Podcasts about little red rooster

This week on the Deadpod a fine show from the spring of 1982, one often overlooked due to the notoriety of the next night's performance.  This show, from April 17, 1982 in Hartford Connecticut features quite a nice first set, with fine versions of Bird Song and Jack-A-Roe (which was still relatively new at the time). I also would call your attention to the arrangement of El Paso, which is played at a much slower tempo than the usual polka arrangement, and benefits from that difference, I think. Also an interesting set closer here with 'Man Smart, Woman Smarter'. The first two songs in this set are from an audience source, the rest come from a soundboard.   Grateful Dead Hartford Civic Center Hartford, CT 4/17/1982 - Saturday One      New Minglewood Blues [7:46] > Sugaree [12:10] > El Paso [5:19] Jack-A-Roe [4:48] Little Red Rooster [8:51] Tennessee Jed [8:44] It's All Over Now [8:18] Bird Song [9:27] > Man Smart (Woman Smarter) [5:44]   You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod042525.mp3     My thanks for your support. 

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This week's Deadpod again features an audience recording - this time of the performance on February 19, 1982 in San Diego California. This, the third performance of 1982 finds the boys finding their groove, with a hot opening 'Bertha', a great 'Dire Wolf' and of course 'Althea'. While the vocals are sometimes a little far back on this audience recording, you can't say the same for Garcia's guitar -it is outfront and I really enjoyed hearing him on this tape - I hope you enjoy it as well!   Grateful Dead Golden Hall - San Diego Community Concourse San Diego, CA 2/19/1982 - Friday One       Bertha [6:53] > Greatest Story Ever Told [3:49]   Dire Wolf [3:24]   Little Red Rooster [8:28]   Brown Eyed Women [5:21]   Cassidy [4:58]   Candyman [6:22] > El Paso [#5:13]   Althea [7:39]   New Minglewood Blues [6:45]  You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod020725.mp3  a nice way to remove yourself from the world for an hour.... 

This week on the Grenade, we continue into the month of October 1988 in the WWF history books. Mr. Perfect shoots hoops... Perfectly,  Bobby Heenan's "Little Red Rooster" makes his in-ring debut, Jake & Cheryl Roberts make a promise to Rick Rude, Hacksaw Duggan & Dino Bravo go nose-to-nose on the set of the Brother Love Show, Hercules makes his babyface debut in the ring (complete with Theme Music), Rick Rude has new tights, The Big Boss Man is primed & ready for a big push, Jesse Ventura mocks The Hart Foundation's business sense, "Outlaw" Ron Bass hangs another victim, Greg Valentine's "Heartbreaker", IC Champ The Ultimate Warrior destroys another foe, the Young Stallions reform for this week, the Survivor Series is coming, more fun as Gorilla Monsoon returns to Prime Time to take issue with The Brain, hard sell for the Sugar Ray/Lalonde bout begins, and so much more!Please Subscribe to our Patreon to help pay the bills, https://www.patreon.com/wrestlecopiaIncludes the $5 “All Access” Tier & $9 "VIP Superfan" Tier featuring our VIDEO CASTS, Patreon Watch-Along Series, our insanely detailed show notes (for the Grenade, Monday Warfare, Regional Rasslin, Puro Academy, & Retro Re-View), Early Show Releases, REMASTERED editions of the early Grenade episodes including NEW content! PLUS, monthly DIGITAL DOWNLOADS for your viewing and reading pleasure!WrestleCopia Merchandise Available at https://www.teepublic.com/user/wrestlecopiaVisit the WrestleCopia Podcast Network https://wrestlecopia.comFollow WrestleCopia on “X” (Formerly Twitter) @RasslinGrenadeFollow & LIKE our FACEBOOK PAGE – https://www.facebook.com/RasslinGrenadeSubscribe to the WrestleCopia Youtube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/RasslinGrenade ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

It's all uphill from here! This week, our hosts FiG and Knob are headed to Wisconsin. It's July 6th, 1984 and the Grateful Dead are playing at the Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy, Wisconsin. Discussions abound about Graham's donor rap, a solid Little Red Rooster, and the history of FiG and Knob's friendship. Iko Iko Jack Straw > Big Railroad Blues Little Red Rooster Candyman Me & My Uncle > Mexicali Blues Bird Song Let It Grow China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider Ship of Fools Women Are Smarter Drums > Space > Dear Mr. Fantasy > The Other One > Black Peter > Why Don't We Do It In The Road > Around & Around Jam Sugar Magnolia Touch Of Gray

More of the British charts for November 1964. Our first month in the history of the show without a Beatles song in either the British or American charts. It will be all the way to *next month* for us to Feel Fine again. Still some quality music as Petula Clark takes us Downtown, the Stones tell us about their Little Red Rooster and the Yardbirds talk about their little schoolgirl. Support this podcast at the $6/month level on patreon to get extra content! Create your podcast today! #madeonzencastr

The post Beat Club: Little Red Rooster appeared first on NiTfm.

The post Beat Club: Little Red Rooster appeared first on NiTfm.

Phish's three-night run at Alpine ValleyLarry Mishkin features a Grateful Dead concert at a "funky" venue on July 29, 1994, at Buckeye Lake, Ohio.  The Grateful Dead opened with "Rain" by the Beatles, reflecting their admiration for the Beatles' music. "Rain," primarily written by John Lennon, was a song exploring themes of reality and illusion and was notable for its use of reverse audio effects. The Grateful Dead incorporated several Beatles songs into their performances, demonstrating their appreciation for the band.The conversation touches on the Grateful Dead's setlist, which included several opening songs like "Feel Like a Stranger" and "Bertha." The speakers recall personal experiences and the excitement of attending these concerts, sharing memories of Buckeye Lake as a vibrant venue despite unpredictable weather. The conversation transitions to "Wang Dang Doodle," a blues standard written by Willie Dixon and performed by artists like Howlin' Wolf and Koko Taylor. The Grateful Dead's affinity for blues music and their ability to blend various musical influences into their performances is highlighted. Larry changes his focus and shifts to a discussion about the band Phish, detailing a recent three-night run at Alpine Valley. He express his excitement and nostalgia for the venue, sharing experiences of attending concerts there over the years. The recap of Phish's performances includes a detailed analysis of the setlists, noting songs like "46 Days," "Moma Dance," "Cities," "Cavern," "Axilla," "Down with Disease," "Bathtub Gin," and a cover of Led Zeppelin's "Good Times Bad Times." Larry's enthusiasm is evident as he recount the energy and musicianship of Phish, highlighting the unique experience of attending their concerts and the connection it fosters among fans.  Grateful DeadJuly 29, 1994  (30 years ago)Buckeye Lake OhioGrateful Dead Live at Buckeye Lake Music Center on 1994-07-29 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive  INTRO:                                 Rain                                                Track #1                                                :26 – 2:10 John Lennon wrote most of "Rain." It was his first song to get really deep, exploring themes of reality and illusion - after all, rain or shine is just a state of mind.Written by John “about people moaning about the weather all the time” as he was becoming more in tune with his role as a social leader – as is evidenced by the lines “I can show you” and “Can you hear me”Played 29 timesFirst:  December 2, 1992 at McNichols Sports Arena, Denver, CO, USALast:  June 30, 1995 at Three Rivers Stadium, Pittsburgh, PA, USA  SHOW No. 1:                    Wang Dang Doodle                                                Track #4                                                4:03 – 5:43 "Wang Dang Doodle" is a blues song written by Willie Dixon. Music critic Mike Rowe calls it a party song in an urban style with its massive, rolling, exciting beat.[1] It was first recorded by Howlin' Wolf in 1960 and released by Chess Records in 1961. In 1965, Dixon and Leonard Chess persuaded Koko Taylor to record it for Checker Records, a Chess subsidiary. Taylor's rendition quickly became a hit, reaching number thirteen on the Billboard R&B chart and number 58 on the pop chart.[2] "Wang Dang Doodle" became a blues standard[3] and has been recorded by various artists. Taylor's version was added to the United States National Recording Registry in 2023. In 1995, Taylor's rendition was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in the "Classics of Blues Recording – Singles or Album Tracks" category.[17] The Foundation noted that the song was the last blues single produced by Dixon to reach the record charts, and "became Koko Taylor's signature crowdpleaser, inspiring singalongs to the 'all night long' refrain night after night".[17]Taylor's version of "Wang Dang Doodle" was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry in 2023.[18]Chuck Berry, Bruce Hornsby, John Popper, Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead and Willie Dixon's daughter, Shirley Dixon, performed "Wang Dang Doodle" in tribute to Willie Dixon at the 1994 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.In his autobiography, I Am The Blues, Willie Dixon says;Wang Dang Doodle meant a good time. Especially if a guy came in from the South. A wang dang meant having a ball and a lot of dancing, they called it a rocking style so that's what it meant to wang dang doodle. Wang Dang Doodle was first performed by the Grateful Dead in August 1983. The song was played only a few times each year through the rest of the 1980's. From 1991 onwards it was performed more often averaging about 15 performances a year through to 1995.  Played: 95 timesFirst:  August 26, 1983 at Portland Memorial Coliseum, Portland, OR, USALast:  July 8, 1995 at Soldier Field, Chicago, IL, USA  MUSIC NEWS: Phish shows, Friday and Saturday night at Alpine ValleyRIP – John Mayall  SHOW No. 2:                    Althea                                                Track #7                                                9:40 – end                                                 INTO                                                 Eternity                                                Track #8                                                0:00 – 1:39 Co-writing a song with one of your personal heroes—that seems like a dream come true.Willie Dixon (1915-1992) was one of the preeminent blues songwriters and performers of all time. The Grateful Dead covered a fairly lengthy list of his songs, attesting to his influence on the band: “Down in the Bottom,” “I Ain't Superstitious,” “I Just Want to Make Love To You,” “Little Red Rooster,” “The Same Thing,” “Spoonful,” and “Wang Dang Doodle.” Plus a couple they only played once, or only in soundcheck.The song was written during the sessions for Rob Wasserman's Trios album. “Guitar Player” magazine ran an interview with Weir in 1993:I had this chord progression and melody that I wanted to run by Willie to see if he liked it .... he did, so he started dashing off words. He wanted me to run a certain section by him again and stuff like that, and we started working on a bridge. Then he dashes off this sheet of lyrics and hands it to me. Now I'm really stoked to be working with the legendary Willie Dixon and I'm prepared for just about anything.He hands these lyrics to me and I'm reading through them. And they seem, you know, awfully simplistic. Like there wasn't a whole lot to them........Now he wants me to read through it and sing the melody I have and see if they fit. And so I started singing through these simplistic lyrics, and that simplicity takes on a whole other direction.By the time I had sung through them, it's like my head is suddenly eons wide. I can hear what's happening just sort of echoing around in there and I'm astounded by the simple grace of what he has just presented to me. I'm sitting there with my mouth open literally, and Willie's laughing. He's just sitting there laughing, saying, 'Now you see it. Now you see it. That's the wisdom of the bluesPlayed:  44 timesFirst:  February 21, 1993 at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena, Oakland, CA, USALast:  July 8, 1995 at Soldier Field, Chicago, IL, USA  SHOW No. 3:                    I Want To Tell You                                                Track #11                                                0:00 – 1:35 "I Want to Tell You" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1966 album Revolver. It was written and sung by George Harrison, the band's lead guitarist. After "Taxman" and "Love You To", it was the third Harrison composition recorded for Revolver. Its inclusion on the LP marked the first time that he was allocated more than two songs on a Beatles album, a reflection of his continued growth as a songwriter beside John Lennon and Paul McCartney.When writing "I Want to Tell You", Harrison drew inspiration from his experimentation with the hallucinogenic drug LSD. The lyrics address what he later termed "the avalanche of thoughts that are so hard to write down or say or transmit".[1] In combination with the song's philosophical message, Harrison's stuttering guitar riff and the dissonance he employs in the melody reflect the difficulties of achieving meaningful communication. The recording marked the first time that McCartney played his bass guitar part after the band had completed the rhythm track for a song, a technique that became commonplace on the Beatles' subsequent recordings.George Harrison wrote "I Want to Tell You" in the early part of 1966, the year in which his songwriting matured in terms of subject matter and productivity.[2] As a secondary composer to John Lennon and Paul McCartney in the Beatles,[3] Harrison began to establish his own musical identity through his absorption in Indian culture,[4][5] as well as the perspective he gained through his experiences with the hallucinogenic drug LSD.[6] According to author Gary Tillery, the song resulted from a "creative surge" that Harrison experienced at the start of 1966. In his autobiography, I, Me, Mine, Harrison says that "I Want to Tell You" addresses "the avalanche of thoughts that are so hard to write down or say or transmit".[1][12] Authors Russell Reising and Jim LeBlanc cite the song, along with "Rain" and "Within You Without You", as an early example of the Beatles abandoning "coy" statements in their lyrics and instead "adopt[ing] an urgent tone, intent on channeling some essential knowledge, the psychological and/or philosophical epiphanies of LSD experience" to their listeners.[13] Writing in The Beatles Anthology, Harrison likened the outlook inspired by his taking the drug to that of "an astronaut on the moon, or in his spaceship, looking back at the Earth. I was looking back to the Earth from my awareness." Played: 7 timesFirst:  July 1, 1994 at Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View, CA, USALast:  May 24, 1995 at Memorial Stadium, Seattle, WA, USA MJ NEWS  SHOW No. 4:                    Standing On The Moon                                                Track #19                                                7:23 – 9:00 Garcia/Hunter tune from Built To Last (1989) Played:  76 timesFirst:  February 5, 1989 at Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center, Oakland, CA, USALast:  June 30, 1995 at Three Rivers Stadium, Pittsburgh, PA  OUTRO:                               Quinn The Eskimo                                                Track #21                                                2:28 – 4:17 "Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)" is a folk-rock song written and first recorded by Bob Dylan in 1967 during the Basement Tapes sessions. The song's first release was in January 1968 as "Mighty Quinn" in a version by the British band Manfred Mann,[4] which became a great success. It has been recorded by a number of performers, often under the "Mighty Quinn" title.The subject of the song is the arrival of Quinn (an Eskimo), who prefers a more relaxed lifestyle [" jumping queues, and making haste just ain't my cup of meat"] and refuses hard work ["Just tell me where to put 'em and I'll tell you who to call"], but brings joy to the people.Dylan is widely believed to have derived the title character from actor Anthony Quinn's role as an Eskimo in the 1960 movie The Savage Innocents.[5] Dylan has also been quoted as saying that the song was nothing more than a "simple nursery rhyme". A 2004 Chicago Tribune article[6] said the song was named after Gordon Quinn, co-founder of Kartemquin Films, who had given Dylan and Howard Alk uncredited editing assistance on Eat the Document.Dylan first recorded the song in 1967 during the Basement Tapes sessions, but did not release a version for another three years. Meanwhile, the song was picked up and recorded in December 1967 by the British band Manfred Mann,[7] who released it as a single in the US on 8 January 1968 under the title "Mighty Quinn".[8] A UK single followed within a week.[8] The Manfred Mann version reached No. 1 in the UK Singles Chart for the week of 14 February 1968, and remained there the following week.[9] It also charted on the American Billboard Hot 100 chart, peaking at No. 10, and reached No. 4 in Cash Box. Cash Box called it a "funky-rock track" with "a trace of calypso [to] add zest to a tremendous effort."  Played:  59 timesFirst: December 30, 1985 at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena, Oakland, CA, USALast:  July 2, 1995 at Deer Creek Music Center, Noblesville, IN, USA  .Produced by PodConx Deadhead Cannabis Show - https://podconx.com/podcasts/deadhead-cannabis-showLarry Mishkin - https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkinRob Hunt - https://podconx.com/guests/rob-huntJay Blakesberg - https://podconx.com/guests/jay-blakesbergSound Designed by Jamie Humiston - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-humiston-91718b1b3/Recorded on Squadcast

"Cannabis, COVID, and Concerts: A Grateful Dead Fan's Journey"Larry Mishkin is back from a break spent in South Carolina with his granddaughter he shares his experience of contracting a mild case of COVID, attributing his quick recovery to his cannabis use. He references studies suggesting that certain strains of sativa marijuana may mitigate COVID symptoms.The episode features a detailed discussion of a special Grateful Dead concert from July 15, 1989, at Deer Creek Music Theater in Noblesville, Indiana. Larry reminisces about the venue, the band's setlist, and the memorable experience shared with friends. He highlights key performances from the show, including "Bertha," "Greatest Story Ever Told," "Candyman," "Walkin' Blues," and others.Larry also covers recent music news, mentioning Melissa Etheridge's performance in Colorado and her upcoming summer tour. He shares updates on the String Cheese Incident's New Orleans-themed show at Red Rocks and Phish's recent appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, where they performed "Evolve" from their new album. Grateful DeadDeer Creek Music Theater CenterNoblesville, INGrateful Dead Live at Deer Creek Music Center on 1989-07-15 : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive With:  Judy, Andy K., Lary V., AWell and others First Dead show ever at Deer Creek which had just opened that year.  Became a regular stop on the Dead's summer tour thereafter and one of the favorite places for the Deadheads given its relatively small size as compared to the stadium venues that soon became the norm for summer tours.  Ironically, two days after this one-off Dead played their final 3 shows at Alpine Valley, switched to Tinley Park in 1990 and then starting in 1991 Chicago summer  tour shows were confined to Soldier Field with 60,000 attendees. INTRO:                                 Bertha                                                Track #2                                                1:20 – 3:00 Garcia/Hunter – first appeared on Grateful Dead (live) aka Skull and Roses or Skullfuck (1971)Played: 401First:  February 18, 1971 at Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, NY, USALast:  June 27, 1995 at the Palace of Auburn Hills, Detroit, MI  SHOW No. 1:                    Walkin Blues                                                Track #5                                                1:38 – 3:20 "Walkin' Blues" or "Walking Blues" is a blues standard written and recorded by American Delta blues musician Son House in 1930. Although unissued at the time, it was part of House's repertoire and other musicians, including Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, adapted the song and recorded their own versions. "Walkin' Blues" was not a commercial success when it was issued as a "race record" marketed to black listeners.  However, the song was received with great enthusiasm by a small group of white jazz record collectors and critics. Producer John Hammond chose "Walkin' Blues" and "Preachin' Blues" as the records to be played at his 1938 From Spirituals to Swing concert, when Johnson himself could not appear (Johnson had died a few months earlier).[15] The 1961 Johnson compilation album King of the Delta Blues Singers was marketed to white enthusiasts. According to most sources, John Hammond was involved in the production and the selection of tracks. The album included the two House-style songs and a song with House-style guitar figures ("Cross Road Blues" and excluded songs in the commercial style of the late 1930s. Notable exclusions were Johnson's one commercial hit, "Terraplane Blues", and two songs which he passed on to the mainstream of blues recording, "Sweet Home Chicago" and "Dust My Broom". Dead first played it in 1966, once in 1982 and 4 times in 1985.  Then, beginning in 1987 it became a standard part of Dead song lists, peaking in 1988 when it was played 23 times.  Became one of Bobby's early first set blues numbers with Minglewood Blues, CC Rider and Little Red Rooster. Played: 141First:  October 7, 1966 at Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA, USALast:  July 2, 1995 at Deer Creek Music Center, Noblesville, IN, USA   SHOW No. 2:                    Crazy Fingers                                                Track #12                                                4:30 – 6:12 Pretty standard second set song, usually pre-drums.  Fist played in 1975, a few times in 1976 and then dropped until 1982 at Ventura County Fairgrounds (day after my first show).  Played 7 times that year, dropped until 1985 (10 times), then dropped until 1987 and then played regularly until the end.  Great tune, Jerry often forgot the lyrics and this version is great because Bobby saves him on the lyrics when Jerry starts to go astray.  Good fun considering how many times Bobby would forget the words to his songs. But one of those things you remember if you see it happen Garcia/Hunter, released on Blues For Allah (Sept. 1, 1975)Played: 145 timesFirst:  June 17, 1975 at Winterland Arena, San Francisco, CA, USALast:  July 5, 1995 at Riverport Amphitheatre in Maryland Heights, MO (St. Louis)  SHOW No. 3:                    Truckin                                                Track #13                                                7:00 – end Hunter/Garcia/Weir/Lesh/Kreutzman (Pigpen went inside to take a nap) by the side of a pool.Released on American Beauty (November, 1970) final tune on the albumPlayed: 532 timesFirst:  August 17, 1970 at Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, USALast:  July 6, 1995 at Riverport Amphitheatre in Maryland Heights, MO                                                  INTO                                                Smokestack Lightning                                                Track #14                                                0:00 – 0:36  "Smokestack Lightning" (also "Smoke Stack Lightning" or "Smokestack Lightnin'") is a blues song recorded by Howlin' Wolf (Chester Burnett) in 1956. It became one of his most popular and influential songs. It is based on earlier blues songs, and numerous artists later interpreted it.  Recorded at Chess Records in Chicago and released in March, 1956 with You Can't Be Beat on the B side. Wolf had performed "Smokestack Lightning" in one form or another at least by the early 1930s,[1] when he was performing with Charley Patton in small Delta communities.[1] The song, described as "a hypnotic one-chord drone piece",[2] draws on earlier blues, such as Tommy Johnson's "Big Road Blues",[3] the Mississippi Sheiks' "Stop and Listen Blues",[4] and Charley Patton's "Moon Going Down".[5][6] Wolf said the song was inspired by watching trains in the night: "We used to sit out in the country and see the trains go by, watch the sparks come out of the smokestack. That was smokestack lightning." In a song review for AllMusic, Bill Janovitz described "Smokestack Lightning" as "almost like a distillation of the essence of the blues... a pleasingly primitive and raw representation of the blues, pure and chant-like. Wolf truly sounds like a man in otherwise inexpressible agony, flailing for words."[8] In 1999, the song received a Grammy Hall of Fame Award, honoring its lasting historical significance.[13]Rolling Stone magazine ranked it at number 291 in its list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time"[7] and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included it in its list of the "500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll".[14] In 1985, the song was inducted into the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame in the "Classics of Blues Recordings" category[15] and, in 2009, it was selected for permanent preservation in the National Recording Registry of the U.S. Library of Congress. Janovitz also identifies "Smokestack Lightning" as a blues standard "open to varied interpretation, covered by artists ranging from the Yardbirds to Soundgarden, all stamping their personal imprint on the song".[8] Clapton identifies the Yardbirds' performances of the song as the group's most popular live number.[17] They played it almost every show, and sometimes it could last up to 30 minutes. Dead often played it out of Truckin, would also play the blues tune Spoonful out of Truckin. Played:  63 timesFirst:  November 19, 1966 at Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA, USALast:  October 18, 1994 at Madison Square Garden, New York, NY, USA   SHOW No. 4:                    Space                                                Track #17                                                7:45 – 9:20  On November 28, 1973, Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia and drummer Mickey Hart staged a performance at San Francisco's Palace Of Fine Arts. At the time, Hart – whose 80th birthday is today – was on a sabbatical from the Dead, having last performed in public with Garcia and the band in February 1971. Hart would rejoin the Dead for good in October 1974.A poster promoting the concert shows a clean-shaven Garcia dressed in black beside an equally freshly shaven Hart wearing all white. At the bottom of the advertisement was printed “An Experiment in Quadrophonic Sound.”Hart recalled his experience at the duo concert with Garcia in 1973 that was not only a Seastones precursor but also planted the seeds for the band's mind-bending “Space” jams.“There were so many exciting that we've done together. Adventurous musical things. He was also into adventure and creating new spaces, so we had that in common. We got together many times out of the ring – where he first discovered synthesizers, being able to synthesize his guitar, which led to MIDI.“The first concert we did was in 1973. It was just a duo. He got an Arp [Odyssey], an electric instrument, a keyboard, and he plugged his guitar into it and that was the first time I had heard his guitar I had heard his guitar running through sophisticated synthesizers.“I just thought of that concert, which kind of was the beginning of ‘Space' – ‘Drums' and ‘Space' actually – it might have been the very beginning of it. And I think of that on his birthday, the seminal things we did together.” After the November 28, 1973 concert, the Grateful Dead began to occasionally incorporate elements of a “Space” jam into their shows. In January 1978, Dead shows almost always included a nightly “Drums” jam paired with a freeform “Space” jam, consistently showing up mid-second set throughout the rest of their career. Played:  1086First:  March 19, 1966 at Carthay Studios, Los Angeles, CA, USALast:  July 9, 1995 at Soldier Field, Chicago, IL   OUTRO:                               Brokedown Palace                                                Track #22                                                5:04 – 6:43  The lyric to “Brokedown Palace” was written by Robert Hunter as part of a suite of songs that arrived via his pen during a stay in London in 1970. He entitled it “Broke-Down Palace,” and now that it exists as a piece of writing, it seems to have always existed. It was composed on the same afternoon as “Ripple” and “To Lay Me Down,” with the aid of a half bottle of retsina.Its first performance was on August 18, 1970, at the Fillmore West in San Francisco, and became a staple of the live repertoire. After the 1975 hiatus, “Brokedown Palace” appeared almost exclusively as the closing song of the show, as an encore. It had the effect of sending us out of the show on a gentle pillow of sound, the band bidding us “Fare you well, fare you well…”Garcia/HunterReleased on American Beauty (Nov. 1970) Played: 219 timesFirst:  August 18, 1970 at Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, USALast:  June 25, 1995 at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. .Produced by PodConx Deadhead Cannabis Show - https://podconx.com/podcasts/deadhead-cannabis-showLarry Mishkin - https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkinRob Hunt - https://podconx.com/guests/rob-huntJay Blakesberg - https://podconx.com/guests/jay-blakesbergSound Designed by Jamie Humiston - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-humiston-91718b1b3/Recorded on Squadcast

"Celebrating July 4th with Grateful Dead Memories and Rolling Stones Reverence"Larry Mishkin highlights a memorable Grateful Dead concert from July 1984 at Pine Knob Music Theater in Clarkston, Michigan, which holds special significance for Larry and his friends who attended the University of Michigan. He reflects on how attending this concert was a fitting farewell for his crew as they wrapped up their college years.The show begins with the Grateful Dead's lively rendition of "Iko Iko," a song with a rich history and a favorite of Larry's. He shares his experiences of following the Dead's tour in 1984, which included several memorable concerts. He discusses the band's performance of "Little Red Rooster," a blues classic by Willie Dixon, and how it sometimes felt like a letdown after high-energy openers but ultimately captivated the audience with its jam session.Larry then shifts to music news, discussing the origins of the song "Cover of the Rolling Stone" by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, written by Shel Silverstein. He highlights Silverstein's diverse contributions to music and literature, including his work with Johnny Cash and Dr. Hook.The episode transitions to Larry's recent experience at a Rolling Stones concert at Soldier Field in Chicago. He recounts the thrill of seeing the Stones live, especially with Mick Jagger's energetic performance and the band's enduring musical prowess. The setlist included classics like "Start Me Up," "Wild Horses," "Sympathy for the Devil," "Gimme Shelter," and "Jumpin' Jack Flash." Larry praises the band's longevity and urges listeners to seize any opportunity to see the Rolling Stones live.  In more music news, Larry introduces Daniel Donato, a rising star in the Cosmic Country genre, who recently performed at the Chop Shop in Chicago. He expresses his admiration for Donato's music, hinting at a promising future for the young artist. July 1, 1984Pine Knob Music TheaterClarkston, MI (Detroit)Grateful Dead Live at Pine Knob Music Theatre on 1984-07-01 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive The last night in Ann Arbor, what better way to say goodbye after 4 amazing years than go to a “hometown” Dead show.  Our whole crew was there, Harold's birthday, great seats in the pavilion and a memorable show.  Always memorable when they start out like this:  INTRO:                                 Iko Iko                                                Track #1                                                0:10 – 1:36  SHOW No. 1:                    Little Red Rooster                                                Track #2                                                5:00 – 6:48 MUSIC NEWS: Stones reviewDaniel Donato reviewNeil Young cancels remainder of summer tour dates due to illnessWillie Nelson sitting out Outlaw Music Festivals – our rock idols are getting old (see Stones!) SHOW No. 2:                    Might As Well                                                Track # 8                                                1:07 – 2:45 SHOW No. 3:                    I Need A Miracle                                                Track # 16                                                1:47 – 3:17MJ NEWS: IRS Advises Marijuana Businesses That They Still Can't Take Federal Tax Deductions Due To 280E Until Rescheduling Is Finalized2.      Maryland Governor Launches Marijuana Workforce Development Program Focused On People Criminalized Over Cannabis3.    Marijuana Rescheduling Won't Affect Drug Testing For Truckers, Transportation Secretary Buttigieg Say4.    House committee votes to include intoxicating hemp ban in draft Farm Bill SHOW No. 4:                    Bertha                                                Track # 17                                                3:24 – 5:00OUTRO:                               It's All Over Now Baby Blue                                                Track #19                                                5:10 – 6:33 .Produced by PodConx Deadhead Cannabis Show - https://podconx.com/podcasts/deadhead-cannabis-showLarry Mishkin - https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkinRob Hunt - https://podconx.com/guests/rob-huntJay Blakesberg - https://podconx.com/guests/jay-blakesbergSound Designed by Jamie Humiston - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-humiston-91718b1b3/Recorded on Squadcast

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 I think this week's Deadpod brings March in both as a lion and a lamb = this first set from Cleveland on March 3, 1981 has some great rockin' tunes and some sweet ballads to please the most discerning Deadhead.  Don't be put off by the start of 'Feel Like a Stranger' - the audience patch only lasts for a short bit - the rest of this tape is a fine sounding soundboard in which you can hear the interplay between the members most clearly.  A sweet 'Peggy O' follows then a fine 'Me & My Uncle' into 'Big River' highlighted by some nice Garcia work. That continues in the 'Bird Song' that follows.. and leads into 'Looks Like Rain'  -this one builds to a nice crescendo. The rockin' returns with a great 'Big Railroad Blues' - nice work here by Brent. A long 'Little Red Rooster' follows.. Brent adds some nice B3 work here. The set closing 'Deal' ramps things back up properly..    Grateful Dead Cleveland Music Hall Cleveland, OH 3/3/1981 - Tuesday One     Feel Like A Stranger [8:33] Peggy-O [7:49] Me And My Uncle [3:01] > Big River [5:16] Bird Song [11:08] > Looks Like Rain [7:47] Big Railroad Blues [4:50] Little Red Rooster [10:06] > Deal [7:22]   You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod030124.mp3  All the best my friends.... 

Just imagine... at one point we thought this surprisingly epic True Orphans series might fit in two episodes, HA! Anyway, for this final episode Martin and Sam consider the Waits material from 2010 to the present day, including several contributions to tribute albums, a few live recordings, and his beautiful-yet-flawed farewell to David Letterman. website: songbysongpodcast.com twitter: @songbysongpod e-mail: songbysongpodcast@gmail.com Music extracts used for illustrative/review purposes include: Tootie Ma Is A Big Fine Thing, Preservation - An Album To Benefit Preservation Hall and The Preservation Hall Music Outreach Program, Tom Waits & The Preservation Hall Jazz Band (2010) Corrine Died on the Battlefield, Preservation - An Album To Benefit Preservation Hall and The Preservation Hall Music Outreach Program, Tom Waits & The Preservation Hall Jazz Band (2010) Fortune Has its Cookies To Give Out, live recording, Herbst Theater, San Francisco CA, w. Lawrence Ferlinghetti (2 October 2010)  Ghost to a Ghost, Ghost to a Ghost, Hank Williams III (2011) Fadin Moon, Ghost to a Ghost, Hank Williams III (2011) Shenandoah, Son Of Rogues Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs and Chanteys, Tom Waits & Keith Richards (2013) Little Red Rooster, live recording, Oracle Arena, Oakland CA, The Rolling Stones w. Tom Waits (5 May 2013) Take One Last Look, live recording, The Late Show with David Letterman, New York NY, Tom Waits (14 May 2015) The Soul of a Man, God Don't Never Change: The Songs of Blind Willie Johnston, Tom Waits (2016) John The Revelator, God Don't Never Change: The Songs of Blind Willie Johnston, Tom Waits (2016) Respect Yourself, live recording, Lagunitas Amphitheatre, Petaluma CA, Mavis Staples w. Tom Waits (11 September 2017) Rains On Me, live recording, Troubador, Los Angeles CA, w. Chuck E. Weiss & Tom Waits (18 March 2022) Getting Drunk On A Bottle / I Like To Sleep Late In The Morning, live recording, Snap Sessions - KPFK FM - Santa Monica OR Folk Arts Rare Records, w. Dave Blue (November, 1973) We think your Song by Song experience will be enhanced by hearing, in full, the songs featured in the show, which you can get hold of from your favourite record shop or online platform. Please support artists by buying their music, or using services which guarantee artists a revenue - listen responsibly.

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Label: Rolling Stones 19100Year: 1971Condition: M-Price: $20.00This is one of the greatest of the Stones two-sided monster hits. Well, the B side didn't actually chart, but it's so great it really should have. Presumably, radio just wasn't ready to play a song called "Bitch" yet... though they were prepared by 1975 when Elton John hit the Top 10 with "The Bitch Is Back." OK, trivia time again... "Brown Sugar" was one of eight #1 U.S. singles by the Stones. The group also had eight chart-toppers in their native England, though over there they garnered all of those hits during the 1960s. Here is the list of the Stones' #1 U.S. singles: (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (1965) Get Off My Cloud (1965) Paint It, Black (1966) Ruby Tuesday (1967) Honky Tonk Women (1969) Brown Sugar (1971) Angie (1973), and Miss You (1978) For comparison's sake, here are their #1 U.K. hits. You'll notice that the group gained monster popularity about a year earlier than they did in the U.S., same as the Beatles. It's All Over Now (1964) Little Red Rooster (1964) The Last Time (1964) (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (1965) Get Off My Cloud (1965) Paint It, Black (1966) Jumpin' Jack Flash (1968) Honky Tonk Women (1969) Note: This copy comes in a vintage Atlantic/Atco Records factory sleeve. This copy has a drillhole, not shown in the scan.

Tips for guessing within two years when a song was played.Larry Mishkin reviews the Grateful Dead concert from August 4th, 1994, at Giant Stadium. He discusses the show and welcomes guest   Christian Sauska, who attended that concert and shares his love for New Orleans-style music and his journey as a Deadhead. The conversation delves into the 80s and 90s eras of the band, and they discuss their musical backgrounds and the band's new music.Produced by PodConx  Deadhead Cannabis Show - https://podconx.com/podcasts/deadhead-cannabis-showLarry Mishkin - https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkinRob Hunt - https://podconx.com/guests/rob-huntChristian Sauska -  https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-sauska-5aab2310/Jay Blakesberg - https://podconx.com/guests/jay-blakesbergRecorded on Squadcast  Grateful DeadAugust 4, 1994Giant's StadiumEast Rutherford, NJTraffic opened the show              Jerry sits in with Traffic on Dear Mr. Fantasy and Gimme Some Lovin  INTRO:              Box of Rain                           Track No. 2                           3:42 – 4:51 SHOW #1:        Jack Straw                           Track No. 3                           5:00 – 6:09  SHOW #2:        Eternity                           Track No. 7                           0:36 – 1:45               A “new” Bob Weir song, music by Bob and Rob Wasserman and lyrics by Willie Dixonfirst played on February 21, 1993 at Oakland Alameda County Coliseum              Played 44 times in concert              Last played July 8, 1995 at Soldier Field  – second to last show              Released on Dead's first post-Jerry box set, So Many Roads               Rob Wasserman (Rat Dog with Bobby)  Wasserman started playing violin, and graduated to the bass after his teenage years. He studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where he studied composing with John Adams and double bass with San Francisco Symphony bassists.[5]He worked with Van Morrison, Oingo Boingo, and David Grisman. His 1983 album Solo won Down Beat magazine's Record of the Year award. On the albums Duets and Trios, he worked with Bobby McFerrin, Rickie Lee Jones, Cheryl Bentyne, Lou Reed, Stéphane Grappelli, Jerry Garcia, Brian Wilson, Willie Dixon, Branford Marsalis, Bob Weir, Edie Brickell, Les Claypool, Neil Young, and Elvis Costello.Duets was nominated for three Grammy Awards. Bobby McFerrin won for "Brothers", which was performed with Wasserman. Wasserman also won Holland's Edison Award for Record of the Year.His 2000 album, Space Island, incorporated more contemporary musical elements. RatDog, which he co-founded with Bob Weir from the Grateful Dead, occupied much of his time. He toured extensively with Lou Reed.Wasserman was a judge for the sixth-tenth annual Independent Music Awards.[8]Rob Wasserman died on June 29, 2016. Cause of death was cancer.[9] Entombment was made in Salem Memorial Park and Garden at Colma, California.[10]                Willie Dixon (1915-1992) was one of the preeminent blues songwriters and performers of all time. The Grateful Dead covered a fairly lengthy list of his songs, attesting to his influence on the band: “Down in the Bottom,” “I Ain't Superstitious,” “I Just Want to Make Love To You,” “Little Red Rooster,” “The Same Thing,” “Spoonful,” and “Wang Dang Doodle.”            The song was written during the sessions for Rob Wasserman's Trios album. “Guitar Player” magazine ran an interview with Weir in 1993:“I had this chord progression and melody that I wanted to run by Willie to see if he liked it .... he did, so he started dashing off words. He wanted me to run a certain section by him again and stuff like that, and we started working on a bridge. Then he dashes off this sheet of lyrics and hands it to me. Now I'm really stoked to be working with the legendary Willie Dixon and I'm prepared for just about anything.“He hands these lyrics to me and I'm reading through them. And they seem, you know, awfully simplistic. Like there wasn't a whole lot to them....“....Now he wants me to read through it and sing the melody I have and see if they fit. And so I started singing through these simplistic lyrics, and that simplicity takes on a whole other direction.“By the time I had sung through them, it's like my head is suddenly eons wide. I can hear what's happening just sort of echoing around in there and I'm astounded by the simple grace of what he has just presented to me. I'm sitting there with my mouth open literally, and Willie's laughing. He's just sitting there laughing, saying, 'Now you see it. Now you see it. That's the wisdom of the blues.'”           David Dodd (author of Complete Grateful Dead Annotated Lyrics) – “Weir's songs from this era (anything from “Victim or the Crime” forward) seem aggressively innovative, shall we say. The rhythmic patterns, the big multi-layered chords, the changes in meter and tone, all add up to something that seems calculated to disrupt any comfort we might have been sinking into. OK, I didn't say that very well, but anyone who has struggled with these late-period Weir songs knows what I mean.”           SHOW #3:        Childhood's End                           Track No. 8                           3:10 – 4:15               A “new” Phil tune, first played July 24, 1994 at Deer Creek Music Center, Noblesville, IN              Played 11 times in concert              Last played July 9, 1995 at Soldier Field – last show              Never released on a studio album                “Childhood's End” on 7/20/94 – the last original Grateful Dead song to enter the live repertoire, written and sung by Phil Lesh.             Per John Hilgart of 4CPComics, the background story is that Lesh (and perhaps the others) felt that new songs would help fuel Garcia engagement in a period when Jerry was headed in the same direction as in the mid-1980s, when his drugged-out-bad-health put him in a coma that he narrowly survived – living on to drive the 1989-onward renaissance of the band. In the 1995 remake, Jerry died. The big musical difference between those two episodes is that everyone else in the band had their shit together in 1994, whereas the whole band was a mess in 1986.              John's general take on post-Brent 1990's Dead is that they were not to be dismissed – a band that had stopped depending on Garcia's leadership to determine the musical outcome, but who were always therefore also ready when Garcia was feeling spry. Weir has said something to that effect. And when Garcia was feeling spry, it was just as you would wish it to be. SHOW #4:        Way To Go Home                           Track No. 14                           2:59 – 4:12                           A “new” Vince song music by Vince and Bob Bralove, lyrics by Robert Hunter.              First played February 23, 1992 at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum              Played 92 times              Last played June 28, 1995 at The Palace of Auburn Hills, Auburn Hills               Also wrote Samba In The Rain for the Dead.               Bob Bralove is a keyboard–synthesizer player who worked as a sound technician with the Grateful Dead from 1986 to 1995. Throughout his tenure, he performed as an auxiliary musician throughout "Drums" and "Space", the band's signature aleatoric music segments.[1]Accordingly, he played a key role in their integration of MIDI technology (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and related audio devices for playing, editing, and recording music.[1]  ; Before the development of MIDI, electronic musical instruments from different manufacturers could generally not communicate with each other. This meant that a musician could not, for example, plug a Roland keyboard into a Yamaha synthesizer module. With MIDI, any MIDI-compatible keyboard (or other controller device) can be connected to any other MIDI-compatible sequencer, sound module, drum machine, synthesizer, or computer, even if they are made by different manufacturers.), first working with drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, keyboardist Brent Mydland, and later guitarist Bob Weir and synthesizer/piano player Vince Welnick. He also co-wrote several songs with Weir and Welnick, including "Picasso Moon" on Built to Last (1989) and "Way to Go Home" and "Easy Answers", which were slated to appear on the band's unfinished fourteenth studio album. (A live reconstruction, Ready or Not, was ultimately released in 2019 and contains both songs.) Perhaps his most significant project with the band was curating excerpts from "Drums" and "Space" on Infrared Roses, a 1991 compilation album. "Parallelogram" and "Little Nemo in Nightland" are some of his most notable "compositions" from this release.Bralove was also a member and producer of the Psychedelic Keyboard Trio, along with Welnick and fellow former Grateful Dead keyboardist Tom Constanten.[2] Bralove and Constanten also collaborated as Dose Hermanos, a showcase for their improvisational keyboard work; since 1998, they have toured irregularly and released five albums under the moniker. Bralove also worked with Stevie Wonder, setting up and programming Wonder's synthesizers including while he was touring.[3]  OUTRO:            Days Between                           Track No. 20                           5:55 – 7:24                           “new” Jerry tune              First played February 22, 1993 at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena              Played 42 times by the Dead              Last played June 24, 1995 at RFK Stadium in D.C.               It has become a favorite of the surviving band members, played the third night at the 50th Anniversary Shows at Soldier Field in 2015 and frequently played by Dead & Co. with Bobby singing,  Also played by Bob Weir and Wolf Bros. and Phil and Friends.  Great tune to end this episode.               David Dodd:  “Days Between” has come to be an anthem that makes us remember Garcia in a particular way, and, in particular, the days between his birth date of August 1 and his death date of August 9. It's a fitting song for such thoughts, with its big sweeping chords and its lyrics heavy with nostalgia and longing.There's a word in German, sehnsucht, that lacks a proper emotional counterpart in English, but which means, roughly, “longing.” It carries a sense of wishing you could see something—see something again, see something at all—that something is missing from your eyes and from your presence. I find that “Days Between” belongs with a raft of songs that induce this feeling in me.“Days Between,” a late song in the Robert Hunter / Jerry Garcia songbook, was perhaps their last collaboration on a big, significant song, one that ranks with “Dark Star” and “Terrapin Station” as ambitious and intentionally grand. (I was talking the other day with a friend, about Garcia's playing and songwriting, and the thought came up that Garcia, like few others, was unafraid of grandeur, and could successfully pull it off. Same with Hunter.) During its relatively short time in the live repertoire, they played it 41 times, always in the second set, and fairly frequently rising out of the Drums. Phil:  “I don't know whether to weep with joy at the beauty of the vision or with sadness at the impassable chasm of time between the golden past and the often painful present.”

Summer is here, and it's time for a classic Summer show, this one from the Summer tour of 1991, a very good tour in my opinion.  This week I decided to share the first set of the show from June 7, 1991 at Deer Creek Music Center in Noblesville, Indiana, a favorite stop on the latter day tour trail.  This set starts with a fine 'Half-Step', Jerry has a wonderful closing jam on this one.  The Rooster that follows shows Vince doing some sampling on the Hammond organ. 'Stagger Lee', while far from my favorite Dead tune, is done with justice here. They really smoke 'Maggie's Farm', and I'm always appreciative of a good 'Loser' You'll hear Hornsby throughout this performance as some have complained he is too aggressive here, while I am still appreciative of what he brought to the sound.      Grateful Dead Deer Creek Music Center Noblesville, IN 6/7/1991 - Friday One Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo   Little Red Rooster   Stagger Lee   Me And My Uncle > Maggie's Farm   Loser   The Music Never Stopped   Don't Ease Me In You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod060223.mp3 As always, my thanks for your support of the Deadpod. 

Intro Song –  Albert King, “I'll Play The Blues For You”, At The Forum 1972 
First Set -
 Howlin' Wolf, “Little Red Rooster”, Ebbet's Field, Denver CO 8/23/1973 
 The Fabulous Thunderbirds, “Feelin' Good”, Rhein-Mein Halle Maifestspiele, 5/23/1980

 Second Set –
 James Cotton, “Dust My Broom”, Dallas Motor Speedway, 08/30/1969
 Tommy Castro, “Calling San Francisco”, Aladdin Theater, Portland OR, 10/31/2001
 Lightnin' Hopkins, “My Babe”, Live in Montreal, 6/23/1977 

Third Set – 
 Albert Collins, “Iceman”, Red Rocks, Morrison CO, 8/16/1992
 Coco Montoya, “Nothing But Love”, Petrillo Music Shell, Chicago, IL, 7/4/2000 
Fourth Set – 
 Muddy Waters, “Instrumental with Intro”, Live at Ebbetts Field, Denver, 5/30/1973 
 Muddy Waters, “Band Intros”, Live at Ebbetts Field, Denver, 5/30/1973
 Muddy Waters/BB King, “I Know You Didn't Want Me”, Live at Ebbetts Field, Denver, 5/30/1973


Singles Going Around- Here Comes The WeekendBo Diddley- "Aztec"The Beach Boys- "Wild Honey"The Rolling Stones- "Off The Hook"Gary US Bonds- "I Wanna Holler"J.J. Cale- "After Midnight"Dave Edmunds- "Here Comes The Weekend"Otis Redding- "Wonderful World"John Mayall with Eric Clapton- "Steppin Out"Bobby Charles- "Street People"The Beatles- "I Want To Tell You"The Kinks- "Holiday In Waikiki"The Rolling Stones- "Little Red Rooster"The Counts- "Enchanted Sea"The Vettes- "Voodoo Green Part One"*des vinyls originaux"

The Queens of the Blues podcast celebrates the prolific female blues music from the early 1920's to present times. This show, entitled “Little Red Rooster,” is entirely about Margie Day.#margieday

This week we feature a fine show from February 21, 1991 at the Oakland Coliseum. This was the last night of a three day run to open the year for the band, and this particular run was without Bruce Hornsby. Any show that opens with 'Help>Slip>Frank' offers great promise and I think they boys delivered on this night.  The 'Slipknot' in particular is especially well-formed, and sweet to hear. They follow with a good 'Rooster' then after some indecision, 'Loser' follows. Bobby plays a sweet 'Stuck Inside of Mobile' then a happy 'Tennessee Jed' leads into the 'Promised Land' set closer.    Grateful Dead Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena Oakland, CA 2/21/1991 - Thursday One     Help On The Way > Slipknot! > Franklin's Tower ; Little Red Rooster ; Loser ; Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again ; Tennessee Jed ; The Promised Land   You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod021723.mp3 "One way or another This darkness got to give"

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Episode one hundred and fifty-five of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Waterloo Sunset” by the Kinks, and the self-inflicted damage the group did to their career between 1965 and 1967. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a nineteen-minute bonus episode available, on "Excerpt From a Teenage Opera" by Keith West. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many Kinks songs. I've used several resources for this and future episodes on the Kinks, most notably Ray Davies: A Complicated Life by Johnny Rogan and You Really Got Me by Nick Hasted. X-Ray by Ray Davies is a remarkable autobiography with a framing story set in a dystopian science-fiction future, while Kink by Dave Davies is more revealing but less well-written. The Anthology 1964-1971 is a great box set that covers the Kinks' Pye years, which overlap almost exactly with their period of greatest creativity. For those who don't want a full box set, this two-CD set covers all the big hits. And this is the interview with Rasa I discuss in the episode. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start, this episode has some mentions of racism and homophobia, several discussions of physical violence, one mention of domestic violence, and some discussion of mental illness. I've tried to discuss these things with a reasonable amount of sensitivity, but there's a tabloid element to some of my sources which inevitably percolates through, so be warned if you find those things upsetting. One of the promises I made right at the start of this project was that I would not be doing the thing that almost all podcasts do of making huge chunks of the episodes be about myself -- if I've had to update people about something in my life that affects the podcast, I've done it in separate admin episodes, so the episodes themselves will not be taken up with stuff about me. The podcast is not about me. I am making a very slight exception in this episode, for reasons that will become clear -- there's no way for me to tell this particular story the way I need to without bringing myself into it at least a little. So I wanted to state upfront that this is a one-off thing. The podcast is not suddenly going to change. But one question that I get asked a lot -- far more than I'd expect -- is "do the people you talk about in the podcast ever get in touch with you about what you've said?" Now that has actually happened twice, both times involving people leaving comments on relatively early episodes. The first time is probably the single thing I'm proudest of achieving with this series, and it was a comment left on the episode on "Goodnight My Love" a couple of years back: [Excerpt: Jesse Belvin, "Goodnight My Love"] That comment was from Debra Frazier and read “Jesse Belvin is my Beloved Uncle, my mother's brother. I've been waiting all my life for him to be recognized in this manner. I must say the content in this podcast is 100% correct!Joann and Jesse practically raised me. Can't express how grateful I am. Just so glad someone got it right. I still miss them dearly to this day. My world was forever changed Feb. 6th 1960. I can remember him writing most of those songs right there in my grandmother's living room. I think I'm his last living closest relative, that knows everything in this podcast is true." That comment by itself would have justified me doing this whole podcast. The other such comment actually came a couple of weeks ago, and was on the episode on "Only You": [Excerpt: The Platters, "Only You"] That was a longer comment, from Gayle Schrieber, an associate of Buck Ram, and started "Well, you got some of it right. Your smart-assed sarcasm and know-it-all attitude is irritating since I Do know it all from the business side but what the heck. You did better than most people – with the exception of Marv Goldberg." Given that Marv Goldberg is the single biggest expert on 1950s vocal groups in the world, I'll take that as at least a backhanded compliment. So those are the only two people who I've talked about in the podcast who've commented, but before the podcast I had a blog, and at various times people whose work I wrote about would comment -- John Cowsill of the Cowsills still remembers a blog post where I said nice things about him fourteen years ago, for example. And there was one comment on a blog post I made four or five years ago which confirmed something I'd suspected for a while… When we left the Kinks, at the end of 1964, they had just recorded their first album. That album was not very good, but did go to number three in the UK album charts, which is a much better result than it sounds. Freddie "Boom Boom" Cannon got to number one in 1960, but otherwise the only rock acts to make number one on the album charts from the start of the sixties through the end of 1967 were Elvis, Cliff Richard, the Shadows, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and the Monkees. In the first few years of the sixties they were interspersed with the 101 Strings, trad jazz, the soundtrack to West Side Story, and a blackface minstrel group, The George Mitchell Singers. From mid-1963 through to the end of 1967, though, literally the only things to get to number one on the album charts were the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, the Monkees, and the soundtrack to The Sound of Music. That tiny cabal was eventually broken at the end of 1967 by Val Doonican Rocks… But Gently, and from 1968 on the top of the album charts becomes something like what we would expect today, with a whole variety of different acts, I make this point to point out two things The first is that number three on the album charts is an extremely good position for the Kinks to be in -- when they reached that point the Rolling Stones' second album had just entered at number one, and Beatles For Sale had dropped to number two after eight weeks at the top -- and the second is that for most rock artists and record labels, the album market was simply not big enough or competitive enough until 1968 for it to really matter. What did matter was the singles chart. And "You Really Got Me" had been a genuinely revolutionary hit record. According to Ray Davies it had caused particular consternation to both the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds, both of whom had thought they would be the first to get to number one with a dirty, distorted, R&B-influenced guitar-riff song. And so three weeks after the release of the album came the group's second single. Originally, the plan had been to release a track Ray had been working on called "Tired of Waiting", but that was a slower track, and it was decided that the best thing to do would be to try to replicate the sound of their first hit. So instead, they released "All Day And All Of The Night": [Excerpt: The Kinks, "All Day And All Of The Night"] That track was recorded by the same team as had recorded "You Really Got Me", except with Perry Ford replacing Arthur Greenslade on piano. Once again, Bobby Graham was on drums rather than Mick Avory, and when Ray Davies suggested that he might want to play a different drum pattern, Graham just asked him witheringly "Who do you think you are?" "All Day and All of the Night" went to number two -- a very impressive result for a soundalike follow-up -- and was kept off the number one spot first by "Baby Love" by the Supremes and then by "Little Red Rooster" by the Rolling Stones. The group quickly followed it up with an EP, Kinksize Session, consisting of three mediocre originals plus the group's version of "Louie Louie". By February 1965 that had hit number one on the EP charts, knocking the Rolling Stones off. Things were going as well as possible for the group. Ray and his girlfriend Rasa got married towards the end of 1964 -- they had to, as Rasa was pregnant and from a very religious Catholic family. By contrast, Dave was leading the kind of life that can only really be led by a seventeen-year-old pop star -- he moved out of the family home and in with Mick Avory after his mother caught him in bed with five women, and once out of her watchful gaze he also started having affairs with men, which was still illegal in 1964. (And which indeed would still be illegal for seventeen-year-olds until 2001). In January, they released their third hit single, "Tired of Waiting for You". The track was a ballad rather than a rocker, but still essentially another variant on the theme of "You Really Got Me" -- a song based around a few repeated phrases of lyric, and with a chorus with two major chords a tone apart. "You Really Got Me"'s chorus has the change going up: [Plays "You Really Got Me" chorus chords] While "Tired Of Waiting For You"'s chorus has the change going down: [Plays "Tired of Waiting For You" chorus chords] But it's trivially easy to switch between the two if you play them in the same key: [Demonstrates] Ray has talked about how "Tired of Waiting for You" was partly inspired by how he felt tired of waiting for the fame that the Kinks deserved, and the music was written even before "You Really Got Me". But when they went into the studio to record it, the only lyrics he had were the chorus. Once they'd recorded the backing track, he worked on the lyrics at home, before coming back into the studio to record his vocals, with Rasa adding backing vocals on the softer middle eight: [Excerpt: The Kinks, "Tired of Waiting For You"] After that track was recorded, the group went on a tour of Australia, New Zealand, and Hong Kong. The flight out to Australia was thirty-four hours, and also required a number of stops. One stop to refuel in Moscow saw the group forced back onto the plane at gunpoint after Pete Quaife unwisely made a joke about the recently-deposed Russian Premier Nikita Khruschev. They also had a stop of a couple of days in Mumbai, where Ray was woken up by the sounds of fishermen chanting at the riverside, and enchanted by both the sound and the image. In Adelaide, Ray and Dave met up for the first time in years with their sister Rose and her husband Arthur. Ray was impressed by their comparative wealth, but disliked the slick modernity of their new suburban home. Dave became so emotional about seeing his big sister again that he talked about not leaving her house, not going to the show that night, and just staying in Australia so they could all be a family again. Rose sadly told him that he knew he couldn't do that, and he eventually agreed. But the tour wasn't all touching family reunions. They also got into a friendly rivalry with Manfred Mann, who were also on the tour and were competing with the Kinks to be the third-biggest group in the UK behind the Beatles and the Stones, and at one point both bands ended up on the same floor of the same hotel as the Stones, who were on their own Australian tour. The hotel manager came up in the night after a complaint about the noise, saw the damage that the combined partying of the three groups had caused, and barricaded them into that floor, locking the doors and the lift shafts, so that the damage could be contained to one floor. "Tired of Waiting" hit number one in the UK while the group were on tour, and it also became their biggest hit in the US, reaching number six, so on the way home they stopped off in the US for a quick promotional appearance on Hullabaloo. According to Ray's accounts, they were asked to do a dance like Freddie and the Dreamers, he and Mick decided to waltz together instead, and the cameras cut away horrified at the implied homosexuality. In fact, examining the footage shows the cameras staying on the group as Mick approaches Ray, arms extended, apparently offering to waltz, while Ray backs off nervous and confused, unsure what's going on. Meanwhile Dave and Pete on the other side of the stage are being gloriously camp with their arms around each other's shoulders. When they finally got back to the UK, they were shocked to hear this on the radio: [Excerpt: The Who, "I Can't Explain"] Ray was horrified that someone had apparently stolen the group's sound, especially when he found out it was the Who, who as the High Numbers had had a bit of a rivalry with the group. He said later "Dave thought it was us! It was produced by Shel Talmy, like we were. They used the same session singers as us, and Perry Ford played piano, like he did on ‘All Day And All Of The Night'. I felt a bit appalled by that. I think that was worse than stealing a song – they were actually stealing our whole style!” Pete Townshend later admitted as much, saying that he had deliberately demoed "I Can't Explain" to sound as much like the Kinks as possible so that Talmy would see its potential. But the Kinks were still, for the moment, doing far better than the Who. In March, shortly after returning from their foreign tour, they released their second album, Kinda Kinks. Like their first album, it was a very patchy effort, but it made number two on the charts, behind the Rolling Stones. But Ray Davies was starting to get unhappy. He was dissatisfied with everything about his life. He would talk later about looking at his wife lying in bed sleeping and thinking "What's she doing here?", and he was increasingly wondering if the celebrity pop star life was right for him, simultaneously resenting and craving the limelight, and doing things like phoning the music papers to deny rumours that he was leaving the Kinks -- rumours which didn't exist until he made those phone calls. As he thought the Who had stolen the Kinks' style, Ray decided to go in a different direction for the next Kinks single, and recorded "Everybody's Gonna Be Happy", which was apparently intended to sound like Motown, though to my ears it bears no resemblance: [Excerpt: The Kinks, "Everybody's Gonna Be Happy"] That only went to number nineteen -- still a hit, but a worry for a band who had had three massive hits in a row. Several of the band started to worry seriously that they were going to end up with no career at all. It didn't help that on the tour after recording that, Ray came down with pneumonia. Then Dave came down with bronchitis. Then Pete Quaife hit his head and had to be hospitalised with severe bleeding and concussion. According to Quaife, he fainted in a public toilet and hit his head on the bowl on the way down, but other band members have suggested that Quaife -- who had a reputation for telling tall stories, even in a band whose members are all known for rewriting history -- was ashamed after getting into a fight. In April they played the NME Poll-Winners' Party, on the same bill as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Animals, the Moody Blues, the Searchers, Freddie And The Dreamers, Herman's Hermits, Wayne Fontana & The Mindbenders, the Rockin' Berries, the Seekers, the Ivy League, Them, the Bachelors, Georgie Fame & The Blue Flames, Cilla Black, Dusty Springfield, Twinkle, Tom Jones, Donovan, and Sounds Incorporated. Because they got there late they ended up headlining, going on after the Beatles, even though they hadn't won an award, only come second in best new group, coming far behind the Stones but just ahead of Manfred Mann and the Animals. The next single, "Set Me Free", was a conscious attempt to correct course after "Everybody's Gonna Be Happy" had been less successful: [Excerpt: The Kinks, "Set Me Free"] The song is once again repetitive, and once again based on a riff, structured similarly to "Tired of Waiting" but faster and more upbeat, and with a Beatles-style falsetto in the chorus. It worked -- it returned the group to the top ten -- but Ray wasn't happy at writing to order. He said in August of that year “I'm ashamed of that song. I can stand to hear and even sing most of the songs I've written, but not that one. It's built around pure idiot harmonies that have been used in a thousand songs.” More recently he's talked about how the lyric was an expression of him wanting to be set free from the constraint of having to write a hit song in the style he felt he was outgrowing. By the time the single was released, though, it looked like the group might not even be together any longer. There had always been tensions in the band. Ray and Dave had a relationship that made the Everly Brothers look like the model of family amity, and while Pete Quaife stayed out of the arguments for the most part, Mick Avory couldn't. The core of the group had always been the Davies brothers, and Quaife had known them for years, but Avory was a relative newcomer and hadn't grown up with them, and they also regarded him as a bit less intelligent than the rest of the group. He became the butt of jokes on a fairly constant basis. That would have been OK, except that Avory was also an essentially passive person, who didn't want to take sides in conflicts, while Dave Davies thought that as he and Avory were flatmates they should be on the same side, and resented when Avory didn't take his side in arguments with Ray. As Dave remembered it, the trigger came when he wanted to change the setlist and Mick didn't support him against Ray. In others' recollection, it came when the rest of the band tried to get Dave away from a party and he got violent with them. Both may be true. Either way, Dave got drunk and threw a suitcase at the back of a departing Mick, who was normally a fairly placid person but had had enough, and so he turned round, furious, grabbed Dave, got him in a headlock and just started punching, blackening both his eyes. According to some reports, Avory was so infuriated with Dave that he knocked him out, and Dave was so drunk and angry that when he came to he went for Avory again, and got knocked out again. The next day, the group were driven to their show in separate cars -- the Davies brothers in one, the rhythm section in the other -- they had separate dressing rooms, and made their entrance from separate directions. They got through the first song OK, and then Dave Davies insulted Avory's drumming, spat at him, and kicked his drums so they scattered all over the stage. At this point, a lot of the audience were still thinking this was part of the act, but Avory saw red again and picked up his hi-hat cymbal and smashed it down edge-first onto Dave's head. Everyone involved says that if his aim had been very slightly different he would have actually killed Dave. As it is, Dave collapsed, unconscious, bleeding everywhere. Ray screamed "My brother! He's killed my little brother!" and Mick, convinced he was a murderer, ran out of the theatre, still wearing his stage outfit of a hunting jacket and frilly shirt. He was running away for his life -- and that was literal, as Britain still technically had the death penalty at this point; while the last executions in Britain took place in 1964, capital punishment for murder wasn't abolished until late 1965 -- but at the same time a gang of screaming girls outside who didn't know what was going on were chasing him because he was a pop star. He managed to get back to London, where he found that the police had been looking for him but that Dave was alive and didn't want to press charges. However, he obviously couldn't go back to their shared home, and they had to cancel gigs because Dave had been hospitalised. It looked like the group were finished for good. Four days after that, Ray and Rasa's daughter Louisa was born, and shortly after that Ray was in the studio again, recording demos: [Excerpt: Ray Davies, "I Go to Sleep (demo)"] That song was part of a project that Larry Page, the group's co-manager, and Eddie Kassner, their publisher, had of making Ray's songwriting a bigger income source, and getting his songs recorded by other artists. Ray had been asked to write it for Peggy Lee, who soon recorded her own version: [Excerpt: Peggy Lee, "I Go to Sleep"] Several of the other tracks on that demo session featured Mitch Mitchell on drums. At the time, Mitchell was playing with another band that Page managed, and there seems to have been some thought of him possibly replacing Avory in the group. But instead, Larry Page cut the Gordian knot. He invited each band member to a meeting, just the two of them -- and didn't tell them that he'd scheduled all these meetings at the same time. When they got there, they found that they'd been tricked into having a full band meeting, at which point Page just talked to them about arrangements for their forthcoming American tour, and didn't let them get a word in until he'd finished. At the end he asked if they had any questions, and Mick Avory said he'd need some new cymbals because he'd broken his old ones on Dave's head. Before going on tour, the group recorded a song that Ray had written inspired by that droning chanting he'd heard in Mumbai. The song was variously titled "See My Friend" and "See My Friends" -- it has been released under both titles, and Ray seems to sing both words at different times -- and Ray told Maureen Cleave "The song is about homosexuality… It's like a football team and the way they're always kissing each other.” (We will be talking about Ray Davies' attitudes towards sexuality and gender in a future episode, but suffice to say that like much of Davies' worldview, he has a weird mixture of very progressive and very reactionary views, and he is also prone to observe behaviours in other people's private lives and make them part of his own public persona). The guitar part was recorded on a bad twelve-string guitar that fed back in the studio, creating a drone sound, which Shel Talmy picked up on and heavily compressed, creating a sound that bore more than a little resemblance to a sitar: [Excerpt: The Kinks, "See My Friend"] If that had been released at the time, it would have made the Kinks into trend-setters. Instead it was left in the can for nearly three months, and in the meantime the Yardbirds released the similar-sounding "Heart Full of Soul", making the Kinks look like bandwagon-jumpers when their own record came out, and reinforcing a paranoid belief that Ray had started to develop that his competitors were stealing his ideas. The track taking so long to come out was down to repercussions from the group's American tour, which changed the course of their whole career in ways they could not possibly have predicted. This was still the era when the musicians' unions of the US and UK had a restrictive one-in, one-out policy for musicians, and you couldn't get a visa to play in the US without the musicians' union's agreement -- and the AFM were not very keen on the British invasion, which they saw as taking jobs away from their members. There are countless stories from this period of bands like the Moody Blues getting to the US only to find that the arrangements have fallen through and they can't perform. Around this time, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders were told they weren't notable enough to get permission to play more than one gig, even though they were at number one on the charts in the US at the time. So it took a great deal of effort to get the Kinks' first US tour arranged, and they had to make a good impression. Unfortunately, while the Beatles and Stones knew how to play the game and give irreverent, cheeky answers that still left the interviewers amused and satisfied, the Kinks were just flat-out confusing and rude: [Excerpt: The Kinks Interview with Clay Cole] The whole tour went badly. They were booked into unsuitable venues, and there were a series of events like the group being booked on the same bill as the Dave Clark Five, and both groups having in their contract that they would be the headliner. Promoters started to complain about them to their management and the unions, and Ray was behaving worse and worse. By the time the tour hit LA, Ray was being truly obnoxious. According to Larry Page he refused to play one TV show because there was a Black drummer on the same show. Page said that it was not about personal prejudice -- though it's hard to see how it could not be, at least in part -- but just picking something arbitrary to complain about to show he had the power to mess things up. While shooting a spot for the show Where The Action Is, Ray got into a physical fight with one of the other cast members over nothing. What Ray didn't realise was that the person in question was a representative for AFTRA, the screen performers' union, and was already unhappy because Dave had earlier refused to join the union. Their behaviour got reported up the chain. The day after the fight was supposed to be the highlight of the tour, but Ray was missing his wife. In the mid-sixties, the Beach Boys would put on a big Summer Spectacular at the Hollywood Bowl every year, and the Kinks were due to play it, on a bill which as well as the Beach Boys also featured the Byrds, the Righteous Brothers, Dino, Desi & Billy, and Sonny and Cher. But Ray said he wasn't going on unless Rasa was there. And he didn't tell Larry Page, who was there, that. Instead, he told a journalist at the Daily Mirror in London, and the first Page heard about it was when the journalist phoned him to confirm that Ray wouldn't be playing. Now, they had already been working to try to get Rasa there for the show, because Ray had been complaining for a while. But Rasa didn't have a passport. Not only that, but she was an immigrant and her family were from Lithuania, and the US State Department weren't exactly keen on people from the Eastern Bloc flying to the US. And it was a long flight. I don't know exactly how long a flight from London to LA took then, but it takes eleven and a half hours now, and it will have been around that length. Somehow, working a miracle, Larry Page co-ordinated with his co-managers Robert Wace and Grenville Collins back in London -- difficult in itself as Wace and Collins and Page and his business partner Eddie Kassner were by now in two different factions, because Ray had been manipulating them and playing them off against each other for months. But the three of them worked together and somehow got Rasa to LA in time for Ray to go on stage. Page waited around long enough to see that Ray had got on stage at the Hollywood Bowl, then flew back to London. He had had enough of Ray's nonsense, and didn't really see any need to be there anyway, because they had a road manager, their publisher, their agent, and plenty of support staff. He felt that he was only there to be someone for Ray Davies to annoy and take his frustrations out on. And indeed, once Page flew back to the UK, Ray calmed down, though how much of that was the presence of Rasa it's hard to say. Their road manager at the time though said "If Larry wasn't there, Ray couldn't make problems because there was nobody there to make them to. He couldn't make problems for me because I just ignored them. For example, in Hawaii, the shirts got stolen. Ray said, ‘No way am I going onstage without my shirt.' So I turned around and said to him, ‘Great, don't go on!' Of course, they went on.” They did miss the gig the next night in San Francisco, with more or less the same lineup as the Hollywood Bowl show -- they'd had problems with the promoter of that show at an earlier gig in Reno, and so Ray said they weren't going to play unless they got paid in cash upfront. When the promoter refused, the group just walked on stage, waved, and walked off. But other than that, the rest of the tour went OK. What they didn't realise until later was that they had made so many enemies on that tour that it would be impossible for them to return to the US for another four years. They weren't blacklisted, as such, they just didn't get the special treatment that was necessary to make it possible for them to visit there. From that point on they would still have a few hits in the US, but nothing like the sustained massive success they had in the UK in the same period. Ray felt abandoned by Page, and started to side more and more with Wace and Collins. Page though was still trying to promote Ray's songwriting. Some of this, like the album "Kinky Music" by the Larry Page Orchestra, released during the tour, was possibly not the kind of promotion that anyone wanted, though some of it has a certain kitsch charm: [Excerpt: The Larry Page Orchestra, "All Day And All Of The Night"] Incidentally, the guitarist on that album was Jimmy Page, who had previously played rhythm guitar on a few Kinks album tracks. But other stuff that Larry Page was doing would be genuinely helpful. For example, on the tour he had become friendly with Stone and Greene, the managers who we heard about in the Buffalo Springfield episode. At this point they were managing Sonny and Cher, and when they came over to the UK, Page took the opportunity to get Cher into the studio to cut a version of Ray's "I Go to Sleep": [Excerpt: Cher, "I Go to Sleep"] Most songwriters, when told that the biggest new star of the year was cutting a cover version of one of their tracks for her next album, would be delighted. Ray Davies, on the other hand, went to the session and confronted Page, screaming about how Page was stealing his ideas. And it was Page being marginalised that caused "See My Friend" to be delayed, because while they were in the US, Page had produced the group in Gold Star Studios, recording a version of Ray's song "Ring the Bells", and Page wanted that as the next single, but the group had a contract with Shel Talmy which said he would be their producer. They couldn't release anything Talmy hadn't produced, but Page, who had control over the group's publishing with his business partner Kassner, wouldn't let them release "See My Friend". Eventually, Talmy won out, and "See My Friend" became the group's next single. It made the top ten on the Record Retailer chart, the one that's now the official UK chart cited in most sources, but only number fifteen on the NME chart which more people paid attention to at the time, and only spent a few weeks on the charts. Ray spent the summer complaining in the music papers about how the track -- "the only one I've really liked", as he said at the time -- wasn't selling as much as it deserved, and also insulting Larry Page and boasting about his own abilities, saying he was a better singer than Andy Williams and Tony Bennett. The group sacked Larry Page as their co-manager, and legal battles between Page and Kassner on one side and Collins and Wace on the other would continue for years, tying up much of the group's money. Page went on to produce a new band he was managing, making records that sounded very like the Kinks' early hits: [Excerpt: The Troggs, "Wild Thing"] The Kinks, meanwhile, decided to go in a different direction for their new EP, Kwyet Kinks, an EP of mostly softer, folk- and country-inspired songs. The most interesting thing on Kwyet Kinks was "Well-Respected Man", which saw Ray's songwriting go in a completely different direction as he started to write gentle social satires with more complex lyrics, rather than the repetitive riff-based songs he'd been doing before. That track was released as a single in the US, which didn't have much of an EP market, and made the top twenty there, despite its use of a word that in England at the time had a double meaning -- either a cigarette or a younger boy at a public school who has to be the servant of an older boy -- but in America was only used as a slur for gay people: [Excerpt: The Kinks, "Well Respected Man"] The group's next album, The Kink Kontroversy, was mostly written in a single week, and is another quickie knockoff album. It had the hit single "Til the End of the Day", another attempt at getting back to their old style of riffy rockers, and one which made the top ten. It also had a rerecorded version of "Ring the Bells", the song Larry Page had wanted to release as a single: [Excerpt: The Kinks, "Ring the Bells"] I'm sure that when Ray Davies heard "Ruby Tuesday" a little over a year later he didn't feel any better about the possibility that people were stealing his ideas. The Kink Kontroversy was a transitional album for the group in many ways. It was the first album to prominently feature Nicky Hopkins, who would be an integral part of the band's sound for the next three years, and the last one to feature a session drummer (Clem Cattini, rather than Avory, played on most of the tracks). From this point on there would essentially be a six-person group of studio Kinks who would make the records -- the four Kinks themselves, Rasa Davies on backing vocals, and Nicky Hopkins on piano. At the end of 1965 the group were flailing, mired in lawsuits, and had gone from being the third biggest group in the country at the start of the year to maybe the tenth or twentieth by the end of it. Something had to change. And it did with the group's next single, which in both its sound and its satirical subject matter was very much a return to the style of "Well Respected Man". "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" was inspired by anger. Ray was never a particularly sociable person, and he was not the kind to do the rounds of all the fashionable clubs like the other pop stars, including his brother, would. But he did feel a need to make some kind of effort and would occasionally host parties at his home for members of the fashionable set. But Davies didn't keep up with fashion the way they did, and some of them would mock him for the way he dressed. At one such party he got into a fistfight with someone who was making fun of his slightly flared trousers, kicked all the guests out, and then went to a typewriter and banged out a lyric mocking the guest and everyone like him: [Excerpt: The Kinks, "Dedicated Follower of Fashion"] The song wasn't popular with Ray's bandmates -- Dave thought it was too soft and wimpy, while Quaife got annoyed at the time Ray spent in the studio trying to make the opening guitar part sound a bit like a ukulele. But they couldn't argue with the results -- it went to number five on the charts, their biggest success since "Tired of Waiting for You" more than a year earlier, and more importantly in some ways it became part of the culture in a way their more recent singles hadn't. "Til The End of the Day" had made the top ten, but it wasn't a record that stuck in people's minds. But "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" was so popular that Ray soon got sick of people coming up to him in the street and singing "Oh yes he is!" at him. But then, Ray was getting sick of everything. In early 1966 he had a full-scale breakdown, brought on by the flu but really just down to pure exhaustion. Friends from this time say that Ray was an introverted control freak, always neurotic and trying to get control and success, but sabotaging it as soon as he attained it so that he didn't have to deal with the public. Just before a tour of Belgium, Rasa gave him an ultimatum -- either he sought medical help or she would leave him. He picked up their phone and slammed it into her face, blacking her eye -- the only time he was ever physically violent to her, she would later emphasise -- at which point it became imperative to get medical help for his mental condition. Ray stayed at home while the rest of the band went to Belgium -- they got in a substitute rhythm player, and Dave took the lead vocals -- though the tour didn't make them any new friends. Their co-manager Grenville Collins went along and with the tact and diplomacy for which the British upper classes are renowned the world over, would say things like “I understand every bloody word you're saying but I won't speak your filthy language. De Gaulle won't speak English, why should I speak French?” At home, Ray was doing worse and worse. When some pre-recorded footage of the Kinks singing "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" came on the TV, he unplugged it and stuck it in the oven. He said later "I was completely out of my mind. I went to sleep and I woke up a week later with a beard. I don't know what happened to me. I'd run into the West End with my money stuffed in my socks, I'd tried to punch my press agent, I was chased down Denmark Street by the police, hustled into a taxi by a psychiatrist and driven off somewhere. And I didn't know. I woke up and I said, ‘What's happening? When do we leave for Belgium?' And they said, ‘Ray it's all right. You had a collapse. Don't worry. You'll get better.'” He did get better, though for a long time he found himself unable to listen to any contemporary rock music other than Bob Dylan -- electric guitars made him think of the pop world that had made him ill -- and so he spent his time listening to classical and jazz records. He didn't want to be a pop star any more, and convinced himself he could quit the band if he went out on top by writing a number one single. And so he did: [Excerpt: The Kinks, "Sunny Afternoon"] Or at least, I say it's a single he wrote, but it's here that I finally get to a point I've been dancing round since the beginning of the episode. The chorus line, "In the summertime", was Rasa's suggestion, and in one of the only two interviews I've ever come across with her, for Johnny Rogan's biography of Ray, she calls the song "the only one where I wrote some words". But there's evidence, including another interview with her I'll talk about in a bit, that suggests that's not quite the case. For years, I thought it was an interesting coincidence that Ray Davies' songwriting ability follows a curve that almost precisely matches that of his relationship with Rasa. At the start, he's clearly talented -- "You Really Got Me" is a great track -- but he's an unformed writer and most of his work is pretty poor stuff. Then he marries Rasa, and his writing starts to become more interesting. Rasa starts to regularly contribute in the studio, and he becomes one of the great songwriters of his generation. For a five-year period in the mid-to-late-sixties, the period when their marriage is at its strongest, Ray writes a string of classic songs that are the equal of any catalogue in popular music. Then around 1970 Rasa stops coming to the studio, and their marriage is under strain. The records become patchier -- still plenty of classic tracks, but a lot more misses. And then in 1973, she left him, and his songwriting fell off a cliff. If you look at a typical Ray Davies concert setlist from 2017, the last time he toured, he did twenty songs, of which two were from his new album, one was the Kinks' one-off hit "Come Dancing" from 1983, and every other song was from the period when he and Rasa were married. Now, for a long time I just thought that was interesting, but likely a coincidence. After all, most rock songwriters do their most important work in their twenties, divorces have a way of messing people's mental health up, musical fashions change… there are a myriad reasons why these things could be like that. But… the circumstantial evidence just kept piling up. Ray's paranoia about people stealing his ideas meant that he became a lot more paranoid and secretive in his songwriting process, and would often not tell his bandmates the titles of the songs, the lyrics, or the vocal melody, until after they'd recorded the backing tracks -- they would record the tracks knowing the chord changes and tempo, but not what the actual song was. Increasingly he would be dictating parts to Quaife and Nicky Hopkins in the studio from the piano, telling them exactly what to play. But while Pete Quaife thought that Ray was being dictatorial in the studio and resented it, he resented something else more. As late as 1999 he was complaining about, in his words, "the silly little bint from Bradford virtually running the damn studio", telling him what to do, and feeling unable to argue back even though he regarded her as "a jumped-up groupie". Dave, on the other hand, valued Rasa's musical intuition and felt that Ray was the same. And she was apparently actually more up-to-date with the music in the charts than any of the band -- while they were out on the road, she would stay at home and listen to the radio and make note of what was charting and why. All this started to seem like a lot of circumstantial evidence that Rasa was possibly far more involved in the creation of the music than she gets credit for -- and given that she was never credited for her vocal parts on any Kinks records, was it too unbelievable that she might have contributed to the songwriting without credit? But then I found the other interview with Rasa I'm aware of, a short sidebar piece I'll link in the liner notes, and I'm going to quote that here: "Rasa, however, would sometimes take a very active role during the writing of the songs, many of which were written in the family home, even on occasion adding to the lyrics. She suggested the words “In the summertime” to ‘Sunny Afternoon', it is claimed. She now says, “I would make suggestions for a backing melody, sing along while Ray was playing the song(s) on the piano; at times I would add a lyric line or word(s). It was rewarding for me and was a major part of our life.” That was enough for me to become convinced that Rasa was a proper collaborator with Ray. I laid all this out in a blog post, being very careful how I phrased what I thought -- that while Ray Davies was probably the principal author of the songs credited to him (and to be clear, that is definitely what I think -- there's a stylistic continuity throughout his work that makes it very clear that the same man did the bulk of the work on all of it), the songs were the work of a writing partnership. As I said in that post "But even if Rasa only contributed ten percent, that seems likely to me to have been the ten percent that pulled those songs up to greatness. Even if all she did was pull Ray back from his more excessive instincts, perhaps cause him to show a little more compassion in his more satirical works (and the thing that's most notable about his post-Rasa songwriting is how much less compassionate it is), suggest a melodic line should go up instead of down at the end of a verse, that kind of thing… the cumulative effect of those sorts of suggestions can be enormous." I was just laying out my opinion, not stating anything as a certainty, though I was morally sure that Rasa deserved at least that much credit. And then Rasa commented on the post, saying "Dear Andrew. Your article was so informative and certainly not mischaracterised. Thank you for the 'history' of my input working with Ray. As I said previously, that time was magical and joyous." I think that's as close a statement as we're likely to get that the Kinks' biggest hits were actually the result of the songwriting team of Davies and Davies, and not of Ray alone, since nobody seems interested at all in a woman who sang on -- and likely co-wrote -- some of the biggest hit records of the sixties. Rasa gets mentioned in two sentences in the band's Wikipedia page, and as far as I can tell has only been interviewed twice -- an extensive interview by Johnny Rogan for his biography of Ray, in which he sadly doesn't seem to have pressed her on her songwriting contributions, and the sidebar above. I will probably continue to refer to Ray writing songs in this and the next episode on the Kinks, because I don't know for sure who wrote what, and he is the one who is legally credited as the sole writer. But… just bear that in mind. And bear it in mind whenever I or anyone else talk about the wives and girlfriends of other rock stars, because I'm sure she's not the only one. "Sunny Afternoon" knocked "Paperback Writer" off the number one spot, but by the time it did, Pete Quaife was out of the band. He'd fallen out with the Davies brothers so badly that he'd insisted on travelling separately from them, and he'd been in a car crash that had hospitalised him for six weeks. They'd quickly hired a temporary replacement, John Dalton, who had previously played with The Mark Four, the group that had evolved into The Creation. They needed him to mime for a TV appearance pretty much straight away, so they asked him "can you play a descending D minor scale?" and when he said yes he was hired -- because the opening of "Sunny Afternoon" used a trick Ray was very fond of, of holding a chord in the guitars while the bass descends in a scale, only changing chord when the notes would clash too badly, and then changing to the closest possible chord: [Excerpt: The Kinks, "Sunny Afternoon"] Around this time, the group also successfully renegotiated their contract with Pye Records, with the help of a new lawyer they had been advised to get in touch with -- Allen Klein. As well as helping renegotiate their contracts, Klein also passed on a demo of one of Ray's new songs to Herman's Hermits. “Dandy” was going to be on the Kinks' next album, but the Hermits released it as a single in the US and took it into the top ten: [Excerpt: Herman's Hermits, “Dandy”] In September, Pete Quaife formally quit the band -- he hadn't played with them in months after his accident -- and the next month the album Face To Face, recorded while Quaife was still in the group, was released. Face to Face was the group's first really solid album, and much of the album was in the same vein as "Sunny Afternoon" -- satirical songs that turned on the songwriter as much as on the people they were ostensibly about. It didn't do as well as the previous albums, but did still make the top twenty on the album chart. The group continued work, recording a new single, "Dead End Street", a song which is musically very similar to "Sunny Afternoon", but is lyrically astonishingly bleak, dealing with poverty and depression rather than more normal topics for a pop song. The group produced a promotional film for it, but the film was banned by the BBC as being in bad taste, as it showed the group as undertakers. But the single happened to be released two days after the broadcast of "Cathy Come Home", the seminal drama about homelessness, which suddenly brought homelessness onto the political agenda. While "Dead End Street" wasn't technically about homelessness, it was close enough that when the TV programme Panorama did a piece on the subject, they used "Dead End Street" to soundtrack it. The song made the top five, an astonishing achievement for something so dark: [Excerpt: The Kinks, "Dead End Street"] But the track also showed the next possible breach in the Kinks' hitmaking team -- when it was originally recorded, Shel Talmy had produced it, and had a French horn playing, but after he left the session, the band brought in a trombone player to replace the French horn, and rerecorded it without him. They would continue working with him for a little while, recording some of the tracks for their next album, but by the time the next single came out, Talmy would be out of the picture for good. But Pete Quaife, on the other hand, was nowhere near as out of the group as he had seemed. While he'd quit the band in September, Ray persuaded him to rejoin the band four days before "Dead End Street" came out, and John Dalton was back to working in his day job as a builder, though we'll be hearing more from him. The group put out a single in Europe, "Mr. Pleasant", a return to the style of "Well Respected Man" and "Dedicated Follower of Fashion": [Excerpt: The Kinks, “Mr. Pleasant”] That was a big hit in the Netherlands, but it wasn't released in the UK. They were working on something rather different. Ray had had the idea of writing a song called "Liverpool Sunset", about Liverpool, and about the decline of the Merseybeat bands who had been at the top of the profession when the Kinks had been starting out. But then the Beatles had released "Strawberry Fields Forever" and "Penny Lane", and Ray hadn't wanted to release anything about Liverpool's geography and look like he had stolen from them, given his attitudes to plagiarism. He said later "I sensed that the Beatles weren't going to be around long. When they moved to London, and ended up in Knightsbridge or wherever, I was still in Muswell Hill. I was loyal to my origins. Maybe I felt when they left it was all over for Merseybeat.” So instead, he -- or he and Rasa -- came up with a song about London, and about loneliness, and about a couple, Terry and Julie -- Terry was named after his nephew Terry who lived in Australia, while Julie's name came from Julie Christie, as she was then starring in a film with a Terry, Terrence Stamp: [Excerpt: The Kinks, "Waterloo Sunset"] It's interesting to look at the musical inspirations for the song. Many people at the time pointed out the song's similarity to "Winchester Cathedral" by the New Vaudeville Band, which had come out six months earlier with a similar melody and was also named after a place: [Excerpt: The New Vaudeville Band, "Winchester Cathedral"] And indeed Spike Milligan had parodied that song and replaced the lyrics with something more London-centric: [Excerpt: Spike Milligan, "Tower Bridge"] But it seems likely that Ray had taken inspiration from an older piece of music. We've talked before about Ferd Grofe in several episodes -- he was the one who orchestrated the original version of "Rhapsody in Blue", who wrote the piece of music that inspired Don Everly to write "Cathy's Clown", and who wrote the first music for the Novachord, the prototype synthesiser from the 1930s. As we saw earlier, Ray was listening to a lot of classical and jazz music rather than rock at this point, and one has to wonder if, at some point during his illness the previous year, he had come across Metropolis: A Blue Fantasy, which Grofe had written for Paul Whiteman's band in 1928, very much in the style of "Rhapsody in Blue", and this section, eight and a half minutes in, in particular: [Excerpt: Paul Whiteman, "Metropolis: A Blue Fantasy" ] "Waterloo Sunset" took three weeks to record. They started out, as usual, with a backing track recorded without the rest of the group knowing anything about the song they were recording -- though the group members did contribute some ideas to the arrangement, which was unusual by this point. Pete Quaife contributed to the bass part, while Dave Davies suggested the slapback echo on the guitar: [Excerpt: The Kinks, "Waterloo Sunset, Instrumental Take 2"] Only weeks later did they add the vocals. Ray had an ear infection, so rather than use headphones he sang to a playback through a speaker, which meant he had to sing more gently, giving the vocal a different tone from his normal singing style: [Excerpt: The Kinks, "Waterloo Sunset"] And in one of the few contributions Rasa made that has been generally acknowledged, she came up with the "Sha la la" vocals in the middle eight: [Excerpt: The Kinks, "Waterloo Sunset"] And the idea of having the track fade out on cascading, round-like vocals: [Excerpt: The Kinks, "Waterloo Sunset"] Once again the Kinks were at a turning point. A few weeks after "Waterloo Sunset" came out, the Monterey Pop Festival finally broke the Who in America -- a festival the Kinks were invited to play, but had to turn down because of their visa problems. It felt like the group were being passed by -- Ray has talked about how "Waterloo Sunset" would have been another good point for him to quit the group as he kept threatening to, or at least to stay home and just make the records, like Brian Wilson, while letting the band tour with Dave on lead vocals. He decided against it, though, as he would for decades to come. That attitude, of simultaneously wanting to be part of something and be a distanced, dispassionate observer of it, is what made "Waterloo Sunset" so special. As Ray has said, in words that seem almost to invoke the story of Moses: "it's a culmination of all my desires and hopes – it's a song about people going to a better world, but somehow I stayed where I was and became the observer in the song rather than the person who is proactive . . . I did not cross the river. They did and had a good life apparently." Ray stayed with the group, and we'll be picking up on what he and they did next in about a year's time. "Waterloo Sunset" went to number two on the charts, and has since become the most beloved song in the Kinks' whole catalogue. It's been called "the most beautiful song in the English language", and "the most beautiful song of the rock 'n' roll era", though Ray Davies, ever self-critical when he's not being self-aggrandising, thinks it could be improved upon. But most of the rest of us disagree. As the song itself says, "Waterloo Sunset's fine".

Label: Rolling Stones 19100Year: 1971Condition: M-Last Price: $20.00. Not currently available for sale.This is one of the greatest of the Stones two-sided monster hits. Well, the B side didn't actually chart, but it's so great it really should have. Presumably, radio just wasn't ready to play a song called "Bitch" yet... though they were prepared by 1975 when Elton John hit the Top 10 with "The Bitch Is Back." OK, trivia time again... "Brown Sugar" was one of eight #1 U.S. singles by the Stones. The group also had eight chart-toppers in their native England, though over there they garnered all of those hits during the 1960s. Here is the list of the Stones' #1 U.S. singles: (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (1965) Get Off My Cloud (1965) Paint It, Black (1966) Ruby Tuesday (1967) Honky Tonk Women (1969) Brown Sugar (1971) Angie (1973), and Miss You (1978) For comparison's sake, here are their #1 U.K. hits. You'll notice that the group gained monster popularity about a year earlier than they did in the U.S., same as the Beatles. It's All Over Now (1964) Little Red Rooster (1964) The Last Time (1964) (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (1965) Get Off My Cloud (1965) Paint It, Black (1966) Jumpin' Jack Flash (1968) Honky Tonk Women (1969) Note: This beautiful copy comes in a vintage Atlantic/Atco Records factory sleeve. The B side audio sounds Mint despite some surface scuffs. (This scan is a representative image from our archives.)

"Being summer, I took off my shirt...." well I'm not taking my shirt off but I am bringing you a summertime treat I think, with an excellent audience recording of the band's performance in Denver on July 14, 1981. As I listened to this tape it just struck me that the feeling of being there that a good audience recording gives you was perfect for this time of the year, when many of us have been lucky enough to experience some live music in person.. I do hope you have! This show has some excellent energy throughout, the Minglewood has a couple very nice Jerry solos, the 'Cassidy' is nicely paced, and leads into a sweet 'To Lay Me Down'.  Weir has some fun with 'Me & My Uncle' which is blistering.. as is the outstanding 'Big Railroad Blues'  The highlight of the set is the Birdsong>Sailor>Saint, however. It is only the the 14th electric birdsong since 9/15/73, and the only time that Sailor comes out of Birdsong. It is excellent.    Grateful Dead McNichols Arena Denver, CO 7/14/1981 - Tuesday One     Cold Rain And Snow [5:40] > New Minglewood Blues [6:41] ; Friend Of The Devil [9:00] ; Cassidy [5:05] ; To Lay Me Down [8:53] > Me And My Uncle [2:55]> Mexicali Blues [4:30] ; Big Railroad Blues [3:48] ; Little Red Rooster [8:23] ; Bird Song [11:48] > Lost Sailor [6:42] > Saint Of Circumstance [7:25] > Don't Ease Me In [3:06]  You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod071522.mp3 Thanks for your kind support. I hope you are able to enjoy these summer daze!   

Merle Haggard "Swinging Doors (Medley)"Grateful Dead "High Time"The Replacements "Alex Chilton"Betty LaVette "Let Me down Easy"Al Green "Hot Wire"R.E.M. "Near Wild Heaven"Vic Chesnutt "Lucinda Williams"Dreams So Real "Golden"The Glands "Livin' Was Easy"Love Tractor "Cutting Corners (Instrumental Version)"Kevn Kinney "MacDougal Blues"Peter Buck "I Hate My Life And The Way I Live"Widespread Panic "Makes Sense To Me"Vic Chesnutt "Doris Days"Aretha Franklin "Spirit in the Dark"Eddie Floyd "Guess Who"Fiona Apple "Shameika"Alvin Youngblood hart "Fightin' Hard"Chuck Berry "Hello Little Girl, Goodbye"James Luther Dickinson "O How She Dances"Delbert McClinton "Take Me To The River"Built To Spill "Understood"Valerie June "Trials, Troubles, Tribulations"The Hold Steady "Navy Sheets"Loretta Lynn "Rated X"The Mountain Goats "Training Montage"Mavis Staples "I Ain't Particular"Lulu "Sweep Around Your Own Back Door"Spirit Family Reunion "Time to Go Back Home"The White Stripes "Ball And Biscuit"The Hold Steady "Your Little Hoodrat Friend"Chris Knight "I'm William Callahan"Drive-By Truckers "Billy Ringo in the Dark"Memphis Minnie "Kissing in the Dark"Sister Rosetta Tharpe "Strange Things Happening Every Day"Howlin' Wolf "I Asked for Water"Wilson Pickett "I Found the One"Billy Joe Shaver "Ride Me Down Easy"Steve Earle "Mercenary Song"Ted Taylor "Little Red Rooster"Ray Charles "Halleleujah I Love Her So"Ernest Tubbs & Conway Twitty "Jimmy Rogers' Last Blue Yodel (The Women Make A Fool Out Of Me)"Centro-matic "If They Talk You Down"Craig Finn "Birthdays"Waylon Jennings "It's Only Rock & Roll"

The post Beat Club: Little Red Rooster appeared first on NiTfm.

This week we stay on the Continent for a show that took place on October 12, 1981 at the Olympia Halle in Munich, West Germany during the band's Fall European Tour. For the most part this is quite an excellent recording, although it does have a couple patches..  They come out firing on an up-tempo 'Jack Straw', then Garcia delivers a more laid back selection with a pretty 'Candyman'. The 'Little Red Rooster' that follows is one of my favorite versions of this tune they delivered - check it out! Brent is all over these songs, if you are a fan you're going to enjoy this set. Some other highlights include an insane 'Passenger' and the set closing 'China>Rider' .. don't miss this one.      Grateful Dead Olympia Halle Munich, West Germany 10/12/81 - Monday One     Jack Straw [6:02] ; Candyman [6:33] > Little Red Rooster [8:21] ; Cumberland Blues [5:17] ; Beat It On Down The Line [2:57] ; Ramble On Rose [7:32] ; (1) Mama Tried [2:30] > Mexicali Blues [2:50#] ; Althea [9:12] ; Passenger [5:09] ; China Cat Sunflower [7:46] > I Know You Rider [5:59]    You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod092421.mp3    Thanks so much for your kind support!  Be well and keep on..   

Charlie Watts, som døde i august 2021, 80 år gammel, passede trommerne i The Rolling Stones i 58 år. Han regnes generelt for en af rockepokens mest ikoniske musikere, og hans forbilledligt enkle stil, generelt støvsuget for overflødigheder og blær, blev meget efterlignet, men sjældent overgået. Trods udgangspunkt i jazzen, der forblev hans musikalske kærlighed, besad han en intuitiv fornemmelse for blues og rock og han kom til at præge begge genrer.Privat var han en beskeden mand med en knastør humoristisk sans og stor forkærlighed for skræddersyede jakkesæt.Rockhistorier har samlet nogle af hans største øjeblikke med The Rolling Stones – både nogle af de mere kanoniserede og enkelte private favoritter, suppleret med et par koncertoptagelser. 1. ”Little Red Rooster” (1964) 2. "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" (1965)3. "Get Off of My Cloud" (1965)4. “19th Nervous Breakdown" (1966)5. "Paint It, Black" (1966)6. “She's a Rainbow” (1967)7. “Stray Cat Blues” (1968)8. "Sympathy for the Devil" (1968)9. "Honky Tonk Women" (1969)10. “Gimme Shelter” (1969)11. “Can't You Hear Me Knocking” (1971)12. “Rip This Joint” (1972)13. “Shake Your Hips” (1972)14. “Street Fighting Man” (Live 1973)15. “If You Can't Rock Me” (1974)16. “Tumbling Dice” (Live 1976)17. “Miss You” (1978)18. “Beast of Burden” (1978)19. “Dance (Pt. 1)” (1980)20. “Undercover of the Night” (1983)21. “Moon Is Up” (1994)22. “Commit a Crime” (2016)

Sometimes I feel like a Little Red Rooster, too lazy to crow for days. It takes a Cosmic Dweller to bounce you back to where you need to be. Thanks Amo. Jake out.

Episode 129 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones, and how they went from being a moderately successful beat group to being the only serious rivals to the Beatles. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have an eleven-minute bonus episode available, on "I'll Never Find Another You" by the Seekers. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources As usual I've created a Mixcloud streaming playlist with full versions of all the songs in the episode. i used a lot of resources for this episode. Two resources that I've used for this and all future Stones episodes — The Rolling Stones: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesden is an invaluable reference book, while Old Gods Almost Dead by Stephen Davis is the least inaccurate biography. When in doubt, the version of the narrative I've chosen to use is the one from Davis' book. I've also used Andrew Loog Oldham's autobiography Stoned, and Keith Richards' Life, though be warned that both casually use slurs. Sympathy for the Devil: The Birth of the Rolling Stones and the Death of Brian Jones by Paul Trynka is, as the title might suggest, essentially special pleading for Jones. It's as well-researched and well-written as a pro-Jones book can be, and is worth reading for balance, though I find it unconvincing. This web page seems to have the most accurate details of the precise dates of sessions and gigs. And this three-CD set contains the A and B sides of all the Stones' singles up to 1971, including every Stones track I excerpt in this episode. 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 most important riffs in rock and roll history -- the record that turned the distorted guitar riff into the defining feature of the genre, even though the man who played that riff never liked it. We're going to look at a record that took the social protest of the folk-rock movement, aligned it with the misogyny its singer had found in many blues songs, and turned it into the most powerful expression of male adolescent frustration ever recorded to that point. We're going to look at "Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Satisfaction"] A note before we start this -- this episode deals with violence against women, and with rape. If you're likely to be upset hearing about those things, you might want to either skip this episode, or read the transcript on the website first. The relevant section comes right at the end of the episode, so you can also listen through to the point where I give another warning, without missing any of the rest of the episode. Another point I should make here -- most of the great sixties groups have very accurate biographies written about them. The Stones, even more than the Beatles, have kept a surprising amount of control over their public image, with the result that the only sources about them are either rather sanitised things made with their co-operation, or rather tabloidy things whose information mostly comes from people who are holding a grudge or have a particular agenda. I believe that everything in this episode is the most likely of the various competing narratives, but if you check out the books I used, which are listed on the blog post associated with this episode, you'll see that there are several different tellings of almost every bit of this story. So bear that in mind as you're listening. I've done my best. Anyway, on with the episode.  When we left the Rolling Stones, they were at the very start of their recording career, having just released their first big hit single, a version of "I Wanna Be Your Man", which had been written for them by Lennon and McCartney.  The day after they first appeared on Top of the Pops, they were back in the recording studio, but not to record for themselves. The five Stones, plus Ian Stewart, were being paid two pounds a head by their manager/producer Andrew Oldham to be someone else's backing group. Oldham was producing a version of "To Know Him is to Love Him", the first hit by his idol Phil Spector, for a new singer he was managing named Cleo Sylvester: [Excerpt: Cleo, "To Know Him is to Love Him"] In a further emulation of Spector, the B-side was a throwaway instrumental. Credited to "the Andrew Oldham Orchestra", and with Mike Leander supervising, the song's title, "There Are But Five Rolling Stones", gave away who the performers actually were: [Excerpt: The Andrew Oldham Orchestra, "There Are But Five Rolling Stones"] At this point, the Stones were still not writing their own material, but Oldham had already seen the writing on the wall -- there was going to be no place in the new world opened up by the Beatles for bands that couldn't generate their own hits, and he had already decided who was going to be doing that for his group.  It would have been natural for him to turn to Brian Jones, still at this point the undisputed leader of the group, and someone who had a marvellous musical mind. But possibly in order to strengthen the group's identity as a group rather than a leader and his followers -- Oldham has made different statements about this at different points -- or possibly just because they were living in the same flat as him at the time, while Jones was living elsewhere, he decided that the Rolling Stones' equivalent of Lennon and McCartney was going to be Jagger and Richards. There are several inconsistencies in the stories of how Jagger and Richards started writing together -- and things like what the actual first song they wrote together was, or when they wrote it, will probably always be lost to the combination of self-aggrandisement and drug-fuelled memory loss that makes it difficult to say anything definitive about much of their career. But we do know that one of the earliest songs they wrote together was "As Tears Go By", a song that wasn't considered suitable for the group -- though they did later record a version of it -- and was given instead to Marianne Faithfull, a young singer with whom Jagger was about to enter into a relationship: [Excerpt: Marianne Faithfull, "As Tears Go By"] It's not entirely clear who wrote what on that song -- it's usually referred to as a Jagger/Richards collaboration, but it's credited to Jagger, Richards, and Oldham, and at least one source claims it was actually written by Jagger and the session guitarist Big Jim Sullivan -- and if so, this would be the first time of many that a song written by Jagger or Richards in collaboration with someone else would be credited to Jagger and Richards without any credit going to their co-writer. But the consensus story, as far as there is a consensus, seems to be that Oldham locked Jagger and Richards into a kitchen, and told them they weren't coming out until they had a song written. And it had to be a proper song, not a pastiche of something else, and it had to be the kind of song you could release as a single, not a blues song. After spending all night in the kitchen, Richards eventually got bored of being stuck in there, and started strumming his guitar and singing "it is the evening of the day", and the two of them quickly came up with the rest of the song. After "As Tears Go By", they wrote a lot of songs that they didn't feel were right for the group, but gave them away to other people, like Gene Pitney, who recorded "That Girl Belongs to Yesterday": [Excerpt: Gene Pitney, "That Girl Belongs to Yesterday"] Pitney, and his former record producer Phil Spector, had visited the Stones during the sessions for their first album, which started the day after that Cleo session, and had added a little piano and percussion to a blues jam called "Little by Little", which also featured Allan Clarke and Graham Nash of the Hollies on backing vocals. The songwriting on that track was credited to Spector and Nanker Phelge, a group pseudonym that was used for jam sessions and instrumentals. It was one of two Nanker Phelge songs on the album, and there was also an early Jagger and Richards song, "Tell Me", an unoriginal Merseybeat pastiche: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Tell Me"] But the bulk of the album was made up of cover versions of songs by Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Rufus Thomas, Marvin Gaye, and other Black American musicians. The album went to number one in the UK album charts, which is a much more impressive achievement than it might sound. At this point, albums sold primarily to adults with spending money, and the album charts changed very slowly. Between May 1963 and February 1968, the *only* artists to have number one albums in the UK were the Beatles, the Stones, Dylan, the Monkees, the cast of The Sound of Music, and Val Doonican. And between May 63 and April 65 it was *only* the Beatles and the Stones. But while they'd had a number one album, they'd still not had a number one single, or even a top ten one. "I Wanna Be Your Man" had been written for them and had hit number twelve, but they were still not writing songs that they thought were suited for release as singles, and they couldn't keep asking the Beatles to help them out, so while Jagger and Richards kept improving as songwriters, for their next single they chose a Buddy Holly B-side: [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, "Not Fade Away"] The group had latched on to the Bo Diddley rhythm in that song, along with its machismo -- many of the cover versions they chose in this period seem to have not just a sexual subtext but to be overtly bragging, and if Little Richard is to be believed on the subject, Holly's line "My love is bigger than a Cadillac" isn't that much of an exaggeration. It's often claimed that the Stones exaggerated and emphasised the Bo Diddley sound, and made their version more of an R&B number than Holly's, but if anything their version owes more to someone else.  The Stones' first real UK tour had been on a bill with Mickie Most, Bo Diddley, Little Richard, and the Everly Brothers, and Keith Richards in particular had been amazed by the Everlys. He said later "The best rhythm guitar playing I ever heard was from Don Everly. Nobody ever thinks about that, but their rhythm guitar playing is perfect". Don Everly, of course, was himself very influenced by Bo Diddley, and learned to play in open-G tuning from Diddley -- and several years later, Keith Richards would make that tuning his own, after being inspired by Everly and Ry Cooder.  The Stones' version of "Not Fade Away" owes at least as much to Don Everly's rhythm guitar style as to that of Holly or Diddley. Compare, say, the opening of "Wake Up Little Suzie": [Excerpt: The Everly Brothers, "Wake Up Little Suzie"] The rhythm guitar on the Stones version of "Not Fade Away" is definitely Keith Richards doing Don Everly doing Bo Diddley: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Not Fade Away"] That was recorded during the sessions for their first album, and was, depending on whose story you believe, another track that featured Phil Spector and Gene Pitney on percussion, recorded at the same session as "Little by Little", which became its B-side. Bill Wyman, who kept copious notes of the group's activities, has always said that the idea that it was recorded at that session was nonsense, and that it was recorded weeks later, and Oldham merely claimed Spector was on the record for publicity purposes. On the other hand, Gene Pitney had a very strong memory of being at that session. Spector had been in the country because the Ronettes had been touring the UK with the Stones as one of their support acts, along with the Swinging Blue Jeans and Marty Wilde, and Spector was worried that Ronnie might end up with one of the British musicians. He wasn't wrong to worry -- according to Ronnie's autobiography, there were several occasions when she came very close to sleeping with John Lennon, though they never ended up doing anything and remained just friends, while according to Keith Richards' autobiography he and Ronnie had a chaste affair on that tour which became less chaste when the Stones later hit America. But Spector had flown over to the UK to make sure that he remained in control of the young woman who he considered his property. Pitney, meanwhile, according to his recollection, turned up to the session at the request of Oldham, as the group were fighting in the studio and not getting the track recorded. Pitney arrived with cognac, telling the group that it was his birthday and that they all needed to get drunk with him. They did, they stopped fighting, and they recorded the track: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Not Fade Away"] "Not Fade Away" made number three on the UK charts, and also became the first Stones record to chart in the US at all, though it only scraped its way to number forty-eight, not any higher. But in itself that was a lot -- it meant that the Stones had a record doing well enough to justify them going to the US for their first American tour.  But before that, they had to go through yet another UK tour -- though this isn't counted as an official tour in the listings of their tours, it's just a bunch of shows, in different places, that happened to be almost every night for a couple of months. By this time, the audience response was getting overwhelming, and shows often had to be cut short to keep the group safe. At one show, in Birkenhead, the show had to be stopped after the band played *three bars*, with the group running off stage after that as the audience invaded the stage. And then it was off to the US, where they were nowhere near as big, though while they were over there, "Tell Me" was also released as a single to tie in with the tour, and that did surprisingly well, making number twenty-four. The group's first experience of the US wasn't an entirely positive one -- there was a disastrous appearance on the Dean Martin Show on TV, with Martin mocking the group both before and after their performance, to the extent that Bob Dylan felt moved to write in the liner notes to his next album “Dean Martin should apologise t'the Rolling Stones”. But on the other hand, there were some good experiences. They got to see James Brown at the Apollo, and Jagger started taking notes -- though Richards also noted *what* Jagger was noting, saying "James wanted to show off to these English folk. He's got the Famous Flames, and he's sending one out for a hamburger, he's ordering another to polish his shoes and he's humiliating his own band. To me, it was the Famous Flames, and James Brown happened to be the lead singer. But the way he lorded it over his minions, his minders and the actual band, to Mick was fascinating" They also met up with Murray the K, the DJ who had started the career of the Ronettes among others. Murray had unilaterally declared himself "the fifth Beatle", and was making much of his supposed connections with British pop stars, most of whom either had no idea who he was or actively disliked him (Richards, when talking about him, would often replace the K with a four-letter word usually spelled with a "c"). The Stones didn't like him any more than any of the other groups did, but Murray played them a record he thought they'd be interested in -- "It's All Over Now" by the Valentinos, the song that Bobby Womack had written and which was on Sam Cooke's record label: [Excerpt: The Valentinos, "It's All Over Now"] They decided that they were going to record that, and handily Oldham had already arranged some studio time for them. As Giorgio Gomelsky would soon find with the Yardbirds, Oldham was convinced that British studios were simply unsuitable for recording loud blues-based rock and roll music, and Phil Spector had suggested to him that if the Stones loved Chess records so much, they might as well record at Chess studios.  So while the group were in Chicago, they were booked in for a couple of days in the studio at Chess, where they were horrified to discover that their musical idol Muddy Waters was earning a little extra cash painting the studio ceiling and acting as a roadie, helping them in with their equipment.  (It should be noted here that Marshall Chess, Leonard Chess' son who worked with the Stones in the seventies, has denied this happened. Keith Richards insists it did.) But after that shock, they found working at Chess a great experience. Not only did various of their musical idols, like Willie Dixon and Chuck Berry, as well as Waters, pop in to encourage them, and not only were they working with the same engineer who had recorded many of those people's records, but they were working in a recording studio with an actual multi-track system rather than a shoddy two-track tape recorder. From this point on, while they would still record in the UK on occasion, they increasingly chose to use American studios.  The version of "It's All Over Now" they recorded there was released as their next single. It only made the top thirty in the US -- they had still not properly broken through there -- but it became their first British number one: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "It's All Over Now"] Bobby Womack was furious that the Stones had recorded his song while his version was still new, but Sam Cooke talked him down, explaining that if Womack played his cards right he could have a lot of success through his connection with these British musicians. Once the first royalty cheques came in, Womack wasn't too upset any more. When they returned to the UK, they had another busy schedule of touring and recording -- and not all of it just for Rolling Stones work. There was, for example, an Andrew Oldham Orchestra session, featuring many people from the British session world who we've noted before -- Joe Moretti from Vince Taylor's band, John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page, Andy White, Mike Leander, and more. Mick Jagger added vocals to their version of "I Get Around": [Excerpt: The Andrew Oldham Orchestra, "I Get Around"] It's possible that Oldham had multiple motives for recording that -- Oldham was always a fan of Beach Boys style pop music more than he was of R&B, but he also was in the process of setting up his own publishing company, and knew that the Beach Boys' publishers didn't operate in the UK. In 1965, Oldham's company would become the Beach Boys' UK publishers, and he would get a chunk of every cover version of their songs, including his own. There were also a lot of demo sessions for Jagger/Richards songs intended for other artists, with Mick and Keith working with those same session musicians -- like this song that they wrote for the comedian Jimmy Tarbuck, demoed by Jagger and Richards with Moretti, Page, Jones, John McLaughlin, Big Jim Sullivan, and Andy White: [Excerpt: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, "We're Wastin' Time"] But of course there were also sessions for Rolling Stones records, like their next UK number one single, "Little Red Rooster": [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Little Red Rooster"] "Little Red Rooster" is a song that is credited to Willie Dixon, but which actually combines several elements from earlier blues songs, including a riff inspired by the one from Son House's "Death Letter Blues": [Excerpt: Son House, "Death Letter Blues"] A melody line and some lines of lyric from Memphis Minnie's "If You See My Rooster": [Excerpt: Memphis Minnie, "If You See My Rooster"] And some lines from Charley Patton's "Banty Rooster Blues": [Excerpt: Charley Patton, "Banty Rooster Blues"] Dixon's resulting song had been recorded by Howlin' Wolf in 1961: [Excerpt: Howlin' Wolf, "Little Red Rooster"] That hadn't been a hit, but Sam Cooke had recorded a cover version, in a very different style, that made the US top twenty and proved the song had chart potential: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "Little Red Rooster"] The Rolling Stones version followed Howlin' Wolf's version very closely, except that Jagger states that he *is* a cock -- I'm sorry, a rooster -- rather than that he merely has one. And this would normally be something that would please Brian Jones immensely -- that the group he had formed to promote Delta and Chicago blues had managed to get a song like that to number one in the UK charts, especially as it was dominated by his slide playing. But in fact the record just symbolised the growing estrangement between Jones and the rest of his band. When he turned up at the session to record "Little Red Rooster", he was dismayed to find out that the rest of the group had deliberately told him the wrong date. They'd recorded the track the day before, without him, and just left a note from Jagger to tell him where to put his slide fills. They spent the next few months ping-ponging between the UK and the US. In late 1964 they made another US tour, during which at one point Brian Jones collapsed with what has been variously reported as stress and alcohol poisoning, and had to miss several shows, leaving the group to carry on without him. There was much discussion at this point of just kicking him out of the band, but they decided against it -- he was still perceived as the group's leader and most popular member. They also appeared on the TAMI show, which we've mentioned before, and which we'll look at in more detail when we next look at James Brown, but which is notable here for two things. The first is that they once again saw how good James Brown was, and at this point Jagger decided that he was going to do his best to emulate Brown's performance -- to the extent that he asked a choreographer to figure out what Brown was doing and teach it to him, but the choreographer told Jagger that Brown moved too fast to figure out all his steps. The other is that the musical director for the TAMI Show was Jack Nitzsche, and this would be the start of a professional relationship that would last for many years. We've seen Nitzsche before in various roles -- he was the co-writer of "Needles and Pins", and he was also the arranger on almost all of Phil Spector's hits. He was so important to Spector's sound that Keith Richards has said “Jack was the Genius, not Phil. Rather, Phil took on Jack's eccentric persona and sucked his insides out.” Nitzsche guested on piano when the Stones went into the studio in LA to record a chunk of their next album, including the ballad "Heart of Stone", which would become a single in the US. From that point on, whenever the Stones recorded in LA, Nitzsche would be there, adding keyboards and percussion and acting as an uncredited co-producer and arranger. He was apparently unpaid for this work, which he did just because he enjoyed being around the band. Nitzsche would also play on the group's next UK single, recorded a couple of months later. This would be their third UK number one, and the first one credited to Jagger and Richards as songwriters, though the credit is a rather misleading one in this case, as the chorus is taken directly from a gospel song by Pops Staples, recorded by the Staple Singers: [Excerpt: The Staple Singers, "This May Be The Last Time"] Jagger and Richards took that chorus and reworked it into a snarling song whose lyrics were based around Jagger's then favourite theme -- how annoying it is when women want to do things other than whatever their man wants them to do: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "The Last Time"] There is a deep, deep misogyny in the Stones' lyrics in the mid sixties, partly inspired by the personas taken on by some blues men (though there are very few blues singers who stuck so unrelentingly to a single theme), and partly inspired by Jagger's own relationship with Chrissie Shrimpton, who he regarded as his inferior, even though she was his superior in terms of the British class system. That's even more noticeable on "Play With Fire", the B-side to "The Last Time". "The Last Time" had been recorded in such a long session that Jones, Watts, and Wyman went off to bed, exhausted. But Jagger and Richards wanted to record a demo of another song, which definitely seems to have been inspired by Shrimpton, so they got Jack Nitzsche to play harpsichord and Phil Spector to play (depending on which source you believe) either a bass or a detuned electric guitar: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Play With Fire"] The demo was considered good enough to release, and put out as the B-side without any contribution from the other three Stones. Other songs Chrissie Shrimpton would inspire over the next couple of years would include "Under My Thumb", "19th Nervous Breakdown", and "Stupid Girl". It's safe to say that Mick Jagger wasn't going to win any boyfriend of the year awards. "The Last Time" was a big hit, but the follow-up was the song that turned the Stones from being one of several British bands who were very successful to being the only real challengers to the Beatles for commercial success. And it was a song whose main riff came to Keith Richards in a dream: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction)"] Richards apparently had a tape recorder by the side of his bed, and when the riff came to him he woke up enough to quickly record it before falling back to sleep with the tape running. When he woke up, he'd forgotten the riff, but found it at the beginning of a recording that was otherwise just snoring. For a while Richards was worried he'd ripped the riff off from something else, and he's later said that he thinks that it was inspired by "Dancing in the Street". In fact, it's much closer to the horn line from another Vandellas record, "Nowhere to Run", which also has a similar stomping rhythm: [Excerpt: Martha and the Vandellas, "Nowhere to Run"] You can see how similar the two songs are by overlaying the riff from “Satisfaction” on the chorus to “Nowhere to Run”: [Excerpt “Nowhere to Run”/”Satisfaction”] "Nowhere to Run" also has a similar breakdown. Compare the Vandellas: [Excerpt: Martha and the Vandellas, "Nowhere to Run"] to the Stones: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"] So it's fairly clear where the song's inspiration came from, but it's also clear that unlike a song like "The Last Time" this *was* just inspiration, rather than plagiarism.  The recorded version of "Satisfaction" was never one that its main composer was happy with. The group, apart from Brian Jones, who may have added a harmonica part that was later wiped, depending on what sources you read, but is otherwise absent from the track, recorded the basic track at Chess studios, and at this point it was mostly acoustic. Richards thought it had come out sounding too folk-rock, and didn't work at all. At this point Richards was still thinking of the track as a demo -- though by this point he was already aware of Andrew Oldham's tendency to take things that Richards thought were demos and release them. When Richards had come up with the riff, he had imagined it as a horn line, something like the version that Otis Redding eventually recorded: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"] So when they went into the studio in LA with Jack Nitzsche to work on some tracks there including some more work on the demo for “Satisfaction”, as well as Nitzsche adding some piano, Richards also wanted to do something to sketch out what the horn part would be. He tried playing it on his guitar, and it didn't sound right, and so Ian Stewart had an idea, went to a music shop, and got one of the first ever fuzz pedals, to see if Richards' guitar could sound like a horn. Now, people have, over the years, said that "Satisfaction" was the first record ever to use a fuzz tone. This is nonsense. We saw *way* back in the episode on “Rocket '88” a use of a damaged amp as an inspired accident, getting a fuzzy tone, though nobody picked up on that and it was just a one-off thing. Paul Burlison, the guitarist with the Rock 'n' Roll Trio, had a similar accident a few years later, as we also saw, and went with it, deliberately loosening tubes in his amp to get the sound audible on their version of "Train Kept A-Rollin'": [Excerpt: Johnny Burnette and the Rock 'n' Roll Trio, "Train Kept A-Rollin'"] A few years later, Grady Martin, the Nashville session player who was the other guitarist on that track, got a similar effect on his six-string bass solo on Marty Robbins' "Don't Worry", possibly partly inspired by Burlison's sound: [Excerpt: Marty Robbins, "Don't Worry"] That tends to be considered the real birth of fuzz, because that time it was picked up by the whole industry. Martin recorded an instrumental showing off the technique: [Excerpt: Grady Martin, "The Fuzz"] And more or less simultaneously, Wrecking Crew guitarist Al Casey used an early fuzz tone on a country record by Sanford Clark: [Excerpt: Sanford Clark, "Go On Home"] And the pedal steel player Red Rhodes had invented his own fuzz box, which he gave to another Wrecking Crew player, Billy Strange, who used it on records like Ann-Margret's "I Just Don't Understand": [Excerpt: Ann-Margret, "I Just Don't Understand"] All those last four tracks, and many more, were from 1960 or 1961. So far from being something unprecedented in recording history, as all too many rock histories will tell you, fuzz guitar was somewhat passe by 1965 -- it had been the big thing on records made by the Nashville A-Team and the Wrecking Crew four or five years earlier, and everyone had moved on to the next gimmick long ago. But it was good enough to use to impersonate a horn to sketch out a line for a demo. Except, of course, that while Jagger and Richards disliked the track as recorded, the other members of the band, and Ian Stewart (who still had a vote even though he was no longer a full member) and Andrew Oldham all thought it was a hit single as it was. They overruled Jagger and Richards and released it complete with fuzz guitar riff, which became one of the most well-known examples of the sound in rock history. To this day, though, when Richards plays the song live, he plays it without the fuzztone effect. Lyrically, the song sees Mick Jagger reaching for the influence of Bob Dylan and trying to write a piece of social commentary. The title line seems, appropriately for a song partly recorded at Chess studios, to have come from a line in a Chuck Berry record, "Thirty Days": [Excerpt: Chuck Berry, "Thirty Days"] But the sentiment also owes more than a little to another record by a Chess star, one recorded so early that it was originally released when Chess was still called Aristocrat Records -- Muddy Waters'  "I Can't Be Satisfied": [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "I Can't Be Satisfied"] “Satisfaction” is the ultimate exercise in adolescent male frustration. I once read something, and I can't for the life of me remember where or who the author was, that struck me as the most insightful critique of the sixties British blues bands I've ever heard. That person said that by taking the blues out of the context in which the music had been created, they fundamentally changed the meaning of it -- that when Bo Diddley sang "I'm a Man", the subtext was "so don't call me 'boy', cracker". Meanwhile, when some British white teenagers from Essex sang the same words, in complete ignorance of the world in which Diddley lived, what they were singing was "I'm a man now, mummy, so you can't make me tidy my room if I don't want to". But the thing is, there are a lot of teenagers out there who don't want to tidy their rooms, and that kind of message does resonate. And here, Jagger is expressing the kind of aggressive sulk that pretty much every teenager, especially every frustrated male teenager will relate to. The protagonist is dissatisfied with everything in his life, so criticism of the vapidity of advertising is mixed in with sexual frustration because women won't sleep with the protagonist when they're menstruating: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"] It is the most adolescent lyric imaginable, but pop music is an adolescent medium. The song went to number one in the UK, and also became the group's first American number one. But Brian Jones resented it, so much so that when they performed the song live, he'd often start playing “I'm Popeye the Sailor Man”. This was partly because it wasn't the blues he loved, but also because it was the first Stones single he wasn't on (again, at least according to most sources. Some say he played acoustic rhythm guitar, but most say he's not on it and that Richards plays all the guitar parts). And to explain why, I have to get into the unpleasant details I talked about at the start. If you're likely to be upset by discussion of rape or domestic violence, stop the episode now. Now, there are a number of different versions of this story. This is the one that seems most plausible to me, based on what else I know about the Stones, and the different accounts, but some of the details might be wrong, so I don't want anyone to think that I'm saying that this is absolutely exactly what happened. But if it isn't, it's the *kind* of thing that happened many times, and something very like it definitely happened. You see, Brian Jones was a sadist, and not in a good way. There are people who engage in consensual BDSM, in which everyone involved is having a good time, and those people include some of my closest friends. This will never be a podcast that engages in kink-shaming of consensual kinks, and I want to make clear that what I have to say about Jones has nothing to do with that. Because Jones was not into consent. He was into physically injuring non-consenting young women, and he got his sexual kicks from things like beating them with chains. Again, if everyone is involved is consenting, this is perfectly fine, but Jones didn't care about anyone other than himself. At a hotel in Clearwater, Florida, on the sixth of May 1965, the same day that Jagger and Richards finished writing "Satisfaction", a girl that Bill Wyman had slept with the night before came to him in tears. She'd been with a friend the day before, and the friend had gone off with Jones while she'd gone off with Wyman. Jones had raped her friend, and had beaten her up -- he'd blackened both her eyes and done other damage. Jones had hurt this girl so badly that even the other Stones, who as we have seen were very far from winning any awards for being feminists of the year, were horrified. There was some discussion of calling the police on him, but eventually they decided to take matters into their own hands, or at least into one of their employees' hands. They got their roadie Mike Dorsey to teach him a lesson, though Oldham was insistent that Dorsey not mess up Jones' face. Dorsey dangled Jones by his collar and belt out of an upstairs window and told Jones that if he ever did anything like that again, he'd drop him. He also beat him up, cracking two of Jones' ribs. And so Jones was not in any state to play on the group's first US number one, or to play much at all at the session, because of the painkillers he was on for the cracked ribs.  Jones would remain in the band for the next few years, but he had gone from being the group's leader to someone they disliked and were disgusted by. And as we'll see the next couple of times we look at the Stones, he would only get worse.

Yes the show is a year old and Tommy celebrated with the following playlist The Beatles - Birthday The Supremes "Baby Love" Elvis Presley "It's Now or Never" The Searchers "Needles and Pins" Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas "Little Children" Engelbert Humperdinck "Release Me" Cilla Black "You're My World (Il Mio Mondo)" Roy Orbison "It's Over" Elvis Presley "Wooden Heart" The Dave Clark Five "Glad All Over" The Archies "Sugar, Sugar" † The Bachelors "Diane" Cilla Black "Anyone Who Had a Heart" The Beatles "She Loves You" Peter & Gordon "A World Without Love" The Searchers "Don't Throw Your Love Away" Pye The Four Pennies "Juliet" The Animals "The House of the Rising Sun" The Rolling Stones "It's All Over Now" The Beatles "A Hard Day's Night" Manfred Mann "Do Wah Diddy Diddy" The Honeycombs "Have I the Right?" Herman's Hermits "I'm Into Something Good" The Beatles "Hey Jude" Roy Orbison "Oh, Pretty Woman" Sandie Shaw "(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me" Frank Ifield - I remember you The Rolling Stones "Little Red Rooster" The Beatles "I Feel Fine" Ken Dodd "Tears" † Tom Jones "Green, Green Grass of Home" The Kinks "You Really Got Me" The Beatles - "Can't Buy Me Love" Mary Wells - My Guy 4 seasons - Rag Doll Shangri-las - Leader of the pack

Label: Rolling Stones 19100Year: 1971Condition: M-Last Price: $24.00. Not currently available for sale.This is one of the greatest of the Stones two-sided monster hits. Well, the B side didn't actually chart, but it's so great it really should have. Presumably, radio just wasn't ready to play a song called "Bitch" yet... though they were prepared by 1975 when Elton John hit the Top 10 with "The Bitch Is Back." Note: This beautiful copy has a drillhole and comes in a Rolling Stones "tongue" sleeve. Despite an odd "dimple" from manufacture, the audio sounds pristine Mint, both sides! OK, trivia time again... "Brown Sugar" was one of eight #1 U.S. singles by the Stones. The group also had eight chart-toppers in their native England, though over there they garnered all of those hits during the 1960s. Here is the list of the Stones' #1 U.S. singles: (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (1965) Get Off My Cloud (1965) Paint It, Black (1966) Ruby Tuesday (1967) Honky Tonk Women (1969) Brown Sugar (1971) Angie (1973), and Miss You (1978) For comparison's sake, here are their #1 U.K. hits. You'll notice that the group gained monster popularity about a year earlier than they did in the U.S., same as the Beatles. It's All Over Now (1964) Little Red Rooster (1964) The Last Time (1964) (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (1965) Get Off My Cloud (1965) Paint It, Black (1966) Jumpin' Jack Flash (1968) Honky Tonk Women (1969) (This scan is a representative image from our archives.)

The Pogues "The Body Of An American"Joe Strummer with The Pogues "If I Should Fall From Grace With God"Sister Rosetta Tharpe & The Sammy Price Trio "Up Above My Head I Hear Music in the Air"Lightning Hopkins "Walking Blues"ZZ Top "Brown Sugar"Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys "Bring It On Down to My House, Honey"Valerie June "Call Me A Fool"Marty Robbins "Singing the Blues"James McMurtry "Copper Canteen"Joan Shelley "Jenny Come In"Elvis Costello & The Attractions "(I Don't Want To Go To) Chelsea"The Yardbirds "The Train Kept A-Rollin'"The Yardbirds "Think About It"Sugar Britches "The Worst"Stack Waddy "Repossession Boogie"Bobby Rush "Sue"Howlin' Wolf "Little Red Rooster"Maria Muldaur With Bonnie Raitt "My Journey To The Sky"Lucky Millinder and His Orchestra "Shout Sister Shout"Elvis Presley "Little Sister"The Dubliners/The Pogues "Irish Rover"Bob Dylan "Baby,Let Me Follow You Down"Various Artists "The Game"Lefty Frizzell "Cigarettes and Coffee Blues"Johnny Cash "Wayfaring Stranger"Songs: Ohia "Didn't It Rain"Oscar "Papa" Celestin "Jambalaya"Michael Doucet "Acadian Blues"Drunken Catfish Ramblers "Long Tall Disconnected Mama"New Orleans Nightcrawlers "Funky Liza"Hank Williams "Why Don't You Love Me"Steve Earle "Johnny Come Lately"The Pogues "Down All the Days"Lightnin Hopkins "Lonesome Dog Blues"Rory Block "Stand By Me"Charley Pride "Walkin'"Valerie June "Twined & Twisted"Various Artists "Tribulations"Lucero "Back in Ohio"Tom Waits "Big Joe And Phantom 309 [Live Album Version]"Lightnin' Hopkins "Penitentiary Blues"The Pogues "The Broad Majestic Shannon"

An Ambient audio recording in my living room with my Sony stereo voice recorder in the quiet early hours. Taken from this YouTube link.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhEIZUBSeaw&t=3149s

Label: Rolling Stones 19100Year: 1971Condition: MLast Price: $18.00. Not currently available for sale.This is one of the greatest of the Stones two-sided monster hits. Well, the B side didn't actually chart, but it's so great it really should have. Presumably, radio just wasn't ready to play a song called "Bitch" yet... though they were prepared by 1975 when Elton John hit the Top 10 with "The Bitch Is Back." OK, trivia time again... "Brown Sugar" was one of eight #1 U.S. singles by the Stones. The group also had eight chart-toppers in their native England, though over there they garnered all of those hits during the 1960s. Here is the list of the Stones' #1 U.S. singles: (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (1965) Get Off My Cloud (1965) Paint It, Black (1966) Ruby Tuesday (1967) Honky Tonk Women (1969) Brown Sugar (1971) Angie (1973), and Miss You (1978) For comparison's sake, here are their #1 U.K. hits. You'll notice that the group gained monster popularity about a year earlier than they did in the U.S., same as the Beatles. It's All Over Now (1964) Little Red Rooster (1964) The Last Time (1964) (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (1965) Get Off My Cloud (1965) Paint It, Black (1966) Jumpin' Jack Flash (1968) Honky Tonk Women (1969) Note: This beautiful copy has Mint labels and pristine sound. This is a second pressing with "Warner Communications" in the perimeter print.

My "Bluesland" podcast from July 16, 2020 KMRE 102.3 FM radio show. Enjoy the music of Howlin'Wolf with Little Red Rooster, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Little Milton and more. It's free. Just click on the link/picture.

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The post Beat Club: Little Red Rooster appeared first on NiTfm.

The post Beat Club: Little Red Rooster appeared first on NiTfm.

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39 years ago the band played a fine show at the Uptown Theater in Chicago, which I'm pleased to begin to present to you today. A fine 'Jack Straw' opener begins things on a high note, and the rest of this first set is varied and quite well played on this fine recording. Some of the highlights include a 'Little Red Rooster' with both some fine slide work and some nice color added by Brent, a great 'Big Railroad Blues' (which ones aren't?), and a near-perfect 'Althea'.  'Let it Grow' segs into 'Deal' to close this enjoyable set of early 80s Dead.        Grateful Dead Uptown Theatre Chicago, IL 2/28/81 - Saturday     One     Jack Straw [6:25] ; They Love Each Other [7:19] ; Mama Tried [2:36] > Mexicali Blues [4:22] ; Candyman [7:17] ; Little Red Rooster [8:30] ; Big Railroad Blues [4:46] > Looks Like Rain [7:31] ; Althea [9:07] ; Let It Grow [11:56] > Deal [7:48]    You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod022820.mp3       Keep your lamps trimmed and burning... thanks for your support! 

As we close out the month of January, I decided to feature the first show the band performed back in 1989. This one comes from the Henry J Kaiser Convention Center in Oakland California on February 5, 1989.  While there was alot of anxiety among the faithful that this might be the last time the band would be allowed to play in the relatively intimate confines of the Kaiser, the band came out this night determined to put on a show. They feature a number of relative 'new' tunes, including the first time the Brent song 'We Can Run' was played. The 'Touch of Grey' opener was a great start, then a energetic 'Stranger' into a smart 'Franklin's Tower'. I even think the 'Rooster' here is quite good with Jerry adding some really nice sounds.    We'll hear the second set next week, including another 'first time' played..      Grateful Dead Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center Oakland, CA 2/5/89 - Sunday One     Touch Of Grey Feel Like A Stranger > Franklin's Tower ; Little Red Rooster ; Althea ; We Can Run* ; Desolation Row ; Don't Ease Me In    You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod013120.mp3   "Winter gray and falling rain, we'll see summer come again, Darkness falls and seasons change (gonna happen every time). Same old friends the wind and rain, Summers fade and roses die, You'll see summer come again, Like a song that's born to soar the sky."      

The post Beat Club: Little Red Rooster appeared first on NiTfm.

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We start out October with a show from across the pond in London, England on October 3rd, 1981. A well-played, rockin' first set gives a few hints as to the improvisation that will follow in set 2 next week. 'Alabama Getaway' is the opener, not uncommon for the time, and while the sound is a bit dicey at first things clear up nicely for the rest of the set. There's a really nice 'Peggy-O' here, and the 'Little Red Rooster' is a real rocker. 'Bird Song' has some very nice moments from Garcia, and the jam between 'China Cat' and 'I Know You Rider' is quite good as well. Brent is quite featured in the mix throughout, although Bobby's guitar is often a bit too low.       Grateful Dead Rainbow Theater  London, England Date     10/3/81 - Saturday     One     Alabama Getaway > The Promised Land ; Peggy-O ; Me And My Uncle > Big River ; Tennessee Jed > Little Red Rooster ; Bird Song > Looks Like Rain ; China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider   You can listen to this week's Deadpod here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod100419.mp3   I do thank you for listening, and those of you who are able to support the Deadpod!     p.s. I'm supposed to be getting some copies of the new release of 6/17/91 'Saint of Circumstance' CD set. Keep watching this space for details on how you could enter to win a copy ! details on the release are here: https://store.dead.net/special-edition-shops/giants-stadium/saint-of-circumstance-giants-stadium-east-rutherford-nj-6-17-91-digital.html  

This week's Deadpod features the anniversary of a show that took place 32 years ago at Town Park in beautiful Telluride Colorado. It was the weekend of the celebrated 'Harmonic Convergence' which marked a globally synchronized mediation event as well as an exceptional alignment of planets. Needless to say it did not bring about an era of world peace or contentment. Nonetheless, the boys played an interesting show which was a request from a friend of the Deadpod who is marrying his finance there this summer! All the best wishes, Frank!   The first set which we will hear this week, features some nice work by Brent, as well as a snappy Mississippi Half Step opener and a 'Big Railroad Blues', always a favorite of mine..   Grateful Dead Town Park Telluride, CO 8/16/87 - Sunday One     Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo [7:15] > Little Red Rooster [8:15] ; Iko Iko [4:59] ; Beer Barrel Polka Tuning ; Far From Me [3:59] ; West L.A. Fadeaway [6:49] ; When I Paint My Masterpiece [4:07] ; Big Railroad Blues [4:02] > The Promised Land [3:53]   You can listen to this week's Deadpod here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod081619.mp3     "Summers fade and roses die.. "   thank you for your support my friends.      

While it is still a few days off, since this is the last Deadpod before the big 4th of July holiday I thought it appropriate to bring you a big 'ol party from that date in GD history. This one comes from Manor Downs in Austin Texas on July 4th, 1981.We'll hear the first set this week, which of course starts with 'Jack Straw'... leave it to Bobby to screw up the iconic lyrics :) It's an energetic set, Jerry has some very nice runs on Big River, Tennessee Jed is fine. Loser is always a favorite of mine, and the set-closing China>Rider is sure to please.     Grateful Dead Manor Downs Austin, TX 7/4/81 - Saturday One  Jack Straw [6:00] ; Peggy-O [7:03] ; Me And My Uncle [2:58]> Big River [5:35] ; Loser [6:48] ; Little Red Rooster [8:28] ; Tennessee Jed [8:14]> New Minglewood Blues [6:17] ; China Cat Sunflower [6:45]> I Know You Rider [4:58]    You can listen to this week's Deadpod here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod062819.mp3   Had some issues this week with a sump pump which set back my sending out the CDs to the winners of the Aoxomoxoa giveaway.  I'll sure try to get those out this week.   Thanks for your kind support of the Deadpod.   Have a safe and happy 4th of July!  

Welcome to episode twenty-nine of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. This is the second of our three-part look at Chess Records, and focuses on “Maybellene” by Chuck Berry. 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 all the songs in the episode. I reference three previous episodes here — last week’s, the disclaimer episode, and the episode on Ida Red. I used three main books as reference here: Brown Eyed Handsome Man: The Life and Hard Times of Chuck Berry by Bruce Pegg is a good narrative biography of Berry, which doesn’t shy away from the less salubrious aspects of his personality, but is clearly written by an admirer. Long Distance Information: Chuck Berry’s Recorded Legacy by Fred Rothwell is an extraordinarily researched look at every single recording session of Berry’s career up to 2001. And for information on Chess, I used The Record Men: Chess Records and the Birth of Rock and Roll by Richard Cohen. I wouldn’t recommend that book, however — while it has some useful interview material and anecdotes from those involved, Cohen gets some basic matters of fact laughably wrong, and generally seems to be more interested in showing off his prose style than fact-checking. There are a myriad Chuck Berry compilations available. The one I’d recommend if you don’t have a spare couple of hundred quid for the complete works box set is the double-CD Gold, which has every major track without any of the filler. And if you want to check out more of Willie Dixon’s material, this four-CD set contains a hundred records he either performed on as an artist, played on as a session player, wrote, or produced. It’s the finest body of work in post-war blues.     Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript   [Intro: Alan Freed introducing Chuck Berry and Maybellene] Welcome to the second part of our trilogy on Chess Records. This week, we’re going to talk about the most important single record Chess ever put out, and arguably the most important artist in the whole history of rock music. But first, we’re going to talk about something a lot more recent. We’re going to talk about “Old Town Road,” by Lil Nas X. For those of you who don’t follow the charts and the music news in general, “Old Town Road” is a song put out late last year by a rapper, but it reached number nineteen in the country charts. Because it’s a country song: [Excerpt: “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X] That’s a song with banjo and mandolin, with someone singing in a low Johnny Cash style voice about riding a horse while wearing a cowboy hat. It’s clearly country music if anything at all is country music. But it was taken off the country music charts the week it would otherwise have made number one, in a decision that Billboard was at pains to say was nothing at all to do with his race. A hint — if you have to go to great lengths to say that the thing you’re doing isn’t racist, it’s probably racist. Because genre labels have always been about race, and about policing racial boundaries in the US, since the very beginning. Remember that when Billboard started the R&B charts they were called the “race music” charts. You had the race music charts for black people, the country charts for lower-class whites, and the pop charts for the respectable white people. That was the demarcation, and that still is the demarcation. But people will always want to push against those constraints. And in the 1950s, just like today, there were black people who wanted to make country music. But in the 1950s, unlike today, there was a term for the music those people were making. It was called rock and roll. For about a decade, from roughly 1955 through 1965, “rock and roll” became a term for the music which disregarded those racial boundaries. And since then there has been a slow but sure historical revisionism. The lines of rock and roll expand to let in any white man, but they constrict to push out the women and black men who were already there. But there’s one they haven’t yet been able to push out, because this particular black man playing country music was more or less the embodiment of rock and roll. Chuck Berry was, in many ways, not at all an admirable man. He was one of all too many rock and roll pioneers to be a sex offender (and again, please see the disclaimer episode I did close to the start of this series, for my thoughts about that — nothing I say about his work should be taken to imply that I think that work mitigates some of the awful things he did) and he was also by all accounts an unpleasant person in a myriad other ways. As I talked about in the disclaimer episode, we will be dealing with many awful people in this series, because that’s the nature of the history of rock and roll, but Chuck Berry was one of the most fundamentally unpleasant, unlikeable, people we’ll be looking at. Nobody has a good word to say about him as a human being, and he hurt a lot of people over his long life. When I talk about his work, or the real injustices that were also done to him, I don’t want to forget that. But when it comes to rock and roll, Chuck Berry may be the single most important figure who ever lived, and a model for everyone who followed. [Excerpt: “Maybellene”, just the intro] To talk about Chuck Berry, we first of all have to talk about Johnnie Johnson. Johnnie Johnson was a blues piano player, who had got a taste of life as a professional musician in the Marines, where he’d played in a military band led by Bobby Troup, the writer of “Route 66” among many other songs. After leaving the Marines, he’d moved around the Midwest, playing blues in various bands, before forming his own trio, the Johnnie Johnson Trio, in St Louis. That trio consisted of piano, saxophone, and drums — until New Year’s Eve 1952, when the saxophone player had a stroke and couldn’t play. Johnson needed another musician to play with the trio, and needed someone quick, but it was New Year’s Eve — every musician he could think of would be booked up. Except for Chuck Berry. Berry was a guitarist he vaguely knew, and was different in every way from Johnson. Where Johnson was an easy-going, fat, jovial, man, who had no ambitions other than to make a living playing boogie-woogie piano, Chuck Berry had already served a term in prison for armed robbery, was massively ambitious, and was skinny as a rake. But he could play the guitar and sing well enough, and the customers had hired a trio, not a duo, and so Chuck Berry joined the Johnnie Johnson Trio. Berry soon took over the band, as Johnson, a relatively easy-going person, saw that Berry was so ambitious that he would be able to bring the band greater success than they would otherwise have had. And also, Berry owned a car, which was useful for transporting the band to gigs. And so the Johnnie Johnson trio became the Chuck Berry Trio. Berry would also play gigs on the side with other musicians, and in 1954 he played guitar on a session for a calypso record on a local independent label: [Excerpt: “Oh Maria”, Joe Alexander and the Cubans] However, when Berry tried to get that label to record the Chuck Berry Trio, they weren’t interested. But then Berry drove to Chicago to see one of his musical heroes, Muddy Waters. We’ve talked about Waters before, but only in passing — but Waters was, by far, the biggest star in the Chicago electric blues style, whose driving, propulsive, records were more accessible than Howlin’ Wolf but still had some of the Delta grit that was missing from the cleaner sounds of people like T-Bone Walker. Berry stayed after the show to talk to his idol, and asked him how he could make records like Waters did. Waters told him to go and see Leonard Chess at Chess Records. Berry went to see Chess, who asked if Berry had a demo tape. He didn’t, but he went back to St Louis and came back the next week with a wire recording of four newly-recorded songs. The first thing he played was a blues song he’d written called “The Wee Wee Hours”: [excerpt: Chuck Berry, “The Wee Wee Hours”] That was too generic for Chess — and the blues they put out tended to be more electric Chicago blues, rather than the Nat Cole or Charles Brown style Berry was going for there. But the next song he played had them interested. Berry had always been interested in playing as many different styles of music as he could — he was someone who was trying to incorporate the sounds of Louis Jordan, Muddy Waters, Charlie Christian, and Nat “King” Cole, among others. And so as well as performing blues, jazz, and rhythm and blues music, he’d also incorporated a fair amount of country and western music in his shows. And in particular, he was an admirer of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, and he would perform their song “Ida Red” in shows, where it always went down well. We already had an entire episode of the podcast on “Ida Red”, which I’ll link in the liner notes to this, but as a quick reminder, it’s an old folk song, or collection of folk songs, that had become a big hit for Bob Wills, the Western Swing fiddle player: [Excerpt: “Ida Red”, Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys] Berry would perform that song live, but messed around and changed the lyrics a lot — he eventually changed the title to “Ida May”, for a start — and when he performed the song for Leonard Chess, Chess thought it sounded great. There was only one problem — he thought the name made it too obvious where Berry had got the idea, and he wanted it to sound more original. They tried several names and eventually hit on “Maybellene”, after the popular cosmetics brand, though they changed the spelling. “Ida Red” wasn’t the only influence on “Maybellene” though, there was another song called “Oh Red”, a hokum song by the Harlem Hamfats: [Excerpt: “Oh Red”, the Harlem Hamfats] Larry Birnbaum, in “Before Elvis”, suggests that this was the *only* influence on “Maybellene”, and that Berry was misremembering the song, as both songs have “Red” in the titles. I disagree — I think it’s fairly clear that “Maybellene” is inspired both by “Ida Red”s structure and patter-lyric verse and by “Oh Red”s chorus melody. And it wasn’t just Bob Wills’ version of “Ida Red” that inspired Berry. There’s a blues version, by Bumble Bee Slim, which has a guitar break that isn’t a million miles away from what Berry was doing: [Excerpt: “Ida Red”, Bumble Bee Slim] And there’s another influence as well. Berry’s lyrics were about a car chase — to try to catch up with a cheating girlfriend — and are the thing that makes the song so unique. They — and the car-horn sound of the guitar — seem to have been inspired by a hillbilly boogie song called “Hot Rod Racer” by Arkie Shibley and his Mountain Dew Boys: [Excerpt: “Hot Rod Racer”, Arkie Shibley and his Mountain Dew Boys] That had been a successful enough country song that it spawned at least three hit cover versions, including one by Red Foley. Berry took all these Western Swing, blues, and hillbilly boogie influences and turned them into something new: [Excerpt: Chuck Berry, “Maybellene”] Even this early, you can already see the Chuck Berry style fully formed. Clean blues guitar, as clean as someone like T-Bone Walker, but playing almost rockabilly phrases — this is closer to the style of Elvis’ Sun records than it is to anything else that Chess were putting out — and punning, verbose, witty lyrics talking about something that would have a clear appeal to people half his age. All of future rock is right there. The lineup on the record was the Chuck Berry trio — Berry on guitar, Johnson on piano, and Ebby Hardy on drums — augmented by two other musicians. Jerome Green, the maraca player, is someone we’ll be talking about next week, but we should here talk a bit about Willie Dixon, the bass player, because he is probably the single most important figure in the whole Chess Records story. Dixon had started out as a boxer — he’d been Joe Louis’ sparring partner — before starting to play a bass made out of a tin can and a single string for him by the blues pianist Leonard Caston. Dixon and Caston formed an Ink Spots-style group, “The Five Breezes”: [Excerpt: “Sweet Louise”, the Five Breezes] But when America joined in World War II, Dixon’s music career went on hold, as he was a conscientious objector, unwilling to fight in defence of a racist state, and so he spent ten months in prison. He joined Chess in 1951 shortly after Leonard Chess took over full control of the company by buying out its original owner — right after the club Chess had been running had mysteriously burned down, on a day it was closed, giving him enough insurance money to buy the whole record company. And Dixon was necessary because among Leonard Chess’ flaws was one fatal one — he had no idea what real musical talent was or how to find it. But he *did* have the second-order ability to find people who could recognise real musical talent when they heard it, and the willingness to trust those people’s judgment. And Dixon was not only a real talent himself, but he could bring out the best in others, too. Dixon was, effectively, the auteur behind almost everything that Chess Records put out. As well as a session bass player who played on almost every Chess release that wasn’t licensed from someone else, he was also their staff producer, talent scout, and staff songwriter, as well as a solo artist under his own name. He wrote and played on hits for Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Little Walter, Koko Taylor, Bo Diddley, Elmore James… to all intents and purposes, Willie Dixon *was* the Chicago blues, and when the second generation of rock and rollers started up in the 1960s — white boys with guitars from England — it was Willie Dixon’s songs that formed the backbone of their repertoire. Just a few of the songs he wrote that became classics include “Little Red Rooster” for Howlin’ Wolf: [Excerpt: Howlin’ Wolf, “Little Red Rooster”] “Bring it on Home” for Sonny Boy Williamson II [Excerpt: Sonny Boy Williamson II, “Bring it on Home”] “You Need Love” for Muddy Waters [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, “You Need Love”] You get the idea. In any other session he played on — in any other room he ever entered — Dixon would be the most important songwriter in the room. But as it turned out, on this occasion, he was only the second-most important and influential songwriter there, as “Maybellene” would be the start of a run of singles that is unparalleled for its influence on rock and roll music. It was the debut of the single most important songwriter in rock and roll history. Of course, Chuck Berry isn’t the only credited songwriter — and, separately, he may not have been the song’s only writer. But these two things aren’t linked. Leonard Chess was someone who had a reputation for not being particularly fair with his artists when it came to contracts. A favourite technique for him was to call an artist and tell him that he had some new papers to sign. He would then leave a bottle of whisky in the office, and not be in when the musician turned up. His secretary would say “Mr. Chess has been delayed. Help yourself to a drink while you wait in the office”. Chess would only return when the musician was totally drunk, and then get him to sign the contract. That wouldn’t work on Berry, who didn’t drink, but Chess did manage to get Berry to sign two thirds of the rights to “Maybellene” over to people who had nothing to do with writing it — Russ Fratto and Alan Freed. Freed had already taken the songwriting credit for several songs by bands that he managed, none of which he wrote, but now he was going to take the credit for a song by someone he had never met — Chess added his name to the credits as a bribe, in order to persuade him to play the song on his radio show. Russ Fratto, meanwhile, was the landlord of Chess Records’ offices and owned the stationery company that printed the labels Chess used on their records. It’s been said in a few places that Fratto was given the credit because the Chess brothers owed him money, so they gave him a cut of Berry’s royalties to pay off their own debt. But while Freed and Fratto took unearned credit for the song, it’s at least arguable that so did Chuck Berry. We’ll be looking at several Chuck Berry songs over the course of this podcast, and the question of authorship comes up for all of them. After they stopped working together, Johnnie Johnson started to claim that he deserved co-writing credit for everything that was credited to Berry on his own. Johnson claimed that while Berry wrote the lyrics by himself, the band as a whole worked out the music, and that Berry’s melody lines would be based on Johnson’s piano parts. To get an idea of what Johnson brought to the mix, here’s a performance from Johnson, without Berry, many years later: [Excerpt: Johnnie Johnson, “Johnny’s Boogie”] It’s impossible to say with certainty who did what — Johnson sued Berry in 2000, but the case was dismissed because of the length of time between the songs being written and the case being brought. And Johnson worked with Berry on almost all his albums before that so we don’t have any clear guides as to what Berry’s music sounded like without Johnson. Given Berry’s money-grubbing, grasping, nature, and his willingness to see every single interaction as about how many dollars and cents were in it for Chuck Berry, I have no trouble believing that Berry would take the credit for other people’s work and not think twice about it, so I can fully believe that Johnson worked with him on the music for the songs. On the other hand, most of the songs in question were based around very basic blues chord changes, and the musical interest in them comes almost solely from Berry’s guitar licks — Johnnie Johnson was a very good blues piano player just like a thousand other very good blues piano players, but Chuck Berry’s guitar style is absolutely distinctive, and unlike anything ever recorded before. But the crucial evidence as to how much input or lack of it Johnson had on the writing process comes with the keys Berry chose. Maybellene is in B-flat. A lot of his other songs are in E-flat. These are *not* keys that any guitarist would normally choose to write in. If you’re a guitarist, writing for the guitar, you’d probably choose to write in E or A if you’re playing the blues, D if you’re doing folkier stuff, maybe G or C if you’re doing something poppier and more melodic. These are easy keys for the guitar, the keys that every guitarist’s fingers will automatically fall into unless they have a good reason not to. E-flat and B-flat, though, are fairly straightforward keys on the piano if you’re playing the blues. And they’re keys that are *absolutely* standard for a saxophone player — alto saxes are tuned to an E-flat, tenor saxes to B-flat, so if you’re a band where the sax player is the most important instrumentalist, those are the keys you’re most likely to choose, all else being equal. Now, remember that Chuck Berry replaced the saxophone player in Johnnie Johnson’s band. Once you know that it seems obvious what’s happened — Berry has fit himself in around arrangements and repertoire that Johnson had originally worked up with a sax player, playing in the keys that Johnson was already used to. When they worked out the music for Berry’s songs, that was the pattern they fell into. So, I tend to believe Johnson that the backings were worked out between them after Berry wrote the lyrics. Johnson’s contribution seems to have come somewhere between that of an arranger and of a songwriter, and he deserves some credit at least morally, if not under the ridiculous legal situation that made arrangements uncopyrightable. [Excerpt: “Maybellene” guitar solo showing interplay of Berry and Johnson] “Maybellene”’s success was in part because of a very deliberate decision Berry had made years earlier, having noted the success of white performers singing black musicians’ material, and deciding that he was going to try to get the white people to buy his recordings rather than the cover versions, by singing in a voice that was closer to white singers than the typical blues vocalist. While it caused him problems in early days, notably with him turning up to gigs only to be told, often with accompanying racial slurs, that they’d expected the performer of “Maybellene” to be a white man and he wasn’t allowed to play, his playing-down of his own blackness also caused a major benefit — he became one of the only black musicians to chart higher than the white cover version. It would normally be expected that “Maybellene” would be overshadowed on the charts by Marty Robbins’ version, especially since Marty Robbins was a hugely popular star, and Berry was an unknown on a small blues label: [excerpt: Marty Robbins, “Maybellene”] Instead, as well as going to number one on the R&B charts, Berry’s recording went to number five on the pop charts. And other recordings by him would follow over the next few years. He was never a consistent chart success — in fact he did significantly less well than his reputation in rock and roll history would suggest — but he notched several top ten hits on the pop charts. “Maybellene” did so well that even “Wee Wee Hours”, released as the B-side, went to number ten on the R&B charts. And Berry’s next single was a “Maybellene” soundalike — “Thirty Days” [Excerpt: “Thirty Days”, Chuck Berry] It’s a great track, but it didn’t do quite so well on the charts — it went to number two on the R&B charts, and didn’t hit the pop charts at all. The single after that, “No Money Down”, did less well again. But Berry was about to turn things around again with his next single: [excerpt: *just the guitar intro* of “Roll Over Beethoven” by Chuck Berry] You don’t need anything more, do you? That’s the Chuck Berry formula, right there. You don’t even need to hear the vocals to know exactly what the record is. That record is, of course, “Roll Over Beethoven”. It’s worth listening to the lyrics again just to see what Berry is doing here. [Excerpt: “Roll Over Beethoven”, Chuck Berry] What we have here is, as far as I can tell, the first time that rock and roll started the pattern of self-mythologising that would continue throughout the genre’s history. Of course, there had been plenty of records before this that had talked about the power of music or how much the singer wanted to make you dance, or whatever, but this one is different in a couple of ways. Firstly, it’s talking about *recorded* music specifically — Berry isn’t wanting to go out and listen to a band play live, but he wants to listen to the DJ play his favourite record instead. And secondly, he’s explicitly making a link between his music — “these rhythm and blues” — and the music of the rockabilly artists from Memphis — “don’t step on my blue suede shoes”. And Berry’s music did resemble the Memphis rockabilly more than it resembled anything else. Both had electric lead guitars, double bass, drums, and reverb, and no saxophone and little piano. Both sang sped-up hillbilly boogies with a hard backbeat. Rock and roll was, as we have seen, a disparate genre at first, and people would continue to pull from a whole variety of different sources. But working independently and with no knowledge of each other, a white country hick from Tennessee and a sophisticated black urbanite from the Midwest had hit upon almost exactly the same formula, and Berry was going to make sure that he made the connection as clear as possible. If there’s a moment that rock and roll culture coalesced into a single thing, it was with “Roll Over Beethoven”. And Berry now had his formula worked out. The next thing to do was to get rid of the band. “Roll Over Beethoven” was the penultimate single credited to Chuck Berry & His Combo, rather than to just Chuck Berry. We’ll look at the last one, recorded at the same session, in a few weeks’ time.

Welcome to episode twenty-nine of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. This is the second of our three-part look at Chess Records, and focuses on “Maybellene” by Chuck Berry. 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 all the songs in the episode. I reference three previous episodes here — last week’s, the disclaimer episode, and the episode on Ida Red. I used three main books as reference here: Brown Eyed Handsome Man: The Life and Hard Times of Chuck Berry by Bruce Pegg is a good narrative biography of Berry, which doesn’t shy away from the less salubrious aspects of his personality, but is clearly written by an admirer. Long Distance Information: Chuck Berry’s Recorded Legacy by Fred Rothwell is an extraordinarily researched look at every single recording session of Berry’s career up to 2001. And for information on Chess, I used The Record Men: Chess Records and the Birth of Rock and Roll by Richard Cohen. I wouldn’t recommend that book, however — while it has some useful interview material and anecdotes from those involved, Cohen gets some basic matters of fact laughably wrong, and generally seems to be more interested in showing off his prose style than fact-checking. There are a myriad Chuck Berry compilations available. The one I’d recommend if you don’t have a spare couple of hundred quid for the complete works box set is the double-CD Gold, which has every major track without any of the filler. And if you want to check out more of Willie Dixon’s material, this four-CD set contains a hundred records he either performed on as an artist, played on as a session player, wrote, or produced. It’s the finest body of work in post-war blues.     Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript   [Intro: Alan Freed introducing Chuck Berry and Maybellene] Welcome to the second part of our trilogy on Chess Records. This week, we’re going to talk about the most important single record Chess ever put out, and arguably the most important artist in the whole history of rock music. But first, we’re going to talk about something a lot more recent. We’re going to talk about “Old Town Road,” by Lil Nas X. For those of you who don’t follow the charts and the music news in general, “Old Town Road” is a song put out late last year by a rapper, but it reached number nineteen in the country charts. Because it’s a country song: [Excerpt: “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X] That’s a song with banjo and mandolin, with someone singing in a low Johnny Cash style voice about riding a horse while wearing a cowboy hat. It’s clearly country music if anything at all is country music. But it was taken off the country music charts the week it would otherwise have made number one, in a decision that Billboard was at pains to say was nothing at all to do with his race. A hint — if you have to go to great lengths to say that the thing you’re doing isn’t racist, it’s probably racist. Because genre labels have always been about race, and about policing racial boundaries in the US, since the very beginning. Remember that when Billboard started the R&B charts they were called the “race music” charts. You had the race music charts for black people, the country charts for lower-class whites, and the pop charts for the respectable white people. That was the demarcation, and that still is the demarcation. But people will always want to push against those constraints. And in the 1950s, just like today, there were black people who wanted to make country music. But in the 1950s, unlike today, there was a term for the music those people were making. It was called rock and roll. For about a decade, from roughly 1955 through 1965, “rock and roll” became a term for the music which disregarded those racial boundaries. And since then there has been a slow but sure historical revisionism. The lines of rock and roll expand to let in any white man, but they constrict to push out the women and black men who were already there. But there’s one they haven’t yet been able to push out, because this particular black man playing country music was more or less the embodiment of rock and roll. Chuck Berry was, in many ways, not at all an admirable man. He was one of all too many rock and roll pioneers to be a sex offender (and again, please see the disclaimer episode I did close to the start of this series, for my thoughts about that — nothing I say about his work should be taken to imply that I think that work mitigates some of the awful things he did) and he was also by all accounts an unpleasant person in a myriad other ways. As I talked about in the disclaimer episode, we will be dealing with many awful people in this series, because that’s the nature of the history of rock and roll, but Chuck Berry was one of the most fundamentally unpleasant, unlikeable, people we’ll be looking at. Nobody has a good word to say about him as a human being, and he hurt a lot of people over his long life. When I talk about his work, or the real injustices that were also done to him, I don’t want to forget that. But when it comes to rock and roll, Chuck Berry may be the single most important figure who ever lived, and a model for everyone who followed. [Excerpt: “Maybellene”, just the intro] To talk about Chuck Berry, we first of all have to talk about Johnnie Johnson. Johnnie Johnson was a blues piano player, who had got a taste of life as a professional musician in the Marines, where he’d played in a military band led by Bobby Troup, the writer of “Route 66” among many other songs. After leaving the Marines, he’d moved around the Midwest, playing blues in various bands, before forming his own trio, the Johnnie Johnson Trio, in St Louis. That trio consisted of piano, saxophone, and drums — until New Year’s Eve 1952, when the saxophone player had a stroke and couldn’t play. Johnson needed another musician to play with the trio, and needed someone quick, but it was New Year’s Eve — every musician he could think of would be booked up. Except for Chuck Berry. Berry was a guitarist he vaguely knew, and was different in every way from Johnson. Where Johnson was an easy-going, fat, jovial, man, who had no ambitions other than to make a living playing boogie-woogie piano, Chuck Berry had already served a term in prison for armed robbery, was massively ambitious, and was skinny as a rake. But he could play the guitar and sing well enough, and the customers had hired a trio, not a duo, and so Chuck Berry joined the Johnnie Johnson Trio. Berry soon took over the band, as Johnson, a relatively easy-going person, saw that Berry was so ambitious that he would be able to bring the band greater success than they would otherwise have had. And also, Berry owned a car, which was useful for transporting the band to gigs. And so the Johnnie Johnson trio became the Chuck Berry Trio. Berry would also play gigs on the side with other musicians, and in 1954 he played guitar on a session for a calypso record on a local independent label: [Excerpt: “Oh Maria”, Joe Alexander and the Cubans] However, when Berry tried to get that label to record the Chuck Berry Trio, they weren’t interested. But then Berry drove to Chicago to see one of his musical heroes, Muddy Waters. We’ve talked about Waters before, but only in passing — but Waters was, by far, the biggest star in the Chicago electric blues style, whose driving, propulsive, records were more accessible than Howlin’ Wolf but still had some of the Delta grit that was missing from the cleaner sounds of people like T-Bone Walker. Berry stayed after the show to talk to his idol, and asked him how he could make records like Waters did. Waters told him to go and see Leonard Chess at Chess Records. Berry went to see Chess, who asked if Berry had a demo tape. He didn’t, but he went back to St Louis and came back the next week with a wire recording of four newly-recorded songs. The first thing he played was a blues song he’d written called “The Wee Wee Hours”: [excerpt: Chuck Berry, “The Wee Wee Hours”] That was too generic for Chess — and the blues they put out tended to be more electric Chicago blues, rather than the Nat Cole or Charles Brown style Berry was going for there. But the next song he played had them interested. Berry had always been interested in playing as many different styles of music as he could — he was someone who was trying to incorporate the sounds of Louis Jordan, Muddy Waters, Charlie Christian, and Nat “King” Cole, among others. And so as well as performing blues, jazz, and rhythm and blues music, he’d also incorporated a fair amount of country and western music in his shows. And in particular, he was an admirer of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, and he would perform their song “Ida Red” in shows, where it always went down well. We already had an entire episode of the podcast on “Ida Red”, which I’ll link in the liner notes to this, but as a quick reminder, it’s an old folk song, or collection of folk songs, that had become a big hit for Bob Wills, the Western Swing fiddle player: [Excerpt: “Ida Red”, Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys] Berry would perform that song live, but messed around and changed the lyrics a lot — he eventually changed the title to “Ida May”, for a start — and when he performed the song for Leonard Chess, Chess thought it sounded great. There was only one problem — he thought the name made it too obvious where Berry had got the idea, and he wanted it to sound more original. They tried several names and eventually hit on “Maybellene”, after the popular cosmetics brand, though they changed the spelling. “Ida Red” wasn’t the only influence on “Maybellene” though, there was another song called “Oh Red”, a hokum song by the Harlem Hamfats: [Excerpt: “Oh Red”, the Harlem Hamfats] Larry Birnbaum, in “Before Elvis”, suggests that this was the *only* influence on “Maybellene”, and that Berry was misremembering the song, as both songs have “Red” in the titles. I disagree — I think it’s fairly clear that “Maybellene” is inspired both by “Ida Red”s structure and patter-lyric verse and by “Oh Red”s chorus melody. And it wasn’t just Bob Wills’ version of “Ida Red” that inspired Berry. There’s a blues version, by Bumble Bee Slim, which has a guitar break that isn’t a million miles away from what Berry was doing: [Excerpt: “Ida Red”, Bumble Bee Slim] And there’s another influence as well. Berry’s lyrics were about a car chase — to try to catch up with a cheating girlfriend — and are the thing that makes the song so unique. They — and the car-horn sound of the guitar — seem to have been inspired by a hillbilly boogie song called “Hot Rod Racer” by Arkie Shibley and his Mountain Dew Boys: [Excerpt: “Hot Rod Racer”, Arkie Shibley and his Mountain Dew Boys] That had been a successful enough country song that it spawned at least three hit cover versions, including one by Red Foley. Berry took all these Western Swing, blues, and hillbilly boogie influences and turned them into something new: [Excerpt: Chuck Berry, “Maybellene”] Even this early, you can already see the Chuck Berry style fully formed. Clean blues guitar, as clean as someone like T-Bone Walker, but playing almost rockabilly phrases — this is closer to the style of Elvis’ Sun records than it is to anything else that Chess were putting out — and punning, verbose, witty lyrics talking about something that would have a clear appeal to people half his age. All of future rock is right there. The lineup on the record was the Chuck Berry trio — Berry on guitar, Johnson on piano, and Ebby Hardy on drums — augmented by two other musicians. Jerome Green, the maraca player, is someone we’ll be talking about next week, but we should here talk a bit about Willie Dixon, the bass player, because he is probably the single most important figure in the whole Chess Records story. Dixon had started out as a boxer — he’d been Joe Louis’ sparring partner — before starting to play a bass made out of a tin can and a single string for him by the blues pianist Leonard Caston. Dixon and Caston formed an Ink Spots-style group, “The Five Breezes”: [Excerpt: “Sweet Louise”, the Five Breezes] But when America joined in World War II, Dixon’s music career went on hold, as he was a conscientious objector, unwilling to fight in defence of a racist state, and so he spent ten months in prison. He joined Chess in 1951 shortly after Leonard Chess took over full control of the company by buying out its original owner — right after the club Chess had been running had mysteriously burned down, on a day it was closed, giving him enough insurance money to buy the whole record company. And Dixon was necessary because among Leonard Chess’ flaws was one fatal one — he had no idea what real musical talent was or how to find it. But he *did* have the second-order ability to find people who could recognise real musical talent when they heard it, and the willingness to trust those people’s judgment. And Dixon was not only a real talent himself, but he could bring out the best in others, too. Dixon was, effectively, the auteur behind almost everything that Chess Records put out. As well as a session bass player who played on almost every Chess release that wasn’t licensed from someone else, he was also their staff producer, talent scout, and staff songwriter, as well as a solo artist under his own name. He wrote and played on hits for Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Little Walter, Koko Taylor, Bo Diddley, Elmore James… to all intents and purposes, Willie Dixon *was* the Chicago blues, and when the second generation of rock and rollers started up in the 1960s — white boys with guitars from England — it was Willie Dixon’s songs that formed the backbone of their repertoire. Just a few of the songs he wrote that became classics include “Little Red Rooster” for Howlin’ Wolf: [Excerpt: Howlin’ Wolf, “Little Red Rooster”] “Bring it on Home” for Sonny Boy Williamson II [Excerpt: Sonny Boy Williamson II, “Bring it on Home”] “You Need Love” for Muddy Waters [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, “You Need Love”] You get the idea. In any other session he played on — in any other room he ever entered — Dixon would be the most important songwriter in the room. But as it turned out, on this occasion, he was only the second-most important and influential songwriter there, as “Maybellene” would be the start of a run of singles that is unparalleled for its influence on rock and roll music. It was the debut of the single most important songwriter in rock and roll history. Of course, Chuck Berry isn’t the only credited songwriter — and, separately, he may not have been the song’s only writer. But these two things aren’t linked. Leonard Chess was someone who had a reputation for not being particularly fair with his artists when it came to contracts. A favourite technique for him was to call an artist and tell him that he had some new papers to sign. He would then leave a bottle of whisky in the office, and not be in when the musician turned up. His secretary would say “Mr. Chess has been delayed. Help yourself to a drink while you wait in the office”. Chess would only return when the musician was totally drunk, and then get him to sign the contract. That wouldn’t work on Berry, who didn’t drink, but Chess did manage to get Berry to sign two thirds of the rights to “Maybellene” over to people who had nothing to do with writing it — Russ Fratto and Alan Freed. Freed had already taken the songwriting credit for several songs by bands that he managed, none of which he wrote, but now he was going to take the credit for a song by someone he had never met — Chess added his name to the credits as a bribe, in order to persuade him to play the song on his radio show. Russ Fratto, meanwhile, was the landlord of Chess Records’ offices and owned the stationery company that printed the labels Chess used on their records. It’s been said in a few places that Fratto was given the credit because the Chess brothers owed him money, so they gave him a cut of Berry’s royalties to pay off their own debt. But while Freed and Fratto took unearned credit for the song, it’s at least arguable that so did Chuck Berry. We’ll be looking at several Chuck Berry songs over the course of this podcast, and the question of authorship comes up for all of them. After they stopped working together, Johnnie Johnson started to claim that he deserved co-writing credit for everything that was credited to Berry on his own. Johnson claimed that while Berry wrote the lyrics by himself, the band as a whole worked out the music, and that Berry’s melody lines would be based on Johnson’s piano parts. To get an idea of what Johnson brought to the mix, here’s a performance from Johnson, without Berry, many years later: [Excerpt: Johnnie Johnson, “Johnny’s Boogie”] It’s impossible to say with certainty who did what — Johnson sued Berry in 2000, but the case was dismissed because of the length of time between the songs being written and the case being brought. And Johnson worked with Berry on almost all his albums before that so we don’t have any clear guides as to what Berry’s music sounded like without Johnson. Given Berry’s money-grubbing, grasping, nature, and his willingness to see every single interaction as about how many dollars and cents were in it for Chuck Berry, I have no trouble believing that Berry would take the credit for other people’s work and not think twice about it, so I can fully believe that Johnson worked with him on the music for the songs. On the other hand, most of the songs in question were based around very basic blues chord changes, and the musical interest in them comes almost solely from Berry’s guitar licks — Johnnie Johnson was a very good blues piano player just like a thousand other very good blues piano players, but Chuck Berry’s guitar style is absolutely distinctive, and unlike anything ever recorded before. But the crucial evidence as to how much input or lack of it Johnson had on the writing process comes with the keys Berry chose. Maybellene is in B-flat. A lot of his other songs are in E-flat. These are *not* keys that any guitarist would normally choose to write in. If you’re a guitarist, writing for the guitar, you’d probably choose to write in E or A if you’re playing the blues, D if you’re doing folkier stuff, maybe G or C if you’re doing something poppier and more melodic. These are easy keys for the guitar, the keys that every guitarist’s fingers will automatically fall into unless they have a good reason not to. E-flat and B-flat, though, are fairly straightforward keys on the piano if you’re playing the blues. And they’re keys that are *absolutely* standard for a saxophone player — alto saxes are tuned to an E-flat, tenor saxes to B-flat, so if you’re a band where the sax player is the most important instrumentalist, those are the keys you’re most likely to choose, all else being equal. Now, remember that Chuck Berry replaced the saxophone player in Johnnie Johnson’s band. Once you know that it seems obvious what’s happened — Berry has fit himself in around arrangements and repertoire that Johnson had originally worked up with a sax player, playing in the keys that Johnson was already used to. When they worked out the music for Berry’s songs, that was the pattern they fell into. So, I tend to believe Johnson that the backings were worked out between them after Berry wrote the lyrics. Johnson’s contribution seems to have come somewhere between that of an arranger and of a songwriter, and he deserves some credit at least morally, if not under the ridiculous legal situation that made arrangements uncopyrightable. [Excerpt: “Maybellene” guitar solo showing interplay of Berry and Johnson] “Maybellene”’s success was in part because of a very deliberate decision Berry had made years earlier, having noted the success of white performers singing black musicians’ material, and deciding that he was going to try to get the white people to buy his recordings rather than the cover versions, by singing in a voice that was closer to white singers than the typical blues vocalist. While it caused him problems in early days, notably with him turning up to gigs only to be told, often with accompanying racial slurs, that they’d expected the performer of “Maybellene” to be a white man and he wasn’t allowed to play, his playing-down of his own blackness also caused a major benefit — he became one of the only black musicians to chart higher than the white cover version. It would normally be expected that “Maybellene” would be overshadowed on the charts by Marty Robbins’ version, especially since Marty Robbins was a hugely popular star, and Berry was an unknown on a small blues label: [excerpt: Marty Robbins, “Maybellene”] Instead, as well as going to number one on the R&B charts, Berry’s recording went to number five on the pop charts. And other recordings by him would follow over the next few years. He was never a consistent chart success — in fact he did significantly less well than his reputation in rock and roll history would suggest — but he notched several top ten hits on the pop charts. “Maybellene” did so well that even “Wee Wee Hours”, released as the B-side, went to number ten on the R&B charts. And Berry’s next single was a “Maybellene” soundalike — “Thirty Days” [Excerpt: “Thirty Days”, Chuck Berry] It’s a great track, but it didn’t do quite so well on the charts — it went to number two on the R&B charts, and didn’t hit the pop charts at all. The single after that, “No Money Down”, did less well again. But Berry was about to turn things around again with his next single: [excerpt: *just the guitar intro* of “Roll Over Beethoven” by Chuck Berry] You don’t need anything more, do you? That’s the Chuck Berry formula, right there. You don’t even need to hear the vocals to know exactly what the record is. That record is, of course, “Roll Over Beethoven”. It’s worth listening to the lyrics again just to see what Berry is doing here. [Excerpt: “Roll Over Beethoven”, Chuck Berry] What we have here is, as far as I can tell, the first time that rock and roll started the pattern of self-mythologising that would continue throughout the genre’s history. Of course, there had been plenty of records before this that had talked about the power of music or how much the singer wanted to make you dance, or whatever, but this one is different in a couple of ways. Firstly, it’s talking about *recorded* music specifically — Berry isn’t wanting to go out and listen to a band play live, but he wants to listen to the DJ play his favourite record instead. And secondly, he’s explicitly making a link between his music — “these rhythm and blues” — and the music of the rockabilly artists from Memphis — “don’t step on my blue suede shoes”. And Berry’s music did resemble the Memphis rockabilly more than it resembled anything else. Both had electric lead guitars, double bass, drums, and reverb, and no saxophone and little piano. Both sang sped-up hillbilly boogies with a hard backbeat. Rock and roll was, as we have seen, a disparate genre at first, and people would continue to pull from a whole variety of different sources. But working independently and with no knowledge of each other, a white country hick from Tennessee and a sophisticated black urbanite from the Midwest had hit upon almost exactly the same formula, and Berry was going to make sure that he made the connection as clear as possible. If there’s a moment that rock and roll culture coalesced into a single thing, it was with “Roll Over Beethoven”. And Berry now had his formula worked out. The next thing to do was to get rid of the band. “Roll Over Beethoven” was the penultimate single credited to Chuck Berry & His Combo, rather than to just Chuck Berry. We’ll look at the last one, recorded at the same session, in a few weeks’ time.

Welcome to episode twenty-nine of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs. This is the second of our three-part look at Chess Records, and focuses on "Maybellene" by Chuck Berry. 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 all the songs in the episode. I reference three previous episodes here -- last week's, the disclaimer episode, and the episode on Ida Red. I used three main books as reference here: Brown Eyed Handsome Man: The Life and Hard Times of Chuck Berry by Bruce Pegg is a good narrative biography of Berry, which doesn't shy away from the less salubrious aspects of his personality, but is clearly written by an admirer. Long Distance Information: Chuck Berry's Recorded Legacy by Fred Rothwell is an extraordinarily researched look at every single recording session of Berry's career up to 2001. And for information on Chess, I used The Record Men: Chess Records and the Birth of Rock and Roll by Richard Cohen. I wouldn't recommend that book, however -- while it has some useful interview material and anecdotes from those involved, Cohen gets some basic matters of fact laughably wrong, and generally seems to be more interested in showing off his prose style than fact-checking. There are a myriad Chuck Berry compilations available. The one I'd recommend if you don't have a spare couple of hundred quid for the complete works box set is the double-CD Gold, which has every major track without any of the filler. And if you want to check out more of Willie Dixon's material, this four-CD set contains a hundred records he either performed on as an artist, played on as a session player, wrote, or produced. It's the finest body of work in post-war blues.     Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript   [Intro: Alan Freed introducing Chuck Berry and Maybellene] Welcome to the second part of our trilogy on Chess Records. This week, we're going to talk about the most important single record Chess ever put out, and arguably the most important artist in the whole history of rock music. But first, we're going to talk about something a lot more recent. We're going to talk about "Old Town Road," by Lil Nas X. For those of you who don't follow the charts and the music news in general, "Old Town Road" is a song put out late last year by a rapper, but it reached number nineteen in the country charts. Because it's a country song: [Excerpt: "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X] That's a song with banjo and mandolin, with someone singing in a low Johnny Cash style voice about riding a horse while wearing a cowboy hat. It's clearly country music if anything at all is country music. But it was taken off the country music charts the week it would otherwise have made number one, in a decision that Billboard was at pains to say was nothing at all to do with his race. A hint -- if you have to go to great lengths to say that the thing you're doing isn't racist, it's probably racist. Because genre labels have always been about race, and about policing racial boundaries in the US, since the very beginning. Remember that when Billboard started the R&B charts they were called the "race music" charts. You had the race music charts for black people, the country charts for lower-class whites, and the pop charts for the respectable white people. That was the demarcation, and that still is the demarcation. But people will always want to push against those constraints. And in the 1950s, just like today, there were black people who wanted to make country music. But in the 1950s, unlike today, there was a term for the music those people were making. It was called rock and roll. For about a decade, from roughly 1955 through 1965, "rock and roll" became a term for the music which disregarded those racial boundaries. And since then there has been a slow but sure historical revisionism. The lines of rock and roll expand to let in any white man, but they constrict to push out the women and black men who were already there. But there's one they haven't yet been able to push out, because this particular black man playing country music was more or less the embodiment of rock and roll. Chuck Berry was, in many ways, not at all an admirable man. He was one of all too many rock and roll pioneers to be a sex offender (and again, please see the disclaimer episode I did close to the start of this series, for my thoughts about that -- nothing I say about his work should be taken to imply that I think that work mitigates some of the awful things he did) and he was also by all accounts an unpleasant person in a myriad other ways. As I talked about in the disclaimer episode, we will be dealing with many awful people in this series, because that's the nature of the history of rock and roll, but Chuck Berry was one of the most fundamentally unpleasant, unlikeable, people we'll be looking at. Nobody has a good word to say about him as a human being, and he hurt a lot of people over his long life. When I talk about his work, or the real injustices that were also done to him, I don't want to forget that. But when it comes to rock and roll, Chuck Berry may be the single most important figure who ever lived, and a model for everyone who followed. [Excerpt: “Maybellene”, just the intro] To talk about Chuck Berry, we first of all have to talk about Johnnie Johnson. Johnnie Johnson was a blues piano player, who had got a taste of life as a professional musician in the Marines, where he'd played in a military band led by Bobby Troup, the writer of "Route 66" among many other songs. After leaving the Marines, he'd moved around the Midwest, playing blues in various bands, before forming his own trio, the Johnnie Johnson Trio, in St Louis. That trio consisted of piano, saxophone, and drums -- until New Year's Eve 1952, when the saxophone player had a stroke and couldn't play. Johnson needed another musician to play with the trio, and needed someone quick, but it was New Year's Eve -- every musician he could think of would be booked up. Except for Chuck Berry. Berry was a guitarist he vaguely knew, and was different in every way from Johnson. Where Johnson was an easy-going, fat, jovial, man, who had no ambitions other than to make a living playing boogie-woogie piano, Chuck Berry had already served a term in prison for armed robbery, was massively ambitious, and was skinny as a rake. But he could play the guitar and sing well enough, and the customers had hired a trio, not a duo, and so Chuck Berry joined the Johnnie Johnson Trio. Berry soon took over the band, as Johnson, a relatively easy-going person, saw that Berry was so ambitious that he would be able to bring the band greater success than they would otherwise have had. And also, Berry owned a car, which was useful for transporting the band to gigs. And so the Johnnie Johnson trio became the Chuck Berry Trio. Berry would also play gigs on the side with other musicians, and in 1954 he played guitar on a session for a calypso record on a local independent label: [Excerpt: "Oh Maria", Joe Alexander and the Cubans] However, when Berry tried to get that label to record the Chuck Berry Trio, they weren't interested. But then Berry drove to Chicago to see one of his musical heroes, Muddy Waters. We've talked about Waters before, but only in passing -- but Waters was, by far, the biggest star in the Chicago electric blues style, whose driving, propulsive, records were more accessible than Howlin' Wolf but still had some of the Delta grit that was missing from the cleaner sounds of people like T-Bone Walker. Berry stayed after the show to talk to his idol, and asked him how he could make records like Waters did. Waters told him to go and see Leonard Chess at Chess Records. Berry went to see Chess, who asked if Berry had a demo tape. He didn't, but he went back to St Louis and came back the next week with a wire recording of four newly-recorded songs. The first thing he played was a blues song he'd written called "The Wee Wee Hours": [excerpt: Chuck Berry, "The Wee Wee Hours"] That was too generic for Chess -- and the blues they put out tended to be more electric Chicago blues, rather than the Nat Cole or Charles Brown style Berry was going for there. But the next song he played had them interested. Berry had always been interested in playing as many different styles of music as he could -- he was someone who was trying to incorporate the sounds of Louis Jordan, Muddy Waters, Charlie Christian, and Nat "King" Cole, among others. And so as well as performing blues, jazz, and rhythm and blues music, he'd also incorporated a fair amount of country and western music in his shows. And in particular, he was an admirer of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, and he would perform their song "Ida Red" in shows, where it always went down well. We already had an entire episode of the podcast on "Ida Red", which I'll link in the liner notes to this, but as a quick reminder, it's an old folk song, or collection of folk songs, that had become a big hit for Bob Wills, the Western Swing fiddle player: [Excerpt: "Ida Red", Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys] Berry would perform that song live, but messed around and changed the lyrics a lot -- he eventually changed the title to "Ida May", for a start -- and when he performed the song for Leonard Chess, Chess thought it sounded great. There was only one problem -- he thought the name made it too obvious where Berry had got the idea, and he wanted it to sound more original. They tried several names and eventually hit on "Maybellene", after the popular cosmetics brand, though they changed the spelling. "Ida Red" wasn't the only influence on "Maybellene" though, there was another song called "Oh Red", a hokum song by the Harlem Hamfats: [Excerpt: "Oh Red", the Harlem Hamfats] Larry Birnbaum, in "Before Elvis", suggests that this was the *only* influence on "Maybellene", and that Berry was misremembering the song, as both songs have "Red" in the titles. I disagree -- I think it's fairly clear that "Maybellene" is inspired both by "Ida Red"s structure and patter-lyric verse and by "Oh Red"s chorus melody. And it wasn't just Bob Wills' version of “Ida Red” that inspired Berry. There's a blues version, by Bumble Bee Slim, which has a guitar break that isn't a million miles away from what Berry was doing: [Excerpt: "Ida Red", Bumble Bee Slim] And there's another influence as well. Berry's lyrics were about a car chase -- to try to catch up with a cheating girlfriend -- and are the thing that makes the song so unique. They -- and the car-horn sound of the guitar -- seem to have been inspired by a hillbilly boogie song called "Hot Rod Racer" by Arkie Shibley and his Mountain Dew Boys: [Excerpt: "Hot Rod Racer", Arkie Shibley and his Mountain Dew Boys] That had been a successful enough country song that it spawned at least three hit cover versions, including one by Red Foley. Berry took all these Western Swing, blues, and hillbilly boogie influences and turned them into something new: [Excerpt: Chuck Berry, "Maybellene"] Even this early, you can already see the Chuck Berry style fully formed. Clean blues guitar, as clean as someone like T-Bone Walker, but playing almost rockabilly phrases -- this is closer to the style of Elvis' Sun records than it is to anything else that Chess were putting out -- and punning, verbose, witty lyrics talking about something that would have a clear appeal to people half his age. All of future rock is right there. The lineup on the record was the Chuck Berry trio -- Berry on guitar, Johnson on piano, and Ebby Hardy on drums -- augmented by two other musicians. Jerome Green, the maraca player, is someone we'll be talking about next week, but we should here talk a bit about Willie Dixon, the bass player, because he is probably the single most important figure in the whole Chess Records story. Dixon had started out as a boxer -- he'd been Joe Louis' sparring partner -- before starting to play a bass made out of a tin can and a single string for him by the blues pianist Leonard Caston. Dixon and Caston formed an Ink Spots-style group, "The Five Breezes": [Excerpt: "Sweet Louise", the Five Breezes] But when America joined in World War II, Dixon's music career went on hold, as he was a conscientious objector, unwilling to fight in defence of a racist state, and so he spent ten months in prison. He joined Chess in 1951 shortly after Leonard Chess took over full control of the company by buying out its original owner -- right after the club Chess had been running had mysteriously burned down, on a day it was closed, giving him enough insurance money to buy the whole record company. And Dixon was necessary because among Leonard Chess' flaws was one fatal one -- he had no idea what real musical talent was or how to find it. But he *did* have the second-order ability to find people who could recognise real musical talent when they heard it, and the willingness to trust those people's judgment. And Dixon was not only a real talent himself, but he could bring out the best in others, too. Dixon was, effectively, the auteur behind almost everything that Chess Records put out. As well as a session bass player who played on almost every Chess release that wasn't licensed from someone else, he was also their staff producer, talent scout, and staff songwriter, as well as a solo artist under his own name. He wrote and played on hits for Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Little Walter, Koko Taylor, Bo Diddley, Elmore James... to all intents and purposes, Willie Dixon *was* the Chicago blues, and when the second generation of rock and rollers started up in the 1960s -- white boys with guitars from England -- it was Willie Dixon's songs that formed the backbone of their repertoire. Just a few of the songs he wrote that became classics include "Little Red Rooster" for Howlin' Wolf: [Excerpt: Howlin' Wolf, "Little Red Rooster"] "Bring it on Home" for Sonny Boy Williamson II [Excerpt: Sonny Boy Williamson II, "Bring it on Home"] "You Need Love" for Muddy Waters [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "You Need Love"] You get the idea. In any other session he played on -- in any other room he ever entered -- Dixon would be the most important songwriter in the room. But as it turned out, on this occasion, he was only the second-most important and influential songwriter there, as "Maybellene" would be the start of a run of singles that is unparalleled for its influence on rock and roll music. It was the debut of the single most important songwriter in rock and roll history. Of course, Chuck Berry isn't the only credited songwriter -- and, separately, he may not have been the song's only writer. But these two things aren't linked. Leonard Chess was someone who had a reputation for not being particularly fair with his artists when it came to contracts. A favourite technique for him was to call an artist and tell him that he had some new papers to sign. He would then leave a bottle of whisky in the office, and not be in when the musician turned up. His secretary would say "Mr. Chess has been delayed. Help yourself to a drink while you wait in the office". Chess would only return when the musician was totally drunk, and then get him to sign the contract. That wouldn't work on Berry, who didn't drink, but Chess did manage to get Berry to sign two thirds of the rights to "Maybellene" over to people who had nothing to do with writing it -- Russ Fratto and Alan Freed. Freed had already taken the songwriting credit for several songs by bands that he managed, none of which he wrote, but now he was going to take the credit for a song by someone he had never met -- Chess added his name to the credits as a bribe, in order to persuade him to play the song on his radio show. Russ Fratto, meanwhile, was the landlord of Chess Records' offices and owned the stationery company that printed the labels Chess used on their records. It's been said in a few places that Fratto was given the credit because the Chess brothers owed him money, so they gave him a cut of Berry's royalties to pay off their own debt. But while Freed and Fratto took unearned credit for the song, it's at least arguable that so did Chuck Berry. We'll be looking at several Chuck Berry songs over the course of this podcast, and the question of authorship comes up for all of them. After they stopped working together, Johnnie Johnson started to claim that he deserved co-writing credit for everything that was credited to Berry on his own. Johnson claimed that while Berry wrote the lyrics by himself, the band as a whole worked out the music, and that Berry's melody lines would be based on Johnson's piano parts. To get an idea of what Johnson brought to the mix, here's a performance from Johnson, without Berry, many years later: [Excerpt: Johnnie Johnson, “Johnny's Boogie”] It's impossible to say with certainty who did what -- Johnson sued Berry in 2000, but the case was dismissed because of the length of time between the songs being written and the case being brought. And Johnson worked with Berry on almost all his albums before that so we don't have any clear guides as to what Berry's music sounded like without Johnson. Given Berry's money-grubbing, grasping, nature, and his willingness to see every single interaction as about how many dollars and cents were in it for Chuck Berry, I have no trouble believing that Berry would take the credit for other people's work and not think twice about it, so I can fully believe that Johnson worked with him on the music for the songs. On the other hand, most of the songs in question were based around very basic blues chord changes, and the musical interest in them comes almost solely from Berry's guitar licks -- Johnnie Johnson was a very good blues piano player just like a thousand other very good blues piano players, but Chuck Berry's guitar style is absolutely distinctive, and unlike anything ever recorded before. But the crucial evidence as to how much input or lack of it Johnson had on the writing process comes with the keys Berry chose. Maybellene is in B-flat. A lot of his other songs are in E-flat. These are *not* keys that any guitarist would normally choose to write in. If you're a guitarist, writing for the guitar, you'd probably choose to write in E or A if you're playing the blues, D if you're doing folkier stuff, maybe G or C if you're doing something poppier and more melodic. These are easy keys for the guitar, the keys that every guitarist's fingers will automatically fall into unless they have a good reason not to. E-flat and B-flat, though, are fairly straightforward keys on the piano if you're playing the blues. And they're keys that are *absolutely* standard for a saxophone player -- alto saxes are tuned to an E-flat, tenor saxes to B-flat, so if you're a band where the sax player is the most important instrumentalist, those are the keys you're most likely to choose, all else being equal. Now, remember that Chuck Berry replaced the saxophone player in Johnnie Johnson's band. Once you know that it seems obvious what's happened -- Berry has fit himself in around arrangements and repertoire that Johnson had originally worked up with a sax player, playing in the keys that Johnson was already used to. When they worked out the music for Berry's songs, that was the pattern they fell into. So, I tend to believe Johnson that the backings were worked out between them after Berry wrote the lyrics. Johnson's contribution seems to have come somewhere between that of an arranger and of a songwriter, and he deserves some credit at least morally, if not under the ridiculous legal situation that made arrangements uncopyrightable. [Excerpt: “Maybellene” guitar solo showing interplay of Berry and Johnson] “Maybellene”'s success was in part because of a very deliberate decision Berry had made years earlier, having noted the success of white performers singing black musicians' material, and deciding that he was going to try to get the white people to buy his recordings rather than the cover versions, by singing in a voice that was closer to white singers than the typical blues vocalist. While it caused him problems in early days, notably with him turning up to gigs only to be told, often with accompanying racial slurs, that they'd expected the performer of "Maybellene" to be a white man and he wasn't allowed to play, his playing-down of his own blackness also caused a major benefit -- he became one of the only black musicians to chart higher than the white cover version. It would normally be expected that "Maybellene" would be overshadowed on the charts by Marty Robbins' version, especially since Marty Robbins was a hugely popular star, and Berry was an unknown on a small blues label: [excerpt: Marty Robbins, "Maybellene"] Instead, as well as going to number one on the R&B charts, Berry's recording went to number five on the pop charts. And other recordings by him would follow over the next few years. He was never a consistent chart success -- in fact he did significantly less well than his reputation in rock and roll history would suggest -- but he notched several top ten hits on the pop charts. "Maybellene" did so well that even "Wee Wee Hours", released as the B-side, went to number ten on the R&B charts. And Berry's next single was a "Maybellene" soundalike -- "Thirty Days" [Excerpt: "Thirty Days", Chuck Berry] It's a great track, but it didn't do quite so well on the charts -- it went to number two on the R&B charts, and didn't hit the pop charts at all. The single after that, "No Money Down", did less well again. But Berry was about to turn things around again with his next single: [excerpt: *just the guitar intro* of "Roll Over Beethoven" by Chuck Berry] You don't need anything more, do you? That's the Chuck Berry formula, right there. You don't even need to hear the vocals to know exactly what the record is. That record is, of course, "Roll Over Beethoven". It's worth listening to the lyrics again just to see what Berry is doing here. [Excerpt: "Roll Over Beethoven", Chuck Berry] What we have here is, as far as I can tell, the first time that rock and roll started the pattern of self-mythologising that would continue throughout the genre's history. Of course, there had been plenty of records before this that had talked about the power of music or how much the singer wanted to make you dance, or whatever, but this one is different in a couple of ways. Firstly, it's talking about *recorded* music specifically -- Berry isn't wanting to go out and listen to a band play live, but he wants to listen to the DJ play his favourite record instead. And secondly, he's explicitly making a link between his music -- "these rhythm and blues" -- and the music of the rockabilly artists from Memphis -- "don't step on my blue suede shoes". And Berry's music did resemble the Memphis rockabilly more than it resembled anything else. Both had electric lead guitars, double bass, drums, and reverb, and no saxophone and little piano. Both sang sped-up hillbilly boogies with a hard backbeat. Rock and roll was, as we have seen, a disparate genre at first, and people would continue to pull from a whole variety of different sources. But working independently and with no knowledge of each other, a white country hick from Tennessee and a sophisticated black urbanite from the Midwest had hit upon almost exactly the same formula, and Berry was going to make sure that he made the connection as clear as possible. If there's a moment that rock and roll culture coalesced into a single thing, it was with "Roll Over Beethoven". And Berry now had his formula worked out. The next thing to do was to get rid of the band. "Roll Over Beethoven" was the penultimate single credited to Chuck Berry & His Combo, rather than to just Chuck Berry. We'll look at the last one, recorded at the same session, in a few weeks' time.

What does a rooster symbolize in 1960s Chicago? Is it just a rooster or is it something more? Explore these questions in Howlin' Wolf's "Little Red Rooster."

Welcome to Episode 13 of Nooks and Crannies! Blue Jays Season Preview: a retail nightmare This week’s episode was delayed because, well, it was just one of those weeks. Kicking things off awkwardly, Matt sings the girls softball cheer “Little Red Rooster” which he parlays seamlessly into a lefty diatribe about how pleased he is that the Blue Jay’s have become the first MLB team to raise the salaries of their minor league players. Lisa and Sam helped Matty, the bunting machine, Sanderson with the much anticipated Toronto Blue Jay’s 2019 Season Preview SPECTACULAR! (5:50) This season is full of storylines but we all feel like the team is going to be awful but also weirdly hopeful as the team is clearly in rebuilding mode. Lisa it turns out would make a ruthless ‘new style’ GM, Sam is a big fan of the notorious bully Bud Norris, and Matty likes to play favorites especially with his undersized 2nd Base-People like Devon Travis.   After the season preview, Matty the stuffy-nosed podcast co-host, returns with a podcast recommendation section (37:01) suggesting that you all listen to At the Letters, Birds all Day, Artificial Turf Wars and Around the Nest (the Jays minor league podcast) *****TRIGGER WARNING: Human Bodily Dysfunctions***** (40:53) Alright folks, fair warning starts here but Lisa and Sam told the funniest story yet renditioned on Nooks and Crannies, but if you are made queasy or uncomfortable by tales of human digestion gon wrong, do not listen to this one. You have been warned…The Retail Nightmare Story starts here (42:10). Last segment; bit of a pallet cleanser I hope (49:19) is a really heartwarming happy spring message from Ol Matty, including mention of his Radical 80’s Mixtape (up now on Spotify). Happy Spring Equinox all you Polytheists’ out there, Talk To You all as soon as I get some rest. :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Episode 14 Links: I Shake My Head with Lisa and Sam, Support their show, Buy their Stuff, Creep them on Twitter, Or see the real life Bit-Moji version of them on Insta, Their show is edited and produced by John Bukenas Hey, find out why Sam was so offended to have her name attached to Lisa’s Amazing Playlist :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: N&C Links Archive of Episodes Topics and Lighthearted Complaints Watch Matty Fight on Social Ponder Evan’s Blurry Pictures Find Nooks and Crannies on Spotify Listen to Evan’s Much Superior Musical Picks Graphics by Donna Hume ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Proud of you Lindsay

Sunset Heights – Only Time Will Tell –Texa Tea 1993 Cindy Lauper – I’m just Your Fool –Memphis Blues 2010 Rick Derringer - Let The Good Times Roll –Blues Deluxe 1998 Rick Vito – I’ll Never leave This Love Alive –King Of Hearts 1992 Eelco Gelling and The Blues Connection – Little Red Rooster –The Blues 1990 Kal David – The Visit –Croossroads of My Life 2010 Kerry Kearney – Gypsy Baby –Kerry Kearney 1999 Tom Principato – Can’t you See Waht You’re doin’to me –Tip of The Iceberg 1992 Otis Span – Looks Like Twins –The Bottom of the Blues 1968 Ronnie Earl and The Broadcasters – Backstroke –Test of Time 1992 Indigo Duck – Help Me –Double Duck 2004 Kim Wilson – High & Lonesome –Smokin’ Joint 2001

Sean fire stone place acoustic song

Intro Song, Clarence “The Blues Man” Turner, “Just A Little Bit”, Talkin' About My Baby First Set Bobby Rush with Blind Dog Smokin', “Skinny Little Woman”, Decisions Little Charlie and The Nightcats, “Dirty Dealin' Mama”, Shadow of the Blues Little Boys Blue, “She Put Me Down”, Bad Love Second  Set C.J. Chenier & the red hot Louisiana Band , “Everybody Needs A Little Monkey”, Step It Up! Little G. Weevil, “See Me In The Country”, Something Poppin' Anni Piper, “Little Red Head”, Texas Hold ‘Em Third  Set Lil' Ed & The Blues Emperials, “Computer Girl”, Heads Up! Lil' Cliff & the Cliffhangers, “Down In Louisiana”,  The Lovin' Kind Li'l Ronnie and the Grand Dukes, “Leavin' Here Tonight”,  Young & Evil Fourth Set Pinetop Perkins & Jimmy Rogers with Little Mike and the Tornadoes, “Pine & Jimmy's Jump”, Genuine Blues Legends Little Mike, “Tryna' Find My Baby”, How Long? Various Artists, “Little Red Rooster”, Howlin' At Greaseland, Henry Gray-piano & Vocals, Kid Andersen-guitar Special thanks and big hugs to Janiva Magness. She was in town and put me on her guest list. She said hello to me during the show and then made some very kind comments at the end of her show and mentioned the show by name! What a sweetie! Thanks to Michael Allen Engstrom at the Crossroads Blues Gallery

This week's Deadpod comes as the result of a request by a friend .. some say the highlight of this show is the opener, I wouldn't go that far but it is a surprise, even for a Sunday! The 'Samson & Delilah' opener only happened a couple of times in the band's history but I think the rest of this set is quite entertaining as well. From April 10th, 1983 in Morgantown West Virginia.. I found the interplay between Garcia and Brent Mydland to be very entertaining here (Brent is certainly up a bit in the mix on this tape). 'Tennessee Jed' is a highlight here for me, as is a slow 'Friend of the Devil' that includes some nice surprises from Jerry.   Grateful Dead Coliseum - West Virginia University Morgantown, WV 4/10/83 - Sunday   One Samson And Delilah ; Friend Of The Devil ; Me And My Uncle > Mexicali Blues ; Althea ; Little Red Rooster ; Tennessee Jed ; My Brother Esau ; Might As Well   You can listen to this week's Deadpod here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod012618.mp3   Pass it on! You can now listen to the Deadpod on Spotify!   Feel free to send me *your* requests - email or on our Facebook page!   Thank you my friends for your support...,....    

This week I've decided to bring you the first set of what might very well be the band's most historic Halloween show - 10/31/91 in Oakland. The run was historic because it occurred the week of the passing of Bill Graham in a tragic helicopter crash. A great friend of the Dead, Bill's passing was marked in the second set of this show during a eulogy from Ken Kesey, which we'll hear next week. This first set however is definitely worth hearing and should provide a great warm up to your Halloween weekend! It starts off with a great Help->Slip->Frank, with Phil out front and driving the train. The Slipknot is a beautiful ensemble effort, especially Vince and Bruce's contributions to the overall structure. It floats along beautifully, then, just as it reaches its apex, we're plunged into that great bouncy Franklin's Tower. Jerry's leads here are crystalline, soaring.. Jerry's voice contains just enough world weariness to make me feel the wisdom here. While 'Little Red Rooster' wouldn't have been my choice to follow this up with, it is one of their better versions, with some nice slide work. 'Loser' follows, it takes a bit to get warmed up, but Garcia builds it up slowly into a great crescendo. Phil follows with a great version of  'Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues', a song they would only break out 4 or 5 times a year. A long 'Let It Grow' closes the set, an interesting if not completely enrapturing performance of this piece....    Grateful Dead   Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena Oakland, CA 10/31/91 - Thursday One Help On The Way > Slipknot! > Franklin's Tower ; Little Red Rooster ; Loser ; Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues ; Let It Grow    You can listen to this week's Deadpod here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod102717.mp3     For those of you looking for the 2nd set from October 19, 1971, you can find it here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod070811.mp3    My apologies for repeating the first set last week..   Have a safe and happy Halloween!!   As always, my sincere thanks for your support, my friends.     

Later British Blues, Part 2 Playlist, times and description Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones, two of the most famous British rock bands, were influenced deeply by American blues and played versions of blues standards throughout their careers. All Blues from the Summer Room podcasts were edited and compiled by our good friend of Skidompha Library, Mark Addison. Intro from Love in Vain 2:17: Led Zeppelin I Can’t Quit You Baby 6:59: You Shook Me 13:26: Bring It on Home 17:47: When the Levee Breaks 24:49: Lemon Song The Rolling Stones 33:34: Little Red Rooster 36:38: You Gotta Move 39:10: Love in Vain 44:20: Blue and Lonesome 47:27: I Can’t Quit You, Baby 52:37: Everybody Knows About My Good Thing Them 58:22: Baby Please Don’t Go

Usually in the month of August I'm drawn to playing some latter day Dead simply because the power of Garcia's ballads seemed to grow as his other abilities diminished. I also enjoy hearing some of the songs that the band debuted in the latter phase of their existence. Many listeners of the Deadpod only had the chance to see the band live in these latter day concerts as well, so its great to revisit them occasionally. I think the show I've chosen this week is one of the better ones. This occurred on August 22nd, 1993 at Autzen Stadium in Eugene Oregon. While as usual during this time, the first set is not as long as we'd like it is pretty well played. It starts with an interesting Jack Straw - Weir has equipment problems and is absent for most of it, leaving it up to Jerry and Phil to create some interesting interplay. Broken Arrow is a later day Phil addition I always enjoyed, and this is a fine version. The set-closing 'Music Never Stopped' is probably the highlight of this set as it features some nice moments. Next week we'll feature the quite good second set of this show.     Grateful Dead Autzen Stadium - University of Oregon Eugene, OR 8/22/93 - Sunday   One   Jack Straw ; Bertha ; Little Red Rooster ; Broken Arrow ; Althea ; When I Paint My Masterpiece ; Tennessee Jed ; The Music Never Stopped   You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod082517.mp3   Thank you for your kind support of the Deadpod, which makes its' continued existence possible.         

We have a very fine second set to usher in the start of 'full eclipse' weekend on this edition of the Deadpod! Shows at the Uptown in Chicago were usually great, and this one was no exception. They start with a song they hadn't played since 1965! - Little Red Rooster - while you may have grown tired of it - the audience that night couldn't say the same :) The rest of the set is well played and I really enjoy hearing Brent as he fits into his role with the band at this early stage of his tenure. The highlight here is the wonderful 'Comes A Time'  in the midst of a Playin' sandwich - excellent emotion and playing. The boys do a wonderful Alabama Getaway finale here! Shame that didn't happen more often, then treat the crowd to a Johnny B Goode encore .. I'm sure they were feeling it this night..      Grateful Dead Uptown Theatre Chicago, IL  8/19/80 - Tuesday   Two Little Red Rooster [7:42] > China Cat Sunflower [6:00] > I Know You Rider [6:10] > Estimated Prophet [10:09] > Eyes Of The World [8:20] > Space [5:20] > Drums [13:21] > Space [1:08] > Playing In The Band [9:18] > Comes A Time [10:00] > Playing In The Band [5:56] > Around And Around [4:12] > Alabama Getaway [4:42] Encore Johnny B. Goode [4:19]   You can listen to this week's Deadpod here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod081817.mp3   Thank you for your kind support of the Deadpod!    Please be careful and don't look at the sun during that eclipse!    Ain't No Time to Hate! 

As March blows in we go back in this week's Deadpod to the spring of 1981, and one of the fine shows from the band's run at Madison Square Garden. Last year we played the previous evening's show, but this performance from March 10, 1981 deserves a spot on our favorites as well. The show beings with a Mississippi Half-Step that starts off great, then a shocking bit of feedback/reverb blows through the sound system - the band simply plays through it like the pros they are, but don't let it throw you off, this is a great version! This flows into a fine, stand alone version of Franklin's Tower. I always enjoy these, and this one is no slouch. Me and My Uncle follows with Weir joking that the earlier feedback was all planned. They slow it up a little with 'Roses'. Don't Easy Me In occupies a rare mid-set position, and there is some nice improvisation in the Lazy Lightnin'->Supplication transition. A strong first set that I hope puts you in a fine space as we roll into early March!    Grateful Dead Madison Square Garden New York , NY 3/10/81 - Tuesday   One Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo [11:36] > Franklin's Tower [11:03] > Me And My Uncle [3:05] ; It Must Have Been The Roses [6:18] > Little Red Rooster [6:12] ; Don't Ease Me In [3:15] ; Lazy Lightnin' [3:24] > Supplication [6:03] ; Brown Eyed Women [5:27] > Looks Like Rain [9:19] > Deal [7:13]   You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod030317.mp3     My thanks for your kind support!!     

Episode 051 - December 2016 Set 1 Bertha (1971-08-26)Sugaree-> Little Red Rooster (1983-10-17)Mama Tried (1976-09-25)Row Jimmy (1974-06-18)Same Thing[1] (1993-03-27)Cassidy (1989-06-21)Peggy-O (1974-08-04)Let It Grow-> Althea (1980-06-20)Empty Page[1] s (1971-08-26)Broken Arrow[1] (1993-03-09)Bird Song (1972-10-18)From The Heart Of Me (1979-02-03)Dancin' In The Streets-> Wharf Rat-> Dancin' In The Streets-> Around & Around (1976-10-14)Alabama Getaway-> Promised Land (1987-04-19)[1] Dead Fantasy Debut

This week, on the eve of the election, I decided to bring you what I consider to be a really fun show from the fall of 1985. This comes to us from Rochester New York on November 8th, 1985. The boys are really loose and having fun and deliver a really good (if uneven) performance. We have a nice sounding recording to share, and I think you'll find the first set quite entertaining this week. This one starts with a rockin' Iko, Iko, into a down and dirty 'Little Red Rooster'.  Garcia provides a nice reading of  'Peggy O'; 'My Brother Esau' and 'Brown Eyed Women' follow, then the band performs an excellent version of 'Baby What You Want Me To Do' with Brett and Bobby trading verses on what would be the Dead's last performance of this tune. A frantic 'Jack Straw' follows and leads into a fun 'Might as Well' to close this first set.. (these two from an audience recording, by the way).        Grateful Dead Community War Memorial Auditorium Rochester, NY  11/8/85 - Friday   One   Iko Iko ; Little Red Rooster ; Peggy-O ; My Brother Esau ; Brown Eyed Women ; Baby What You Want Me To Do ; Jack Straw > Might As Well     You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod110416.mp3   Thank you to all my friends whose support of the Deadpod allows us to keep rollin'..      Till next week, be kind and let's hope for the best :)   

Episode 044 - August 2016 Set 2Hard To Handle[1] (1971-08-06)Me and My Uncle-> Big River (1979-11-25)Little Red Rooster (1981-12-30)Loser (1984-07-22)Deal (1988-04-01)Scarlet Begonias-> Fire On The Mountain (1978-02-05)Expressway (To Your Heart)[1] (1974-09-02)All Blues[1] (1974-06-04)China Cat Sunflower-> I Know You Rider-> China Doll (1977-12-29)Goin' Down The Road Feelin' Bad (1971-04-05)Morning Dew (1993-09-09)[1] Dead Fantasy Debut

Episode 003 - February 2015 Set 1The Music Never Stopped->Sugaree->The Music Never StoppedThey Love Each Other->El PasoThe Harder They ComeLittle Red RoosterLazy Lightning->SupplicationLove in the AfternoonLooks Like RainLost Sailor->Saint of CircumstanceCats Under StarsBlow Away

Rolling Stones, Sid Vicious, Elvis Presley, Robert Plant, Urge Overkill, The Clash, U2, Nick Cave & Shane McGowan, Yardbirds, The White Stripes e várias outras bandas tocando as suas versões das músicas que apareceram na Mixtape 32 “Originais”. Confira se a versão que você escolheu está na mixtape. Clique aqui com o botão direito do mouse e faça o download agora. Para ouvir outras músicas do artista clique nos links. 01 – Whiskey In The Jar – Thin Lizzy 02 – Hound Dog – Elvis Presley 03 – Little Red Rooster – Howling Wolf & Yardbirds 04 – What a Wonderful World – Nick Cave & Shane McGowan 05 – My Way – Sid Vicious 06 – Thats Life – The Peddlers 07 – Sea of Love – Robert Plant & The Honeydrippers 08 – Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home) – U2 09 – Baby, I love you- CJ Ramone 10 – Jolene – The White Stripes 11 – Girl You’ll Be a Woman Soon – Urge Overkill 12 – Guitarman – The Jesus And Mary Chain 13 – Higher Ground – Red Hot Chili Peppers 14 – Hitch Hike – The Rolling Stones 15 – Police & Thieves – The Clash 16 – Twist And Shout – BackBeat Band (Dave Pirner, Greg Dulli, Thurston Moore, Don Fleming, Mike Mills, Dave Grohl) 17 – Police on my Back – Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros 18 – Sunshine Superman – Hüsker Dü 19 – I Don’t Want To Grow Up – Ramones A próxima mixtape vai pro ar no dia 10/01/2016

“ORIGINAIS”, a mixtape de hoje contém as versões originais de várias músicas que vocês provavelmente conhecem tocadas por outros artistas. A idéia é que vocês escutem e depois comentem neste post (até o dia 10/12/2015) qual a versão “roqueira” vocês querem na mixtape do dia 20/12/2015, coloque o nome da música e o nome do artista/banda. A versão que você escolheu e comentou em nosso post poderá fazer parte da mixtape. Clique com o botão direito do mouse e faça o download agora. Para ouvir outras músicas do artista clique nos links. 01 – Whiskey In The Jar – The Dubliners 02 – Hound Dog – Big Mama Thornton 03 – The Little Red Rooster – Willie Dixon 04 – What A Wonderful World – Louis Armstrong 05 – Comme d’habitude – Claude François 06 – That’s Life – Marion Montgomery 07 – Sea of Love – Phil Phillip 08 – Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) – Darlene Love 09 – Baby, I Love You – The Ronettes 10 – Jolene – Dolly Parton 11 – Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon – Neil Diamond 12 – Guitar Man – Jerry Reed 13 – Higher Ground – Stevie Wonder 14 – Hitch Hike – Marvin Gaye 15 – Police & Thieves – Junior Murvin 16 – Do You Wanna Dance – Bobby Freeman 17 – Twist and Shout – The Isley Brothers 18 – Police on My Back – The Equals 19 – Sunshine Superman – Donovan 20 – I Don’t Wanna Grow Up – Tom Waits A próxima mixtape vai pro ar no dia 30/11/2015.

Yikes! Friday the 13th! but not only is it Friday the 13th it is ODD day! - 11/13/15 :)  I decided such an auspicious occasion deserved an unusual show and I think this one fits the bill. It features *three* songs that would never be played by the band again - one in this first set and the other two in the second set that we'll hear next week.   This is from November 21st, 1985 at the Kaiser in Oakland CA. The show beings with a song that hasn't been played in over 15 years - 'Big Boy Pete'.. they then move into a fun 'Dire Wolf'.. 'Little Red Rooster' features some great Hammond organ from Brett. 'Brown-Eyed Women' follows, always a favorite and in the Uncle->Mexicali that follows Jerry does some fine pickin'.. The set closes with a Ramble on Rose->Looks Like Rain->Might As Well.. It is not a very long first set, nevertheless I hope you enjoy it!  Next week we'll listen to the second set with *two* songs that receive their final performance...        Grateful Dead Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center Oakland, CA 11/21/85 - Thursday   One Big Boy Pete ; Dire Wolf ; Little Red Rooster ; Brown Eyed Women ; Me And My Uncle > Mexicali Blues ; Ramble On Rose ; Looks Like Rain > Might As Well     You can listen to this week's Deadpod here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod111315.mp3     Be safe, be kind, and thank You my friends for allowing me the pleasure of bringing these tunes to you each week..   

Intro Song Roomful of Blues, “That's Right”, 45 Live, 2013 Alligator Records                 First Set Brandon Santini, “Have A Good Time”, Live & Extended!,  VizzTone Label Group   Zac Harmon, “I Got News For You”, Live at Babe & Ricky's Inn,  2002 Z-Mac Music   Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble, “Look At Little Sister”, Live Alive, EPIC Records Second Set     The Mannish Boys , “Kid's Jump”, Live & In Demand, Delta Groove Music Buddy Guy & Junior Wells, “Every Day I Have the Blues”, Live In Montreaux, Evidence Records John Nemeth, “Mother In Law'”, Blues Live, Nemeth Music Third Set Vinyl Vault Howlin' Wolf, “Little Red Rooster”, Live Recording August 23, 1973,  Denver Ebbett's Field Soundboard Koko Taylor, “Hey Bartender”, Blues Deluxe,  Recorded Live at the 1980 Chicago Fest Clarence Gatemouth Brown, “St. Louis Blues”, Real Life, Rounder Records Fourth Set Sean Costello, “Hucklebuck”, At His Best - Live, 2011 Landslide Records Roosevelt Sykes, “Running The Boogie”, The Original Honeydripper, Blind Pig Records The Nighthawks, “Matchbox”, Live & Acoustic, EllerSoul Records

This week's Deadpod has been on my request list for quite awhile, and in reviewing that list I decided it was time to pull it out. This show comes to us from April 15th, 1983 at the War Memorial Auditorium in Rochester NY. There seems to be lots of good memories of this show, and while I don't think it was their strongest outing of the year, it is an enjoyable and generally wellplayed performance I think you'll enjoy. A Shakedown opener is always a great way to start out a show and we're treated to a good one here. Brent's keyboards add a nice, uptempo feeling here and Jerry does a great job with his leads and vocals - listen for how he changes the words at one point. 'My Brother Esau' follows in the second slot - a strange position for this number, I think, and frankly I think it takes the band a bit to work into the emotional feel of this number, following Shakedown. I enjoy this number, but to my ears there's a bit of dissonance here. A nice Brown-Eyed Women follows, but it is marred by microphone problems which steal from us Jerry's first couple verses. Little Red Rooster has the additional Brent verses that often popped up during this period. Dire Wolf follows, a personal favorite, then Lazy Lightnin'->Supplication, followed by a nice set ending Deal.  We'll hear set 2 next week,    War Memorial Auditorium, Rochester, NY (4/15/83) Shakedown Street My Brother Esau Brown Eyed Women Little Red Rooster Dire Wolf Lazy Lightnin' Supplication Deal   You can listen to this week's Deadpod here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod040315.mp3     Thanks for picking this up and for your kind support! You're the best!    

I don't know about you, but I'm feeling the need for a little early jump into summer.... so this week I decided to bring you this excellent summertime Dead show, recently requested by one of my wonderful listeners. This sweet show comes to us from that weird town of Austin, Texas :), back in 1982. Just a day before Jerry's birthday I think you'll agree that he and the rest of the band were in a fine mood for this classic summertime show. The first set, which we'll hear this week, has a great song list, highlighted for me by a sweet Bird Song, a surprisingly good Little Red Rooster, and a wonderful jam out of Music Never Stopped into Deal.. The band keeps ripping it up in the second set which we'll hear next week..   Manor Downs, Austin, TX (7/31/82) Alabama Getaway Promised Land Candyman El Paso Bird Song Little Red Rooster Ramble on Rose It's All Over Now Brown Eyed Women Music Never Stopped Deal   You can listen to this week's Deadpod here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod051614.mp3     Of course to those of you able to contribute to keep the Deadpod on the air, my most sincere thanks and appreciation!   Hope you have a fine weekend with blue skies and sunshine!  

"Spring hasn't sprung, until the Dead play the Frost" or so goes the saying I used to hear.. and in an attempt to conjure up a more lasting Spring I decided to bring one of their magical concerts from this classic venue to  our Deadpod this week. This concert comes from the  Spring of 1985, surely a  year that doesn't always get much respect, but nonetheless the place for some amazing shows back in the day, and I think you'll agree that this particular event was one of those.. The famous bass line welcomes us to a wonderful Dancin' and we know we're on our way to a fabulous time with the boys. Bertha doesn't give anyone a chance to sit down as Jerry rocks it at a breakneck pace.. a lazy Little Red Rooster follows.. but don't despair.. a great Brown Eyed Women is up next followed by 'My Brother Esau'.. every time I hear that song I'm reminded of a show I saw back in the early 90s where someone just kept yelling .... "Bobby.. are you still boxing with the apocalypse?" Ramble on Rose is a keeper I think.. well played and Jerry sounds into it and it has that unique 'electic dixieland' sound as David Crosby so well described it.. It is also wonderful that Jerry  is in full and fine voice here and throughout this show.. Phil's 'Tom Thumb' is pleasant and goes into a very fine Cold Rain and Snow.. The set ends with a well developed Music Never Stopped.. the jaming hints at whats coming next week in set 2..  Frost Amphitheater (Stanford U), Palo Alto, CA (4/27/85) set 1 Dancin' in the Streets Bertha Little Red Rooster Brown Eyed Women My Brother Esau Ramble on Rose Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues-> Cold Rain and Snow Music Never Stopped You can listen to this week's Deadpod here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod041913.mp3 Thank you for listening to the Deadpod, and for your contributions, without which I can not continue to publish it each week... Let It Grow..

Another fine suggestion by a friend of the Deadpod sets the stage for this week's show - July 14th, 1984 from the Greek Theater in Berkeley CA. It seems to fit right in with the last few weeks' and the boys do not disappoint on this one.. From our correspondent's email: "The first set features really high energy versions of Jack Straw and Big Railroad Blues. I'm not normally a big fan of Little Red Rooster, but this is a truly great version" I can second that recommendation and hope you enjoy this set as much as I do.. Grateful Dead  Date:  7/14/84 - Saturday  Location:  Greek Theatre - University of California - Berkeley, CA  One:Jack Straw ;  West L.A. Fadeaway ;  Little Red Rooster ;  Tennessee Jed ;  Beat It On Down The Line ;  Big Railroad Blues ;  Looks Like Rain >  Don't Ease Me In ;  You can listen to this week's Deadpod http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod060311.mp3 Thanks for listening and for your SUPPORT!

This week's Deadpod has two unusual occurances - first a show from 1986 - a year I usually find quite depressing and an audience tape to boot! I think when you give this show a listen you'll understand why I decided to ignore my prejudices and post this classic show! This one starts with a smokin' Alabama Getaway into Greatest Story.. there's a *fine* Dire Wolf and I was always a fan of Brother Esau.. the rest of the set is very well played as well, and closes with the second Box of Rain in a week after having not been played since '73.. the crowd goes predictably wild.. :)I hope you enjoy the performance..Grateful Deadthe Spectrum, Philadelphia PA3/24/86 MondayAlabama Getaway [4:33] > Greatest Story Ever Told [4:00] ; Dire Wolf [3:06] ; Little Red Rooster [7:57] ; Brown Eyed Women [4:57] ; My Brother Esau [4:36] ; Ramble On Rose [6:52] ; El Paso [5:11] ; Box Of Rain [4:59]You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:http://media.libsyn.com/media/deadshow/deadpod121809.mp3Have a great week - as always many thanks for your kind support !

I'm surrounded by beautiful Fall foliage here in Michigan this time of year and it brought to mind this quite remarkable period of Dead shows. I will never forget when I saw the Dead open up sitting around and playing accoustic music. I loved those shows, and unfortunately there aren't a whole lot of soundboards of complete shows from that period that are out but this is one and I hope that you enjoy hearing it as much as I do.Yes the acoustic sets may not have as much variety as we'd like - but I really doubt that you can avoid having a smile as you listen to the boys chat between tunes or sing along as you listen to Ripple.. its a real pleasure for me and I hope you enjoy it as well..Grateful DeadRadio City Music Hall10/26/80 - SundayOne : Iko, Iko Dark Hollow, It Must Have Been The Roses, On The Road Again, Jack-A-Roe, Csasidy, China Doll -> Ripple ..Electric -1 :Jack Straw -> Sugaree, Little Red Rooster, Brown-Eyed WomenYou can listen to this week's Deadpod here:http://media.libsyn.com/media/deadshow/deadpod102309.mp3Be well and be kind to each other my friends..

Time for something a little different, here's a show I've wanted to play for some time, a really solid show that features Jerry in fine voice and the band playing tightly.. I especially enjoy the Jack Straw->Sugaree opener and the West LA in the first set, Bobby announces it's Brent's birthday (which its not).. but Brent does close the set with a fine 'Far From Me'....Please note: I understand that I had a misplaced song in the original podcast - my appologies - if you downloaded the first version you may need to re-download the corrected one..Grateful Dead Boston Garden Boston, MADate 9/18/82 - SaturdayOne Jack Straw [5:03] > Sugaree [11:43] ; Mama Tried [2:31] > Mexicali Blues [4:49] ; West L.A. Fadeaway [7:56] ; Little Red Rooster [7:33] ; Dupree's Diamond Blues [5:49] ; Cassidy [6:02] ; Far From Me [4:15]You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:http://media.libsyn.com/media/deadshow/deadpod032009.mp3As always, thanks so much for listening and for your support!!

This week we have a great new soundboard of a show from a year that's often under appreciated - 1980. This comes to us from August 29th, 1980, when the boys played the Spectrum in Philladelphia. The first set, which we'll hear this week, starts off with a rockin' Alabama Getaway->Promised Land opener. The band proceeds to play a really high energy twelve song first set, nicely played and sounding like they were really listening to one another. Brent fits in very nicely here, as he's really found his spot by now. I really enjoy the Big River, and Row Jimmy, and check out the crazy set closing Deal!!! This week marks the start of KOPN's spring pledge drive, so I am asking for your help in allowing our community radio station, and this podcast, to remain on the air. Any contribution, no matter what, will help to keep us going. I'm working on securing some CDs to use as premiums to thank you for your support, and will announce them when and if they're finalized. But in the meantime, I hope you'll consider clicking on the contribute now button and helping us out with your contribution. If you prefer to phone in your support, you can reach the station at (573) 874-1139. Thanks!! Grateful Dead The Spectrum Philadelphia, PA 8/29/80 - Friday One Alabama Getaway [4:31] > The Promised Land [4:16] ; Candyman [6:59] ; Me And My Uncle [2:58] > Big River [5:30] ; Row Jimmy [10:05] > Little Red Rooster [7:33] ; Brown Eyed Women [5:03] ; Far From Me [4:10] ; Lost Sailor[6:39] > Saint Of Circumstance [5:59] > Deal [4:29]You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:http://media.libsyn.com/media/deadshow/deadpod050208.mp3As always, my thanks for your support!! Have a most excellent spring!

This week we get a nice recording of a wonderful early 80's show - this one comes to us from Alpine Valley, August the 8th, 1982. This week we'll hear the first set (and the opener of the 2nd), next week we'll finish up the show.. I really enjoyed the Alabama Getaway openers of this period and this is no exception. I also think you'll like the Little Red Rooster, Looks Like Rain and Peggy-O in this first set for sure. Samson and Delilah close out the set in an unusual position for this song, but one that works well. There are a few flubs and recording problems - the Loser is cut at the beginning unfortunately - but nevertheless an enjoyable listen, I think.Grateful Dead Alpine Valley Music Theatre East Troy, WI8/8/82 - Sunday One Alabama Getaway [4:47] > The Promised Land [4:27] ; They Love Each Other [8:18] ; Mama Tried [2:44] > Mexicali Blues [5:02] ; Loser [#4:33] ; Little Red Rooster [7:49] ; Brown Eyed Women [5:25] > Looks Like Rain [8:26] ; Peggy-O [7:06] ; Samson And Delilah [7:47]Two Far From MeYou can listen to the Deadpod here:http://media.libsyn.com/media/deadshow/deadpod031408.mp3Be well friends and thanks for your support..

This week we have a wonderful show from the Summer of 1988, PLUS a chance for you to win a great book! First off, we're going to hear the first set from 7/31/88, Laguna Seca. This set features David Hildago of Los Lobos sitting in on Little Red Rooster and a very hot West LA Fadeaway, then a rare 'Gentlemen Start Your Engines'.. Next week I'll bring you the second set..Grateful Dead Laguna Seca Raceway Monterey , CADate 7/31/88 - SundayOne Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodleloo ; Little Red Rooster [1] ; West L.A. Fadeaway [1] ; Me And My Uncle > Big River ; Ramble On Rose ; Gentlemen Start Your Engines ; When I Paint My Masterpiece ; Bird SongAs always you can hear the Deadpod here:http://www.libsyn.com/media/deadshow/deadpod060807.mp3But that's not all! I've been fortunate enough to receive 10 copies of the wonderful book by David Dodd: The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics.Not only does this 500+ page book contain the lyrics of all of the original GD compositions (and many of the covers), but it also contains a huge wealth of background information on the sources and meaning of the characters and references in the songs. Its a hugely fun read, and all you have to do to have a chance to win your copy is to send me an email at: j.henrikson@gmail.comI'll pick the winners at random next week! More information on The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics can be found here.