Podcasts about Kitty Wells

Today on another edition of the Rarified Heir Podcast, we are Jason Everly, son of Phil Everly of the famed Everly Brothers. We connected with Jason after listening to his radio show on Sirius XM satellite radio on the Fifties Gold channel. It sparked a memory that Jason and host Josh Mills had attended the same middle school together at the Oakwood School in Los Angeles going back to the Carter administration. After rummaging around and finding a school yearbook, we emailed Jason with a photo of himself in 7th grade, asked him to be on the podcast and he graciously accepted. We covered a lot of topics on this episode, from intimidating science teachers to the time Paul Simon called Jason up to find out the best way to approach his dad for potential Simon and Garfunkel / Everly Brothers tour in the nineties. We also discussed the roots of the Everly Brothers, how Phil was a down-to-earth dad who spent a lot of time bonding with his son playing made up games and drawing together. We discussed the how his father and uncle essentially created a genre that became known as country-rock, how Phil helped his friend & arranger Warren Zevon title one of his biggest hits, the time Paul McCartney told Billy Joel that Phil Everly was his musical hero and much more. We also discussed the Everly Brothers infamous split, a famous cousin who was on a wildly popular television show in the 1970s, the evolution of radio performers Little Donnie and Baby Boy Phil, the hard scrabbled life the boys led until they found fame and fortune, Graham Nash, Kitty Wells, which song of the Brothers gets licensed the most, Jason's acting career and much more. What's our favorite part?  When Jason mixed up our science teacher Sol Rubenstein with guitarist Saul Hudson aka Slash from Guns-n-Roses. Your favorite part is coming up next on this episode of the Rarified Heir Podcast. Everyone has a story.

Episode 322, Music for Breaking Up, includes 16 songs about what happens when love goes astray. Artists include Patsy Cline, Willie Nelson, Vic Damone, Kitty Wells, Rosemary Clooney, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, and eight others.... Read More The post Episode 322, Music for Breaking Up appeared first on Sam Waldron.

Send us a textWhat a joy to remember working with so many of the greats. ROY CLARK, BILL CARLISLE, SKEETER DAVIS, JEAN SHEPARD, RAY PRICE, KITTY WELLS, ROY ACCUFF  and a special group called OLD DOGS that you won't wanna miss. Much more my friends. Enjoy and please share.

Episode 319, More Signature Songs, presents the most-remembered recordings by iconic mid-century performers including Elvis Presley, The Ink Spots, Kitty Wells, Jerry Lee Lewis, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, Fats Domino, Perry Como, Dean Martin, and... Read More The post Episode 319, More Signature Songs appeared first on Sam Waldron.

Bienvenidos, bienvenidas a una nueva aventura con el comienzo con Cody Jinks y su particular homenaje a Lefty Frizzell en su nuevo album, y de ahí hemos hablado de Frizell y después nos hemos trasladado a lo más actual con James Ellis,Zakk Grandahl,Anna Wescout,Clay Labeff y hemos hablado de una de las canciones más importantes de Dolly Parton Jolene y hemos buscado esa versión diferente y después llega Filipo Marco con una de sus canciones favoritas y hemos recordado los álbumes de Suzy Bogguss Aces y de Allison Moorer su álbum Alabama Song y el album tributo de Laura Cantrell a Kitty Wells y por último nuestra monedita a la gramola. Espero os guste.

There are a handful of common story threads that run through classic country songs. I'm not talking about trucks, beer the ‘merica that seems to have overwhelmed modern so-called country with autotune and synth pop. The heartbreak of cheating situations that were among the most common storylines in the Golden Age of country at a time when family unity was of paramount importance. It was country music's frank portrayal of infidelity that offered a counterpoint which was both relatable and controversial. Cheating songs became a central theme, reflecting the complexities and emotional intensity of love, betrayal, and heartbreak. Dave will share as many as will fit in two hours in this week's episode with early tearjerkers from Kitty Wells, The Louvin Brothers, Billy Walker, Bonnie Owens and George Jones. There will also be the very best of the classics from Charley Pride, Dolly Parton, and Loretta Lynn to take us into the 70s and beyond. . .

The charts for the year 1956 were overtaken by Elvis. No question. There were a few others that illuminated the jukebox namely Fats Domino, Webb Pierce, Little Richard, and The Platters. Rock ‘n roll's impact swept the floor with most burying some fairly incredible performances in it's wake. Call it an avalanche. Call it a mudslide. Call it what you like. As I began to assemble a show looking at the top of the charts for the year, I found that starting at the bottom and working my way up was a revelation. Whether it was country, rhythm & blues, rock ‘n roll or pop…there were some delicious also-rans that I could not ignore so chose to ignore the Top 30 and focused today's show on the so-called losers below the waterline of the Top 40. And what a joy it was! We'll hear from some of them including Big Joe Turner, The Dells, LaVern Baker, Clyde McPhatter, Carl Smith and Kitty Wells in today's show. I hope you'll find some time, morning, noon or night, to listen in.

This week Sara sits down with country music icon, Bill Anderson! Bill walks Sara through his journey to finding his love for music and how he ended up in Nashville pursuing his dream. The two of them reminisce on Bill presenting Sara her Opry induction and the songs that Bill has written that Sara loves. Bill also offers to take Sara out on his boat, and who knows, maybe the next big country hit will be written on Whispering Bill Anderson's boat. You don't wanna miss the laughs and memories shared in this episode!   About Bill Anderson: Bill Anderson has been using that philosophy for over sixty years to capture the attention of millions of country music fans around the world, en route to becoming a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame and one of the most popular, most enduring entertainers of our time. He's known, in fact as “Whispering Bill,” a nickname hung on him years ago as a result of his breathy voice and his warm, soft approach to singing a country song. His credentials, however, shout his prominence: One of the most awarded songwriters in the history of country music, a million-selling recording artist many times over, television game show host, network soap opera star, author of four books, and a consummate onstage performer. His backup group, The Po' Folks Band, has long been considered one of the finest instrumental and vocal groups in the business. Bill Anderson was born in Columbia, South Carolina, but spent most of his growing-up years around Atlanta, Georgia. He graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in journalism, having worked his way through college as a disc jockey on nearby radio stations. It was while he was still in school that he began performing and writing songs. At the age of nineteen, he composed the country classic, “City Lights,” and began rapidly carving his place in musical history. He moved to Nashville, Tennessee, secured a recording contract with Decca Records, and began turning out hit after hit with songs like “Po'Folks,” “Mama Sang A Song,” “The Tips Of My Fingers,” “8X10,” and the unforgettable country and pop smash, “Still.” His compositions were recorded by such diverse musical talents as Ray Price, Porter Wagoner, James Brown, Debbie Reynolds, Ivory Joe Hunter, Kitty Wells, Faron Young, Lawrence Welk, Dean Martin, Jerry Lee Lewis, Aretha Franklin, Walter Brennan and many others. Bill has been voted Songwriter Of The Year six times, Male Vocalist Of The Year, half of the Duet Of The Year with both Jan Howard and Mary Lou Turner, has hosted and starred in the Country Music Television Series Of The Year, seen his band voted Band Of The Year, and in 1975 was voted membership in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Ten years later, the State of Georgia honored him by choosing him as only the 7th living performer inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame. In 1993, he was made a member of the Georgia Broadcasters' Hall of Fame. In 1994, South Carolina inducted him into their Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame. And in 2001, he received the ultimate honor, membership in Nashville's prestigious Country Music Hall of Fame. Bill Anderson continues to paint a broad stroke across the Nashville music scene. He has been a member of the Grand Ole Opry since 1961 and performs there regularly. He continues to write and to record, his latest release being vocal and instrumental versions of some of his best known songs, titled “Bill Anderson – The Hits Re-Imagined.” On the personal side, Bill lives on Old Hickory Lake outside Nashville where he spends as much time as possible with his three children and eight grandchildren. He is a boater and sports enthusiast who has been known to adjust his work schedule to fit around a ball game he just “has to see.” He is an avid reader, his bookshelves lined with mysteries, biographies, books on religion, sports, and humor.   Listen to Unbroke: (https://ffm.to/seunbroke)   LET'S BE SOCIAL:   Follow Bill Anderson: Instagram: (@whisperinbillanderson) Youtube: (@BillAnderson) Website: https://billanderson.com/wired/   Follow Diving in Deep Podcast: Instagram –(@divingindeeppod) TikTok – (@divingindeeppod) Twitter – (@divingindeeppod) Facebook – (@divingindeeppod)   Follow Sara Evans: Instagram – (@saraevansmusic) TikTok – (@saraevansmusic) Twitter – (@saraevansmusic) Facebook – (@saraevansmusic)   Produced and Edited by: The Cast Collective (Nashville, TN) YouTube – ( @TheCastCollective ) Instagram – (@TheCastCollective) Twitter – (@TheCastCollective)   Directed by: Erin Dugan Edited By: Sean Dugan, Corey Williams, & Michaela Dolph https://www.thecastcollective.com  

This week Sara sits down with country music icon, Bill Anderson! Bill walks Sara through his journey to finding his love for music and how he ended up in Nashville pursuing his dream. The two of them reminisce on Bill presenting Sara her Opry induction and the songs that Bill has written that Sara loves. Bill also offers to take Sara out on his boat, and who knows, maybe the next big country hit will be written on Whispering Bill Anderson's boat. You don't wanna miss the laughs and memories shared in this episode!   About Bill Anderson: Bill Anderson has been using that philosophy for over sixty years to capture the attention of millions of country music fans around the world, en route to becoming a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame and one of the most popular, most enduring entertainers of our time. He's known, in fact as "Whispering Bill," a nickname hung on him years ago as a result of his breathy voice and his warm, soft approach to singing a country song. His credentials, however, shout his prominence: One of the most awarded songwriters in the history of country music, a million-selling recording artist many times over, television game show host, network soap opera star, author of four books, and a consummate onstage performer. His backup group, The Po' Folks Band, has long been considered one of the finest instrumental and vocal groups in the business. Bill Anderson was born in Columbia, South Carolina, but spent most of his growing-up years around Atlanta, Georgia. He graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in journalism, having worked his way through college as a disc jockey on nearby radio stations. It was while he was still in school that he began performing and writing songs. At the age of nineteen, he composed the country classic, "City Lights," and began rapidly carving his place in musical history. He moved to Nashville, Tennessee, secured a recording contract with Decca Records, and began turning out hit after hit with songs like "Po'Folks," "Mama Sang A Song," "The Tips Of My Fingers," "8X10," and the unforgettable country and pop smash, "Still." His compositions were recorded by such diverse musical talents as Ray Price, Porter Wagoner, James Brown, Debbie Reynolds, Ivory Joe Hunter, Kitty Wells, Faron Young, Lawrence Welk, Dean Martin, Jerry Lee Lewis, Aretha Franklin, Walter Brennan and many others. Bill has been voted Songwriter Of The Year six times, Male Vocalist Of The Year, half of the Duet Of The Year with both Jan Howard and Mary Lou Turner, has hosted and starred in the Country Music Television Series Of The Year, seen his band voted Band Of The Year, and in 1975 was voted membership in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Ten years later, the State of Georgia honored him by choosing him as only the 7th living performer inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame. In 1993, he was made a member of the Georgia Broadcasters' Hall of Fame. In 1994, South Carolina inducted him into their Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame. And in 2001, he received the ultimate honor, membership in Nashville's prestigious Country Music Hall of Fame. Bill Anderson continues to paint a broad stroke across the Nashville music scene. He has been a member of the Grand Ole Opry since 1961 and performs there regularly. He continues to write and to record, his latest release being vocal and instrumental versions of some of his best known songs, titled "Bill Anderson - The Hits Re-Imagined." On the personal side, Bill lives on Old Hickory Lake outside Nashville where he spends as much time as possible with his three children and eight grandchildren. He is a boater and sports enthusiast who has been known to adjust his work schedule to fit around a ball game he just "has to see." He is an avid reader, his bookshelves lined with mysteries, biographies, books on religion, sports, and humor.   Listen to Unbroke:...

National Beach day.  Entertainment from 2011.  Europe outlaws the crossbox, Lake Pontchatrain causway opened, Washington to Moscow hotline installed. Todays birthdays - Mary Shelly, Fred MacMurray, Kitty Wells, Jack Swigert, John Phillips, Lewis Black, Michael Chiklis, Cameron Diaz.  Charles Bronson died.Intro - Pour some sugar on me - Def Leppard   https://defleppard.com/Lets go to the beach - Super simple songsLast Friday night - Katy PerryAm I the only one - Dierks BentleyBirthdays - In da club - 50 Cent     https://www.50cent.com/My Three Sons TV themeIt wasn't god who made honky tonk angels - Kitty WellsCalifornia dreamin - Mamas & the PapasExit - Its not love - Dokken   https://www.dokken.net/Follow Jeff Stampka on facebook and cooolmedia.com 

Dr. Jada Watson returns to The Table Women to chat all about women in radio, including: How Jada found her passion for women in radio and later turned that into a career The evolution of her path and the history of radio charts How radio charts even work! Beyoncé, Country Music Radio, and backlash (or not?) The power of having data to back up what we experience The cost of having access to the facts We're still going backwards for female representation in radio, what's up? Tomato-gate and it's impact History of Country Music and how we ended up here There are only ever 3 women “succeeding” at a time - wtf?! Barbie, women in pop music, politics, country music - weird connections! So how do we fix it? Jada's own experiences with being targeted in retaliation for her work Seeing how being armed with information uplifts the next generations And more! Jada's website and other links: www.SongData.ca   Jada Watson, “‘Diversi'tea': Spilling the Data on Inclusive Programming.” Presented at Country Radio Seminar, 1 March 2024.   Jan Diehm and Jada Watson, “They Won't Play a Lady-O on Country Radio: Examining Back-to-Back Plays by Gender, Race, and Sexual Orientation.” The Pudding, 22 May 2023.   Jada Watson, “Redlining in Country Music 2.0: Representation in the Country Music Industry in 2021 and 2022.” SongData Reports; Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, 17 March 2023.   NOTES: Corb Lund: https://www.corblund.com/ Sarah Harmer: https://sarahharmer.com/ Loretta Lynn: https://lorettalynn.com/ Kitty Wells: https://www.kittywells.com/ Mickey Guyton: https://www.mickeyguyton.com/ Maren Morris: https://www.marenmorris.com/ Beyoncé: https://www.beyonce.com/ Beverly Keel chapter in A Boy Named Sue: Gender and Country Music: https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/A/A-Boy-Named-Sue Lainey Wilson: https://www.laineywilson.com/home?page=1 Women In Music: https://www.womeninmusic.org/get-involved Tomato-Gate (Keith Hill): https://www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/music/2015/06/18/tomato-gate-galvanizes-women-country/28936501/ Jingoism: https://www.britannica.com/topic/jingoism The Chicks: https://thechicks.com/ Robyn Ottolini: https://www.robynottolini.com/ Priscilla Block: https://www.priscillablock.com/ Jada's Toronto Star Article: https://www.thestar.com/opinion/jason-aldean-s-try-that-is-now-no-1-on-the-charts-that-s-a/article_d88b19c8-5cd3-51b9-af43-fc75f98a5fab.html Emily Yahr: “Tracy Chapman, Luke Combs and the Complicated Response to ‘Fast Car'.” Sara Ahmed “Living a Feminist Life”: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11g9836 We Belmont: https://www.instagram.com/webelmont/ Rissi Palmer: https://rissipalmermusic.com/ Black Opry: https://www.blackopry.com/ Sasha: https://www.iamsacha.com/ Julie Williams: https://www.thisisjuliewilliams.com/about Roberta Lea: https://www.iamrobertalea.com/ Joy Oladokun: https://www.joyoladokun.com/ Emma White: https://emmawhite.com/ Kelsea Ballerini: https://www.kelseaballerini.com/Cowboys-Cry-Too Carly Pearce: https://www.carlypearce.com/#/ Allison Russell: https://allisonrussellmusic.com/ Carter Faith: https://www.carterfaith.com/   P.S. We discuss the initial reaction to Beyoncé releasing "Cowboy Carter" including the backlash, or what seemed to be backlash, from Country Music Radio. Sarah and Jada discussed videos online regarding radio stations claiming they won't play the record. We went back and were able to find content on the initial incident discussed, but we're still looking for videos describing other incidents. If you know of any information regarding people/stations being against playing "Cowboy Carter" please reach out and send them our way, we'd love to have them and share them with Jada!   

This week's show, after a 1994 GBV gutting: brand new Chime School, Bob Mould, Royal Headache, Black Watch, Beachwood Sparks, Trans-Canada Highwaymen, and Mary Timony, plus Valentinos, 1965 Bee Gees, T. Rex, Kitty Wells, Johnny Mandel, Lighthouse, and ...

Six String Hayride Classic Country Podcast Episode 40. The 1950's Episode. The Death of Hank Williams and The Rise of Johnny Cash. Musicals rule with Singing in the Rain and The King and I. The LONE RANGER becomes one of the early hits for Television. Webb Pierce, Eddy Arnold, Red Foley, Kitty Wells, and Tennessee Ernie Ford rule the record charts. Young Upstarts at SUN RECORDS give us Country, Gospel, Blues, and Rock all at once. Rockabilly and Blue Grass Music blow our minds with musical virtuosos like Carl Perkins and Bill Monroe. Kitty Wells teaches Hank Thompson some manners. Wanda Jackson tells us to have a party and Eddie Cochran climbs twenty flights of stairs. Anne Francis stars in Forbidden Planet. The Great Movies of the 1950's and Johnny Cash's Honey Glaze Pulled Pork Recipe. The World Mourns Buddy Holly. All this and More from the Fabulous Fifties with Chris and Jim.https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100086513555749https://www.patreon.com/user?u=81625843

Heino [00:23] "Heute Singen Wir Mit Heino/Wißt Ihr Was? Heute Hat's Geschneit" Sing Mit Heino Folge 9 und 10 Winterzeit - Kinderzeit - Weihnachtzeit Hör Zu 1 C 066-45 322 1979 Sing along with Heino! And evidently, the old Deustschekrooner is still alive. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the German phenomenon that is Heino, of course, there's a documentary (https://youtu.be/M-39Unh0X2E?si=WlId8Vtympf3n2ob). The Four Roses Society [03:03] "Hand Me Down My Walkin' Cane/Deep in the Heart of Texas" Sing with the Four Roses Society Four Roses K8OP-6582 / 3 Well all right then. During my brief career as a liquor store clerk (one summer during college), Four Roses bourbon was not the esteemed brand it is today. It was easily found on the bottom shelf of the whiskey section. Kitty Wells [05:49] "Country Girl" Singing'em Country Decca DL 75221 1970 One of the contenders to the title of Queen of Country Music reminiscing at the ripe old age of 51. Elvis Presley [08:24] "Santa Bring My Baby Back (to Me)" Sings Christmas Songs - Elvis' Christmas Album RCA Victor LPM-1951 1957 (1964 reissue) An extremely well-worn seasonal classic. I'm surprised it sounds as good as it does, considering the state of the record surface. Odetta [12:45] "Don't Think Twice, It's Allright" Odetta Sings Dylan RCA Victor LSP-3324 An excellent rendition of this transitional Dylan single. To my mind, it is almost as good as the jangling toe-tapper version by Waylon Jennings (https://youtu.be/2GTl6-BJhvc?si=Ofi9FdbmGvJyqCKr). Bob McGrath with the Jimmy Joyce Singers [18:30] "Black and White" Sings for All the Boys and Girls Disneyland 1357 1974 Indeed, that Bob from Sesame Street. Helped out here by some of the Wrecking Crew including Tommy Tedesco and Earl Palmer. Inspired by the Three Dog Night version of this song (https://youtu.be/PEy6968xO-I?si=hNq9IL8tnQ9RCPDd), the song was originally recorded by Pete Seger in 1956 and with lyrics by David I. Arkin, father of Alan Arkin no less. Nat King Cole [22:21] "Autumn Leaves" Sings for Two in Love Capitol Records DT 420 1963 (original release 1953) This monophonic classic album is reinvigorated in beautiful Duophonic sound! Bonnie Prince Billy [25:03] "Ohio River Boat Song" Sings Greatest Palace Music Drag City DC252 / Palace Records PR31 A collection of Nashville-ified reimaginings Will Oldham's earlier work, with a number of Nashville greats, including Hargus "Pig" Robbins. The thing I love about seeing Will Oldham perform live in whatever configuration is that he seemingly never plays a song the same way twice. This pass at the debut single from Palace Music (https://youtu.be/jYVTkUTHENg?si=Iz69YWTah4Kmc4uO) exemplifies that spirit. Wayne Newton [30:00] "More (Theme from 'Mondo Cane')" Sings Hit Songs Capitol Records T 2130 1964 Despite rumblings in Memphis and New Orleans and even Liverpool by this point, the big band sound of the Greatest Generation continues to thrive in popular music. John McCormack [32:37] "The Foggy Dew" Sings Irish Songs Pickwick CAS-407 1975 Evidently, stereo, in this case, means slapping some reverb on the left channel. Despite being partially the result of Irish immigration, I am not sentimental, which is why I chose the shortest track for this collection. Lotte Lehman [34:41] "Ich Liebe Dich (Beethoven)" Sings Lieder, Vol. 1 Camden CAL-378 Pretty sure I grabbed this from the dollar bin because in my haste I thought it was Lotte Lenya. Colin Meloy [37:21] "Bandit Queen" Sings Live! Jealous Butcher Records JB-065 2008 From a solo tour Colin Meloy made in 2006, recorded at various venues, including this one that I happened to attend at the Great American Music Hall. This live album does do one of those things that drives me nuts, which is to put the stage banter for the upcoming song before the track break. Tom Jones [43:05] "In Dreams" Sings She's a Lady Parrot XPAS 71046 1971 Candy colored clown! (https://youtu.be/R7zukRlfzh8?si=110VDkQtE8m4jD52) Nat "King" Cole [46:30] "Blue Gardenia" Ballads of the Day Capitol Records DT 680 1960 (original release 1956) As performed in Fritz Lang's classic noir The Blue Gardenia (https://youtu.be/3bxSn2UMBMY?si=vKu34lBUOQstY3f4). Harry Belafonte [49:29] "A Fool For You" Sings the Blues RCA Victor LSP-1972 1958 A collection of blues standards, including this Ray Charles number. Ella Fitzgerald [53:09] "'S Wonderful" Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Book (Volume Two) Verve Records MG V-4025 1959 Helped out here by Nelson Riddle. An excellent cover painting by Bernard Buffet is featured on this album. Music behind the DJ: "Games People Play (https://youtu.be/hIBlCac8_wk?si=KjX6MUoC_zQ0qftn)" by Arthur Greenslade and his Orchesta

The feud between Kendrick and Drake has dominated pop culture the last few weeks, so we decided to take a look at some of country music's greatest diss tracks. Did you know country artists took jabs? From Zach Bryan to The Chicks to Kitty Wells and more, we've got a spicy list for ya this week!Check out our Patreon!Check out our new merch store!Instagram: @TakeThisPodandShoveItFor everything else click HERE!Want to create your own great podcast? Why not start today! We use BuzzSprout for hosting and have loved it. So we suggest you give them a try as well! Buzzsprout gets your show listed in every major podcast platform, and makes understanding your podcast data a breeze. Follow this link to let Buzzsprout know we sent you—you'll get a $20 credit if you sign up for a paid plan, and it helps support our show.

Musician include: Hank Thompson, Kitty Wells, Slim Whitman, Hank Williams, Red Foley and Ernest Tubb.  Songs include: The Wild side of Life, Salty Dog Rag, Jambalya, It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels  and Too Old to Cut the Mustard.

There's hardly a branch or root extension of American music that is not somehow connected the gospel. The themes of love, betrayal, birth, death, and the soul's redemption have all long been played out repeatedly in the pulpit each and every Sunday. Thoughts and prayers are easily spent when the hard work isn't as palpable to deal with. This week's show blends the gospel of the Baptist, Pentacostal and Church of Christ as they were the big leader of the rafter shakers on the way to “Beulah Land” with a little bit of swing and country favorites. Tune in for music that runs the gospel gamut from the Soul Satisfiers of Philadelphia and the Gospel Songbirds to Sister Oda Mae Terrell and the country pairings of the Chuck Wagon Gang, Mac Wiseman, Kitty Wells, and of course, Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. Deeper Roots revisits some gospel classics in another Friday morning blend of the past 100 years of America's music. Here on KOWS Community Radio. Free Speech. No Bull. 

Episode 294, Cindy Walker, features 17 songs from the pen of one of the most prolific behind-the-scenes songwriters of the 20th century. Performers include Bing Crosby, Jerry Wallace, Kitty Wells, Willie Nelson, Ernest Tubb, Roy... Read More The post Episode 294, Cindy Walker appeared first on Sam Waldron.

Featured album - Grevious Angel by Gram Parsons - Some great music from Gram Parsons, Chris Stapleton, Jamey Johnson, The Byrds, Johnny Cash, Sturgill Simpson, Kitty Wells and many, many others. Broadcast on OAR 105.4FM Dunedin www.oar.org.nz

Jeremy assigns Andy: Lonely Street by Kitty Wells. Andy assigns Jeremy: Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs by Marty Robbins. Check out our official Andy and Jeremy Listen to Music playlist on Spotify!AAJLTM Theme Music by @ryrobrawAAJLTM Original Images by @fxmint.art 

Episode 294, Cindy Walker, features 17 songs from the pen of one of the most prolific behind-the-scenes songwriters of the 20th century. Performers include Bing Crosby, Jerry Wallace, Kitty Wells, Willie Nelson, Ernest Tubb, Roy... Read More The post Episode 294, Cindy Walker appeared first on Sam Waldron.

When ya get to reach my age group,,,,,,, you've shared a lot of "Yesterdays"so for this episode I thought I'd share some of my experiences with these stars of Yesterday that will live on forever because of their legacy in country music. Enjoy Roy Clark, Bill Carlisle, Jean Shepard, Kitty Wells, Roy Acuff,,,,,,, and a real special with Jerry Reed, Waylon, Mel, and Bobby Bare ,,,,,,plus Jerry and Glen gettin down on guitars.

This week we welcome The Kendalls! Formed in 1969, The Kendalls recorded an album for Stop Records, from which a single was released in 1970: a cover of John Denver's "Leaving on a Jet Plane" (previously a hit for Peter, Paul & Mary). The Kendalls version narrowly missed the top fifty on the U.S. country charts. The duo signed with Dot Records in 1972, and released an album and two singles, "Two Divided By Love", (a cover version of The Grass Roots' pop hit) and "Everything I Own" a cover of Bread's 1972 hit. Eventually, the Kendalls parted with their record label, before signing with the independent Ovation Label in 1977. Their first single for the label, a cover of Kitty Wells hit "Making Believe", made the lower regions of the charts (Emmylou Harris' version of "Making Believe" hit the U.S. Country Charts around the same time). It was the Kendall's 2nd single on Ovation, a "cheating" song called "Heaven's Just a Sin Away", that proved to be their breakthrough. The song topped the country charts and was also a minor crossover pop hit, and won the 1978 Grammy for Best Country Vocal by a Duo or Group. In 1981, after Ovation Records closed, the duo signed with Mercury Records and continued to have hits with "Teach Me To Cheat" and "If You're Waitin' On Me (You're Backin' Up), which both made the country top 10. More hits followed with "Movin' Train" and "Precious Love," which made the top 20. Their last #1 was 1984's "Thank God For the Radio". The Kendalls had many more Top 20 hits in the 80's and early 90's. The also had a supper club in Gulf Shores, Alabama and a theater in Branson, MO.

As broadcast October 11, 2023 with plenty of twang to do your thang.  Tonight Danno & Dunia embark on their first proper round trip in a few weeks' time due to the Chuseok holiday and the Busking World Cup, and this is one both of them have had burning in the pocket for a while now.  Nashville is literally Music City, so whatever genre you're talking about, there's some mind-blowing artist in that area of the audiosphere that is a top notch musician.  From legends like Dolly Parton and Kitty Wells to newer additions to the city's ever-expanding roster of artists in resident like Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, Alanna Royale, and Charli Adams...there's something for everyone on this one!#feelthegravityROUND TRIP – Nashville (Flight TD109)Oct 11, 2023Tracklist (st:rt)Part 1 (00:00)Allman Brothers Band – Ramblin' ManDolly Parton – JoleneBecca Mancari – Summertime MamaThe Black Keys – Mind EraserBriston Maroney – Freakin' Out On The InterstateBarbara Mandrell - Love Is Thin Ice Part 2 (31:55)Miley Cyrus - Used To Be YoungThe Civil Wars – Poison & WineKitty Wells - It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk AngelsRoy Acuff - The Wabash Cannonball Devon Gilfillian – The Good LifeTim McGraw - Highway Don't Care ft. Taylor Swift, Keith Urban Part 3 (62:12)Charli Adams – Heroes/DyingNoah Cyrus - JulyAlanna Royale – Fall In Love AgainKyshona Armstrong - Worried MindOkey Dokey – Wavy GravyChrome Pony – Ragged Child Part 4 (94:21)Taylor Swift - Blank SpaceNite Tides – Your WindowBlake Shelton- FootlooseBilly Ray Cyrus - Achy Breaky HeartAseul – 모래성 SandcastlesThe Poles (더폴스) – Find me! 

National beach day. Entertainment from 1979. 2nd Jewish temple in Jerusalum destroyed, "Red Phone" instlled between US & USSR, a comet hit the sun. Todays birthdays - Mary Shelly, Fred MacMurray, Kitty Wells, Jack Swigert, John Phillips, Lewis Black, Michael Chilis, Cameron Diaz. Charles Bronson died. Intro - Pour some sugar on me - Def Leppard http://defleppard.com/Lets go to the beach - Super Simple SongsMy Sharona - The KnackHeartbreak Hotel - Willie Nelson & Leon RussellBirthdays - In da club - 50 Cent http://50cent.com/My three sons TV themeIt wasn't god who made honky tonk angels - Kitty WellsCalifornia Dreamin - The Mamas & The PapasExit - It's not love - Dokken http://dokken.net/https://www.coolcasts.cooolmedia.com/show/history-factoids-about-today/

The audience for country music in the years following World War II was predominently male and many of the records were aimed at the juke boxes that thrived in the bars and watering holes where this working class audience gathered. This week on the program we'll sample some classic honky tonk music from the late 30's until today. We'll hear Kitty Wells, Hank Snow, Buck Owens, Webb Pierce and, of course, Hank Williams. We'll also hear more contemporary tunes from The Byrds, Emmylou Harris and Asleep at the Wheel. “There Stands the Glass” and some honky tonk angels … this week on the Sing Out! Radio Magazine.Pete Seeger / “If I Had A Hammer”(excerpt) / Songs of Hope and Struggle / Smithsonian Folkways Don Rich / “Buckeroo” / Country Pickin': The Don Rich Anthology / SundazedThe Byrds / “You're Still on My Mind” / Sweetheart of the Rodeo / ColumbiaHank Williams / “Honky Tonk Blues” / 40 Greatest Hits / PolydorJean Shepard /with Ferlon Husky / “A Dear John Letter” / Super Hits / GustoEmmylou Harris & the Nash Ramblers / “Two More Bottles of Wine” / Ramble in Music City / NonesuchBuddy Holly / “Midnight Shift” / The Definitive Collection / DeccaAsleep at the Wheel / “The Letter that Johnny Walker Read” / Half a Hundred Years / BismeauxVal Mindel & Emily Miller / “Lonely Street” / Close to Home / Yodel-Ay-HeeKitty Wells / “It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” / Essential Honky Tonk / Not NowRoger Miller / “Kansas City Star” / All Time Greatest Hits / MercuryDon Rich / “Chicken Pickin'” / Country Pickin': The Don Rich Anthology / SundazedVernon Solomon / “Beaumont Rag” / Texas Hoedown Revisited / CountyJess Willard / “Honky Tonk Hardwood Floor” / Hillbilly Boogie and Jive / AtomicatHank Snow / “I'm Moving On” / The Very Best of Hank Snow / BMGPatsy Montana / “Montana Plains” / Ragged But Right: Great Country String Bands of the 1930's / RCAMerle Haggard / “Mama Tried” / Live at Billy Bob's Texas / Smith Music GroupWebb Pierce / “There Stands the Glass” / King of the Honky Tonk / MCABuck Owens / “Under Your Spell Again” / Right After the Dance / AtomicatWillie Nelson / “Heartaches by the Number” / A Tribute to Ray Price / LegacyBill Doggett / “Honky Tonk pt.2” / Honky Tonk / Ace Pete Seeger / “If I Had A Hammer”(excerpt) / Songs of Hope and Struggle / Smithsonian Folkways

Belly up to the Bike Rides bar this week for some day-sponsor-inspired Honkytonk sets on the ride. Included: Hank Thompson, Kitty Wells, Cindy Walker, Jean Shepard, Erik Koskinen, Elvis Koskinen (JK!) Elvis PRESLEY, Cher and several others.

Episode #263, Breaking Up, presents 17 songs about the bitter end of romantic relationships. Performers include Roy Clark, Kitty Wells, Guy Lombardo, Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, and 11 more.   Episode... Read More The post Episode #263, Breaking Up appeared first on Sam Waldron.

Lucero "Mom"Memphis Slim "Steady Rolling Blues"JD McPherson "You Must Have Met Little Caroline?"Gillian Welch "Down Along the Dixie Line"Eilen Jewell "Crooked River"Waylon Jennings "If You See Me Getting Smaller"Carla Thomas "I Take It To My Baby"boygenius "Not Strong Enough"Memphis Minnie "The Man I Love"Grateful Dead "Dark Hollow"Kitty Wells "Forever Young"Coleman Hawkins "At McKie's"Raphael Saadiq "Sure Hope You Mean It"Professor Longhair "Hey Little Girl"Jack Logan "All Grown Up"Jack Logan "I Brake For God"Steve Earle "Hometown Blues"Doc & Merle Watson "Worried Blues"Cat Power "Lived in Bars"R.E.M. "Belong"R.E.M. "Orange Crush"Marine Girls "A Place In The Sun"Tampa Red "I'm a Stranger Here"Lee Morgan "Most Like Lee"Glossary "Almsgiver"The Mountain Goats "Rat Queen"Shaver "The Earth Rolls On"Vic Chesnutt "And How"Jon Dee Graham & The Fighting Cocks "Beautifully Broken"Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit "White Man's World"Gillian Welch "Happy Mother's Day"Brown Bird "Fingers to the Bone"Bonnie Prince Billy "Easy Does It"Magnolia Electric Co. "Talk To Me Devil, Again"Magnolia Electric Co. "Memphis Moon"Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers "The Witch doctor"The Velvet Underground "I'm Waiting For The Man"Townes Van Zandt "Be Here to Love Me"Will Johnson "To the Shepard, to the Lion"Centro-Matic "If They Talk You Down"Willie Nelson "Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again

While I was considering what to play for you today I kept having flashbacks of my yesterdays. And so my friends, today's show has to do with my memories of yesterdays including, ROY CLARK, BILL CARLISLE, SKEETER DAVIS, JERRY REED& GLEN CAMPBELL, JEAN SHEPARD, RAY PRICE, WILL ARDEL, KITTY WELLS, ROY ACUFF, GARTH BROOKS , LORETTA LYNN,  and even a get together of MEL TILLIS, WAYLON JENNINGS, BOBBY BARE & JERRY REED with a song I'm pretty sure you haven't heard. Have a BLESSED day my friends.

Episode 259, Rare 1940s Records, presents seldom-played recordings by Ella Fitzgerald, Herb Jeffries, The Buchanan Brothers, Kitty Wells, Al Dexter, Louise Massey, Zeke Manners, George Morgan, and nine more.   45 RPM, Music of the... Read More The post Episode 259, Rare 1940s Records appeared first on Sam Waldron.

I,M THINKING THIS SHOW WILL REALLY MAKE YOU THINK MY FRIENDS. WHETHER YOU BELIEVE IN ANGELS OR NOT, THESE ARTISTS MIGHT HELP YOU MAKE UP YOUR MIND. ALABAMA, BOBBY HELMS, DOLLY PARTON, WILLY NELSON, KITTY WELLS, BARBRA MANDRELL, GEORGE JONES & MELBA MONTGOMERY,GEORGE STRAIT, ALAN JACKSON & ALISON KRAUSE, and RANDY TRAVIS all sing about ANGELS.  Take a listen and maybe hear in music, what it is that relates to you personally. As for me,,,,,,,, I believe in ANGELS.

Two Cow Garage "Let the Boys Be Girls"Ramones "I Don't Wanna Go Down to the Basement"John Hammond "Shake For Me"Etta James "Something's Got a Hold on Me"Joel Paterson "After You've Gone"Eilen Jewell "Shakin' All Over"Nina Nastasia "Just Stay in Bed"Bob Dylan "I' LL Be Your Baby Tonight"Sonny Rollins Quintet "I've Grown Accustomed to Your Face"Tom Waits "Filipino Box Spring Hog"Drag the River "Calloused Heart"Kitty Wells "Forever Young"Elvis Costello "Sugar Won't Work"Big Mama Thornton "Everything Gonna Be Alright"John R. Miller "Lookin' Over My Shoulder"Superchunk "Me & You & Jackie Mittoo"Valerie June "Look At Miss Ohio"James Luther Dickinson "Dixie Fried"Andrew Bird "Faithless Ghost"Joan Shelley "Amberlit Morning (feat. Bill Callahan)"Garth Brooks "Friends in Low Places"Billy Joe Shaver "Played the Game Too Long"Craig Finn "Jester & June"Blondie "X Offender"Precious Bryant "Someday Baby"Guy Clark "My Favorite Picture of You"The Both "Milwaukee"Blue Mountain "Jimmy Carter"Muddy Waters "Champagne & Reefer"James McMurtry "Deaver's Crossing"Elvis Costello "Less Than zero"Spencer Dickinson "Cryin'"Sugar Pie DeSanto "I Don't Feel Sorry"Jerry Garcia "I'll Take a Melody"Langhorn Slim "House Of My Soul"Shannon Wright "St. Pete"Steve Earle "Lungs"Sweet Emma & Her Preservation Hall Jazz Band "Ice Cream"Peter Case "Ain't Gonna Worry No More"Lucero "Macon If We Make It"Dr. John "Right Place Wrong Time"The Black Crowes "Good Morning Captain"Tuba Skinny "Wee Midnight Hours"

This week we welcome The Kendalls! Formed in 1969, The Kendall's recorded an album for Stop Records, from which a single was released in 1970: a cover of John Denver's "Leaving on a Jet Plane" (previously a hit for Peter, Paul & Mary). The Kendall's version narrowly missed the top fifty on the U.S. country charts. The duo signed with Dot Records in 1972, and released an album and two singles, "Two Divided By Love", (a cover version of The Grass Roots' pop hit) and "Everything I Own" a cover of Bread's 1972 hit. Eventually, the Kendall's parted with their record label, before signing with the independent Ovation Label in 1977. Their first single for the label, a cover of Kitty Wells hit "Making Believe", made the lower regions of the charts (Emmylou Harris' version of "Making Believe" hit the U.S. Country Charts around the same time). It was the Kendall's 2nd single on Ovation, a "cheating" song called "Heaven's Just a Sin Away", that proved to be their breakthrough. The song topped the country charts and was also a minor crossover pop hit, and won the 1978 Grammy for Best Country Vocal by a Duo or Group. In 1981, after Ovation Records closed, the duo signed with Mercury Records and continued to have hits with "Teach Me To Cheat" and "If You're Waitin' On Me (You're Backin' Up), which both made the country top 10. More hits followed with "Movin' Train" and "Precious Love," which made the top 20. Their last #1 was 1984's "Thank God For the Radio". The Kendall's had many more Top 20 hits in the 80's and early 90's. The also had a supper club in Gulf Shores, Alabama and a theater in Branson, MO. After her fathers death in 1998 Jeannie has pursued a solo career. In 2013, she joined forces with entertainer Carl Acuff Jr. who now opens the show and sing's with Jeannie to recreate that unique sound and those favorite "Kendall's" hits. For more information, check her website: JeannieKendall.com

The femmes are back with a brand new episode and a new featured femme! This one is a classic and a bombshell. You know here from movies, famous songs, and a look that is undeniably iconic. She's a country music singer who wrote a song that the majority of the population should all know (and probably LOVE). ===== Singer, Songwriter, Writer, Actor, Producer “I'm not going to limit myself just because people won't accept the fact that I can do something else.” Born January 1946 in Tennessee, the 4th child of 12. Her mother was also singer who taught her church music and Elizabethan ballads her ancestors brought to America. Her grandfather was a fiddling preacher who wrote “Singing His Praise,” which was recorded by Kitty Wells. Listen to the whole episode to find out more! ===== Sources: https://nashvillelifestyles.com/entertainment/celebrities/12-inspiring-quotes-from-dolly-parton/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CIf%20you%20don't%20like,we%20can%20adjust%20the%20sails.%E2%80%9D https://www.countrymusichalloffame.org/hall-of-fame/dolly-parton https://dollyparton.com/about-dolly-parton https://www.countryliving.com/life/entertainment/g3007/13-things-you-didnt-know-about-dolly-parton/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/danschawbel/2012/11/29/dolly-parton-her-personal-philosophy-life-obstacles-and-best-advice/?sh=2d9afac12a31 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_Parton_filmography#:~:text=She%20has%20appeared%20in%20twelve,over%20400%20appearances%20on%20television https://www.insider.com/dolly-parton-used-whitney-houston-royalties-to-help-black-neighborhood-2021-7 ===== Enjoy the show and share it with a friend! Find the femmes on social media! IG: @thefalliblefemmes Tiktok: @thefalliblefemmes Twitter: @thefallblefemmes Website: thefalliblefemmes.com We'd love to hear your stories! Email: hello@thefalliblefemmes.com

R.E.M. "I'm Gonna DJ"The Hold Steady "Most People Are Djs"The Low Anthem "Yellowed By the Sun"Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit "Kid Fears (feat. Brandi Carlile & Julien Baker)"The Crystals "And Then He Kissed Me"Louis Armstrong "I Ain't Gonna Give Nobody None of This Jelly Roll"Kitty Wells "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man"13th Floor Elevators "You're Gonna Miss Me"Kris Kristofferson "Maybe You Heard"The Undertones "Teenage Kicks"The Tammys "Egyptian Shumba"The White Stripes "Hello Operator"Muddy Waters "Baby I Done Got Wise"D'Angelo "Feel Like Makin' Love"Dolly Parton "Don't Drop Out"John R. Miller "Motor's Fried"Aimee Mann "In Mexico"Bob Dylan & The Band "Goin' to Acapulco"The Flies "I'm Not Your Stepping Stone"Clem Snide "Moment in the Sun"Neko Case "John Saw That Number"My Morning Jacket "The Way That He Sings"The Supremes "You Can't Hurry Love"Willie Nelson & Wynton Marsalis "Rainy Day Blues"Oscar Peterson Trio "The Girl From Ipanema"Leslie Gore "Maybe I Know"The Velvet Underground "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'"Cat Clyde "Sheets of Green"Lightnin' Hopkins "Ride in Your New Automobile"Matt Sweeney "I Am a Youth Inclined to Ramble"Townes Van Zandt "Still Looking For You"The Shirelles "Will You Love Me Tomorrow"Gram Parsons "The Angels Rejoiced Last Night"Doc Watson "Little Darling Pal of Mine"Tom Verlaine "There's a Reason"Television "See No Evil"Neutral Milk Hotel "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea"Phoebe Bridgers "I Know The End"Shaver "The Earth Rolls On"Solomon Burke "Diamond in Your Mind"Dave Rawlings Machine "Pilgrim (You Can't Go Home)"

Nat King Cole "The Christmas Song"Jon Spencer "Big Yule Log"Clarence Carter "Back Door Santa"Ella Fitzgerald "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!"Mac McCaughan "Down We Go (Sledding Song)"Otis Gibbs "Color Wheel"Darlene Love "Marshmallow World (1963)"Count Basie "Good Morning Blues"Sufjan Stevens "We're Going to the Country!"Billy Briggs "North Pole Boogie"Charlie Parr "Slim Tall's Christmas On The Lam"Soltero "Songs of the Season"Esther Phillips "Far away christmas blues"Kermit Ruffins "Little Drummer Boy"Ted Hawkins "Golden Sun"She & Him "The Christmas Waltz"Lucinda Williams "Blue Christmas"Bonnie "Prince" Billy & Dawn McCarthy "Christmas Eve Can Kill You"John Fahey "Go I Will Send Thee (Instrumental)"JD McPherson "Hey Skinny Santa!"Squirrel Nut Zippers "Hanging Up My Stockings"Tom Waits "Silent Night"Willie Nelson "Pretty Paper"Valerie June "Winter Wonderland"Bessie Smith "At the Christmas Ball"Albert King "Santa Claus Wants Some Loving"Kitty Wells "Christmas Ain't Like Christmas Anymore"Brown Bird "The Old Church Bell"Phoebe Bridgers "7 O'Clock News / Silent Night"Huey 'Piano' Smith and The Clowns "'Twas the Night Before Christmas"Andrew Bird "Alabaster"John Prine "Christmas In Prison"The Both "Nothing Left to Do (Let's Make This Christmas Blue)"Kathleen Edwards "It's Christmastime (Let's Just Survive)"Buck Owens "Santa Looked A Lot Like Daddy"Les Paul & Mary Ford "Jungle Bells (Dingo-Dongo-Day) [Bonus Track]"The Staple Singers "No Room At the Inn"Hank Williams "At the First Fall of Snow"Louis Armstrong "'Zat You Santa Claus?"Merle Haggard "Daddy Won't Be Home Again For Christmas"Dinah Washington "Ole Santa - Single Version"Johnny Cash "The Ballad of the Harp Weaver"James Brown "Let's make christmas mean something this year pts. 1&2"Joel Paterson "Christmas Time Is Here"Nina Nastasia "Handmade Card"Vic Chesnutt "White Christmas"Low "Just Like Christmas"

The audience for country music in the years following the World War II was predominently male and many of the records were destined for the juke boxes that thrived in the bars and watering holes where this working class audience gathered. This week on the program we'll sample some classic honky tonk music from the late 1930s until today. We'll hear Kitty Wells, Hank Snow, Buck Owens, Webb Pierce and of course, Hank Williams. We'll also hear more contemporary tunes from The Byrds, Emmylou Harris and Asleep at the Wheel. Let's go Honky Tonkin' … this week on The Sing Out! Radio Magazine.Pete Seeger / “If I Had A Hammer”(excerpt) / Songs of Hope and Struggle / Smithsonian Folkways Don Rich / “Buckeroo” / Country Pickin': The Don Rich Anthology / SundazedThe Byrds / “You're Still on My Mind” / Sweetheart of the Rodeo / ColumbiaHank Williams / “Honky Tonk Blues” / 40 Greatest Hits / PolydorJean Shepard /w Ferlon Husky / “A Dear John Letter” / Super Hits / GustoEmmylou Harris & the Nash Ramblers / “Two More Bottles of Wine” / Ramble in Music City / NonesuchBuddy Holly / “Midnight Shift” / The Definitive Collection / DeccaAsleep at the Wheel / “The Letter that Johnny Walker Read” / Half a Hundred Years / BismeauxVal Mindel & Emily Miller / “Lonely Street” / Close to Home / Yodel-Ay-HeeKitty Wells / “It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” / Essential Honky Tonk / Not NowRoger Miller / “Kansas City Star” / All Time Greatest Hits / MercuryDon Rich / “Chicken Pickin'” / Country Pickin': The Don Rich Anthology / SundazedVernon Solomon / “Beaumont Rag” / Texas Hoedown Revisited / CountyJess Willard / “Honky Tonk Hardwood Floor” / Hillbilly Boogie and Jive / AtomicatHank Snow / “I'm Moving On” / The Very Best of Hank Snow / BMGPatsy Montana / “Montana Plains” / Ragged But Right: Great Country String Bands of the 1930's / RCAMerle Haggard / “Mama Tried” / Live at Billy Bob's Texas / Smith Music GroupWebb Pierce / “There Stands the Glass” / King of the Honky Tonk / MCABuck Owens / “Under Your Spell Again” / Right After the Dance / AtomicatWillie Nelson / “Heartaches by the Number” / A Tribute to Ray Price / LegacyBill Doggett / “Honky Tonk pt.2” / Honky Tonk / Ace Pete Seeger / “If I Had A Hammer”(excerpt) / Songs of Hope and Struggle / Smithsonian Folkways

This week's show, after a 1968 Bee Gees weeper: brand new The House of Love, Wedding Present (with Amelia Fletcher), Sadies, Sansyou, Valery Trails, I Was a King, and Death Cab For Cutie; plus Arthur Alexander, Small Faces, Kitty Wells, Roscoe Holcomb,...

This week we welcome Jeannie Kendall! Formed in 1969, The Kendall's recorded an album for Stop Records, from which a single was released in 1970: a cover of John Denver's "Leaving on a Jet Plane" (previously a hit for Peter, Paul & Mary). The Kendall's version narrowly missed the top fifty on the U.S. country charts. The duo signed with Dot Records in 1972, and released an album and two singles, "Two Divided By Love", (a cover version of The Grass Roots' pop hit) and "Everything I Own" a cover of Bread's 1972 hit. Eventually, the Kendall's parted with their record label, before signing with the independent Ovation Label in 1977. Their first single for the label, a cover of Kitty Wells hit "Making Believe", made the lower regions of the charts (Emmylou Harris' version of "Making Believe" hit the U.S. Country Charts around the same time). It was the Kendall's 2nd single on Ovation, a "cheating" song called "Heaven's Just a Sin Away", that proved to be their breakthrough. The song topped the country charts and was also a minor crossover pop hit, and won the 1978 Grammy for Best Country Vocal by a Duo or Group. In 1981, after Ovation Records closed, the duo signed with Mercury Records and continued to have hits with "Teach Me To Cheat" and "If You're Waitin' On Me (You're Backin' Up), which both made the country top 10. More hits followed with "Movin' Train" and "Precious Love," which made the top 20. Their last #1 was 1984's "Thank God For the Radio". The Kendall's had many more Top 20 hits in the 80's and early 90's. The also had a supper club in Gulf Shores, Alabama and a theater in Branson, MO. After her fathers death in 1998 Jeannie has pursued a solo career. In 2013, she joined forces with entertainer Carl Acuff Jr. who now opens the show and sing's with Jeannie to recreate that unique sound and those favorite "Kendall's" hits. For more information, check her website: JeannieKendall.com

Episode 232, “Kitty Wells,” presents the music of a pioneer vocalist who earned the nickname “The Queen of Country Music.” Recordings include “It Wasn't God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels,” “Three Ways to Love You,” Poison... Read More The post Episode 232, “Kitty Wells,” appeared first on Sam Waldron.

The Cave Singers "Gifts and the Raft"The Cave Singers "Black Leaf"Bob Dylan "Tangled Up In Blue"Eilen Jewell "Down the Road"Tyler Childers "Long Violent History"Patti Smith "People Have the Power"R.E.M. "Oh My Heart"Candi Staton "Wanted: Lover"Spirit Family Reunion "Time to Go Back Home"Mavis Staples "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free"The Rollers "Knocking on the Wrong Door"Professor Longhair "Everyday I Have The Blues"Professor Longhair "Tipitina"Arlo McKinley "Back Home"Frank Williams & the Rocketeers "Show Me What You Got"Swamp Dogg "Total Destruction to Your Mind"Sleater-Kinney "You're No Rock n' Roll Fun"Kitty Wells "You're No Angel Yourself"The Low Anthem "This God Damn House"Buddy Emmons "Bottle Baby Boogie"Lou Donaldson "Blues Walk"D'Angelo "Devil's Pie"Big Maybelle "Way Back Home"Micah Schnabel "Blame It On Geography"Delbert McClinton "The Jealous Kind"Little Milton "Monologue 1 / That's How Strong My Love Is"Earth, Wind & Fire "Keep Your Head to the Sky"Lucero "Sometimes"Dolly Parton "Heartbreak Express"The Devil Makes Three "For Good Again"Billy Joe Shaver "Honky Tonk Heroes"Wilco "Impossible Germany"Turnpike Troubadours "Easton & Main"Eddie Vedder "Long Way"The Hold Steady "Southtown Girls"S.G. Goodman "Teeth Marks"Roky Erickson "Don't Shake Me Lucifer"Steve Earle & The Dukes "Angry Young Man"Valerie June "Use Me"Eddie Hinton "Everybody Needs Love"Willie Nelson "Time of the Preacher"

Two Cow Garage "The Heart and the Crown"Richard Swift "Broken Finger Blues"JD McPherson "Just Around The Corner"Kitty Wells "Guilty Street"Adia Victoria "Devil Is A Lie"Blue Mountain "Bloody 98"Fats Domino "When I Was Young"Memphis Slim "We're Gonna Rock"Wilco "Falling Apart (Right Now)"Elvis Costello & the Roots "Sugar Won't Work"Eilen Jewell "Back to Dallas"Rick Danko "What A Town"Eddie Hinton "Brand New Man"Hot Water Music "Trusty Chords"Joan Shelley "Over and Even"Superchunk "Endless Summer"Joseph "Come On Up To The House"LaVern Baker "Bumble Bee"Little Brother Montgomery "Michigan Water Blues"Bob Dylan "Precious Angel"Labi Siffre "I Got The..."Kendrick Lamar "Auntie Diaries"Hank Crawford "Sister Sadie"Arthur Gunter "Baby Let´s Play House"The 40 Acre Mule "16 Days"Old 97's "Rollerskate Skinny"Nina Simone "Do I Move You?"Koko Taylor "I'd Rather Go Blind"Jack White "If I Die Tomorrow"Drive-By Truckers "Forged In Hell And Heaven Sent"R.E.M. "Swan Swan H"Cory Branan "Imogene"Sister O.M. Terrell "Life Is a Problem"Jkutchma & the Five Fifths "Sundown, Usa"Carl Perkins "Poor Boy Blues"Blue Lu Barker "I'll Give You Some Tomorrow"John Prine "Sweet Revenge"Buddy Guy "Outskirst of Town"Junior Walker & The All Stars "Way Back Home"Wynonie Harris "Mr Blues Is Coming To Town"Billie Holiday Orchestra "Summertime"Lucero "That Much Further West"

James McMurtry And The Heartless Bastards "No More Buffalo"The Low Anthem "Home I'll Never Be"Valerie June "Fade Into You"Candi Staton "Darling You're All That I Had"Otis Redding "Little Ol' Me"Golden Smog "Radio King"Laura Marling "Soothing"Johnny Cash "Jealous Loving Heart"Drag the River "forgiveness"Buddy Emmons "If No News Is Good News"Hank Williams "Howlin' At the Moon"Nick Drake "Pink Moon"Son Volt "Medicine Hat"Jolie Holland "Old Fashioned Morphine"James Luther Dickinson "Out of Blue"Trombone Shorty "Lie To Me"The Temptations "I Wish It Would Rain"Kitty Wells "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man"Matt Sweeney "My Home Is The Sea"Bonnie Raitt "Livin' for the Ones"Micah Schnabel "Gentle Always"Two Cow Garage "Let the Boys Be Girls"Micah Schnabel "Cincinnati, Ohio"Ted Hawkins "Sorry You're Sick"Eddie Floyd "Stealing Love"Big Mama Thornton "Sweet Little Angel"Otis Rush "Homework"Aimee Mann "Deathly (Remastered 2020)"Gillian Welch "I Just Came Home To Count The Memories"Otha Turner "Lay My Burden Down (Album Version)"Kendrick Lamar "The Heart Part 5"Koko Taylor "Never Trust A Man"Dr. John "I Walk On Guilded Splinters"Mavis Staples "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free"Bill Withers "Ain't No Sunshine"The Meters "Cissy Strut"Bobby "Blue" Bland "Ain't No Love In The Heart Of The City"Jerry Lee Lewis "Goodnight Irene"

Episode one hundred and forty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Hey Joe" by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and is the longest episode to date, at over two hours. Patreon backers also have a twenty-two-minute bonus episode available, on "Making Time" by The Creation. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual, I've put together a Mixcloud mix containing all the music excerpted in this episode. For information on the Byrds, I relied mostly on Timeless Flight Revisited by Johnny Rogan, with some information from Chris Hillman's autobiography. Information on Arthur Lee and Love came from Forever Changes: Arthur Lee and the Book of Love by John Einarson, and Arthur Lee: Alone Again Or by Barney Hoskyns. Information on Gary Usher's work with the Surfaris and the Sons of Adam came from The California Sound by Stephen McParland, which can be found at https://payhip.com/CMusicBooks Information on Jimi Hendrix came from Room Full of Mirrors by Charles R. Cross, Crosstown Traffic by Charles Shaar Murray, and Wild Thing by Philip Norman. Information on the history of "Hey Joe" itself came from all these sources plus Hey Joe: The Unauthorised Biography of a Rock Classic by Marc Shapiro, though note that most of that book is about post-1967 cover versions. Most of the pre-Experience session work by Jimi Hendrix I excerpt in this episode is on this box set of alternate takes and live recordings. And "Hey Joe" can be found on Are You Experienced? Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Just a quick note before we start – this episode deals with a song whose basic subject is a man murdering a woman, and that song also contains references to guns, and in some versions to cocaine use. Some versions excerpted also contain misogynistic slurs. If those things are likely to upset you, please skip this episode, as the whole episode focusses on that song. I would hope it goes without saying that I don't approve of misogyny, intimate partner violence, or murder, and my discussing a song does not mean I condone acts depicted in its lyrics, and the episode itself deals with the writing and recording of the song rather than its subject matter, but it would be impossible to talk about the record without excerpting the song. The normalisation of violence against women in rock music lyrics is a subject I will come back to, but did not have room for in what is already a very long episode. Anyway, on with the show. Let's talk about the folk process, shall we? We've talked before, like in the episodes on "Stagger Lee" and "Ida Red", about how there are some songs that aren't really individual songs in themselves, but are instead collections of related songs that might happen to share a name, or a title, or a story, or a melody, but which might be different in other ways. There are probably more songs that are like this than songs that aren't, and it doesn't just apply to folk songs, although that's where we see it most notably. You only have to look at the way a song like "Hound Dog" changed from the Willie Mae Thornton version to the version by Elvis, which only shared a handful of words with the original. Songs change, and recombine, and everyone who sings them brings something different to them, until they change in ways that nobody could have predicted, like a game of telephone. But there usually remains a core, an archetypal story or idea which remains constant no matter how much the song changes. Like Stagger Lee shooting Billy in a bar over a hat, or Frankie killing her man -- sometimes the man is Al, sometimes he's Johnny, but he always done her wrong. And one of those stories is about a man who shoots his cheating woman with a forty-four, and tries to escape -- sometimes to a town called Jericho, and sometimes to Juarez, Mexico. The first version of this song we have a recording of is by Clarence Ashley, in 1929, a recording of an older folk song that was called, in his version, "Little Sadie": [Excerpt: Clarence Ashley, "Little Sadie"] At some point, somebody seems to have noticed that that song has a slight melodic similarity to another family of songs, the family known as "Cocaine Blues" or "Take a Whiff on Me", which was popular around the same time: [Excerpt: The Memphis Jug Band, "Cocaine Habit Blues"] And so the two songs became combined, and the protagonist of "Little Sadie" now had a reason to kill his woman -- a reason other than her cheating, that is. He had taken a shot of cocaine before shooting her. The first recording of this version, under the name "Cocaine Blues" seems to have been a Western Swing version by W. A. Nichol's Western Aces: [Excerpt: W.A. Nichol's Western Aces, "Cocaine Blues"] Woody Guthrie recorded a version around the same time -- I've seen different dates and so don't know for sure if it was before or after Nichol's version -- and his version had himself credited as songwriter, and included this last verse which doesn't seem to appear on any earlier recordings of the song: [Excerpt: Woody Guthrie, "Cocaine Blues"] That doesn't appear on many later recordings either, but it did clearly influence yet another song -- Mose Allison's classic jazz number "Parchman Farm": [Excerpt: Mose Allison, "Parchman Farm"] The most famous recordings of the song, though, were by Johnny Cash, who recorded it as both "Cocaine Blues" and as "Transfusion Blues". In Cash's version of the song, the murderer gets sentenced to "ninety-nine years in the Folsom pen", so it made sense that Cash would perform that on his most famous album, the live album of his January 1968 concerts at Folsom Prison, which revitalised his career after several years of limited success: [Excerpt: Johnny Cash, "Cocaine Blues (live at Folsom Prison)"] While that was Cash's first live recording at a prison, though, it wasn't the first show he played at a prison -- ever since the success of his single "Folsom Prison Blues" he'd been something of a hero to prisoners, and he had been doing shows in prisons for eleven years by the time of that recording. And on one of those shows he had as his support act a man named Billy Roberts, who performed his own song which followed the same broad outlines as "Cocaine Blues" -- a man with a forty-four who goes out to shoot his woman and then escapes to Mexico. Roberts was an obscure folk singer, who never had much success, but who was good with people. He'd been part of the Greenwich Village folk scene in the 1950s, and at a gig at Gerde's Folk City he'd met a woman named Niela Miller, an aspiring songwriter, and had struck up a relationship with her. Miller only ever wrote one song that got recorded by anyone else, a song called "Mean World Blues" that was recorded by Dave Van Ronk: [Excerpt: Dave Van Ronk, "Mean World Blues"] Now, that's an original song, but it does bear a certain melodic resemblance to another old folk song, one known as "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" or "In the Pines", or sometimes "Black Girl": [Excerpt: Lead Belly, "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?"] Miller was clearly familiar with the tradition from which "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" comes -- it's a type of folk song where someone asks a question and then someone else answers it, and this repeats, building up a story. This is a very old folk song format, and you hear it for example in "Lord Randall", the song on which Bob Dylan based "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall": [Excerpt: Ewan MacColl, "Lord Randall"] I say she was clearly familiar with it, because the other song she wrote that anyone's heard was based very much around that idea. "Baby Please Don't Go To Town" is a question-and-answer song in precisely that form, but with an unusual chord progression for a folk song. You may remember back in the episode on "Eight Miles High" I talked about the circle of fifths -- a chord progression which either increases or decreases by a fifth for every chord, so it might go C-G-D-A-E [demonstrates] That's a common progression in pop and jazz, but not really so much in folk, but it's the one that Miller had used for "Baby, Please Don't Go to Town", and she'd taught Roberts that song, which she only recorded much later: [Excerpt: Niela Miller, "Baby, Please Don't Go To Town"] After Roberts and Miller broke up, Miller kept playing that melody, but he changed the lyrics. The lyrics he added had several influences. There was that question-and-answer folk-song format, there's the story of "Cocaine Blues" with its protagonist getting a forty-four to shoot his woman down before heading to Mexico, and there's also a country hit from 1953. "Hey, Joe!" was originally recorded by Carl Smith, one of the most popular country singers of the early fifties: [Excerpt: Carl Smith, "Hey Joe!"] That was written by Boudleaux Bryant, a few years before the songs he co-wrote for the Everly Brothers, and became a country number one, staying at the top for eight weeks. It didn't make the pop chart, but a pop cover version of it by Frankie Laine made the top ten in the US: [Excerpt: Frankie Laine, "Hey Joe"] Laine's record did even better in the UK, where it made number one, at a point where Laine was the biggest star in music in Britain -- at the time the UK charts only had a top twelve, and at one point four of the singles in the top twelve were by Laine, including that one. There was also an answer record by Kitty Wells which made the country top ten later that year: [Excerpt: Kitty Wells, "Hey Joe"] Oddly, despite it being a very big hit, that "Hey Joe" had almost no further cover versions for twenty years, though it did become part of the Searchers' setlist, and was included on their Live at the Star Club album in 1963, in an arrangement that owed a lot to "What'd I Say": [Excerpt: The Searchers, "Hey Joe"] But that song was clearly on Roberts' mind when, as so many American folk musicians did, he travelled to the UK in the late fifties and became briefly involved in the burgeoning UK folk movement. In particular, he spent some time with a twelve-string guitar player from Edinburgh called Len Partridge, who was also a mentor to Bert Jansch, and who was apparently an extraordinary musician, though I know of no recordings of his work. Partridge helped Roberts finish up the song, though Partridge is about the only person in this story who *didn't* claim a writing credit for it at one time or another, saying that he just helped Roberts out and that Roberts deserved all the credit. The first known recording of the completed song is from 1962, a few years after Roberts had returned to the US, though it didn't surface until decades later: [Excerpt: Billy Roberts, "Hey Joe"] Roberts was performing this song regularly on the folk circuit, and around the time of that recording he also finally got round to registering the copyright, several years after it was written. When Miller heard the song, she was furious, and she later said "Imagine my surprise when I heard Hey Joe by Billy Roberts. There was my tune, my chord progression, my question/answer format. He dropped the bridge that was in my song and changed it enough so that the copyright did not protect me from his plagiarism... I decided not to go through with all the complications of dealing with him. He never contacted me about it or gave me any credit. He knows he committed a morally reprehensible act. He never was man enough to make amends and apologize to me, or to give credit for the inspiration. Dealing with all that was also why I made the decision not to become a professional songwriter. It left a bad taste in my mouth.” Pete Seeger, a friend of Miller's, was outraged by the injustice and offered to testify on her behalf should she decide to take Roberts to court, but she never did. Some time around this point, Roberts also played on that prison bill with Johnny Cash, and what happened next is hard to pin down. I've read several different versions of the story, which change the date and which prison this was in, and none of the details in any story hang together properly -- everything introduces weird inconsistencies and things which just make no sense at all. Something like this basic outline of the story seems to have happened, but the outline itself is weird, and we'll probably never know the truth. Roberts played his set, and one of the songs he played was "Hey Joe", and at some point he got talking to one of the prisoners in the audience, Dino Valenti. We've met Valenti before, in the episode on "Mr. Tambourine Man" -- he was a singer/songwriter himself, and would later be the lead singer of Quicksilver Messenger Service, but he's probably best known for having written "Get Together": [Excerpt: Dino Valenti, "Get Together"] As we heard in the "Mr. Tambourine Man" episode, Valenti actually sold off his rights to that song to pay for his bail at one point, but he was in and out of prison several times because of drug busts. At this point, or so the story goes, he was eligible for parole, but he needed to prove he had a possible income when he got out, and one way he wanted to do that was to show that he had written a song that could be a hit he could make money off, but he didn't have such a song. He talked about his predicament with Roberts, who agreed to let him claim to have written "Hey Joe" so he could get out of prison. He did make that claim, and when he got out of prison he continued making the claim, and registered the copyright to "Hey Joe" in his own name -- even though Roberts had already registered it -- and signed a publishing deal for it with Third Story Music, a company owned by Herb Cohen, the future manager of the Mothers of Invention, and Cohen's brother Mutt. Valenti was a popular face on the folk scene, and he played "his" song to many people, but two in particular would influence the way the song would develop, both of them people we've seen relatively recently in episodes of the podcast. One of them, Vince Martin, we'll come back to later, but the other was David Crosby, and so let's talk about him and the Byrds a bit more. Crosby and Valenti had been friends long before the Byrds formed, and indeed we heard in the "Mr. Tambourine Man" episode how the group had named themselves after Valenti's song "Birdses": [Excerpt: Dino Valenti, "Birdses"] And Crosby *loved* "Hey Joe", which he believed was another of Valenti's songs. He'd perform it every chance he got, playing it solo on guitar in an arrangement that other people have compared to Mose Allison. He'd tried to get it on the first two Byrds albums, but had been turned down, mostly because of their manager and uncredited co-producer Jim Dickson, who had strong opinions about it, saying later "Some of the songs that David would bring in from the outside were perfectly valid songs for other people, but did not seem to be compatible with the Byrds' myth. And he may not have liked the Byrds' myth. He fought for 'Hey Joe' and he did it. As long as I could say 'No!' I did, and when I couldn't any more they did it. You had to give him something somewhere. I just wish it was something else... 'Hey Joe' I was bitterly opposed to. A song about a guy who murders his girlfriend in a jealous rage and is on the way to Mexico with a gun in his hand. It was not what I saw as a Byrds song." Indeed, Dickson was so opposed to the song that he would later say “One of the reasons David engineered my getting thrown out was because I would not let Hey Joe be on the Turn! Turn! Turn! album.” Dickson was, though, still working with the band when they got round to recording it. That came during the recording of their Fifth Dimension album, the album which included "Eight Miles High". That album was mostly recorded after the departure of Gene Clark, which was where we left the group at the end of the "Eight Miles High" episode, and the loss of their main songwriter meant that they were struggling for material -- doubly so since they also decided they were going to move away from Dylan covers. This meant that they had to rely on original material from the group's less commercial songwriters, and on a few folk songs, mostly learned from Pete Seeger The album ended up with only eleven songs on it, compared to the twelve that was normal for American albums at that time, and the singles on it after "Eight Miles High" weren't particularly promising as to the group's ability to come up with commercial material. The next single, "5D", a song by Roger McGuinn about the fifth dimension, was a waltz-time song that both Crosby and Chris Hillman were enthused by. It featured organ by Van Dyke Parks, and McGuinn said of the organ part "When he came into the studio I told him to think Bach. He was already thinking Bach before that anyway.": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "5D"] While the group liked it, though, that didn't make the top forty. The next single did, just about -- a song that McGuinn had written as an attempt at communicating with alien life. He hoped that it would be played on the radio, and that the radio waves would eventually reach aliens, who would hear it and respond: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Mr. Spaceman"] The "Fifth Dimension" album did significantly worse, both critically and commercially, than their previous albums, and the group would soon drop Allen Stanton, the producer, in favour of Gary Usher, Brian Wilson's old songwriting partner. But the desperation for material meant that the group agreed to record the song which they still thought at that time had been written by Crosby's friend, though nobody other than Crosby was happy with it, and even Crosby later said "It was a mistake. I shouldn't have done it. Everybody makes mistakes." McGuinn said later "The reason Crosby did lead on 'Hey Joe' was because it was *his* song. He didn't write it but he was responsible for finding it. He'd wanted to do it for years but we would never let him.": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Hey Joe"] Of course, that arrangement is very far from the Mose Allison style version Crosby had been doing previously. And the reason for that can be found in the full version of that McGuinn quote, because the full version continues "He'd wanted to do it for years but we would never let him. Then both Love and The Leaves had a minor hit with it and David got so angry that we had to let him do it. His version wasn't that hot because he wasn't a strong lead vocalist." The arrangement we just heard was the arrangement that by this point almost every group on the Sunset Strip scene was playing. And the reason for that was because of another friend of Crosby's, someone who had been a roadie for the Byrds -- Bryan MacLean. MacLean and Crosby had been very close because they were both from very similar backgrounds -- they were both Hollywood brats with huge egos. MacLean later said "Crosby and I got on perfectly. I didn't understand what everybody was complaining about, because he was just like me!" MacLean was, if anything, from an even more privileged background than Crosby. His father was an architect who'd designed houses for Elizabeth Taylor and Dean Martin, his neighbour when growing up was Frederick Loewe, the composer of My Fair Lady. He learned to swim in Elizabeth Taylor's private pool, and his first girlfriend was Liza Minelli. Another early girlfriend was Jackie DeShannon, the singer-songwriter who did the original version of "Needles and Pins", who he was introduced to by Sharon Sheeley, whose name you will remember from many previous episodes. MacLean had wanted to be an artist until his late teens, when he walked into a shop in Westwood which sometimes sold his paintings, the Sandal Shop, and heard some people singing folk songs there. He decided he wanted to be a folk singer, and soon started performing at the Balladeer, a club which would later be renamed the Troubadour, playing songs like Robert Johnson's "Cross Roads Blues", which had recently become a staple of the folk repertoire after John Hammond put out the King of the Delta Blues Singers album: [Excerpt: Robert Johnson, "Cross Roads Blues"] Reading interviews with people who knew MacLean at the time, the same phrase keeps coming up. John Kay, later the lead singer of Steppenwolf, said "There was a young kid, Bryan MacLean, kind of cocky but nonetheless a nice kid, who hung around Crosby and McGuinn" while Chris Hillman said "He was a pretty good kid but a wee bit cocky." He was a fan of the various musicians who later formed the Byrds, and was also an admirer of a young guitarist on the scene named Ryland Cooder, and of a blues singer on the scene named Taj Mahal. He apparently was briefly in a band with Taj Mahal, called Summer's Children, who as far as I can tell had no connection to the duo that Curt Boettcher later formed of the same name, before Taj Mahal and Cooder formed The Rising Sons, a multi-racial blues band who were for a while the main rivals to the Byrds on the scene. MacLean, though, firmly hitched himself to the Byrds, and particularly to Crosby. He became a roadie on their first tour, and Hillman said "He was a hard-working guy on our behalf. As I recall, he pretty much answered to Crosby and was David's assistant, to put it diplomatically – more like his gofer, in fact." But MacLean wasn't cut out for the hard work that being a roadie required, and after being the Byrds' roadie for about thirty shows, he started making mistakes, and when they went off on their UK tour they decided not to keep employing him. He was heartbroken, but got back into trying his own musical career. He auditioned for the Monkees, unsuccessfully, but shortly after that -- some sources say even the same day as the audition, though that seems a little too neat -- he went to Ben Frank's -- the LA hangout that had actually been namechecked in the open call for Monkees auditions, which said they wanted "Ben Franks types", and there he met Arthur Lee and Johnny Echols. Echols would later remember "He was this gadfly kind of character who knew everybody and was flitting from table to table. He wore striped pants and a scarf, and he had this long, strawberry hair. All the girls loved him. For whatever reason, he came and sat at our table. Of course, Arthur and I were the only two black people there at the time." Lee and Echols were both Black musicians who had been born in Memphis. Lee's birth father, Chester Taylor, had been a cornet player with Jimmie Lunceford, whose Delta Rhythm Boys had had a hit with "The Honeydripper", as we heard way back in the episode on "Rocket '88": [Excerpt: Jimmie Lunceford and the Delta Rhythm Boys, "The Honeydripper"] However, Taylor soon split from Lee's mother, a schoolteacher, and she married Clinton Lee, a stonemason, who doted on his adopted son, and they moved to California. They lived in a relatively prosperous area of LA, a neighbourhood that was almost all white, with a few Asian families, though the boxer Sugar Ray Robinson lived nearby. A year or so after Arthur and his mother moved to LA, so did the Echols family, who had known them in Memphis, and they happened to move only a couple of streets away. Eight year old Arthur Lee reconnected with seven-year-old Johnny Echols, and the two became close friends from that point on. Arthur Lee first started out playing music when his parents were talked into buying him an accordion by a salesman who would go around with a donkey, give kids free donkey rides, and give the parents a sales pitch while they were riding the donkey, He soon gave up on the accordion and persuaded his parents to buy him an organ instead -- he was a spoiled child, by all accounts, with a TV in his bedroom, which was almost unheard of in the late fifties. Johnny Echols had a similar experience which led to his parents buying him a guitar, and the two were growing up in a musical environment generally. They attended Dorsey High School at the same time as both Billy Preston and Mike Love of the Beach Boys, and Ella Fitzgerald and her then-husband, the great jazz bass player Ray Brown, lived in the same apartment building as the Echols family for a while. Ornette Coleman, the free-jazz saxophone player, lived next door to Echols, and Adolphus Jacobs, the guitarist with the Coasters, gave him guitar lessons. Arthur Lee also knew Johnny Otis, who ran a pigeon-breeding club for local children which Arthur would attend. Echols was the one who first suggested that he and Arthur should form a band, and they put together a group to play at a school talent show, performing "Last Night", the instrumental that had been a hit for the Mar-Keys on Stax records: [Excerpt: The Mar-Keys, "Last Night"] They soon became a regular group, naming themselves Arthur Lee and the LAGs -- the LA Group, in imitation of Booker T and the MGs – the Memphis Group. At some point around this time, Lee decided to switch from playing organ to playing guitar. He would say later that this was inspired by seeing Johnny "Guitar" Watson get out of a gold Cadillac, wearing a gold suit, and with gold teeth in his mouth. The LAGs started playing as support acts and backing bands for any blues and soul acts that came through LA, performing with Big Mama Thornton, Johnny Otis, the O'Jays, and more. Arthur and Johnny were both still under-age, and they would pencil in fake moustaches to play the clubs so they'd appear older. In the fifties and early sixties, there were a number of great electric guitar players playing blues on the West Coast -- Johnny "Guitar" Watson, T-Bone Walker, Guitar Slim, and others -- and they would compete with each other not only to play well, but to put on a show, and so there was a whole bag of stage tricks that West Coast R&B guitarists picked up, and Echols learned all of them -- playing his guitar behind his back, playing his guitar with his teeth, playing with his guitar between his legs. As well as playing their own shows, the LAGs also played gigs under other names -- they had a corrupt agent who would book them under the name of whatever Black group had a hit at the time, in the belief that almost nobody knew what popular groups looked like anyway, so they would go out and perform as the Drifters or the Coasters or half a dozen other bands. But Arthur Lee in particular wanted to have success in his own right. He would later say "When I was a little boy I would listen to Nat 'King' Cole and I would look at that purple Capitol Records logo. I wanted to be on Capitol, that was my goal. Later on I used to walk from Dorsey High School all the way up to the Capitol building in Hollywood -- did that many times. I was determined to get a record deal with Capitol, and I did, without the help of a fancy manager or anyone else. I talked to Adam Ross and Jack Levy at Ardmore-Beechwood. I talked to Kim Fowley, and then I talked to Capitol". The record that the LAGs released, though, was not very good, a track called "Rumble-Still-Skins": [Excerpt: The LAGs, "Rumble-Still-Skins"] Lee later said "I was young and very inexperienced and I was testing the record company. I figured if I gave them my worst stuff and they ripped me off I wouldn't get hurt. But it didn't work, and after that I started giving my best, and I've been doing that ever since." The LAGs were dropped by Capitol after one single, and for the next little while Arthur and Johnny did work for smaller labels, usually labels owned by Bob Keane, with Arthur writing and producing and Johnny playing guitar -- though Echols has said more recently that a lot of the songs that were credited to Arthur as sole writer were actually joint compositions. Most of these records were attempts at copying the style of other people. There was "I Been Trying", a Phil Spector soundalike released by Little Ray: [Excerpt: Little Ray, "I Been Trying"] And there were a few attempts at sounding like Curtis Mayfield, like "Slow Jerk" by Ronnie and the Pomona Casuals: [Excerpt: Ronnie and the Pomona Casuals, "Slow Jerk"] and "My Diary" by Rosa Lee Brooks: [Excerpt: Rosa Lee Brooks, "My Diary"] Echols was also playing with a lot of other people, and one of the musicians he was playing with, his old school friend Billy Preston, told him about a recent European tour he'd been on with Little Richard, and the band from Liverpool he'd befriended while he was there who idolised Richard, so when the Beatles hit America, Arthur and Johnny had some small amount of context for them. They soon broke up the LAGs and formed another group, the American Four, with two white musicians, bass player John Fleckenstein and drummer Don Costa. Lee had them wear wigs so they seemed like they had longer hair, and started dressing more eccentrically -- he would soon become known for wearing glasses with one blue lens and one red one, and, as he put it "wearing forty pounds of beads, two coats, three shirts, and wearing two pairs of shoes on one foot". As well as the Beatles, the American Four were inspired by the other British Invasion bands -- Arthur was in the audience for the TAMI show, and quite impressed by Mick Jagger -- and also by the Valentinos, Bobby Womack's group. They tried to get signed to SAR Records, the label owned by Sam Cooke for which the Valentinos recorded, but SAR weren't interested, and they ended up recording for Bob Keane's Del-Fi records, where they cut "Luci Baines", a "Twist and Shout" knock-off with lyrics referencing the daughter of new US President Lyndon Johnson: [Excerpt: The American Four, "Luci Baines"] But that didn't take off any more than the earlier records had. Another American Four track, "Stay Away", was recorded but went unreleased until 2006: [Excerpt: Arthur Lee and the American Four, "Stay Away"] Soon the American Four were changing their sound and name again. This time it was because of two bands who were becoming successful on the Sunset Strip. One was the Byrds, who to Lee's mind were making music like the stuff he heard in his head, and the other was their rivals the Rising Sons, the blues band we mentioned earlier with Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder. Lee was very impressed by them as an multiracial band making aggressive, loud, guitar music, though he would always make the point when talking about them that they were a blues band, not a rock band, and *he* had the first multiracial rock band. Whatever they were like live though, in their recordings, produced by the Byrds' first producer Terry Melcher, the Rising Sons often had the same garage band folk-punk sound that Lee and Echols would soon make their own: [Excerpt: The Rising Sons, "Take a Giant Step"] But while the Rising Sons recorded a full album's worth of material, only one single was released before they split up, and so the way was clear for Lee and Echols' band, now renamed once again to The Grass Roots, to become the Byrds' new challengers. Lee later said "I named the group The Grass Roots behind a trip, or an album I heard that Malcolm X did, where he said 'the grass roots of the people are out in the street doing something about their problems instead of sitting around talking about it'". After seeing the Rolling Stones and the Byrds live, Lee wanted to get up front and move like Mick Jagger, and not be hindered by playing a guitar he wasn't especially good at -- both the Stones and the Byrds had two guitarists and a frontman who just sang and played hand percussion, and these were the models that Lee was following for the group. He also thought it would be a good idea commercially to get a good-looking white boy up front. So the group got in another guitarist, a white pretty boy who Lee soon fell out with and gave the nickname "Bummer Bob" because he was unpleasant to be around. Those of you who know exactly why Bobby Beausoleil later became famous will probably agree that this was a more than reasonable nickname to give him (and those of you who don't, I'll be dealing with him when we get to 1969). So when Bryan MacLean introduced himself to Lee and Echols, and they found out that not only was he also a good-looking white guitarist, but he was also friends with the entire circle of hipsters who'd been going to Byrds gigs, people like Vito and Franzoni, and he could get a massive crowd of them to come along to gigs for any band he was in and make them the talk of the Sunset Strip scene, he was soon in the Grass Roots, and Bummer Bob was out. The Grass Roots soon had to change their name again, though. In 1965, Jan and Dean recorded their "Folk and Roll" album, which featured "The Universal Coward"... Which I am not going to excerpt again. I only put that pause in to terrify Tilt, who edits these podcasts, and has very strong opinions about that song. But P. F. Sloan and Steve Barri, the songwriters who also performed as the Fantastic Baggies, had come up with a song for that album called "Where Where You When I Needed You?": [Excerpt: Jan and Dean, "Where Were You When I Needed You?"] Sloan and Barri decided to cut their own version of that song under a fake band name, and then put together a group of other musicians to tour as that band. They just needed a name, and Lou Adler, the head of Dunhill Records, suggested they call themselves The Grass Roots, and so that's what they did: [Excerpt: The Grass Roots, "Where Were You When I Needed You?"] Echols would later claim that this was deliberate malice on Adler's part -- that Adler had come in to a Grass Roots show drunk, and pretended to be interested in signing them to a contract, mostly to show off to a woman he'd brought with him. Echols and MacLean had spoken to him, not known who he was, and he'd felt disrespected, and Echols claims that he suggested the name to get back at them, and also to capitalise on their local success. The new Grass Roots soon started having hits, and so the old band had to find another name, which they got as a joking reference to a day job Lee had had at one point -- he'd apparently worked in a specialist bra shop, Luv Brassieres, which the rest of the band found hilarious. The Grass Roots became Love. While Arthur Lee was the group's lead singer, Bryan MacLean would often sing harmonies, and would get a song or two to sing live himself. And very early in the group's career, when they were playing a club called Bido Lito's, he started making his big lead spot a version of "Hey Joe", which he'd learned from his old friend David Crosby, and which soon became the highlight of the group's set. Their version was sped up, and included the riff which the Searchers had popularised in their cover version of  "Needles and Pins", the song originally recorded by MacLean's old girlfriend Jackie DeShannon: [Excerpt: The Searchers, "Needles and Pins"] That riff is a very simple one to play, and variants of it became very, very, common among the LA bands, most notably on the Byrds' "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better"] The riff was so ubiquitous in the LA scene that in the late eighties Frank Zappa would still cite it as one of his main memories of the scene. I'm going to quote from his autobiography, where he's talking about the differences between the LA scene he was part of and the San Francisco scene he had no time for: "The Byrds were the be-all and end-all of Los Angeles rock then. They were 'It' -- and then a group called Love was 'It.' There were a few 'psychedelic' groups that never really got to be 'It,' but they could still find work and get record deals, including the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, Sky Saxon and the Seeds, and the Leaves (noted for their cover version of "Hey, Joe"). When we first went to San Francisco, in the early days of the Family Dog, it seemed that everybody was wearing the same costume, a mixture of Barbary Coast and Old West -- guys with handlebar mustaches, girls in big bustle dresses with feathers in their hair, etc. By contrast, the L.A. costumery was more random and outlandish. Musically, the northern bands had a little more country style. In L.A., it was folk-rock to death. Everything had that" [and here Zappa uses the adjectival form of a four-letter word beginning with 'f' that the main podcast providers don't like you saying on non-adult-rated shows] "D chord down at the bottom of the neck where you wiggle your finger around -- like 'Needles and Pins.'" The reason Zappa describes it that way, and the reason it became so popular, is that if you play that riff in D, the chords are D, Dsus2, and Dsus4 which means you literally only wiggle one finger on your left hand: [demonstrates] And so you get that on just a ton of records from that period, though Love, the Byrds, and the Searchers all actually play the riff on A rather than D: [demonstrates] So that riff became the Big Thing in LA after the Byrds popularised the Searchers sound there, and Love added it to their arrangement of "Hey Joe". In January 1966, the group would record their arrangement of it for their first album, which would come out in March: [Excerpt: Love, "Hey Joe"] But that wouldn't be the first recording of the song, or of Love's arrangement of it – although other than the Byrds' version, it would be the only one to come out of LA with the original Billy Roberts lyrics. Love's performances of the song at Bido Lito's had become the talk of the Sunset Strip scene, and soon every band worth its salt was copying it, and it became one of those songs like "Louie Louie" before it that everyone would play. The first record ever made with the "Hey Joe" melody actually had totally different lyrics. Kim Fowley had the idea of writing a sequel to "Hey Joe", titled "Wanted Dead or Alive", about what happened after Joe shot his woman and went off. He produced the track for The Rogues, a group consisting of Michael Lloyd and Shaun Harris, who later went on to form the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, and Lloyd and Harris were the credited writers: [Excerpt: The Rogues, "Wanted Dead or Alive"] The next version of the song to come out was the first by anyone to be released as "Hey Joe", or at least as "Hey Joe, Where You Gonna Go?", which was how it was titled on its initial release. This was by a band called The Leaves, who were friends of Love, and had picked up on "Hey Joe", and was produced by Nik Venet. It was also the first to have the now-familiar opening line "Hey Joe, where you going with that gun in your hand?": [Excerpt: The Leaves, "Hey Joe Where You Gonna Go?"] Roberts' original lyric, as sung by both Love and the Byrds, had been "where you going with that money in your hand?", and had Joe headed off to *buy* the gun. But as Echols later said “What happened was Bob Lee from The Leaves, who were friends of ours, asked me for the words to 'Hey Joe'. I told him I would have the words the next day. I decided to write totally different lyrics. The words you hear on their record are ones I wrote as a joke. The original words to Hey Joe are ‘Hey Joe, where you going with that money in your hand? Well I'm going downtown to buy me a blue steel .44. When I catch up with that woman, she won't be running round no more.' It never says ‘Hey Joe where you goin' with that gun in your hand.' Those were the words I wrote just because I knew they were going to try and cover the song before we released it. That was kind of a dirty trick that I played on The Leaves, which turned out to be the words that everybody uses.” That first release by the Leaves also contained an extra verse -- a nod to Love's previous name: [Excerpt: The Leaves, "Hey Joe Where You Gonna Go?"] That original recording credited the song as public domain -- apparently Bryan MacLean had refused to tell the Leaves who had written the song, and so they assumed it was traditional. It came out in November 1965, but only as a promo single. Even before the Leaves, though, another band had recorded "Hey Joe", but it didn't get released. The Sons of Adam had started out as a surf group called the Fender IV, who made records like "Malibu Run": [Excerpt: The Fender IV, "Malibu Run"] Kim Fowley had suggested they change their name to the Sons of Adam, and they were another group who were friends with Love -- their drummer, Michael Stuart-Ware, would later go on to join Love, and Arthur Lee wrote the song "Feathered Fish" for them: [Excerpt: Sons of Adam, "Feathered Fish"] But while they were the first to record "Hey Joe", their version has still to this day not been released. Their version was recorded for Decca, with producer Gary Usher, but before it was released, another Decca artist also recorded the song, and the label weren't sure which one to release. And then the label decided to press Usher to record a version with yet another act -- this time with the Surfaris, the surf group who had had a hit with "Wipe Out". Coincidentally, the Surfaris had just changed bass players -- their most recent bass player, Ken Forssi, had quit and joined Love, whose own bass player, John Fleckenstein, had gone off to join the Standells, who would also record a version of “Hey Joe” in 1966. Usher thought that the Sons of Adam were much better musicians than the Surfaris, who he was recording with more or less under protest, but their version, using Love's arrangement and the "gun in your hand" lyrics, became the first version to come out on a major label: [Excerpt: The Surfaris, "Hey Joe"] They believed the song was in the public domain, and so the songwriting credits on the record are split between Gary Usher, a W. Hale who nobody has been able to identify, and Tony Cost, a pseudonym for Nik Venet. Usher said later "I got writer's credit on it because I was told, or I assumed at the time, the song was Public Domain; meaning a non-copyrighted song. It had already been cut two or three times, and on each occasion the writing credit had been different. On a traditional song, whoever arranges it, takes the songwriting credit. I may have changed a few words and arranged and produced it, but I certainly did not co-write it." The public domain credit also appeared on the Leaves' second attempt to cut the song, which was actually given a general release, but flopped. But when the Leaves cut the song for a *third* time, still for the same tiny label, Mira, the track became a hit in May 1966, reaching number thirty-one: [Excerpt: The Leaves, "Hey Joe"] And *that* version had what they thought was the correct songwriting credit, to Dino Valenti. Which came as news to Billy Roberts, who had registered the copyright to the song back in 1962 and had no idea that it had become a staple of LA garage rock until he heard his song in the top forty with someone else's name on the credits. He angrily confronted Third Story Music, who agreed to a compromise -- they would stop giving Valenti songwriting royalties and start giving them to Roberts instead, so long as he didn't sue them and let them keep the publishing rights. Roberts was indignant about this -- he deserved all the money, not just half of it -- but he went along with it to avoid a lawsuit he might not win. So Roberts was now the credited songwriter on the versions coming out of the LA scene. But of course, Dino Valenti had been playing "his" song to other people, too. One of those other people was Vince Martin. Martin had been a member of a folk-pop group called the Tarriers, whose members also included the future film star Alan Arkin, and who had had a hit in the 1950s with "Cindy, Oh Cindy": [Excerpt: The Tarriers, "Cindy, Oh Cindy"] But as we heard in the episode on the Lovin' Spoonful, he had become a Greenwich Village folkie, in a duo with Fred Neil, and recorded an album with him, "Tear Down the Walls": [Excerpt: Fred Neil and Vince Martin, "Morning Dew"] That song we just heard, "Morning Dew", was another question-and-answer folk song. It was written by the Canadian folk-singer Bonnie Dobson, but after Martin and Neil recorded it, it was picked up on by Martin's friend Tim Rose who stuck his own name on the credits as well, without Dobson's permission, for a version which made the song into a rock standard for which he continued to collect royalties: [Excerpt: Tim Rose, "Morning Dew"] This was something that Rose seems to have made a habit of doing, though to be fair to him it went both ways. We heard about him in the Lovin' Spoonful episode too, when he was in a band named the Big Three with Cass Elliot and her coincidentally-named future husband Jim Hendricks, who recorded this song, with Rose putting new music to the lyrics of the old public domain song "Oh! Susanna": [Excerpt: The Big Three, "The Banjo Song"] The band Shocking Blue used that melody for their 1969 number-one hit "Venus", and didn't give Rose any credit: [Excerpt: Shocking Blue, "Venus"] But another song that Rose picked up from Vince Martin was "Hey Joe". Martin had picked the song up from Valenti, but didn't know who had written it, or who was claiming to have written it, and told Rose he thought it might be an old Appalchian murder ballad or something. Rose took the song and claimed writing credit in his own name -- he would always, for the rest of his life, claim it was an old folk tune he'd heard in Florida, and that he'd rewritten it substantially himself, but no evidence of the song has ever shown up from prior to Roberts' copyright registration, and Rose's version is basically identical to Roberts' in melody and lyrics. But Rose takes his version at a much slower pace, and his version would be the model for the most successful versions going forward, though those other versions would use the lyrics Johnny Echols had rewritten, rather than the ones Rose used: [Excerpt: Tim Rose, "Hey Joe"] Rose's version got heard across the Atlantic as well. And in particular it was heard by Chas Chandler, the bass player of the Animals. Some sources seem to suggest that Chandler first heard the song performed by a group called the Creation, but in a biography I've read of that group they clearly state that they didn't start playing the song until 1967. But however he came across it, when Chandler heard Rose's recording, he knew that the song could be a big hit for someone, but he didn't know who. And then he bumped into Linda Keith, Keith Richards' girlfriend,  who took him to see someone whose guitar we've already heard in this episode: [Excerpt: Rosa Lee Brooks, "My Diary"] The Curtis Mayfield impression on guitar there was, at least according to many sources the first recording session ever played on by a guitarist then calling himself Maurice (or possibly Mo-rees) James. We'll see later in the story that it possibly wasn't his first -- there are conflicting accounts, as there are about a lot of things, and it was recorded either in very early 1964, in which case it was his first, or (as seems more likely, and as I tell the story later) a year later, in which case he'd played on maybe half a dozen tracks in the studio by that point. But it was still a very early one. And by late 1966 that guitarist had reverted to the name by which he was brought up, and was calling himself Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix and Arthur Lee had become close, and Lee would later claim that Hendrix had copied much of Lee's dress style and attitude -- though many of Hendrix's other colleagues and employers, including Little Richard, would make similar claims -- and most of them had an element of truth, as Lee's did. Hendrix was a sponge. But Lee did influence him. Indeed, one of Hendrix's *last* sessions, in March 1970, was guesting on an album by Love: [Excerpt: Love with Jimi Hendrix, "Everlasting First"] Hendrix's name at birth was Johnny Allen Hendrix, which made his father, James Allen Hendrix, known as Al, who was away at war when his son was born, worry that he'd been named after another man who might possibly be the real father, so the family just referred to the child as "Buster" to avoid the issue. When Al Hendrix came back from the war the child was renamed James Marshall Hendrix -- James after Al's first name, Marshall after Al's dead brother -- though the family continued calling him "Buster". Little James Hendrix Junior didn't have anything like a stable home life. Both his parents were alcoholics, and Al Hendrix was frequently convinced that Jimi's mother Lucille was having affairs and became abusive about it. They had six children, four of whom were born disabled, and Jimi was the only one to remain with his parents -- the rest were either fostered or adopted at birth, fostered later on because the parents weren't providing a decent home life, or in one case made a ward of state because the Hendrixes couldn't afford to pay for a life-saving operation for him. The only one that Jimi had any kind of regular contact with was the second brother, Leon, his parents' favourite, who stayed with them for several years before being fostered by a family only a few blocks away. Al and Lucille Hendrix frequently split and reconciled, and while they were ostensibly raising Jimi (and for a  few years Leon), he was shuttled between them and various family members and friends, living sometimes in Seattle where his parents lived and sometimes in Vancouver with his paternal grandmother. He was frequently malnourished, and often survived because friends' families fed him. Al Hendrix was also often physically and emotionally abusive of the son he wasn't sure was his. Jimi grew up introverted, and stuttering, and only a couple of things seemed to bring him out of his shell. One was science fiction -- he always thought that his nickname, Buster, came from Buster Crabbe, the star of the Flash Gordon serials he loved to watch, though in fact he got the nickname even before that interest developed, and he was fascinated with ideas about aliens and UFOs -- and the other was music. Growing up in Seattle in the forties and fifties, most of the music he was exposed to as a child and in his early teens was music made by and for white people -- there wasn't a very large Black community in the area at the time compared to most major American cities, and so there were no prominent R&B stations. As a kid he loved the music of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, and when he was thirteen Jimi's favourite record was Dean Martin's "Memories are Made of This": [Excerpt: Dean Martin, "Memories are Made of This"] He also, like every teenager, became a fan of rock and roll music. When Elvis played at a local stadium when Jimi was fifteen, he couldn't afford a ticket, but he went and sat on top of a nearby hill and watched the show from the distance. Jimi's first exposure to the blues also came around this time, when his father briefly took in lodgers, Cornell and Ernestine Benson, and Ernestine had a record collection that included records by Lightnin' Hopkins, Howlin' Wolf, and Muddy Waters, all of whom Jimi became a big fan of, especially Muddy Waters. The Bensons' most vivid memory of Jimi in later years was him picking up a broom and pretending to play guitar along with these records: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "Baby Please Don't Go"] Shortly after this, it would be Ernestine Benson who would get Jimi his very first guitar. By this time Jimi and Al had lost their home and moved into a boarding house, and the owner's son had an acoustic guitar with only one string that he was planning to throw out. When Jimi asked if he could have it instead of it being thrown out, the owner told him he could have it for five dollars. Al Hendrix refused to pay that much for it, but Ernestine Benson bought Jimi the guitar. She said later “He only had one string, but he could really make that string talk.” He started carrying the guitar on his back everywhere he went, in imitation of Sterling Hayden in the western Johnny Guitar, and eventually got some more strings for it and learned to play. He would play it left-handed -- until his father came in. His father had forced him to write with his right hand, and was convinced that left-handedness was the work of the devil, so Jimi would play left-handed while his father was somewhere else, but as soon as Al came in he would flip the guitar the other way up and continue playing the song he had been playing, now right-handed. Jimi's mother died when he was fifteen, after having been ill for a long time with drink-related problems, and Jimi and his brother didn't get to go to the funeral -- depending on who you believe, either Al gave Jimi the bus fare and told him to go by himself and Jimi was too embarrassed to go to the funeral alone on the bus, or Al actually forbade Jimi and Leon from going.  After this, he became even more introverted than he was before, and he also developed a fascination with the idea of angels, convinced his mother now was one. Jimi started to hang around with a friend called Pernell Alexander, who also had a guitar, and they would play along together with Elmore James records. The two also went to see Little Richard and Bill Doggett perform live, and while Jimi was hugely introverted, he did start to build more friendships in the small Seattle music scene, including with Ron Holden, the man we talked about in the episode on "Louie Louie" who introduced that song to Seattle, and who would go on to record with Bruce Johnston for Bob Keane: [Excerpt: Ron Holden, "Gee But I'm Lonesome"] Eventually Ernestine Benson persuaded Al Hendrix to buy Jimi a decent electric guitar on credit -- Al also bought himself a saxophone at the same time, thinking he might play music with his son, but sent it back once the next payment became due. As well as blues and R&B, Jimi was soaking up the guitar instrumentals and garage rock that would soon turn into surf music. The first song he learned to play was "Tall Cool One" by the Fabulous Wailers, the local group who popularised a version of "Louie Louie" based on Holden's one: [Excerpt: The Fabulous Wailers, "Tall Cool One"] As we talked about in the "Louie Louie" episode, the Fabulous Wailers used to play at a venue called the Spanish Castle, and Jimi was a regular in the audience, later writing his song "Spanish Castle Magic" about those shows: [Excerpt: The Jimi Hendrix Experience, "Spanish Castle Magic"] He was also a big fan of Duane Eddy, and soon learned Eddy's big hits "Forty Miles of Bad Road", "Because They're Young", and "Peter Gunn" -- a song he would return to much later in his life: [Excerpt: Jimi Hendrix, "Peter Gunn/Catastrophe"] His career as a guitarist didn't get off to a great start -- the first night he played with his first band, he was meant to play two sets, but he was fired after the first set, because he was playing in too flashy a manner and showing off too much on stage. His girlfriend suggested that he might want to tone it down a little, but he said "That's not my style".  This would be a common story for the next several years. After that false start, the first real band he was in was the Velvetones, with his friend Pernell Alexander. There were four guitarists, two piano players, horns and drums, and they dressed up with glitter stuck to their pants. They played Duane Eddy songs, old jazz numbers, and "Honky Tonk" by Bill Doggett, which became Hendrix's signature song with the band. [Excerpt: Bill Doggett, "Honky Tonk"] His father was unsupportive of his music career, and he left his guitar at Alexander's house because he was scared that his dad would smash it if he took it home. At the same time he was with the Velvetones, he was also playing with another band called the Rocking Kings, who got gigs around the Seattle area, including at the Spanish Castle. But as they left school, most of Hendrix's friends were joining the Army, in order to make a steady living, and so did he -- although not entirely by choice. He was arrested, twice, for riding in stolen cars, and he was given a choice -- either go to prison, or sign up for the Army for three years. He chose the latter. At first, the Army seemed to suit him. He was accepted into the 101st Airborne Division, the famous "Screaming Eagles", whose actions at D-Day made them legendary in the US, and he was proud to be a member of the Division. They were based out of Fort Campbell, the base near Clarksville we talked about a couple of episodes ago, and while he was there he met a bass player, Billy Cox, who he started playing with. As Cox and Hendrix were Black, and as Fort Campbell straddled the border between Kentucky and Tennessee, they had to deal with segregation and play to only Black audiences. And Hendrix quickly discovered that Black audiences in the Southern states weren't interested in "Louie Louie", Duane Eddy, and surf music, the stuff he'd been playing in Seattle. He had to instead switch to playing Albert King and Slim Harpo songs, but luckily he loved that music too. He also started singing at this point -- when Hendrix and Cox started playing together, in a trio called the Kasuals, they had no singer, and while Hendrix never liked his own voice, Cox was worse, and so Hendrix was stuck as the singer. The Kasuals started gigging around Clarksville, and occasionally further afield, places like Nashville, where Arthur Alexander would occasionally sit in with them. But Cox was about to leave the Army, and Hendrix had another two and a bit years to go, having enlisted for three years. They couldn't play any further away unless Hendrix got out of the Army, which he was increasingly unhappy in anyway, and so he did the only thing he could -- he pretended to be gay, and got discharged on medical grounds for homosexuality. In later years he would always pretend he'd broken his ankle parachuting from a plane. For the next few years, he would be a full-time guitarist, and spend the periods when he wasn't earning enough money from that leeching off women he lived with, moving from one to another as they got sick of him or ran out of money. The Kasuals expanded their lineup, adding a second guitarist, Alphonso Young, who would show off on stage by playing guitar with his teeth. Hendrix didn't like being upstaged by another guitarist, and quickly learned to do the same. One biography I've used as a source for this says that at this point, Billy Cox played on a session for King Records, for Frank Howard and the Commanders, and brought Hendrix along, but the producer thought that Hendrix's guitar was too frantic and turned his mic off. But other sources say the session Hendrix and Cox played on for the Commanders wasn't until three years later, and the record *sounds* like a 1965 record, not a 1962 one, and his guitar is very audible – and the record isn't on King. But we've not had any music to break up the narration for a little while, and it's a good track (which later became a Northern Soul favourite) so I'll play a section here, as either way it was certainly an early Hendrix session: [Excerpt: Frank Howard and the Commanders, "I'm So Glad"] This illustrates a general problem with Hendrix's life at this point -- he would flit between bands, playing with the same people at multiple points, nobody was taking detailed notes, and later, once he became famous, everyone wanted to exaggerate their own importance in his life, meaning that while the broad outlines of his life are fairly clear, any detail before late 1966 might be hopelessly wrong. But all the time, Hendrix was learning his craft. One story from around this time  sums up both Hendrix's attitude to his playing -- he saw himself almost as much as a scientist as a musician -- and his slightly formal manner of speech.  He challenged the best blues guitarist in Nashville to a guitar duel, and the audience actually laughed at Hendrix's playing, as he was totally outclassed. When asked what he was doing, he replied “I was simply trying to get that B.B. King tone down and my experiment failed.” Bookings for the King Kasuals dried up, and he went to Vancouver, where he spent a couple of months playing in a covers band, Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers, whose lead guitarist was Tommy Chong, later to find fame as one half of Cheech and Chong. But he got depressed at how white Vancouver was, and travelled back down south to join a reconfigured King Kasuals, who now had a horn section. The new lineup of King Kasuals were playing the chitlin circuit and had to put on a proper show, and so Hendrix started using all the techniques he'd seen other guitarists on the circuit use -- playing with his teeth like Alphonso Young, the other guitarist in the band, playing with his guitar behind his back like T-Bone Walker, and playing with a fifty-foot cord that allowed him to walk into the crowd and out of the venue, still playing, like Guitar Slim used to. As well as playing with the King Kasuals, he started playing the circuit as a sideman. He got short stints with many of the second-tier acts on the circuit -- people who had had one or two hits, or were crowd-pleasers, but weren't massive stars, like Carla Thomas or Jerry Butler or Slim Harpo. The first really big name he played with was Solomon Burke, who when Hendrix joined his band had just released "Just Out of Reach (Of My Two Empty Arms)": [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "Just Out of Reach (Of My Two Empty Arms)"] But he lacked discipline. “Five dates would go beautifully,” Burke later said, “and then at the next show, he'd go into this wild stuff that wasn't part of the song. I just couldn't handle it anymore.” Burke traded him to Otis Redding, who was on the same tour, for two horn players, but then Redding fired him a week later and they left him on the side of the road. He played in the backing band for the Marvelettes, on a tour with Curtis Mayfield, who would be another of Hendrix's biggest influences, but he accidentally blew up Mayfield's amp and got sacked. On another tour, Cecil Womack threw Hendrix's guitar off the bus while he slept. In February 1964 he joined the band of the Isley Brothers, and he would watch the Beatles on Ed Sullivan with them during his first days with the group. Assuming he hadn't already played the Rosa Lee Brooks session (and I think there's good reason to believe he hadn't), then the first record Hendrix played on was their single "Testify": [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, "Testify"] While he was with them, he also moonlighted on Don Covay's big hit "Mercy, Mercy": [Excerpt: Don Covay and the Goodtimers, "Mercy Mercy"] After leaving the Isleys, Hendrix joined the minor soul singer Gorgeous George, and on a break from Gorgeous George's tour, in Memphis, he went to Stax studios in the hope of meeting Steve Cropper, one of his idols. When he was told that Cropper was busy in the studio, he waited around all day until Cropper finished, and introduced himself. Hendrix was amazed to discover that Cropper was white -- he'd assumed that he must be Black -- and Cropper was delighted to meet the guitarist who had played on "Mercy Mercy", one of his favourite records. The two spent hours showing each other guitar licks -- Hendrix playing Cropper's right-handed guitar, as he hadn't brought along his own. Shortly after this, he joined Little Richard's band, and once again came into conflict with the star of the show by trying to upstage him. For one show he wore a satin shirt, and after the show Richard screamed at him “I am the only Little Richard! I am the King of Rock and Roll, and I am the only one allowed to be pretty. Take that shirt off!” While he was with Richard, Hendrix played on his "I Don't Know What You've Got, But It's Got Me", which like "Mercy Mercy" was written by Don Covay, who had started out as Richard's chauffeur: [Excerpt: Little Richard, "I Don't Know What You've Got, But It's Got Me"] According to the most likely version of events I've read, it was while he was working for Richard that Hendrix met Rosa Lee Brooks, on New Year's Eve 1964. At this point he was using the name Maurice James, apparently in tribute to the blues guitarist Elmore James, and he used various names, including Jimmy James, for most of his pre-fame performances. Rosa Lee Brooks was an R&B singer who had been mentored by Johnny "Guitar" Watson, and when she met Hendrix she was singing in a girl group who were one of the support acts for Ike & Tina Turner, who Hendrix went to see on his night off. Hendrix met Brooks afterwards, and told her she looked like his mother -- a line he used on a lot of women, but which was true in her case if photos are anything to go by. The two got into a relationship, and were soon talking about becoming a duo like Ike and Tina or Mickey and Sylvia -- "Love is Strange" was one of Hendrix's favourite records. But the only recording they made together was the "My Diary" single. Brooks always claimed that she actually wrote that song, but the label credit is for Arthur Lee, and it sounds like his work to me, albeit him trying hard to write like Curtis Mayfield, just as Hendrix is trying to play like him: [Excerpt: Rosa Lee Brooks, "My Diary"] Brooks and Hendrix had a very intense relationship for a short period. Brooks would later recall Little

This week we welcome Jeannie Kendall! Formed in 1969, The Kendall's recorded an album for Stop Records, from which a single was released in 1970: a cover of John Denver's "Leaving on a Jet Plane" (previously a hit for Peter, Paul & Mary). The Kendall's version narrowly missed the top fifty on the U.S. country charts. The duo signed with Dot Records in 1972, and released an album and two singles, "Two Divided By Love", (a cover version of The Grass Roots' pop hit) and "Everything I Own" a cover of Bread's 1972 hit. Eventually, the Kendall's parted with their record label, before signing with the independent Ovation Label in 1977. Their first single for the label, a cover of Kitty Wells hit "Making Believe", made the lower regions of the charts (Emmylou Harris' version of "Making Believe" hit the U.S. Country Charts around the same time). It was the Kendall's 2nd single on Ovation, a "cheating" song called "Heaven's Just a Sin Away", that proved to be their breakthrough. The song topped the country charts and was also a minor crossover pop hit, and won the 1978 Grammy for Best Country Vocal by a Duo or Group. In 1981, after Ovation Records closed, the duo signed with Mercury Records and continued to have hits with "Teach Me To Cheat" and "If You're Waitin' On Me (You're Backin' Up), which both made the country top 10. More hits followed with "Movin' Train" and "Precious Love," which made the top 20. Their last #1 was 1984's "Thank God For the Radio". The Kendall's had many more Top 20 hits in the 80's and early 90's. The also had a supper club in Gulf Shores, Alabama and a theater in Branson, MO. After her fathers death in 1998 Jeannie has pursued a solo career. In 2013, she joined forces with entertainer Carl Acuff Jr. who now opens the show and sing's with Jeannie to recreate that unique sound and those favorite "Kendall's" hits. For more information, check her website: JeannieKendall.com