b741KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD - DeadstickGUM & AMBROSE KENNY-SMITH - TelescopeTAME IMPALA - ElephantMOMMA - RodeoWISHY - HoneyYAWNERS - Self-diagnoseTHE BEACHES - Last Girls At The PartyANAUT - When Your Days Grow LongANAUT - El barco (feat. Anni B Sweet)DEPEDRO - Two Parts In One (Cruce de caminos) (feat. Calexico)LITUS, ANDREU BUENAFUENTE, PABLO NOVOA & OEST DE FRANC - God Only KnowsWINGS - Magneto And Titanium ManPAUL AND LINDA MCCARTNEY - Uncle Albert / Admiral HalseyTHE LEMON TWIGS - My Golden YearsBRIAN D'ADDARIO - Till the MorningTIMOTHÉE CHALAMET - Like a Rolling StoneOK GO - A Good, Good Day at Last (feat. Ben Harper, Shalyah Fearing & BEGINNERS)GALACTIC & IRMA THOMAS - Lady LibertyVULFPECK - Matter of TimeDJO - Gap Tooth SmileFINN WOLFHARD - Choose the latterTEENAGE FANCLUB - Sparky's DreamEscuchar audio

Jim shovels some coal into the New Music Train. Get on board with some tunes by the Primitives, Galactic with Irma Thomas, Lola Kirke and Caamp. Get with Rockin' the Suburbs on Apple Podcasts/iTunes or other podcast platforms, like audioBoom, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon, iHeart, Stitcher and TuneIn. Or listen at SuburbsPod.com. Please rate/review the show on Apple Podcasts and share it with your friends. Visit our website at SuburbsPod.com Email Jim & Patrick at rock@suburbspod.com Follow us on the Threads, Facebook or Instagram @suburbspod If you're glad or sad or high, call the Suburban Party Line — 612-440-1984.

Today's Song of the Day is “Where I Belong” from Galactic and Irma Thomas' collaborative album Audience With The Queen, out April 11.

#1,057 - Irma Thomas Returns Soul and blues singer Irma Thomas returns for an exclusive interview on The Paul Leslie Hour. Are you here? Hooray, we love it when you're here. Ladies and gentlemen, we're pleased to present a fresh interview with Irma Thomas, the Soul Queen of New Orleans. “Simply the Best”! Recorded on Lundi Gras 2025, your host Paul was delighted to welcome Sweet Irma Thomas in audio-visual brilliance, that's video. You're going to want to see Irma Thomas perform at the 2025 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, on April 26th and May 2nd. Paul wouldn't miss it for the world. And we also hear that the one and only Irma Thomas has a new album coming out. Well, you're going to hear all about that and more in this interview, which you're sure to enjoy. So what do you say - let's listen together?

Welcome back to Festival Circuit: New Orleans. In this episode, we're going to explore the late night music scene around jazz fest. We hear from George Porter, Papa Mali and Robert Walter about the magic of one-time late night collaborations, and we talk with Irma Thomas about performing with Allen Toussaint on the President. We also explore the growth of Frenchmen Street as a destination, the legacy of Tipitina's, and amazing late night shows over the past 50 years.  If you like the show, please subscribe and share, and leave a review. Thank you.  Festival Circuit is presented by Osiris Media. This series is Narrated and Produced by Rob Steinberg. Executive Producers are Christina Collins, Andrew Goodwin and RJ Bee, who also double duties as series writer and creator. Produced, Edited and Mixed by Matt Dwyer. Show logo by Liz Bee. The theme song is “JazzFest Time,” by Circus Mind. Thanks to our partners at WWOZ. To check out more shows that help deepen the connection to music you love, please visit OsirisPod.com.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Comenzar la semana con el buen gusto de unos magníficos arreglos de vientos y metales. Repertorio muy variado. J.Teixi Band y su fidelidad al rock and soul, al rocanrol en esencia. La supervivencia de Irma Thomas a sus 84 años. La clase de Everything But The Girl o A Girl Called Eddy. La recuperación de la mejor Tina Turner de los años setenta. Salvador Santana poniendo al día el sonido único, característico de su padre Carlos y su tío Jorge. Y las novedades de Jeremie Albino, Johnny Burgos o Warren Haynes CLO PROMO SECRETAS DISCO 1 J. TEIXI BAND Go-Win (3) DISCO 2 SALVADOR SANTANA BAND Sounds Good (4)  DISCO 3 GALACTIC & IRMA THOMAS Lady Liberty (ESCA) SEP MARTÍN X (TWITER) + Lunes RÁINER DISCO 4 EVERYTHING BUT THE GIRL Each And Every One (7) DISCO 5 A GIRL CALLED EDDY Come To The Palisades (9) DISCO 6 JEAN KNIGHT Mr. Big Stuff (SOUL DIVA SESSIONS- CD 2 - 11 CLO LUCAS Podcast + LUNES ELENA DISCO 7 JAMIROQUAI Light Years (4) DISCO 8 JOHNNY BURGOS Promise (3) DISCO 9 TINA TURNER Backstabbers (6) DISCO 10 WARREN HAYNES Here From On Out (CD 1 - 8) INDI MÚSICA ELIAS + SEP MARTÍN X (TWITTER) DISCO 11 ROSEBUD Flying To The Morning (10) DISCO 12 JEREMIE ALBINO I Don’t Mind Waiting (1) DISCO 13 THE LOW NOTE QUINTET & BRUCE FOWLER Nothing Can Stop Me Now (SHORT CUTS - 14)Escuchar audio

Welcome back Festival Circuit: New Orleans. In episode 2, we explore the idea of family in New Orleans, in all the ways that it manifests—the famous musical families of the city, the broader New Orleans musical family, and the idea that the city feels like one big family in many ways. There's discussion of food, a lot of music, and so much more. We also talk about how the New Orleans family came together around a tragedy, after Hurricane Katrina. For this series, we interviewed Ivan Neville, George Porter, Jr., Irma Thomas, Anders Osborne, Ben Jaffe, Papa Mali and dozens of other musicians. We also talked to writers, academics and music fans about what makes the music of the city so unique. Thanks to all interviewees, and to our partners at WWOZ. Festival Circuit is presented by Osiris Media. This series is Narrated and Produced by Rob Steinberg. Executive Producers are Christina Collins, Andrew Goodwin and RJ Bee, who also double duties as series writer and creator. Produced, Edited and Mixed by Matt Dwyer. Show logo by Liz Bee. The theme song is “JazzFest Time,” by Circus Mind. To check out more shows that help deepen the connection to music you love, please visit OsirisPod.com.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to Festival Circuit. This is a new narrative series focusing on the history and impact of festivals and cities around the world. The first season, focused on the music of New Orleans and the annual jazz festival, premieres today. In episode 1, we explore the history of the city and the history of music in New Orleans, including how the institution of slavery influenced the unique rhythms of the city. We also trace the evolution of jazz music and how that led to the creation of the jazz fest in 1970. The next episodes will focus on the families of the city, the creation and evolution of the jazz festival, memorable performances in the festival's history, the impact of late night shows around the city, and the legacy and lasting appeal of New Orleans music. For this series, we interviewed Ivan Neville, George Porter, Jr., Irma Thomas, Anders Osborne, Ben Jaffe, Papa Mali and dozens of other musicians. We also talked to writers, academics and music fans about what makes the music of the city so unique. Thanks to all interviewees, and to our partners at WWOZ. Festival Circuit is presented by Osiris Media. This series is Narrated and Produced by Rob Steinberg. Executive Producers are Christina Collins, Andrew Goodwin and RJ Bee, who also double duties as series writer and creator. Produced, Edited and Mixed by Matt Dwyer. Show logo by Liz Bee. The theme song is “JazzFest Time,” by Circus Mind. To check out more shows that help deepen the connection to music you love, please visit OsirisPod.com.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode includes a long track in memory of Joe Britt (pictured, Highway QCs), more selections from gospel reissue packages that came out in 2024, and music from artists such as Irma Thomas, Biblical Gospel Singers, Jo Ann Blackman, and the Friendly Brothers.

Episode 033: Time flies when you're sharing great music! As Six Picks Music Club celebrates our first trip around the sun, we're diving into an episode all about time. From memories of yesterday to dreams of tomorrow, we're exploring how music captures life's temporal journey. Join Geoff, Russ, and Dave as they turn back the clock, live in the moment, and look ahead with  tracks from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Streetlight Manifesto, Irma Thomas, Jim Croce, Pup, and Tom Waits. Plus, we're putting our own spin on New Year's resolutions. Thanks to all our listeners for making this past year unforgettable—here's to many more adventures in music! Apple Podcasts Instagram Spotify Playlist YouTube Playlist Official Site Listener Listens - Sierra Ferrell - Instagram

It's Thursday and that means it's time to catch up on politics with The Times Picayune/The Advocate's editorial director and columnist, Stephanie Grace. Today on @LAConsidered, we break down the upset in the Baton Rouge mayor-president race, and why a parish that went blue in November elected a Republican one month later.The New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) is gearing up for a star-studded milestone celebration, the 20th annual “Home for the Holidays” Concert. The event features artists like Irma Thomas, Kermit Ruffins and the Rebirth Brass Band, and raises money to support rising artists with scholarships. Adonis Rose, Grammy award-winning musician and executive director of NOCCA, joins us with the details.The Xavier University of Louisiana has been mourning the loss of one of their greatest pioneers, Dr. J. W. Carmichael. Having worked at Xavier for over four decades, primarily as a pre-med advisor for undergraduates, Carmichael is largely credited with putting the school's medical program on the map.WWNO's Bob Pavlovich spoke with Quo Vadis Webster, director of Xavier's pre-med program, to learn more about Camichael's life and legacy. —Today's episode of Louisiana Considered was hosted by Diane Mack. Our managing producer is Alana Schreiber. We get production and technical support from Garrett Pittman, Adam Vos and our assistant producer Aubry Procell. You can listen to Louisiana Considered Monday through Friday at noon  and 7 pm. It's available on Spotify, Google Play, and wherever you get your podcasts. Louisiana Considered wants to hear from you! Please fill out our pitch line to let us know what kinds of story ideas you have for our show. And while you're at it, fill out our listener survey! We want to keep bringing you the kinds of conversations you'd like to listen to.Louisiana Considered is made possible with support from our listeners. Thank you!

We spin some B-sides to bigger hits, 1960s Mod classics, some mid-1960s West Coast rock, Dolly Parton Northern Soul, Johnny Nash before he went reggae, and that big tune that Irma Thomas got to first, then the Rolling Stones made into a hit.For more info and tracklisting, visit: https://thefaceradio.com/that-driving-beat/Tune into new broadcasts of That Driving Beat, Tuesdays from 8- 10 PM EST / 1 - 3 AM GMT//Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Join the family at https://plus.acast.com/s/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We spin some B-sides to bigger hits, 1960s Mod classics, some mid-1960s West Coast rock, Dolly Parton Northern Soul, Johnny Nash before he went reggae, and that big tune that Irma Thomas got to first, then the Rolling Stones made into a hit. -Originally broadcast December 8, 2024- Willie Mitchell / That Driving BeatCandy and the Kisses / Shakin' TimeEddie Holman / A Free CountryTeardrops / Tears Come TumblingThe Manhattans / What's It Gonna BeLaura Lee / To Win Your HeartShades of Blue / Oh How HappyMartha & The Vandellas / Never Leave Your Baby's SideThe Supremes / Let Me Go The Right WayBobby Powell / QuestionJohnny Nash / Love Ain't Nothin'Dolly Parton / Control YourselfDeon Jackson / Love Makes The World Go RoundThe Ribbons / Ain't Gonna Kiss YaThe O'Jays / Lipstick Traces (on a Cigarette)The Heartbreakers / I've Got To Face ItBo Diddley / Ooh BabyRuby Johnson / Callin' All BoysThe Drifters / At The ClubDoris Troy / Bossa Nova BluesCandy and the Kisses / The 81The Leaves / Hey JoeThe Liverpool Five / Too Far OutThe Laughing Wind / Don't Take Very Much to See TomorrowThe Vejtables / I Still Love YouChris Kenner / That's My GirlTimmy Shaw / I'm A Lonely GuyBetty Everett / Getting Mighty CrowdedIrma Thomas / Time Is On My SideInez Foxx / Live For TodayIke & Tina Turner / It's Gonna Work Out FineClarence & Calvin / Rooster Knees & RiceBarbara Mason / Keep HimEdwin Starr / He Who Picks A RoseThe Marvelettes / Goddess of LoveThe Continental 4 / What You Gave UpThe Casuals / Money (That's All I Want) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Segunda entrega dedicada a canciones que alcanzaron su puesto más alto en listas pop de EEUU en noviembre de 1964. Un mes con una cosecha lo suficientemente interesante como para sacar otra entrega en donde rescatamos canciones que -en su mayoría- quedaron en la parte baja del Top 100. Ahí encontramos a varios pioneros peleando por mantener su hueco en la actualidad musical del momento, a las últimas bandas de espíritu festivo o a varias figuras del soul que encontraban su espacio en las audiencias blancas.Playlist;(sintonía) RAMSEY LEWIS TRIO “Something you got” (top 63)ELVIS PRESLEY “Ain’t that lovin you baby” (top 16)ROGER MILLER “Chuck-a-lug” (top 9)JOHNNY CASH “It ain’t me baby” (top 58)CHUCK BERRY “Little Marie” (top 54)JERRY LEE LEWIS “High heel sneakers” (top 91)BOBBY BLAND “Ain’t doing too bad (part 1)” (top 49)B.B. KING “Beautician Blues” (top 82)RUFUS THOMAS “Jump back” (top 49)MICKEY LEE LANE “Shaggy dog” (top 38)BOBBY FREEMAN “S-W-I-M” (top 56)THE CHARTBUSTERS “Why (doncha be my girl)” (top 92)RONNY and THE DAYTONAS “California bound” (top 72)SAM COOKE “Cousin of mine” (top 31)SAM COOKE “That’s where it’s at” (top 93)OTIS REDDING “Chained and bound” (top 70)JACKIE ROSS “I’ve got the skill” (top 89)ARETHA FRANKLIN “Runnin’ out of fools” (top 57)IRMA THOMAS “Times have changed” (top 98)Escuchar audio

Can't believe I got to see Irma Thomas in person a few years back. (Saw The Stones performing the same song in 1965 on their first American tour. Have to pinch myself that that really happened. But it did.) But time is on my mind just now. This is for two reasons: 1) Two old friends died under conditions that felt like almost the polar opposite of what we would have expected when we were all very young together. There was so much promise and so much hopefulness and so much enthusiasm and so much pluck. But then 50+ years later, aloneness and physical distress and self-despair. Terminal, in fact. Who would have thought? Not I. So I'm seeing each of these old friends as they were when they were 20, then comparing their circumstances at death decades later. Time was not on their side. 2) One of my heroes, J.B. Priestley (d. 1984), wrote plays about this. Especially his 1937 masterpiece Time and the Conways. He tried to understand the meaning, the constituent elements, and the implications of time, and us. I think he came very close. (Time and the Conways, incidentally, was filmed, and very well, in 1985. You can see it right now on YouTube.) Oh, and just to show everyone that time really doesn't matter, within eternal perspective that is, I've put at the end of the cast the absolute best cover version ever recorded of Irma Thomas' famous song. You'll see. Or rather, you'll hear. LUV U.

Segunda entrega de canciones que alcanzaron su puesto más alto en el Billboard Hot 100 de EEUU en el mes de agosto de hace 60 años. Voces del Deep soul procedentes de Memphis, Nueva Orleans o Muscle Shoals, bandas de frat rock, pioneros de los años 50, country o los últimos coletazos del surf conviven en las listas de éxitos.(Foto del podcast; Irma Thomas)Playlist;(sintonía) BOOKER T. and THE MG’S “Soul dressing” (top 95)CARLA THOMAS “I’ve got no time to lose” (top 67)IRMA THOMAS “Anyone who knows what love is (will understand)” (top 52)JIMMY HUGHES “Steal away” (top 17)SOLOMON BURKE “Everybody needs somebody to love” (top 58)JAN and DEAN “Little old lady (from Passadena)” (top 3)BRUCE and TERRY “Summer means fun” (top 72)BOBBY FREEMAN “C’mon and swim” (top 5)THE PREMIERS “Farmer John” (top 19)THE KINGSMEN “Little latin Lupe Lu” (top 46)THE CHARTBUSTERS “She’s the one” (top 33)LULU and THE LUVVERS “Shout” (top 94)LITTLE RICHARD “Bama Lama bama Loo” (top 82)ELVIS PRESLEY with THE JORDANAIRES “Such a night” (top 16)JACKIE WILSON “Squeeze her-tease her (but love her)” (top 89)DEL SHANNON “Handy man” (top 22)AL (HE’S THE KING) HIRT “Sugar lips” (top 30)RUBY and THE ROMANTICS “Baby come home” (top 75)ROGER MILLER “Dang me” (top 7)RAY CHARLES “No one to cry to” (top 55)Escuchar audio

Captain Dan and Penny Lane bring you a show full of twists and surprises this week on Punks in Parkas!Hear tracks from the likes of Amy Winehouse, Wallace Collection, Irma Thomas and more!For more info and tracklisting, visit: https://thefaceradio.com/punks-in-parkasTune into new broadcasts of Punks In Parkas, Every Monday from Midday – 1 PM EST / 5 - 6 PM GMT//Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Join the family at https://plus.acast.com/s/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this episode of The Bandwich Tapes, I had the honor of chatting with the incredible Stanton Moore. Stanton Moore is a GRAMMY award-winning artist, teacher, and performer. Born and raised in New Orleans, he is a dedicated drummer, performer, and educator who is especially connected to the city, its culture, and its collaborative spirit. In the early ‘90s, Moore helped found the New Orleans-based essential funk band Galactic, which continues to amass a worldwide audience via recording and touring globally. Moore launched his solo career in 1998 and has nine records under his own name, with the most recent being "With You In Mind: The Songs of Allen Toussaint." Throughout his 25-year career, Moore has played and/or recorded with a diverse group of artists, including Maceo Parker, Joss Stone, Irma Thomas, Leo Nocentelli and George Porter (of the Meters), Tom Morello (of Rage Against the Machine), Corrosion of Conformity, Donald Harrison Jr., Nicholas Payton, Trombone Shorty, Skerik, Charlie Hunter, Robert Walter, Will Bernard, Ivan Neville, Anders Osborne, and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. He has also made numerous appearances on the Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O'Brien, and Seth Meyers late-night TV shows. With a bachelor's degree in music and business from Loyola University, Moore stays involved in education by constantly presenting clinics and teaching master classes and private lessons worldwide. He has released two books and three video projects. His book "Groove Alchemy" was picked by Modern Drummer as one of the top 25 instructional drum books of all time. To continue his passion for teaching and become more closely connected with his students, he recently launched his own online drum academy, StantonMooreDrumAcademy.com. On a personal note, my son, Skyler, was able to study drumset with Stanton while he was artist-in-residence at Louisiana State University. I encourage you to check out Stanton's music and schedule at stantonmoore.com.Thank you for listening! If you have any questions, feedback, or ideas for the show, please contact me at brad@thebandwichtapes.com. Please tell your friends about the show.The theme song, "Playcation", was written by Mark Mundy.

Hey Primos!

Como cada comienzo de mes te ofrecemos nuevo capítulo de esta serie dedicada a recordar singles que alcanzaron su puesto más alto en el Billboard Hot 100 hace 60 años. Viajamos a mayo de 1964, el mes en donde, tras tres meses con The Beatles en el top1 de las listas, por fin dos artistas estadounidenses vuelven a alcanzar la cima, Louis Armstrong y Mary Wells. La factoría Motown sigue afianzándose como el gran baluarte de resistencia a los invasores británicos, el soul sigue creciendo como nueva tendencia musical, Chuck Berry reaparece tras su estancia carcelaria y Henry Mancini mantiene en lo alto la música instrumental.Playlist;(sintonía) HENRY MANCINI “The Pink panther theme” (top 31)SAMMY KAYE “Charade” (top 36)LOUIS ARMSTRONG “Hello Dolly!” (top 1)MARY WELLS “My guy” (top 1)THE BEATLES “Love me do” (top 1)THE DAVE CLARK FIVE “Bits and pieces” (top 4)DUSTY SPRINGFIELD “Stay awhile” (top 38)THE REFLECTIONS “(Just like) Romeo and Juliet” (top 6)THE RONETTES “(The best part of) Breakin’ up” (top 39)JAN and DEAN “Dead man’s curve” (top 8)CHUCK BERRY “Nadine (is it you?)” (top 23)THE VIBRATIONS “My girl Sloopy” (top 26)THE KINGSMEN “Money (that’s what I want)” (top 16)THE WAILERS “Tall cool one” (top 38)MARTHA and THE VANDELLAS “In my lonely room” (top 44)IRMA THOMAS “Wish someone would care” (top 17)OTIS REDDING “Come to me” (top 69)THE COASTERS “T’ain’t nothin’ to me” (top 64)KING CURTIS “Soul serenade” (top 51)Escuchar audio

Soul, Funk, Jazz, Tropicália, and Jazz are all cooking together in this edition of One Room Paradise. New releases from Bruno Berle and DeRobert & the Half-Truths alongside classics from Irma Thomas, Poncho Sanchez, Yusef Lateef, Linda Martell, and more!Tune into new broadcasts of One Room Paradise, the 2nd & 4th Sunday from 7 - 8 PM - EST / 12 - 1 AM GMT. (Monday)For more info visit: https://thefaceradio.com/on-target////Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Join the family at https://plus.acast.com/s/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Back with another funky, groovy two hours - Andy brings you his eclectic lix of tunes including Donald Byrd, Marvin Gaye, Irma Thomas, James Brown, Outkast and Muddy Waters - his three Northern Soul Stonkers are from the 70s and he leaves us on a magic carpet ride - enjoy!Tune into new broadcasts of Groovy Soul, LIVE, Sunday 12 - 2 PM EST / 5 - 7 PM GMT.For more info and tracklisting, visit :https://thefaceradio.com/groovy-soul//Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Join the family at https://plus.acast.com/s/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Groovy Soul at its eclectic and finest as Andy serves up another two hours - classics from The Isley Brothers, Irma Thomas and Pulp sit nicely next too new ones from Jalen Ngonda and Richard Hawley; the three Northern Soul stonkers are huge tunes spun at Stoke on Trent's Torch Club; we begin a new feature of answer songs and the alphabet of songs with women's names reaches HTune into new broadcasts of Groovy Soul, LIVE, Sunday 12 - 2 PM EST / 5 - 7 PM GMT.For more info and tracklisting, visit :https://thefaceradio.com/groovy-soul//Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Join the family at https://plus.acast.com/s/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ella Fitzgerald “Every Time We Say Goodbye”Julie London “Fly Me To The Moon”Dinah Washington “Call Me Irresponsible”Lena Horne & Ray Ellis And His Orchestra “In Love In Vain”Tina Turner “Night Time Is The Right Time”Bonnie Raitt “I Can't Make You Love Me”Erma Franklin “Light My Fire”Aretha Franklin “Today I Sing The Blues”Nina Simone ”Wild Is The Wind”Kay Starr “Baby Won't You Please Come Home”Peggy Lee “The Man I Love”Sarah Vaughan & Jimmy Jones & His Orchestra “Stormy Weather”Betty Lavette “Let Me Down Easy”Irma Thomas “Wish Someone Would Care”Bettye Swann “Tell It Like It Is”Billie Holiday With Paul Whiteman And His Orchestra “Trav'Lin Light”Cassandra Wilson “Time After Time”Escuchar audio

Funny how the calendar works! Fat Tuesday slow dancing with Valentine's Day. Dom and I pride ourselves on our specialty shows - quite a feat when doing all vinyl. When you trove through the amazing soul and funk songs coming out of New Orleans - there are loads of songs about heartbreak and infidelity ( I blame it on the open drinks carry law and the beads, of course) - take Dr John's - ‘Pull The Covers Off The Lovers' and the Irma Thomas masterpiece LP Between The Tears. Dom and I wear out hearts on our sleeves - all the better for digging deep into the bins - and we came up with loads of New Orleans Love songs that not only capture the love when the lust was still alive, it's lively like Mardi Gras itself. And there are also a few love songs we just adore for Valentine's Day! Featuring The Wild Tchoupitoulas, Professor Longhair, The Meters, Clifton Chenier And His Red Hot Louisiana Band, Queen Ida And The Bon Temps Band, Dr. John and loads more!Bon Mardis Gras et Joyeuse Saint Valentin! This show was first broadcast on the 12th of February, 2024For more info and tracklisting, visit: https://thefaceradio.com/worldy/Tune into new broadcasts of Worldy with Matt and Dom, LIVE, Monday from 10 AM - 12 Noon EST / 3- 5 PM GMT.Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Join the family at https://plus.acast.com/s/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Pat K swings through some roaring gospel, funky soul, and Latin jazz from yesterday and today! Kid Congo, Art Farmer, Soul Dog, Irma Thomas, the In Motion Collective and more all make appearances.This show was first broadcast on the 11th of February, 2024Tune into new broadcasts of One Room Paradise, the 2nd & 4th Sunday from 7 - 8 PM - EST / 12 - 1 AM GMT. (Monday)For more info visit: https://thefaceradio.com/on-target////Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Join the family at https://plus.acast.com/s/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Louisiana! A little French History of Acadia, Bayou Fiddle Music, Zydeco Accordion, Meet Lafyette's Finest Honky Tonk with Deano and Jo, Go To New Orleans For King Cake, Fats Domino, Louis Armstrong, Doug Kershaw, Irma Thomas, Doctor John, Neville Brothers, Clifton Chenier, Paul Prudhomme's Food Philosophy, Chris Makes Red Beans and Rice, and Fun on the Big River with Jim and Chris. “Laissez les bons temps rouler” https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100086513555749https://www.patreon.com/user?u=81625843

We caught up with guitarist Chris Adkins on playing with many of New Orlean's greatest including Irma Thomas, Dr. John, Al "Carnival Time" Johnson, and Steve Masakowski and how he came to be one of George Porter Jr's Runnin Pardeners  Ep: 352 #ATJPod more: https://www.chrisadkinsmusic.com/ @allthatjampod on IG, FB, and Twitter - www.allthatjampod.com - Subscribe - leave a review - tell a friend. Merch: https://t.co/QgtAisVtbV All That Jam is brought to you by Executive Producers Amanda Cadran and Kevin Hogan. Produced and edited by Amanda Cadran and Kevin Hogan. Mixed and Mastered by Kevin Hogan. Original Music by Aaron Gaul. Art by Amanda Cadran. 

I'm stoked to say that today, I have both Annie and her legendary father - Cranston Clements joining me on the show. Annie Clements is an incredibly talented bassist and backing vocalist for stars like Amos Lee, Maren Morris and Sugarland among others, and currently resides in Montana. While her dad, Cranston - who has played with numerous artists himself, including Dr John, Irma Thomas, Boz Scaggs and Cyril Neville continues to work and live locally within the New Orleans area. I honestly couldn't think of a better way to start the very first episode of season 3... For more information on Annie, please visit www.annieclements.com For more information on Cranston, please visit ww.cransmusic.com For more information on Travis Marc, please visit www.travismarc.com For more information on 'The Musicians Mentor, please visit www.musicians-mentor.com Lastly, please rate, review and like/follow as we continue to create more content for you all, thank you. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/musiciansmentor/support

The Queens of the Blues podcast celebrates the prolific female blues music from the early 1920's to present times. This show, entitled “Ruler Of My Heart” is entirely about the Soul Queen of New Orleans ... Irma Thomas.#irmathomas

This episode features music from Alex Bradford, Bibletones, Sensational Nightingales, Swanee Quintet (pictured), Gales of Joy, Irma Thomas, a Christmas gospel set, a track from the new album by Faith & Harmony, and more.

I'm sure almost everyone who interviews you must ask about “Time Is on My Side.” But could you talk about why you gave up playing it for a while in the middle of your career?"Well you know, after a while, when you sing something that you know you've recorded, and you did the first national version of it, and when you're singing, somebody tells you: “Oh, you're doing a Rolling Stones song,” I got tired of explaining that I did it before the Rolling Stones. After a while that gets to be old. And so I stopped doing it, because I got tired of explaining that. They didn't do their homework, they made assumptions. And so at some point you get tired of repeating yourself. Even now, I don't do it as much as I do others. I sing it, but a lot of times it's requested before I think about doing it, because I have so many other songs I can do.I have a large enough repertoire that by choice I can either do all of my own material or I can do a few cover songs that I like. And by taking requests, it makes it simpler, because then you are doing what your audience wants to hear. And I'll put it this way: Most folks leave satisfied that they've heard their favorite song.In fact, “Anyone Who Knows What Love Is” — I recorded that back in 1964. I was at a show on the East Coast somewhere, and somebody in the audience asked me to play “Anyone Who Knows What Love Is.” I said, “Wow, I haven't heard that request in a long time.” I sang it for them, and then when I got through, I asked them: “What album did you get that from?” They said, “We didn't get it off an album. We heard it on ‘Black Mirror.'” You never know where you're going to get a request from, or where they heard the song. And so I prepare — I put as much of my own material in my iPad, lyrically, so in case someone asks for it, I'll do my best to do it for them."Is there one song that you consider nearest to your heart?"The only one that I could say I'm closest to would be the one that got me my first big hit, which was: Wish Someone Would Care". It became No. 17 in the nation, and if it hadn't been for the British Invasion, it might have gone a little higher in the charts. There were some personal things going on in my life and I wrote the song because of those things. So that would be the closest to me."

Uwe and James bring stacks of Mod and Northern Soul 45 rpm favorites for today's 1960s all-vinyl dance party. Enjoy tunes from Nella Dodds, Little Milton, Darrell Banks, Irma Thomas, Pat Lewis, Chuck Jackson, Etta James, and hear the story of us playing a highly in-demand Northern Soul classic by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes at a soul club night and clearing the dance floor! Originally broadcast October 29, 2023 Willie Mitchell / That Driving BeatDee Clark / Crossfire TimeJames Brown & The Famous Flames / Night TrainMarvin Gaye / Little Darling, I Need YouPatty LaBelle & the Bluebelles / You Forgot How To LoveLittle Milton / Just A Little BitAlvin Cash & The Registers / The Philly FreezeTina Britt / You're Absolutely RightThe Vibrations / My Girl SloopyMajor Lance / Too Hot To HoldDarrell Banks / Somebody (Somewhere) Needs YouJimmy Lewis / Two WomenThe Lot / Loving You Is All I DoWilmer & The Dukes / Give Me One More ChanceTimmy Shaw / Gonna Sent You Back To GeorgiaLee Rogers / You're the Cream of the CropNella Dodds / Your Love BackHarold Melvin & The Blue Notes / Get Out (and Let Me Cry)Maxine Brown / You Upset My SoulBobby Bland / Call On MeIrma Thomas / Time Is On My SideBunny & Cindy / Sure Didn't Take LongMike Williams / If This Isn't LovePat Lewis / WarningThe Olympics / FireworksAnna King / The Big ChangeChuck Jackson / Any Day NowMaxine Brown / One In A MillionBetty Everett / I Can't Hear YouThe Preparations / Get-E-Up (The Horse)Bobby Freeman / C'mon and SwimMadeline Bell / Picture Me GoneThe Diplomats / There's Still A TomorrowThe Cookies / Don't Say Nothin' Bad (About My Baby)Lee Dorsey / Can You Hear MeJim Benson / Some Other FaceEtta James / Mellow FellowGarnett Mimms / Prove It To Me Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week's guest is the one…the only Stanton Moore. Stanton is GRAMMY award-winning drummer, educator and performer born and raised in New Orleans. His pride for his hometown is pretty unmatched.  In the early ‘90s, Moore helped found the New Orleans-based essential funk band Galactic who continue to amass a worldwide audience via recording and touring globally. The band has averaged 100 shows a year for the last 25 years. Moore launched his solo career in 1998. He has 8 records under his own name. In 2022 Moore started a new project with Grammy award winning guitarist and producer Eric Krasno. The Krasno / Moore Project's current record is “Book of Queens”. Throughout his 25 year career, Moore has played and or recorded with a diverse group of artists including Maceo Parker, Joss Stone, Irma Thomas, Leo Nocentelli and George Porter (of the Meters),Tom Morello (of Rage Against the Machine), Corrosion of Conformity, Donald Harrison Jr., Nicholas Payton, Trombone Shorty, Skerik, Charlie Hunter, Robert Walter, Will Bernard, Ivan Neville, Anders Osborne and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Les Claypool (Primus) to name a few. With a bachelor's degree in music and business from Loyola University, Moore stays involved in education by constantly presenting clinics and teaching master classes and private lessons all over the world. He has released two books and three video projects. His book Groove Alchemy was picked by Modern Drummer as one of the top 25 instructional drum books of all time. To continue with his passion for teaching and to become more closely connected with his students, he recently launched his own online drum academy, StantonMooreDrumAcademy.com. He's the man and this is one for the books. I hope you enjoy the 5 records that shaped Stanton Moore into the drummer he is today. Cheers! SUBMIT YOUR LISTENER PICKS HERE STANTON'S BIG FAT FIVE

This episode includes a long set in memory of Robert Dixon of the Salem Travelers of Chicago, tracks from the new 2-CD collection of Pilgrim Travelers' sides on Specialty, and music from Mahalia Jackson, Irma Thomas, Original Five Blind Boys, Gospel Coronetts, and others.

Notes: Karina and Isaac recap their experiences at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Artists discussed include: Neal Francis, the Disco Biscuits, Ghost Note, Santana, Irma Thomas, Buddy Guy, and more.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

517. Part 2 of our interview with Windy Counsell Petre about Louisiana author Grace King. “Grace King was an American author of Louisiana stories, history, and biography, and a leader in historical and literary activities. King began her literary career as a response to George Washington Cable negative portrayal of Louisiana Creoles. King desired to create a sympathetic portrayal of Louisianians and Southerners based on her observations and experiences. King viewed herself as a type of representative for the region, although she herself was not in fact a Creole.  King also became a representative for Southern women. In her literary works, King focuses primarily on women and women's issues in Reconstruction and its aftermath. King also emphasizes how race and class affected the lives of women” (Wikipedia).  This week in Louisiana history. April 15, 1795. The Pointee Coupee Slave Rebellion. This week in New Orleans history. April 16, 1718. Official date of founding of New Orleans. This week in Louisiana. 2023 Annual Festival International De Louisiane Cajundome & Convention Center, Lafayette, Louisiana Apr 26 - 30, 2023 Website Le Festival International de Louisiane is a community-based, non-profit arts organization formed in 1986 to produce an annual visual and performing arts festival celebrating the French cultural heritage of southern Louisiana - primarily a combination of French, African, Caribbean and Hispanic influences. The largest outdoor, FREE Francophone event in the U.S., the Festival places special emphasis on highlighting the connections between Acadiana and the Francophone world. Each year, artists from Europe, Africa, Canada, the Caribbean and the Americas are invited to share their talents with the community. Since its creation, Le Festival International de Louisiane has become famous as a premier presenter of some of the most unique world musicians and performances in the United States. Popular artists such as Aaron Neville, Dr. John, Irma Thomas, Black Joe Lewis, The Wailers, Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, and Buddy Guy have all performed on our stages. Postcards from Louisiana. Brass band playing in Jackson Square.Listen on Google Play.Listen on Google Podcasts.Listen on Spotify.Listen on Stitcher.Listen on TuneIn.The Louisiana Anthology Home Page.Like us on Facebook.

517. Part 2 of our interview with Windy Counsell Petre about Louisiana author Grace King. “Grace King was an American author of Louisiana stories, history, and biography, and a leader in historical and literary activities. King began her literary career as a response to George Washington Cable negative portrayal of Louisiana Creoles. King desired to create a sympathetic portrayal of Louisianians and Southerners based on her observations and experiences. King viewed herself as a type of representative for the region, although she herself was not in fact a Creole.  King also became a representative for Southern women. In her literary works, King focuses primarily on women and women's issues in Reconstruction and its aftermath. King also emphasizes how race and class affected the lives of women” (Wikipedia).  This week in Louisiana history. April 15, 1795. The Pointee Coupee Slave Rebellion. This week in New Orleans history. April 16, 1718. Official date of founding of New Orleans. This week in Louisiana. 2023 Annual Festival International De Louisiane Cajundome & Convention Center, Lafayette, Louisiana Apr 26 - 30, 2023 Website Le Festival International de Louisiane is a community-based, non-profit arts organization formed in 1986 to produce an annual visual and performing arts festival celebrating the French cultural heritage of southern Louisiana - primarily a combination of French, African, Caribbean and Hispanic influences. The largest outdoor, FREE Francophone event in the U.S., the Festival places special emphasis on highlighting the connections between Acadiana and the Francophone world. Each year, artists from Europe, Africa, Canada, the Caribbean and the Americas are invited to share their talents with the community. Since its creation, Le Festival International de Louisiane has become famous as a premier presenter of some of the most unique world musicians and performances in the United States. Popular artists such as Aaron Neville, Dr. John, Irma Thomas, Black Joe Lewis, The Wailers, Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, and Buddy Guy have all performed on our stages. Postcards from Louisiana. Brass band playing in Jackson Square.Listen on Google Play.Listen on Google Podcasts.Listen on Spotify.Listen on Stitcher.Listen on TuneIn.The Louisiana Anthology Home Page.Like us on Facebook.

Episode 163 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “(Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay", Stax Records, and the short, tragic, life of Otis Redding. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-three minute bonus episode available, on "Soul Man" by Sam and Dave. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by Redding, even if I split into multiple parts. The main resource I used for the biographical details of Redding was Dreams to Remember: Otis Redding, Stax Records, and the Transformation of Southern Soul by Mark Ribowsky. Ribowsky is usually a very good, reliable, writer, but in this case there are a couple of lapses in editing which make it not a book I can wholeheartedly recommend, but the research on the biographical details of Redding seems to be the best. Information about Stax comes primarily from two books: Soulsville USA: The Story of Stax by Rob Bowman, and Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion by Robert Gordon. Country Soul by Charles L Hughes is a great overview of the soul music made in Muscle Shoals, Memphis, and Nashville in the sixties. There are two Original Album Series box sets which between them contain all the albums Redding released in his life plus his first few posthumous albums, for a low price. Volume 1, volume 2. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A quick note before I begin -- this episode ends with a description of a plane crash, which some people may find upsetting. There's also a mention of gun violence. In 2019 the film Summer of Soul came out. If you're unfamiliar with this film, it's a documentary of an event, the Harlem Cultural Festival, which gets called the "Black Woodstock" because it took place in the summer of 1969, overlapping the weekend that Woodstock happened. That event was a series of weekend free concerts in New York, performed by many of the greatest acts in Black music at that time -- people like Stevie Wonder, David Ruffin, Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King, the Staple Singers, Sly and the Family Stone, Nina Simone, and the Fifth Dimension. One thing that that film did was to throw into sharp relief a lot of the performances we've seen over the years by legends of white rock music of the same time. If you watch the film of Woodstock, or the earlier Monterey Pop festival, it's apparent that a lot of the musicians are quite sloppy. This is easy to dismiss as being a product of the situation -- they're playing outdoor venues, with no opportunity to soundcheck, using primitive PA systems, and often without monitors. Anyone would sound a bit sloppy in that situation, right? That is until you listen to the performances on the Summer of Soul soundtrack. The performers on those shows are playing in the same kind of circumstances, and in the case of Woodstock literally at the same time, so it's a fair comparison, and there really is no comparison. Whatever you think of the quality of the *music* (and some of my very favourite artists played at Monterey and Woodstock), the *musicianship* is orders of magnitude better at the Harlem Cultural Festival [Excerpt: Gladys Knight and the Pips “I Heard it Through the Grapevine (live)”] And of course there's a reason for this. Most of the people who played at those big hippie festivals had not had the same experiences as the Black musicians. The Black players were mostly veterans of the chitlin' circuit, where you had to play multiple shows a day, in front of demanding crowds who wanted their money's worth, and who wanted you to be able to play and also put on a show at the same time. When you're playing for crowds of working people who have spent a significant proportion of their money to go to the show, and on a bill with a dozen other acts who are competing for that audience's attention, you are going to get good or stop working. The guitar bands at Woodstock and Monterey, though, hadn't had the same kind of pressure. Their audiences were much more forgiving, much more willing to go with the musicians, view themselves as part of a community with them. And they had to play far fewer shows than the chitlin' circuit veterans, so they simply didn't develop the same chops before becoming famous (the best of them did after fame, of course). And so it's no surprise that while a lot of bands became more famous as a result of the Monterey Pop Festival, only three really became breakout stars in America as a direct result of it. One of those was the Who, who were already the third or fourth biggest band in the UK by that point, either just behind or just ahead of the Kinks, and so the surprise is more that it took them that long to become big in America. But the other two were themselves veterans of the chitlin' circuit. If you buy the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray of Monterey Pop, you get two extra discs along with the disc with the film of the full festival on it -- the only two performances that were thought worth turning into their own short mini-films. One of them is Jimi Hendrix's performance, and we will talk about that in a future episode. The other is titled Shake! Otis at Monterey: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Shake! (live at Monterey Pop Festival)"] Otis Redding came from Macon, Georgia, the home town of Little Richard, who became one of his biggest early influences, and like Richard he was torn in his early years between religion and secular music -- though in most other ways he was very different from Richard, and in particular he came from a much more supportive family. While his father, Otis senior, was a deacon in the church, and didn't approve much of blues, R&B, or jazz music or listen to it himself, he didn't prevent his son from listening to it, so young Otis grew up listening to records by Richard -- of whom he later said "If it hadn't been for Little Richard I would not be here... Richard has soul too. My present music has a lot of him in it" -- and another favourite, Clyde McPhatter: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes, "Have Mercy Baby"] Indeed, it's unclear exactly how much Otis senior *did* disapprove of those supposedly-sinful kinds of music. The biography I used as a source for this, and which says that Otis senior wouldn't listen to blues or jazz music at all, also quotes his son as saying that when he was a child his mother and father used to play him "a calypso song out then called 'Run Joe'" That will of course be this one: [Excerpt: Louis Jordan, "Run Joe"] I find it hard to reconcile the idea of someone who refused to listen to the blues or jazz listening to Louis Jordan, but then people are complex. Whatever Otis senior's feelings about secular music, he recognised from a very early age that his son had a special talent, and encouraged him to become a gospel singer. And at the same time he was listening to Little Richard, young Otis was also listening to gospel singers. One particular influence was a blind street singer, Reverend Pearly Brown: [Excerpt: Reverend Pearly Brown, "Ninety Nine and a Half Won't Do"] Redding was someone who cared deeply about his father's opinion, and it might well have been that he would eventually have become a gospel performer, because he started his career with a foot in both camps. What seems to have made the difference is that when he was sixteen, his father came down with tuberculosis. Even a few years earlier this would have been a terminal diagnosis, but thankfully by this point antibiotics had been invented, and the deacon eventually recovered. But it did mean that Otis junior had to become the family breadwinner while his father was sick, and so he turned decisively towards the kind of music that could make more money. He'd already started performing secular music. He'd joined a band led by Gladys Williams, who was the first female bandleader in the area. Williams sadly doesn't seem to have recorded anything -- discogs has a listing of a funk single by a Gladys Williams on a tiny label which may or may not be the same person, but in general she avoided recording studios, only wanting to play live -- but she was a very influential figure in Georgia music. According to her former trumpeter Newton Collier, who later went on to play with Redding and others, she trained both Fats Gonder and Lewis Hamlin, who went on to join the lineup of James Brown's band that made Live at the Apollo, and Collier says that Hamlin's arrangements for that album, and the way the band would segue from one track to another, were all things he'd been taught by Miss Gladys. Redding sang with Gladys Williams for a while, and she took him under her wing, trained him, and became his de facto first manager. She got him to perform at local talent shows, where he won fifteen weeks in a row, before he got banned from performing to give everyone else a chance. At all of these shows, the song he performed was one that Miss Gladys had rehearsed with him, Little Richard's "Heeby Jeebies": [Excerpt: Little Richard, "Heeby Jeebies"] At this time, Redding's repertoire was largely made up of songs by the two greats of fifties Georgia R&B -- Little Richard and James Brown -- plus some by his other idol Sam Cooke, and those singers would remain his greatest influences throughout his career. After his stint with Williams, Redding went on to join another band, Pat T Cake and the Mighty Panthers, whose guitarist Johnny Jenkins would be a major presence in his life for several years. The Mighty Panthers were soon giving Redding top billing, and advertising gigs as featuring Otis "Rockin' Robin" Redding -- presumably that was another song in his live repertoire. By this time Redding was sounding enough like Little Richard that when Richard's old backing band, The Upsetters, were looking for a new singer after Richard quit rock and roll for the ministry, they took Redding on as their vocalist for a tour. Once that tour had ended, Redding returned home to find that Johnny Jenkins had quit the Mighty Panthers and formed a new band, the Pinetoppers. Redding joined that band, who were managed by a white teenager named Phil Walden, who soon became Redding's personal manager as well. Walden and Redding developed a very strong bond, to the extent that Walden, who was studying at university, spent all his tuition money promoting Redding and almost got kicked out. When Redding found this out, he actually went round to everyone he knew and got loans from everyone until he had enough to pay for Walden's tuition -- much of it paid in coins. They had a strong enough bond that Walden would remain his manager for the rest of Redding's life, and even when Walden had to do two years in the Army in Germany, he managed Redding long-distance, with his brother looking after things at home. But of course, there wasn't much of a music industry in Georgia, and so with Walden's blessing and support, he moved to LA in 1960 to try to become a star. Just before he left, his girlfriend Zelma told him she was pregnant. He assured her that he was only going to be away for a few months, and that he would be back in time for the birth, and that he intended to come back to Georgia rich and marry her. Her response was "Sure you is". In LA, Redding met up with a local record producer, James "Jimmy Mack" McEachin, who would later go on to become an actor, appearing in several films with Clint Eastwood. McEachin produced a session for Redding at Gold Star studios, with arrangements by Rene Hall and using several of the musicians who later became the Wrecking Crew. "She's All Right", the first single that came from that session, was intended to sound as much like Jackie Wilson as possible, and was released under the name of The Shooters, the vocal group who provided the backing vocals: [Excerpt: The Shooters, "She's All Right"] "She's All Right" was released on Trans World, a small label owned by Morris Bernstein, who also owned Finer Arts records (and "She's All Right" seems to have been released on both labels). Neither of Bernstein's labels had any great success -- the biggest record they put out was a single by the Hollywood Argyles that came out after they'd stopped having hits -- and they didn't have any connection to the R&B market. Redding and McEachin couldn't find any R&B labels that wanted to pick up their recordings, and so Redding did return to Georgia and marry Zelma a few days before the birth of their son Dexter. Back in Georgia, he hooked up again with the Pinetoppers, and he and Jenkins started trying local record labels, attempting to get records put out by either of them. Redding was the first, and Otis Redding and the Pinetoppers put out a single, "Shout Bamalama", a slight reworking of a song that he'd recorded as "Gamma Lamma" for McEachin, which was obviously heavily influenced by Little Richard: [Excerpt: Otis Redding and the Pinetoppers, "Shout Bamalama"] That single was produced by a local record company owner, Bobby Smith, who signed Redding to a contract which Redding didn't read, but which turned out to be a management contract as well as a record contract. This would later be a problem, as Redding didn't have an actual contract with Phil Walden -- one thing that comes up time and again in stories about music in the Deep South at this time is people operating on handshake deals and presuming good faith on the part of each other. There was a problem with the record which nobody had foreseen though -- Redding was the first Black artist signed to Smith's label, which was called Confederate Records, and its logo was the Southern Cross. Now Smith, by all accounts, was less personally racist than most white men in Georgia at the time, and hadn't intended that as any kind of statement of white supremacy -- he'd just used a popular local symbol, without thinking through the implications. But as the phrase goes, intent isn't magic, and while Smith didn't intend it as racist, rather unsurprisingly Black DJs and record shops didn't see things in the same light. Smith was told by several DJs that they wouldn't play the record while it was on that label, and he started up a new subsidiary label, Orbit, and put the record out on that label. Redding and Smith continued collaborating, and there were plans for Redding to put out a second single on Orbit. That single was going to be "These Arms of Mine", a song Redding had originally given to another Confederate artist, a rockabilly performer called Buddy Leach (who doesn't seem to be the same Buddy Leach as the Democratic politician from Louisiana, or the saxophone player with George Thorogood and the Destroyers). Leach had recorded it as a B-side, with the slightly altered title "These Arms Are Mine". Sadly I can't provide an excerpt of that, as the record is so rare that even websites I've found by rockabilly collectors who are trying to get everything on Confederate Records haven't managed to get hold of copies. Meanwhile, Johnny Jenkins had been recording on another label, Tifco, and had put out a single called "Pinetop": [Excerpt: Johnny Jenkins and the Pinetoppers, "Pinetop"] That record had attracted the attention of Joe Galkin. Galkin was a semi-independent record promoter, who had worked for Atlantic in New York before moving back to his home town of Macon. Galkin had proved himself as a promoter by being responsible for the massive amounts of airplay given to Solomon Burke's "Just Out of Reach (of My Two Open Arms)": [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "Just Out of Reach (of My Two Open Arms)"] After that, Jerry Wexler had given Galkin fifty dollars a week and an expense account, and Galkin would drive to all the Black radio stations in the South and pitch Atlantic's records to them. But Galkin also had his own record label, Gerald Records, and when he went to those stations and heard them playing something from a smaller label, he would quickly negotiate with that smaller label, buy the master and the artist's contract, and put the record out on Gerald Records -- and then he would sell the track and the artist on to Atlantic, taking ten percent of the record's future earnings and a finder's fee. This is what happened with Johnny Jenkins' single, which was reissued on Gerald and then on Atlantic. Galkin signed Jenkins to a contract -- another of those contracts which also made him Jenkins' manager, and indeed the manager of the Pinetops. Jenkins' record ended up selling about twenty-five thousand records, but when Galkin saw the Pinetoppers performing live, he realised that Otis Redding was the real star. Since he had a contract with Jenkins, he came to an agreement with Walden, who was still Jenkins' manager as well as Redding's -- Walden would get fifty percent of Jenkins' publishing and they would be co-managers of Jenkins. But Galkin had plans for Redding, which he didn't tell anyone about, not even Redding himself. The one person he did tell was Jerry Wexler, who he phoned up and asked for two thousand dollars, explaining that he wanted to record Jenkins' follow-up single at Stax, and he also wanted to bring along a singer he'd discovered, who sang with Jenkins' band. Wexler agreed -- Atlantic had recently started distributing Stax's records on a handshake deal of much the same kind that Redding had with Walden. As far as everyone else was concerned, though, the session was just for Johnny Jenkins, the known quantity who'd already released a single for Atlantic. Otis Redding, meanwhile, was having to work a lot of odd jobs to feed his rapidly growing family, and one of those jobs was to work as Johnny Jenkins' driver, as Jenkins didn't have a driving license. So Galkin suggested that, given that Memphis was quite a long drive, Redding should drive Galkin and Jenkins to Stax, and carry the equipment for them. Bobby Smith, who still thought of himself as Redding's manager, was eager to help his friend's bandmate with his big break (and to help Galkin, in the hope that maybe Atlantic would start distributing Confederate too), and so he lent Redding the company station wagon to drive them to the session.The other Pinetoppers wouldn't be going -- Jenkins was going to be backed by Booker T and the MGs, the normal Stax backing band. Phil Walden, though, had told Redding that he should try to take the opportunity to get himself heard by Stax, and he pestered the musicians as they recorded Jenkins' "Spunky": [Excerpt: Johnny Jenkins, "Spunky"] Cropper later remembered “During the session, Al Jackson says to me, ‘The big tall guy that was driving Johnny, he's been bugging me to death, wanting me to hear him sing,' Al said, ‘Would you take some time and get this guy off of my back and listen to him?' And I said, ‘After the session I'll try to do it,' and then I just forgot about it.” What Redding didn't know, though Walden might have, is that Galkin had planned all along to get Redding to record while he was there. Galkin claimed to be Redding's manager, and told Jim Stewart, the co-owner of Stax who acted as main engineer and supervising producer on the sessions at this point, that Wexler had only funded the session on the basis that Redding would also get a shot at recording. Stewart was unimpressed -- Jenkins' session had not gone well, and it had taken them more than two hours to get two tracks down, but Galkin offered Stewart a trade -- Galkin, as Redding's manager, would take half of Stax's mechanical royalties for the records (which wouldn't be much) but in turn would give Stewart half the publishing on Redding's songs. That was enough to make Stewart interested, but by this point Booker T. Jones had already left the studio, so Steve Cropper moved to the piano for the forty minutes that was left of the session, with Jenkins remaining on guitar, and they tried to get two sides of a single cut. The first track they cut was "Hey Hey Baby", which didn't impress Stewart much -- he simply said that the world didn't need another Little Richard -- and so with time running out they cut another track, the ballad Redding had already given to Buddy Leach. He asked Cropper, who didn't play piano well, to play "church chords", by which he meant triplets, and Cropper said "he started singing ‘These Arms of Mine' and I know my hair lifted about three inches and I couldn't believe this guy's voice": [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "These Arms of Mine"] That was more impressive, though Stewart carefully feigned disinterest. Stewart and Galkin put together a contract which signed Redding to Stax -- though they put the single out on the less-important Volt subsidiary, as they did for much of Redding's subsequent output -- and gave Galkin and Stewart fifty percent each of the publishing rights to Redding's songs. Redding signed it, not even realising he was signing a proper contract rather than just one for a single record, because he was just used to signing whatever bit of paper was put in front of him at the time. This one was slightly different though, because Redding had had his twenty-first birthday since the last time he'd signed a contract, and so Galkin assumed that that meant all his other contracts were invalid -- not realising that Redding's contract with Bobby Smith had been countersigned by Redding's mother, and so was also legal. Walden also didn't realise that, but *did* realise that Galkin representing himself as Redding's manager to Stax might be a problem, so he quickly got Redding to sign a proper contract, formalising the handshake basis they'd been operating on up to that point. Walden was at this point in the middle of his Army service, but got the signature while he was home on leave. Walden then signed a deal with Galkin, giving Walden half of Galkin's fifty percent cut of Redding's publishing in return for Galkin getting a share of Walden's management proceeds. By this point everyone was on the same page -- Otis Redding was going to be a big star, and he became everyone's prime focus. Johnny Jenkins remained signed to Walden's agency -- which quickly grew to represent almost every big soul star that wasn't signed to Motown -- but he was regarded as a footnote. His record came out eventually on Volt, almost two years later, but he didn't release another record until 1968. Jenkins did, though, go on to have some influence. In 1970 he was given the opportunity to sing lead on an album backed by Duane Allman and the members of the Muscle Shoals studio band, many of whom went on to form the Allman Brothers Band. That record contained a cover of Dr. John's "I Walk on Guilded Splinters" which was later sampled by Beck for "Loser", the Wu-Tang Clan for "Gun Will Go" and Oasis for their hit "Go Let it Out": [Excerpt: Johnny Jenkins, "I Walk on Guilded Splinters"] Jenkins would play guitar on several future Otis Redding sessions, but would hold a grudge against Redding for the rest of his life for taking the stardom he thought was rightfully his, and would be one of the few people to have anything negative to say about Redding after his early death. When Bobby Smith heard about the release of "These Arms of Mine", he was furious, as his contract with Redding *was* in fact legally valid, and he'd been intending to get Redding to record the song himself. However, he realised that Stax could call on the resources of Atlantic Records, and Joe Galkin also hinted that if he played nice Atlantic might start distributing Confederate, too. Smith signed away all his rights to Redding -- again, thinking that he was only signing away the rights to a single record and song, and not reading the contract closely enough. In this case, Smith only had one working eye, and that wasn't good enough to see clearly -- he had to hold paper right up to his face to read anything on it -- and he simply couldn't read the small print on the contract, and so signed over Otis Redding's management, record contract, and publishing, for a flat seven hundred dollars. Now everything was legally -- if perhaps not ethically -- in the clear. Phil Walden was Otis Redding's manager, Stax was his record label, Joe Galkin got a cut off the top, and Walden, Galkin, and Jim Stewart all shared Redding's publishing. Although, to make it a hit, one more thing had to happen, and one more person had to get a cut of the song: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "These Arms of Mine"] That sound was becoming out of fashion among Black listeners at the time. It was considered passe, and even though the Stax musicians loved the record, Jim Stewart didn't, and put it out not because he believed in Otis Redding, but because he believed in Joe Galkin. As Stewart later said “The Black radio stations were getting out of that Black country sound, we put it out to appease and please Joe.” For the most part DJs ignored the record, despite Galkin pushing it -- it was released in October 1962, that month which we have already pinpointed as the start of the sixties, and came out at the same time as a couple of other Stax releases, and the one they were really pushing was Carla Thomas' "I'll Bring it Home to You", an answer record to Sam Cooke's "Bring it On Home to Me": [Excerpt: Carla Thomas, "I'll Bring it Home to You"] "These Arms of Mine" wasn't even released as the A-side -- that was "Hey Hey Baby" -- until John R came along. John R was a Nashville DJ, and in fact he was the reason that Bobby Smith even knew that Redding had signed to Stax. R had heard Buddy Leach's version of the song, and called Smith, who was a friend of his, to tell him that his record had been covered, and that was the first Smith had heard of the matter. But R also called Jim Stewart at Stax, and told him that he was promoting the wrong side, and that if they started promoting "These Arms of Mine", R would play the record on his radio show, which could be heard in twenty-eight states. And, as a gesture of thanks for this suggestion -- and definitely not as payola, which would be very illegal -- Stewart gave R his share of the publishing rights to the song, which eventually made the top twenty on the R&B charts, and slipped into the lower end of the Hot One Hundred. "These Arms of Mine" was actually recorded at a turning point for Stax as an organisation. By the time it was released, Booker T Jones had left Memphis to go to university in Indiana to study music, with his tuition being paid for by his share of the royalties for "Green Onions", which hit the charts around the same time as Redding's first session: [Excerpt: Booker T. and the MGs, "Green Onions"] Most of Stax's most important sessions were recorded at weekends -- Jim Stewart still had a day job as a bank manager at this point, and he supervised the records that were likely to be hits -- so Jones could often commute back to the studio for session work, and could play sessions during his holidays. The rest of the time, other people would cover the piano parts, often Cropper, who played piano on Redding's next sessions, with Jenkins once again on guitar. As "These Arms of Mine" didn't start to become a hit until March, Redding didn't go into the studio again until June, when he cut the follow-up, "That's What My Heart Needs", with the MGs, Jenkins, and the horn section of the Mar-Keys. That made number twenty-seven on the Cashbox R&B chart -- this was in the period when Billboard had stopped having one. The follow-up, "Pain in My Heart", was cut in September and did even better, making number eleven on the Cashbox R&B chart: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Pain in My Heart"] It did well enough in fact that the Rolling Stones cut a cover version of the track: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Pain in My Heart"] Though Redding didn't get the songwriting royalties -- by that point Allen Toussaint had noticed how closely it resembled a song he'd written for Irma Thomas, "Ruler of My Heart": [Excerpt: Irma Thomas, "Ruler of My Heart"] And so the writing credit was changed to be Naomi Neville, one of the pseudonyms Toussaint used. By this point Redding was getting steady work, and becoming a popular live act. He'd put together his own band, and had asked Jenkins to join, but Jenkins didn't want to play second fiddle to him, and refused, and soon stopped being invited to the recording sessions as well. Indeed, Redding was *eager* to get as many of his old friends working with him as he could. For his second and third sessions, as well as bringing Jenkins, he'd brought along a whole gang of musicians from his touring show, and persuaded Stax to put out records by them, too. At those sessions, as well as Redding's singles, they also cut records by his valet (which was the term R&B performers in those years used for what we'd now call a gofer or roadie) Oscar Mack: [Excerpt: Oscar Mack, "Don't Be Afraid of Love"] For Eddie Kirkland, the guitarist in his touring band, who had previously played with John Lee Hooker and whose single was released under the name "Eddie Kirk": [Excerpt: Eddie Kirk, "The Hawg, Part 1"] And Bobby Marchan, a singer and female impersonator from New Orleans who had had some massive hits a few years earlier both on his own and as the singer with Huey "Piano" Smith and the Clowns, but had ended up in Macon without a record deal and been taken under Redding's wing: [Excerpt: Bobby Marchan, "What Can I Do?"] Redding would continue, throughout his life, to be someone who tried to build musical careers for his friends, though none of those singles was successful. The changes in Stax continued. In late autumn 1963, Atlantic got worried by the lack of new product coming from Stax. Carla Thomas had had a couple of R&B hits, and they were expecting a new single, but every time Jerry Wexler phoned Stax asking where the new single was, he was told it would be coming soon but the equipment was broken. After a couple of weeks of this, Wexler decided something fishy was going on, and sent Tom Dowd, his genius engineer, down to Stax to investigate. Dowd found when he got there that the equipment *was* broken, and had been for weeks, and was a simple fix. When Dowd spoke to Stewart, though, he discovered that they didn't know where to source replacement parts from. Dowd phoned his assistant in New York, and told him to go to the electronics shop and get the parts he needed. Then, as there were no next-day courier services at that time, Dowd's assistant went to the airport, found a flight attendant who was flying to Memphis, and gave her the parts and twenty-five dollars, with a promise of twenty-five more if she gave them to Dowd at the other end. The next morning, Dowd had the equipment fixed, and everyone involved became convinced that Dowd was a miracle worker, especially after he showed Steve Cropper some rudimentary tape-manipulation techniques that Cropper had never encountered before. Dowd had to wait around in Memphis for his flight, so he went to play golf with the musicians for a bit, and then they thought they might as well pop back to the studio and test the equipment out. When they did, Rufus Thomas -- Carla Thomas' father, who had also had a number of hits himself on Stax and Sun -- popped his head round the door to see if the equipment was working now. They told him it was, and he said he had a song if they were up for a spot of recording. They were, and so when Dowd flew back that night, he was able to tell Wexler not only that the next Carla Thomas single would soon be on its way, but that he had the tapes of a big hit single with him right there: [Excerpt: Rufus Thomas, "Walking the Dog"] "Walking the Dog" was a sensation. Jim Stewart later said “I remember our first order out of Chicago. I was in New York in Jerry Wexler's office at the time and Paul Glass, who was our distributor in Chicago, called in an order for sixty-five thousand records. I said to Jerry, ‘Do you mean sixty-five hundred?' And he said, ‘Hell no, he wants sixty-five thousand.' That was the first order! He believed in the record so much that we ended up selling about two hundred thousand in Chicago alone.” The record made the top ten on the pop charts, but that wasn't the biggest thing that Dowd had taken away from the session. He came back raving to Wexler about the way they made records in Memphis, and how different it was from the New York way. In New York, there was a strict separation between the people in the control room and the musicians in the studio, the musicians were playing from written charts, and everyone had a job and did just that job. In Memphis, the musicians were making up the arrangements as they went, and everyone was producing or engineering all at the same time. Dowd, as someone with more technical ability than anyone at Stax, and who was also a trained musician who could make musical suggestions, was soon regularly commuting down to Memphis to be part of the production team, and Jerry Wexler was soon going down to record with other Atlantic artists there, as we heard about in the episode on "Midnight Hour". Shortly after Dowd's first visit to Memphis, another key member of the Stax team entered the picture. Right at the end of 1963, Floyd Newman recorded a track called "Frog Stomp", on which he used his own band rather than the MGs and Mar-Keys: [Excerpt: Floyd Newman, "Frog Stomp"] The piano player and co-writer on that track was a young man named Isaac Hayes, who had been trying to get work at Stax for some time. He'd started out as a singer, and had made a record, "Laura, We're On Our Last Go-Round", at American Sound, the studio run by the former Stax engineer and musician Chips Moman: [Excerpt: Isaac Hayes, "Laura, We're On Our Last Go-Round"] But that hadn't been a success, and Hayes had continued working a day job at a slaughterhouse -- and would continue doing so for much of the next few years, even after he started working at Stax (it's truly amazing how many of the people involved in Stax were making music as what we would now call a side-hustle). Hayes had become a piano player as a way of getting a little extra money -- he'd been offered a job as a fill-in when someone else had pulled out at the last minute on a gig on New Year's Eve, and took it even though he couldn't actually play piano, and spent his first show desperately vamping with two fingers, and was just lucky the audience was too drunk to care. But he had a remarkable facility for the instrument, and while unlike Booker T Jones he would never gain a great deal of technical knowledge, and was embarrassed for the rest of his life by both his playing ability and his lack of theory knowledge, he was as great as they come at soul, at playing with feel, and at inventing new harmonies on the fly. They still didn't have a musician at Stax that could replace Booker T, who was still off at university, so Isaac Hayes was taken on as a second session keyboard player, to cover for Jones when Jones was in Indiana -- though Hayes himself also had to work his own sessions around his dayjob, so didn't end up playing on "In the Midnight Hour", for example, because he was at the slaughterhouse. The first recording session that Hayes played on as a session player was an Otis Redding single, either his fourth single for Stax, "Come to Me", or his fifth, "Security": [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Security"] "Security" is usually pointed to by fans as the point at which Redding really comes into his own, and started directing the musicians more. There's a distinct difference, in particular, in the interplay between Cropper's guitar, the Mar-Keys' horns, and Redding's voice. Where previously the horns had tended to play mostly pads, just holding chords under Redding's voice, now they were starting to do answering phrases. Jim Stewart always said that the only reason Stax used a horn section at all was because he'd been unable to find a decent group of backing vocalists, and the function the horns played on most of the early Stax recordings was somewhat similar to the one that the Jordanaires had played for Elvis, or the Picks for Buddy Holly, basically doing "oooh" sounds to fatten out the sound, plus the odd sax solo or simple riff. The way Redding used the horns, though, was more like the way Ray Charles used the Raelettes, or the interplay of a doo-wop vocal group, with call and response, interjections, and asides. He also did something in "Security" that would become a hallmark of records made at Stax -- instead of a solo, the instrumental break is played by the horns as an ensemble: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Security"] According to Wayne Jackson, the Mar-Keys' trumpeter, Redding was the one who had the idea of doing these horn ensemble sections, and the musicians liked them enough that they continued doing them on all the future sessions, no matter who with. The last Stax single of 1964 took the "Security" sound and refined it, and became the template for every big Stax hit to follow. "Mr. Pitiful" was the first collaboration between Redding and Steve Cropper, and was primarily Cropper's idea. Cropper later remembered “There was a disc jockey here named Moohah. He started calling Otis ‘Mr. Pitiful' 'cause he sounded so pitiful singing his ballads. So I said, ‘Great idea for a song!' I got the idea for writing about it in the shower. I was on my way down to pick up Otis. I got down there and I was humming it in the car. I said, ‘Hey, what do you think about this?' We just wrote the song on the way to the studio, just slapping our hands on our legs. We wrote it in about ten minutes, went in, showed it to the guys, he hummed a horn line, boom—we had it. When Jim Stewart walked in we had it all worked up. Two or three cuts later, there it was.” [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Mr. Pitiful"] Cropper would often note later that Redding would never write about himself, but that Cropper would put details of Redding's life and persona into the songs, from "Mr. Pitiful" right up to their final collaboration, in which Cropper came up with lines about leaving home in Georgia. "Mr Pitiful" went to number ten on the R&B chart and peaked at number forty-one on the hot one hundred, and its B-side, "That's How Strong My Love Is", also made the R&B top twenty. Cropper and Redding soon settled into a fruitful writing partnership, to the extent that Cropper even kept a guitar permanently tuned to an open chord so that Redding could use it. Redding couldn't play the guitar, but liked to use one as a songwriting tool. When a guitar is tuned in standard tuning, you have to be able to make chord shapes to play it, because the sound of the open strings is a discord: [demonstrates] But you can tune a guitar so all the strings are the notes of a single chord, so they sound good together even when you don't make a chord shape: [demonstrates open-E tuning] With one of these open tunings, you can play chords with just a single finger barring a fret, and so they're very popular with, for example, slide guitarists who use a metal slide to play, or someone like Dolly Parton who has such long fingernails it's difficult to form chord shapes. Someone like Parton is of course an accomplished player, but open tunings also mean that someone who can't play well can just put their finger down on a fret and have it be a chord, so you can write songs just by running one finger up and down the fretboard: [demonstrates] So Redding could write, and even play acoustic rhythm guitar on some songs, which he did quite a lot in later years, without ever learning how to make chords. Now, there's a downside to this -- which is why standard tuning is still standard. If you tune to an open major chord, you can play major chords easily but minor chords become far more difficult. Handily, that wasn't a problem at Stax, because according to Isaac Hayes, Jim Stewart banned minor chords from being played at Stax. Hayes said “We'd play a chord in a session, and Jim would say, ‘I don't want to hear that chord.' Jim's ears were just tuned into one, four, and five. I mean, just simple changes. He said they were the breadwinners. He didn't like minor chords. Marvell and I always would try to put that pretty stuff in there. Jim didn't like that. We'd bump heads about that stuff. Me and Marvell fought all the time that. Booker wanted change as well. As time progressed, I was able to sneak a few in.” Of course, minor chords weren't *completely* banned from Stax, and some did sneak through, but even ballads would often have only major chords -- like Redding's next single, "I've Been Loving You Too Long". That track had its origins with Jerry Butler, the singer who had been lead vocalist of the Impressions before starting a solo career and having success with tracks like "For Your Precious Love": [Excerpt: Jerry Butler, "For Your Precious Love"] Redding liked that song, and covered it himself on his second album, and he had become friendly with Butler. Butler had half-written a song, and played it for Redding, who told him he'd like to fiddle with it, see what he could do. Butler forgot about the conversation, until he got a phone call from Redding, telling him that he'd recorded the song. Butler was confused, and also a little upset -- he'd been planning to finish the song himself, and record it. But then Redding played him the track, and Butler decided that doing so would be pointless -- it was Redding's song now: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "I've Been Loving You Too Long"] "I've Been Loving You Too Long" became Redding's first really big hit, making number two on the R&B chart and twenty-one on the Hot One Hundred. It was soon being covered by the Rolling Stones and Ike & Tina Turner, and while Redding was still not really known to the white pop market, he was quickly becoming one of the biggest stars on the R&B scene. His record sales were still not matching his live performances -- he would always make far more money from appearances than from records -- but he was by now the performer that every other soul singer wanted to copy. "I've Been Loving You Too Long" came out just after Redding's second album, The Great Otis Redding Sings Soul Ballads, which happened to be the first album released on Volt Records. Before that, while Stax and Volt had released the singles, they'd licensed all the album tracks to Atlantic's Atco subsidiary, which had released the small number of albums put out by Stax artists. But times were changing and the LP market was becoming bigger. And more importantly, the *stereo* LP market was becoming bigger. Singles were still only released in mono, and would be for the next few years, but the album market had a substantial number of audiophiles, and they wanted stereo. This was a problem for Stax, because they only had a mono tape recorder, and they were scared of changing anything about their setup in case it destroyed their sound. Tom Dowd, who had been recording in eight track for years, was appalled by the technical limitations at the McLemore Ave studio, but eventually managed to get Jim Stewart, who despite -- or possibly because of -- being a white country musician was the most concerned that they keep their Black soul sound, to agree to a compromise. They would keep everything hooked up exactly the same -- the same primitive mixers, the same mono tape recorder -- and Stax would continue doing their mixes for mono, and all their singles would come directly off that mono tape. But at the same time, they would *also* have a two-track tape recorder plugged in to the mixer, with half the channels going on one track and half on the other. So while they were making the mix, they'd *also* be getting a stereo dump of that mix. The limitations of the situation meant that they might end up with drums and vocals in one channel and everything else in the other -- although as the musicians cut everything together in the studio, which had a lot of natural echo, leakage meant there was a *bit* of everything on every track -- but it would still be stereo. Redding's next album, Otis Blue, was recorded on this new equipment, with Dowd travelling down from New York to operate it. Dowd was so keen on making the album stereo that during that session, they rerecorded Redding's two most recent singles, "I've Been Loving You Too Long" and "Respect" (which hadn't yet come out but was in the process of being released) in soundalike versions so there would be stereo versions of the songs on the album -- so the stereo and mono versions of Otis Blue actually have different performances of those songs on them. It shows how intense the work rate was at Stax -- and how good they were at their jobs -- that apart from the opening track "Ole Man Trouble", which had already been recorded as a B-side, all of Otis Blue, which is often considered the greatest soul album in history, was recorded in a twenty-eight hour period, and it would have been shorter but there was a four-hour break in the middle, from 10PM to 2AM, so that the musicians on the session could play their regular local club gigs. And then after the album was finished, Otis left the session to perform a gig that evening. Tom Dowd, in particular, was astonished by the way Redding took charge in the studio, and how even though he had no technical musical knowledge, he would direct the musicians. Dowd called Redding a genius and told Phil Walden that the only two other artists he'd worked with who had as much ability in the studio were Bobby Darin and Ray Charles. Other than those singles and "Ole Man Trouble", Otis Blue was made up entirely of cover versions. There were three versions of songs by Sam Cooke, who had died just a few months earlier, and whose death had hit Redding hard -- for all that he styled himself on Little Richard vocally, he was also in awe of Cooke as a singer and stage presence. There were also covers of songs by The Temptations, William Bell, and B.B. King. And there was also an odd choice -- Steve Cropper suggested that Redding cut a cover of a song by a white band that was in the charts at the time: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"] Redding had never heard the song before -- he was not paying attention to the white pop scene at the time, just to his competition on the R&B charts -- but he was interested in doing it. Cropper sat by the turntable, scribbling down what he thought the lyrics Jagger was singing were, and they cut the track. Redding starts out more or less singing the right words: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"] But quickly ends up just ad-libbing random exclamations in the same way that he would in many of his live performances: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"] Otis Blue made number one on the R&B album chart, and also made number six on the UK album chart -- Redding, like many soul artists, was far more popular in the UK than in the US. It only made number seventy-five on the pop album charts in the US, but it did a remarkable thing as far as Stax was concerned -- it *stayed* in the lower reaches of the charts, and on the R&B album charts, for a long time. Redding had become what is known as a "catalogue artist", something that was almost unknown in rock and soul music at this time, but which was just starting to appear. Up to 1965, the interlinked genres that we now think of as rock and roll, rock, pop, blues, R&B, and soul, had all operated on the basis that singles were where the money was, and that singles should be treated like periodicals -- they go on the shelves, stay there for a few weeks, get replaced by the new thing, and nobody's interested any more. This had contributed to the explosive rate of change in pop music between about 1954 and 1968. You'd package old singles up into albums, and stick some filler tracks on there as a way of making a tiny bit of money from tracks which weren't good enough to release as singles, but that was just squeezing the last few drops of juice out of the orange, it wasn't really where the money was. The only exceptions were those artists like Ray Charles who crossed over into the jazz and adult pop markets. But in general, your record sales in the first few weeks and months *were* your record sales. But by the mid-sixties, as album sales started to take off more, things started to change. And Otis Redding was one of the first artists to really benefit from that. He wasn't having huge hit singles, and his albums weren't making the pop top forty, but they *kept selling*. Redding wouldn't have an album make the top forty in his lifetime, but they sold consistently, and everything from Otis Blue onward sold two hundred thousand or so copies -- a massive number in the much smaller album market of the time. These sales gave Redding some leverage. His contract with Stax was coming to an end in a few months, and he was getting offers from other companies. As part of his contract renegotiation, he got Jim Stewart -- who like so many people in this story including Redding himself liked to operate on handshake deals and assumptions of good faith on the part of everyone else, and who prided himself on being totally fair and not driving hard bargains -- to rework his publishing deal. Now Redding's music was going to be published by Redwal Music -- named after Redding and Phil Walden -- which was owned as a four-way split between Redding, Walden, Stewart, and Joe Galkin. Redding also got the right as part of his contract negotiations to record other artists using Stax's facilities and musicians. He set up his own label, Jotis Records -- a portmanteau of Joe and Otis, for Joe Galkin and himself, and put out records by Arthur Conley: [Excerpt: Arthur Conley, "Who's Fooling Who?"] Loretta Williams [Excerpt: Loretta Williams, "I'm Missing You"] and Billy Young [Excerpt: Billy Young, "The Sloopy"] None of these was a success, but it was another example of how Redding was trying to use his success to boost others. There were other changes going on at Stax as well. The company was becoming more tightly integrated with Atlantic Records -- Tom Dowd had started engineering more sessions, Jerry Wexler was turning up all the time, and they were starting to make records for Atlantic, as we discussed in the episode on "In the Midnight Hour". Atlantic were also loaning Stax Sam and Dave, who were contracted to Atlantic but treated as Stax artists, and whose hits were written by the new Stax songwriting team of Isaac Hayes and David Porter: [Excerpt: Sam and Dave, "Soul Man"] Redding was not hugely impressed by Sam and Dave, once saying in an interview "When I first heard the Righteous Brothers, I thought they were colored. I think they sing better than Sam and Dave", but they were having more and bigger chart hits than him, though they didn't have the same level of album sales. Also, by now Booker T and the MGs had a new bass player. Donald "Duck" Dunn had always been the "other" bass player at Stax, ever since he'd started with the Mar-Keys, and he'd played on many of Redding's recordings, as had Lewie Steinberg, the original bass player with the MGs. But in early 1965, the Stax studio musicians had cut a record originally intending it to be a Mar-Keys record, but decided to put it out as by Booker T and the MGs, even though Booker T wasn't there at the time -- Isaac Hayes played keyboards on the track: [Excerpt: Booker T and the MGs, "Boot-Leg"] Booker T Jones would always have a place at Stax, and would soon be back full time as he finished his degree, but from that point on Duck Dunn, not Lewie Steinberg, was the bass player for the MGs. Another change in 1965 was that Stax got serious about promotion. Up to this point, they'd just relied on Atlantic to promote their records, but obviously Atlantic put more effort into promoting records on which it made all the money than ones it just distributed. But as part of the deal to make records with Sam and Dave and Wilson Pickett, Atlantic had finally put their arrangement with Stax on a contractual footing, rather than their previous handshake deal, and they'd agreed to pay half the salary of a publicity person for Stax. Stax brought in Al Bell, who made a huge impression. Bell had been a DJ in Memphis, who had gone off to work with Martin Luther King for a while, before leaving after a year because, as he put it "I was not about passive resistance. I was about economic development, economic empowerment.” He'd returned to DJing, first in Memphis, then in Washington DC, where he'd been one of the biggest boosters of Stax records in the area. While he was in Washington, he'd also started making records himself. He'd produced several singles for Grover Mitchell on Decca: [Excerpt: Grover Mitchell, "Midnight Tears"] Those records were supervised by Milt Gabler, the same Milt Gabler who produced Louis Jordan's records and "Rock Around the Clock", and Bell co-produced them with Eddie Floyd, who wrote that song, and Chester Simmons, formerly of the Moonglows, and the three of them started their own label, Safice, which had put out a few records by Floyd and others, on the same kind of deal with Atlantic that Stax had: [Excerpt: Eddie Floyd, "Make Up Your Mind"] Floyd would himself soon become a staff songwriter at Stax. As with almost every decision at Stax, the decision to hire Bell was a cause of disagreement between Jim Stewart and his sister Estelle Axton, the "Ax" in Stax, who wasn't as involved in the day-to-day studio operations as her brother, but who was often regarded by the musicians as at least as important to the spirit of the label, and who tended to disagree with her brother on pretty much everything. Stewart didn't want to hire Bell, but according to Cropper “Estelle and I said, ‘Hey, we need somebody that can liaison between the disc jockeys and he's the man to do it. Atlantic's going into a radio station with six Atlantic records and one Stax record. We're not getting our due.' We knew that. We needed more promotion and he had all the pull with all those disc jockeys. He knew E. Rodney Jones and all the big cats, the Montagues and so on. He knew every one of them.” Many people at Stax will say that the label didn't even really start until Bell joined -- and he became so important to the label that he would eventually take it over from Stewart and Axton. Bell came in every day and immediately started phoning DJs, all day every day, starting in the morning with the drivetime East Coast DJs, and working his way across the US, ending up at midnight phoning the evening DJs in California. Booker T Jones said of him “He had energy like Otis Redding, except he wasn't a singer. He had the same type of energy. He'd come in the room, pull up his shoulders and that energy would start. He would start talking about the music business or what was going on and he energized everywhere he was. He was our Otis for promotion. It was the same type of energy charisma.” Meanwhile, of course, Redding was constantly releasing singles. Two more singles were released from Otis Blue -- his versions of "My Girl" and "Satisfaction", and he also released "I Can't Turn You Loose", which was originally the B-side to "Just One More Day" but ended up charting higher than its original A-side. It's around this time that Redding did something which seems completely out of character, but which really must be mentioned given that with very few exceptions everyone in his life talks about him as some kind of saint. One of Redding's friends was beaten up, and Redding, the friend, and another friend drove to the assailant's house and started shooting through the windows, starting a gun battle in which Redding got grazed. His friend got convicted of attempted murder, and got two years' probation, while Redding himself didn't face any criminal charges but did get sued by the victims, and settled out of court for a few hundred dollars. By this point Redding was becoming hugely rich from his concert appearances and album sales, but he still hadn't had a top twenty pop hit. He needed to break the white market. And so in April 1966, Redding went to LA, to play the Sunset Strip: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Respect (live at the Whisky A-Go-Go)"] Redding's performance at the Whisky A-Go-Go, a venue which otherwise hosted bands like the Doors, the Byrds, the Mothers of Invention, and Love, was his first real interaction with the white rock scene, part of a process that had started with his recording of "Satisfaction". The three-day residency got rave reviews, though the plans to release a live album of the shows were scuppered when Jim Stewart listened back to the tapes and decided that Redding's horn players were often out of tune. But almost everyone on the LA scene came out to see the shows, and Redding blew them away. According to one biography of Redding I used, it was seeing how Redding tuned his guitar that inspired the guitarist from the support band, the Rising Sons, to start playing in the same tuning -- though I can't believe for a moment that Ry Cooder, one of the greatest slide guitarists of his generation, didn't already know about open tunings. But Redding definitely impressed that band -- Taj Mahal, their lead singer, later said it was "one of the most amazing performances I'd ever seen". Also at the gigs was Bob Dylan, who played Redding a song he'd just recorded but not yet released: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Just Like a Woman"] Redding agreed that the song sounded perfect for him, and said he would record it. He apparently made some attempts at rehearsing it at least, but never ended up recording it. He thought the first verse and chorus were great, but had problems with the second verse: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Just Like a Woman"] Those lyrics were just too abstract for him to find a way to connect with them emotionally, and as a result he found himself completely unable to sing them. But like his recording of "Satisfaction", this was another clue to him that he should start paying more attention to what was going on in the white music industry, and that there might be things he could incorporate into his own style. As a result of the LA gigs, Bill Graham booked Redding for the Fillmore in San Francisco. Redding was at first cautious, thinking this might be a step too far, and that he wouldn't go down well with the hippie crowd, but Graham persuaded him, saying that whenever he asked any of the people who the San Francisco crowds most loved -- Jerry Garcia or Paul Butterfield or Mike Bloomfield -- who *they* most wanted to see play there, they all said Otis Redding. Redding reluctantly agreed, but before he took a trip to San Francisco, there was somewhere even further out for him to go. Redding was about to head to England but before he did there was another album to make, and this one would see even more of a push for the white market, though still trying to keep everything soulful. As well as Redding originals, including "Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)", another song in the mould of "Mr. Pitiful", there was another cover of a contemporary hit by a guitar band -- this time a version of the Beatles' "Day Tripper" -- and two covers of old standards; the country song "Tennessee Waltz", which had recently been covered by Sam Cooke, and a song made famous by Bing Crosby, "Try a Little Tenderness". That song almost certainly came to mind because it had recently been used in the film Dr. Strangelove, but it had also been covered relatively recently by two soul greats, Aretha Franklin: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Try a Little Tenderness"] And Sam Cooke: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "Live Medley: I Love You For Sentimental Reasons/Try a Little Tenderness/You Send Me"] This version had horn parts arranged by Isaac Hayes, who by this point had been elevated to be considered one of the "Big Six" at Stax records -- Hayes, his songwriting partner David Porter, Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn, Booker T. Jones, and Al Jackson, were all given special status at the company, and treated as co-producers on every record -- all the records were now credited as produced by "staff", but it was the Big Six who split the royalties. Hayes came up with a horn part that was inspired by Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come", and which dominated the early part of the track: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Try a Little Tenderness"] Then the band came in, slowly at first: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Try a Little Tenderness"] But Al Jackson surprised them when they ran through the track by deciding that after the main song had been played, he'd kick the track into double-time, and give Redding a chance to stretch out and do his trademark grunts and "got-ta"s. The single version faded out shortly after that, but the version on the album kept going for an extra thirty seconds: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Try a Little Tenderness"] As Booker T. Jones said “Al came up with the idea of breaking up the rhythm, and Otis just took that and ran with it. He really got excited once he found out what Al was going to do on the drums. He realized how he could finish the song. That he could start it like a ballad and finish it full of emotion. That's how a lot of our arrangements would come together. Somebody would come up with something totally outrageous.” And it would have lasted longer but Jim Stewart pushed the faders down, realising the track was an uncommercial length even as it was. Live, the track could often stretch out to seven minutes or longer, as Redding drove the crowd into a frenzy, and it soon became one of the highlights of his live set, and a signature song for him: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Try a Little Tenderness (live in London)"] In September 1966, Redding went on his first tour outside the US. His records had all done much better in the UK than they had in America, and they were huge favourites of everyone on the Mod scene, and when he arrived in the UK he had a limo sent by Brian Epstein to meet him at the airport. The tour was an odd one, with multiple London shows, shows in a couple of big cities like Manchester and Bristol, and shows in smallish towns in Hampshire and Lincolnshire. Apparently the shows outside London weren't particularly well attended, but the London shows were all packed to overflowing. Redding also got his own episode of Ready! Steady! Go!, on which he performed solo as well as with guest stars Eric Burdon and Chris Farlowe: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, Chris Farlowe and Eric Burdon, "Shake/Land of a Thousand Dances"] After the UK tour, he went on a short tour of the Eastern US with Sam and Dave as his support act, and then headed west to the Fillmore for his three day residency there, introducing him to the San Francisco music scene. His first night at the venue was supported by the Grateful Dead, the second by Johnny Talbot and De Thangs and the third by Country Joe and the Fish, but there was no question that it was Otis Redding that everyone was coming to see. Janis Joplin turned up at the Fillmore every day at 3PM, to make sure she could be right at the front for Redding's shows that night, and Bill Graham said, decades later, "By far, Otis Redding was the single most extraordinary talent I had ever seen. There was no comparison. Then or now." However, after the Fillmore gigs, for the first time ever he started missing shows. The Sentinel, a Black newspaper in LA, reported a few days later "Otis Redding, the rock singer, failed to make many friends here the other day when he was slated to appear on the Christmas Eve show[...] Failed to draw well, and Redding reportedly would not go on." The Sentinel seem to think that Redding was just being a diva, but it's likely that this was the first sign of a problem that would change everything about his career -- he was developing vocal polyps that were making singing painful. It's notable though that the Sentinel refers to Redding as a "rock" singer, and shows again how different genres appeared in the mid-sixties to how they appear today. In that light, it's interesting to look at a quote from Redding from a few months later -- "Everybody thinks that all songs by colored people are rhythm and blues, but that's not true. Johnny Taylor, Muddy Waters, and B.B. King are blues singers. James Brown is not a blues singer. He has a rock and roll beat and he can sing slow pop songs. My own songs "Respect" and "Mr Pitiful" aren't blues songs. I'm speaking in terms of the beat and structure of the music. A blues is a song that goes twelve bars all the way through. Most of my songs are soul songs." So in Redding's eyes, neither he nor James Brown were R&B -- he was soul, which was a different thing from R&B, while Brown was rock and roll and pop, not soul, but journalists thought that Redding was rock. But while the lines between these things were far less distinct than they are today, and Redding was trying to cross over to the white audience, he knew what genre he was in, and celebrated that in a song he wrote with his friend Art

RockerMike and Rob Presents: Tracey Anne- Jolie Known as “The Queen Diva of Bourbon Street,” Tracey Anne-Jolie is a Vocal and Entertainment Force to be reckoned with! As the Lead Singer of the “Beasts of Bourbon” Band, many tourists never make it all the way down Bourbon Street after hearing her sing from inside the club! They are drawn in by her Over Powering Voice, and after witnessing her Unbelievable Stage Presence, they refuse to leave until after the show is over! Born May 21, 1967 in the Bronx, New York Tracey began singing in local talent shows at only 10 years of age and went on to enroll at Music & Arts High School to hone her vocal skills. In 1982 her parents moved their family to Puerto Rico were at 15 years old she began singing and performing at the many Luxury  Hotels that dot San Juan Puerto Rico. Tracey went on to star as herself in the Puerto Rican Soap Opera, Coralita, were she sang her own songs on the Television Show! Tracey performed commercial jingles on local radio shows and sang back-up vocals on many local musicians' albums! In 1986 she even went to Los Angeles and cut two demo tapes with Berry Gordy Sr.! In 1989 Tracey moved to New Orleans where she got married and had two children all while becoming a very popular singer on the Westbank of New Orleans and at the Lakefront on Lake Ponchatrain! In 2000 she made the move to Bourbon Street where she has been a mainstay and one of the most popular and memorable singers to ever perform on the famous street! Tracey's time on Bourbon Street has been spent in bands such as The Band-Aids, The Syrens, The Moonshyn Band, and The Almighty Remedy Band! On Bourbon she has graced the stage with famous bands like Journey and Bad Company as well as celebrities and musicians like Clarence Clemmons, John Goodman, Nicholas Cage, Juliette Lewis, Irma Thomas, Charmaine Neville and local favorite Rockin' Dopsie! Tracey currently has a weekend residency at the Famous Door on Bourbon from 7pm to 12am, Friday -Sunday with her “Beasts of Bourbon” Band! https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracey-anne-jolie-8b37353 https://m.facebook.com/QueenDivaRockandRoll/ https://www.reverbnation.com/traceyannejolie https://www.instagram.com/traceyannejolieedwards/ https://www.facebook.com/traceyedwards21?mibextid=LQQJ4d https://m.soundcloud.com/tracey-anne-jolie-edwards @NewOrleans @NOLA @BourbonStreet @Jazz @singer @soulsinger @Diva #Music #NOLA #singer #BourbonStreet #Diva #jazz Please follow us on Youtube,Facebook,Instagram,Twitter,Patreon and at www.gettinglumpedup.com https://linktr.ee/RobRossi Get your T-shirt at https://www.prowrestlingtees.com/gettinglumpedup And https://www.bonfire.com/store/getting-lumped-up/ https://app.hashtag.expert/?fpr=roberto-rossi80 https://dc2bfnt-peyeewd4slt50d2x1b.hop.clickbank.net Subscribe to the channel and hit the like button This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/rob-rossi/support https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/getting-lumped-up-with-rob-rossi/id1448899708 https://open.spotify.com/show/00ZWLZaYqQlJji1QSoEz7a https://www.patreon.com/Gettinglumpedup --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/rob-rossi/support