Podcasts about little bird told me

L'épisode de cette semaine se penche sur "Twist and Shout" des Isley Brothers et sur les débuts de la carrière de Bert Berns. Si certains d'entre vous se demande qui c'est…. C'est un songwriter et producteur responsable de titre comme Everybody need somebody,  "Piece of My Heart", "Brown Eyed Girl" et "Under the Boardwalk". Et….. Twist and shout bien sur….. The Isley Brothers, "Twist and Shout" The Isley Brothers, "Standing on the DanceFloor" The Isley Brothers, "The Snake" Jerry Butler, "Make it Easy on Yourself" The Five Pearls, "Please Let Me Know" Dave "Baby" Cortez, "The Happy Organ" Ray Peterson, "Corrina, Corrina" The Top Notes, "Hearts of Stone" Ersel Hickey, "Bluebirds Over the Mountain" Bert and Bill Giant, “The Gettysburg Address” Bert Berns, "The Legend of the Alamo" LaVern Baker, "A Little Bird Told Me" Austin Taylor, "Push Push" The Top Notes, "Twist and Shout" The Jarmels, "A Little Bit of Soap" Russell Byrd, "You'd Better Come Home" Russell Byrd, "Nights of Mexico" Solomon Burke, "Just Out of Reach" Solomon Burke, "Cry to Me" The Isley Brothers, "Twist and Shout" The Contours, "Do You Love Me" Jan et Dean, "Linda" The Isley Brothers, "Twistin' With Linda" The Isley Brothers, "Nobody But Me" The Isley Brothers, "Surf and Shout" The Isley Brothers, "Who's That Lady ?" The Isley Brothers, "Testify" Don Covay and the Goodtimers, "Mercy, Mercy" Little Richard, "I Don't Know What You've Got But It's Got Me" Les Beatles, "Twist and Shout"  

NEWS SOURCES: Twitch testing peer-to-peer technology (AMONG YOUR PEERS) https://esportsgen.com/twitch-testing-peer-to-peer-technology-in-south-korea-check-out-the-details/ https://www.sportskeeda.com/esports/news-twitch-testing-peer-to-peer-technology-korea-despite-potential-privacy-concerns Leaked TimeSpy benchmarks show RTX 4070 and 4080 results (HOW MUCH CAN YOU BENCH?) https://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4080-rtx-4070-expected-3dmark-performance-benchmark-revealed/ https://www.tomshardware.com/news/timespy-rtx-4080-faster-3090-ti https://twitter.com/kopite7kimi/status/1553003215544672258 https://twitter.com/kopite7kimi/status/1549045512212742144 https://www.tomshardware.com/news/geforce-rtx-40-series-flagship-gpu-may-hit-800w-power-limit https://twitter.com/kopite7kimi/status/1553294155543359488 Sapphire rapids (Sapphire Slow-ids) https://game-news24.com/2022/08/01/intel-sapphire-rapids-server-processors-delayed-until-2023/#:~:text=A%20date%20of%20release%20for,E4%20and%20the%20actual%20E5. https://wccftech.com/intel-sapphire-rapids-xeon-cpu-production-woes-moves-launch-to-early-2023/ Samsung has a new feature that will hide your pics during a phone repair (CARE TO REPAIR) https://www.engadget.com/samsung-introduces-repair-mode-143743861.html https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/29/23284292/samsung-repair-mode-protect-personal-data-accounts-messages-pictures-korea-galaxy-s21 Twitter likely to allow posting images, videos in one tweet soon (A LITTLE BIRD TOLD ME) https://www.canindia.com/twitter-may-soon-allow-posting-images-videos-in-one-tweet/ https://www.business-standard.com/article/technology/twitter-likely-to-allow-posting-images-videos-in-one-tweet-soon-122073000144_1.html YouTube's Added a New Option to Cut Your Long Form Videos into Shorts (WHO LIKES SHORT SHORTS) https://www.pcmag.com/news/youtube-is-making-it-easier-for-channels-to-post-shorts https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/youtubes-added-a-new-option-to-cut-your-long-form-videos-into-shorts/628416/ China's uncontrolled rocket crashes down over the Indian Ocean (SPACE JUNK OVERHEAD) https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/30/23285239/china-uncontrolled-rocket-crashes-down-indian-ocean-long-march-5b-borneo https://www.space.com/chinese-long-march-5b-rocket-space-debris-crash https://time.com/6202364/chinese-space-rocket-debris-crashes-back-earth-ocean/ Indonesia bans access to Steam, Epic Games, PayPal, and more (TERMS AND CONDITIONS APPLY) https://paperwriter.ca/indonesia-requires-formal-registration-of-tech-and-gaming-companies-niko https://linustechtips.com/topic/1445816-indonesia-urged-tech-companies-to-register-under-new-licensing-rules-issued-inspection-and-ban-warning-to-those-who-didnt-register-update/ https://mobgaze.com/index.php/2022/07/31/indonesia-urges-tech-platforms-to-sign-up-to-new-licensing-rules-or-risk-being-blocked/

Drive-By Truckers "Dragon Pants"Elvis Costello & The Attractions "Uncomplicated"Howlin' Wolf "I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline)"Danny Barker "Ham & Eggs"Charlie Parr "Cheap Wine"Superchunk "Kicked In"Amy Helm "Didn't It Rain"Jack White "Sittin' On Top of The World"Billie Holiday "Sugar"ARMCHAIR MARTIAN "Swingin' w/ Jesus"Johnny Cash "Get Rhythm"Two Cow Garage "My Concern"The Jam "Sounds from the Street"Chisel "Theme For A Pharmacist"Precious Bryant "My Chauffeur"Bob Dylan "Delia"Joan Shelley "Jenny Come In"Lucero "When You Decided To Leave"John R. Miller "Lookin' Over My Shoulder"Billie Jo Spears "I Don't Wanna Play House"Bull Moose Jackson & His Buffalo Bearcats "I Know Who Threw the Whiskey in the Well!"Cedric Burnside "Keep On Pushing"Valerie June "Call Me A Fool"Blue Lu Barker "A Little Bird Told Me"Duke Ellington "Black And Tan Fantasy"Songs: Ohia "Didn't It Rain"Hank Williams "Alone and Forsaken"Sister Rosetta Tharpe "Didn't It Rain"Bonnie Raitt "Everybody's Cryin' Mercy"Mississippi Fred Mc Dowell "White Lightnin'"Lefty Frizzell "No One to Talk to But the Blues"Otis Spann "Goin' Down Slow"Jimmie Rodgers "Sweet Mama Hurry Home"Townes Van Zandt "Tecumseh Valley"J Mascis "Circle"R.E.M. "Begin The Begin"Sleater-Kinney "Hot Rock"Jimmy Reed "Honest I Do"Steve And Justin Townes Earle "Candy Man"Hartman's Heartbreakers "Let Me Play with It"THE BLACK CROWES "Bad Luck Blue Eyes Goodbye"Aretha Franklin "People Get Ready"R.L. Burnside "Miss Maybelle"Ella Fitzgerald "'Tain't What You Do"John Hammond "I Know I've Been Changed"The Replacements "Here Comes a Regular"Sidney Bechet "Strange Fruit"

Facebook, Friendster and MySpace weren't the only companies that pioneered social media. In 2006, a new company turned the act of “tweeting” into an opportunity for wide-ranging commentary, and made your number of “followers” a status symbol. On this episode, Steven talks to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, who also co-founded Medium.com and wrote the memoir Things a Little Bird Told Me.Listen to new episodes 1 week early and ad free, and access exclusive seasons of American Innovations with Wondery+. Join Wondery+ for exclusives, binges, early access, and ad free listening. Available in the Wondery App https://wondery.app.link/innovations.Support us by supporting our sponsors!Monday.com - Visit Monday.com/podcast for your free two-week trial.ZipRecruiter - Go to ziprecruiter.com/AI, to try ZipRecruiter for free.Nord VPN - Go to NordVPN.com/innovations, or use code innovations to get 73% off your 2-year plan plus 4 bonus months for free. Be quick because this offer is for a limited time only. Plus, there's a 30-Day Money back guarantee if NordVPN is not for you so there's no risk.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The show must go on, but before the show, it’s time for another birthday party! This time it’s Hap’s birthday and everyone brought a present, including an unexpected guest. Roll For Combat, Three Ring Adventure Podcast is a playthrough of the Pathfinder Adventure Path, Extinction Curse, and the second book, Legacy of the Lost God. … Continue reading "Three Ring Adventure S2|09: A Little Bird Told Me" The post Three Ring Adventure S2|09: A Little Bird Told Me appeared first on Roll For Combat: Paizo's Official Pathfinder & Starfinder Actual Play Podcasts.

The show must go on, but before the show, it's time for another birthday party! This time it's Hap's birthday and everyone brought a present, including an unexpected guest. Roll For Combat, Three Ring Adventure Podcast is a playthrough of the Pathfinder Adventure Path, Extinction Curse, and the second book, Legacy of the Lost God. … Continue reading "Three Ring Adventure S2|09: A Little Bird Told Me" The post Three Ring Adventure S2|09: A Little Bird Told Me appeared first on Roll For Combat: Paizo's Official Pathfinder & Starfinder Actual Play Podcasts.

Charlie and Marianne Holmes (A Little Bird Told Me; All Your Little Lies) discuss procedures when children go missing, societal changes in regards to domestic violence in the 1970s, and, on a lighter note, trying not to finish books you're not enjoying. Please note there is some noise in this episode - noise cancelling headphones are recommended (pun not intended) as they will make the vocals crisper. Some podcast apps do not show description links properly unless the listener subscribes to the podcast. If you can't click the links below and don't wish to subscribe, copy and paste the following address into your browser to access the episode's page on my blog: http://wormhole.carnelianvalley.com/podcast/episode-29-marianne-holmes/ Wikipedia's article on K M Peyton's Flambards The act created in 1976 was the Domestic Violence and Matrimonial Proceedings Act. According to the British Library "This act enabled married women to obtain a court order against their violent husbands without divorce or separation proceedings. A court could order a man out of the matrimonial home, whether or not he owned it or tenancy was in his name. Problems arose because this protection did not apply to unmarried women." Missing People Question Index 00:35 You grew up in different countries; your father was in the RAF. Can you tell us about that? 01:05 Has your career in marketing helped with your books? 01:49 Your road to publication started with a tweet?... 03:50 Do you plan your books? 10:22 Why the heatwave of 1976? 11:47 Was Robin's reading material, Flambards, a book you read yourself? 12:26 Could you talk about the era in terms of the social changes in regards to domestic violence? 13:54 The refusal of adults to tell things to children - for A Little Bird Told Me, was that inspired by a particular event? 20:03 What, to you, is the defining element of All Your Little Lies? 21:31 Your son's reaction to a missing child influenced the book?... 24:32 (For both books) how do you incorporate the two narratives, the character as a child and as an adult? 25:39 What was your reason for writing in the third person as opposed to the first? 26:51 How much time did you need to spend developing the secondary characters for the readers' understanding of Annie to work? 28:14 Is Annie going to be able to heal from all of this? 29:20 In both books you look at the ways young girls relate to each other - this is important to you? 30:38 You have a book on the go about a little known figure... 32:21 Have you been successful in putting down books you're not enjoying reading? Purchase Links A Little Bird Told Me: Amazon UK Amazon US Amazon Canada Barnes & Noble IndieBound Indigo Chapters All Your Little Lies: Amazon UK Amazon US Amazon Canada Waterstones Hive IndieBound I am an IndieBound affiliate and earn a small commission on qualifying purchases. Photograph used with the permission of the publisher.

Episode one hundred and two of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Twist and Shout” by the Isley Brothers, and the early career of Bert Berns. 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 “How Do You Do It?” by Gerry and the Pacemakers. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt’s irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ —-more—- Resources No Mixcloud this week, due to the number of songs by the Isleys. Amazingly, there are no books on the Isley Brothers, unless you count a seventy-two page self-published pamphlet by Rudolph Isley’s daughter, so I’ve had to piece this together from literally dozens of different sources. For information about the Isley Brothers the main source was  Icons of R&B and Soul by Bob Gulla.  The information about Bert Berns comes from Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues by Joel Selvin. There are many compilations of the public-domain recordings of the Isleys. This one seems the most complete. This three-CD set, though, is the best overview of the group’s whole career. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we’re going to look at one of the great Brill Building songwriters, and at a song he wrote which became a classic both of soul and of rock music. We’re going to look at how a novelty Latin song based around a dance craze was first taken up by one of the greatest soul groups of the sixties, and then reworked by the biggest British rock band of all time. We’re going to look at “Twist and Shout” by the Isley Brothers. [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, “Twist and Shout”] When we left the Isley Brothers, they had just signed to Atlantic, and released several singles with Leiber and Stoller, records like “Standing on the Dance Floor” that were excellent R&B records, but which didn’t sell: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, “Standing on the Dance Floor”] In 1962 they were dropped by Atlantic and moved on to Wand Records, the third label started by Florence Greenberg, who had already started Tiara and Scepter. As with those labels, Luther Dixon was in charge of the music, and he produced their first single on the label, a relatively catchy dance song called “The Snake”, which didn’t catch on commercially: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, “The Snake”] While “The Snake” didn’t sell, the Isley Brothers clearly had some commercial potential — and indeed their earlier hit “Shout” had just recharted, after Joey Dee and the Starliters had a hit with a cover version of it. All that was needed was the right song, and they could be as big as Luther Dixon’s other group, the Shirelles. And Dixon had just the song for them — a song co-written by Burt Bacharach, and sung on the demo by a young singer called Dionne Warwick. Unfortunately, they spent almost all the session trying and failing to get the song down — they just couldn’t make it work — and eventually they gave up on it, and Bacharach produced the song for Jerry Butler, the former lead singer of the Impressions, who had a top twenty hit with it: [Excerpt: Jerry Butler, “Make it Easy on Yourself”] So they were stuck without a song to record — and then Dixon’s assistant on the session, Bert Berns, suggested that they record one of his songs — one that had been a flop for another group the previous year. The story of “Twist and Shout” actually starts with a group called the Five Pearls, who made their first record in 1954: [Excerpt: The Five Pearls, “Please Let Me Know”] The Five Pearls recorded under various different names, and in various different combinations, for several different mid-sized record labels like Aladdin throughout the 1950s, but without much success — the closest they came was when one of the members, Dave “Baby” Cortez, went solo and had a hit with “The Happy Organ” in 1959: [Excerpt: Dave “Baby” Cortez, “The Happy Organ”] But in 1960 two members of the Pearls — who used different names at different points of their career, but at this point were calling themselves Derek Ray and Guy Howard, signed to Atlantic as a new duo called The Top Notes. Their first single under this name, “A Wonderful Time”, did no better than any of their other records had — but by their third single, they were being produced by a new staff producer — Phil Spector, who had started taking on production jobs that Leiber and Stoller weren’t interested in doing themselves, like a remake of the old folk song “Corrina, Corrina”, which had been an R&B hit for Big Joe Turner and which Spector produced for the country singer Ray Peterson: [Excerpt: Ray Peterson, “Corrina, Corrina”] But soon after that, Spector had broken with Leiber and Stoller. Spector was given the opportunity to co-write songs for the new Elvis film, Blue Hawaii. But he was signed to a publishing contract with Leiber and Stoller’s company, Trio Music, and they told Hill & Range that he could only do the songs if Trio got half the publishing, which Hill & Range refused — there was apparently some talk of them going ahead anyway, but Hill & Range were scared of Trio’s lawyer, one of the best in the entertainment industry. This wouldn’t be the last time that Phil Spector and Lee Eastman ended up on the opposite sides of a disagreement. Shortly after that, Spector’s contract mysteriously went missing from Trio’s office. Someone remembered that Spector happened to have a key to the office. But by this point Spector had co-written or co-produced a fair few hits, and so he was taken on by Atlantic on his own merits, and so he and Jerry Wexler co-produced singles for the Top Notes, with arrangements by Teddy Randazzo, who we last heard of singing with accordion accompaniment in The Girl Can’t Help It. The first of these Top Notes singles, “Hearts of Stone”, was an obvious attempt at a Ray Charles soundalike, with bits directly lifted both from “What’d I Say” and Charles’ hit “Sticks and Stones”: [Excerpt: The Top Notes, “Hearts of Stone”] But the next Top Notes release was the song that would make them at least a footnote in music history. The writing credit on it was Bert Russell and Phil Medley, and while Medley would have little impact on the music world otherwise, the songwriter credited as Bert Russell is worth us looking at. His actual name was Bertrand Russell Berns — he had been named after the famous philosopher — and he was a man on a mission. He was already thirty-one, and he knew he didn’t have long to live — he’d had rheumatic fever as a child and it had given him an incurable heart condition. He had no idea how long he had, but he knew he wasn’t going to live to a ripe old age. And he’d wasted his twenties already — he’d tried various ways to get into showbiz, with no success. He’d tried a comedy double act, and at one point had moved to Cuba, where he’d tried to buy a nightclub but backed out when he’d realised it was actually a brothel.  On his return to the US, he’d started working as a songwriter in the Brill Building. In the late fifties he worked for a while with the rockabilly singer Ersel Hickey — no relation to me — who had a minor hit with “Bluebirds Over the Mountain”: [Excerpt: Ersel Hickey, “Bluebirds Over the Mountain”] Berns was proud just to know Hickey, though, because “Bluebirds Over the Mountain” had been covered by Ritchie Valens, and “La Bamba” was Berns’ favourite record — one he would turn to for inspiration throughout his career. He loved Latin music generally — it had been one of the reasons he’d moved to Cuba — but that song in particular was endlessly fascinating to him. He’d written and produced a handful of recordings in the early fifties, before his Cuba trip, but it was on his return that he started to be properly productive. He’d started producing novelty records with a friend called Bill Giant, like a song based on the Gettysburg Address: [Excerpt: Bert and Bill Giant, “The Gettysburg Address”] Or a solo record about the Alamo — at the time Berns seemed to think that songs about American history were going to be the next big thing: [Excerpt: Bert Berns, “The Legend of the Alamo”] He’d co-written a song called “A Little Bird Told Me” with Ersel Hickey — not the same as the song of the same name we talked about a year or so ago — and it was recorded by LaVern Baker: [Excerpt: LaVern Baker, “A Little Bird Told Me”] And he and Medley co-wrote “Push Push” for Austin Taylor: [Excerpt: Austin Taylor, “Push Push”] But he was still basically a nobody in the music industry in 1961. But Jerry Wexler had produced that LaVern Baker record of “A Little Bird Told Me”, and he liked Berns, and so he accepted a Berns and Medley cowrite for the next Top Notes session.  The song in question had started out as one called “Shake it Up Baby”, based very firmly around the chords and melody of “La Bamba”, but reimagined with the Afro-Cuban rhythms that Berns loved so much — and then further reworked to reference the Twist dance craze. Berns was sure it was a hit — it was as catchy as anything he could write, and full of hooks.  Berns was allowed into the studio to watch the recording, which was produced by Wexler and Spector, but he wasn’t allowed to get involved — and he watched with horror as Spector flattened the rhythm and totally rewrote the middle section. Spector also added in backing vocals based on the recent hit “Handy Man” — a “come-a-come-a” vocal line that didn’t really fit the song. The result was actually quite a decent record, but despite being performed by all the usual Atlantic session players like King Curtis, and having the Cookies do their usual sterling job on backing vocals, “Twist and Shout” by the Top Notes was a massive flop, and Berns could tell it would be even during the session: [Excerpt: The Top Notes, “Twist and Shout”] The Top Notes soon split up, making no real further mark on the industry — when Guy Howard died in 1977, he had reverted to his original name Howard Guyton, and the Top Notes were so obscure that his obituaries focused on his time in one of the later touring versions of the Platters. Berns was furious at the way that Spector had wrecked his song, and decided that he was going to have to start producing his own songs, so they couldn’t be messed up. But that was put on the back burner for a while, as he started having success. His first chart success as a songwriter was with a song he wrote for a minor group called the Jarmels. By this time, the Drifters were having a lot of success with their use of the same Latin and Caribbean rhythms that Berns liked, and so he wrote “A Little Bit of Soap” in the Drifters’ style, and it made the top twenty: [Excerpt: The Jarmels, “A Little Bit of Soap”] He also started making non-novelty records of his own. Luther Dixon at Wand Records heard one of Berns’ demos, and decided he should be singing, not just writing songs. Berns was signed to Wand Records as a solo artist under the name “Russell Byrd”, and his first single for the label was produced by Dixon. The song itself is structurally a bit of a mess — Berns seems to have put together several hooks (including some from other songs) but not thought properly about how to link them together, and so it meanders a bit — but you can definitely see a family resemblance to “Twist and Shout” in the melody, and in Carole King’s string arrangement: [Excerpt: Russell Byrd, “You’d Better Come Home”] That made the top fifty, and got Berns a spot on American Bandstand, but it was still not the breakout success that Berns needed. While Berns had been annoyed at Spector for the way he’d messed up “Twist and Shout”, he clearly wasn’t so upset with him that they couldn’t work together, because the second Russell Byrd session, another Drifters knockoff, was produced by Spector: [Excerpt: Russell Byrd, “Nights of Mexico”] But Berns was still looking to produce his own material. He got the chance when Jerry Wexler called him up. Atlantic were having problems — while they had big vocal groups like the Drifters and the Coasters, they’d just lost their two biggest male solo vocalists, as Bobby Darin and Ray Charles had moved on to other labels. They had recently signed a gospel singer called Solomon Burke, and he’d had a minor hit with a version of an old country song, “Just Out of Reach”: [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, “Just Out of Reach”] Burke was the closest thing to a male solo star they now had, and clearly a major talent, but he was also a very opinionated person, and not easy to get on with. His grandmother had had a dream, twelve years before he was born, in which she believed God had told her of her future grandson’s importance. She’d founded a church, Solomon’s Temple: The House Of God For All People, in anticipation of his birth, and he’d started preaching there from the age of seven as the church’s spiritual leader. Rather unsurprisingly, he had rather a large ego, and that ego wasn’t made any smaller by the fact that he was clearly a very talented singer. His strong opinions included things like how his music was to be marketed. He was fine with singing pop songs, rather than the gospel music he’d started out in, as he needed the money — he had eight kids, and as well as being a singer and priest, he was also a mortician, and had a side job shovelling snow for four dollars an hour — but he wasn’t keen on being marketed as “rhythm and blues” — rhythm and blues was dirty music, not respectable. His music needed to be called something else. After some discussion with Atlantic, everyone agreed on a new label that would be acceptable to his church, one that had previously been applied to a type of mostly-instrumental jazz influenced by Black gospel music, but from this point on would be applied almost exclusively to Black gospel-influenced pop music in the lineage of Ray Charles and Clyde McPhatter. Burke was not singing rhythm and blues, but soul music. Wexler had produced Burke’s first sessions, but he always thought he worked better when he had a co-producer, and he liked a song Berns had written, “Cry to Me”, another of his Drifters soundalikes. So he asked Berns into the studio to produce Burke singing that song. The two didn’t get on very well at first — Burke’s original comment on meeting Berns was “Who is this Paddy mother–” except he included the expletive that my general audience content rating prevents me from saying there — but it’s hard to argue with the results, one of the great soul records of all time: [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, “Cry to Me”] That made the top five on the R&B chart, and started a run of hits for Burke, whose records would continue to be produced by the team of Berns and Wexler for the next several years. After this initial production success, Berns started producing many other records, most of them again unsuccessful, like a cheap Twist album to cash in on the resurgent Twist craze. And he was still working with Wand records, which is what led to him being invited to assist Dixon with the Isley Brothers session for “Make it Easy on Yourself”.  When they couldn’t get a take done for that track, Berns suggested that they make an attempt at “Twist and Shout”, which he still thought had the potential to be a hit, and which would be perfectly suited to the Isley Brothers — after all, their one hit was “Shout!”, so “Twist and Shout” would be the perfect way for them to get some relevance.  The brothers hated the song, and they didn’t want to record any Twist material at all — apparently they were so vehemently against recording the song that furniture got smashed in the argument over it. But Luther Dixon insisted that they do it, and so they reluctantly recorded “Twist and Shout”, and did it the way Bert Berns had originally envisioned it, Latin feel and all: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, “Twist and Shout”] It’s a testament to Ronald Isley’s talent, in particular, that he sounds utterly committed on the record despite it being something he had no wish to take part in at all.  The record made the top twenty on the pop chart and number two in R&B, becoming the Isleys’ first real mainstream hit. It might have even done better, but for an unfortunate coincidence — “Do You Love Me” by the Contours, a song written by Berry Gordy, was released on one of the Motown labels a couple of weeks later, and had a very similar rising vocal hook: [Excerpt: The Contours, “Do You Love Me”] “Do You Love Me” was a bigger hit, making number three in the pop charts and number one R&B, but it’s hard not to think that the two records being so similar must have eaten into the market for both records. But either way, “Twist and Shout” was a proper big hit for the Isleys, and one that established them as real stars, and Berns became their regular producer for a while. Unfortunately, both they and Berns floundered about what to do for a follow-up. The first attempt was one of those strange records that tries to mash up bits of as many recent hits as possible, and seems to have been inspired by Jan & Dean’s then-recent hit with a revival of the 1946 song “Linda”: [Excerpt: Jan and Dean, “Linda”] That song was, coincidentally, written about the daughter of Lee Eastman, the lawyer we mentioned earlier. “Twistin’ With Linda”, the brothers’ response, took the character from that song, and added the melody to the recent novelty hit “Hully Gully”, lyrical references to “Twist and Shout” and Chubby Checker’s Twist hits, and in the tag Ronald Isley sings bits of “Shout”, “Don’t You Just Know It”, “Duke of Earl”, and for some reason “I’m Popeye the Sailor Man”: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, “Twistin’ With Linda”] That only made the lower reaches of the charts. Their next single was “Nobody But Me”, which didn’t make the hot one hundred, but would later be covered by the Human Beinz, making the top ten in their version in 1968: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, “Nobody But Me”] With Berns still producing, the Isleys moved over to United Artists records, but within a year of “Twist and Shout”, they were reduced to remaking it as “Surf and Shout”, with lyrics referencing another Jan and Dean hit, “Surf City”: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, “Surf and Shout”] Oddly, while they were doing this, Berns was producing them on much more interesting material for album tracks, but for some reason, even as Berns was also by now producing regular hits for Solomon Burke, Ben E King and the Drifters, the Isleys were stuck trying to jump on whatever the latest bandwagon was in an attempt at commercial success. Even when they were writing songs that would become hits, they were having no success. The last of the songs that Berns produced for them was another Isleys original, “Who’s That Lady?”: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, “Who’s That Lady?”] That would become one of the group’s biggest hits, but not until they remade it nine years later. It was only two years since “Twist and Shout”, but the Isley Brothers were commercially dead. But the success of “Twist and Shout” — and their songwriting royalties from “Shout” — gave them the financial cushion to move to comparatively better surroundings — and to start their own record label. They moved to Teaneck, New Jersey, and named their new label T-Neck in its honour. They also had one of the best live bands in the US at the time, and the first single on T-Neck, “Testify”, produced by the brothers themselves, highlighted their new guitar player, Jimmy James: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, “Testify”] But even while he was employed by the Isleys, Jimmy James was playing on other records that were doing better, like Don Covay’s big hit “Mercy, Mercy”: [Excerpt: Don Covay and the Goodtimers, “Mercy, Mercy”] And he soon left the Isleys, going on first to tour with a minor soul artist supporting Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson, and then to join Little Richard’s band, playing on Richard’s classic soul ballad “I Don’t Know What You’ve Got But It’s Got Me”, also written by Don Covay: [Excerpt: Little Richard, “I Don’t Know What You’ve Got But It’s Got Me”] We’ll be picking up the story of Jimmy James in a couple of months’ time, by which point he will have reverted to his birth name and started performing as Jimi Hendrix. But for the moment, this is where we leave Hendrix and the Isley Brothers, but they will both, of course, be turning up again in the story. But of course, that isn’t all there is to say about “Twist and Shout”, because the most famous version of the song isn’t the Isleys’. While the Beatles’ first single had been only a minor hit, their second, “Please Please Me”, went to number one or two in the  UK charts, depending on which chart you look at, and they quickly recorded a follow-up album, cutting ten songs in one day to add to their singles to make a fourteen-track album. Most of the songs they performed that day were cover versions that were part of their live act — versions of songs by Arthur Alexander, the Cookies, and the Shirelles, among others.  John Lennon had a bad cold that day, and so they saved the band’s live showstopper til last, because they knew that it would tear his throat up. Their version of “Twist and Shout” was only recorded in one take — Lennon’s voice didn’t hold up enough for a second — but is an undoubted highlight of the album: [Excerpt: The Beatles, “Twist and Shout”] Suddenly Bert Berns had a whole new market to work in. And so when we next look at Bert Berns, he will be working with British beat groups, and starting some of the longest-lasting careers in British R&B.  

Episode one hundred and two of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Twist and Shout" by the Isley Brothers, and the early career of Bert Berns. 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 "How Do You Do It?" by Gerry and the Pacemakers. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ ----more---- Resources No Mixcloud this week, due to the number of songs by the Isleys. Amazingly, there are no books on the Isley Brothers, unless you count a seventy-two page self-published pamphlet by Rudolph Isley's daughter, so I've had to piece this together from literally dozens of different sources. For information about the Isley Brothers the main source was  Icons of R&B and Soul by Bob Gulla.  The information about Bert Berns comes from Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues by Joel Selvin. There are many compilations of the public-domain recordings of the Isleys. This one seems the most complete. This three-CD set, though, is the best overview of the group's whole career. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Today we're going to look at one of the great Brill Building songwriters, and at a song he wrote which became a classic both of soul and of rock music. We're going to look at how a novelty Latin song based around a dance craze was first taken up by one of the greatest soul groups of the sixties, and then reworked by the biggest British rock band of all time. We're going to look at "Twist and Shout" by the Isley Brothers. [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, "Twist and Shout"] When we left the Isley Brothers, they had just signed to Atlantic, and released several singles with Leiber and Stoller, records like "Standing on the Dance Floor" that were excellent R&B records, but which didn't sell: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, "Standing on the Dance Floor"] In 1962 they were dropped by Atlantic and moved on to Wand Records, the third label started by Florence Greenberg, who had already started Tiara and Scepter. As with those labels, Luther Dixon was in charge of the music, and he produced their first single on the label, a relatively catchy dance song called "The Snake", which didn't catch on commercially: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, "The Snake"] While "The Snake" didn't sell, the Isley Brothers clearly had some commercial potential -- and indeed their earlier hit "Shout" had just recharted, after Joey Dee and the Starliters had a hit with a cover version of it. All that was needed was the right song, and they could be as big as Luther Dixon's other group, the Shirelles. And Dixon had just the song for them -- a song co-written by Burt Bacharach, and sung on the demo by a young singer called Dionne Warwick. Unfortunately, they spent almost all the session trying and failing to get the song down -- they just couldn't make it work -- and eventually they gave up on it, and Bacharach produced the song for Jerry Butler, the former lead singer of the Impressions, who had a top twenty hit with it: [Excerpt: Jerry Butler, "Make it Easy on Yourself"] So they were stuck without a song to record -- and then Dixon's assistant on the session, Bert Berns, suggested that they record one of his songs -- one that had been a flop for another group the previous year. The story of "Twist and Shout" actually starts with a group called the Five Pearls, who made their first record in 1954: [Excerpt: The Five Pearls, "Please Let Me Know"] The Five Pearls recorded under various different names, and in various different combinations, for several different mid-sized record labels like Aladdin throughout the 1950s, but without much success -- the closest they came was when one of the members, Dave "Baby" Cortez, went solo and had a hit with "The Happy Organ" in 1959: [Excerpt: Dave "Baby" Cortez, "The Happy Organ"] But in 1960 two members of the Pearls -- who used different names at different points of their career, but at this point were calling themselves Derek Ray and Guy Howard, signed to Atlantic as a new duo called The Top Notes. Their first single under this name, "A Wonderful Time", did no better than any of their other records had -- but by their third single, they were being produced by a new staff producer -- Phil Spector, who had started taking on production jobs that Leiber and Stoller weren't interested in doing themselves, like a remake of the old folk song "Corrina, Corrina", which had been an R&B hit for Big Joe Turner and which Spector produced for the country singer Ray Peterson: [Excerpt: Ray Peterson, "Corrina, Corrina"] But soon after that, Spector had broken with Leiber and Stoller. Spector was given the opportunity to co-write songs for the new Elvis film, Blue Hawaii. But he was signed to a publishing contract with Leiber and Stoller's company, Trio Music, and they told Hill & Range that he could only do the songs if Trio got half the publishing, which Hill & Range refused -- there was apparently some talk of them going ahead anyway, but Hill & Range were scared of Trio's lawyer, one of the best in the entertainment industry. This wouldn't be the last time that Phil Spector and Lee Eastman ended up on the opposite sides of a disagreement. Shortly after that, Spector's contract mysteriously went missing from Trio's office. Someone remembered that Spector happened to have a key to the office. But by this point Spector had co-written or co-produced a fair few hits, and so he was taken on by Atlantic on his own merits, and so he and Jerry Wexler co-produced singles for the Top Notes, with arrangements by Teddy Randazzo, who we last heard of singing with accordion accompaniment in The Girl Can't Help It. The first of these Top Notes singles, "Hearts of Stone", was an obvious attempt at a Ray Charles soundalike, with bits directly lifted both from "What'd I Say" and Charles' hit "Sticks and Stones": [Excerpt: The Top Notes, "Hearts of Stone"] But the next Top Notes release was the song that would make them at least a footnote in music history. The writing credit on it was Bert Russell and Phil Medley, and while Medley would have little impact on the music world otherwise, the songwriter credited as Bert Russell is worth us looking at. His actual name was Bertrand Russell Berns -- he had been named after the famous philosopher -- and he was a man on a mission. He was already thirty-one, and he knew he didn't have long to live -- he'd had rheumatic fever as a child and it had given him an incurable heart condition. He had no idea how long he had, but he knew he wasn't going to live to a ripe old age. And he'd wasted his twenties already -- he'd tried various ways to get into showbiz, with no success. He'd tried a comedy double act, and at one point had moved to Cuba, where he'd tried to buy a nightclub but backed out when he'd realised it was actually a brothel.  On his return to the US, he'd started working as a songwriter in the Brill Building. In the late fifties he worked for a while with the rockabilly singer Ersel Hickey -- no relation to me -- who had a minor hit with "Bluebirds Over the Mountain": [Excerpt: Ersel Hickey, "Bluebirds Over the Mountain"] Berns was proud just to know Hickey, though, because "Bluebirds Over the Mountain" had been covered by Ritchie Valens, and "La Bamba" was Berns' favourite record -- one he would turn to for inspiration throughout his career. He loved Latin music generally -- it had been one of the reasons he'd moved to Cuba -- but that song in particular was endlessly fascinating to him. He'd written and produced a handful of recordings in the early fifties, before his Cuba trip, but it was on his return that he started to be properly productive. He'd started producing novelty records with a friend called Bill Giant, like a song based on the Gettysburg Address: [Excerpt: Bert and Bill Giant, "The Gettysburg Address"] Or a solo record about the Alamo -- at the time Berns seemed to think that songs about American history were going to be the next big thing: [Excerpt: Bert Berns, "The Legend of the Alamo"] He'd co-written a song called "A Little Bird Told Me" with Ersel Hickey -- not the same as the song of the same name we talked about a year or so ago -- and it was recorded by LaVern Baker: [Excerpt: LaVern Baker, "A Little Bird Told Me"] And he and Medley co-wrote "Push Push" for Austin Taylor: [Excerpt: Austin Taylor, "Push Push"] But he was still basically a nobody in the music industry in 1961. But Jerry Wexler had produced that LaVern Baker record of "A Little Bird Told Me", and he liked Berns, and so he accepted a Berns and Medley cowrite for the next Top Notes session.  The song in question had started out as one called "Shake it Up Baby", based very firmly around the chords and melody of "La Bamba", but reimagined with the Afro-Cuban rhythms that Berns loved so much -- and then further reworked to reference the Twist dance craze. Berns was sure it was a hit -- it was as catchy as anything he could write, and full of hooks.  Berns was allowed into the studio to watch the recording, which was produced by Wexler and Spector, but he wasn't allowed to get involved -- and he watched with horror as Spector flattened the rhythm and totally rewrote the middle section. Spector also added in backing vocals based on the recent hit "Handy Man" -- a "come-a-come-a" vocal line that didn't really fit the song. The result was actually quite a decent record, but despite being performed by all the usual Atlantic session players like King Curtis, and having the Cookies do their usual sterling job on backing vocals, "Twist and Shout" by the Top Notes was a massive flop, and Berns could tell it would be even during the session: [Excerpt: The Top Notes, "Twist and Shout"] The Top Notes soon split up, making no real further mark on the industry -- when Guy Howard died in 1977, he had reverted to his original name Howard Guyton, and the Top Notes were so obscure that his obituaries focused on his time in one of the later touring versions of the Platters. Berns was furious at the way that Spector had wrecked his song, and decided that he was going to have to start producing his own songs, so they couldn't be messed up. But that was put on the back burner for a while, as he started having success. His first chart success as a songwriter was with a song he wrote for a minor group called the Jarmels. By this time, the Drifters were having a lot of success with their use of the same Latin and Caribbean rhythms that Berns liked, and so he wrote "A Little Bit of Soap" in the Drifters' style, and it made the top twenty: [Excerpt: The Jarmels, "A Little Bit of Soap"] He also started making non-novelty records of his own. Luther Dixon at Wand Records heard one of Berns' demos, and decided he should be singing, not just writing songs. Berns was signed to Wand Records as a solo artist under the name "Russell Byrd", and his first single for the label was produced by Dixon. The song itself is structurally a bit of a mess -- Berns seems to have put together several hooks (including some from other songs) but not thought properly about how to link them together, and so it meanders a bit -- but you can definitely see a family resemblance to "Twist and Shout" in the melody, and in Carole King's string arrangement: [Excerpt: Russell Byrd, "You'd Better Come Home"] That made the top fifty, and got Berns a spot on American Bandstand, but it was still not the breakout success that Berns needed. While Berns had been annoyed at Spector for the way he'd messed up "Twist and Shout", he clearly wasn't so upset with him that they couldn't work together, because the second Russell Byrd session, another Drifters knockoff, was produced by Spector: [Excerpt: Russell Byrd, "Nights of Mexico"] But Berns was still looking to produce his own material. He got the chance when Jerry Wexler called him up. Atlantic were having problems -- while they had big vocal groups like the Drifters and the Coasters, they'd just lost their two biggest male solo vocalists, as Bobby Darin and Ray Charles had moved on to other labels. They had recently signed a gospel singer called Solomon Burke, and he'd had a minor hit with a version of an old country song, "Just Out of Reach": [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "Just Out of Reach"] Burke was the closest thing to a male solo star they now had, and clearly a major talent, but he was also a very opinionated person, and not easy to get on with. His grandmother had had a dream, twelve years before he was born, in which she believed God had told her of her future grandson's importance. She'd founded a church, Solomon's Temple: The House Of God For All People, in anticipation of his birth, and he'd started preaching there from the age of seven as the church's spiritual leader. Rather unsurprisingly, he had rather a large ego, and that ego wasn't made any smaller by the fact that he was clearly a very talented singer. His strong opinions included things like how his music was to be marketed. He was fine with singing pop songs, rather than the gospel music he'd started out in, as he needed the money -- he had eight kids, and as well as being a singer and priest, he was also a mortician, and had a side job shovelling snow for four dollars an hour -- but he wasn't keen on being marketed as "rhythm and blues" -- rhythm and blues was dirty music, not respectable. His music needed to be called something else. After some discussion with Atlantic, everyone agreed on a new label that would be acceptable to his church, one that had previously been applied to a type of mostly-instrumental jazz influenced by Black gospel music, but from this point on would be applied almost exclusively to Black gospel-influenced pop music in the lineage of Ray Charles and Clyde McPhatter. Burke was not singing rhythm and blues, but soul music. Wexler had produced Burke's first sessions, but he always thought he worked better when he had a co-producer, and he liked a song Berns had written, "Cry to Me", another of his Drifters soundalikes. So he asked Berns into the studio to produce Burke singing that song. The two didn't get on very well at first -- Burke's original comment on meeting Berns was "Who is this Paddy mother--" except he included the expletive that my general audience content rating prevents me from saying there -- but it's hard to argue with the results, one of the great soul records of all time: [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "Cry to Me"] That made the top five on the R&B chart, and started a run of hits for Burke, whose records would continue to be produced by the team of Berns and Wexler for the next several years. After this initial production success, Berns started producing many other records, most of them again unsuccessful, like a cheap Twist album to cash in on the resurgent Twist craze. And he was still working with Wand records, which is what led to him being invited to assist Dixon with the Isley Brothers session for "Make it Easy on Yourself".  When they couldn't get a take done for that track, Berns suggested that they make an attempt at "Twist and Shout", which he still thought had the potential to be a hit, and which would be perfectly suited to the Isley Brothers -- after all, their one hit was "Shout!", so "Twist and Shout" would be the perfect way for them to get some relevance.  The brothers hated the song, and they didn't want to record any Twist material at all -- apparently they were so vehemently against recording the song that furniture got smashed in the argument over it. But Luther Dixon insisted that they do it, and so they reluctantly recorded "Twist and Shout", and did it the way Bert Berns had originally envisioned it, Latin feel and all: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, "Twist and Shout"] It's a testament to Ronald Isley's talent, in particular, that he sounds utterly committed on the record despite it being something he had no wish to take part in at all.  The record made the top twenty on the pop chart and number two in R&B, becoming the Isleys' first real mainstream hit. It might have even done better, but for an unfortunate coincidence -- "Do You Love Me" by the Contours, a song written by Berry Gordy, was released on one of the Motown labels a couple of weeks later, and had a very similar rising vocal hook: [Excerpt: The Contours, "Do You Love Me"] "Do You Love Me" was a bigger hit, making number three in the pop charts and number one R&B, but it's hard not to think that the two records being so similar must have eaten into the market for both records. But either way, "Twist and Shout" was a proper big hit for the Isleys, and one that established them as real stars, and Berns became their regular producer for a while. Unfortunately, both they and Berns floundered about what to do for a follow-up. The first attempt was one of those strange records that tries to mash up bits of as many recent hits as possible, and seems to have been inspired by Jan & Dean's then-recent hit with a revival of the 1946 song "Linda": [Excerpt: Jan and Dean, "Linda"] That song was, coincidentally, written about the daughter of Lee Eastman, the lawyer we mentioned earlier. "Twistin' With Linda", the brothers' response, took the character from that song, and added the melody to the recent novelty hit "Hully Gully", lyrical references to "Twist and Shout" and Chubby Checker's Twist hits, and in the tag Ronald Isley sings bits of "Shout", "Don't You Just Know It", "Duke of Earl", and for some reason "I'm Popeye the Sailor Man": [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, "Twistin' With Linda"] That only made the lower reaches of the charts. Their next single was "Nobody But Me", which didn't make the hot one hundred, but would later be covered by the Human Beinz, making the top ten in their version in 1968: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, "Nobody But Me"] With Berns still producing, the Isleys moved over to United Artists records, but within a year of "Twist and Shout", they were reduced to remaking it as "Surf and Shout", with lyrics referencing another Jan and Dean hit, "Surf City": [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, "Surf and Shout"] Oddly, while they were doing this, Berns was producing them on much more interesting material for album tracks, but for some reason, even as Berns was also by now producing regular hits for Solomon Burke, Ben E King and the Drifters, the Isleys were stuck trying to jump on whatever the latest bandwagon was in an attempt at commercial success. Even when they were writing songs that would become hits, they were having no success. The last of the songs that Berns produced for them was another Isleys original, "Who's That Lady?": [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, "Who's That Lady?"] That would become one of the group's biggest hits, but not until they remade it nine years later. It was only two years since "Twist and Shout", but the Isley Brothers were commercially dead. But the success of "Twist and Shout" -- and their songwriting royalties from "Shout" -- gave them the financial cushion to move to comparatively better surroundings -- and to start their own record label. They moved to Teaneck, New Jersey, and named their new label T-Neck in its honour. They also had one of the best live bands in the US at the time, and the first single on T-Neck, "Testify", produced by the brothers themselves, highlighted their new guitar player, Jimmy James: [Excerpt: The Isley Brothers, "Testify"] But even while he was employed by the Isleys, Jimmy James was playing on other records that were doing better, like Don Covay's big hit "Mercy, Mercy": [Excerpt: Don Covay and the Goodtimers, "Mercy, Mercy"] And he soon left the Isleys, going on first to tour with a minor soul artist supporting Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson, and then to join Little Richard's band, playing on Richard's classic soul ballad "I Don't Know What You've Got But It's Got Me", also written by Don Covay: [Excerpt: Little Richard, "I Don't Know What You've Got But It's Got Me"] We'll be picking up the story of Jimmy James in a couple of months' time, by which point he will have reverted to his birth name and started performing as Jimi Hendrix. But for the moment, this is where we leave Hendrix and the Isley Brothers, but they will both, of course, be turning up again in the story. But of course, that isn't all there is to say about "Twist and Shout", because the most famous version of the song isn't the Isleys'. While the Beatles' first single had been only a minor hit, their second, "Please Please Me", went to number one or two in the  UK charts, depending on which chart you look at, and they quickly recorded a follow-up album, cutting ten songs in one day to add to their singles to make a fourteen-track album. Most of the songs they performed that day were cover versions that were part of their live act -- versions of songs by Arthur Alexander, the Cookies, and the Shirelles, among others.  John Lennon had a bad cold that day, and so they saved the band's live showstopper til last, because they knew that it would tear his throat up. Their version of "Twist and Shout" was only recorded in one take -- Lennon's voice didn't hold up enough for a second -- but is an undoubted highlight of the album: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Twist and Shout"] Suddenly Bert Berns had a whole new market to work in. And so when we next look at Bert Berns, he will be working with British beat groups, and starting some of the longest-lasting careers in British R&B.  

Reflecting the ultimate pop culture of the day, thousands of fans listened in rapture for the exciting countdown to the Number One song, from a group of 15, was hyped. Today's show opens with the number 4 hit, A Little Bird Told Me, performed by Frank Sinatra and the Hit Paraders. Starring: Frank Sinatra Broadcast Date: January 1, 1949 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/dennis-moore9/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/dennis-moore9/support

  Welcome to episode eighteen of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. Today we're looking at "Sh-Boom" by the Chords. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.    ----more----     Resources As always, I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of almost all the songs in the episode. In this case, I have missed out one track that's used in the podcast - I use approximately seven seconds of the intro to "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke, without any of the lyrics, in the podcast. I am not going to share that song anywhere, given its lyrical content. My main resources are, as with last week  Honkers & Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues by Arnold Shaw, one of the most important books on early 50s rhythm and blues, The Sound of the City by Charlie Gillett, and Marv Goldberg's website. The Chords' music has never been anthologised on CD that I can find out, but almost any good doo-wop compilation should have "Sh-Boom".   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Let's talk about one-hit wonders for a while. One-hit wonders have an unusual place in the realm of music history, and one which it's never easy to decide whether to envy or to pity. After all, a one-hit wonder has had a hit, which is more than the vast majority of musicians ever do. And depending on how big the hit is and how good it is, that one hit might be enough to keep them going through a whole career. There are musicians to this day who can go out and perform in front of a crowd of a few thousand people, every night, who've come there just to hear that one song they recorded nearly sixty years ago -- and if the musician is good enough they can get that crowd enjoying their other songs as well. But there are other musicians who can never capitalise on that one record, and who never get another shot. And for those people, as the song goes, "a taste of honey's worse than none at all". What initially looked like it might be a massive career turns into a fluke. Sometimes they take it well and it just becomes a story to tell the grandkids, but other times it messes up everyone's life. There are people out there who've spent thirty or forty years of their life chasing a second hit, who will never be truly happy because they expected more from their brief success than it brought them. There are a lot of one-hit wonders in the world of rock and roll, and a lot of people who end up unlucky, but few have been as unlucky as the Chords, who wrote and recorded one of the biggest hits of all time, but who through a combination of bad luck in choosing a name, and more than a little racism, never managed to have a follow-up. Amazingly, they seem to have handled it far better than most. "Sh-Boom", the Chords' only hit, was the first rhythm and blues record by a black artist or group to make the top ten in the Billboard pop charts, so I suppose this is as good a time as any to talk about how the Billboard charts work, and how they differ from charts in the UK and some other countries. While the UK's singles charts are based only on record sales (and, these days, streams, but that doesn't really apply to this pre-digital era), the Billboard charts have always been an industry-specific thing rather than aimed at the public, and so they were based on many different metrics. As well as charts for record sales, they had (or have) charts for jukebox plays, for radio plays, and various other things. These would be combined into different genre-specific charts first, and those genres would be based on what the radio stations were playing. This means that the country charts would include all the songs played by country stations, the R&B charts all those played by R&B stations, and so on, rather than Billboard deciding themselves what counted as what genre. Then all of these charts would be combined to make the "Hot 100", which is sort of a chart of charts. This would sometimes lead to anomalous results, when more than one type of station started playing a song, and some songs would end up on the country chart *and* the rhythm and blues chart *and* the pop chart. Pop is here a separate type of music in itself, and in the early 1950s what got played on "pop" radio was, essentially, the music that was made by white people in the suburbs *for* white people in the suburbs. In 1954, the year we're talking about, the big hits were "O Mein Papa" by Eddie Fisher... [very short excerpt] "Secret Love" by Doris Day [very short excerpt] and records by Perry Como, Rosemary Clooney, Jo Stafford, and Tony Bennett. Polite, white, middle-class music for polite white middle-class people. None of that hillbilly nonsense, and *certainly* nothing by any black people. Some of it, like the Tony Bennett tracks, was pretty good, but much of it was the kind of horrible pap which made rock and roll, when it finally broke on to the pop charts, seem like such a breath of fresh air. And even the Tony Bennett records weren't in any way exciting -- they were good, but they'd relax you after a hard day, not make you want to get up and dance. What's noticeable here is that the pop music charts were dominated by music aimed at adults. There was no music for teenagers or younger adults hitting the pop charts, and no music for dancing. During the height of the swing era, the big bands had of course been making dance music, but now every last bit of black or lower-class influence was being eradicated, in order to appeal to the "return to normalcy". You see, by the end of the Second World War, America had been through a lot -- so much so that the first call for a "return to normalcy" had been from Warren G. Harding in the 1920 election, nearly thirty years earlier. In the previous forty-five years, the country had been involved in two world wars, suffered through the depression and the dustbowl, and simultaneously seen an unprecedented growth in technology which had brought the car, the plane and now the jet, the cinema and then the talkies, the radio and the TV, and now the atomic bomb, into people's lives. People had undergone the greatest disruption in history, and several generations had now grown up with an idea of what was "normal" that didn't match their reality at all. And so the white, semi-prosperous, middle and upper-working class in America made a collective decision around 1946 that they were going to reconstruct that normality for themselves, and to try to pretend as much as possible that nothing had really changed. And that meant pretending that all the black people who'd moved to the Northern cities from the south in that time, and all the poor white people from Oklahoma and Texas who'd moved west to avoid the dustbowl, simply didn't exist. Obviously those other people had some ideas of their own about that, and about how they fit into the world. And those people had a little more of a voice now than they'd had previously. The black people living in the cities had enjoyed something of a war boom -- there had been so much work in the factories that many black people had pulled themselves up into something approaching affluence. That was quickly snatched away when the war ended and those jobs were quote needed by the returning heroes unquote, but a small number of them had managed to get themselves into economically secure positions, and a larger number now knew that it was *possible* for them to make money, and were more motivated than ever for social change that would let them return to their previous status. (This is a recurring pattern in the American economy, incidentally. Every time there's an economic boom, black people are the last to benefit from it and then the first to be damaged in the downturn that follows. White America is like Lucy, putting the football of the American Dream in front of black people and then taking it away again, over and over.) And so the pop chart was for the people who were working in advertising, having three-martini lunches, and driving home to their new suburban picket-fence houses. And the other charts were for everyone else. And this is why it was the music on the other charts that was so interesting. There's an argument that what made rock and roll something new and interesting wasn't any one feature of the genre, but an attitude towards creation. Early rock and roll was very much what we would now think of as "mash ups" -- collages or montages of wildly different elements being brought together -- and this is what really distinguishes between the innovative musicians and the copycats. If you were bringing together half a dozen elements from different styles, then you were doing rock and roll. But if you were just copying one other record -- even if that other record was itself a rock and roll record -- and not bringing anything new to it, then you weren't doing rock and roll, you were doing pop. And it was the people at the margins who would do rock and roll. Because they were the ones who weren't sealing themselves off and trying to deny reality. We talked a little bit about doo-wop last week, but the songs we talked about there probably wouldn't be called doo-wop by most listeners, though there are clear stylistic similarities. It's probably time for me to explain what doo-wop actually is, musically. It's a style you don't get now, except in conscious pastiches, but it was basically an extension of the Ink Spots' style. You have at least four singers, one of whom is a very prominent bass vocalist who sings nonsense words like "doo wop" or "bom bom ba dom", another of whom is a high tenor who takes most of the leads, and the rest sing harmonies in the middle. While the jump bands and western swing were both music that dominated on the West Coast -- the early jump bands were often based in New York, but LA was really the base of the music -- doo wop was a music of the North-East. It sometimes got as far west as Detroit, but it was mostly New York, Washington DC, and a bit later New Jersey, that produced doo-wop singers. And it was doo-wop that would really take off as a musical style. While the jump bands remained mildly successful, the early fifties saw them decline in popularity as far as the R&B charts went, because the new vocal groups were becoming the dominant form in R&B -- and this was especially true of the "bird groups". The first "bird group" was the Ravens, and they might be considered the first doo-wop group full stop. They took the Ink Spots' "top and bottom" format and extended it, so that on their ballads there'd be more interplay between the high and low vocals. Listening to "You Foolish Thing" you can clearly hear the Ink Spots influence: [excerpt "you Foolish Thing"] On their uptempo music, on the other hand, they just had the bass singer sing the lead: [excerpt: the Ravens “Rock Me All Night Long”] And the Ravens became massively influential. They'd found a way to get the catchiest parts of the Ink Spots sound, but without having to stick so closely to the formula. It could work for all kinds of songs, and soon there were a whole host of bands named after birds and singing in the Ravens' style -- the Orioles, the Flamingoes, the Penguins, the Wrens, and many more. We've already heard one of the bands they influenced when we listened to the Robins. The other major influential bird group was the Orioles, whose "It's Too Soon To Know" is another record that's often considered by some to be "the first rock and roll record" -- though to my ears it just sounds like a derivative of the Ink Spots rather than anything new: [excerpt "It's Too Soon to Know" by the Orioles] So there's a clear stylistic progression there, but we're not looking at anything radically different from what came before. The first real doo-wop record to really have a major impact was "Gee", by the Crows, another bird group, which was recorded and released in 1953, but became a hit in 1954, charting a month after "Sh-Boom" was recorded, but before Sh-Boom itself became a hit: [excerpt: "Gee", the Crows] "Gee" is doo-wop absolutely fully formed, and it's a record which had a massive influence, particularly on young California teenagers who were growing up listening to Johnny Otis' radio show -- both Frank Zappa and the Beach Boys would later record their own strange takes on the song, emphasising how odd the record actually sounded. It's also widely credited as the first R&B record to become a hit with a large part of its audience being white teenagers. More than any other form of R&B, doo-wop traded in the concerns of the adolescent, and so it was the first subgenre to become accessible to that huge demographic of white kids who wanted something new they could appropriate and call their own. "Gee" is a record that deserves an episode to itself, frankly, in terms of importance, but there's not much to say about it -- the Crows had one hit, never had another, split up soon after, and there's no real biographical information out there about them. The record just stands on its own. That's also true for "Sh-Boom", and the Chords were another one-hit wonder, but there's a difference there. While "Gee" was the first doo-wop record to make money from white people, "Sh-Boom" was the first doo-wop record to lose money to white people. [excerpt: “Sh-Boom”, the Chords] The Chords were, at least, not actually a bird group -- they were too individual for that -- but in other respects they're very much in the typical mould of the early doo-wop bands, and "Sh-Boom" is, in many ways, an absolutely typical doo-wop song. "Sh-Boom" was not meant to be a hit. It was released on Cat records, a subsidiary of Atlantic Records, but apparently everyone at Atlantic hated the song -- it was only recorded at the Chords' insistence, and it was originally only a B-side until the song started to hit with the DJs. Sh-Boom was arranged by Jesse Stone, but presumably his contribution was the instrumental, rather than the vocal arrangement, as the song was written by the Chords themselves, originally while sitting together in a car. At the time, according to Buddy McCrea of the band, "When they talked to each other, they'd say 'boom.' They'd say 'Hey, man, boom, how ya doin'." Jimmy Keyes, also of the band, said "'Boom' was the slang word. If you were standing on this block for five minutes, you'd hear that slang word fifteen times or more. We would take the 'boom' and make it sound like a bomb: 'shhhhhh-BOOM'." Even the nonsense words in the background were, according to Keyes, meaningful to the band -- "'A langala langala lang.' Well, you could hear the church bells over there," while other parts were references to someone called "Bip", the uncle of band members Carl and Claude Feaster. Bip was homeless, and apparently stank, and when Bip would come to visit, according to Keyes, "We could smell Bip as soon as he opened the door." They would cover their noses and sing "here comes Bip, a flip a dooba dip." And one suspects that this played a big part in the song's success -- while the lyrics are genial gibberish, they're genial gibberish that had meaning to the singers, if not to the audience. That wasn't necessarily appreciated by older people though. The great satirist Stan Freberg recorded a rather mean-spirited parody of the song, combining it with a parody of Marlon Brando who was similarly popular at the time and who Freberg thought comparable in unintelligibility: [excerpt: Stan Freberg "Sh-Boom"] But there's an element of racism in the popular reaction to the success of "Sh-Boom". There was a belief among many people that since they couldn't understand the lyrics, they were hiding some secret code. And any secret code sung by black men must, obviously, have to do with sex. We'll see a lot of this kind of thing as the story goes on, unfortunately. But of course, meaningless lyrics have a long, long, history in popular music -- much longer than is usually appreciated. Most people, when they're talking about nonsense lyrics, trace scat singing back as far as Louis Armstrong imitating his own trumpet. But there's a good argument that they go back as far as we have records of songs existing, or almost. If you look at traditional folk music you'll often find a common pattern, of people singing "As I walked out one bright summer's day/sing too ra la loo ra la loo ra la lay" or similar. That kind of nonsense singing dates back as far as we have records, and no-one knows how it started, but one hypothesis I've seen which makes sense to me is that it comes from Gregorian chant and similar religious forms. No, seriously. It makes sense when you think about it. One of the places that people in the Middle Ages were most likely to hear music was in church, and many early motets contained Latin texts -- usually sung by the tenors -- while other people would sing commentary or explanation of the lyrics in the vernacular -- English or French or whatever language. Now, for a peasant hearing this, what do you hear? You hear some of the people singing words that make sense to you, in your own language, but it's mixed in with this other gibberish that you don't understand. If the people you're listening to are singing something that makes sense and they drop into Latin, they might as well be singing "Sh-Boom Sh-Boom sha la la la la la la la la la la la" for all the sense it'll make to you. So you come to the conclusion that that's just how songs *are*. They have bits that make sense and then bits of nonsense that sounds good. Indeed, one of the bits of lyric of “Sh-Boom” as it's commonly transcribed is "hey nonny", which if that's the lyric would tie directly back into that old folk tradition -- that is, sadly, the one bit of nonsense syllabics that the band weren't asked about, and so we can't know if they were thinking of minstrels singing "hey nonny nonny", or if it had some other inspiration as personal as Uncle Bip. But either way, after “Sh-Boom” doo-wop, and R&B in general, became obsessed with nonsense syllabics. We'll be hearing a lot of examples of this in the next few years, and it became so prevalent that by 1961 Barry Mann was asking this musical question: [excerpt: “Who Put the Bomp”, Barry Mann] Doo-wop started as a musical style among black teenagers in East Coast cities, but within a few years it became dominated by Italian-American teenagers from the same areas, and we'll see that progression happen over the next eighty or ninety episodes of this podcast. But we can also see it happening in miniature in the Chords' career. Because while they had a big hit with "Sh-Boom", they didn't have the biggest hit with it. If you vaguely know "Sh-Boom", maybe from hearing it in a film soundtrack, you might have been surprised when you heard a snatch of it earlier in this episode. It might have sounded very subtly wrong. It will have sounded *more or less* like the record you know, but... different. That's because the record you know isn't "Sh-Boom" by the Chords, but "Sh-Boom" by the Crew Cuts. To explain why, we're first going to have to talk about "A Little Bird Told Me": "A Little Bird Told Me" was a song originally recorded by Paula Watson on Supreme Records. Watson, and all the musicians on the record, and the record label's owner, were all black. Watson's record went to number two on the R&B charts and number fourteen on the bestseller charts: [excerpt "A Little Bird Told Me", Paula Watson] And then Decca put out a record -- "A Little Bird Told Me", sung by Evelyn Knight: [excerpt: "A Little Bird Told Me", Evelyn Knight] That record went to number one on the pop charts. And everyone involved in *that* record -- the singer, the backing band, the record label owners -- was white. Now, to just show you how ridiculously similar the two are, I'm going to try something -- I'm going to play both records together, simultaneously. [excerpt: both versions of "A Little Bird Told Me" played together] As you can imagine, the owners of Supreme Records were more than a little put out by this. This kind of direct copying was *not* the norm in the late 1940s -- as we've talked about before, it was perfectly normal for people to rework songs into their own style, and to do different versions for different markets, but just to make a record sounding as close as possible to someone else's hit record of the song, that was unusual. So Supreme Records took Decca to court, and said that Decca's record was copyright infringement. It was a direct copy of their record and should be treated as such. Before we go any further, you have to know that there are roughly three different concepts that many people confuse when they're talking about the music industry, all of which are important. There's the song, the recording, and the arrangement. The song is, to put it simply, just what the singer sings. It's the words and the melody line, and maybe the chord sequence if the chord sequence is sufficiently original. But basically, if you can sing it to yourself unaccompanied, that bit's the song. And the copyright in that is owned by the songwriter or her publisher. Now, once a song has been published, either as a record or as sheet music, *anyone* at all can make a recording of it or perform it live. There are certain conditions to that -- you can change the song in minor ways, to put it into your own style, or for example to give the protagonist's love interest a different gender if that's something that concerns you, but you can't make major changes to the song's melody or lyrics without the writer or publisher's permission. You also can't use the song in a film or TV show without jumping through some other hoops, just on a record or live performance. But I could, right now, make and release an album of "Andrew Hickey Sings the Lennon and McCartney Songbook in the Bath" and I wouldn't need anyone's permission to do so, so long as I paid Lennon and McCartney's publishers the legal minimum amount for every copy I sold. I need a songwriter's permission to make the *first* record of their song, but anyone can legally make the second. The next thing is the recording itself -- the specific recording of a specific performance. These days, that too is under copyright -- I can put out my *own* recording of me singing Beatles songs, but I can't just release a CD of one of the Beatles' albums, at least if I don't want to go to prison. A lot of people get confused by this because we talk, for example, about "She Loves You" being "a Beatles song" -- in fact, it's a Lennon and McCartney *song* performed on a Beatles *recording*. These days, each individual recording has its own copyright, but at the time we're talking about, in the US, there was no federal legislation giving copyright to sound recordings -- that didn't end up happening, in fact, until the 1970s. Up to that point, the copyright law around sound recordings was based on case law and odd rulings (for example it was ruled that it was illegal to play a record on the radio without permission, not because of copyright, but because of the right to privacy -- playing a record which had only been licensed for individual use to a group was considered like opening someone's mail). But still, there was usually at least state-level copyright law around recordings, and so record labels were fairly safe. But there's a third aspect, one somewhere between the song and the recording, and that's the arrangement. The arrangement is all the decisions made about how to perform a song -- things like how much of a groove you want it to have, whether you're going to back it with guitar or harpsichord or accordion, whether the backing instruments are going to play countermelodies or riffs or just strum the chords, whether you're going to play it as a slow ballad or an uptempo boogie. All that stuff. Until the "A Little Bird Told Me" case, everyone had assumed that arrangements were copyrightable. It makes sense that they would be -- you can write them down in sheet music form, they make a massive difference to how the performance sounds, they're often what we remember most, and they require a huge amount of creative effort. By every basic principle of copyright law, arrangements should be copyrightable. But the court ruled otherwise, and set a precedent that held until very recently -- until, in fact, a case that only went through its final appeal in December 2018, the "Blurred Lines" case, which ruled on whether Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" plagiarised Marvin Gaye's "Got To Give It Up". [excerpts: “Blurred Lines” and “Got To Give It Up”] Between "A Little Bird Told Me" and "Blurred Lines", copyright law in the US held that you could copyright an actual recording, and you could copyright a song, but you couldn't copyright an arrangement or groove. And this had two major effects on the music industry, both of them hugely detrimental to black people. The first was simply that people could steal a groove -- a riff or rhythm or feel -- and make a new record with new lyrics and melody but the same groove, without giving credit. As the genres favoured by black musicians were mostly groove-based, while those favoured by white musicians were mostly melody-based, white musicians were more protected from theft than black musicians were. Bo Diddley, for example, invented the "Bo Diddley beat", but didn't receive royalties from Buddy Holly, the Rolling Stones, or George Michael when they used that rhythm. And secondly, it opened the floodgates to white musicians remaking black musicians' hits in the same style as the black musicians. Up to this point, if a white singer had covered a black musician, or vice versa, it would have been with a different feel and a different arrangement. But now, all of a sudden, whenever a black musician put out an interesting-sounding record, a white person would put out an identical copy, and the white version would get the radio play and record sales. As the black musicians tended to record for tiny labels while the white ones would be on major labels that wouldn't sign black musicians, the result was that a whole generation of black innovators saw their work stolen from them. And we'll be seeing the results of that play out in a lot of the records we talk about in the future. But for most of the records we're going to look at, the one that's stood the test of time will be the original -- very few people nowadays listen to, say, Pat Boone's versions of "Tutti Frutti" or "Ain't That A Shame", because no-one would do so when the Little Richard or Fats Domino versions are available. But with "Sh-Boom", the version that still has most traction is by The Crew Cuts. [excerpt: “Sh-Boom” – the Crew Cuts] The Crew Cuts were a white, Canadian, vocal group, who specialised in rerecording songs originally performed by black groups, in near-identical arrangements, and scoring bigger hits with them than the black people had. In the case of "Sh-Boom", sadly, the characterless white copy has dominated in popular culture over the version that actually has some life in it. The Chords never had another hit, although "Sh-Boom" was successful enough that at one point in 1955 there was even a Sh-Boom shampoo on the market, made by a company owned by the Chords themselves. Lawsuits over the band's name which made them have to be known for a time as the Chordcats contributed to their decline, and while there were several reunions over the years, they never replicated the magic of "Sh-Boom". The Crew Cuts, on the other hand, had many more hits, successfully leeching off sales of records of black artists like the Penguins, Gene and Eunice, Nappy Brown, and Otis Williams and the Charms, and getting more airplay and sales from identical copies. They even had the gall to say that those artists should be grateful to the Crew Cuts, for giving their songs exposure. We'll be talking about several of those songs in the next few weeks. It seems it's not as hard to follow up your first hit if you don't have to have any ideas yourself, just be white.

  Welcome to episode eighteen of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. Today we’re looking at “Sh-Boom” by the Chords. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode.    —-more—-     Resources As always, I’ve created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of almost all the songs in the episode. In this case, I have missed out one track that’s used in the podcast – I use approximately seven seconds of the intro to “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke, without any of the lyrics, in the podcast. I am not going to share that song anywhere, given its lyrical content. My main resources are, as with last week  Honkers & Shouters: The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues by Arnold Shaw, one of the most important books on early 50s rhythm and blues, The Sound of the City by Charlie Gillett, and Marv Goldberg’s website. The Chords’ music has never been anthologised on CD that I can find out, but almost any good doo-wop compilation should have “Sh-Boom”.   Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Let’s talk about one-hit wonders for a while. One-hit wonders have an unusual place in the realm of music history, and one which it’s never easy to decide whether to envy or to pity. After all, a one-hit wonder has had a hit, which is more than the vast majority of musicians ever do. And depending on how big the hit is and how good it is, that one hit might be enough to keep them going through a whole career. There are musicians to this day who can go out and perform in front of a crowd of a few thousand people, every night, who’ve come there just to hear that one song they recorded nearly sixty years ago — and if the musician is good enough they can get that crowd enjoying their other songs as well. But there are other musicians who can never capitalise on that one record, and who never get another shot. And for those people, as the song goes, “a taste of honey’s worse than none at all”. What initially looked like it might be a massive career turns into a fluke. Sometimes they take it well and it just becomes a story to tell the grandkids, but other times it messes up everyone’s life. There are people out there who’ve spent thirty or forty years of their life chasing a second hit, who will never be truly happy because they expected more from their brief success than it brought them. There are a lot of one-hit wonders in the world of rock and roll, and a lot of people who end up unlucky, but few have been as unlucky as the Chords, who wrote and recorded one of the biggest hits of all time, but who through a combination of bad luck in choosing a name, and more than a little racism, never managed to have a follow-up. Amazingly, they seem to have handled it far better than most. “Sh-Boom”, the Chords’ only hit, was the first rhythm and blues record by a black artist or group to make the top ten in the Billboard pop charts, so I suppose this is as good a time as any to talk about how the Billboard charts work, and how they differ from charts in the UK and some other countries. While the UK’s singles charts are based only on record sales (and, these days, streams, but that doesn’t really apply to this pre-digital era), the Billboard charts have always been an industry-specific thing rather than aimed at the public, and so they were based on many different metrics. As well as charts for record sales, they had (or have) charts for jukebox plays, for radio plays, and various other things. These would be combined into different genre-specific charts first, and those genres would be based on what the radio stations were playing. This means that the country charts would include all the songs played by country stations, the R&B charts all those played by R&B stations, and so on, rather than Billboard deciding themselves what counted as what genre. Then all of these charts would be combined to make the “Hot 100”, which is sort of a chart of charts. This would sometimes lead to anomalous results, when more than one type of station started playing a song, and some songs would end up on the country chart *and* the rhythm and blues chart *and* the pop chart. Pop is here a separate type of music in itself, and in the early 1950s what got played on “pop” radio was, essentially, the music that was made by white people in the suburbs *for* white people in the suburbs. In 1954, the year we’re talking about, the big hits were “O Mein Papa” by Eddie Fisher… [very short excerpt] “Secret Love” by Doris Day [very short excerpt] and records by Perry Como, Rosemary Clooney, Jo Stafford, and Tony Bennett. Polite, white, middle-class music for polite white middle-class people. None of that hillbilly nonsense, and *certainly* nothing by any black people. Some of it, like the Tony Bennett tracks, was pretty good, but much of it was the kind of horrible pap which made rock and roll, when it finally broke on to the pop charts, seem like such a breath of fresh air. And even the Tony Bennett records weren’t in any way exciting — they were good, but they’d relax you after a hard day, not make you want to get up and dance. What’s noticeable here is that the pop music charts were dominated by music aimed at adults. There was no music for teenagers or younger adults hitting the pop charts, and no music for dancing. During the height of the swing era, the big bands had of course been making dance music, but now every last bit of black or lower-class influence was being eradicated, in order to appeal to the “return to normalcy”. You see, by the end of the Second World War, America had been through a lot — so much so that the first call for a “return to normalcy” had been from Warren G. Harding in the 1920 election, nearly thirty years earlier. In the previous forty-five years, the country had been involved in two world wars, suffered through the depression and the dustbowl, and simultaneously seen an unprecedented growth in technology which had brought the car, the plane and now the jet, the cinema and then the talkies, the radio and the TV, and now the atomic bomb, into people’s lives. People had undergone the greatest disruption in history, and several generations had now grown up with an idea of what was “normal” that didn’t match their reality at all. And so the white, semi-prosperous, middle and upper-working class in America made a collective decision around 1946 that they were going to reconstruct that normality for themselves, and to try to pretend as much as possible that nothing had really changed. And that meant pretending that all the black people who’d moved to the Northern cities from the south in that time, and all the poor white people from Oklahoma and Texas who’d moved west to avoid the dustbowl, simply didn’t exist. Obviously those other people had some ideas of their own about that, and about how they fit into the world. And those people had a little more of a voice now than they’d had previously. The black people living in the cities had enjoyed something of a war boom — there had been so much work in the factories that many black people had pulled themselves up into something approaching affluence. That was quickly snatched away when the war ended and those jobs were quote needed by the returning heroes unquote, but a small number of them had managed to get themselves into economically secure positions, and a larger number now knew that it was *possible* for them to make money, and were more motivated than ever for social change that would let them return to their previous status. (This is a recurring pattern in the American economy, incidentally. Every time there’s an economic boom, black people are the last to benefit from it and then the first to be damaged in the downturn that follows. White America is like Lucy, putting the football of the American Dream in front of black people and then taking it away again, over and over.) And so the pop chart was for the people who were working in advertising, having three-martini lunches, and driving home to their new suburban picket-fence houses. And the other charts were for everyone else. And this is why it was the music on the other charts that was so interesting. There’s an argument that what made rock and roll something new and interesting wasn’t any one feature of the genre, but an attitude towards creation. Early rock and roll was very much what we would now think of as “mash ups” — collages or montages of wildly different elements being brought together — and this is what really distinguishes between the innovative musicians and the copycats. If you were bringing together half a dozen elements from different styles, then you were doing rock and roll. But if you were just copying one other record — even if that other record was itself a rock and roll record — and not bringing anything new to it, then you weren’t doing rock and roll, you were doing pop. And it was the people at the margins who would do rock and roll. Because they were the ones who weren’t sealing themselves off and trying to deny reality. We talked a little bit about doo-wop last week, but the songs we talked about there probably wouldn’t be called doo-wop by most listeners, though there are clear stylistic similarities. It’s probably time for me to explain what doo-wop actually is, musically. It’s a style you don’t get now, except in conscious pastiches, but it was basically an extension of the Ink Spots’ style. You have at least four singers, one of whom is a very prominent bass vocalist who sings nonsense words like “doo wop” or “bom bom ba dom”, another of whom is a high tenor who takes most of the leads, and the rest sing harmonies in the middle. While the jump bands and western swing were both music that dominated on the West Coast — the early jump bands were often based in New York, but LA was really the base of the music — doo wop was a music of the North-East. It sometimes got as far west as Detroit, but it was mostly New York, Washington DC, and a bit later New Jersey, that produced doo-wop singers. And it was doo-wop that would really take off as a musical style. While the jump bands remained mildly successful, the early fifties saw them decline in popularity as far as the R&B charts went, because the new vocal groups were becoming the dominant form in R&B — and this was especially true of the “bird groups”. The first “bird group” was the Ravens, and they might be considered the first doo-wop group full stop. They took the Ink Spots’ “top and bottom” format and extended it, so that on their ballads there’d be more interplay between the high and low vocals. Listening to “You Foolish Thing” you can clearly hear the Ink Spots influence: [excerpt “you Foolish Thing”] On their uptempo music, on the other hand, they just had the bass singer sing the lead: [excerpt: the Ravens “Rock Me All Night Long”] And the Ravens became massively influential. They’d found a way to get the catchiest parts of the Ink Spots sound, but without having to stick so closely to the formula. It could work for all kinds of songs, and soon there were a whole host of bands named after birds and singing in the Ravens’ style — the Orioles, the Flamingoes, the Penguins, the Wrens, and many more. We’ve already heard one of the bands they influenced when we listened to the Robins. The other major influential bird group was the Orioles, whose “It’s Too Soon To Know” is another record that’s often considered by some to be “the first rock and roll record” — though to my ears it just sounds like a derivative of the Ink Spots rather than anything new: [excerpt “It’s Too Soon to Know” by the Orioles] So there’s a clear stylistic progression there, but we’re not looking at anything radically different from what came before. The first real doo-wop record to really have a major impact was “Gee”, by the Crows, another bird group, which was recorded and released in 1953, but became a hit in 1954, charting a month after “Sh-Boom” was recorded, but before Sh-Boom itself became a hit: [excerpt: “Gee”, the Crows] “Gee” is doo-wop absolutely fully formed, and it’s a record which had a massive influence, particularly on young California teenagers who were growing up listening to Johnny Otis’ radio show — both Frank Zappa and the Beach Boys would later record their own strange takes on the song, emphasising how odd the record actually sounded. It’s also widely credited as the first R&B record to become a hit with a large part of its audience being white teenagers. More than any other form of R&B, doo-wop traded in the concerns of the adolescent, and so it was the first subgenre to become accessible to that huge demographic of white kids who wanted something new they could appropriate and call their own. “Gee” is a record that deserves an episode to itself, frankly, in terms of importance, but there’s not much to say about it — the Crows had one hit, never had another, split up soon after, and there’s no real biographical information out there about them. The record just stands on its own. That’s also true for “Sh-Boom”, and the Chords were another one-hit wonder, but there’s a difference there. While “Gee” was the first doo-wop record to make money from white people, “Sh-Boom” was the first doo-wop record to lose money to white people. [excerpt: “Sh-Boom”, the Chords] The Chords were, at least, not actually a bird group — they were too individual for that — but in other respects they’re very much in the typical mould of the early doo-wop bands, and “Sh-Boom” is, in many ways, an absolutely typical doo-wop song. “Sh-Boom” was not meant to be a hit. It was released on Cat records, a subsidiary of Atlantic Records, but apparently everyone at Atlantic hated the song — it was only recorded at the Chords’ insistence, and it was originally only a B-side until the song started to hit with the DJs. Sh-Boom was arranged by Jesse Stone, but presumably his contribution was the instrumental, rather than the vocal arrangement, as the song was written by the Chords themselves, originally while sitting together in a car. At the time, according to Buddy McCrea of the band, “When they talked to each other, they’d say ‘boom.’ They’d say ‘Hey, man, boom, how ya doin’.” Jimmy Keyes, also of the band, said “‘Boom’ was the slang word. If you were standing on this block for five minutes, you’d hear that slang word fifteen times or more. We would take the ‘boom’ and make it sound like a bomb: ‘shhhhhh-BOOM’.” Even the nonsense words in the background were, according to Keyes, meaningful to the band — “‘A langala langala lang.’ Well, you could hear the church bells over there,” while other parts were references to someone called “Bip”, the uncle of band members Carl and Claude Feaster. Bip was homeless, and apparently stank, and when Bip would come to visit, according to Keyes, “We could smell Bip as soon as he opened the door.” They would cover their noses and sing “here comes Bip, a flip a dooba dip.” And one suspects that this played a big part in the song’s success — while the lyrics are genial gibberish, they’re genial gibberish that had meaning to the singers, if not to the audience. That wasn’t necessarily appreciated by older people though. The great satirist Stan Freberg recorded a rather mean-spirited parody of the song, combining it with a parody of Marlon Brando who was similarly popular at the time and who Freberg thought comparable in unintelligibility: [excerpt: Stan Freberg “Sh-Boom”] But there’s an element of racism in the popular reaction to the success of “Sh-Boom”. There was a belief among many people that since they couldn’t understand the lyrics, they were hiding some secret code. And any secret code sung by black men must, obviously, have to do with sex. We’ll see a lot of this kind of thing as the story goes on, unfortunately. But of course, meaningless lyrics have a long, long, history in popular music — much longer than is usually appreciated. Most people, when they’re talking about nonsense lyrics, trace scat singing back as far as Louis Armstrong imitating his own trumpet. But there’s a good argument that they go back as far as we have records of songs existing, or almost. If you look at traditional folk music you’ll often find a common pattern, of people singing “As I walked out one bright summer’s day/sing too ra la loo ra la loo ra la lay” or similar. That kind of nonsense singing dates back as far as we have records, and no-one knows how it started, but one hypothesis I’ve seen which makes sense to me is that it comes from Gregorian chant and similar religious forms. No, seriously. It makes sense when you think about it. One of the places that people in the Middle Ages were most likely to hear music was in church, and many early motets contained Latin texts — usually sung by the tenors — while other people would sing commentary or explanation of the lyrics in the vernacular — English or French or whatever language. Now, for a peasant hearing this, what do you hear? You hear some of the people singing words that make sense to you, in your own language, but it’s mixed in with this other gibberish that you don’t understand. If the people you’re listening to are singing something that makes sense and they drop into Latin, they might as well be singing “Sh-Boom Sh-Boom sha la la la la la la la la la la la” for all the sense it’ll make to you. So you come to the conclusion that that’s just how songs *are*. They have bits that make sense and then bits of nonsense that sounds good. Indeed, one of the bits of lyric of “Sh-Boom” as it’s commonly transcribed is “hey nonny”, which if that’s the lyric would tie directly back into that old folk tradition — that is, sadly, the one bit of nonsense syllabics that the band weren’t asked about, and so we can’t know if they were thinking of minstrels singing “hey nonny nonny”, or if it had some other inspiration as personal as Uncle Bip. But either way, after “Sh-Boom” doo-wop, and R&B in general, became obsessed with nonsense syllabics. We’ll be hearing a lot of examples of this in the next few years, and it became so prevalent that by 1961 Barry Mann was asking this musical question: [excerpt: “Who Put the Bomp”, Barry Mann] Doo-wop started as a musical style among black teenagers in East Coast cities, but within a few years it became dominated by Italian-American teenagers from the same areas, and we’ll see that progression happen over the next eighty or ninety episodes of this podcast. But we can also see it happening in miniature in the Chords’ career. Because while they had a big hit with “Sh-Boom”, they didn’t have the biggest hit with it. If you vaguely know “Sh-Boom”, maybe from hearing it in a film soundtrack, you might have been surprised when you heard a snatch of it earlier in this episode. It might have sounded very subtly wrong. It will have sounded *more or less* like the record you know, but… different. That’s because the record you know isn’t “Sh-Boom” by the Chords, but “Sh-Boom” by the Crew Cuts. To explain why, we’re first going to have to talk about “A Little Bird Told Me”: “A Little Bird Told Me” was a song originally recorded by Paula Watson on Supreme Records. Watson, and all the musicians on the record, and the record label’s owner, were all black. Watson’s record went to number two on the R&B charts and number fourteen on the bestseller charts: [excerpt “A Little Bird Told Me”, Paula Watson] And then Decca put out a record — “A Little Bird Told Me”, sung by Evelyn Knight: [excerpt: “A Little Bird Told Me”, Evelyn Knight] That record went to number one on the pop charts. And everyone involved in *that* record — the singer, the backing band, the record label owners — was white. Now, to just show you how ridiculously similar the two are, I’m going to try something — I’m going to play both records together, simultaneously. [excerpt: both versions of “A Little Bird Told Me” played together] As you can imagine, the owners of Supreme Records were more than a little put out by this. This kind of direct copying was *not* the norm in the late 1940s — as we’ve talked about before, it was perfectly normal for people to rework songs into their own style, and to do different versions for different markets, but just to make a record sounding as close as possible to someone else’s hit record of the song, that was unusual. So Supreme Records took Decca to court, and said that Decca’s record was copyright infringement. It was a direct copy of their record and should be treated as such. Before we go any further, you have to know that there are roughly three different concepts that many people confuse when they’re talking about the music industry, all of which are important. There’s the song, the recording, and the arrangement. The song is, to put it simply, just what the singer sings. It’s the words and the melody line, and maybe the chord sequence if the chord sequence is sufficiently original. But basically, if you can sing it to yourself unaccompanied, that bit’s the song. And the copyright in that is owned by the songwriter or her publisher. Now, once a song has been published, either as a record or as sheet music, *anyone* at all can make a recording of it or perform it live. There are certain conditions to that — you can change the song in minor ways, to put it into your own style, or for example to give the protagonist’s love interest a different gender if that’s something that concerns you, but you can’t make major changes to the song’s melody or lyrics without the writer or publisher’s permission. You also can’t use the song in a film or TV show without jumping through some other hoops, just on a record or live performance. But I could, right now, make and release an album of “Andrew Hickey Sings the Lennon and McCartney Songbook in the Bath” and I wouldn’t need anyone’s permission to do so, so long as I paid Lennon and McCartney’s publishers the legal minimum amount for every copy I sold. I need a songwriter’s permission to make the *first* record of their song, but anyone can legally make the second. The next thing is the recording itself — the specific recording of a specific performance. These days, that too is under copyright — I can put out my *own* recording of me singing Beatles songs, but I can’t just release a CD of one of the Beatles’ albums, at least if I don’t want to go to prison. A lot of people get confused by this because we talk, for example, about “She Loves You” being “a Beatles song” — in fact, it’s a Lennon and McCartney *song* performed on a Beatles *recording*. These days, each individual recording has its own copyright, but at the time we’re talking about, in the US, there was no federal legislation giving copyright to sound recordings — that didn’t end up happening, in fact, until the 1970s. Up to that point, the copyright law around sound recordings was based on case law and odd rulings (for example it was ruled that it was illegal to play a record on the radio without permission, not because of copyright, but because of the right to privacy — playing a record which had only been licensed for individual use to a group was considered like opening someone’s mail). But still, there was usually at least state-level copyright law around recordings, and so record labels were fairly safe. But there’s a third aspect, one somewhere between the song and the recording, and that’s the arrangement. The arrangement is all the decisions made about how to perform a song — things like how much of a groove you want it to have, whether you’re going to back it with guitar or harpsichord or accordion, whether the backing instruments are going to play countermelodies or riffs or just strum the chords, whether you’re going to play it as a slow ballad or an uptempo boogie. All that stuff. Until the “A Little Bird Told Me” case, everyone had assumed that arrangements were copyrightable. It makes sense that they would be — you can write them down in sheet music form, they make a massive difference to how the performance sounds, they’re often what we remember most, and they require a huge amount of creative effort. By every basic principle of copyright law, arrangements should be copyrightable. But the court ruled otherwise, and set a precedent that held until very recently — until, in fact, a case that only went through its final appeal in December 2018, the “Blurred Lines” case, which ruled on whether Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” plagiarised Marvin Gaye’s “Got To Give It Up”. [excerpts: “Blurred Lines” and “Got To Give It Up”] Between “A Little Bird Told Me” and “Blurred Lines”, copyright law in the US held that you could copyright an actual recording, and you could copyright a song, but you couldn’t copyright an arrangement or groove. And this had two major effects on the music industry, both of them hugely detrimental to black people. The first was simply that people could steal a groove — a riff or rhythm or feel — and make a new record with new lyrics and melody but the same groove, without giving credit. As the genres favoured by black musicians were mostly groove-based, while those favoured by white musicians were mostly melody-based, white musicians were more protected from theft than black musicians were. Bo Diddley, for example, invented the “Bo Diddley beat”, but didn’t receive royalties from Buddy Holly, the Rolling Stones, or George Michael when they used that rhythm. And secondly, it opened the floodgates to white musicians remaking black musicians’ hits in the same style as the black musicians. Up to this point, if a white singer had covered a black musician, or vice versa, it would have been with a different feel and a different arrangement. But now, all of a sudden, whenever a black musician put out an interesting-sounding record, a white person would put out an identical copy, and the white version would get the radio play and record sales. As the black musicians tended to record for tiny labels while the white ones would be on major labels that wouldn’t sign black musicians, the result was that a whole generation of black innovators saw their work stolen from them. And we’ll be seeing the results of that play out in a lot of the records we talk about in the future. But for most of the records we’re going to look at, the one that’s stood the test of time will be the original — very few people nowadays listen to, say, Pat Boone’s versions of “Tutti Frutti” or “Ain’t That A Shame”, because no-one would do so when the Little Richard or Fats Domino versions are available. But with “Sh-Boom”, the version that still has most traction is by The Crew Cuts. [excerpt: “Sh-Boom” – the Crew Cuts] The Crew Cuts were a white, Canadian, vocal group, who specialised in rerecording songs originally performed by black groups, in near-identical arrangements, and scoring bigger hits with them than the black people had. In the case of “Sh-Boom”, sadly, the characterless white copy has dominated in popular culture over the version that actually has some life in it. The Chords never had another hit, although “Sh-Boom” was successful enough that at one point in 1955 there was even a Sh-Boom shampoo on the market, made by a company owned by the Chords themselves. Lawsuits over the band’s name which made them have to be known for a time as the Chordcats contributed to their decline, and while there were several reunions over the years, they never replicated the magic of “Sh-Boom”. The Crew Cuts, on the other hand, had many more hits, successfully leeching off sales of records of black artists like the Penguins, Gene and Eunice, Nappy Brown, and Otis Williams and the Charms, and getting more airplay and sales from identical copies. They even had the gall to say that those artists should be grateful to the Crew Cuts, for giving their songs exposure. We’ll be talking about several of those songs in the next few weeks. It seems it’s not as hard to follow up your first hit if you don’t have to have any ideas yourself, just be white.

Many freelancers are in a situation that could work against them in the commercial or media market. Combining freelancing with caring responsibilities, living in a part of the world that has a poor reputation for the quality of its writers, or having health problems or being disabled, for example. In this episode of the podcast, Philippa interviews Mridu Khullar Relph, a freelance writer who has written for the likes of the New York Times, Time magazine, Ms magazine and more, and they discuss how to turn a disadvantage into a strength.Apologies for the inconsistent sound quality in parts of this interview. However, it's well worth tolerating it for the great content!Show notes Mridu's website (UK / US) The Shy Writer: An introvert's guide to writing success by C. Hope Clark Effective marketing for introverts Turn your biggest disadvantage into your biggest strength But how do I know it's good? How you can evaluate content quality and ditch content anxiety Mridu on Twitter Mridu on Facebook. There are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, please 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Philippa online, check out these links:WebsitesPhilippa Willitts: freelance writingPhilippa: Proofread My StuffPhilippa Willitts: social media, SEO and tech writingTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesFacebook:Philippa's main Freelance Writing on FacebookPhilippa's Social Media Writer pn FacebookLinkedIn:Philippa Willitts on LinkedInGoogle+Philippa Willitts pn Google+PinterestPhilippa Willitts on PinterestQuoraPhilippa Willitts on QuoraBirdsongCourtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw.

People who self-publish books have a lot to prove if they want to dispel the industry's bad reputation. In this podcast episode, Philippa and Lorrie take listeners through a series of self-publishing no-nos offer recommendations and tips to make sure self-published work is the best it can be.Show Notes DIY: How to Understand Self-Publishing Acronyms Lousy Book Covers Fiverr Authors are a**holes Written? Kitten! There are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, do 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast! To find Lorrie and Philippa on the web, follow these links:WebsitesPhilippa Willitts's freelance writing websiteLorrie Hartshorn's freelance writing websitePhilippa Willitts's Social Media Writer websiteTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesLorrie: @ThatWordyBirdFacebook:Lorrie on FacebookPhilippa's main freelance writing Facebook pagePhilippa's Social Media Writer Facebook pageLinkedIn:Lorrie HartshornPhilippa WillittsGoogle+Philippa WillittsLorrie HartshornPinterestPhilippa WillittsBirdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw. 

There are times when freelance writing clients cross a line. Sending text messages to check you got their email, calling you at 7pm on a Saturday night, or emailing 12 times a day to check on progress. In this solo episode, Lorrie goes through some tricks and tips to return professional distance to a working relationship.Show Notes 35 tech terms translated into plain English There are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Lorrie online, follow these links:WebsitesLorrie's website: http://www.lorriehartshorn.comTwitterLorrie: @ThatWordyBirdFacebook:Lorrie: http://www.facebook.com/ThatWordyBirdLinkedIn:Lorrie HartshornBirdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Logo design by Philippa Willitts.

Writing for agencies can be a great way to boost the stability and income of your freelance writing business - but it's definitely an acquired taste!In this podcast episode, Lorrie and Philippa discuss how to decide if writing for agencies is for you, and to how to find the best agencies to suit your needs and working style.Show Notes If you're feeling unappreciated, give someone else credit 14 brilliant pieces of literature you can read in the time it takes to eat lunch Freelance writing: to specialise or not to specialise There are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, do 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Lorrie and Philippa on the web, follow these links:WebsitesPhilippa Willitts's freelance writing websiteLorrie Hartshorn's freelance writing websitePhilippa Willitts's Social Media Writer websiteTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesLorrie: @ThatWordyBirdFacebook:Lorrie on FacebookPhilippa's main freelance writing Facebook pagePhilippa's Social Media Writer Facebook pageLinkedIn:Lorrie HartshornPhilippa WillittsGoogle+Philippa WillittsLorrie HartshornPinterestPhilippa WillittsBirdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw.

Social media is an unavoidable part of marketing a business nowadays, but thankfully there are tools available that can help freelancers to avoid spending unnecessary time and energy on social channels when it's not absolutely necessary. In this podcast episode, Philippa goes through a series of tools to streamline Twitter marketing and make it a far more efficient process.Show Notes Tweetdeck Hootsuite Buffer ManageFlitter FollowerWonk Tweriod Tweepi Twitter is like… There are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, please 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Philippa online, check out these links:WebsitesPhilippa Willitts: freelance writingPhilippa: Proofread My StuffPhilippa Willitts: social media, SEO and tech writingTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesFacebook:Philippa's main Freelance Writing on FacebookPhilippa's Social Media Writer pn FacebookLinkedIn:Philippa Willitts on LinkedInGoogle+Philippa Willitts pn Google+PinterestPhilippa Willitts on PinterestQuoraPhilippa Willitts on QuoraBirdsongCourtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw.

Most people wish they were paid more but, when you're freelancing, you will often be called upon to demonstrate why you deserve the pay rise you want! In this podcast episode, Lorrie and Philippa look at ways to make sure you justify the fees you want to charge.Show Notes Writing for different audiences - experts vs beginners Freelance writing: to specialise or not to specialise Why and how to charge more for your freelance writing The art of getting paid How to decide what to charge for your freelance writing services What British People Say Versus What They Mean http://offers.hubspot.com/content-mapping-template https://www.canvas.net/ Other: How to meet and exceed your clients' needs The hows, the whys and the wherefores of the perfect press release There are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, do 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Lorrie and Philippa on the web, follow these links:WebsitesPhilippa Willitts's freelance writing websiteLorrie Hartshorn's freelance writing websitePhilippa Willitts's Social Media Writer websiteTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesLorrie: @ThatWordyBirdFacebook:Lorrie on FacebookPhilippa's main freelance writing Facebook pagePhilippa's Social Media Writer Facebook pageLinkedIn:Lorrie HartshornPhilippa WillittsGoogle+Philippa WillittsLorrie HartshornPinterestPhilippa WillittsBirdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw.NB Some of the above links are affiliate links, which means if you buy after clicking on them it will help to fund the podcast. 

Do you ever find yourself faced with a blank Word document? Clueless about how to get 500 words onto the page, incorporating SEO keywords, heading tags and a call to action? In Lorrie's solo episode, she goes through some non-linear ways to approach copywriting, where you don't necessarily start at the top and finish at the bottom.Show Notes Episode 19: How to proofread your own work There are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Lorrie online, follow these links:WebsitesLorrie's website: http://www.lorriehartshorn.comTwitterLorrie: @ThatWordyBirdFacebook:Lorrie: http://www.facebook.com/ThatWordyBirdLinkedIn:Lorrie HartshornBirdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Logo design by Philippa Willitts.

In this podcast, Philippa and Lorrie discuss several options for additional income streams for freelance writers. Income from freelancing can go up and down and taking time off sick or for a holiday can be a scary time, financially. Because of this, it can be a good idea to have an extra income stream or two, but many writers have no idea what they could do to gain any kind of passive or residual income. Tune in to get some great ideas!Show Notes Amazon affiliates Google AdSense Clickbank E-Junkie Commission Junction Affiliate Window This is what petunias look like, in case you were wondering Constant Content Amazon Kindle CreateSpace Lulu Philippa's t-shirts on RedBubble ... and on Zazzle There is also Society6 and CafePress Ding ding: 9 Knockout Inbound Marketing Tips Fiercety, Seriosity, Debonairity: 14 Abstract Nouns We Need to Bring Back. There are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, do 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Lorrie and Philippa on the web, follow these links:WebsitesPhilippa Willitts's freelance writing websiteLorrie Hartshorn's freelance writing websitePhilippa Willitts's Social Media Writer websiteTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesLorrie: @ThatWordyBirdFacebook:Lorrie on FacebookPhilippa's main freelance writing Facebook pagePhilippa's Social Media Writer Facebook pageLinkedIn:Lorrie HartshornPhilippa WillittsGoogle+Philippa WillittsLorrie HartshornPinterestPhilippa WillittsBirdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw.NB Some of the above links are affiliate links, which means if you buy after clicking on them it will help to fund the podcast. 

Some days you will be bursting with ideas, but everybody has those moments when the Word document is empty - and so is their bank of inspiration. This solo podcast episode by Philippa is full of ways to get content inspiration. Show Notes Feedly Topsy Quora Google Trends Google Adwords Keyword Planner Ubersuggest Google Alerts StumbleUpon There are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, please 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Philippa online, check out these links:WebsitesPhilippa Willitts: freelance writingPhilippa Willitts: social media writingTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesFacebook:Philippa's main Freelance Writing on FacebookPhilippa's Social Media Writer pn FacebookLinkedIn:Philippa Willitts on LinkedInGoogle+Philippa Willitts pn Google+PinterestPhilippa Willitts on PinterestQuoraPhilippa Willitts on QuoraBirdsongCourtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw.

Despite being thought of as a bit of an outsider, Google+ actually has a lot to offer a freelancer. It has powerful features, smart personalisation options and an ideal B2B marketplace. In this episode of the freelance writing podcast, Philippa and Lorrie go through Google+'s functionality, dos and don'ts, best practice and hacks. Show Notes Top 20 stats to get you active on Google+ Better than Gmail for Android: Boomerang for Android Reviewed The 5-step editing process for a perfect resume There are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, do 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Lorrie and Philippa on the web, follow these links:WebsitesPhilippa Willitts's freelance writing websiteLorrie Hartshorn's freelance writing websitePhilippa Willitts's Social Media Writer websiteTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesLorrie: @ThatWordyBirdFacebook:Lorrie on FacebookPhilippa's main freelance writing Facebook pagePhilippa's Social Media Writer Facebook pageLinkedIn:Lorrie HartshornPhilippa WillittsGoogle+Philippa WillittsLorrie HartshornPinterestPhilippa WillittsBirdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw.

Lorrie outsources some of her work to other freelance writers, and writers all over the world hire proofreaders and editors to help them perfect their masterpieces. But how on earth do you go about finding the right person for the job? It can be a big decision, and a big responsibility, so Lorrie gives you the dos and don'ts for hiring a freelancer in this episode!Show Notes   Copywriting contract template Episode 20: Goal Planning - Your Freelance Aims for 2013 Episode 23: How to Decide What to Charge for your Freelance Writing Services Episode 24: The Art of Getting Paid Episode 25: Why and How to Charge More For Your Freelance Writing 7 Sins of Newbie Entrepreneurs   There are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Lorrie online, follow these links:WebsitesLorrie's website: http://www.lorriehartshorn.comTwitterLorrie: @ThatWordyBirdFacebook:Lorrie: http://www.facebook.com/ThatWordyBirdLinkedIn:Lorrie HartshornBirdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw.

Now more than ever, business owners and media outlets put pressure on writers to work for free. Is there any benefit to this, or is the fabled 'exposure' they promise not worth a thing? In this episode, Philippa and Lorrie deconstruct the facts and share some strong opinions on the topic!Show Notes Episode 4: Is writing for free ever ok? The Center for Architecture and Urban Design Los Angeles (CALA) logo design competition 99 designs Absolute Write: $5 for 500 word articles Carol Tice on Freelance Writing Scams Philip Hensher stirs debate among authors after refusing to write for free Paying bills with a drawing of a spider Episode 23: How to decide what to charge for your freelance writing services Episode 24: The art of getting paid Episode 25: Why and how to charge more for your freelance writing Freelance writers: how to tame the client from hell 7 habits of highly ineffective people Other relevant links The Mumsnet racketeers by Nick Cohen Harlan Ellison - Pay the Writer (Video) Equal. Not. There are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, do 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Lorrie and Philippa on the web, follow these links:WebsitesPhilippa Willitts's freelance writing websiteLorrie Hartshorn's freelance writing websitePhilippa Willitts's Social Media Writer websiteTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesLorrie: @ThatWordyBirdFacebook:Lorrie on FacebookPhilippa's main freelance writing Facebook pagePhilippa's Social Media Writer Facebook pageLinkedIn:Lorrie HartshornPhilippa WillittsGoogle+Philippa WillittsPinterestPhilippa WillittsBirdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw.

Lucy Hay is the owner of the successful Bang2Write website, all about screenwriting and novel writing, and she is a script editor and organiser of the London Screenwriting Festival. In this podcast episode, Philippa interviews Lucy and they talk about her work with J.K. Amalou, helping to give women opportunities through London Screenwriting Festival, funding and investment for films, why some films work and some don't, how much to disclose on social media, Twitter hashtags, cyber bullying and teenage pregnancy, and during the discussion, Philippa inadvertently comes out as gay. A must-listen for anyone interested in making it in the film and television industry as a screenwriter, and anybody who just wants to know more about different types of writing career.Show Notes Bang2Write BAFTA J.K. Amalou Rush Frozen Gravity The Ledge Pacific Rim Man on a Ledge The Brave One 6 Ways to Avoid Being a Keyboard Warrior (Bang2Write) - Lucy's response to Twitter row Forget funeral selfies. What are the ethics of tweeting a terminal illness? (Cache) #scriptchat on Twitter #wclw on Twitter Can you spot these 3 different freelance writing scams? Find Lucy Hay on Facebook and on Twitter. Her writers groups are Bang2Writers on Facebook and on LinkedIn. Lucy is also on Quora and Pinterest.  There are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, please 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Philippa online, check out these links:WebsitesPhilippa Willitts: freelance writingPhilippa Willitts: social media writingTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesFacebook:Philippa's main Freelance Writing on FacebookPhilippa's Social Media Writer pn FacebookLinkedIn:Philippa Willitts on LinkedInGoogle+Philippa Willitts pn Google+PinterestPhilippa Willitts on PinterestQuoraPhilippa Willitts on QuoraBirdsongCourtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw.

Everybody loves a list, so in this episode, Philippa and Lorrie go through five and a half types of lists that can transform your freelance marketing plan. Show Notes10 most popular episodes of 2013:10: Episode 2: Setting up as a freelance writer: website, social media and brand management best practice9: Episode 3: Setting up as a freelance writer part 28: Episode 18: How to network like a ninja7: Episode 7: Freelance Writing: To specialise or not to specialise?6: Episode 55: Coping with rejection5: Episode 30: It's not about you: the art and science of commercial copywriting4: Episode 38: How to break into new freelance writing markets3: Episode 50: Part 2 of How to stop your freelance business from wasting money2: Episode 24: The art of getting paiddrumroll - and I don't really know what this says about our listeners, but at number one is...1: Episode 26: How to turn down / disconnect from a client or supplier without losing your professionalism or gaining an enemyPhilippa's Twitter listsLorrie's Twitter listsTweetdeckHootsuiteGuerrillamail - Disposable, Temporary E-mail AddressesErasure - Love to Hate YouEpisode 40: What to do when you run out of ideas, AKA what Pippa Middleton's bum can teach us about finding writing inspirationHow to create a content strategy for a B2B businessFour ways to step up your marketing campaign in JanuaryWeight Watchers recipe cards21 truly upsetting vintage recipesThere are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, do 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Lorrie and Philippa on the web, follow these links:WebsitesPhilippa Willitts's freelance writing websiteLorrie Hartshorn's freelance writing websitePhilippa Willitts's Social Media Writer websiteTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesLorrie: @ThatWordyBirdFacebook:Lorrie on FacebookPhilippa's main freelance writing Facebook pagePhilippa's Social Media Writer Facebook pageLinkedIn:Lorrie HartshornPhilippa WillittsGoogle+Philippa WillittsPinterestPhilippa WillittsBirdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw. 

While we would like all of our work, as freelance writers, to be fascinating and thrilling, the fact is that there will be times when we have to write on a really boring topic. In this podcast episode, Lorrie goes through six top tips to create interesting writing on the most tedious of topics.Show NotesWhat should I tweet? 8 places to find fantastic contentThere are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Lorrie online, follow these links:WebsitesLorrie's website: http://www.lorriehartshorn.comTwitterLorrie: @ThatWordyBirdFacebook:Lorrie: http://www.facebook.com/ThatWordyBirdLinkedIn:Lorrie HartshornBirdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw. 

As a freelance writer you primarily create content, for both your clients and yourself. If you are in a position where you fling your words out to the world and never think of them again, you are missing a trick and probably wasting at least some of your time (and your clients' money!). If, instead, you measure how effective your content is, you can quickly learn what works and what doesn't, what readers can relate to and what they ignore, and when you pay attention to what you discover and apply it to your future work, you will find that the content you produce makes an impact. Show NotesEpisode 63: 60 minutes to a more successful freelance writing businessShareGrabPretty Link LiteRankerizerWP Stats Dashboard PluginNew Statpress PluginTweepiTweriodPay With a Tweet‘Because' has become a preposition, because grammarThere are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, do 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Lorrie and Philippa on the web, follow these links:WebsitesPhilippa Willitts's freelance writing websiteLorrie Hartshorn's freelance writing websitePhilippa Willitts's Social Media Writer websiteTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesLorrie: @ThatWordyBirdFacebook:Lorrie on FacebookPhilippa's main freelance writing Facebook pagePhilippa's Social Media Writer Facebook pageLinkedIn:Lorrie HartshornPhilippa WillittsGoogle+Philippa WillittsPinterestPhilippa WillittsBirdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw.

Doing business development work can seem like yet another onerous task that interrupts your writing time, but it is important to undertake these jobs if you are to run a sustainable and successful freelance business. In this podcast episode, Philippa has condensed seven tasks into a 60-minute plan, to help you to get a load of bizdev under your belt without the need to sacrifice hours and hours of writing - or fun - time!Show NotesEpisode 37: Freelance Writers and Social Proof - What it is, why you need it and how to get itRelationship Marketing Basics for Freelance ProfessionalsThere are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, please 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Philippa online, check out these links:WebsitesPhilippa's freelance writing website Philippa's social media writer websiteTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesFacebook:Philippa's main Freelance Writing Facebook PagePhilippa's Social Media Writer Facebook PageLinkedIn:Philippa Willitts on LinkedInGoogle+Philippa's Google+ AccountPinterestPhilippa on PinterestBirdsongCourtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw.

Keeping hold of a good client tends to be far easier than finding a new one, so it's really important to make sure that you are always meeting, and ideally exceeding, the expectations of those who are hiring you to work for them. In this podcast, we look at different ways you can identify what you need to do, and then do it perfectly, to ensure you are always offering your best work.Show Notes Episode 18: How to network like a ninja Episode 13: How to be responsive and flexible without losing the plot Lousy Book Covers Lorrie's favourite lousy book cover Philippa couldn't decide whether this one or this one was the best / worst Free Download: 50 customizable call-to-action templatesThere are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, do 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Lorrie and Philippa on the web, follow these links:WebsitesPhilippa Willitts's freelance writing websiteLorrie Hartshorn's freelance writing websitePhilippa Willitts's Social Media Writer websiteTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesLorrie: @ThatWordyBirdFacebook:Lorrie on FacebookPhilippa's main freelance writing Facebook pagePhilippa's Social Media Writer Facebook pageLinkedIn:Lorrie HartshornPhilippa WillittsGoogle+Philippa WillittsPinterestPhilippa WillittsBirdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw.

If you want to make freelance writing your full-time business, sometimes you really want a blueprint for how to get started. In this episode, Lorrie takes listeners through a six-week plan to get you ready to begin your new career in 2014.Show NotesALBTM 17 - How To Create An Editorial Calendar ALBTM 18 - How To Network Like A NinjaALBTM 20 - Goalplanning: your freelance writing aims for 2013ALBTM 23 - How to decide what to charge for your freelance writing servicesALBTM 24 - The art of getting paidALBTM 25 - why and How to Charge More For Your Freelance WritingMonthly budget templatehttp://www.copyblogger.com/create-content-infographic/AkismetLimit login attemptsThere are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, please 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Lorrie online, follow these links:WebsitesLorrie's website: http://www.lorriehartshorn.comTwitterLorrie: @ThatWordyBirdFacebook:Lorrie: http://www.facebook.com/ThatWordyBirdLinkedIn:Lorrie HartshornBirdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw.

It's an unfortunate truth that freelancers can be subject to oppressive behaviours from the clients they work with. Women, as well as members of minority groups, can be particularly at risk of being treated with a lack of respect or even downright abuse, especially if they work in traditionally male-dominated areas. In this podcast episode, Lorrie and Philippa discuss how freelancers can recognise when they are being treated inappropriately, and what they can do when it happens.Show Notes How to Handle Sexual Harassment from a Client A Woman In Your Own Right: Assertiveness and You (Anne Dickson) - USA / UK Online in 60 Seconds ShareGrab There are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, do 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Lorrie and Philippa on the web, follow these links:WebsitesPhilippa Willitts's freelance writing websiteLorrie Hartshorn's freelance writing websitePhilippa Willitts's Social Media Writer websiteTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesLorrie: @ThatWordyBirdFacebook:Lorrie on FacebookPhilippa's main freelance writing Facebook pagePhilippa's Social Media Writer Facebook pageLinkedIn:Lorrie HartshornPhilippa WillittsGoogle+Philippa WillittsPinterestPhilippa WillittsBirdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw.

As freelance writers, we might be called upon to write on a wide variety of topics, but sometimes when we're searching our brain for a suitable subject to write about we miss the most obvious: those things we love and are passionate about. Most people have a number of hobbies and interests outside of writing, and our knowledge and expertise in these areas can be tapped to produce ideas to write about. In this podcast episode, Philippa goes through a number of ways to make money by writing about your hobbies, for different platforms and audiences.Show NotesClipboard MagicThere are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, please 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Philippa online, check out these links:WebsitesPhilippa's freelance writing website Philippa's social media writer websiteTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesFacebook:Philippa's main Freelance Writing Facebook PagePhilippa's Social Media Writer Facebook PageLinkedIn:Philippa Willitts on LinkedInGoogle+Philippa's Google+ AccountPinterestPhilippa on PinterestBirdsongCourtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw.

As November rapidly approaches, thousands of people across the world are preparing to spend the month undertaking the ridiculous but awesome task of writing a whole novel in 30 days. In this episode of the freelance writing podcast, Philippa and Lorrie take listeners through plenty of tips and advice for making it through unscathed, and winning the challenge with 50,000 words written by the end of the month. Show NotesNANOWRIMOWriting Down the Bones by Natalie GoldbergRelentless by Simon KernickTwitter Fail: Comparing A Real Shooting to Breaking BadNet Profit Margin CalculatorEpisode 20: Goal Planning - Your Freelance Aims for 2013There are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, do 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Lorrie and Philippa on the web, follow these links:WebsitesPhilippa Willitts's freelance writing websiteLorrie Hartshorn's freelance writing websitePhilippa Willitts's Social Media Writer websiteTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesLorrie: @ThatWordyBirdFacebook:Lorrie on FacebookPhilippa's main freelance writing Facebook pagePhilippa's Social Media Writer Facebook pageLinkedIn:Lorrie HartshornPhilippa WillittsGoogle+Philippa WillittsPinterestPhilippa WillittsBirdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw.

As a freelance writer, you might be called upon to proofread or edit work for a client. At the same time, you might need to hire a proofreader or editor of your own to check your work. But are you confident about understanding the difference between the two roles? How do you explain proofreading to clients? And how on earth do you choose your own editor when you need to hire one?In this episode, Philippa and Lorrie cover all these topics and more.Show NotesSimple Errors in Social Marketing Alienate UK UsersEpisode 19: How to Proofread Your Own WorkEpisode 23: How to Decide What to Charge for your Freelance Writing ServicesEpisode 4: Hot Topic: Writing and Editing for free - is it ever OK?120 Marketing Tactics For Your Blog (Infographic)The art of the interviewThere are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, please 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Lorrie and Philippa on the web, follow these links:WebsitesPhilippa Willitts's freelance writing websiteLorrie Hartshorn's freelance writing websitePhilippa Willitts's Social Media Writer websiteTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesLorrie: @ThatWordyBirdFacebook:Lorrie on FacebookPhilippa's main freelance writing Facebook pagePhilippa's Social Media Writer Facebook pageLinkedIn:Lorrie HartshornPhilippa WillittsGoogle+Philippa WillittsPinterestPhilippa WillittsBirdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw.

We talk a lot in this podcast about freelancing best practice and how to do work that's brilliant. In this solo episode, however, Lorrie goes in the other direction: what are those freelance writer sins that cause her to fire the freelancers on her books? What should a client never, ever have to put up with? And what bad habits might have you searching for new work in the near future?Show NotesEpisode 19: How to Proofread Your Own WorkEpisode 55: How to Deal with RejectionThe 45 Inbound Marketing Terms You Should Know (HubSpot)There are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, please 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Lorrie online, follow these links:WebsitesLorrie's website: http://www.lorriehartshorn.comTwitterLorrie: @ThatWordyBirdFacebook:Lorrie: http://www.facebook.com/ThatWordyBirdLinkedIn:Lorrie HartshornBirdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw.

Rejection can be a large part of a freelancer's life, and it can also be really painful! When somebody doesn't want your work it is all too easy to take it as a personal insult and feel like you should just give up and get yourself a new career. However, help is at hand in Philippa's podcast this week - top tips to cope with rejection, and come back even stronger. Show NotesYes, your submission phobia is holding you backWhy Freelancers Are Saving the InternetThere are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, please 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Philippa online, check out these links:WebsitesPhilippa's freelance writing website Philippa's social media writer websiteTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesFacebook:Philippa's main Freelance Writing Facebook PagePhilippa's Social Media Writer Facebook PageLinkedIn:Philippa Willitts on LinkedInGoogle+Philippa's Google+ AccountPinterestPhilippa on PinterestBirdsong Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw. 

For freelancers who want more challenges, a wider variety of work, or simply more money in the bank, business expansion is a viable option. In this podcast episode, Lorrie and Philippa talk about the different reasons self-employed writers might decide to expand, and give top tips and advice on how to go about it.Show NotesSWOT AnalysisEpisode 20: Goal Planning - Your Freelance Aims for 2013The Freelancing Mindset: Don't be Afraid12 Nonprofit marketing emails that actually convertThere are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, please 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Lorrie and Philippa on the web, follow these links:WebsitesPhilippa Willitts's freelance writing websiteLorrie Hartshorn's freelance writing websitePhilippa Willitts's Social Media Writer websiteTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesLorrie: @ThatWordyBirdFacebook:Lorrie on FacebookPhilippa's main freelance writing Facebook pagePhilippa's Social Media Writer Facebook pageLinkedIn:Lorrie HartshornPhilippa WillittsGoogle+Philippa WillittsPinterestPhilippa WillittsBirdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw.

Sometimes, running your own business can be overwhelming. There are so many things you know you ought to be doing, but where do you find the time when you're busy working your way through paid projects from those hard-won clients? In this solo podcast episode, Lorrie describes some quick tips to make a real difference to your business in a flash.Show NotesBoomerang for Gmail Cam ScannerALBTM 51 - Essential Smartphone Apps For Freelance WritersALBTM 52 - Episode 52: The Freelance Writers' Guide to LinkedIn SuccessALBTM 48 - How to stop your business losing moneyALBTM 50 - How to stop your business losing moneysearch.creativecommons.orgTED talksEventbriteThere are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, please 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Lorrie online, follow these links:WebsitesLorrie's website: http://www.lorriehartshorn.comTwitterLorrie: @ThatWordyBirdFacebook:Lorrie: http://www.facebook.com/ThatWordyBirdLinkedIn:Lorrie HartshornBirdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org and freesfx.co.uk, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija, cakeje, gr8sfx, Bansemer, hutsvoid and Corsica_S, Jaturo.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw. 

You can't really beat LinkedIn as a B2B networking tool, and for a freelance writer it can be an invaluable resource for keeping up to date with industry news, and finding new clients to work with. In the UK alone there are 11 million members, and its focus on being a social networking site predominantly for professionals makes it a really useful way to show off your skills and abilities, and network with others.In this episode of the A Little Bird Told Me Freelance Writing Podcast, Philippa and Lorrie go through the essential dos and don'ts that every self-employed writer needs to know to master LinkedIn and make the most of its possibilities. Show NotesThe overpayment scam that targets proofreaders5 Common Synopsis Mistakes That Fiction Writers Make47 Hilariously Underwhelming Local News HeadlinesThere are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, please 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Lorrie and Philippa on the web, follow these links:WebsitesPhilippa Willitts's freelance writing websiteLorrie Hartshorn's freelance writing websitePhilippa Willitts's Social Media Writer websiteTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesLorrie: @ThatWordyBird Facebook: Lorrie on FacebookPhilippa's main freelance writing Facebook page Philippa's Social Media Writer Facebook page LinkedIn: Lorrie Hartshorn Philippa Willitts Google+ Philippa Willitts Pinterest Philippa Willitts   Birdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw. 

As we use our mobile devices more and more, so we are expected to be able to work on the go. Apps make it far easier to be productive when using phones or tablet PCs for work, whether it is for something as simple as checking your email, or something as complex as crafting a mind map. In this podcast episode, Philippa discusses the top mobile apps for freelancers.Show Notes CamScanner Google Drive Mobile Apps Google Calendar for Mobile eduPort Voice Recorder by Mamoru Tokashiki Mindjet Maps Feedly Mobile Apps Mobile Dropbox Worldometers There are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, please 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Philippa online, check out these links:WebsitesPhilippa's freelance writing website Philippa's social media writer websiteTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesFacebook:Philippa's main Freelance Writing Facebook PagePhilippa's Social Media Writer Facebook PageLinkedIn:Philippa Willitts on LinkedInGoogle+Philippa's Google+ AccountPinterestPhilippa on PinterestBirdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw.

In episode 48, Lorrie and Philippa talked through lots of ways to both save money and avoid waste in a freelance writing business. In this episode today they explain even more top tips for saving cash, with ideas that will suit any self-employed writer.Show Notes Philippa's work bookshelf Directgov business information Citizens' Advice Bureau Episode 23: How to Decide What to Charge for your Freelance Writing Services 7 Online Filters And Site Blockers For Fighting Distractions Online Don't sweat the small stuff Episode 46: How to deal with criticism and negative feedback Worktimer Desktop There are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, please 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Lorrie and Philippa on the web, follow these links:WebsitesPhilippa Willitts's freelance writing websiteLorrie Hartshorn's freelance writing websitePhilippa Willitts's Social Media Writer websiteTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesLorrie: @ThatWordyBird Facebook:Lorrie on Facebook Philippa's main freelance writing Facebook page Philippa's Social Media Writer Facebook page LinkedIn: Lorrie Hartshorn Philippa Willitts Google+ Philippa Willitts Pinterest Philippa Willitts  Birdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw.

Marketing activities need to be carried out regularly by all freelancers, and thinking creatively about how to make approaches will increase your success rate considerably. In this solo episode, Lorrie looks at some unusual marketing ideas and discusses how they can be used by freelance writers.Show Notes: Roses are red pub sign: http://i.imgur.com/i32ru.jpgAmnesty hanging people flyers: http://www.toxel.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/handle07.jpgESPN Brasil interactive advert: http://yepyep.gibbs12.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/football.jpgRock FM air guitars: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Dc8q8nuzrHw/R3tyYHs6JMI/AAAAAAAABtY/9P7T3am7Pqk/s1600/Afbeelding%2B1.pngAccountancy terms glossary: http://www.freelanceadvisor.co.uk/freelancer-basics/the-definitive-freelancer-accountancy-glossary/There are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, please 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Lorrie online, follow these links:WebsitesLorrie's website: http://www.lorriehartshorn.comTwitterLorrie: @ThatWordyBirdFacebook:Lorrie: http://www.facebook.com/ThatWordyBirdLinkedIn:Lorrie HartshornBirdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw.

Many freelance writers have periods of lower income than they would like, with less lucrative work or the loss of a major client. In this episode, Philippa and Lorrie talk about ways to save money in your freelance business, and different tips and tricks to stop wasting cash.Show Notes Google Drive Open Office Open University OpenLearn Alison.com YouTube Suite101 WikiHow Quora Credit Unions MoneySavingExpert TopCashback Google Calendar Checker Plus for Google Calendar (Chrome Extension) Facebook Events on Google Calendar (Chrome Extension) Send to Calendar (Chrome Extension) Save your local library Philippa's work bookshelf There are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, please 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Lorrie and Philippa on the web, follow these links:WebsitesPhilippa Willitts's freelance writing websiteLorrie Hartshorn's freelance writing websitePhilippa Willitts's Social Media Writer websiteTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesLorrie: @ThatWordyBirdFacebook: Lorrie on Facebook Philippa's main freelance writing Facebook page Philippa's Social Media Writer Facebook page LinkedIn: Lorrie Hartshorn Philippa Willitts Google+ Philippa Willitts Pinterest Philippa Willitts Birdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw.  

Blogs can be great marketing tools, demonstrating your writing skills and expert knowledge to potential clients and building your online reputation. However they do not suit everybody. As well as taking a lot of work to maintain, there are decisions to be made about what to write about and how frequently to post.In this podcast episode, Philippa talks about whether or not freelance writers should have their own blogs and, if so, how they should go about it. Show Notes10 reasons every freelance writer should have a blog - Michelle RafterEpisode 7: Freelance writing - to specialise or not to specialise?Do freelancers have to blog to get clients? - Carol Tice5 ways writers kill their credibility onlineThere are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, please 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Philippa online, check out these links:WebsitesPhilippa's freelance writing website Philippa's social media writer websiteTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesFacebook:Philippa's main Freelance Writing Facebook PagePhilippa's Social Media Writer Facebook PageLinkedIn:Philippa Willitts on LinkedInGoogle+Philippa's Google+ AccountPinterestPhilippa on PinterestBirdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw. 

It will happen to every freelance writer at one point or another: a client won't be happy with a piece of work you submit to them. In this episode, Philippa and Lorrie go through different options, including what to do if the problem was your fault, what to do if you believe the client is in error, and how to re-build your confidence if it takes a dent.Looking at everything from clients who are bullies to how best to admit your mistakes, this episode covers the best ways to deal with these tricky situations.Show Notes Episode 19: How to proofread your own work Episode 41: The importance of professional courtesy Curious fact of the week: The whistling islands The state of freelance writing and why it will be dead within one year There are several ways to make sure that you don't miss out on A Little Bird Told Me.Subscribe via RSSSubscribe via iTunesFind us on Stitcher Smart RadioAnd finally, please 'like' us on Facebook to be the first to hear our news and to talk with us about what you hear on the podcast!To find Lorrie and Philippa on the web, follow these links:WebsitesPhilippa Willitts's freelance writing websiteLorrie Hartshorn's freelance writing websitePhilippa Willitts's Social Media Writer websiteTwitterPhilippa: @PhilippaWritesLorrie: @ThatWordyBird Facebook: Lorrie on Facebook Philippa's main freelance writing Facebook page Philippa's Social Media Writer Facebook page LinkedIn: Lorrie Hartshorn Philippa Willitts Google+ Philippa Willitts Pinterest Philippa Willitts Birdsong  Courtesy of http://www.freesound.org, thanks to: Justkiddink, Dobroide, Acclivity, Percy-duke, Ingsey101, 3bagbrew, Inchadney, Sean Townsend, Soundbytez, Urupin, reinsamba, 28-yuen-po, Tomlija.For artwork snippets, thanks goes to James Nash and Amir Rowaichi, for also Creative Commons Licensing their bird illustrations. Pippa's good at putting things together, but can't draw. 

Hello. This is, John Rhodes and this the 21rst chapter of my podcast novel, “Little Bird Told Me”, entitled, “Success at Blackmail”. This is slightly besides the point but somehow I think blackmail is less prevalent when applied to the guilty than it is to the innocent. When Steve and Maria were blackmailed by their guilt complexes into assuming they had serious cases of mental illness, they had taken on identities that they couldn’t call totally their own. They took them on voluntarily. I think this is the way many wicked people escape blame. I hope you don’t think that is too much of a stretch to understand. You now have two more chapters to go. Please consider buying my books if you can from Audible books in audio and Authorhouse in text

Hello. This is John Rhodes with the 22nd chapter of my podcast novel, “Little Bird Told Me”, the chapter being entitled, “A Baby Falling from the Tree and the Powerful Police Action”. This chapter is very hopeful but I still have hope that we can elect a president as good as the one in this chapter. I’m hoping Barack Obama has a glimmer of the same openness to change that the president in this chapter has. He definitely is better than Hillary. I don’t think you can trust her when she openly says, “Obliterate Iran”. I was originally going to vote for Hillary because she seemed the better choice in that I thought that she, being more conservative, would get the Democratic vote. When I saw Obama doing well early on, I switched because I knew that Barack was more open to change. Please vote for Barack. I am not picking gender sides on this one, I just think Barack is much more creative in understanding political strategy, where Hillary is impulsive. Well, I used up all my time talking plugging Barack, but again, the comparison between him and the president in this chapter is fitting.

Hello. This is John Rhodes with the 23nrd chapter of my podcast novel, “Little Bird Told Me”, the chapter being entitled-Togetherness, the I Ching, and the Honeymoon in Nepal

John Rhodes is a Novelist/Poet/Podcast/TV Producer. He created the videos on this site and created this site in hopes to stimulate the growth of the Writer's Union. His web sites are: http://sanfranciscopoetry.blip.tv http://mysticbabylon.podomatic.com http://littlebirdtoldme.podomatic.com http://poetryhotel.podomatic.com His books are: "Spirits of Bondage and Inherent Transcendence" "Little Bird Told Me" Shortly to be releases: "Mystic Babylon Revisited"

Hello. This is John Rhodes with my Podcast Novel: "Little Bird Told Me", and this is chapter 20, entitled: "Finding Evidence in Columbia". I don't have too much to say about this chapter except that the character Alberto was built up around someone I knew named Alberto when I used to live in Guadalajara, Mexico, in the 60's. Also some of the ideas about the Columbian Culture mentioned were created out of what I had known about Latin culture when I lived down there. I'll leave this short, but I'll just mention, please buy my book from www.audible.com in audio, or in text form from www.authorhouse.com as a donation to an artist who hopes he is pleasing you with his surreal twists and turns he takes you through with his prose. Also visit my Mystic Babylon Open Mic Poetry Podcast TV site at: http://mysticbabylon.podomatic.com .

Hello. This is John Rhodes with my podcast novel, “Little Bird Told Me”, and this is chapter 19 entitled, “The Detective Returns from India, and a Meeting”. The detective returns from Goa, India. Goa, India is supposedly a place that, much like Yelapa, Mexico, has preserved the spirit of the sixties. In these show notes I have included a link to a free movie that takes place in Goa.Here is the link: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4293381565598742364 It’s pretty good. If that doesn’t work, try going to Google Video, and search for this: The Wonderland Experience - psychedelic trance music movie shot in Goa India, by Urban Eye. I’m going to be short and sweet today, but please, if you can consider buying my book in its full audio version from www.audible.com . Thanx.

Hello. This is John Rhodes with chapter 18 of my podcast novel: Little Bird Told Me. It is entitled: "Planning for More Evidence, Maria's Real Parents, and Marriage". Detectives are not usually philosophers but in this book they get to share the nitty-gritty truths of this hip dou and help confirm their sublime truths for them. I think that when facts are properly presented, most anybody will believe in them as if they were everyday fact. I think this is something that the left doesn't employ enough. They try to transcend reason and logic, when they can use reason and logic to prove hidden and unobvious truths. This is what I call spiritually practical. In this chapter the couple in the book will talk about picking and choosing who can help them to help them prove or disprove who their real parents are. Isn't it true that peace and love should be something that the whole family should share...not something that should be just fostered...as if it really only was something that was innate to rebellious waifs and Godhead? Of course there is also marriage in the plot, and I'll leave you to puzzle about that until you hear it. Again, let me remind you to consider buying my audio-novel, or text version; the audio version from www.audible.com , and the text version from www.authorhouse.com . Please consider it more of a donation at this point, seeing as how you only have four chapters left until the end. Also watch my Mystic Babylon poetry podcast/TV from http://mysticbabylon.podomatic.com , or watch it on a big screen TV on San Francisco Local Comcast Channel 29 and 76. It re-runs 10 to 15 times a month on those channels . It is there called: Open Mic Poetry. It usually says the month of the show, and the schedule is only good for two to four days at a time. All this stuff I do I do it for free. Let's hope it becomes a stab in the back to those traditional publishers who take control of their authors and box them into little niches, where they have little control over their books. Expect another poetry book from me this summer. It will be called Mystic Babylon. Sorry to go on and on. I'll just let you listen. Adios!

Hello. This is John Rhodes. This is my podcast novel entitled : “Little Bird Told Me”, and you will hear the 17th chapter which is called: “A Family Stepping Forward: The DNA Message”. In this chapter I discuss DNA testing. No matter how critical I can get of Timothy Leary, and no matter how vacuous I think his ploy was, his ploy was a good one…teaching that we could all be aware through transcendental experience of the DNA message. In his case he experienced this with LSD, but many have experienced this without drugs. This idea that one can be totally right, as if the spirit was made flesh, where truth becomes manifest, is now less of a fleeting experience than it was in the sixties. We have unlocked the scientific truths of DNA, so people can un-mask fakes who act falsely as if they are most absolute in their righteousness and perfection. I suspect though that most anyone can be fooled, even scientists, and just as there are stereotypical truths on every level of sociological and philosophical knowledge, I believe they will find flaws in DNA testing. I believe that there are backrooms in every form of science and spirit. Later I briefly address one of the more obvious flaws in DNA testing…but I think they will find more, less obvious flaws. Timothy Leary presented himself as having the great ancient DNA message within him, and I don’t think he will be the last person to fool mankind into believing that the truth pulsates in their veins, while all the time they are blatant farces

Hello. This is John Rhodes. This is my podcast novel entitled : “Little Bird Told Me”. This Chapter is-Enlightenment from the Far East and a Manure Gas Energy Plant

This is Chapter 14 of LITTLE BIRD TOLD ME called: Terror Amongst the Young, a Podcast Novel by John Rhodes.

Hello. This is John Rhodes and this is the chapter of Little Bird Told Me the Podcast Novel entitled: Looking for Truth at the Tantra Center Diabetes and a delusional Tantrum.

Hello. This is John Rhodes and this is the 13th chapter of my mystic podcast novel and free audiobook, “Little Bird Told Me” entitled, “Awaking in a Sunless World”. I borrowed a lot of this from real Navajo Myth. These myths, for the most part are real myths, not made up ones. In the chapter I discuss the idea of darkness and coming to the light in mythical proportions as if our psychic states resemble stories told about the Earth as if once we really did all live in darkness as in the Navajo myth that once upon a time we lived without a Sun. We really have to be our own light, and this is true spiritual empowerment. I will add one more comment. In the chapter I mention a quote from Hebrews 11. 1 that is: “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen”. With spiritual experience we are revealed unseen truths and the mystery of the Maria’s parents is much like this. Well that’s about enough. I will let you listen at the knee of listening.

Hello. This is John Rhodes and this is the 12th chapter of my mystic podcast novel and free San Francisco audiobook, entitled: “Little Bird Told Me”, this 12th chapter being entitled, “Maria’s Tortured, Childlike Mind”. In this chapter the plot thickens, and Maria struggles with the idea of being a part of a bigger plot in life as her life begins to develop like a spy novel. I don’t want to give away the plot but Maria in her confusion tries to identify with the intrigue in her life that pops up in this chapter, and ends up developing fanciful delusions that maybe she is somehow Matahari, the lady who in the 20th century was accused of being a double agent, although as you will see in the plot she is really something better than Matahari. I hope you enjoy this chapter.

Hello. This is Mystic Babylon Open Mike Poetry Podcast broadcasting from near the Haight in San Francisco. Today I have one poet besides me. The poet is named Tom Odegard. You can buy his book, or chapbooks, by writing: Tom Odegard P.O. Box 2808, Friday Harbor, Washington, 98250, or by sending an email to: tommsg@gmail.com . All of this info will be in the web site show notes and Tom will give more info when he introduces himself when he reads. You can see the cover of his newly produced book, right here above the show notes. It is entitled: Past Lives Led. I decided I am going to read part of the first chapter of my new novel, “Little Bird Told Me” that just came out. If you want to read the full first chapter it is posted at: http://www.rhodespoetry.com. I’ll probably read 6 minutes. Please consider buying my and the other author's books. My book is available through Authorhouse for a reduced price and for a little more from Barnes and Noble. The reading segment will start shortly.

Hello! This is Mystic Babylon broadcasting from near Haight Street with the best of San Francisco poetry. Today we have some poetry from two other poets besides me. First I have some poetry from a poet who asked me a long time ago to record some of her works named Lenore Weiss. She gave me a disk of what she called cell-phone poetry and I extracted one small snippet from that recording. After that I have some poetry from a poet named David Alpaugh. He also runs a small press. David Alpaugh’s works have appeared in more than a hundred literary journals and anthologies. His first collection, Counterpoint, won a prize, and is published by Story Line Press. He has had chapbooks published by Coracle Books and Pudding House Publications. His new book HEAVY LIFTING has just been published by Alehouse Press. Order it direct from the poet for $15 postpaid: Small Poetry Press Distribution, P.O. Box 5342, Concord, CA 94524, or go to: http://www.alehousepress.com . He has his small press at: http://www.smallpoetrypress.com . May I remind you to read and buy our books. My poetry book is: Spirits of Bondage and Inherent Transcendence, and my new novel is called: Little Bird Told Me. My voice-over for that book is almost finished and as soon as I get it submitted to Audible.com in its full version, for sale, I will start posting it chapter by chapter over a whole year. David's picture and part of the cover from his new book is above. Remember, as Poor Richard’s Almanac said, “Money Doesn’t Grow On Trees”.

Hello. This is Mystic Babylon Open Mike Poetry Podcast broadcasting from near the Haight. Today we have two poets besides me. These poets are H.D. Moe and Doug Reese. H.D. Moe has many, many books out which can be purchased from numerous places, the main one being his web site at: http://www.hdmoe.com . The second poet, Doug Reese is a close friend of Moe’s and has some very good poems here. I, being much like the Huichol Indians in Mexico who eat Peyote, don’t have curse words in my vocabulary, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huichol), but I try not to rationalize and censor, when people want to use them in their poems, so, I have permitted a few to slip under the wire. Even when censoring serves its purpose it is also a form of rational analysis based on preset values that impose upon the freedom of the mind. I have thusly put explicit on this particular podcast in iTunes, whatever that must mean. May I remind you to buy the author’s books. My book is, “Spirits of Bondage and Inherent Transcendence”. It is fun buying books to put on your shelves. I am waiting, for instance, for Donovon’s newly published autobiography: “The Hurdy Gurdy Man”. My new book, “Little Bird Told Me” might delay a little bit, but be patient, and it will be out soon.

Hello. This is John Rhodes and this is the 9th chapter of my San Francisco podcast novel and free audiobook, “Little Bird Told Me”, entitled “Obsessions with the Paranormal, and Some Traumatic Premonitions”. Much like Steve in this story, I have studied the paranormal and mysticism. I do believe that premonitions are much more common in chaotic events, and are brought about during periods of trauma and stress. The story of Judas Iscariot and his predilections in relation to Jesus Christ certainly were born out of both love and hate, and I think psychic predictions and betrayals in general are usually born in the same manner as was the betrayal of Christ. Just as Steve was betrayed by his voices, Jesus was betrayed by his voice, Judas Iscariot. I think most people have experienced some betrayal on some level at some time in their lives and I hope you can identify in this way with my character in this chapter. The background Music, I think was written in Sweden by Tuomas Mattson, by a band called Limelight, and is called “Betrayal of a Friend”. Just a reminder, you can get my books in text from, http://www.authorhouse.com . Thank-you, and if you do neither, please remember to tell your friends and above all, please enjoy.

Hello. This is John Rhodes again, and this is the eighth chapter of my San Francisco podcast novel and free audiobook, “Little Bird Told Me”, entitled “Going to Mexico”. This is a rather long chapter being about 20 minutes. In relation to this chapter about Mexico, when I was young, in my early teen years I visited Oaxaca, during a period when I lived most of the time in Mexico with the hippies in Yelapa, Mexico, near Puerto Vallarta, which still has no road to it. The first hut I lived in down there, Donovan Leitch, the Scottish folk musician had just moved out of, back in 1965. I moved around to a couple different huts in Yelapa, that one being the first one I lived in. I lived on about 25 dollars a month. I also got to know a lot of the big Mexican rock musicians, the biggest being some of the musicians who played with the Mexican blues musician Javier Batiz. I haven’t visited Oaxaca since then, except for once in the late 70’s, but didn’t stay long, because it was winter, and it was bitterly cold there in Huatla at 11,000 feet. There are peaks near there that are easy to climb that reach to 14,000 feet. At night in the late summer in the rainy season, late at night, after a day’s rain, when there is a full moon, the valleys fill with luminous oceans of clouds that splash against the mountains, and at 11,000 feet there are millions of stars in the sky. The view is truly breathtaking. I won’t bore you with my story any more. I’ll just let you tune in your iPod and listen to Michael Butler, the narrator tell the story. Enjoy. Oh, by the way. The music in the beginning is a sound by “Canned Heat”, called “Huatla”. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As of the 10th chapter two chapters will be combined into one download and there will be a small charge per download. There will be a preview of the paid chapter, but to download the chapter you will have to go to my web site at http://littlebirdtoldme.podomatic.com and pay a pittance of .50 cents for each of the 2 chapter downloads. The address will also be on my show page in iTunes and in the show notes. There will be a total of 7 downloads of 14 chapters which is about 3.50 for the whole thing. That is the cheapest audio book available on the internet. I can do that because I am the publisher. Please consider this purchase. Thank-you.

Hello. This is John Rhodes again with the seventh chapter of my San Francisco podcast novel and free audiobook, “Little Bird Told Me”, entitled: “Walking Through a Door of a Sufi Cult”. Although I highly respect the Sufi Religion and people like Rumi, they are also known for their tricksters, which I discuss in this chapter. I met some of these tricksters once who where indirectly connected also to Gurdjieff and Scientology. I think though that any culture can create negative stereotypes of its culture. The specific cult that I met was in the early 70’s and went so far as to distribute pamphlets called “War Memos”, and they nicknamed their Guru, “The Beast”. I identify with the hippie culture of the sixties, and they, like most cultures, had their negative stereotypes too. It’s just this particular stereotype we are dealing with heavily in these apocalyptic days we live in, in relation to Islamic religion in the news, Sufism being a branch of Islam. I enjoyed reading little tales quoted by the writer Idries Shah, who I recommend. Please buy my books if you can. My novel, “Little Bird Told Me”, or my poetry book, “Spirits of Bondage and Inherent Transcendence”. Please pardon me if you practice Sufi Religion. No matter how negative this chapter sounds, I still enjoy the mystic Sufi Religion. I hope you enjoy this chapter.

Hello. This is the author, John Rhodes, and this is the sixth chapter of my San Francisco podcast novel and free audio book: “Little Bird Told Me”, entitled “Amateur Telescopes”. For a period in my life I used to build amateur telescopes and that is what inspired this chapter. The bit about the Hubble Space Telescope not being parabolized, and most amateur telescope makers knowing better than to not parabolize their mirrors is absolutely true. I made two telescopes, both of which I parabolized. This story is not biographical per se, but I used my life as a stage on which I launched my writings. I have talked to very few writers who didn’t use some plots or characters from their own lives in their writings. You’ll have to kill me to get the real truth out of me though.It is 23 chapters, so it will be a while before you get to the end on this podcast. If you don’t buy it, please pay for it by telling as many friends as you can about it. What ever you do, enjoy. If I know how to read my audio editing software right, it is about eight minutes. Peace.

Hello. This is John Rhodes with the 5th chapter of the free San Franciscan serial version of my podcast novel and free audio book: “Little Bird Told Me”. This chapter discusses rebirth in its psychological, spiritual, and physical sense, in relation to acceptance of our small demeanor in this world, as in: “The small becoming great”. The “Little Bird” in us all, can tell us of greater things, much like Little Bird, the Indian named Mike does with Steve and Maria. Also visit my Mystic Babylon Open Mike Poetry Podcast at http://mysticbabylon.podomatic.com , and buy my poetry books, “Spirits of Bondage and Inherent Transcendence”, and also: "Mystic Babylon Revisited". My books in text are available from www.authorhouse.com .

Hello. This is John Rhodes with the fourth chapter of my San Francisco podcast novel and free audio book, “Little Bird Told Me”, entitled: “Indian Ritual”. This chapter discusses a peyote ritual. Let me tell you a little about my background. I lived in Guadalajara, in Mexico, in the sixties, and, in a little town near Guadalajara, there are many Huichol Indians who live there who have permits from the government to eat peyote because it is part of their religion. They are mainly known by the public for the invention of the colorful yarn cross that people call the “God’s Eye”. The Huichol Indians have no swear words in their language and are generally known to be pacifists at heart. I don’t myself recommend the liberal use of peyote, and think that if society was allowed to use psychedelics, including marijuana, they should have to submit to regular psychoanalysis to prove that they wouldn’t become psychotic on the drugs, and also I feel they should only be distributed by strict prescription. I think the amount of people who eventually have psychotic experiences with these drugs is a lot higher than anyone had imagined. I don’t want my discussing psychedelics in this book to sound like a straight endorsement of their use, even though many people like Aldous Huxley have met the Godhead through their use. Remember; keep one foot in the world. Please also visit my open mike poetry podcast at http://mysticbabylon.podomatic.com , and please buy my books if you can. There are banners in, and on, all my sites so you can buy them. Remember, the ascetic taste vinegar, is good but not something that you can really live on, so please try to supplement my nourishment with your purchases of my works. I hope you cautiously enjoy this chapter. The image above is a picture of a God’s Eye.

Hello. This is the 3rd chapter of my San Francisco podcast novel and free audio book: Little Bird Told Me. The chapter is entitled: Looking for Accompaniment. In this chapter the main character there, a musician named John, was inspired partially from my experience of hearing beautiful old antiquated hymns in churches in the poor section of town in San Francisco, and also, the satirical part about his first therapist was my take on the inefficiency of psychological care in the world today. There are good therapists in the world today, as you will see towards the end of the chapter, but therapist number one is a classic block of ignorance. Please also visit my poetry podcast at: http://mysticbabylon.podomatic.com , and buy my 1rst poetry book: Spirits of Bondage and Inherent Transcendence, or my second poetry book,”Mystic Babylon Revisited” I guess that’s about it. Peace and Haight.

Hello. This is the second chapter of the free serial audio book, and podcast novel: Little Bird Told Me. I got a good response from you people for the first two weeks. I got about 1500 listens. Please tell your friends about it if you can, and help me launch my mystic book podcast to real success. If you have a blog, write about it, if you have a myspace page, mention it. It will be greatly appreciated. May I remind you that can also buy 3 books in the text version from: www.authorhouse.com . Enough said. About this chapter, entitled: “Arriving in San Francisco and Meeting Maria’. You might know that I live in San Francisco and know a lot of its ins and outs. It has left its mark on me and that is why I placed a lot of the book in this city. I work in a small hotel in San Francisco in the poor section of town much like Steve in the story might have stayed at, after he had saved up some money from his washing dishes and playing music for money in the streets. There is a part in the plot where I mention a Catholic ritual of burying a Statue of St. Joseph upside down. That is not totally made up. Catholics actually have been known to do this for certain reasons. That’s all I want to give away of the plot at this point. A friend of mine I grew up with named Seth Morgan who was going to marry Janis Joplin, lived in these lonely streets, and died about ten years ago after falling off a motorcycle down south. He lived here at the same time I did, but oddly I never saw him the whole time he was here. Very strange. You can Google Janis’s and Seth’s story. Seth wrote a book about these streets called: Home Boy. Please remember I am also a poet, I have a poetry podcast at: http://mysticbabylon.podomatic.com , and I have a poetry book out entitled: Spirits of Bondage and Inherent Transcendence. Charles Dickens produced his books serially to attempt to gain notoriety. Please hope for me that I succeed like he did. Enjoy.

This is the first chapter of the Audiobook and Podcast Novel, Little Bird Told Me. I, John Rhodes, started producing this podcast almost back to when the first podcast novel came out produced by Scott Sigler. We would go to the same Podcast Meetup. This first chapter is entitled, Leaving Home. It deals with parental control much like it is portrayed in its watered down version in the characters of Edith and Archie Bunker. I make you ask the question…if a parent isn’t a mentor or a guide, are they actually holding their child hostage to an unfriendly world, almost as if kidnapped? You be the judge. I hope you enjoy this first chapter. Please visit my poetry podcast/tv show too, at http://mysticbabylon.podomatic.com . It is beginning to run nationally on Public access channels all over the U.S. Enjoy.