Podcasts about Larry Adler

February 27, 1944 - At the Holywood Canteen Jack Benny and the gang broadcast for soldiers with guest Eddie Cantor. References include celebrities Hetty Lamarr, Betty Grable, Lana Turner, Dorothy Lamour, Larry Adler, The Hall Johnson Choir, Al Jolson and Frank Sinatra. Plus the song "Cloe".

February 13, 1944 - From March Field Jack tells the story of buying calmels in Egypt last summer. Larry Adler the harmonica player joins him to re-create a portion of thier USO act. Refrences include liquid stockings, Pepsi Cola, Wendel Willkie and FDR, The Andrews Sisters, Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, the songs "Mairzy Doats" and "Deep In The Heart Of Texas".

Support us on Patreonhttps://www.patreon.com/user?u=4279967Jack Benny TV Videocasthttps://open.spotify.com/show/6BDar4CsgVEyUloEQ8sWpw?si=89123269fe144a10Jack Benny Show OTR Podcast!https://open.spotify.com/show/3UZ6NSEL7RPxOXUoQ4NiDP?si=987ab6e776a7468cJudy Garland and Friends OTR Podcasthttps://open.spotify.com/show/5ZKJYkgHOIjQzZWCt1a1NN?si=538b47b50852483dStrange New Worlds Of Dimension X-1 Podcasthttps://open.spotify.com/show/6hFMGUvEdaYqPBoxy00sOk?si=a37cc300a8e247a1Buck Benny YouTube Channelhttps://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=AwrOoc1Q5bllBgQA469XNyoA;_ylu=Y29sbwNncTEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Ny/RV=2/RE=1707891281/RO=10/RU=https%3a%2f%2fwww.youtube.com%2f%40BuckBenny/RK=2/RS=nVp4LDJhOmL70bh7eeCi6DPNdW4-Support us on Patreonhttps://www.patreon.com/user?u=4279967

Fue uno de los grandes virtuosos de la música popular nacional y falleció muy joven, con apenas 50 años, el 23 de octubre de 1977. Intérprete de armónica, cultor de la música de raíz folklórica, del tango y del jazz, de formación intuitiva, tocaba también violín, piano y contrabajo. Nació en Santiago del Estero, el 10 de agosto de 1927; con tan solo nueve años debutó como solista en una radio de su provincia natal y a los veinte años integró como bajista una banda de jazz. Su calidad cruzó las fronteras del país: Hohner, el principal fabricante de armónicas del mundo (de origen alemán), no sacaba un modelo nuevo al mercado si primero no tenía el visto bueno de Díaz. De hecho, fue el creador de un modo argentino de tocar la armónica, realizando notables trabajos tanto como ejecutante como compositor. Fue tal la dimensión de su conocimiento musical, que transitó cómodamente, desde Vivaldi a Jimi Hendrix, desde Ángel Villoldo a Horacio Salgán. En 1944 partió hacia Buenos Aires junto a, su hasta entonces amigo, Domingo Cura quien luego se convirtió en su cuñado dado que se casó con su hermana Victoria Cura, una cantora de bella voz. Fue contratado por un músico de jazz y director de orquestas características, Juan Carlos Barbará, que lo presentó como solista durante una temporada en la Confitería Hurlingham. En 1946, se destacó su presencia en el conjunto folklórico Chacay Manta, que tuvo buena recepción. El notable arpista paraguayo Félix Pérez Cardozo le abrió varias puertas que le permitieron llegar a los estudios de grabación, tras el trajín en numerosas peñas. A comienzos de los ´50 formó un trío junto a su colega de instrumento Luis Saltos, y el guitarrista Norberto Pereyra, a los que se sumó en el canto Victoria. Fue así que comenzaron a proyectarse a países de Latinoamérica hasta llegar a Estados Unidos, donde hicieron varias presentaciones que lo llevaron a compartir escenario con Louis Armstrong y Oscar Peterson. Luego, viajaron a Europa y, en Alemania, arribaron a la ciudad de Leverkusen, donde se encuentra la sede central de la fábrica de instrumentos Hohner, la marca de armónicas utilizadas por Hugo. En ese lugar fue tan grande el entusiasmo que causó con su talento, que pusieron su fotografía en la sala donde ya estaban las de los consagrados, Thielemans y Larry Adler, máximos exponentes, hasta aquel momento, del instrumento. A raíz de este reconocimiento surgieron muchas oportunidades, la más importante, un contrato para grabar con la orquesta de Waldo de los Ríos en España. A continuación se sucedieron sus actuaciones en Japón, en países de Medio Oriente, en las ciudades de Roma y de Milán. Su mayor dedicación fue el folklore, género en el que registró alrededor de setenta títulos repartidos en cinco discos de larga duración. También grabó jazz e incursionó en temas clásicos y el tango tuvo un lugar en su trayectoria y sus discos, con más de 80 versiones. Se destaca su producción con temas de Carlos Gardel y, en especial, sus recreaciones de “Soledad”, “Volver”, “Cuesta abajo” y “Amores de estudiante”. En esta fecha lo recordamos a partir de registros sonoros conservados en el Archivo Histórico de Radio Nacional. FICHA TÉCNICA Música y testimonios 2022-11-18 María Fernanda Heras (Locutora) Hugo Díaz (La Tempranera – La Folklórica) La Barranquera (Juan de Dios Gallo) Hugo Díaz [1954 “Antología Vol 2”] Tu Tremendo Silencio (Oscar Segundo Carrizo) Hugo Díaz y Los Hermanos Ibañez [1957 “Antología Vol 2”] Lección de Besos (Rauno Lehtinen) Hugo Díaz [1965 del Álbum “Antología Vol 3”] 2023-10-01 Claudio Kleiman (Periodista)  podcast Otra Historia (LRA1) La Olvidada (Hermanos Díaz) Eduardo Lagos y Hugo Díaz [1969 del Álbum “Así nos Gusta”] 2023 Franco Luciani (Musico) Hugo Díaz (Rincones de la Música – La Folklórica) Isla Saca (Santiago Cortesi ) Hugo Díaz [1975 del Álbum “En el Litoral”] Recuerdos de Ipacarai (Demetrio Ortiz - María Teresa Márquez)...

June 28, 1945 - Jack Benny, Larry Adler and Martha Tilton starting their USO tour in Paris. They mention the fall of Berlin, the Folies Bergère music hall, the Davis Cup tennis tournament, Bob Hope, Jasha Heifetz, Van Johnson and Duffy's Tavern. Enjoy the show!

May 20, 1945 - In San Francisco Jack Benny is joined by actress Rita Hayworth, Governer Earl Warren and harmonica player Larry Adler.  This is just after the German Surrender. References include Orson Welles, Bing Crosby in "Going My Way", and Jack Benny's movie "The Horn Blows at Midnight".

Christian Marsh joins me on episode 102.Christian is an Australian who plays both the diatonic and chromatic harmonica. Starting out playing diatonic, Christian drew inspiration from players such as Norton Buffalo and Charlie McCoy, absorbing as much harmonica as he could lay his hands on  . He picked the chromatic up a few years later after hearing Toots Thielemans play, and even went on to maintain Larry Adler's harmonicas while he was touring Australia.Christian is a mainstay on the Australian music scene, having 60 album credits sessions to his name, as well as a number of albums with Dr Goodvibe, and several under his own name, with a new release coming out in January 2024. Christian has also performed a concerto written for harmonica, as well as performing at the Sydney Opera House.Links:Christian Marsh website:https://christianmarsh.com.au/Recording credits:https://christianmarsh.com.au/credits/Online tracks:https://www.reverbnation.com/christianmarsh/song/27991199-sven-libaeks-harmonica-concertoVideos:Nun In The Back Seat, with Dr Goodvibe:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cov-WjwvCp4&t=200sRoxanne, live with Dr Goodvibe:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh136n8OQHYLive with Paul Robert Burton trio:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBMiFbRZYSkPodcast website:https://www.harmonicahappyhour.comDonations:If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GBor sign-up to a monthly subscription to the podcast:https://www.buzzsprout.com/995536/supportSpotify Playlist:Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQPodcast sponsors:This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com  or on Facebook or InstagramSupport the show

Visit us for all things DRUMS:  ⁠http://www.drummersonly.co.uk/⁠ Darryn Farrugia is an independent drummer currently based in Melbourne, Australia. Darryn became interested in jazz at 14 and eventually studied at the Victorian College of the Arts under the tutelage of his long-time instructor, Frank Corniola. This was followed by individual lessons in the United States with drummers like Marvin 'Smitty' Smith and Joe Morello. Darryn's credits include the drum chair for the popular TV show 'Hey, Hey, It's Saturday,' as well as sessions for film soundtracks, jingles, and albums, as well as tours and performances. Darryn has performed with Tom Jones, Tina Arena, Lou Rawls, The Commodores, Curtis Steigers, Trisha Yearwood, Ruby Turner, Larry Adler, Joe Cocker, Michael Feinstein, Ray Davies (the Kinks), Ernie Watts, B.B. King, Bonnie Raitt, Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter, Randy Crawford, Eartha Kitt, Justin Robinson, Buddy Greco, Gloria Loring, Roger Daltry, Barry Man. Darryn has also authored two instructional books – Groove Perspectives and The Groove Perspectives Play-along and maintains a busy teaching schedule. We caught up with Darryn while he was in Glasgow on tour with The Cat Empire. Follow Darryn: https://www.darrynfarrugia.com/ https://www.instagram.com/darryn_farrugia/?hl=en ✉️ Email: info@drummersonly.co.uk

Ein Albumtitel, der fast wie eine Parodie klingt, ein Cover, das potenzielle Interessenten eher verschreckt als anzieht... Götz Alsmann stellt Ihnen die merkwürdigste LP im Schaffen dieses Mundharmonika-Virtuosen vor. Von Götz Alsmann.

Forecast - Duffy's Tavern - Looking For An Irish Tenor, w-Gertrude Neisen From-1940 Announcer-Mel Allen Stars-Ed Gardner, John Kirby(and his Orchestra), Larry Adler, Colonel Stoopnagle, F. Chase Taylor, Gertrude Niesen The very first visit down at the tavern.

We schrijven 1938. De 16-jarige Jean Thielemans hoort en ziet Larry Adler mondharmonica spelen in de Hollywoodfilm 'The Sidewalks of London' en zijn fascinatie voor het instrument is geboren. De liefde voor jazz komt pas later, wanneer de familie Thielemans tijdens W.O. II vlucht van Brussel naar Frankrijk en Jeanke voor het eerst jazz hoort over de radio. Eens terug in Brussel, gaat hij op zoek naar meer. Ontdek in deze aflevering hoe Toots op het pad van de jazz terechtkwam en welke rol de gitaar daarbij speelde.

Episode 143 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Summer in the City'”, and at the short but productive career of the Lovin' Spoonful.  Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Any More" by the Walker Brothers and the strange career of Scott Walker. 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, all the songs excerpted in the podcast can be heard in full at Mixcloud. This box set contains all four studio albums by the Lovin' Spoonful, plus the one album by "The Lovin' Spoonful featuring Joe Butler", while this CD contains their two film soundtracks (mostly inessential instrumental filler, apart from "Darling Be Home Soon") Information about harmonicas and harmonicists comes from Harmonicas, Harps, and Heavy Breathers by Kim Field. There are only three books about the Lovin' Spoonful, but all are worth reading. Do You Believe in Magic? by Simon Wordsworth is a good biography of the band, while his The Magic's in the Music is a scrapbook of press cuttings and reminiscences. Meanwhile Steve Boone's Hotter Than a Match Head: My Life on the Run with the Lovin' Spoonful has rather more discussion of the actual music than is normal in a musician's autobiography. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Let's talk about the harmonica for a while. The harmonica is an instrument that has not shown up a huge amount in the podcast, but which was used in a fair bit of the music we've covered. We've heard it for example on records by Bo Diddley: [Excerpt: Bo Diddley, "I'm a Man"] and by Bob Dylan: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Blowin' in the Wind"] and the Rolling Stones: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Little Red Rooster"] In most folk and blues contexts, the harmonicas used are what is known as a diatonic harmonica, and these are what most people think of when they think of harmonicas at all. Diatonic harmonicas have the notes of a single key in them, and if you want to play a note in another key, you have to do interesting tricks with the shape of your mouth to bend the note. There's another type of harmonica, though, the chromatic harmonica. We've heard that a time or two as well, like on "Love Me Do" by the Beatles: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Love Me Do"] Chromatic harmonicas have sixteen holes, rather than the diatonic harmonica's ten, and they also have a slide which you can press to raise the note by a semitone, meaning you can play far more notes than on a diatonic harmonica -- but they're also physically harder to play, requiring a different kind of breathing to pull off playing one successfully. They're so different that John Lennon would distinguish between the two instruments -- he'd describe a chromatic harmonica as a harmonica, but a diatonic harmonica he would call a harp, like blues musicians often did: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Love These Goon Shows"] While the chromatic harmonica isn't a particularly popular instrument in rock music, it is one that has had some success in other fields. There have been some jazz and light-orchestral musicians who have become famous playing the instrument, like the jazz musician Max Geldray, who played in those Goon Shows the Beatles loved so much: [Excerpt: Max Geldray, "C-Jam Blues"] And in the middle of the twentieth century there were a few musicians who succeeded in making the harmonica into an instrument that was actually respected in serious classical music. By far the most famous of these was Larry Adler, who became almost synonymous with the instrument in the popular consciousness, and who reworked many famous pieces of music for the instrument: [Excerpt: Larry Adler, "Rhapsody in Blue"] But while Adler was the most famous classical harmonicist of his generation, he was not generally considered the best by other musicians. That was, rather, a man named John Sebastian. Sebastian, who chose to take his middle name as a surname partly to Anglicise his name but also, it seems, at least in part as tribute to Johann Sebastian Bach (which incidentally now makes it really, really difficult to search for copies of his masterwork "John Sebastian Plays Bach", as Internet searches uniformly think you're searching just for the composer...) started out like almost all harmonica players as an amateur playing popular music. But he quickly got very, very, good, and by his teens he was already teaching other children, including at a summer camp run by Albert Hoxie, a musician and entrepreneur who was basically single-handedly responsible for the boom in harmonica sales in the 1920s and 1930s, by starting up youth harmonica orchestras -- dozens or even hundreds of kids, all playing harmonica together, in a semi-militaristic youth organisation something like the scouts, but with harmonicas instead of woggles and knots. Hoxie's group and the various organisations copying it led to there being over a hundred and fifty harmonica orchestras in Chicago alone, and in LA in the twenties and thirties a total of more than a hundred thousand children passed through harmonica orchestras inspired by Hoxie. Hoxie's youth orchestras were largely responsible for the popularity of the harmonica as a cheap instrument for young people, and thus for its later popularity in the folk and blues worlds. That was only boosted in the Second World War by the American Federation of Musicians recording ban, which we talked about in the early episodes of the podcast -- harmonicas had never been thought of as a serious instrument, and so most professional harmonica players were not members of the AFM, but were considered variety performers and were part of the American Guild of Variety Artists, along with singers, ukulele players, and musical saw players. Of course, the war did also create a problem, because the best harmonicas were made in Germany by the Hohner company, but soon a lot of American companies started making cheap harmonicas to fill the gap in the market. There's a reason the cliche of the GI in a war film playing a harmonica in the trenches exists, and it's largely because of Hoxie. And Hoxie was based in Philadelphia, where John Sebastian lived as a kid, and he mentored the young player, who soon became a semi-professional performer. Sebastian's father was a rich banker, and discouraged him from becoming a full-time musician -- the plan was that after university, Sebastian would become a diplomat. But as part of his preparation for that role, he was sent to spend a couple of years studying at the universities of Rome and Florence, learning about Italian culture. On the boat back, though, he started talking to two other passengers, who turned out to be the legendary Broadway songwriting team Rodgers and Hart, the writers of such classic songs as "Blue Moon" and "My Funny Valentine": [Excerpt: Ella Fitzgerald, "My Funny Valentine"] Sebastian talked to his new friends, and told them that he was feeling torn between being a musician and being in the foreign service like his father wanted. They both told him that in their experience some people were just born to be artists, and that those people would never actually find happiness doing anything else. He took their advice, and decided he was going to become a full-time harmonica player. He started out playing in nightclubs, initially playing jazz and swing, but only while he built up a repertoire of classical music. He would rehearse with a pianist for three hours every day, and would spend the rest of his time finding classical works, especially baroque ones, and adapting them for the harmonica. As he later said “I discovered sonatas by Telemann, Veracini, Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Hasse, Marcello, Purcell, and many others, which were written to be played on violin, flute, oboe, musette, even bagpipes... The composer seemed to be challenging each instrument to create the embellishments and ornaments to suit its particular voice. . . . I set about choosing works from this treasure trove that would best speak through my instrument.” Soon his nightclub repertoire was made up entirely of these classical pieces, and he was making records like John Sebastian Plays Bach: [Excerpt: John Sebastian, "Flute Sonata in B Minor BWV1030 (J.S. Bach)"] And while Sebastian was largely a lover of baroque music above all other forms, he realised that he would have to persuade new composers to write new pieces for the instrument should he ever hope for it to have any kind of reputation as a concert instrument, so he persuaded contemporary composers to write pieces like George Kleinsinger's "Street Corner Concerto", which Sebastian premiered with the New York Philharmonic: [Excerpt: John Sebastian, "Street Corner Concerto"] He became the first harmonica player to play an entirely classical repertoire, and regarded as the greatest player of his instrument in the world. The oboe player Jay S Harrison once wrote of seeing him perform "to accomplish with success a program of Mr. Sebastian's scope is nothing short of wizardry. . . . He has vast technical facility, a bulging range of colors, and his intentions are ever musical and sophisticated. In his hands the harmonica is no toy, no simple gadget for the dispensing of homespun tunes. Each single number of the evening was whittled, rounded, polished, and poised. . . . Mr. Sebastian's playing is uncanny." Sebastian came from a rich background, and he managed to earn enough as a classical musician to live the lifestyle of a rich artistic Bohemian. During the forties and fifties he lived in Greenwich Village with his family -- apart from a four-year period living in Rome from 1951 to 55 -- and Eleanor Roosevelt was a neighbour, while Vivian Vance, who played Ethel Mertz on I Love Lucy, was the godmother of his eldest son. But while Sebastian's playing was entirely classical, he was interested in a wider variety of music. When he would tour Europe, he would often return having learned European folk songs, and while he was living in Greenwich Village he would often be visited by people like Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, and other folk singers living in the area. And that early influence rubbed off on Sebastian's son, John Benson Sebastian, although young John gave up trying to learn the harmonica the first time he tried, because he didn't want to be following too closely in his father's footsteps. Sebastian junior did, though, take up the guitar, inspired by the first wave rock and rollers he was listening to on Alan Freed's show, and he would later play the harmonica, though the diatonic harmonica rather than the chromatic. In case you haven't already figured it out, John Benson Sebastian, rather than his father, is a principal focus of this episode, and so to avoid confusion, from this point on, when I refer to "John Sebastian" or "Sebastian" without any qualifiers, I'm referring to the younger man. When I refer to "John Sebastian Sr" I'm talking about the father. But it was John Sebastian Sr's connections, in particular to the Bohemian folk and blues scenes, which gave his more famous son his first connection to that world of his own, when Sebastian Sr appeared in a TV show, in November 1960, put together by Robert Herridge, a TV writer and producer who was most famous for his drama series but who had also put together documentaries on both classical music and jazz, including the classic performance documentary The Sound of Jazz. Herridge's show featured both Sebastian Sr and the country-blues player Lightnin' Hopkins: [Excerpt: Lightnin' Hopkins, "Blues in the Bottle"] Hopkins was one of many country-blues players whose career was having a second wind after his discovery by the folk music scene. He'd been recording for fourteen years, putting out hundreds of records, but had barely performed outside Houston until 1959, when the folkies had picked up on his work, and in October 1960 he had been invited to play Carnegie Hall, performing with Pete Seeger and Joan Baez. Young John Sebastian had come along with his dad to see the TV show be recorded, and had an almost Damascene conversion -- he'd already heard Hopkins' recordings, but had never seen anything like his live performances. He was at that time attending a private boarding school, Blair Academy, and his roommate at the school also had his own apartment, where Sebastian would sometimes stay. Soon Lightnin' Hopkins was staying there as well, as somewhere he could live rent-free while he was in New York. Sebastian started following Hopkins around and learning everything he could, being allowed by the older man to carry his guitar and buy him gin, though the two never became close. But eventually, Hopkins would occasionally allow Sebastian to play with him when he played at people's houses, which he did on occasion. Sebastian became someone that Hopkins trusted enough that when he was performing on a bill with someone else whose accompanist wasn't able to make the gig and Sebastian put himself forward, Hopkins agreed that Sebastian would be a suitable accompanist for the evening. The singer he accompanied that evening was a performer named Valentine Pringle, who was a protege of Harry Belafonte, and who had a similar kind of sound to Paul Robeson. Sebastian soon became Pringle's regular accompanist, and played on his first album, I Hear America Singing, which was also the first record on which the great trumpet player Hugh Masakela played. Sadly, Paul Robeson style vocals were so out of fashion by that point that that album has never, as far as I can tell, been issued in a digital format, and hasn't even been uploaded to YouTube.  But this excerpt from a later recording by Pringle should give you some idea of the kind of thing he was doing: [Excerpt: Valentine Pringle, "Go 'Way From My Window"] After these experiences, Sebastian started regularly going to shows at Greenwich Village folk clubs, encouraged by his parents -- he had an advantage over his peers because he'd grown up in the area and had artistic parents, and so he was able to have a great deal of freedom that other people in their teens weren't. In particular, he would always look out for any performances by the great country blues performer Mississippi John Hurt. Hurt had made a few recordings for Okeh records in 1928, including an early version of "Stagger Lee", titled "Stack O'Lee": [Excerpt: Mississippi John Hurt, "Stack O'Lee Blues"] But those records had been unsuccessful, and he'd carried on working on a farm. and not performed other than in his tiny home town of Avalon, Mississippi, for decades. But then in 1952, a couple of his tracks had been included on the Harry Smith Anthology, and as a result he'd come to the attention of the folk and blues scholar community. They'd tried tracking him down, but been unable to until in the early sixties one of them had discovered a track on one of Hurt's records, "Avalon Blues", and in 1963, thirty-five years after he'd recorded six flop singles, Mississippi John Hurt became a minor star, playing the Newport Folk Festival and appearing on the Tonight Show. By this time, Sebastian was a fairly well-known figure in Greenwich Village, and he had become quite a virtuoso on the harmonica himself, and would walk around the city wearing a holster-belt containing harmonicas in a variety of different keys. Sebastian became a huge fan of Hurt, and would go and see him perform whenever Hurt was in New York. He soon found himself first jamming backstage with Hurt, and then performing with him on stage for the last two weeks of a residency. He was particularly impressed with what he called Hurt's positive attitude in his music -- something that Sebastian would emulate in his own songwriting. Sebastian was soon invited to join a jug band, called the Even Dozen Jug Band. Jug band music was a style of music that first became popular in the 1920s, and had many of the same musical elements as the music later known as skiffle. It was played on a mixture of standard musical instruments -- usually portable, "folky" ones like guitar and harmonica -- and improvised homemade instruments, like the spoons, the washboard, and comb and paper. The reason they're called jug bands is because they would involve someone blowing into a jug to make a noise that sounded a bit like a horn -- much like the coffee pot groups we talked about way back in episode six. The music was often hokum music, and incorporated elements of what we'd now call blues, vaudeville, and country music, though at the time those genres were nothing like as distinct as they're considered today: [Excerpt: Cincinnati Jug Band, "Newport Blues"] The Even Dozen Jug Band actually ended up having thirteen members, and it had a rather remarkable lineup. The leader was Stefan Grossman, later regarded as one of the greatest fingerpicking guitarists in America, and someone who will be coming up in other contexts in future episodes I'm sure, and they also featured David Grisman, a mandolin player who would later play with the Grateful Dead among many others;  Steve Katz, who would go on to be a founder member of Blood, Sweat and Tears and produce records for Lou Reed; Maria D'Amato, who under her married name Maria Muldaur would go on to have a huge hit with "Midnight at the Oasis"; and Joshua Rifkin, who would later go on to become one of the most important scholars of Bach's music of the latter half of the twentieth century, but who is best known for his recordings of Scott Joplin's piano rags, which more or less single-handedly revived Joplin's music from obscurity and created the ragtime revival of the 1970s: [Excerpt: Joshua Rifkin, "Maple Leaf Rag"] Unfortunately, despite the many talents involved, a band as big as that was uneconomical to keep together, and the Even Dozen Jug Band only played four shows together -- though those four shows were, as Muldaur later remembered, "Carnegie Hall twice, the Hootenanny television show and some church". The group did, though, make an album for Elektra records, produced by Paul Rothchild. Indeed, it was Rothchild who was the impetus for the group forming -- he wanted to produce a record of a jug band, and had told Grossman that if he got one together, he'd record it: [Excerpt: The Even Dozen Jug Band, "On the Road Again"] On that album, Sebastian wasn't actually credited as John Sebastian -- because he was playing harmonica on the album, and his father was such a famous harmonica player, he thought it better if he was credited by his middle name, so he was John Benson for this one album. The Even Dozen Jug Band split up after only a few months, with most of the band more interested in returning to university than becoming professional musicians, but Sebastian remained in touch with Rothchild, as they both shared an interest in the drug culture, and Rothchild started using him on sessions for other artists on Elektra, which was rapidly becoming one of the biggest labels for the nascent counterculture. The first record the two worked together on after the Even Dozen Jug Band was sparked by a casual conversation. Vince Martin and Fred Neil saw Sebastian walking down the street wearing his harmonica holster, and were intrigued and asked him if he played. Soon he and his friend Felix Pappalardi were accompanying Martin and Neil on stage, and the two of them were recording as the duo's accompanists: [Excerpt: Vince Martin and Fred Neil, "Tear Down the Walls"] We've mentioned Neil before, but if you don't remember him, he was one of the people around whom the whole Greenwich Village scene formed -- he was the MC and organiser of bills for many of the folk shows of the time, but he's now best known for writing the songs "Everybody's Talkin'", recorded famously by Harry Nilsson, and "The Dolphins", recorded by Tim Buckley. On the Martin and Neil album, Tear Down The Walls, as well as playing harmonica, Sebastian acted essentially as uncredited co-producer with Rothchild, but Martin and Neil soon stopped recording for Elektra. But in the meantime, Sebastian had met the most important musical collaborator he would ever have, and this is the start of something that will become a minor trend in the next few years, of important musical collaborations happening because of people being introduced by Cass Elliot. Cass Elliot had been a singer in a folk group called the Big 3 -- not the same group as the Merseybeat group -- with Tim Rose, and the man who would be her first husband, Jim Hendricks (not the more famous guitarist of a similar name): [Excerpt: Cass Elliot and the Big 3, "The Banjo Song"] The Big 3 had split up when Elliot and Hendricks had got married, and the two married members had been looking around for other musicians to perform with, when coincidentally another group they knew also split up. The Halifax Three were a Canadian group who had originally started out as The Colonials, with a lineup of Denny Doherty, Pat LaCroix and Richard Byrne. Byrne didn't turn up for a gig, and a homeless guitar player, Zal Yanovsky, who would hang around the club the group were playing at, stepped in. Doherty and LaCroix, much to Yanovsky's objections, insisted he bathe and have a haircut, but soon the newly-renamed Halifax Three were playing Carnegie Hall and recording for Epic Records: [Excerpt: The Halifax Three, "When I First Came to This Island"] But then a plane they were in crash-landed, and the group took that as a sign that they should split up. So they did, and Doherty and Yanovsky continued as a duo, until they hooked up with Hendricks and Elliot and formed a new group, the Mugwumps. A name which may be familiar if you recognise one of the hits of a group that Doherty and Elliot were in later: [Excerpt: The Mamas and the Papas, "Creeque Alley"] But we're skipping ahead a bit there. Cass Elliot was one of those few people in the music industry about whom it is impossible to find anyone with a bad word to say, and she was friendly with basically everyone, and particularly good at matching people up with each other. And on February the 7th 1964, she invited John Sebastian over to watch the Beatles' first performance on the Ed Sullivan Show. Like everyone in America, he was captivated by the performance: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I Want to Hold Your Hand (live on the Ed Sullivan Show)"] But Yanovsky was also there, and the two played guitar together for a bit, before retreating to opposite sides of the room. And then Elliot spent several hours as a go-between, going to each man and telling him how much the other loved and admired his playing and wanted to play more with him. Sebastian joined the Mugwumps for a while, becoming one of the two main instrumentalists with Yanovsky, as the group pivoted from performing folk music to performing Beatles-inspired rock. But the group's management team, Bob Cavallo and Roy Silver, who weren't particularly musical people, and whose main client was the comedian Bill Cosby, got annoyed at Sebastian, because he and Yanovsky were getting on *too* well musically -- they were trading blues licks on stage, rather than sticking to the rather pedestrian arrangements that the group was meant to be performing -- and so Silver fired Sebastian fired from the group. When the Mugwumps recorded their one album, Sebastian had to sit in the control room while his former bandmates recorded with session musicians, who he thought were nowhere near up to his standard: [Excerpt: The Mugwumps, "Searchin'"] By the time that album was released, the Mugwumps had already split up. Sebastian had continued working as a session musician for Elektra, including playing on the album The Blues Project, which featured white Greenwich Village folk musicians like Eric Von Schmidt, Dave Van Ronk, and Spider John Koerner playing their versions of old blues records, including this track by Geoff Muldaur, which features Sebastian on harmonica and "Bob Landy" on piano -- a fairly blatant pseudonym: [Excerpt: Geoff Muldaur, "Downtown Blues"] Sebastian also played rhythm guitar and harmonica on the demos that became a big part of Tim Hardin's first album -- and his fourth, when the record company released the remaining demos. Sebastian doesn't appear to be on the orchestrated ballads that made Hardin's name -- songs like "Reason to Believe" and "Misty Roses" -- but he is on much of the more blues-oriented material, which while it's not anything like as powerful as Hardin's greatest songs, made up a large part of his repertoire: [Excerpt: Tim Hardin, "Ain't Gonna Do Without"] Erik Jacobsen, the producer of Hardin's records, was impressed enough by Sebastian that he got Sebastian to record lead vocals, for a studio group consisting of Sebastian, Felix Pappalardi, Jerry Yester and Henry Diltz of the Modern Folk Quartet, and a bass singer whose name nobody could later remember. The group, under the name "Pooh and the Heffalumps", recorded two Beach Boys knockoffs, "Lady Godiva" and "Rooty Toot", the latter written by Sebastian, though he would later be embarrassed by it and claim it was by his cousin: [Excerpt: Pooh and the Heffalumps, "Rooty Toot"] After that, Jacobsen became convinced that Sebastian should form a group to exploit his potential as a lead singer and songwriter. By this point, the Mugwumps had split up, and their management team had also split, with Silver taking Bill Cosby and Cavallo taking the Mugwumps, and so Sebastian was able to work with Yanovsky, and the putative group could be managed by Cavallo. But Sebastian and Yanovsky needed a rhythm section. And Erik Jacobsen knew a band that might know some people. Jacobsen was a fan of a Beatles soundalike group called the Sellouts, who were playing Greenwich Village and who were co-managed by Herb Cohen, the manager of the Modern Folk Quartet (who, as we heard a couple of episodes ago, would soon go on to be the manager of the Mothers of Invention). The Sellouts were ultra-professional by the standards  of rock groups of the time -- they even had a tape echo machine that they used on stage to give them a unique sound -- and they had cut a couple of tracks with Jacobsen producing, though I've not been able to track down copies of them. Their leader Skip Boone, had started out playing guitar in a band called the Blue Suedes, and had played in 1958 on a record by their lead singer Arthur Osborne: [Excerpt: Arthur Osborne, "Hey Ruby"] Skip Boone's brother Steve in his autobiography says that that was produced by Chet Atkins for RCA, but it was actually released on Brunswick records. In the early sixties, Skip Boone joined a band called the Kingsmen -- not the same one as the band that recorded "Louie Louie" -- playing lead guitar with his brother Steve on rhythm, a singer called Sonny Bottari, a saxophone player named King Charles, bass player Clay Sonier, and drummer Joe Butler. Sometimes Butler would get up front and sing, and then another drummer, Jan Buchner, would sit in in his place. Soon Steve Boone would replace Bonier as the bass player, but the Kingsmen had no success, and split up. From the ashes of the Kingsmen had formed the Sellouts, Skip Boone, Jerry Angus, Marshall O'Connell, and Joe Butler, who had switched from playing "Peppermint Twist" to playing "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in February 1964. Meanwhile Steve Boone went on a trip to Europe before starting at university in New York, where he hooked up again with Butler, and it was Butler who introduced him to Sebastian and Yanovsky. Sebastian and Yanovsky had been going to see the Sellouts at the behest of Jacobsen, and they'd been asking if they knew anyone else who could play that kind of material. Skip Boone had mentioned his little brother, and as soon as they met him, even before they first played together, they knew from his appearance that he would be the right bass player for them. So now they had at least the basis for a band. They hadn't played together, but Erik Jacobsen was an experienced record producer and Cavallo an experienced manager. They just needed to do some rehearsals and get a drummer, and a record contract was more or less guaranteed. Boone suggested Jan Buchner, the backup drummer from the Kingsmen, and he joined them for rehearsals. It was during these early rehearsals that Boone got to play on his first real record, other than some unreleased demos the Kingsmen had made. John Sebastian got a call from that "Bob Landy" we mentioned earlier, asking if he'd play bass on a session. Boone tagged along, because he was a fan, and when Sebastian couldn't get the parts down for some songs, he suggested that Boone, as an actual bass player, take over: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Maggie's Farm"] But the new group needed a name, of course. It was John Sebastian who came up with the name they eventually chose, The Lovin' Spoonful, though Boone was a bit hesitant about it at first, worrying that it might be a reference to heroin -- Boone was from a very conservative, military, background, and knew little of drug culture and didn't at that time make much of a distinction between cannabis and heroin, though he'd started using the former -- but Sebastian was insistent. The phrase actually referred to coffee -- the name came from "Coffee Blues" by Sebastian's old idol Mississippi John Hurt – or at least Hurt always *said* it was about coffee, though in live performance he apparently made it clear that it was about cunnilingus: [Excerpt: Mississippi John Hurt, "Coffee Blues"] Their first show, at the Night Owl Club, was recorded, and there was even an attempt to release it as a CD in the 1990s, but it was left unreleased and as far as I can tell wasn't even leaked. There have been several explanations for this, but perhaps the most accurate one is just the comment from the manager of the club, who came up to the group after their two sets and told them “Hey, I don't know how to break this to you, but you guys suck.” There were apparently three different problems. They were underrehearsed -- which could be fixed with rehearsal -- they were playing too loud and hurting the patrons' ears -- which could be fixed by turning down the amps -- and their drummer didn't look right, was six years older than the rest of the group, and was playing in an out-of-date fifties style that wasn't suitable for the music they were playing. That was solved by sacking Buchner. By this point Joe Butler had left the Sellouts, and while Herb Cohen was interested in managing him as a singer, he was willing to join this new group at least for the moment. By now the group were all more-or-less permanent residents at the Albert Hotel, which was more or less a doss-house where underemployed musicians would stay, and which had its own rehearsal rooms. As well as the Spoonful, Cass Elliot and Denny Doherty lived there, as did the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Joe Butler quickly fit into the group, and soon they were recording what became their first single, produced by Jacobsen, an original of Sebastian's called "Do You Believe in Magic?", with Sebastian on autoharp and vocals, Yanovsky on lead guitar and backing vocals, Boone on bass, Butler on drums, and Jerry Yester adding piano and backing vocals: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Do You Believe in Magic?"] For a long time, the group couldn't get a deal -- the record companies all liked the song, but said that unless the group were English they couldn't sell them at the moment. Then Phil Spector walked into the Night Owl Cafe, where the new lineup of the group had become popular, and tried to sign them up. But they turned him down -- they wanted Erik Jacobsen to produce them; they were a team. Spector's interest caused other labels to be interested, and the group very nearly signed to Elektra. But again, signing to Elektra would have meant being produced by Rothchild, and also Elektra were an album label who didn't at that time have any hit single acts, and the group knew they had hit single potential. They did record a few tracks for Elektra to stick on a blues compilation, but they knew that Elektra wouldn't be their real home. Eventually the group signed with Charley Koppelman and Don Rubin, who had started out as songwriters themselves, working for Don Kirshner. When Kirshner's organisation had been sold to Columbia, Koppelman and Rubin had gone along and ended up working for Columbia as executives. They'd then worked for Morris Levy at Roulette Records, before forming their own publishing and record company. Rather than put out records themselves, they had a deal to license records to Kama Sutra Records, who in turn had a distribution deal with MGM Records. Koppelman and Rubin were willing to take the group and their manager and producer as a package deal, and they released the group's demo of "Do You Believe In Magic?" unchanged as their first single: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Do You Believe in Magic?"] The single reached the top ten, and the group were soon in the studio cutting their first album, also titled Do You Believe In Magic? The album was a mix of songs that were part of the standard Greenwich Village folkie repertoire -- songs like Mississippi John Hurt's "Blues in the Bottle" and Fred Neil's "The Other Side of This Life" -- and a couple more originals. The group's second single was the first song that Steve Boone had co-written. It was inspired by a date he'd gone on with the photographer Nurit Wilde, who sadly for him didn't go on a second date, and who would later be the mother of Mike Nesmith's son Jason, but who he was very impressed by. He thought of her when he came up with the line "you didn't have to be so nice, I would have liked you anyway", and he and Sebastian finished up a song that became another top ten hit for the group: [Excerpt: (The Good Time Music of) The Lovin' Spoonful, "You Didn't Have to Be So Nice"] Shortly after that song was recorded, but before it was released, the group were called into Columbia TV with an intriguing proposition. Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson, two young TV producers, were looking at producing a TV show inspired by A Hard Day's Night, and were looking for a band to perform in it. Would the Lovin' Spoonful be up for it? They were interested at first, but Boone and Sebastian weren't sure they wanted to be actors, and also it would involve the group changing its name. They'd already made a name for themselves as the Lovin' Spoonful, did they really want to be the Monkees instead? They passed on the idea. Instead, they went on a tour of the deep South as the support act to the Supremes, a pairing that they didn't feel made much sense, but which did at least allow them to watch the Supremes and the Funk Brothers every night. Sebastian was inspired by the straight four-on-the-floor beat of the Holland-Dozier-Holland repertoire, and came up with his own variation on it, though as this was the Lovin' Spoonful the end result didn't sound very Motown at all: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Daydream"] It was only after the track was recorded that Yanovsky pointed out to Sebastian that he'd unconsciously copied part of the melody of the old standard "Got a Date With an Angel": [Excerpt: Al Bowlly, "Got a Date With an Angel"] "Daydream" became the group's third top ten hit in a row, but it caused some problems for the group. The first was Kama Sutra's advertising campaign for the record, which had the words "Lovin' Spoonful Daydream", with the initials emphasised. While the group were drug users, they weren't particularly interested in being promoted for that rather than their music, and had strong words with the label. The other problem came with the Beach Boys. The group were supporting the Beach Boys on a tour in spring of 1966, when "Daydream" came out and became a hit, and they got on with all the band members except Mike Love, who they definitely did not get on with. Almost fifty years later, in his autobiography, Steve Boone would have nothing bad to say about the Wilson brothers, but calls Love "an obnoxious, boorish braggart", a "marginally talented hack" and worse, so it's safe to say that Love wasn't his favourite person in the world. Unfortunately, when "Daydream" hit the top ten, one of the promoters of the tour decided to bill the Lovin' Spoonful above the Beach Boys, and this upset Love, who understandably thought that his group, who were much better known and had much more hits, should be the headliners. If this had been any of the other Beach Boys, there would have been no problem, but because it was Love, who the Lovin' Spoonful despised, they decided that they were going to fight for top billing, and the managers had to get involved. Eventually it was agreed that the two groups would alternate the top spot on the bill for the rest of the tour. "Daydream" eventually reached number two on the charts (and number one on Cashbox) and also became the group's first hit in the UK, reaching number two here as well, and leading to the group playing a short UK tour. During that tour, they had a similar argument over billing with Mick Jagger as they'd had with Mike Love, this time over who was headlining on an appearance on Top of the Pops, and the group came to the same assessment of Jagger as they had of Love. The performance went OK, though, despite them being so stoned on hash given them by the wealthy socialite Tara Browne that Sebastian had to be woken up seconds before he started playing. They also played the Marquee Club -- Boone notes in his autobiography that he wasn't impressed by the club when he went to see it the day before their date there, because some nobody named David Bowie was playing there. But in the audience that day were George Harrison, John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Spencer Davis, and Brian Jones, most of whom partied with the group afterwards. The Lovin' Spoonful made a big impression on Lennon in particular, who put "Daydream" and "Do You Believe in Magic" in his jukebox at home, and who soon took to wearing glasses in the same round, wiry, style as the ones that Sebastian wore. They also influenced Paul McCartney, who wasn't at that gig, but who soon wrote this, inspired by "Daydream": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Good Day Sunshine"] Unfortunately, this was more or less the high point of the group's career. Shortly after that brief UK tour, Zal Yanovsky and Steve Boone went to a party where they were given some cannabis -- and they were almost immediately stopped by the police, subjected to an illegal search of their vehicle, and arrested. They would probably have been able to get away with this -- after all, it was an illegal search, even though of course the police didn't admit to that -- were it not for the fact that Yanovsky was a Canadian citizen, and he could be deported and barred from ever re-entering the US just for being arrested. This was the first major drug bust of a rock and roll group, and there was no precedent for the group, their managers, their label or their lawyers to deal with this. And so they agreed to something they would regret for the rest of their lives. In return for being let off, Boone and Yanovsky agreed to take an undercover police officer to a party and introduce him to some of their friends as someone they knew in the record business, so he would be able to arrest one of the bigger dealers. This was, of course, something they knew was a despicable thing to do, throwing friends under the bus to save themselves, but they were young men and under a lot of pressure, and they hoped that it wouldn't actually lead to any arrests. And for almost a year, there were no serious consequences, although both Boone and Yanovsky were shaken up by the event, and Yanovsky's behaviour, which had always been erratic, became much, much worse. But for the moment, the group remained very successful. After "Daydream", an album track from their first album, "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?" had been released as a stopgap single, and that went to number two as well. And right before the arrest, the group had been working on what would be an even bigger hit. The initial idea for "Summer in the City" actually came from John Sebastian's fourteen-year-old brother Mark, who'd written a bossa nova song called "It's a Different World". The song was, by all accounts, the kind of thing that a fourteen-year-old boy writes, but part of it had potential, and John Sebastian took that part -- giving his brother full credit -- and turned it into the chorus of a new song: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Summer in the City"] To this, Sebastian added a new verse, inspired by a riff the session player Artie Schroeck had been playing while the group recorded their songs for the Woody Allen film What's Up Tiger Lily, creating a tenser, darker, verse to go with his younger brother's chorus: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Summer in the City"] In the studio, Steve Boone came up with the instrumental arrangement, which started with drums, organ, electric piano, and guitar, and then proceeded to bass, autoharp, guitar, and percussion overdubs. The drum sound on the record was particularly powerful thanks to the engineer Roy Halee, who worked on most of Simon & Garfunkel's records. Halee put a mic at the top of a stairwell, a giant loudspeaker at the bottom, and used the stairwell as an echo chamber for the drum part. He would later use a similar technique on Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer". The track still needed another section though, and Boone suggested an instrumental part, which led to him getting an equal songwriting credit with the Sebastian brothers. His instrumental piano break was inspired by Gershwin, and the group topped it off with overdubbed city noises: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Summer in the City"] The track went to number one, becoming the group's only number one record, and it was the last track on what is by far their best album, Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful. That album produced two more top ten hits for the group, "Nashville Cats", a tribute to Nashville session players (though John Sebastian seems to have thought that Sun Records was a Nashville, rather than a Memphis, label), and the rather lovely "Rain on the Roof": [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Rain on the Roof"] But that song caused friction with the group, because it was written about Sebastian's relationship with his wife who the other members of the band despised. They also felt that the songs he was writing about their relationship were giving the group a wimpy image, and wanted to make more rockers like "Summer in the City" -- some of them had been receiving homophobic abuse for making such soft-sounding music. The group were also starting to resent Sebastian for other reasons. In a recent contract renegotiation, a "key member" clause had been put into the group's record contract, which stated that Sebastian, as far as the label was concerned, was the only important member of the group. While that didn't affect decision-making in the group, it did let the group know that if the other members did anything to upset Sebastian, he was able to take his ball away with him, and even just that potential affected the way the group thought about each other. All these factors came into play with a song called "Darling Be Home Soon", which was a soft ballad that Sebastian had written about his wife, and which was written for another film soundtrack -- this time for a film by a new director named Francis Ford Coppola. When the other band members came in to play on the soundtrack, including that track, they found that rather than being allowed to improvise and come up with their own parts as they had previously, they had to play pre-written parts to fit with the orchestration. Yanovsky in particular was annoyed by the simple part he had to play, and when the group appeared on the Ed Sullivan show to promote the record, he mugged, danced erratically, and mimed along mocking the lyrics as Sebastian sang. The song -- one of Sebastian's very best -- made a perfectly respectable number fifteen, but it was the group's first record not to make the top ten: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful, "Darling Be Home Soon"] And then to make matters worse, the news got out that someone had been arrested as a result of Boone and Yanovsky's efforts to get themselves out of trouble the year before. This was greeted with horror by the counterculture, and soon mimeographed newsletters and articles in the underground papers were calling the group part of the establishment, and calling for a general boycott of the group -- if you bought their records, attended their concerts, or had sex with any of the band members, you were a traitor. Yanovsky and Boone had both been in a bad way mentally since the bust, but Yanovsky was far worse, and was making trouble for the other members in all sorts of ways. The group decided to fire Yanovsky, and brought in Jerry Yester to replace him, giving him a severance package that ironically meant that he ended up seeing more money from the group's records than the rest of them, as their records were later bought up by a variety of shell companies that passed through the hands of Morris Levy among others, and so from the late sixties through the early nineties the group never got any royalties. For a while, this seemed to benefit everyone. Yanovsky had money, and his friendship with the group members was repaired. He released a solo single, arranged by Jack Nitzsche, which just missed the top one hundred: [Excerpt: Zal Yanovsky, "Just as Long as You're Here"] That song was written by the Bonner and Gordon songwriting team who were also writing hits for the Turtles at this time, and who were signed to Koppelman and Rubin's company. The extent to which Yanovsky's friendship with his ex-bandmates was repaired by his firing was shown by the fact that Jerry Yester, his replacement in the group, co-produced his one solo album, Alive and Well in Argentina, an odd mixture of comedy tracks, psychedelia, and tributes to the country music he loved. His instrumental version of Floyd Cramer's "Last Date" is fairly listenable -- Cramer's piano playing was a big influence on Yanovsky's guitar -- but his version of George Jones' "From Brown to Blue" makes it very clear that Zal Yanovsky was no George Jones: [Excerpt: Zal Yanovsky, "From Brown to Blue"] Yanovsky then quit music, and went into the restaurant business. The Lovin' Spoonful, meanwhile, made one further album, but the damage had been done. Everything Playing is actually a solid album, though not as good as the album before, and it produced three top forty hits, but the highest-charting was "Six O'Clock", which only made number eighteen, and the album itself made a pitiful one hundred and eighteen on the charts. The song on the album that in retrospect has had the most impact was the rather lovely "Younger Generation", which Sebastian later sang at Woodstock: [Excerpt: John Sebastian, "Younger Generation (Live at Woodstock)"] But at Woodstock he performed that alone, because by then he'd quit the group. Boone, Butler, and Yester decided to continue, with Butler singing lead, and recorded a single, "Never Going Back", produced by Yester's old bandmate from the Modern Folk Quartet Chip Douglas, who had since become a successful producer for the Monkees and the Turtles, and written by John Stewart of the Kingston Trio, who had written "Daydream Believer" for the Monkees, but the record only made number seventy-eight on the charts: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful featuring Joe Butler, "Never Going Back"] That was followed by an album by "The Lovin' Spoonful Featuring Joe Butler", Revelation: Revolution 69, a solo album by Butler in all but name -- Boone claims not to have played on it, and Butler is the only one featured on the cover, which shows a naked Butler being chased by a naked woman with a lion in front of them covering the naughty bits. The biggest hit other than "Never Going Back" from the album was "Me About You", a Bonner and Gordon song which only made number ninety-one: [Excerpt: The Lovin' Spoonful Featuring Joe Butler, "Me About You"] John Sebastian went on to have a moderately successful solo career -- as well as his appearance at Woodstock, he released several solo albums, guested on harmonica on records by the Doors, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young and others, and had a solo number one hit in 1976 with "Welcome Back", the theme song from the TV show Welcome Back, Kotter: [Excerpt: John Sebastian, "Welcome Back"] Sebastian continues to perform, though he's had throat problems for several decades that mean he can't sing many of the songs he's best known for. The original members of the Lovin' Spoonful reunited for two performances -- an appearance in Paul Simon's film One Trick Pony in 1980, and a rather disastrous induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. Zal Yanovsky died of a heart attack in 2002. The remaining band members remained friendly, and Boone, Butler, and Yester reunited as the Lovin' Spoonful in 1991, initially with Yester's brother Jim, who had played in The Association, latterly with other members. One of those other members in the 1990s was Yester's daughter Lena, who became Boone's fourth wife (and is as far as I can discover still married to him). Yester, Boone, and Butler continued touring together as the Lovin' Spoonful until 2017, when Jerry Yester was arrested on thirty counts of child pornography possession, and was immediately sacked from the group. The other two carried on, and the three surviving original members reunited on stage for a performance at one of the Wild Honey Orchestra's benefit concerts in LA in 2020, though that was just a one-off performance, not a full-blown reunion. It was also the last Lovin' Spoonful performance to date, as that was in February 2020, but Steve Boone has performed with John Sebastian's most recent project, John Sebastian's Jug Band Village, a tribute to the Greenwich Village folk scene the group originally formed in, and the two played together most recently in December 2021. The three surviving original members of the group all seem to be content with their legacy, doing work they enjoy, and basically friendly, which is more than can be said for most of their contemporaries, and which is perhaps appropriate for a band whose main songwriter had been inspired, more than anything else, to make music with a positive attitude.

This week's episode looks at "Ticket to Ride", the making of the Beatles' second film, and the influence of Bob Dylan on the Beatles' work and lives. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "The Game of Love" by Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by the Beatles. I have read literally dozens of books on the Beatles, and used bits of information from many of them, but the ones I specifically referred to while writing this episode were: The Complete Beatles Chronicle by Mark Lewisohn, All The Songs: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Release by Jean-Michel Guesdon, And The Band Begins To Play: The Definitive Guide To The Songs of The Beatles by Steve Lambley, The Beatles By Ear by Kevin Moore, Revolution in the Head by Ian MacDonald, and The Beatles Anthology. For material on the making of the film, I referred to Getting Away With It by Steven Soderbergh, a book which is in part a lengthy set of conversations between Soderbergh and Richard Lester. Sadly the only way to legally get the original mix of "Ticket to Ride" is this ludicrously-expensive out-of-print box set, but the 1987 remix is widely available on the CD issue of the Help! soundtrack. The film is available on DVD. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript When we last looked at the Beatles, they had just achieved their American success, and had appeared in their first film, A Hard Day's Night. Today, we're going to look at the massive artistic growth that happened to them between late 1964 and mid 1965, the making of their second film, Help!, the influence, both artistic and personal, of Bob Dylan on the group, and their introduction both to studio experimentation and to cannabis. We're going to look at "Ticket to Ride": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Ticket to Ride"] 1964 was a tremendously busy year for the Beatles. After they'd finished making A Hard Day's Night, but even before it was released, they had gone on yet another tour, playing Denmark, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand, though without Ringo for much of the tour -- Ringo had to have his tonsils removed, and so for the first eight shows of the tour he was replaced by session drummer Jimmy Nicol, the former drummer with Colin Hicks and his Cabin Boys, who had played on several cheap soundalike records of Beatles songs. Nicol was a competent drummer, though very different in style from Ringo, and he found his temporary moment of celebrity hugely upsetting -- he later described it as the worst thing to ever happen to him, and ended up declaring bankruptcy only nine months after touring with the group. Nicol is now a recluse, and hasn't spoken to anyone about his time with the Beatles in more than thirty years. After Ringo returned to the group and the film came out they went back into the studio, only two months after the release of their third album, to start work on their fourth. They recorded four songs in two sessions before departing on their first full US tour. Those songs included two cover versions -- a version of "Mr. Moonlight" by Doctor Feelgood and the Interns that appeared on the album, and a version of Little Willie John's "Leave My Kitten Alone" that didn't see release until 1995 -- and two originals written mostly or entirely by John Lennon, "Baby's In Black", and "I'm a Loser": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I'm a Loser"] "I'm a Loser" was an early sign of an influence that had particularly changed Lennon's attitude to songwriting -- that of Bob Dylan. Dylan had been on the group's radar for some time -- Paul McCartney in the Anthology book seems to have a confused memory of seeing Madhouse on Castle Street, the TV play Dylan had appeared in in January 1963 -- but early 1964 had seen him rise in prominence to the point that he was a major star, not just an obscure folk singer. And Lennon had paid particular attention to what he was doing with his lyrics. We've already seen that Lennon had been writing surreal poetry for years, but at this point in his life he still thought of his songwriting and his poetry as separate. As he would later put it "I had a sort of professional songwriter's attitude to writing pop songs; we would turn out a certain style of song for a single, and we would do a certain style of thing for this and the other thing. I'd have a separate songwriting John Lennon who wrote songs for the meat market, and I didn't consider them (the lyrics or anything) to have any depth at all." This shouldn't be taken as Lennon saying that the early Beatles songs were lacking in quality, or that he didn't take the work seriously, but that it wasn't about self-expression. He was trying to do the best work he could as a craftsman. Listening to Dylan had showed him that it was possible instead to treat pop songwriting as art, in the sense Lennon understood the term -- as a means of personal expression that could also allow for experimentation and playing games. "I'm a Loser" is a first tentative step towards that, with Lennon for one of the first times consciously writing about his own emotions -- though careful to wrap those feelings both in a conventional love song structure and in a thick layer of distancing irony, to avoid making himself vulnerable -- and the stylistic influence of Dylan is very noticeable, as much in the instrumentation as in the lyrics. While several early Beatles singles had featured Lennon playing harmonica, he had been playing a chromatic harmonica, a type of harmonica that's mostly used for playing single-note melodies, because it allows the player to access every single note, but which is not very good for bending notes or playing chords. If you've heard someone playing the harmonica as a single-note melody instrument with few or no chords, whether Stevie Wonder, Larry Adler, or Max Geldray, the chances are they were playing a chromatic harmonica. On "I'm a Loser", though, Lennon plays a diatonic harmonica -- an instrument that he would refer to as a "harp" rather than a harmonica, because he associated it with the blues, where it's often referred to as a harp. Diatonic harmonicas are the instrument of choice for blues players because they allow more note-bending, and it's easier to play a full chord on them -- the downside, that you have a smaller selection of notes available, is less important in the blues, which tends towards harmonic minimalism. Diatonic harmonicas are the ones you're likely to hear on country, blues, and folk recordings -- they're the instrument played by people like Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, Charlie McCoy, and Bob Dylan. Lennon had played a diatonic before, on "I Should Have Known Better", another song which shows Dylan's influence in the performance, though not in the lyrics. In both cases he is imitating Dylan's style, which tends to be full of chordal phrases rather than single-note melody. What's interesting about “I'm a Loser” though is contrasting John's harmonica solo with George's guitar solo which follows immediately after: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I'm a Loser"] That's a pure Carl Perkins solo, and the group would, in their choices of cover versions for the next few months, move away somewhat from the soul and girl-group influences that dominated the covers on their first two albums, and towards country and rockabilly -- they would still cover Larry Williams, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry, but there were no more covers of contemporary Black artists, and instead there were cover versions of Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, and Buck Owens, and Harrison switched from the Rickenbacker that had been his main instrument on A Hard Day's Night to playing a Gretsch -- the brand of guitar that Chet Atkins and Eddie Cochrane played.  The consensus among commentators -- with which, for once, I agree -- seems to be that this was also because of the influence of Dylan. The argument is that the Beatles heard Dylan's music as a form of country music, and it inspired them to go back to their other country-oriented influences. And this makes a lot of sense -- it was only fifteen years earlier, at the same time as they replaced "race" with "rhythm and blues", that Billboard magazine chose to rename their folk chart to the country and western chart -- as Tyler Mahan Coe puts it, "after years of trying to figure out what to call their “poor Black people music” and “poor white people music” charts". And Dylan had been as influenced by Hank Williams as by Woody Guthrie. In short what the Beatles, especially Lennon, heard in Dylan seems to have been three things -- a reminder of the rockabilly and skiffle influences that had been their first love before they'd discovered R&B and soul, permission to write honestly about one's own experiences, and an acknowledgement that such writing could include surrealistic wordplay. Fundamentally, Dylan, as much as being a direct influence, seems to have given the group a kind of permission -- to have shown them that there was room in the commercial sphere in which they were now operating for them to venture into musical and lyrical areas that had always appealed to them. But of course, that was not the only influence that Dylan had on the group, as anyone who has ever read anything at all about their first full US tour knows. That tour saw them playing huge venues like the Hollywood Bowl -- a show which later made up a big part of their only official live album, which was finally released in 1977: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Things We Said Today (live at the Hollywood Bowl 1964)"] It was nine days into the tour, on the twenty-eighth of August 1964, that they met Bob Dylan for the first time. The meeting with Dylan is usually called the first time the Beatles ever smoked cannabis -- and that's true, at least if you're talking about them as a group. Lennon had tried it around 1960, and both Lennon and Harrison had tried it at a show at the Southport Floral Hall in early 1962, but neither had properly understood what they were smoking, and had both already been drunk before smoking it. According to a later interview with Harrison, that had led to the two of them madly dancing the Twist in their dressing room, shouting "This stuff isn't doing anything!" But it was at this meeting that Paul and Ringo first smoked it, and it also seems to have been taken by Lennon and Harrison as their "real" first time, possibly partly because being introduced to cannabis by Bob Dylan in a New York hotel sounds a lot cooler than being introduced to it by your support band's drummer in Southport, possibly because it was the first time that they had all smoked it together as a group, but mostly because this was the time when it became a regular part of the group's life. Oddly, it happened because of a misheard lyric. Dylan had loved "I Want to Hold Your Hand", and had misheard "I can't hide" as "I get high", and thus just assumed that the British band were already familiar with cannabis. The drug had a profound effect on them -- McCartney later recalled being convinced he had discovered the meaning of life, writing it down on a bit of paper, and getting their roadie Mal Evans to hold the paper for safekeeping. The next morning, when he looked at the paper, he found it merely said "there are seven levels". Lennon, on the other hand, mostly remembered Dylan playing them his latest demos and telling them to listen to the words, but Lennon characteristically being unable to concentrate on the lyrics because in his stoned state he was overwhelmed by the rhythm and general sound of the music. From this point on, the use of cannabis became a major part of the group's life, and it would soon have a profound effect on their lifestyles, their songwriting, the production on their records, and every other aspect of their career. The Beatle on whom it seems to have had the strongest and most immediate effect was Lennon, possibly because he was the one who was coping least well with success and most needed something to take his mind off things. Lennon had always been susceptible to extremes of mood -- it's likely that he would these days be diagnosed as bipolar, and we've already seen how as soon as he'd started writing personally, he'd written "I'm a Loser". He was feeling trapped in suburbia, unsuited for his role as a husband and father, unhappy about his weight, and just generally miserable. Cannabis seemed, at least at first, to offer a temporary escape from that. All the group spent much of the next couple of years stoned, but Lennon probably more than any of them, and he was the one whose writing it seemed to affect most profoundly. On the group's return from the US, they carried on working on the next album, and on a non-album single designed to be released simultaneously with it. "I Feel Fine" is a major milestone in the group's career in a number of ways. The most obvious is the opening -- a brief bit of feedback which Lennon would always later claim to be the first deliberate use of the technique on a record: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I Feel Fine"] Feedback had, up until this point, been something that musicians generally tried to avoid -- an unwanted sound that could wreck a performance. But among guitarists in London, especially, it was becoming the fashionable sound to incorporate, in a carefully controlled manner, in order to make sounds that nobody had heard before. Jeff Beck, Dave Davies, and Pete Townshend would all argue about which of them was the first to use the technique, but all were using it on stage by the time the Beatles recorded "I Feel Fine". But the Beatles were, if not the first to deliberately use feedback on a record (as I've said in the past, there is no such thing as a first anything, and there are debatable examples where feedback may be deliberate going back to the 1930s and some records by Bob Wills), certainly the most prominent artists to do so up to that point, and also the first to make it a major, prominent feature of a hit record in this manner. If they hadn't done it, someone else undoubtedly would, but they were the first to capture the sound that was becoming so popular in the London clubs, and as so often in their career they were able to capture something that was at the cutting edge of the underground culture and turn it into something that would be accepted by millions. "I Feel Fine" was important to the Beatles in another way, though, in that it was the first Beatles original to be based entirely around a guitar riff, and this was if anything a more important departure from their earlier records than the feedback was. Up to this point, while the Beatles had used riffs in covers like "Twist and Shout", their originals had avoided them -- the rhythm guitar had tended to go for strummed chords, while the lead guitar was usually reserved for solos and interjections. Rather than sustaining a riff through the whole record, George Harrison would tend to play answer phrases to the vocal melody, somewhat in the same manner as a backing vocalist. This time, though, Lennon wrote an entire song around a riff -- one he had based on an R&B record from a few years earlier that he particularly loved, "Watch Your Step" by Bobby Parker: [Excerpt: Bobby Parker, "Watch Your Step"] Parker's record had, in turn, been inspired by two others -- the influence of Ray Charles' "What'd I Say" is very obvious, but Parker had based the riff on one that Dizzy Gillespie had used in "Manteca", a classic early Afro-Cuban jazz record from 1947: [Excerpt: Dizzy Gillespie, "Manteca"] Parker had played that riff on his guitar, varied it, and come up with what may be the most influential guitar riff of all time, one lifted not only by the Beatles (on both "I Feel Fine" and, in a modified form, "Day Tripper") but Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, the Allman Brothers Band, and many, many others: [Excerpt: Bobby Parker, "Watch Your Step"] Lennon took that riff and based a new song around it -- and it's important to note here that "I Feel Fine" *is* a new song. Both songs share the same riff and twelve-bar blues structure, but Lennon's lyric and melody are totally different, and the record has a different feel. There's a blurry line between plagiarism and homage, and to my mind "I Feel Fine" stays on the right side of that line, although it's a difficult issue because the Beatles were so much more successful than the unknown Parker. Part of the reason "I Feel Fine" could be the Beatles' first single based around a riff was it was recorded on a four-track machine, EMI having finally upgraded their equipment, which meant that the Beatles could record the instrumental and vocal tracks separately. This allowed Lennon and Harrison to hold down the tricky riff in unison, something Lennon couldn't do while also singing the melody -- it's noticeable that when they performed this song live, Lennon usually strummed the chords on a semi-acoustic guitar rather than doubling the riff as he does on the record. It's also worth listening to what Ringo's doing on the drums on the track. One of the more annoying myths about the Beatles is the claim made by a lot of people that Starr was in some way not a good drummer. While there has been some pushback on this, even to the extent that there is now a contrarian counterconsensus that says he was the best drummer in the world at the time, the general public still thinks of him as having been not particularly good. One listen to the part Starr played on "I Feel Fine" -- or indeed a close listen to any of his drum parts -- should get rid of that idea. While George and John are basically duplicating Parker's riff, Ringo picks up on the Parker record's similarity to "What'd I Say" and plays essentially the same part that Ray Charles' drummer had: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "I Feel Fine (isolated drum part)"] There are copies of that posted on YouTube, and almost all of them have comments from people claiming that the drumming in question must be a session drummer, because Starr couldn't play that well.  Several of the Beatles' singles for the next two years would feature a heavy guitar riff as their main instrumental hook. Indeed, it seems like late 1964 is a point where things start to change a little for the Beatles in how they conceptualise singles and albums. Up to this point, they seem to have just written every song as a potential single, then chosen the ones they thought of as the most commercial as singles and stuck the rest out as album tracks. But from autumn 1964 through early 1966 there seems, at least on Lennon's part, to be a divide in how he looked at songs. The songs he brought in that became singles were almost uniformly guitar-driven heavy rockers with a strong riff. Meanwhile, the songs recorded for albums were almost all based on strummed acoustic guitars, usually ballads or at most mid-tempo, and often with meditative lyrics. He clearly seems to have been thinking in terms of commercial singles and less commercial album tracks, even if he didn't quite articulate it that way.  I specify Lennon here, because there doesn't seem to be a comparable split in McCartney's writing -- partly because McCartney didn't really start writing riff-based songs until Lennon dropped the idea in late 1966. McCartney instead seems to start expanding his palette of genres -- while Lennon seems to be in two modes for about an eighteen-month period, and not really to venture out of either the bluesy riff-rocker or the country-flavoured folk rock mode, McCartney starts becoming the stylistic magpie he would become in the later period of the group's career. The B-side to the single, "She's a Woman" is, like the A-side, blues-based, but here it's McCartney in Little Richard mode. The most interesting aspect to it, though, is the rhythm guitar part -- off-beat stabs which sound very much like the group continuing to try to incorporate ska into their work: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "She's a Woman"] The single went to number one, of course, as all the group's singles in this period did. Beatles For Sale, the album that came out of these sessions, is generally regarded as one of the group's weaker efforts, possibly because of the relatively large number of cover versions, but also because of its air of bleakness. From the autumnal cover photo to the laid-back acoustic feel of much of the album, to the depressing nature of Lennon's contributions to the songwriting -- "No Reply", "I'm a Loser", "Baby's in Black", and "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party" all being a far cry from "I Feel Fine" – it's not a fun album by any means. I've always had a soft spot for the album myself, but it's clearly the work of people who were very tired, depressed, and overworked. And they were working hard -- in the four months after the end of their American tour on the twentieth of September, they recorded most of Beatles For Sale and the accompanying single, played forty-eight gigs, made TV appearances on Shindig, Scene at 6:30, Thank Your Lucky Stars, Ready Steady Go, and Top of the Pops, radio appearances on Top Gear and Saturday Club, and sundry interviews. On top of that John also made an appearance on Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's show "Not Only... But Also", performing versions of some of his poetry with Moore and Norman Rossington, who had co-starred in A Hard Day's Night: [Excerpt: John Lennon, Dudley Moore and Norman Rossington, "All Abord Speeching"] They did get a month off from mid-January 1965 through mid-February, but then it was back to work on a new film and accompanying soundtrack album. The group's second film, Help!, is generally regarded with rather less fondness than A Hard Day's Night, and it's certainly the case that some aspects of the film have not dated at all well -- in particular the way that several characters are played by white actors in brownface doing very unconvincing Indian accents, and the less than respectful attitude to Hindu religious beliefs, are things which will make any modern viewer with the slightest sensitivity to such issues cringe terribly.  But those aren't the aspects of the film which most of its critics pick up on -- rather they tend to focus only on the things that the Beatles themselves criticise about the film, mostly that the group spent most of the filming stoned out of their minds, and the performances are thus a lot less focused than those in A Hard Day's Night, and also that the script -- written this time by Richard Lester's regular collaborator Charles Wood, from a story by Marc Behm, rather than by Alun Owen -- is also a little unfocused. All these are fair criticisms as far as they go, but it's also the case that Help! is not a film that is best done justice by being viewed on a small screen on one's own, as most of its critics have viewed it most of the time. Help! is part of a whole subgenre of films which were popular in the 1960s but largely aren't made today -- the loose, chaotic, adventure comedy in which a nominal plot is just an excuse for a series of comedy sketches strung together with spectacular visuals. The genre encompasses everything from It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World to Casino Royale to The Pink Panther, and all of these films are meant to be seen on a big screen which allows the audience to appreciate their visual inventiveness, and in a communal audience which is laughing along with them. And when seen in that light, Help! is actually a remarkably entertaining example of the type. Yes, it doesn't hold together as well as A Hard Day's Night, and it doesn't resolve so much as just stop, but structurally it's remarkably close to the films of the Marx Brothers, especially their Paramount films, and it's odd that the Marx comparisons get made about A Hard Day's Night, a slice-of-life film inspired by the French New Wave, and not about the screwball comedy that ends in a confused chase sequence. There is one thing that is worth noting about Help! that is often obscured -- part of the reason for its globetrotting nature was because of the levels of taxation in Britain at the time. For top earners, like the Beatles were, the marginal rate of income tax was as high as ninety-five percent in the mid-sixties. Many of us would think this was a reasonable rate for people who were earning many, many times in a year what most people would earn in a lifetime, but it's also worth noting that the Beatles'  success had so far lasted only two years, and that a pop act who was successful for five years was remarkably long-lived -- in the British pop industry only Cliff Richard and the Shadows had had a successful career as chart artists for longer than that, and even they were doing much less well in 1965 than they had been in 1963. In retrospect, of course, we know that the Beatles would continue to sell millions of records a year for more than sixty years, but that was not something any of them could possibly have imagined at the time, and we're still in a period where Paul McCartney could talk about going into writing musicals once the Beatles fad passed, and Ringo could still imagine himself as the owner of a hairdresser's. So it's not completely unreasonable of them to want to keep as much of their money as they could, while they could, and so while McCartney will always talk in interviews about how many of the scenes in the film were inspired by a wishlist from the group -- "We've never been skiing", "We've never been to the Bahamas" -- and there might even be some truth to that, it's also the case that the Bahamas were as known for their lax tax regime as for their undoubted charm as a tourist destination, and these journeys were not solely about giving the group a chance to have fun. But of course, before making the film itself, the group had to record songs for its soundtrack, and so on February the sixteenth they went into the studio to record four songs, including the next single, "Ticket to Ride": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Ticket to Ride"] While "Ticket to Ride" is mostly -- or possibly solely -- John's song, the record is very much Paul's record. For most of 1964, McCartney hadn't really been pulling his weight in the songwriting department when compared to John -- the handful of songs he had written had included some exceptional ones, but for the most part he hadn't written much, and John had been the more productive member of their partnership, writing almost all of the A Hard Day's Night album, most of the better tracks on Beatles For Sale, and the non-album single "I Feel Fine".  But now, John was sinking into one of his periodic bouts of depression -- he was still writing strong material, and would produce some of the best songs of his career in 1965, but he was unfocused and unhappy, and it was showing in his slowed productivity -- while McCartney was energised by living in London, the cultural capital of the world at that point in time, and having a famous girlfriend who was exposing him to vast areas of culture he had never been aware of before.  I say that "Ticket to Ride" is written by John, but there is some slight dispute about who contributed what to the writing. John's statement was that the song was all him, and that Paul's main contribution was the drum pattern that Ringo plays. Paul, on the other hand, claims that the song is about a sixty-forty split, with John being the sixty. McCartney's evidence for that is the strong vocal harmony he sings -- usually, if there's a two-part harmony like that on a Beatles song, it came about because Lennon and McCartney were in the same room together while writing it, and singing the part together as they were writing. He also talks about how when writing it they were discussing Ryde in the Isle of Wight, where McCartney's cousin ran a pub. I can certainly see it being the case that McCartney co-wrote the song, but I can also easily see the musicianly McCartney feeling the need to harmonise what would otherwise have been a monotonous melody, and adding the harmonies during the recording stage.  Either way, though, the song is primarily John's in the writing, but the arrangement is primarily McCartney's work -- and while Lennon would later claim that McCartney would always pay less attention to Lennon's songs than to McCartney's own, in this middle period of the group's career most of their truly astounding work comes when  Lennon brings in the song but McCartney experiments with the arrangement and production. Over and over again we see McCartney taking control of a Lennon song in the studio and bringing out aspects of it that its composer either had not considered or had not had the musical vocabulary or patience to realise on his own. Indeed one can see this as part of the dynamic that eventually led to the group breaking up. Lennon would bring in a half-formed idea and have the whole group work on it, especially McCartney, and turn it into the best version of itself it could be, but this would then seem like McCartney trying to take over. McCartney, meanwhile, with his greater musical facility, would increasingly not bother asking for the input of the group's other members, even when that input would have turned a mediocre song into a good one or a good one into a great one.  But at this point in their careers, at least, the collaboration brought out the best in both Lennon and McCartney -- though one must wonder what Harrison and Starr felt about having their parts dictated to them or simply replaced. In the case of "Ticket to Ride", one can trace the evolution of McCartney's drum pattern idea over a period of a few months. He was clearly fascinated by Hal Blaine's drum intro to "Be My Baby": [Excerpt: The Ronettes, "Be My Baby"] and came up with a variation of it for his own song "What You're Doing", possibly the most interesting song on Beatles For Sale on a pure production level, the guitar part for which, owing a lot to the Searchers, is also clearly a pointer to the sound on “Ticket to Ride”: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "What You're Doing"] "Ticket to Ride"s drum part is a more complex variation on that slightly broken pattern, as you can hear if you listen to the isolated drum part: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Ticket to Ride (isolated drums)"] Interestingly, Ringo doesn't keep that precise pattern up all the way through in the studio recording of the song, though he does in subsequent live versions. Instead, from the third verse onwards he shifts to a more straightforward backbeat of the kind he would more normally play: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Ticket to Ride (isolated drums)"] The mono mix of "Ticket to Ride", which is how most listeners of the time encountered it, shows much more than the stereo mix just what the group, and particularly Paul, were trying to do.  It's a bass-heavy track, sluggish and thundering. It's also a song that sounds *obsessed*. For the first six bars of the verse, and the whole intro, the song stays on a single chord, A, only changing on the word "away", right before the chorus: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Ticket to Ride"] This obsession with one chord was possibly inspired by soul music, and in particular by "Dancing in the Street", which similarly stays on one chord for a long time: [Excerpt: Martha and the Vandellas, "Dancing in the Street"] We'll be looking more at how soul music was increasingly doing away with chord progressions in favour of keeping to an extended groove on a single chord when we next look at James Brown in a few weeks' time. But in its single-chord focus and its broken drum beat, "Ticket to Ride" is very much a precursor of what the group would do a little over a year later, when they recorded "Tomorrow Never Knows". Of course, it was also around this time that the group discovered Indian music for the first time. There are scenes in the film Help! which feature musicians playing Indian instruments, and George Harrison became fascinated by the sound of the sitar and bought one, and we'll be seeing the repercussions of that for much of the next year. But it's interesting to note that a lot of the elements that make Indian classical music so distinctive to ears used to Western popular music -- the lack of harmonic movement, the modal melodies, the use of percussion not to keep a steady beat but in melodic interplay with the string instruments -- were all already present in songs like "Ticket to Ride", albeit far less obviously and in a way that still fit very much into pop song conventions. The Beatles grew immensely as musicians from their exposure to Indian music, but it's also the case that Indian music appealed to them precisely because it was an extension of the tastes they already had. Unlike when recording Beatles For Sale, the group clearly had enough original material to fill out an album, even if they ended up not doing so and including two mediocre cover versions on the album -- the last time that would happen during the group's time together. The B-sides of the two singles, John's "Yes It Is" and Paul's "I'm Down", both remained only available on the singles, even though the previous film soundtrack had included the B-sides of both its singles. Not only that, but they recorded two Lennon/McCartney songs that would remain unreleased until more than thirty years later. "If You've Got Troubles" was left unreleased for good reason -- a song written for Ringo to sing, it's probably the single worst Lennon/McCartney song ever attempted by the group, with little or nothing to redeem it. McCartney's "That Means a Lot" is more interesting. It's clearly an attempt by McCartney to write a "Ticket to Ride" part two, with a similar riff and feel: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "That Means a Lot"] It even has a sped-up repurposing of the hook line at the end, just as "Ticket to Ride" does, with "Can't you see?" taking the place of "My baby don't care": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "That Means a Lot"] The group spent a couple of sessions on that track, but seem to have given up on it. While it's far from the best thing they did, it's not worthless or unreleasable, and one suspects that they ended up thinking that the track couldn't go on the same album as "Ticket to Ride" because the two songs were just too close. Instead, they ended up giving the song to P.J. Proby, the American singer who had been brought over by Jack Good for the About The Beatles show, and who had built something of a career for himself in the UK with a string of minor hits. Lennon said "we found we just couldn't sing it. In fact, we made a hash of it, so we thought we'd better give it to someone who could do it well". And Proby *could* have done it well -- but whether he did or not is something you can judge for yourself: [Excerpt: P.J. Proby, "That Means a Lot"] Somehow, Proby's version of the song made the top thirty. When the group started filming "Help!", the film was still going under the working title "Eight Arms to Hold You", which absolutely nobody involved liked -- the title was even included on the label of some copies of "Ticket to Ride", but Lennon and McCartney particularly disliked the idea of writing a song to that title. Some have suggested that the plan was to use McCartney's "Eight Days a Week", an album track from Beatles For Sale that had been released as an American single, as a title track, but it seems unlikely that anyone would have considered that -- United Artists wanted something they could put out on a soundtrack album, and the song had already been out for many months. Instead, at almost the last minute, it was decided to name the film "Help!". This was actually close to the very first working title for the film, which had been "Help, Help". According to Lester, "the lawyer said it had already been registered and you mustn't use it so we had Beatles Two and then Eight Arms to Hold You". The only film I've been able to discover with the title "Help, Help", though, is a silent film from 1912, which I don't imagine would have caused much problem in this case.  However, after the group insisted that they couldn't possibly write a song called "Eight Arms to Hold You", Lester realised that if he put an exclamation mark after the word "help", that turned it into a different title. After getting legal approval he announced that the title of the new film was going to be "Help!", and that same day John came up with a song to that title: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Help!"] Lennon later said that the song had started out as a slow, intense, ballad, and he had been persuaded to speed it up in the studio somewhat against his will. The song being performed as an upbeat pop song possibly made it harder for the public to see what was obvious to Lennon himself, that the song itself was a cry for help from someone going through a mental health crisis. Despite the title not being his, the sentiments certainly were, and for the first time there was barely even the fig-leaf of romantic love to disguise this. The song's lyrics certainly could be interpreted as being the singer wanting help from a romantic partner, but they don't actually specify this, which is not something that could be said about any of the group's other originals up to this point. The soundtrack album for Help! is also notable in other ways. George Harrison writes two songs on the album, when he'd only written one in total for the first four albums. From this point on he would be a major songwriting presence in the group. It also contains the most obvious Dylan homage yet, with Lennon impersonating Dylan's vocal style on "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away", recorded three days after "Ticket to Ride": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"]  "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" was notable in another way as well -- it was the first time that a musician other than the Beatles or George Martin was called in to work on a Beatles record (other than Andy White on the "Love Me Do" session, which was not something the Beatles chose or approved of). The flute player Johnny Scott overdubbed two tracks of flute at the end of the recording: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away"] That was a sign of things to come, because in June, once filming had completed, the group went into the studio to continue recording for the non-soundtrack side of the soundtrack album. This was the height of the group's success and embrace by the establishment -- two days earlier it had been announced that they were all to be awarded MBEs -- and it's also the point at which McCartney's new creative growth as a songwriter really became apparent. They recorded three songs on the same day -- his Little Richard soundalike "I'm Down", which ended up being used as the B-side for "Help!", an acoustic country song called "I've Just Seen a Face", and finally a song whose melody had come to him in a dream many months earlier. McCartney had been so impressed by the melody he'd dreamed that he'd been unable to believe it was original to him, and had spent a long time playing it to other people to see if they recognised it. When they didn't, he eventually changed the lyrics from his original jokey "Scrambled eggs/Oh my baby how I love your legs" to something more appropriate, and titled it "Yesterday": [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Yesterday (Anthology 2 early take)"] "Yesterday" was released as a Beatles track, on a Beatles album, but it had absolutely no involvement from John, George, and Ringo -- nobody could figure out how to adapt the song to a guitars/bass/drums format. Instead George Martin scored it for a string quartet, with some assistance from McCartney who, worried that strings would end up meaning something Mantovani-like, insisted that the score be kept as simple as possible, and played with almost no vibrato. The result was a Beatles track that featured five people, but only one Beatle: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Yesterday"] The group's next album would see all the band members appearing on every track, and no musicians brought in from outside the group and their organisation, but the genie was now out of the bottle -- the label "The Beatles" on a record no longer meant that it featured John, Paul, George, and Ringo, but just that at least one of them was on the track and the others had agreed it could go out under their name. This would lead to immense changes in the way the group worked, and we'll be seeing how that played out throughout the rest of the 1960s.

Como creo que a la hora de compartir música, lo mejor es hacerlo con discos que han tenido un significado especial en la historia de la discografía. Esta semana nos fijaremos, explicaremos y escucharemos contenidos de tres: El grabado por el mítico pianista cubano en el 2001, con el titulo de EL ARTE DEL SABOR, el editado en Londres en el 2011 como antología de la leyenda de LARRY ADLER, el músico que consiguió llevar la armónica a las salas de conciertos, y el titulado BACH EN BRASIL, uno de los últimos trabajos de la pequeña orquesta CAMERATA DE BRASIL recreando a Juan Sebatián Bach.

May 27, 1945 - It's the last show of the season before Jack Benny goes on his USO tour in Europe with harmonica player Larry Adler and singer Martha Tilton. Plus bonus portion of June 28, 1945 broadcast of that USO show. References include Winston Churchill's "blood, toil, tears and sweat" speech, Charles Boyer, Fred Allen returning to radio, radio soap operas and the summer replacement Wayne King and his Orchestra.

“Oh, it's such a perfect day ,I'm glad I spent it with you Oh, such a perfect day, just a perfect day Drink sangria in the park, And then later when it gets dark We go home” Let’s spend a Perfect Day together while we listen to some great tuneage on the Sunday Edition of Whole ‘Nuther Thing on the Independent 885 FM and 885fm.org. I’ll be serving up tasty morsels from Gil Scott Heron, Peter Gabriel with Larry Adler, The Faces, King Crimson, Neil Diamond, Jimi Hendrix, Donovan, Jean Luc Ponty, Nina Simone, The Doors, Peter Frampton, Judy Collins, Robin Trower, Taste, Ten Years After, Al Kooper w Steve Stills, Blodwyn Pig, Eric Burdon & The Animals, It’s A Beautiful Day, Fleetwood Mac, John Coltrane, Cactus, Aerial East and Lou Reed…

Songs include: Baltimore Fire, I Don't Want To Set the World On Fire, Fireworks, Swamp Fire, Ritual Fire Dance, Setting the Woods On Fire and I'm Playing With Fire. Performers include: Charlie Poole, Jo Stafford, Leopold Stokowski, Larry Adler, The Ink Spots, Jimmy Dorsey and Donald Thorne.  

Lucille Ball stars in a dramatic, criminal role on “Suspense.” She plays an ambitious woman who won't let anything stand in her way – not even murder. Then, on “The Jack Benny Program,” Jack and the gang broadcast from Corona Naval Hospital. Tonight, they're accompanied by the world-famous (really!) harmonica player Larry Adler, who amazes with his virtuosity.  Episodes   Suspense October 25, 1945 “A Shroud for Sarah” 1:43   The Jack Benny Program November 19, 1944 “From Corona Naval Hospital” 32:24

Django and American Friends . .recordings made in Paris between 1934 and 1940 featuring the great Gypsy guitarist with American and European jazz players . . Bill Coleman, Frank "Big Boy" Goudie, Christian Wagner, Andre Ekyan, Alix Combelle, June Cole, Garnett Clark, Joe Turner, George Johnson, Larry Adler, and Stephane Grappelli --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/john-clark49/support

1993 & 1994: Cher does her second Lori Davis infomercial, gets made fun of on SNL and records with Beavis & Butthead and Larry Adler. All of this and some Cher-themed holiday goodies are included here!

Chromatic player, Antonio Serrano, is the current SPAH harmonica player of the year. And with good reason. Antonio’s father was a great influence on the fledgling harmonica player. And Antonio met Larry Adler at a young age, and performed with him for the first time, at only 13 years of old. Since that time Antonio has made a big splash on the Spanish music scene, not least when he played with flamenco legend Paco de Lucia. He has recorded with many artists and released some albums under his own name, including a tribute to the legendary Toots Thielemans, who he has also performed with. Select the Chapter Markers tab above to select different sections of the podcast (website version only).Links:https://kamalaproducciones.com/portfolio_page/antonio-serranoYouTube:Performing with Larry Adler at age 13:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAamKnAvnNs&feature=youtu.bePerforming with Toots Thielemans:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdoL5SwLqTU&feature=youtu.bePlaying with Paco de Lucia: (Flamenco)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT8-3_fqO4Y&app=desktopPlaying I Feel For You with Chaka Khan:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbLY9QdYADw&feature=youtu.beAntonio playing Rhapsody In Blue: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRulfholtfQ&feature=youtu.beAntonio playing Send In The Clowns from his first album:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM7-xZ4RPkcSPAH seminar:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HOZHIqW5TI&feature=youtu.be&t=14145&fbclid=IwAR0ZdDoToh7yyIqcSQj9oKKATzkuCxfX9Bpusr3mLeMKF311R4FLxUA_OrIAlso check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains some of the songs discussed in the podcast:https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQSponsor website:https://www.lonewolfblues.com

En este capítulo de "PROTAGONISTAS" vamos a dar un repaso a la extensa carrera de Michael Ball, desde mucho antes que acudiera a Eurovisión en 1992 convirtiéndose en un cantante, actor o presentador de televisión que se ha aventurado a probar todo tipo de géneros desde el pop, el rock, el country, el musical, la opereta.... Todo un ídolo en Reino Unido galardonado por la corona inglesa en 2015 como OBE Oficial del Imperio Británico por su servicio dentro del teatro musical. Michael Ball es un referente para los amantes del musical desde que creó el personaje de Marius en "Los Miserables" pero prácticamente un desconocido para el público en general ya que no se ha prodigado en cine más que dentro de Inglaterra donde tiene sus programas en radio o televisión. Espero te guste el programa que hemos preparado 00h 00'00" One step out of time 00h 02'58" Presentación 00h 03'30" Cabecera 00h 04'16" SUS INICIOS 00h 06'26" GODSPELL - Prepare the way 00h 09'09" JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR - Gethsemane 00h 14'59" PHANTOM OF THE OPERA - All I ask of you (con Sarah Brightman) 00h 19'32" SU PRIMER PROTAGONISTA CON LLOYD WEBBER 00h 20'23" ASPECTS OF LOVE - Love changes everything 00h 23'46" ASPECTS OF LOVE - The first man you remember (con Diana Morrison) 00h 27'08" THE MICHAEL BALL SHOW 00h 27'54" Ain’t no mountain high enough (con Dusty Springfield) 00h 30'25" You and I (con Elaine Paige) 00h 33'46" Summertime (con Cher, Larry Adler-armónica y George Martin-piano) 00h 36'46" SU PRIMER SONDHEIM 00h 38'09" WEST SIDE STORY - Maria 00h 41'08" PASSION - No one has ever loved me 00h 44'17" CONCIERTOS HOMENAJE 00h 44'50" LLOYD WEBBER CELEBRATION - The Vaults of Heaven 00h 48'27" CAMERON MACKINTOSH - HEY MR. PRODUCER - Losing my mind 00h 51'51" SONDHEIM TONIGHT - Broadway Baby 00h 55'33" NUEVOS RETOS 00h 56'40" DONMAR ALONE TOGETHER - Medley 01h 01'01" CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG - Hushaby mountain 01h 03'44" SUNSET BOULEVARD - Sunset Boulevard 01h 06'44" RICHARD O'BRIAN, LLOYD WEBBER Y GILBERT & SULLIVAN 01h 08'50" ROCKY HORROR SHOW - I'm going home 01h 12'08" PATIENCE - Am I alone and unobserved? 01h 16'37" THE WOMAN IN WHITE - You can get away with anything 01h 20'22" LA ENO Y LOS OLIVIER 01h 22'33" KISMET - Stranger in Paradise / This is my beloved 01h 27'03" HAIRSPRAY - You can't stop the beat 01h 31'10" SWEENEY TODD - My friends (con Imelda Staunton) 01h 35'10" JERRY HERMAN & CHESS 01h 36'16" MACK AND MABEL - I won't send roses 01h 39'40" CHESS - Anthem 01h 42'40" LES MISERABLES 01h 43'37" Empty chairs at empty tables 01h 46'29" Bring him home 01h 49'36" Stars 01h 52'47" COVID19 01h 53'56" You’ll never walk alone (con Tom Moore y el Servicio Nacional de Salud) 01h 58'02" Despedida 01h 58'40" Blues Brothers - Medley 02h 04'30" Freddie Mercury - The show must go on 02h 08'49" David Bowie - Life on Mars 02h 12'07" John Miles - Music

En este capítulo de "PROTAGONISTAS" vamos a dar un repaso a la extensa carrera de Michael Ball, desde mucho antes que acudiera a Eurovisión en 1992 convirtiéndose en un cantante, actor o presentador de televisión que se ha aventurado a probar todo tipo de géneros desde el pop, el rock, el country, el musical, la opereta.... Todo un ídolo en Reino Unido galardonado por la corona inglesa en 2015 como OBE Oficial del Imperio Británico por su servicio dentro del teatro musical. Michael Ball es un referente para los amantes del musical desde que creó el personaje de Marius en "Los Miserables" pero prácticamente un desconocido para el público en general ya que no se ha prodigado en cine más que dentro de Inglaterra donde tiene sus programas en radio o televisión. Espero te guste el programa que hemos preparado 00h 00'00" One step out of time 00h 02'58" Presentación 00h 03'30" Cabecera 00h 04'16" SUS INICIOS 00h 06'26" GODSPELL - Prepare the way 00h 09'09" JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR - Gethsemane 00h 14'59" PHANTOM OF THE OPERA - All I ask of you (con Sarah Brightman) 00h 19'32" SU PRIMER PROTAGONISTA CON LLOYD WEBBER 00h 20'23" ASPECTS OF LOVE - Love changes everything 00h 23'46" ASPECTS OF LOVE - The first man you remember (con Diana Morrison) 00h 27'08" THE MICHAEL BALL SHOW 00h 27'54" Ain’t no mountain high enough (con Dusty Springfield) 00h 30'25" You and I (con Elaine Paige) 00h 33'46" Summertime (con Cher, Larry Adler-armónica y George Martin-piano) 00h 36'46" SU PRIMER SONDHEIM 00h 38'09" WEST SIDE STORY - Maria 00h 41'08" PASSION - No one has ever loved me 00h 44'17" CONCIERTOS HOMENAJE 00h 44'50" LLOYD WEBBER CELEBRATION - The Vaults of Heaven 00h 48'27" CAMERON MACKINTOSH - HEY MR. PRODUCER - Losing my mind 00h 51'51" SONDHEIM TONIGHT - Broadway Baby 00h 55'33" NUEVOS RETOS 00h 56'40" DONMAR ALONE TOGETHER - Medley 01h 01'01" CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG - Hushaby mountain 01h 03'44" SUNSET BOULEVARD - Sunset Boulevard 01h 06'44" RICHARD O'BRIAN, LLOYD WEBBER Y GILBERT & SULLIVAN 01h 08'50" ROCKY HORROR SHOW - I'm going home 01h 12'08" PATIENCE - Am I alone and unobserved? 01h 16'37" THE WOMAN IN WHITE - You can get away with anything 01h 20'22" LA ENO Y LOS OLIVIER 01h 22'33" KISMET - Stranger in Paradise / This is my beloved 01h 27'03" HAIRSPRAY - You can't stop the beat 01h 31'10" SWEENEY TODD - My friends (con Imelda Staunton) 01h 35'10" JERRY HERMAN & CHESS 01h 36'16" MACK AND MABEL - I won't send roses 01h 39'40" CHESS - Anthem 01h 42'40" LES MISERABLES 01h 43'37" Empty chairs at empty tables 01h 46'29" Bring him home 01h 49'36" Stars 01h 52'47" COVID19 01h 53'56" You’ll never walk alone (con Tom Moore y el Servicio Nacional de Salud) 01h 58'02" Despedida 01h 58'40" Blues Brothers - Medley 02h 04'30" Freddie Mercury - The show must go on 02h 08'49" David Bowie - Life on Mars 02h 12'07" John Miles - Music

The Glory of Gershwin feat. Larry Adler: Peter Gabriel - "Summertime" Sting - "Nice Work If You Can Get It" Lisa Stansfield - "They Can't Take That Away from Me" Elton John - "Someone to Watch Over Me" / "Love Is Here to Stay" Carly Simon- "I've Got A Crush On You" Elvis Costello- "But Not For Me" Cher - "It Ain't Necessarily So" Kate Bush - "The Man I Love" Willard White - "Bidin' My Time" Sinead O'Connor - "My Man's Gone Now" Robert Palmer- "I Got Rhythm" Meat Loaf - "Somebody Loves Me" Issy Van Randwyck - "I'll Build A Stairway To Paradise" Courtney Pine- "Summertime" Escuchar audio

Labour Of Love - The Music Of Nick Lowe : Dar Williams - “All Men Are Liars” Graham Parker - “The Rose Of England" Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers - “Cracking Up” Sleepy La Beef & C.J. Chenier - “Half A Boy And Half A Man” Greg Brown - “Where's My Everything” Marshall Crenshaw -“Television” Joe Clay - “Shting Shtang” Andrea Re - “When I Write The Book” Marshall Crenshaw & Christine Oldham - “Cruel To Be Kind” Charlie Musselwhite - “Faithless Lover” Guy Davis (3) & Levon Helm - “Soulful Wind” Joe Louis Walker - “(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding” Elvis Costello - “Egypt" The Glory Of Gershwin : Larry Adler & George Martin - "Rhapsody In Blue" Escuchar audio

Here is my conversation with French chromatic harmonica player Olivier Ker Ourio. I met Olivier when I was a teenager growing up in Paris and learning how to play the chromatic harp. I always enjoyed listening to his music. In this episode Olivier talks about his inspirations behind his upcoming albums "Singular Insularity", how he write original music, his friendship with Toots Thielemans, his stay in New York City, the importance of being yourself and a lot more!Connect with Olivier: www.kerourio.comFor more episodes please visit: harmonicastudio.yvonnickprene.com Harmonica Studio Podcast features conversations with pro harmonica players from all over the world, hosted by me, Yvonnick Prené.Instagram: instagram.com/HarmonicaStudioFacebook: facebook.com/harmonicastudioDiscover Yvonnick's books: yvonnickprene.com/bookOver the past year, I have produced over 500 step-by-step lessons to help chromatic harmonica players to practice better. Whether you're just starting out or a pro harmonica player I have something for you to work on! Harmonica Studio is THE place to gain directions, encouragements and most of all be inspired to get your harmonica playing to the next level! Try it FREE today at harmonicastudio.yvonnickprene.comDo Enjoy Listening to This Podcast?If you enjoyed this episode help us out by leaving a star rating and review on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. Thanks for your help!Support the showSupport the show (http://harmonicastudio.yvonnickprene.com)

On the Saturday afternoon of June 2, 1928, about 40 boys and girls were on the stage at Baltimore City College high school at 33rd and the Alameda, facing a standing room only crowd. They were here to compete for the title of Best Harmonica Player in Baltimore. The matter would soon be settled— the winner was Lawrence Larry Adler. His win would take him onto the world stage—and back to Baltimore, with a confession.

Here is my conversation with author, composer, diatonic and chromatic harmonica player Winslow Yerxa. Winslow is the author of the best selling books Harmonica for Dummies and Blues Harmonica for Dummies. He is know worldwide for his deep knowledge of harmonica history and techniques. In this episode we are talking about SPAH (Society Fo the Preservation and Advancement of the Harmonica), Larry Adler, How to Breathe properly and a lot more! Connect with Winslow: winslowyerxa.comFor more episodes please visit: harmonicastudio.yvonnickprene.com Harmonica Studio Podcast features conversations with pro harmonica players from all over the world, hosted by me, Yvonnick Prené.Instagram: instagram.com/HarmonicaStudioFacebook: facebook.com/harmonicastudioDiscover Yvonnick's books: yvonnickprene.com/bookOver the past year, I have produced over 500 step-by-step lessons to help chromatic harmonica players to practice better. Whether you're just starting out or a pro harmonica player I have something for you to work on! Harmonica Studio is THE place to gain directions, encouragements and most of all be inspired to get your harmonica playing to the next level! Try it FREE today at harmonicastudio.yvonnickprene.comDo Enjoy Listening to This Podcast?If you enjoyed this episode help us out by leaving a star rating and review on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. Thanks for your help!Support the show (http://harmonicastudio.yvonnickprene.com)

Three more interesting episodes with Jack and the gang.

Three more interesting episodes with Jack and the gang.

Donald Macleod journeys through some of the contrasting sides of Sir Malcolm Arnold and his music Sir Malcolm Arnold was a prolific composer, writing music in many different genres ranging from nine symphonies and over twenty concertos, to chamber music, music for brass bands and nearly one hundred and twenty film scores. These many works for film include classics such as Hobson’s Choice, Whistle Down the Wind, the St Trinian’s films, and The Bridge on the River Kwai for which he won an Oscar. He composed works for some of the very top performers in the music industry including Julian Bream, Julian Lloyd Webber, Larry Adler, Frederic Thurston, Benny Goodman, and collaborated with the likes of Deep Purple and Gerard Hoffnung. His music crossed social boundaries and gave pleasure to so many, and yet his personal life was marred by alcoholism, depression and periods of hospitalization. He’s been described as a larger than life character, outrageous, Falstaffian, Bohemian, and some of the stories which circulated about Arnold have become the stuff of legend. Across the episode Donald Macleod traces Sir Malcolm Arnold’s life through exploring five different influences upon the composer’s music, from his love of Cornwall and Ireland, to his own mental and emotional wellbeing. Music featured: The Belles of St Trinian’s (Prelude) Symphony No 2, Op 40 (Lento) String Quartet No 1, Op 23 Clarinet Sonatina, Op 29 English Dances Set 1, Op 27 Three Shanties, Op 4 (Allegro vivace) Four Cornish Dances, Op 91 Fantasy for Guitar, Op 107 Symphony No 8, Op 124 (Allegro) Philharmonic Concerto, Op 120 Suite Bourgeoise for flute, oboe and piano (Tango) Concerto for Organ and Orchestra, Op 47 A Grand Grand Overture, Op 57 Symphony No 4, Op 71 (Allegro) Concerto for Two Pianos (3 Hands), Op 104 The Padstow Lifeboat, Op 94 Divertimento for flute, oboe and clarinet, Op 37 Little Suite No 1, Op 53 Fantasy for Brass Band, Op 114 Concerto for Two Violins, Op 77 Hobson’s Choice (Overture) The Sound Barrier Five Blake Songs, Op 66 Symphony No 5, Op 74 Presented by Donald Macleod Produced by Luke Whitlock for BBC Wales For full tracklistings, including artist and recording details, and to listen to the pieces featured in full (for 30 days after broadcast) head to the series page for Malcolm Arnold https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b8hm And you can delve into the A-Z of all the composers we’ve featured on Composer of the Week here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3cjHdZlXwL7W41XGB77X3S0/composers-a-to-z

Jacob Gershowitz hijo de emigrantes judíos llegados desde Rusia que americanizaron su apellido por Gershwin y cambiaron su nombre el de George. Desde pequeño asombró a sus padres con su habilidad natural hacia la música comenzando a trabajar como pianista a los 15 años en una editora de canciones. A los 21 años logró su primer gran éxito con su canción Sweeney. Tras componer con otros letristas en 1924 comenzó a trabajar con su hermano Ira con el que escribiría musicales como LADY BE GOOD, que estrenaron en Broadway Fred Astaire y su hermana Adele. George compuso su obra clásica más popular Rhapsody in blue, que orquestó Ferde Grofé, autor de la famosa Suite del Gran Cañón. Gershwin compuso An American in Paris que estrenó en 1928 en el Carneggie Hall, convirtiéndose en todo un éxito. Con su hermano seguía escribiendo musicales que repasaremos en la siguiente playlist que dedicaremos a las canciones de los Gershwin para musicales de Broadway. En este primer programa nos centraremos en uno de los pocos  compositores que triunfó tanto en Broadway como en los auditorios de música clásica combinando el jazz con el sinfonismo y la música popular. En esta selección hemos incluido piezas como la Rhapsody in blue o An American in Paris, oberturas, preludios, suites y ballets de composiciones para el cine y para musicales contando con  colaboradores de lujo como George Martin, Larry Adler con su armónica, el violín de Joshua Bell, el piano de John Williams con la London Symphony Orchestra,  John Maucery con la Hollywood Bowl Orchestra o Johnny Green con la MGM orchestra. Espero os guste 00h 00'00" Presentación 00h 03'19" Cabecera 00h 03'55" Rhapsopy in blue 00h 12'15" An American in London (A damsel in distress) 00h 22'57" Watch your step - final ballet (Shall we dance) 00h 34'51" Stiff upper lip (A damsel in distress) 00h 43'10" Girl crazy (Overture) 00h 48'26" Of thee I sing (Prelude) 00h 53'18" Tip-toes (Overture) 00h 58'00" Primrose (Overture) 01h 03'36" Oh, Kay! (Overture) 01h 10'14" Porgy and Bess (Fantasy for violin & orchestra) 01h 30'35" An American in Paris (Ballet) 01h 47'13" I got rhythm 01h 51'27" Embraceable you 01h 55'36" Nice work if you can get it 01h 59'12" Liza 02h 03'01" But not for me 02h 07'15" Sweet and low-down 02h 10'45" Our love is here to stay 02h 14'25" Ambulatory Suite 02h 21'39" Three preludes En la siguiente playlist tendremos algunas de las canciones más conocidas de los hermanos George & Ira Gershwin con un buen puñado de intérpretes que siguen encontrando inspiración en sus melodías.

Jacob Gershowitz hijo de emigrantes judíos llegados desde Rusia que americanizaron su apellido por Gershwin y cambiaron su nombre el de George. Desde pequeño asombró a sus padres con su habilidad natural hacia la música comenzando a trabajar como pianista a los 15 años en una editora de canciones. A los 21 años logró su primer gran éxito con su canción Sweeney. Tras componer con otros letristas en 1924 comenzó a trabajar con su hermano Ira con el que escribiría musicales como LADY BE GOOD, que estrenaron en Broadway Fred Astaire y su hermana Adele. George compuso su obra clásica más popular Rhapsody in blue, que orquestó Ferde Grofé, autor de la famosa Suite del Gran Cañón. Gershwin compuso An American in Paris que estrenó en 1928 en el Carneggie Hall, convirtiéndose en todo un éxito. Con su hermano seguía escribiendo musicales que repasaremos en la siguiente playlist que dedicaremos a las canciones de los Gershwin para musicales de Broadway. En este primer programa nos centraremos en uno de los pocos  compositores que triunfó tanto en Broadway como en los auditorios de música clásica combinando el jazz con el sinfonismo y la música popular. En esta selección hemos incluido piezas como la Rhapsody in blue o An American in Paris, oberturas, preludios, suites y ballets de composiciones para el cine y para musicales contando con  colaboradores de lujo como George Martin, Larry Adler con su armónica, el violín de Joshua Bell, el piano de John Williams con la London Symphony Orchestra,  John Maucery con la Hollywood Bowl Orchestra o Johnny Green con la MGM orchestra. Espero os guste 00h 00'00" Presentación 00h 03'19" Cabecera 00h 03'55" Rhapsopy in blue 00h 12'15" An American in London (A damsel in distress) 00h 22'57" Watch your step - final ballet (Shall we dance) 00h 34'51" Stiff upper lip (A damsel in distress) 00h 43'10" Girl crazy (Overture) 00h 48'26" Of thee I sing (Prelude) 00h 53'18" Tip-toes (Overture) 00h 58'00" Primrose (Overture) 01h 03'36" Oh, Kay! (Overture) 01h 10'14" Porgy and Bess (Fantasy for violin & orchestra) 01h 30'35" An American in Paris (Ballet) 01h 47'13" I got rhythm 01h 51'27" Embraceable you 01h 55'36" Nice work if you can get it 01h 59'12" Liza 02h 03'01" But not for me 02h 07'15" Sweet and low-down 02h 10'45" Our love is here to stay 02h 14'25" Ambulatory Suite 02h 21'39" Three preludes En la siguiente playlist tendremos algunas de las canciones más conocidas de los hermanos George & Ira Gershwin con un buen puñado de intérpretes que siguen encontrando inspiración en sus melodías.

Do you remember your dreams wholesale? Wait, that's another story all together. Are you sure you remember exactly what happens? Larry Adler isn't. Article that I mentioned: http://www.thejournal.ie/fake-news-influence-eighth-referendum-survey-4049468-Jun2018/?amp=1&__twitter_impression=true @rantwhile Rantwhile@gmail.com

Jordi Ballester, music

Larry Adler

Hollywood Canteen With Eddie Cantor And Larry Adler 2-27-44 Domain http://oldtimeradiodvd.com

Jack Benny Show Hollywood Canteen With Eddie Cantor And Larry Adler 2-27-44 Public Domain http://oldtimeradiodvd.com

Songs include: You Go to My Head, At the Jazz Band Ball, Sing Sing Sing, Body and Soul, Jungle Blues, Begin the Beguine and Texas Shuffle. Artists include: Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Billie Holiday, Jelly Roll Morton, Thomas "Fats" Waller, Larry Adler, Count Basie and Bobby Hackett.

The Return of Sleepy Lips Dupree and the introduction of Chong E. Bong. These old coots bring 7 songs from "back in the day" about weed. Back when they spelled that shit with a mutha fucking H! Join us as we sit back and let the smoke roll. Hear hits by such artists as Buster Baily, Fats Waller, The Harlem Hamfats and even the world renowned Larry Adler! Puff puff pass, always to the left.

Amelia Gamoneda nos guía por las páginas sobre su propia niñez de Antonio Gamoneda, su padre, de las que ella ha preparado una antología para la editorial Calambur.viñetas musicales: Larry Adler interpreta a Gershwin.

Genevieve, oh Genevieve, why must you be so fickle. Breaking down every few miles. It’s only 60 miles from London to Brighton but in these turn of the 20th century cars it feels more like 600! Hijinks and pranks ensue along the way. Directed by Henry Cornelius, with some sweet mouth organ tunes provided by Larry Adler, starring Dinah Sheridan, John Greyson, Kay Kendall and Kenneth More. It’s part travel film, part slapstick comedy and part commentary on post World War II London. All in all a rollicking good time! Enjoy!

In a John Hannam Archive, John meets LARRY ADLER, the world's greatest mouth organ player. #harmonica #LarryAdler #mouthorgan #RhapsodyInBlue #chromaticharmonica #Sting #RobertPalmer #CarlySimon

Virtuoso of the "mouth organ," Larry Adler passed away today in 2001.  A master of both popular and classical repertoire, he remains largely unknown.   Find out why on today's "A Day in the Life." Subscribe to our podcast and never miss a day!

Alternate versions of the same song.  Songs include: Runnin Wild, Tiger Rag, Open the Door Richard, Caravan and San Antonio Rose. Performers include: Art Tatum, Benny Goodman, Bob Wills, Louis Jordan, Bing Crosby, Larry Adler, Sy Oliver and Les Paul & Mary Ford.

Musicians born 100 years ago this year, including: Ernest Tubb, Dorothy Lamour, Sonny Boy Williamson, Larry Adler, Erskine Hawkins, Rafael Kubelik, Billy Eckstine and Hank Snow.  Songs include: The Man I Love, I'm Moving On, Waiting For a Train, Legends, Tuxedo Junction and My Cabin in Caroline.

شماره پنجم، لری ادلر

Classical music gets the swing treatment. Songs include; My Reverie, Prelude and Fugue, Bounce of the Sugar Plum Fairy and Beethoven riffs. Performers include: John Kirby, Larry Adler, Larry Clinton, Pat Flowers and Hazel Scott.

Early 20th Century harmonica greats, including: Sonny Terry, Larry Adler, Sonny Boy Williamson #1, DeFord Bailey and Gwen Foster. Songs include: Sloppy Drunk Blues, I Love My Baby, No More Good Water and I Got Rhythm.