American blues harmonica player
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22 episodes with Little Walter
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3 episodes with Little Walter
2 episodes with Little Walter
The new episode of Blues is the Truth is up now and it is another one of those shows that just feels good to put together and even better to listen back to. Hosted by Ian McHugh, this week is all about letting the music do its thing, with the regular features ticking along and plenty of moments that stop you in your tracks. There is a brilliant spread of music this time from Tad Robinson, Emma Wilson, The Greaseland All Stars, Monster Mike Welch, Buddy Whittington, Beth Hart and Joe Bonamassa, Del Bromham, Tim Aves and Wolfpack, The Hoax, Chad Strenz, The Vibrationists, The Notting Hillbillies, Guitar Shorty, John Lee Hooker, Rock Candy Funk Party, Little Walter, Royal Enfield, Mary Lane, Junior Wells, Charlie Musselwhite, Steve Howell and the Mighty Men, Angela Strehli, Chuck Jackson's Big Bad Blues Band and Lil' Red and the Rooster. It is a mix that moves easily between roots, soul, grit and groove, with every track chosen for a reason. If you fancy a couple of hours in good company with some great music, this one is well worth your time. Stick it on, turn it up a little and enjoy.
Visit: www.salty.com.au ROOTSTOCK — Another two hours of the best in blues n roots. No sleigh bells here — just deep roots and honest tone. This episode digs into Little Walter lineage, Southern soul, gospel fire and late-night grooves — Billy Branch, Jimmy Burns, Blind Boys of Alabama, Curtis Salgado, Neil Young and more. Plenty of love for Australian releases too — Lloyd Spiegel, Stars, The Blow Out, Collard Greens N Gravy and Aaron Pollock stepping up strong. Roll it out loud, pour something decent, and let the music do the talking. Powered by Salty Dog Blues N Roots www.salty.com.au #Podcast #SaltyDogBluesNRoots #bluesmusicvictoria #BluesPodcast #RootsMusic #AustralianBlues ARTIST / TRACK / ALBUM / LABEL / YEAR ** Australia 01. Billy Branch N The Sons of the Blues / Hate To See You Go / Roots And Branches – The Songs Of Little Walter / Alligator Records / 2019 02. ** Lloyd Spiegel / Alligator Shoes / Single (Pre-Release) / Independent / 2025 03. Gov't Mule w. Billy Bob Thornton / The River Only Flows One Way / Peace … Like A River / Fantasy Records / 2023 04. Jimmy Burns N Soul Message Band / Ain't That Funk For You / Full Circle / Delmark Records / 2025 05. ** Stars / Big Wet, Long Dry / One More Circle Round The Sun / Independent / 2020 06. ** The Blow Out / Road Song / Version of You / Independent / 2024 07. Andrew Duncanson N Michael Peloquin / California Trap / California Trap / Independent / 2024 08. Andy Penkow / Bottom Shelf / Shades On Me / MRVP Studios / 2024 09. Antone's 50th Anniversary Allstars / Reconsider Baby / The Last Real Texas Blues Album / Antone's Records / 2006 10. Kim Wilson N Nathan James / Leaving You Was On My Mind / Slow Burn / Alligator Records / 2016 11. James Harman / Ooh Baby / Live at Buddy Guy's Legends Chicago / Delta Groove Music / 2006 12. Neil Young / Loose Change / Broken Arrow / Reprise Records / 1996 13. Raphael Wressnig / Southern Southern Chicken / Committed / ZYX Music / 2025 14. ** Collard Greens N Gravy / Directly From My Heart / Boogaloo Sauce / Independent / 2025 15. Frank Zappa / Directly From My Heart To You / Weasels Ripped My Flesh / Bizarre / Reprise Records / 1970 16. Curtis Salgado / Who Is He And What Is He To You / Strong Suspicion / Shanachie Records / 1991 17. Harrell ‘Young Rell' Davenport / Hate The Bite / Hate The Bite / Independent / 2024 18. Jeffrey Martin / The Middle / Dogs In The Daylight / Independent / 2025 19. ** Aaron Pollock / Our Very Last Night In The Carolinas / Memory Hoarders / Independent / 2025 20. Moreland N Arbuckle / Can't Get Clear / Flood / Telarc Blues / 2010 21. The Blind Boys Of Alabama / Nobody's Fault But Mine / Spirit of the Century / Real World Records / 2001 22. Endless Boogie / Counterfeiter / Admonitions / Thrill Jockey Records / 2018
Got a harmonica romp through the past one hundred years of America's Music this coming Friday morning. We'll be following the harmonica's journey along and across the American crossroads…one that began in the 19th century, when inexpensive German-made “mouth harps” made their way into the hands of soldiers, travelers, and rural families. Its portability and expressive bends made it a natural fit for early blues and country porch settings. From that country blues porch setting to the juke joints where electric blues, rock, soul, blues, and Americana meet and mingle. We'll be opening the vaults for some classic tracks from the likes of Little Walter, DeFord Bailey, Mickey Raphael, Sonny Boy Williamson, Charlie Musselwhite, and a couple dozen others as we celebrate the “mouth harp” for its blistering, distorted lead influencing generations of performers of all stripes. Drop in…we'd be glad to have you visit this Friday morning.
Avsnitt 91 - "Little Walter – Bluesvärldens mest överskattade ikon" by Bluespodden
Today's show features music performed by Little Walter and B.B. King & Gladys Knight
It's a City (with a capital ‘C' to locals) whose cultural history practically hums with musical possibilities. This is due in large part to how the city has always been a meeting point for restless ideas and diverse communities. From the Gold Rush boomtown that lured fortune-seekers from every continent, to the Beat poets of North Beach and the psychedelic counterculture that turned Haight-Ashbury into a world stage, it's been an easy mark for songwriters. This week's show will visit that blend of beauty, grit and idealism with performances for and about San Francisco. Join us for a whole batch of vintage sounds covering any old genre we care to share with the likes of Harry “The Hipster” Gibson, Little Walter, Charlie Musselwhite, Linda Martell, and, of course, Tony Bennett. We'll celebrate from a short distance away with memories of Broadway, the fog rolling through the Golden Gate, and that endless palette of imagery and mood that is a living chorus always ready to be set to music.
In this extended deep-dive, we explore the life, music, and legacy of Muddy Waters—the man who electrified the Delta blues and laid the foundation for rock 'n' roll. From his early days on Stovall Plantation to his rise in Chicago with Chess Records, we trace his journey through iconic recordings like ‘Hoochie Coochie Man' and ‘Mannish Boy,' his groundbreaking performance at the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival, and the transatlantic collaborations of The London Muddy Waters Sessions.We'll break down Muddy's guitar style, gear, and slide techniques, hear stories of his legendary band with Little Walter and Otis Spann, and map out how his music influenced artists from the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix to Led Zeppelin and beyond.Support the showTo become a MEMBER and get access to over 2 Years of guitar lessons for just $5/Month head to https://www.buzzsprout.com/950998/subscribe
Deeper Roots means just that…and this week we're spinning some blues, gospel, r&b, and swing … all music that introduced the rhythm that would become known as rock ‘n roll. We'll go as far back as the late 1930s with Joe Turner and Pete Johnson and make the picaresque journey across the alleys, juke joints, and house parties where tradition and urban electric blues became the foundation of a sound. We'll share blues from Little Walter, Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker and a handful of others. Also on tap, Goree Carter, Sticks McGhee, Amos Milburn and Julia Lee with some rhythm and blues and jump whose beat and attitude would influence many a rock ‘n roll musician and songwriter. Also on board: Hadda Brooks, Ray Charles, Louis Jordan and Tiny Bradshaw. Don't miss a wailin', rockin' morning here on KOWS Community Radio.
Blues Radio International With Jesse Finkelstein & Audrey Michelle
Lara Price and Albert Castiglia perform live on the Blues Radio International SoundStage at the 2024 Blues Music Awards in Memphis on Edition 701 of Blues Radio International, with Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter and Eddie 9V. Sound by Michael WolfFind more at BluesRadioInternational.net
Hoy os dejamos en La Gran Travesía, con motivo del 75º Aniversario del nacimiento de Chess Records en Chicago (1950 - cerró en 1975-), un programa especial dedicado a su memoria y a su infinito legado con gente como Muddy Waters, Howlin´Wolf, Little Walter, Chuck Berry, Etta James, Willie Dixon, Albert King, Bo Diddley, Buddy Guy, Jimmy Rodgers, Koko Taylor y muchos más. También recordaros que ya podéis comprar La gran travesía del rock, un libro interactivo que además contará con 15 programas de radio complementarios, a modo de ficción sonora... con muchas sorpresas y voces conocidas... https://www.ivoox.com/gran-travesia-del-rock-capitulos-del-libro_bk_list_10998115_1.html Jimi y Janis, dos periodistas musicales, vienen de 2027, un mundo distópico y delirante donde el reguetón tiene (casi) todo el poder... pero ellos dos, deciden alistarse al GLP para viajar en el tiempo, salvar el rock, rescatar sus archivos ocultos y combatir la dictadura troyana del FPR. ✨ El libro ya está en diversas webs, en todostuslibros.com Amazon, Fnac y también en La Montaña Mágica, por ejemplo https://www.amazon.es/GRAN-TRAVES%C3%8DA-DEL-ROCK-autoestopista/dp/8419924938 ▶️ Y ya sabéis, si os gusta el programa y os apetece, podéis apoyarnos y colaborar con nosotros por el simple precio de una cerveza al mes, desde el botón azul de iVoox, y así, además podéis acceder a todo el archivo histórico exclusivo. Muchas gracias también a todos los mecenas y patrocinadores por vuestro apoyo: Poncho C, Don T, Francisco Quintana, Gastón Nicora, Con, Piri, Dotakon, Tete García, Jose Angel Tremiño, Marco Landeta Vacas, Oscar García Muñoz, Raquel Parrondo, Javier Gonzar, Poncho C, Nacho, Javito, Alberto, Pilar Escudero, Blas, Moy, Dani Pérez, Santi Oliva, Vicente DC,, Leticia, JBSabe, Flor, Melomanic, Arturo Soriano, Gemma Codina, Raquel Jiménez, Pedro, SGD, Raul Andres, Tomás Pérez, Pablo Pineda, Quim Goday, Enfermerator, María Arán, Joaquín, Horns Up, Victor Bravo, Fonune, Eulogiko, Francisco González, Marcos Paris, Vlado 74, Daniel A, Redneckman, Elliott SF, Guillermo Gutierrez, Sementalex, Miguel Angel Torres, Suibne, Javifer, Matías Ruiz Molina, Noyatan, Estefanía, Iván Menéndez, Niksisley y a los mecenas anónimos.
Today's show features music performed by Cow Cow Davenport, Booker T & The MGs, and Little Walter
Corky Siegel joins me on episode 129.Corky played was central in the emergence of the popularity of the blues to a white audience. His Siegel-Schwall band gained a residency at Chicago's Pepper Lounge, sharing the stage with blues giants such as Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters and Little Walter. The band were also part of San Francisco's 1967 Summer of Love, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Joni Mitchell and Janis Joplin.Corky has a unique place in harmonica history with his blues / classical collaborations. After performing with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1966, he has gone on to enjoy a platinum selling classical record, composed numerous blues / classical orchestral pieces, recorded with a Chamber music ensemble and performed with orchestras around the world.Links:Website: https://www.corkymusic.com/Siegel-Schwall band: https://www.corkymusic.com/siegel-schwallChamber Blues: https://www.corkymusic.com/chamber-bluesSymphonic Blues: https://www.corkymusic.com/symphonyEcho Audiobook: https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Echo-Audiobook/B00VS6N4ZICorky's lesson on dynamics: https://www.corkymusic.com/harmonica-lessonVideos:Chamber Blues: https://www.corkymusic.com/video-chamber-bluesLullaby, composition by Dr L Subramaniam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty1ri62uBuUCorky playing with Howard Levy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjnYE-jIprcPodcast website:https://www.harmonicahappyhour.comDonations:If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GBSpotify Playlist: Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQPodcast sponsors:This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS--------------------------------Blue Moon Harmonicas: https://bluemoonharmonicas.comSupport the show
Blues Radio International With Jesse Finkelstein & Audrey Michelle
Alabama Mike performs live at the 2024 Blues Music Awards on Edition 678 of Blues Radio International, with Little Walter, Ruthie Foster, Junior Wells, Bobo Jenkins and The Kinsey Report.Find more at BluesRadioInternational.net
The latest episode of Blues is the Truth is here, and normal service resumes with two hours of phenomenal blues that will keep your soul singing and your feet tapping. Hosted by the ever-passionate and knowledgeable Ian McHugh, this week's show is packed with incredible music, the usual fan-favorite features, and a lineup of artists that truly defines the spirit of the blues. This episode shines a spotlight on the brilliant Tomislav Goluban and the powerhouse sounds of Crooked Eye Tommy, both delivering unforgettable performances that will leave you hitting replay. Alongside them, you'll hear classics and contemporary gems from legends like Stevie Ray Vaughan, Muddy Waters, and Buddy Guy, and the deep grooves of Little Walter, Peter Green, and Otis Spann. Etta James brings her unparalleled vocal power, while Mud Morganfield, Tim Aves and Wolfpack, and the soulful Colin James remind us why blues endures. The raw energy of Tail Dragger, Cesar Crespo and the Pinball's Blues Party, and Wailin' Walker will keep you on the edge of your seat, while Bob Margolin and Bob Coritore showcase their collaborative genius. With contributions from Zoe Schwarz Blue Commotion, Larry Griffith, Jeff Pitchell, Kai Strauss, and even blues royalty BB King and Lowell Fulson, this week's lineup spans decades of brilliance. And, of course, there's a special place for Eric Clapton, whose timeless artistry remains an inspiration. Make sure you don't miss this blues-packed episode! Listen now and join Ian McHugh on this musical journey. And if you love what you hear, don't forget to like, share, subscribe, and review on your podcast platform of choice. Spread the word and help keep the blues alive!
Website https://music.amazon.com/artists/B0CY1WDXB9/the-jimmy-dixon-grouphttps://music.apple.com/us/artist/the-jimmy-dixon-group/1732325824https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC38WVQ_MCyqbNT-__vrVZDAFirst rain, then distant thunder, now driving, insistent piano and, ten seconds in, thunder riding on guitars crashes inside the earbuds. The storm rages righteously for another four minutes.“We just tried to write a good, old fashioned rock and roll song,” said Jimmy, “where the listeners would wonder what happened to their socks: well, they got rocked off by The Jimmy Dixon Group! So, we wrote a little rock and roll tune for our vintage electric guitars and plugged 'em into an amp.”Mission accomplished.“Hopefully, people can dig the groove. It's just a song that makes you feel good.”For those who want to groove on the lyrics:Up in the thinnest of airFading a sense to careNo more painLost touch of what is sane“The great thing about a song is that it can have one meaning to one person and mean something completely different to someone else. And neither one is wrong. For me, it's about, I guess, being on a higher plane,” said Jimmy, “however one gets there, and being able to think about who you are, what you're doing, how you're spending your time.”Like, listening to rock and roll?“That's right. Exactly.”The Jimmy Dixon Group is seven people, all with the surname Dixon (no relation anywhere) as far as anybody outside the group is concerned. The website carries the highly entertaining origin story, and anybody willing to believe it is welcome to do so. Jimmy is lead vocals and, with his 1955 Martin D-28, “some guitar.” Chubbs Dixon is the drummer. Cranky Dixon has a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Special and his wife, “Midnight” Mae Dixon, is the pianist. Gary Dixon plays a 1968 Hofner 500/1 bass and sings backing vocals.Capo Dixon, rhythm guitar, is supposedly named for his love of using a capo on his 1967 Martin D12-35 12-string acoustic and his 2017 Rickenbacker 660/12 electric.Benmont Dixon plays strings.“In Thin Air” is the second of 10 tracks on the album Rough Demos, released this year. This is the first music the group has released. Jimmy tells the story of these seven people who just wanted to get together with their vintage instruments and their love for vintage rock and roll and write and play music. A couple years ago, they did just that. They gather in person from time to time but otherwise work and collaborate from a distance.“We didn't go into it thinking we would make an album. We just went into it thinking we'd have a little fun together, writing some songs and playing together. We spent a lot of time on it, and then all of a sudden we had songs that we had a lot of fun making, and we thought somebody would get a little joy out of listening. So we scraped together what we had in the studio and made an album.”The Rough Demos name has its own origin story, supposedly being “recorded whenever and wherever the group could find an empty studio and an engineer who had his back turned,” according to the official group bio. Believing that is optional.“We really love, and we're really proud of, the album.”Their music is inspired by “the roots of rock and roll,” said Jimmy.He cites '50s Chicago blues — Willie Dixon (no relation), Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Little Walter — then moving into the '60s with artists such as Dylan, and on to the '70s (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers).he tracks, whether fast and furious like “In Thin Air” or meditative and whimsical like “Capo 5th Fret No. 2” (“Art is dead, long live the art/Priced to move at Neil's new store”), are full of wonderful performances by the musicians.They are about 90 percent done, he says, with the music that will be Rough Demos II, which will be released early next year.They love the tones of the old instruments too, he said, especially the '50s and '60s Fenders, Gibsons and Martins.“They just have their own unique sound that we really love. Nothing wrong with the new stuff, but we love the sound that you get from an old tweed amp after you plug in that Gibson Les Paul.”“In Thin Air,” a fine piece of old-fashioned rock and roll, has, says Jimmy, “a nice groove to it and people can feel the rock and roll.”He says the band has no career destination.We started out not really having a goal in mind, just playing and creating, having fun and getting joy out of music. We take it one small step at a time, and if we can connect with a couple people here and there who really like our music, that is tremendously exciting for us.”Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/creator-to-creators-with-meosha-bean--4460322/support.
Text us about this show.David Janke (a.k.a. Lil' Davy Max) is a true bluesman through and through. From learning guitar at an early age to teenage midnight forays to see blues legends perform miles from his home to becoming friends with the likes of Muddy Waters, you will know that David is the real deal. He is a gracious and authentic man who is as captivating to talk with as he is to listen to when he's delivering a solid performance. His music reflects the great Chicago blues traditions and whether he's belting out a vocal, blowing his blues harp, or cranking out incredible guitar solos, he will undoubtedly have your attention.Check out Lil' Davy Max on SoundCloud!"Little Girl" written and performed by Lil' Davy Max℗ 2018 Lil' Davy Max. Used with permission of David Janke."Jump The Broom" written and performed by Lil' Davy Max℗ 2018 Lil' Davy Max. Used with permission of David Janke.Support the Show.Visit Into The Music at https://in2themusic.com or https://intothemusicpodcast.com!Support the show: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/intothemusic E-mail us at intothemusic@newprojectx.com YouTube Facebook Instagram INTO THE MUSIC is a production of Project X Productions, Appleton, WI.Host/producer: Rob MarnochaVoiceovers: Brad BordiniRecording, engineering, and post production: Rob MarnochaOpening theme: "Aerostar" by Los Straitjackets* (℗2013 Yep Roc Records)Closing theme: "Close to Champaign" by Los Straitjackets* (℗1999 Yep Roc Records)*Used with permission of Eddie Angel of Los StraitjacketsT...
***This show is brought to you by DistroKid. Go to http://distrokid.com/vip/the500 for 30% off your first year!*** The Best of Little Walter is a foundational piece of blues rock that inspired artists like Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, and Eric Clapton. Little Walter revolutionized live harmonica playing (both in style and technologically). Comedian & Impressionist James Adomian returned to the podcast to discuss the album and jam with JAM on the hand harmonica. Follow James on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jadomian Follow James on YouTube:: https://www.youtube.com/jamesadomian More James Info Including Tour Dates & Tickets: https://jamesadomian.com/ Follow Josh on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joshadammeyers/ Follow Josh on Twitter: https://twitter.com/JoshAdamMeyers Follow Josh on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joshameyers Follow The 500 on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the500podcast/ Follow The 500 on Twitter: https://twitter.com/the500podcast Follow The 500 on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/The500PodcastWithJAM/ Email the show: 500podcast@gmail.com Check the show's website: http://the500podcast.com DistroKid Artist Of The Week: Tommy Newport https://youtu.be/s6oteCQ32Ys?si=ApAanJlB8r55EP0V Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Phish Tour Kicks Off: Anticipation and Reflections from the RoadLarry Mishkin is excited about the ongoing summer tour of the band Phish, particularly looking forward to their upcoming shows at Alpine Valley and St. Louis. He reflects on a Grateful Dead concert from July 22, 1984, at Ventura County Fairgrounds, sharing personal memories of attending shows in 1984, which was a significant year for him. He discusses the song "Loser" by Jerry Garcia, noting its Americana themes and its history with the Grateful Dead. He praises Garcia's performance at the 1984 show and the song's growling vocals and guitar work.Larry also talks about the song "Day Job," highlighting its unique history with the Grateful Dead as a song fans petitioned to be dropped from their setlists. He reflects on why the song wasn't popular among fans, comparing it to another song, "Liberty," which he personally didn't favor. Despite this, he appreciates the version performed at the Ventura show for its energy and Jerry's engagement.In the music world segment, the he provides updates on Phish's summer tour, sharing setlists from recent shows in Mansfield, Massachusetts. He expresses excitement about attending multiple shows and describes how his appreciation for Phish has grown, comparing it to his experience with the Grateful Dead. He anticipates hearing specific songs and is eager to connect with fellow fans.The show also features a segment on Stanley Jordan, a musician known for his unique guitar style. Jordan shares his journey to creating a project called Stanley Plays the Dead, a tribute to the Grateful Dead. He recounts meeting Phil Lesh and performing with him, which inspired his current project. Jordan's distinctive two-hand tapping technique on guitar is highlighted, along with his diverse musical collaborations over the years. Grateful DeadJuly 22, 1084 (40 years ago)Ventura County FairgroundsVentura, CAThe Grateful Dead Live at Ventura County Fairgrounds on 1984-07-22 : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive _____________________________________________INCOMPLETE BUT IT HAS ALL THE MUSIC CLIPSCAN WE TAPE TOMORROW AT 10 A.M. MY TIME?Let me know. Thank you______________________________________Fake Intro for my nephew, Ben Mishkin's 11th birthday, I will just introduce it as “my podcast”, play the clip and wish him a happy birthday, then we cut back to our normal intro tune and I do a regular introduction. What do you think? Bennie and the Jets - Elton John - Live in London 1974 HD (youtube.com)0:08 – 1:18 "Bennie and the Jets" (also titled "Benny & the Jets") is a song written by English musician Elton John and songwriter Bernie Taupin, and performed by John.[3] The song first appeared on the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album in 1973. "Bennie and the Jets" has been one of John's most popular songs and was performed during his appearance at Live Aid.The track was a massive hit in the United States and Canada, released in 1974 as an A-side using the spelling "Bennie". In most territories the track was released as the B-side to "Candle in the Wind", using the spelling "Benny". Album artwork (back-cover track listing and center-panel design) consistently lists the song as "Bennie" while either "Bennie" or "Benny" appears on the vinyl album depending on territory. The track was released as an A-side in the UK in 1976, as "Benny and the Jets".It is ranked number 371 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.Happy Birthday to my nephew Ben who turns 11 today while at summer camp in the Poconos. Great time to be alive. There with his big sister Lily and lots of good friends while his younger brother Nate has the run of the house! Have a great day big guy. And now, back to our regularly scheduled show: Normal house intro music Great show today from one of the Deadhead's favorite venues, Ventura County Fairgrounds. Basically on the car racing track and demo derby. View is of the beach and ocean. Shows start in the afternoon, 2 or 3, so no real light show except mother nature and if you are lucky, a beautiful sunset just as the show ends or shortly thereafter. Location of my first show ever and the only time I saw the boys there. This show is two summers later and finds the Boys cranking along in 1984, a big year for me in terms of shows that included a big chunk of Spring tour, Red Rocks, my first summer tour experience, first Alpine, and first New Years shows. Still found time to graduate from Michigan and start law school. INTRO: Loser Track #4 2:40 – 4:20 The song seems covered in the Americana dust of so many songs from this period of Hunter's and Garcia's songwriting partnership. Abilene, whether in Texas or Kansas, is a dusty cowtown—at the time in which the song seems to be set, the cattle outnumbered the human inhabitants by a factor of tens. It's easy to see the scene Hunter so casually sets, of a broken-down gambler in a saloon, with a dirt street outside full of armed cowpokes.Appearing, as it does, on Garcia (Jan, 1972), the song seems to pair naturally with the other gambling song on the album, “Deal.” It could be sung by the same character on a different day, in fact. And it fits in, as I mentioned, with a whole suite of songs that might be set in the same generic America of the late 19th or early 20th centuries: “Brown-Eyed Women,” “Jack Straw,” “Mister Charlie,” “Tennessee Jed,” “Cumberland Blues,” “Candyman,” and others, as well as certain selected covers, such as “Me and My Uncle,” and “El Paso.”The crowning glory of the song, as in many other Garcia/Hunter compositions, is the bridge.The song culminates in this cry of hopefulness: “Last fair deal in the country, Sweet Susie, last fair deal in the town. Put your gold money where your love is, baby, before you let my deal go down—go down.”(It's noted that “Sweet Susie” was dropped at some point, but then, occasionally, brought back. I think it was an optional decoration to the line. Alex Allan, in his Grateful Dead Lyric and Song Finder site, notes that “Sweet Susie” rarely appears after 1972, but that it's sung in performances in 1974 and 1979.)The version at this show is one of the best I've ever heard. Garcia's voice is growling, his guitar playing spot on, energy bursting out of him. 1984 was a great year for the Dead and this show, and this tune, really epitomize all of it. Almost always a first set tune, usually first part of the set, traded off with Candyman, Must Have Been The Roses, and other first set Jerry ballads.Played: 353 timesFirst: February 18, 1971 at Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, NY, USALast: June 28, 1995 at the Palace at Auburn Hills, MI (Detroit) SHOW No. 1: Day Job Track #8 1:00 – 2:39 Garcia/Hunter “new tune” Never released on any studio recording, appears on Dick's Picks #6, Hartford Civic Center Oct. 14, 1983 in case you've never heard it. It's claim to fame, per Robert Hunter himself, is that “this song was dropped from the Grateful Dead repertoire at the request of the fans. Seriously.” I heard it a few times. Not my favorite, but good when Jerry was sharp and rocking like this version. Really one of the best. Played: 133First: August 28, 1982 at Oregon Country Fair Site, Veneta, OR, USALast: April 4, 1986 at Hartford Civic Center, Hartford, CT, USA SHOW No. 2: I Just Want To Make Love To You Track #11 1:27 – 3:10 "I Just Want to Make Love to You" is a blues song written by Willie Dixon. In 1954, it was recorded by Muddy Waters,[2] and released as a single with the title "Just Make Love to Me". The song reached number four on Billboard magazine's R&B Best Sellers chart.[3]Backing Waters on vocals are Little Walter on harmonica, Jimmy Rogers on guitar, Otis Spann on piano, Willie Dixon on bass, and Fred Below on drums.[1] Waters recorded the song again for the album Electric Mud (1968).The Rolling Stones covered the song on their 1964 debut album The Rolling Stones. In 1972, British blues rock group Foghat recorded a studio version for their self-titled debut album in 1972. The song was also released as a single and it became their first single to reach the charts, appearing at No. 83 on the Billboard Hot 100[9] and No. 31 in Australia.[10] An eight-minute version from a 1977 concert performance is included on Foghat Live. It was edited down to 3:56 release as a single, which reached number 33 on the Billboard Hot 100[9] and No. 28 on the RPM Top Singles chart in Canada. I heard this on Foghat Live and thought it was a Foghat song. Could not believe when I heard the Dead had played it! Dead played it 4 times: Pig in ‘66 Brent in ‘84 Jerry in ‘95 Times: 4First: November 29, 1966 at The Matrix, San Francisco, CA, USALast: February 21, 1995 at Delta Center, Salt Lake City, UT, USA SHOW No. 3: Drums Track #14 7;00 – end INTO Space Track #15 0:00 - :36 SHOW No. 4: Space Track #15 10:59 – end INTO Morning Dew Track #16 0:00 – 1:28 Birthdays: Benny John Gross OUTRO: Midnight Hour Track #19 1:42 – 3:27 .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
Are you ready? Ready for action? Ready for… whatever? I hope you are, because when opportunity knocks you better at least have your drawers on when you answer the door. They say success is when preparation meets opportunity, so you best be ready to jump when the light goes on.This sassy stop-time number was written by the Mozart of the blues, bassist Willie Dixon for the one and only Muddy Waters, and with Little Walter's chromatic harp chords chugging along behind the legendary frontman, it's one of the most invigorating concoctions ever recorded. Muddy is in full command of his ripeness, and when he declares that he's been drinking TNT and smoking dynamite, I believe him. He's ready to fight, fuck, Rock n roll - or, maybe all three at the same time. “I'm ready for you - I hope you ready for me,” he warns, and that ain't no mere boast.
Lickers Jay and Deon wax poetic on ten of their favorite records from their respective collections which are filed under the letter J. Their choices lead to discussions on Blindboy Boatclub (he rules), the origins of their nicknames (do you even know these guys?), another blind-bought Burger Records beauty (Jay is a total Burger fanboy), Steve Albini (R.I.P.), and much more. Tune in and rock out! --- In the early 1970s, legendary collaborator and self-proclaimed non-musician Brian Eno famously designed a deck of 115 cards containing elliptical imperatives to spark in the user creative connections unobtainable through regular modes of work. He called his creation "Oblique Strategies." For the past half century, countless artists and professionals across the globe have benefited from utilizing the oblique strategies technique when attempting to overcome a lull in creative output. In 2024, idiotic, introverted yet somehow still award-winning* hobby podcasters and self-proclaimed Lightnin' Lickers Jay and Deon found themselves uninspired when contemplating the potential theme of their upcoming thirty-seventh episode. Together, they decided... to default back to the alphabet. Because they have a reasonably solid grasp of the alphabet and how it works. They had previously utilized the letters A thru I, so naturally, they went with J. Sonic contributors to the thirty-seventh episode of Lightnin' Licks Radio podcast include: Brothers Johnson, Holland-Dozier-Holland, Lee Moses, Steve Albini, L.L. Cool J, Patience, Prince Paul, De La Soul, Freddie King, Little Walter, Blinboy Boatclub, SHANNON, Cornbroom Jenkins, Mighty Mista Knapps, Lucy Givens, Sesame Street, Huey Lewis & the News, The Jesus Lizard, Jonathon Wolffe, Kenny Gamble, Leon Huff, The Three Degrees, EMINIM, Labi Siffre, Marilyn Manson, Hootie & the Blowfish, Drive Like Jehu, Led Zepplin, Helmet with David Yow, Junk Monkeys, Goo Goo Dolls, Syl Johnson, Howlin' Wolf, Wu-tang Clan, Kanye West with Jay-Z, Hank & Kieth Shocklee with Public Enemy, Charlie Rich, Cypress Hill, The Luniz, R2D2, Jessie Jones, Death Valley Girls, Pete Jolly, Art Pepper, Jessica McQuarter, Herb Alpert, Jerry Moss, Ugly Duckling, DJ Einstein, Jimmie & Vella, Bobby Womack, Dead Prez, J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar, Anthony Fantano, Drake, Timmy Thomas, Post-POTUS George W. Bush, Childish Gambino, Jobriath, David Bowie, Stephen Trask, Vernard Jonson, Peter C. Johnson, Paul Vance & Lee Pockriss, Cody Jinks, Shellac, the Radiolab archives, The Clockers. LLR “J” mixtape: [SIDE A](1) The Jesus Lizard - Mouth Breather (2) Jimmie & Vella - Well (3) Peter C. Johnson - Snowblind (4) J. Cole - No Role Modelz (5) Vernard Johnson - Soul Metamorphosis Medley MegaMix [SIDE B] (1) Pete Jolly - Springs (2) Junk Monkeys - Round and Round (3) Syl Johnson - Is It Because I'm Black (4) Jessie Jones - Sugar Coated (5) Jobriath - World Without You Thanks for listening. Tune in again sometime within a few weeks for another bonus episode. Have a great summer! *former REVIEW magazine best live streaming production --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/llradio/message
Today's show features music performed by Little Walter and Donald Kinsey
Maria Zeringue talks with musician and drummer Jimmi Mayes. Originally from Jackson, MS, Mayes has had a successful career playing professionally all over the world with legendary performers such as Little Walter, Joey Dee and the Starliters, Jimi Hendrix, and many more. In addition to his musical output, Mayes wrote a memoir about his life, titled: "The Amazing Jimmi Mayes: Sideman to the Stars." This past year, he was awarded a Folk Arts Fellowship from the MS Arts Commission. They discuss these topics and more of Mayes' life on the road. If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, please consider contributing to MPB. https://donate.mpbfoundation.org/mspb/podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Dale Hawkins, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters y Little Walter protagonizan los seis EPs “Alternatively Chess” lanzados por el sello barcelonés El Toro Records en donde se rescatan tomas alternativas de grandes canciones grabadas por estos artistas en los años 50 para la disquera Chess Records.Playlist (todas las canciones de los discos “Alternatively Chess”);BO DIDDLEY “Bo Diddley”BO DIDDLEY “Bring it to Jerome”BO DIDDLEY “Little girl”CHUCK BERRY “Beautiful Delilah”CHUCK BERRY “Reelin’ and rockin’”CHUCK BERRY “Sweet Little sixteen”DALE HAWKINS “Susie-Q”DALE HAWKINS “Take my heart”DALE HAWKINS “My babe”HOWLIN’ WOLF “Moanin’ for my baby”HOWLIN’ WOLF “Poor boy”HOWLIN’ WOLF “Howlin’ blues”MUDDY WATERS “Baby please don’t go”MUDDY WATERS “She’s all right”MUDDY WATERS “Hoochie Coochie man”LITTLE WALTER “Juke”LITTLE WALTER “Off the wall”Escuchar audio
Marshall Chess has a long history in the blues. His father, Leonard, was one of the co-founders of Chess Records, the influential record label responsible for exposing the music of artists like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Sonny Boy Williamson to larger audience. Marshall produced the trailblazing Electric Mud from Muddy Waters, and the Howlin' Wolf Album, both were attempts to reinterpret the blues to then current psychedelic rock era. He was the first president of Rolling Stones Records, and worked on several films, including Cadillac Records, which was based on his family's record label. Now comes New Moves - The Chess Project, several decades in the making. Once again, Marshall is reinterpreting the music his family helped nurture, this time for the modern age. With Keith LeBlanc producing, they've assembled a top-notch collection of musicians, reimagining songs by Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Little Walter and more. Marshall also has a YouTube Channel celebrating the Chess history, and a podcast, where he tells many of the great stories of his life.
Singles Going Around- Whirlaway Whirlaway is a all Louisiana show featuring music and artists from North, Central and South Louisiana. The music is taken from the original records.Cookie and his Cupcakes- "Mathilda" Bill Nettles- "Hadacol Boogie"The Sugar Bee's- "Sugar Bee"Slim Harpo- "I'm A King Bee"Tommy Mclain- "Before I Grow Too Old"Jerry Lee Lewis- "Jambalaya"Harry Choates- "Jole Blon"The Velvetiers- "Feelin' Right Saturday Night"Oscar Buddy Woods- "Don't Sell It"Nathan Abshire- "Crying Pine Grove Blues"Bobby Charles- "On Bended Knee" Edit out "See You Later Alligator"Al Ferrier- "Hello Josephine"Fats Domino- "The Fat Man"Warren Storm- "Troubles, Troubles"Boozoo Chavis- "Forty One Davis"Little Walter- "Juke"Johnnie Allan- "Promised Land"Little Bob- "I Got Loaded"Tony Joe White- "Whompt Out On You"Lawrence Walker- "Lena Mae"The Uniques- "Fast Way Of Living"
710. Super fine rock n' roll from the 50's and beyond loaded into each and every episode of DJ Del Villarreal's "Go Kat, GO! The Rock-A-Billy Show!" Flip that PLAY button and get ready for a bombastic barrage of boppin' bruisers and plenty of rockin' cuts to make you frantic! Dig the latest from Hillbilly Moon Explosion, Seatbelt, Jittery Jack, Ricky Rialto, Same Old Shoes, The Black Ravens, The TR5's, Short Stack N' Sides, La Perra Blanca, The Blue Velvets, The Sirocco Bros., Frank Jacket, Brian Setzer, Bloodshot Bill & MORE! Loads of legends are littered throughout this program as well -hear deep tracks from Mac Curtis, Leroy Van Dyke, Little Walter, Charlie Feathers, Link Wray, Janis Martin, Carl Perkins, Webb Pierce, The Kershaw Brothers, Marty Robbins, Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, Chuck Berry & yep, you guessed it.... MORE! Non-stop roots rockin' rhythm goodness when the Aztec Werewolf is behind the decks! Always the finest rockin' billy music for the most discriminating hep cats n' kittens on DJ Del's "Go Kat, GO!" -good to the last bop!™Please follow on FaceBook, Instagram & Twitter!
"Jenny said when she was just five years oldYou know there's nothing happening at allEvery time she puts on the radioThere was nothing goin' down at allThen one fine mornin' she puts on a New York stationShe couldn't believe what she heard at allShe started dancin' to that fine fine musicYou know her life was saved by Rock 'n' Roll"Let me be your lifesaver with 2 hours of fine fine music on the Saturday Edition of Whole 'Nuther Thing. Joining us are Bob Dylan, The Eagles, Cactus, The Blues Project, T. Rex, Tommy Bolin, The Doobie Brothers, Isaac Hayes, Jimi Hendrix, Little Walter, Joe Cocker, Little Feat, Ian Hunter, David Bowie, Mott The Hoople, John Coltrane, John Lee Hooker, Aretha Franklin, Pharoah Sanders and Velvet Underground...
Episode 100 is a retrospective on the greatest ever blues harmonica player, Marion Walter Jacobs, aka Little Walter.Little Walter was born in 1930, probably, and started playing harmonica age 8. He was busking on the streets of New Orleans by age 12, spent some time in Helena, before heading north to Chicago to make his indelible mark on blues and the harmonica. Little Walter teamed up with Muddy Waters and Jimmy Rogers and cut some classic blues recordings before he went out under his own name after he was launched into superstardom with his instrumental Juke, in 1952. He was riding high in the charts and touring for the next few years, including another number one with My Babe, while still also recording with Muddy Waters.The arrival of rhythm and blues started to replace the blues as the popular music of the day, which saw Little Walter start to go down slow, but he still made some great recordings and completed two tours of Europe.He was then taken far too young, at the age of 37, as a result of an injury sustained in a street fight. But he left behind numerous masterpieces in the blues harmonica genre, that have influenced pretty much every player since. Links:The Little Walter Foundation:https://littlewalterfoundation.org/Billy Boy Arnold interview:https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com/billy-boy-arnold-interview/Kim Field website:https://www.kimfield.com/Bob Corritore Little Walter photo tribute page:https://bobcorritore.com/photos/little-walter-photo-tribute/Videos:Lonnie Glosson and Wayne Raney:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfXb7OEjVzUOra Nelle Blues, first recording:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E7z56E0DwIPlaying Walter's Jump with Hound Dog Taylor in 1967:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8GWEvIkzGETrailer of Blue Midnight Little Walter biography:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtZDbiCEfnMShe's 19 Years Old bootleg recording with Sam Lay from 1967:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9-pYoSCcHcLittle Walter's induction into Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyYk_PlnnUoPodcast website:https://www.harmonicahappyhour.comDonations:If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GBor sign-up to a monthly subscription to the podcast:https://www.buzzsprout.com/995536/supportSpotify Playlist:https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQPodcast sponsors:This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com or on Facebook or InstagramSupport the show
Hello everyone! Billy Amendola here, and my show today is one of my “Billy's Bubble” segments, featuring Marshall Chess, the son of Chess Records founder Leonard Chess. Chess, a Polish/Jewish immigrant, and his brother Phil created what many describe as “America's Greatest Blues label.” You've heard of Willie Dixon, Howlin Wolf, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, and other legendary blues musicians from The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and The Beatles. They all were pioneers on the legendary label. My guest, Marshal Chess, now 81 years young, grew up in the studio and became vice-president in 1969 before going on to become president of GRT, and then creating Rolling Stones Records, and becoming executive producer of The Rolling Stones albums “Sticky Fingers” and “Exile on Main Street. Also featured on the show is Marshal's long-time collaborator, producer/drummer/engineer Keith Leblanc. The two met at SugarHill Records and have worked together since. They now have a new record, “The Chess Project,” featuring seasoned players and singers who reinterpret Chess gems from Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Memphis Slim, Little Walter, and Sonny Boy Williamson. The album is titled “New Moves.” Keith, both an acoustic drummer and a pioneer in programming and playing drum machines and electronic loops, became known with his band Tackhead, who were successful in Europe, where Keith lived for a few years. His solo record, “No Sell Out,” is one of the first sample-based releases. Keith kick-started his career at SugarHill Records and later Tommy Boy Records, two of the most successful labels in hip-hop and dance music. In the '90s, Keith worked in the studio with producer Trevor Horn in the UK, programming, and playing drums with Annie Lennox, Tina Turner, and Seal's first album, among others. Let's dive into this historical career with two pioneers in our industry and welcome Marshal & Keith to Drum Channel. Enjoy!
This week on the show, Transmissions host Jason P. Woodbury joins Penelope Spheeris, director of The Decline of Western Civilization trilogy, The Beverly Hillbillies, Little Rascals, Suburbia, and Wayne's World. Spheeris is the host of Peter and the Acid King, a true crime podcast set in the Los Angeles punk scene of the early ‘80s concerning the unsolved murder of Peter Ivers. A pop culture wunderkind, Ivers was many things at once: an all-star harmonica player who played alongside Little Walter, a pal of Van Dyke Parks who opened for Fleetwood Mac, and a songwriter who wrote music for David Lynch's Eraserhead and artists like Diana Ross and The Pointer Sisters. In the early '80s, he found found notoriety as host of New Wave Theatre, which showcased Bad Religion, Circle Jerks, 45 Grave and the Angry Samoans. Peter and the Acid King explores that epochal cultural era and its violent end. Working with investigator and co-creator Alan Sacks, Spheeris narrates with 10-part series, which is just about to finish its run, with world weary charm and sly understatement, as well as her signature attitude. If you dig our show and want to support the work we do at Aquarium Drunkard, pledge your support on Patreon and help keep the servers humming. Transmissions is a part of the Talkhouse Podcast Network. Visit the Talkhouse for more interviews, fascinating reads, and podcasts. Next week on Transmissions? Matt Werth of RVNG joins us to discuss the music of Pauline Anna Strom.
In this episode we welcome acclaimed novelist Michel Faber to RBP's Hammersmith HQ and ask him about his new book ... as well as about a 1979 interview he did with the young Nick Cave. Barney gets the ball rolling by asking the author of Under the Skin and The Crimson Petal and the White what he set out to do with Listen: On Music, Sound and Us. Viewing music through a variety of prisms — from nostalgia and snobbery to racial bias and auditory biology — was the book at least partly an exercise in demystification? A stimulating conversation unfolds as Michel answers questions about "MOJO-fication", vinyl fetishisation, and live performance. A tangent on tinnitus takes us to his memories of seeing (and hearing) one of the Birthday Party's last shows... and waking up temporarily deaf the next morning. Which in turn leads to discussion of the interview our guest did as a student at Melbourne University with the pre-Birthday Party Boys Next Door, and then to clips from a 1995 audio interview in which Nick Cave answers Andy Gill's questions about Murder Ballads and Kylie Minogue. Finally the "panel" considers the week's featured artist (and a key influence on the early Birthday Party): the archetypal "MOJO-fied" cult hero who traded musically under the moniker Captain Beefheart — and whose exceptional paintings as Don Van Vliet feature in a new exhibition at Mayfair's Michael Werner Gallery. After Mark quotes from recently-added library pieces on Little Walter, Sylvester, Ornette Coleman and Björk, Jasper wraps up the episode with his thoughts on articles about the aforementioned Kylie Minogue, Goodie Mob and The Face. Many thanks to special guest Michel Faber. Listen: On Music, Sound and Us is published by Canongate and available now from all good bookshops Pieces discussed: 'Revolution 9', David Byrne's How Music Works, Nick Cave: A Boy Next Door, Nick Cave audio, People talk about BEEFHEART!, Captain Beefheart, Don Van Vliet, Little Walter, Joni Mitchell, Iggy & the Stooges, Ornette Coleman, Björk, Phil Everly, Sylvester, McAlmont & Butler, Kylie Minogue, Goodie Mob and The Face.
"Artivist is a combination of Artist and Activism. I write about Bayard Rustin who was basically the right hand of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for many years. He was a gay Quaker from Pennsylvania and a black man, and there were a lot of issues with him working with Dr. King. Bayard was able to get all of the celebrities and everybody who wanted to support him at the March in Washington and made a lot of amazing changes. His art, his creativity, and in combination with the activism is what got the name Artivist. " Carla Debbie Alleyne is a playwright, screenwriter, and director who received her B.F.A. and M.F.A. in Film and Television and Dramatic Writing from New York University. Carla's play Hey, Little Walter was produced Off-Broadway at Playwright's Horizon as part of the Young Playwrights Festival when she was 16 years old.
Jay Stulo isn't just one of the most talented blues guitarists you'll hear today, he's also a student of the genre. One of the reasons Jay is able to play with the passion and heart that he does goes back to learning the history of the blues and a plethora of its most storied players. It becomes an understanding of the foundations of blues music and its traditions (Delta, Chicago, Texas, British, etc.). Whether any number of guitarists (T-bone Walker to Jeff Beck to Derek Trucks) or other instrumentalists (harmonica players like Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter, and Paul Butterfield), the rich traditions of the blues continue to grow and flourish. Join us as we take a deep dive into the blues and even take in a couple tracks by Jay."Red Dress Boogie" and "Watching You" written and performed by Jay Stulo℗ 2020 Jay Stulo. Used with permission of Jay Stulo.(Photo by Jennifer Stulo Photography)Support the showSupport the show: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/intothemusic E-mail us at intothemusic@newprojectx.com YouTube Facebook Instagram INTO THE MUSIC is a production of Project X Productions, Appleton, WI.Producer: Rob MarnochaRecording, engineering, and post production: Rob MarnochaOpening theme: "Aerostar" by Los Straitjackets* (℗2013 Yep Roc Records)Closing theme: "Close to Champaign" by Los Straitjackets* (℗1999 Yep Roc Records)*Used with permission of Eddie AngelThis podcast copyright ©2024 by Project X Productions. All rights reserved.
Today's show features music performed by Johnny Shines and Little Walter
The Song That Changed My Life is a segment that gives us the chance to talk with some of our favorite artists about the music that made them who they are today. This time around, we're joined by a blues great – Bobby Rush. When he got his start, he played with other greats like Jimmy Reed, Buddy Guy and Howlin' Wolf. The song that changed his life was recorded by another close friend of his – Little Walter. The song? My Babe. Bobby's latest record All My Love For You is out now.
Tu garito subterráneo favorito abre puertas otro viernes de verano para ofrecerte una sesión quitapenas sin interrupciones. Cocinamos un menú de boppin’ rhythm and blues que te ayudará a desentumecer huesos y articulaciones. A disfrutar. (Foto del podcast; Slim Harpo) Playlist; (sintonía) IKE TURNER and THE KINGS OF RHYTHM “Potatoe mash” MEMPHIS SLIM “We’re gonna rock” FRANKIE LEE SIMS “Hey Little girl” COUSIN LEROY “I’m lonesome” HARMONICA FATS “Tore up” CHAMPION JACK DUPREE “Nasty boogie” JEANNIE BARNES “Can’t get you out of my mind” WILD JIMMY SPRUILL “Country boy” TOMMY LOUIS “I love you so” JAMES BROWN “Choonie-on-chon” EMMETT DAVIS “I’m talking about you baby” JOHN LEE HOOKER “No more doggin’” ETTA JAMES “Nobody loves you like me” LITTLE WALTER “Diggin’ my potatoes” JIMMY ANDERSON “I wanna boogie” WILLIE KING with IKE TURNER BAND “Peg leg woman” FRANKIE LEE SIMS “She likes to boogie real low” SLIM HARPO “Shake your hips” JAY SWAN “You don’t love me” ROSE MITCHELL “Baby please don’t go” BUNKER HILL “You can’t make me doubt my baby” LITTLE ESTHER “Hound dog” HAL PAGE and THE WHALERS “Thunderbird” SONNY BOY WILLIAMSON “Polly put your kettle” Escuchar audio
Efectivamente, pizarristas, esta noche les vamos a dar un festín con los suculentos números que hemos preparado. Aparte del citado título de los Prairie Ramblers, también tendremos a The Tiger haciendo "Money is King", Little Walter con "It Ain't Right" y "Lo-do-de-o" de Harry Reser's Six Jumping Jacks. A partir de las 23.00 horas en la sintonía de Radio 3 Escuchar audio
#ukblues #bluesharmonica #bluespiano #petergreen #fleetwoodmac Mark and Bob hanging out at Bob's house in Sheffield, England telling stories about the famous and infamous in UK music. Founder&member of several British blues bands including The Groundhogs, Tramp, The Sunflower Blues Band and The De Luxe Blues Band, Hall has worked and recorded with artists such as Peter Green, Danny Kirwan and Mick Fleetwood, of Fleetwood Mac, and is also a long serving member of Savoy Brown, and guests with The Blues Band, featuring Paul Jones, Dave Kelly and Tom McGuinness. Hall was also a founder-member, with Ian Stewart, of the Boogie Woogie Big Band which later became Rocket 88, and which included Hal Singer, Don Weller and Dick Morrissey, Charlie Watts, Alexis Korner, and Jack Bruce. Bob has accompanied: John Lee Hooker, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Jimmy Witherspoon, Chuck Berry, Homesick James, Lightnin' Slim, Lowell Fulsom, Charlie Musselwhite, Snooky Pryor, J. B. Hutto, Lazy Lester, Dave Peabody, Baby Boy Warren, Eddie "Guitar" Burns, Eddie Taylor, Big John Wrencher, Mickey Baker, and Eddy Clearwater. Mark Hummel Patreon Accidental Productions https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOOnWFbj8SGiV34ixhO0Cwg
Pink Floyd would score another big hit and some mainstream crossover success with their eleventh studio album, The Wall. Originally conceived by bassist Roger Waters, The Wall explores the self-isolation of a cynical rock star named Pink, and portrays events in his life from the loss of his father, to childhood trauma, to the pressures of rock stardom as bricks forming the wall. Parts of the story are autobiographical from Waters, and parts naturally are based on former front man Syd Barrett. The album was a commercial success, the most successful double album of all time, the second most popular Pink Floyd album behind their monstrous hit "Dark Side of the Moon," and would produce the groups only number 1 single on the charts with "Another Brick in the Wall, part 2." Critical reviews were mixed at first, with some considering the rock opera to be pretentious, but the reviews would turn more positive over time.This would be the last album to feature the classic band lineup. Richard Wright would be fired by Roger Waters during production, though he would stay on as a studio musician for the album. One further studio album would be produced before acrimony would lead to Waters departure from the band.What the Riff co-founder Brian Dickhute brings us this album for today's podcast. Brian is also using this as a swan song of sorts as he takes a break from regular podcasting duties to spend more time with the family. Thanks so much for all your work over these hundreds of podcasts, Brian! Hey YouThis well-known track leads off side three of the album and reflects the desperation as Pink realizes how the wall of isolation he has built has trapped him in a cell of his own creation. The inspiration for this song was the breakup of Waters' marriage.Is There Anybody Out There?In the film this song is used to transition from Pink the rock star to Pink the dictator. Session musician Joe DiBlasi was brought in to play the fingerstyle guitar on this piece.Nobody's HomeThe last song written for the album was the result of a fight between Roger Waters and David Gilmour. It was inspired by the isolation Waters felt during their 1977 tour and musings on Syd Barrett. Some of the lyrics are also built around Richard Wright, keyboardist, who was allegedly dealing with drug addiction at the time.VeraThis song is a flashback to days of World War II. The title was inspired by Vera Lynn, a British singer popular during the war who sang the song "We'll Meet Again." Waters lost his grandfather in WWI and his father in WWII.Bring the Boys Back HomeRoger Waters considers this brief song the central theme of the album. The idea is that not just war, but all activity including business and rock music should not be allowed to isolate a person from friends and family. Comfortably NumbOne of the more popular songs from the album, the music was written by David Gilmour and the lyrics by Roger Waters. A significant argument occurred between Gilmour and Waters on the arrangement of this piece, with Gilmour preferring a stripped-down format and Watters wanting a more symphonic approach. The contrasting sections of orchestration and more simplistic riffs is the result of the compromise made for the piece. ENTERTAINMENT TRACK:Frosty the Snowman by Jimmy Durante No, it isn't Christmas again. Popular entertainer Jimmy Durante passed away in January of 1980, and his is one of his best known songs. STAFF PICKS:The Spirit of Radio by Rush Bruce sneaks another Rush song in for Brian's final episode as a regular podcaster. The lead-off track to Rush's album "Permanent Waves" was inspired by the slogan of CFNY-FM in Toronto. FM radio was moving from a more free-form format to a more commercial format, and CFNY was bucking the trend. Damned If I Do by the Alan Parsons ProjectRob brings us a piece from Alan Parsons' fourth studio album called "Eve." The album is focused on the strength and characteristics of women and the difficulties they face in a world of men. "Damned if I do, damned if I don't, but I love you."Boom Boom (Out Go the Lights) by Pat Travers Wayne's staff pick is a boogie woogie cover of a blues song originally released by Little Walter in 1957. It is a well known party song which would not be politically correct today. There's some great guitar playing, and an excellent call-and-response in the live version. Ladies Night by Kool & The GangBrian's staff pick was a popular song in the dying days of disco. This song would see a revitalization of Kool & the Gang's popularity going into the early 80's. INSTRUMENTAL TRACK:Pipeline '76 by Roger PowellIt is unusual to find surfing instrumentals during the early 80's, but this one was around at the time.
Drive-by Truckers "Dragon Pants"Fleetwood Mac "Like It This Way"Fats Domino "The Big Beat"Aerial M "Wedding Song No.2"Valerie June "You And I"Hound Dog Taylor & The HouseRockers "Give Me Back My Wig (Live)"AC/DC "Let There Be Rock"John Fahey "Uncloudy Day"Adia Victoria "Stuck In The South"Andrew Bird "Underlands"Elizabeth Cotten "Going Down the Road Feeling Bad"Craig Finn "God in Chicago"Ian Noe "Strip Job Blues 1984"Esther Phillips "Tonight I'll Be Staying Here with You"R.L. Burnside "Miss Maybelle"Hank Williams "I'm Sorry for You My Friend"Joan Shelley "Amberlit Morning (feat. Bill Callahan)"John R. Miller "Lookin' Over My Shoulder"Max Roach "Garvey's Ghost (feat. Carlos "Patato" Valdes & Carlos "Totico" Eugenio)"Ranie Burnette "Hungry Spell"Nina Nastasia "This Is Love"Thurston Harris "I Got Loaded (In Smokey Joe's Joint)"Folk Implosion "Sputnik's Down"Slim Harpo "I'm a King Bee"Wipers "Youth of America"The Scotty McKay Quintet "The Train Kept a-Rollin'"Mississippi John Hurt "Sliding Delta"Magnolia Electric Co. "Montgomery"Dr. John "Memories of Professor Longhair"Billie McKenzie "I'd Rather Drink Muddy Water"Little Walter "Juke"Elvis Presley "Trying to Get to You"Billie Jo Spears "Get Behind Me Satan And Push"Ray Charles "Georgia On My Mind"Freddy King "Hide Away"Furry Lewis "Old Blue"Billie Holiday "What a Little Moonlight Can Do"Bob Dylan "One More Cup of Coffee"The Primitives "How Do Yu Feel"Ramones "Blitzkrieg Bop"Ruth Brown "Lucky Lips"Bonnie 'Prince' Billy "A Minor Place"Pearl Bailey "Frankie and Johnnie"fIREHOSE "In Memory Of Elizabeth Cotton"James Booker "On The Sunny Side Of The Street"Ray Price "The Same Old Me"Mississippi Fred McDowell "My Babe"The Replacements "Here Comes a Regular"
Episode 159 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Itchycoo Park” by the Small Faces, and their transition from Mod to psychedelia. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-five-minute bonus episode available, on "The First Cut is the Deepest" by P.P. Arnold. 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 so many of the episodes recently have had no Mixcloud due to the number of songs by one artist, I've decided to start splitting the mixes of the recordings excerpted in the podcasts into two parts. Here's part one and part two. I've used quite a few books in this episode. The Small Faces & Other Stories by Uli Twelker and Roland Schmit is definitely a fan-work with all that that implies, but has some useful quotes. Two books claim to be the authorised biography of Steve Marriott, and I've referred to both -- All Too Beautiful by Paolo Hewitt and John Hellier, and All Or Nothing by Simon Spence. Spence also wrote an excellent book on Immediate Records, which I referred to. Kenney Jones and Ian McLagan both wrote very readable autobiographies. I've also used Andrew Loog Oldham's autobiography Stoned, co-written by Spence, though be warned that it casually uses slurs. P.P. Arnold's autobiography is a sometimes distressing read covering her whole life, including her time at Immediate. There are many, many, collections of the Small Faces' work, ranging from cheap budget CDs full of outtakes to hundred-pound-plus box sets, also full of outtakes. This three-CD budget collection contains all the essential tracks, and is endorsed by Kenney Jones, the band's one surviving member. And if you're intrigued by the section on Immediate Records, this two-CD set contains a good selection of their releases. ERRATUM-ISH: I say Jimmy Winston was “a couple” of years older than the rest of the band. This does not mean exactly two, but is used in the vague vernacular sense equivalent to “a few”. Different sources I've seen put Winston as either two or four years older than his bandmates, though two seems to be the most commonly cited figure. Transcript For once there is little to warn about in this episode, but it does contain some mild discussions of organised crime, arson, and mental illness, and a quoted joke about capital punishment in questionable taste which may upset some. One name that came up time and again when we looked at the very early years of British rock and roll was Lionel Bart. If you don't remember the name, he was a left-wing Bohemian songwriter who lived in a communal house-share which at various times was also inhabited by people like Shirley Eaton, the woman who is painted gold at the beginning of Goldfinger, Mike Pratt, the star of Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), and Davey Graham, the most influential and innovative British guitarist of the fifties and early sixties. Bart and Pratt had co-written most of the hits of Britain's first real rock and roll star, Tommy Steele: [Excerpt: Tommy Steele, "Rock with the Caveman"] and then Bart had gone solo as a writer, and written hits like "Living Doll" for Britain's *biggest* rock and roll star, Cliff Richard: [Excerpt: Cliff Richard, "Living Doll"] But Bart's biggest contribution to rock music turned out not to be the songs he wrote for rock and roll stars, and not even his talent-spotting -- it was Bart who got Steele signed by Larry Parnes, and he also pointed Parnes in the direction of another of his biggest stars, Marty Wilde -- but the opportunity he gave to a lot of child stars in a very non-rock context. Bart's musical Oliver!, inspired by the novel Oliver Twist, was the biggest sensation on the West End stage in the early 1960s, breaking records for the longest-running musical, and also transferred to Broadway and later became an extremely successful film. As it happened, while Oliver! was extraordinarily lucrative, Bart didn't see much of the money from it -- he sold the rights to it, and his other musicals, to the comedian Max Bygraves in the mid-sixties for a tiny sum in order to finance a couple of other musicals, which then flopped horribly and bankrupted him. But by that time Oliver! had already been the first big break for three people who went on to major careers in music -- all of them playing the same role. Because many of the major roles in Oliver! were for young boys, the cast had to change frequently -- child labour laws meant that multiple kids had to play the same role in different performances, and people quickly grew out of the roles as teenagerhood hit. We've already heard about the career of one of the people who played the Artful Dodger in the original West End production -- Davy Jones, who transferred in the role to Broadway in 1963, and who we'll be seeing again in a few episodes' time -- and it's very likely that another of the people who played the Artful Dodger in that production, a young lad called Philip Collins, will be coming into the story in a few years' time. But the first of the artists to use the Artful Dodger as a springboard to a music career was the one who appeared in the role on the original cast album of 1960, though there's very little in that recording to suggest the sound of his later records: [Excerpt: Steve Marriott, "Consider Yourself"] Steve Marriott is the second little Stevie we've looked at in recent episodes to have been born prematurely. In his case, he was born a month premature, and jaundiced, and had to spend the first month of his life in hospital, the first few days of which were spent unsure if he was going to survive. Thankfully he did, but he was a bit of a sickly child as a result, and remained stick-thin and short into adulthood -- he never grew to be taller than five foot five. Young Steve loved music, and especially the music of Buddy Holly. He also loved skiffle, and managed to find out where Lonnie Donegan lived. He went round and knocked on Donegan's door, but was very disappointed to discover that his idol was just a normal man, with his hair uncombed and a shirt stained with egg yolk. He started playing the ukulele when he was ten, and graduated to guitar when he was twelve, forming a band which performed under a variety of different names. When on stage with them, he would go by the stage name Buddy Marriott, and would wear a pair of horn-rimmed glasses to look more like Buddy Holly. When he was twelve, his mother took him to an audition for Oliver! The show had been running for three months at the time, and was likely to run longer, and child labour laws meant that they had to have replacements for some of the cast -- every three months, any performing child had to have at least ten days off. At his audition, Steve played his guitar and sang "Who's Sorry Now?", the recent Connie Francis hit: [Excerpt: Connie Francis, "Who's Sorry Now?"] And then, ignoring the rule that performers could only do one song, immediately launched into Buddy Holly's "Oh Boy!" [Excerpt: Buddy Holly, "Oh Boy!"] His musical ability and attitude impressed the show's producers, and he was given a job which suited him perfectly -- rather than being cast in a single role, he would be swapped around, playing different small parts, in the chorus, and occasionally taking the larger role of the Artful Dodger. Steve Marriott was never able to do the same thing over and over, and got bored very quickly, but because he was moving between roles, he was able to keep interested in his performances for almost a year, and he was good enough that it was him chosen to sing the Dodger's role on the cast album when that was recorded: [Excerpt: Steve Marriott and Joyce Blair, "I'd Do Anything"] And he enjoyed performance enough that his parents pushed him to become an actor -- though there were other reasons for that, too. He was never the best-behaved child in the world, nor the most attentive student, and things came to a head when, shortly after leaving the Oliver! cast, he got so bored of his art classes he devised a plan to get out of them forever. Every art class, for several weeks, he'd sit in a different desk at the back of the classroom and stuff torn-up bits of paper under the floorboards. After a couple of months of this he then dropped a lit match in, which set fire to the paper and ended up burning down half the school. His schoolfriend Ken Hawes talked about it many decades later, saying "I suppose in a way I was impressed about how he had meticulously planned the whole thing months in advance, the sheer dogged determination to see it through. He could quite easily have been caught and would have had to face the consequences. There was no danger in anybody getting hurt because we were at the back of the room. We had to be at the back otherwise somebody would have noticed what he was doing. There was no malice against other pupils, he just wanted to burn the damn school down." Nobody could prove it was him who had done it, though his parents at least had a pretty good idea who it was, but it was clear that even when the school was rebuilt it wasn't a good idea to send him back there, so they sent him to the Italia Conti Drama School; the same school that Anthony Newley and Petula Clark, among many others, had attended. Marriott's parents couldn't afford the school's fees, but Marriott was so talented that the school waived the fees -- they said they'd get him work, and take a cut of his wages in lieu of the fees. And over the next few years they did get him a lot of work. Much of that work was for TV shows, which like almost all TV of the time no longer exist -- he was in an episode of the Sid James sitcom Citizen James, an episode of Mr. Pastry's Progress, an episode of the police drama Dixon of Dock Green, and an episode of a series based on the Just William books, none of which survive. He also did a voiceover for a carpet cleaner ad, appeared on the radio soap opera Mrs Dale's Diary playing a pop star, and had a regular spot reading listeners' letters out for the agony aunt Marje Proops on her radio show. Almost all of this early acting work wa s utterly ephemeral, but there are a handful of his performances that do survive, mostly in films. He has a small role in the comedy film Heavens Above!, a mistaken-identity comedy in which a radical left-wing priest played by Peter Sellers is given a parish intended for a more conservative priest of the same name, and upsets the well-off people of the parish by taking in a large family of travellers and appointing a Black man as his churchwarden. The film has some dated attitudes, in the way that things that were trying to be progressive and antiracist sixty years ago invariably do, but has a sparkling cast, with Sellers, Eric Sykes, William Hartnell, Brock Peters, Roy Kinnear, Irene Handl, and many more extremely recognisable faces from the period: [Excerpt: Heavens Above!] Marriott apparently enjoyed working on the film immensely, as he was a fan of the Goon Show, which Sellers had starred in and which Sykes had co-written several episodes of. There are reports of Marriott and Sellers jamming together on banjos during breaks in filming, though these are probably *slightly* inaccurate -- Sellers played the banjolele, a banjo-style instrument which is played like a ukulele. As Marriott had started on ukulele before switching to guitar, it was probably these they were playing, rather than banjoes. He also appeared in a more substantial role in a film called Live It Up!, a pop exploitation film starring David Hemmings in which he appears as a member of a pop group. Oddly, Marriott plays a drummer, even though he wasn't a drummer, while two people who *would* find fame as drummers, Mitch Mitchell and Dave Clark, appear in smaller, non-drumming, roles. He doesn't perform on the soundtrack, which is produced by Joe Meek and features Sounds Incorporated, The Outlaws, and Gene Vincent, but he does mime playing behind Heinz Burt, the former bass player of the Tornadoes who was then trying for solo stardom at Meek's instigation: [Excerpt: Heinz Burt, "Don't You Understand"] That film was successful enough that two years later, in 1965 Marriott came back for a sequel, Be My Guest, with The Niteshades, the Nashville Teens, and Jerry Lee Lewis, this time with music produced by Shel Talmy rather than Meek. But that was something of a one-off. After making Live It Up!, Marriott had largely retired from acting, because he was trying to become a pop star. The break finally came when he got an audition at the National Theatre, for a job touring with Laurence Olivier for a year. He came home and told his parents he hadn't got the job, but then a week later they were bemused by a phone call asking why Steve hadn't turned up for rehearsals. He *had* got the job, but he'd decided he couldn't face a year of doing the same thing over and over, and had pretended he hadn't. By this time he'd already released his first record. The work on Oliver! had got him a contract with Decca Records, and he'd recorded a Buddy Holly knock-off, "Give Her My Regards", written for him by Kenny Lynch, the actor, pop star, and all-round entertainer: [Excerpt: Steve Marriott, "Give Her My Regards"] That record wasn't a hit, but Marriott wasn't put off. He formed a band who were at first called the Moonlights, and then the Frantiks, and they got a management deal with Tony Calder, Andrew Oldham's junior partner in his management company. Calder got former Shadow Tony Meehan to produce a demo for the group, a version of Cliff Richard's hit "Move It", which was shopped round the record labels with no success (and which sadly appears no longer to survive). The group also did some recordings with Joe Meek, which also don't circulate, but which may exist in the famous "Teachest Tapes" which are slowly being prepared for archival releases. The group changed their name to the Moments, and added in the guitarist John Weider, who was one of those people who seem to have been in every band ever either just before or just after they became famous -- at various times he was in Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Family, Eric Burdon and the Animals, and the band that became Crabby Appleton, but never in their most successful lineups. They continued recording unsuccessful demos, of which a small number have turned up: [Excerpt: Steve Marriott and the Moments, "Good Morning Blues"] One of their demo sessions was produced by Andrew Oldham, and while that session didn't lead to a release, it did lead to Oldham booking Marriott as a session harmonica player for one of his "Andrew Oldham Orchestra" sessions, to play on a track titled "365 Rolling Stones (One For Every Day of the Year)": [Excerpt: The Andrew Oldham Orchestra, "365 Rolling Stones (One For Every Day of the Year)"] Oldham also produced a session for what was meant to be Marriott's second solo single on Decca, a cover version of the Rolling Stones' "Tell Me", which was actually scheduled for release but pulled at the last minute. Like many of Marriott's recordings from this period, if it exists, it doesn't seem to circulate publicly. But despite their lack of recording success, the Moments did manage to have a surprising level of success on the live circuit. Because they were signed to Calder and Oldham's management company, they got a contract with the Arthur Howes booking agency, which got them support slots on package tours with Billy J Kramer, Freddie and the Dreamers, the Kinks, and other major acts, and the band members were earning about thirty pounds a week each -- a very, very good living for the time. They even had a fanzine devoted to them, written by a fan named Stuart Tuck. But as they weren't making records, the band's lineup started changing, with members coming and going. They did manage to get one record released -- a soundalike version of the Kinks' "You Really Got Me", recorded for a budget label who rushed it out, hoping to get it picked up in the US and for it to be the hit version there: [Excerpt: The Moments, "You Really Got Me"] But the month after that was released, Marriott was sacked from the band, apparently in part because the band were starting to get billed as Steve Marriott and the Moments rather than just The Moments, and the rest of them didn't want to be anyone's backing band. He got a job at a music shop while looking around for other bands to perform with. At one point around this time he was going to form a duo with a friend of his, Davy Jones -- not the one who had also appeared in Oliver!, but another singer of the same name. This one sang with a blues band called the Mannish Boys, and both men were well known on the Mod scene in London. Marriott's idea was that they call themselves David and Goliath, with Jones being David, and Marriott being Goliath because he was only five foot five. That could have been a great band, but it never got past the idea stage. Marriott had become friendly with another part-time musician and shop worker called Ronnie Lane, who was in a band called the Outcasts who played the same circuit as the Moments: [Excerpt: The Outcasts, "Before You Accuse Me"] Lane worked in a sound equipment shop and Marriott in a musical instrument shop, and both were customers of the other as well as friends -- at least until Marriott came into the shop where Lane worked and tried to persuade him to let Marriott have a free PA system. Lane pretended to go along with it as a joke, and got sacked. Lane had then gone to the shop where Marriott worked in the hope that Marriott would give him a good deal on a guitar because he'd been sacked because of Marriott. Instead, Marriott persuaded him that he should switch to bass, on the grounds that everyone was playing guitar since the Beatles had come along, but a bass player would always be able to find work. Lane bought the bass. Shortly after that, Marriott came to an Outcasts gig in a pub, and was asked to sit in. He enjoyed playing with Lane and the group's drummer Kenney Jones, but got so drunk he smashed up the pub's piano while playing a Jerry Lee Lewis song. The resulting fallout led to the group being barred from the pub and splitting up, so Marriott, Lane, and Jones decided to form their own group. They got in another guitarist Marriott knew, a man named Jimmy Winston who was a couple of years older than them, and who had two advantages -- he was a known Face on the mod scene, with a higher status than any of the other three, and his brother owned a van and would drive the group and their equipment for ten percent of their earnings. There was a slight problem in that Winston was also as good on guitar as Marriott and looked like he might want to be the star, but Marriott neutralised that threat -- he moved Winston over to keyboards. The fact that Winston couldn't play keyboards didn't matter -- he could be taught a couple of riffs and licks, and he was sure to pick up the rest. And this way the group had the same lineup as one of Marriott's current favourites, Booker T and the MGs. While he was still a Buddy Holly fan, he was now, like the rest of the Mods, an R&B obsessive. Marriott wasn't entirely sure that this new group would be the one that would make him a star though, and was still looking for other alternatives in case it didn't play out. He auditioned for another band, the Lower Third, which counted Stuart Tuck, the writer of the Moments fanzine, among its members. But he was unsuccessful in the audition -- instead his friend Davy Jones, the one who he'd been thinking of forming a duo with, got the job: [Excerpt: Davy Jones and the Lower Third, "You've Got a Habit of Leaving"] A few months after that, Davy Jones and the Lower Third changed their name to David Bowie and the Lower Third, and we'll be picking up that story in a little over a year from now... Marriott, Lane, Jones, and Winston kept rehearsing and pulled together a five-song set, which was just about long enough to play a few shows, if they extended the songs with long jamming instrumental sections. The opening song for these early sets was one which, when they recorded it, would be credited to Marriott and Lane -- the two had struck up a writing partnership and agreed to a Lennon/McCartney style credit split, though in these early days Marriott was doing far more of the writing than Lane was. But "You Need Loving" was... heavily inspired... by "You Need Love", a song Willie Dixon had written for Muddy Waters: [Excerpt: Muddy Waters, "You Need Love"] It's not precisely the same song, but you can definitely hear the influence in the Marriott/Lane song: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "You Need Loving"] They did make some changes though, notably to the end of the song: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "You Need Loving"] You will be unsurprised to learn that Robert Plant was a fan of Steve Marriott. The new group were initially without a name, until after one of their first gigs, Winston's girlfriend, who hadn't met the other three before, said "You've all got such small faces!" The name stuck, because it had a double meaning -- as we've seen in the episode on "My Generation", "Face" was Mod slang for someone who was cool and respected on the Mod scene, but also, with the exception of Winston, who was average size, the other three members of the group were very short -- the tallest of the three was Ronnie Lane, who was five foot six. One thing I should note about the group's name, by the way -- on all the labels of their records in the UK while they were together, they were credited as "Small Faces", with no "The" in front, but all the band members referred to the group in interviews as "The Small Faces", and they've been credited that way on some reissues and foreign-market records. The group's official website is thesmallfaces.com but all the posts on the website refer to them as "Small Faces" with no "the". The use of the word "the" or not at the start of a group's name at this time was something of a shibboleth -- for example both The Buffalo Springfield and The Pink Floyd dropped theirs after their early records -- and its status in this case is a strange one. I'll be referring to the group throughout as "The Small Faces" rather than "Small Faces" because the former is easier to say, but both seem accurate. After a few pub gigs in London, they got some bookings in the North of England, where they got a mixed reception -- they went down well at Peter Stringfellow's Mojo Club in Sheffield, where Joe Cocker was a regular performer, less well at a working-man's club, and reports differ about their performance at the Twisted Wheel in Manchester, though one thing everyone is agreed on is that while they were performing, some Mancunians borrowed their van and used it to rob a clothing warehouse, and gave the band members some very nice leather coats as a reward for their loan of the van. It was only on the group's return to London that they really started to gel as a unit. In particular, Kenney Jones had up to that point been a very stiff, precise, drummer, but he suddenly loosened up and, in Steve Marriott's tasteless phrase, "Every number swung like Hanratty" (James Hanratty was one of the last people in Britain to be executed by hanging). Shortly after that, Don Arden's secretary -- whose name I haven't been able to find in any of the sources I've used for this episode, sadly, came into the club where they were rehearsing, the Starlight Rooms, to pass a message from Arden to an associate of his who owned the club. The secretary had seen Marriott perform before -- he would occasionally get up on stage at the Starlight Rooms to duet with Elkie Brooks, who was a regular performer there, and she'd seen him do that -- but was newly impressed by his group, and passed word on to her boss that this was a group he should investigate. Arden is someone who we'll be looking at a lot in future episodes, but the important thing to note right now is that he was a failed entertainer who had moved into management and promotion, first with American acts like Gene Vincent, and then with British acts like the Nashville Teens, who had had hits with tracks like "Tobacco Road": [Excerpt: The Nashville Teens, "Tobacco Road"] Arden was also something of a gangster -- as many people in the music industry were at the time, but he was worse than most of his contemporaries, and delighted in his nickname "the Al Capone of pop". The group had a few managers looking to sign them, but Arden convinced them with his offer. They would get a percentage of their earnings -- though they never actually received that percentage -- twenty pounds a week in wages, and, the most tempting part of it all, they would get expense accounts at all the Carnaby St boutiques and could go there whenever they wanted and get whatever they wanted. They signed with Arden, which all of them except Marriott would later regret, because Arden's financial exploitation meant that it would be decades before they saw any money from their hits, and indeed both Marriott and Lane would be dead before they started getting royalties from their old records. Marriott, on the other hand, had enough experience of the industry to credit Arden with the group getting anywhere at all, and said later "Look, you go into it with your eyes open and as far as I was concerned it was better than living on brown sauce rolls. At least we had twenty quid a week guaranteed." Arden got the group signed to Decca, with Dick Rowe signing them to the same kind of production deal that Andrew Oldham had pioneered with the Stones, so that Arden would own the rights to their recordings. At this point the group still only knew a handful of songs, but Rowe was signing almost everyone with a guitar at this point, putting out a record or two and letting them sink or swim. He had already been firmly labelled as "the man who turned down the Beatles", and was now of the opinion that it was better to give everyone a chance than to make that kind of expensive mistake again. By this point Marriott and Lane were starting to write songs together -- though at this point it was still mostly Marriott writing, and people would ask him why he was giving Lane half the credit, and he'd reply "Without Ronnie's help keeping me awake and being there I wouldn't do half of it. He keeps me going." -- but for their first single Arden was unsure that they were up to the task of writing a hit. The group had been performing a version of Solomon Burke's "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love", a song which Burke always claimed to have written alone, but which is credited to him, Jerry Wexler, and Bert Berns (and has Bern's fingerprints, at least, on it to my ears): [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love"] Arden got some professional writers to write new lyrics and vocal melody to their arrangement of the song -- the people he hired were Brian Potter, who would later go on to co-write "Rhinestone Cowboy", and Ian Samwell, the former member of Cliff Richard's Drifters who had written many of Richard's early hits, including "Move It", and was now working for Arden. The group went into the studio and recorded the song, titled "Whatcha Gonna Do About It?": [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "Whatcha Gonna Do About It?"] That version, though was deemed too raucous, and they had to go back into the studio to cut a new version, which came out as their first single: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "Whatcha Gonna Do About It?"] At first the single didn't do much on the charts, but then Arden got to work with teams of people buying copies from chart return shops, bribing DJs on pirate radio stations to play it, and bribing the person who compiled the charts for the NME. Eventually it made number fourteen, at which point it became a genuinely popular hit. But with that popularity came problems. In particular, Steve Marriott was starting to get seriously annoyed by Jimmy Winston. As the group started to get TV appearances, Winston started to act like he should be the centre of attention. Every time Marriott took a solo in front of TV cameras, Winston would start making stupid gestures, pulling faces, anything to make sure the cameras focussed on him rather than on Marriott. Which wouldn't have been too bad had Winston been a great musician, but he was still not very good on the keyboards, and unlike the others didn't seem particularly interested in trying. He seemed to want to be a star, rather than a musician. The group's next planned single was a Marriott and Lane song, "I've Got Mine". To promote it, the group mimed to it in a film, Dateline Diamonds, a combination pop film and crime caper not a million miles away from the ones that Marriott had appeared in a few years earlier. They also contributed three other songs to the film's soundtrack. Unfortunately, the film's release was delayed, and the film had been the big promotional push that Arden had planned for the single, and without that it didn't chart at all. By the time the single came out, though, Winston was no longer in the group. There are many, many different stories as to why he was kicked out. Depending on who you ask, it was because he was trying to take the spotlight away from Marriott, because he wasn't a good enough keyboard player, because he was taller than the others and looked out of place, or because he asked Don Arden where the money was. It was probably a combination of all of these, but fundamentally what it came to was that Winston just didn't fit into the group. Winston would, in later years, say that him confronting Arden was the only reason for his dismissal, saying that Arden had manipulated the others to get him out of the way, but that seems unlikely on the face of it. When Arden sacked him, he kept Winston on as a client and built another band around him, Jimmy Winston and the Reflections, and got them signed to Decca too, releasing a Kenny Lynch song, "Sorry She's Mine", to no success: [Excerpt: Jimmy Winston and the Reflections, "Sorry She's Mine"] Another version of that song would later be included on the first Small Faces album. Winston would then form another band, Winston's Fumbs, who would also release one single, before he went into acting instead. His most notable credit was as a rebel in the 1972 Doctor Who story Day of the Daleks, and he later retired from showbusiness to run a business renting out sound equipment, and died in 2020. The group hired his replacement without ever having met him or heard him play. Ian McLagan had started out as the rhythm guitarist in a Shadows soundalike band called the Cherokees, but the group had become R&B fans and renamed themselves the Muleskinners, and then after hearing "Green Onions", McLagan had switched to playing Hammond organ. The Muleskinners had played the same R&B circuit as dozens of other bands we've looked at, and had similar experiences, including backing visiting blues stars like Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter, and Howlin' Wolf. Their one single had been a cover version of "Back Door Man", a song Willie Dixon had written for Wolf: [Excerpt: The Muleskinners, "Back Door Man"] The Muleskinners had split up as most of the group had day jobs, and McLagan had gone on to join a group called Boz and the Boz People, who were becoming popular on the live circuit, and who also toured backing Kenny Lynch while McLagan was in the band. Boz and the Boz People would release several singles in 1966, like their version of the theme for the film "Carry on Screaming", released just as by "Boz": [Excerpt: Boz, "Carry on Screaming"] By that time, McLagan had left the group -- Boz Burrell later went on to join King Crimson and Bad Company. McLagan left the Boz People in something of a strop, and was complaining to a friend the night he left the group that he didn't have any work lined up. The friend joked that he should join the Small Faces, because he looked like them, and McLagan got annoyed that his friend wasn't taking him seriously -- he'd love to be in the Small Faces, but they *had* a keyboard player. The next day he got a phone call from Don Arden asking him to come to his office. He was being hired to join a hit pop group who needed a new keyboard player. McLagan at first wasn't allowed to tell anyone what band he was joining -- in part because Arden's secretary was dating Winston, and Winston hadn't yet been informed he was fired, and Arden didn't want word leaking out until it had been sorted. But he'd been chosen purely on the basis of an article in a music magazine which had praised his playing with the Boz People, and without the band knowing him or his playing. As soon as they met, though, he immediately fit in in a way Winston never had. He looked the part, right down to his height -- he said later "Ronnie Lane and I were the giants in the band at 5 ft 6 ins, and Kenney Jones and Steve Marriott were the really teeny tiny chaps at 5 ft 5 1/2 ins" -- and he was a great player, and shared a sense of humour with them. McLagan had told Arden he'd been earning twenty pounds a week with the Boz People -- he'd actually been on five -- and so Arden agreed to give him thirty pounds a week during his probationary month, which was more than the twenty the rest of the band were getting. As soon as his probationary period was over, McLagan insisted on getting a pay cut so he'd be on the same wages as the rest of the group. Soon Marriott, Lane, and McLagan were all living in a house rented for them by Arden -- Jones decided to stay living with his parents -- and were in the studio recording their next single. Arden was convinced that the mistake with "I've Got Mine" had been allowing the group to record an original, and again called in a team of professional songwriters. Arden brought in Mort Shuman, who had recently ended his writing partnership with Doc Pomus and struck out on his own, after co-writing songs like "Save the Last Dance for Me", "Sweets For My Sweet", and "Viva Las Vegas" together, and Kenny Lynch, and the two of them wrote "Sha-La-La-La-Lee", and Lynch added backing vocals to the record: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "Sha-La-La-La-Lee"] None of the group were happy with the record, but it became a big hit, reaching number three in the charts. Suddenly the group had a huge fanbase of screaming teenage girls, which embarrassed them terribly, as they thought of themselves as serious heavy R&B musicians, and the rest of their career would largely be spent vacillating between trying to appeal to their teenybopper fanbase and trying to escape from it to fit their own self-image. They followed "Sha-La-La-La-Lee" with "Hey Girl", a Marriott/Lane song, but one written to order -- they were under strict instructions from Arden that if they wanted to have the A-side of a single, they had to write something as commercial as "Sha-La-La-La-Lee" had been, and they managed to come up with a second top-ten hit. Two hit singles in a row was enough to make an album viable, and the group went into the studio and quickly cut an album, which had their first two hits on it -- "Hey Girl" wasn't included, and nor was the flop "I've Got Mine" -- plus a bunch of semi-originals like "You Need Loving", a couple of Kenny Lynch songs, and a cover version of Sam Cooke's "Shake". The album went to number three on the album charts, with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the number one and two spots, and it was at this point that Arden's rivals really started taking interest. But that interest was quelled for the moment when, after Robert Stigwood enquired about managing the band, Arden went round to Stigwood's office with four goons and held him upside down over a balcony, threatening to drop him off if he ever messed with any of Arden's acts again. But the group were still being influenced by other managers. In particular, Brian Epstein came round to the group's shared house, with Graeme Edge of the Moody Blues, and brought them some slices of orange -- which they discovered, after eating them, had been dosed with LSD. By all accounts, Marriott's first trip was a bad one, but the group soon became regular consumers of the drug, and it influenced the heavier direction they took on their next single, "All or Nothing". "All or Nothing" was inspired both by Marriott's breakup with his girlfriend of the time, and his delight at the fact that Jenny Rylance, a woman he was attracted to, had split up with her then-boyfriend Rod Stewart. Rylance and Stewart later reconciled, but would break up again and Rylance would become Marriott's first wife in 1968: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "All or Nothing"] "All or Nothing" became the group's first and only number one record -- and according to the version of the charts used on Top of the Pops, it was a joint number one with the Beatles' double A-side of "Yellow Submarine" and "Eleanor Rigby", both selling exactly as well as each other. But this success caused the group's parents to start to wonder why their kids -- none of whom were yet twenty-one, the legal age of majority at the time -- were not rich. While the group were on tour, their parents came as a group to visit Arden and ask him where the money was, and why their kids were only getting paid twenty pounds a week when their group was getting a thousand pounds a night. Arden tried to convince the parents that he had been paying the group properly, but that they had spent their money on heroin -- which was very far from the truth, the band were only using soft drugs at the time. This put a huge strain on the group's relationship with Arden, and it wasn't the only thing Arden did that upset them. They had been spending a lot of time in the studio working on new material, and Arden was convinced that they were spending too much time recording, and that they were just faffing around and not producing anything of substance. They dropped off a tape to show him that they had been working -- and the next thing they knew, Arden had put out one of the tracks from that tape, "My Mind's Eye", which had only been intended as a demo, as a single: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "My Mind's Eye"] That it went to number four on the charts didn't make up for the fact that the first the band heard of the record coming out at all was when they heard it on the radio. They needed rid of Arden. Luckily for them, Arden wasn't keen on continuing to work with them either. They were unreliable and flakey, and he also needed cash quick to fund his other ventures, and he agreed to sell on their management and recording contracts. Depending on which version of the story you believe, he may have sold them on to an agent called Harold Davison, who then sold them on to Andrew Oldham and Tony Calder, but according to Oldham what happened is that in December 1966 Arden demanded the highest advance in British history -- twenty-five thousand pounds -- directly from Oldham. In cash. In a brown paper bag. The reason Oldham and Calder were interested was that in July 1965 they'd started up their own record label, Immediate Records, which had been announced by Oldham in his column in Disc and Music Echo, in which he'd said "On many occasions I have run down the large record companies over issues such as pirate stations, their promotion, and their tastes. And many readers have written in and said that if I was so disturbed by the state of the existing record companies why didn't I do something about it. I have! On the twentieth of this month the first of three records released by my own company, Immediate Records, is to be launched." That first batch of three records contained one big hit, "Hang on Sloopy" by the McCoys, which Immediate licensed from Bert Berns' new record label BANG in the US: [Excerpt: The McCoys, "Hang on Sloopy"] The two other initial singles featured the talents of Immediate's new in-house producer, a session player who had previously been known as "Little Jimmy" to distinguish him from "Big" Jim Sullivan, the other most in-demand session guitarist, but who was now just known as Jimmy Page. The first was a version of Pete Seeger's "The Bells of Rhymney", which Page produced and played guitar on, for a group called The Fifth Avenue: [Excerpt: The Fifth Avenue, "The Bells of Rhymney"] And the second was a Gordon Lightfoot song performed by a girlfriend of Brian Jones', Nico. The details as to who was involved in the track have varied -- at different times the production has been credited to Jones, Page, and Oldham -- but it seems to be the case that both Jones and Page play on the track, as did session bass player John Paul Jones: [Excerpt: Nico, "I'm Not Sayin'"] While "Hang on Sloopy" was a big hit, the other two singles were flops, and The Fifth Avenue split up, while Nico used the publicity she'd got as an entree into Andy Warhol's Factory, and we'll be hearing more about how that went in a future episode. Oldham and Calder were trying to follow the model of the Brill Building, of Phil Spector, and of big US independents like Motown and Stax. They wanted to be a one-stop shop where they'd produce the records, manage the artists, and own the publishing -- and they also licensed the publishing for the Beach Boys' songs for a couple of years, and started publicising their records over here in a big way, to exploit the publishing royalties, and that was a major factor in turning the Beach Boys from minor novelties to major stars in the UK. Most of Immediate's records were produced by Jimmy Page, but other people got to have a go as well. Giorgio Gomelsky and Shel Talmy both produced tracks for the label, as did a teenage singer then known as Paul Raven, who would later become notorious under his later stage-name Gary Glitter. But while many of these records were excellent -- and Immediate deserves to be talked about in the same terms as Motown or Stax when it comes to the quality of the singles it released, though not in terms of commercial success -- the only ones to do well on the charts in the first few months of the label's existence were "Hang on Sloopy" and an EP by Chris Farlowe. It was Farlowe who provided Immediate Records with its first home-grown number one, a version of the Rolling Stones' "Out of Time" produced by Mick Jagger, though according to Arthur Greenslade, the arranger on that and many other Immediate tracks, Jagger had given up on getting a decent performance out of Farlowe and Oldham ended up producing the vocals. Greenslade later said "Andrew must have worked hard in there, Chris Farlowe couldn't sing his way out of a paper bag. I'm sure Andrew must have done it, where you get an artist singing and you can do a sentence at a time, stitching it all together. He must have done it in pieces." But however hard it was to make, "Out of Time" was a success: [Excerpt: Chris Farlowe, "Out of Time"] Or at least, it was a success in the UK. It did also make the top forty in the US for a week, but then it hit a snag -- it had charted without having been released in the US at all, or even being sent as a promo to DJs. Oldham's new business manager Allen Klein had been asked to work his magic on the US charts, but the people he'd bribed to hype the record into the charts had got the release date wrong and done it too early. When the record *did* come out over there, no radio station would play it in case it looked like they were complicit in the scam. But still, a UK number one wasn't too shabby, and so Immediate Records was back on track, and Oldham wanted to shore things up by bringing in some more proven hit-makers. Immediate signed the Small Faces, and even started paying them royalties -- though that wouldn't last long, as Immediate went bankrupt in 1970 and its successors in interest stopped paying out. The first work the group did for the label was actually for a Chris Farlowe single. Lane and Marriott gave him their song "My Way of Giving", and played on the session along with Farlowe's backing band the Thunderbirds. Mick Jagger is the credited producer, but by all accounts Marriott and Lane did most of the work: [Excerpt: Chris Farlowe, "My Way of Giving"] Sadly, that didn't make the top forty. After working on that, they started on their first single recorded at Immediate. But because of contractual entanglements, "I Can't Make It" was recorded at Immediate but released by Decca. Because the band weren't particularly keen on promoting something on their old label, and the record was briefly banned by the BBC for being too sexual, it only made number twenty-six on the charts. Around this time, Marriott had become friendly with another band, who had named themselves The Little People in homage to the Small Faces, and particularly with their drummer Jerry Shirley. Marriott got them signed to Immediate, and produced and played on their first single, a version of his song "(Tell Me) Have You Ever Seen Me?": [Excerpt: The Apostolic Intervention, "(Tell Me) Have You Ever Seen Me?"] When they signed to Immediate, The Little People had to change their name, and Marriott suggested they call themselves The Nice, a phrase he liked. Oldham thought that was a stupid name, and gave the group the much more sensible name The Apostolic Intervention. And then a few weeks later he signed another group and changed *their* name to The Nice. "The Nice" was also a phrase used in the Small Faces' first single for Immediate proper. "Here Come the Nice" was inspired by a routine by the hipster comedian Lord Buckley, "The Nazz", which also gave a name to Todd Rundgren's band and inspired a line in David Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust": [Excerpt: Lord Buckley, "The Nazz"] "Here Come the Nice" was very blatantly about a drug dealer, and somehow managed to reach number twelve despite that: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "Here Come the Nice"] It also had another obstacle that stopped it doing as well as it might. A week before it came out, Decca released a single, "Patterns", from material they had in the vault. And in June 1967, two Small Faces albums came out. One of them was a collection from Decca of outtakes and demos, plus their non-album hit singles, titled From The Beginning, while the other was their first album on Immediate, which was titled Small Faces -- just like their first Decca album had been. To make matters worse, From The Beginning contained the group's demos of "My Way of Giving" and "(Tell Me) Have You Ever Seen Me?", while the group's first Immediate album contained a new recording of "(Tell Me) Have You Ever Seen Me?", and a version of "My Way of Giving" with the same backing track but a different vocal take from the one on the Decca collection. From this point on, the group's catalogue would be a complete mess, with an endless stream of compilations coming out, both from Decca and, after the group split, from Immediate, mixing tracks intended for release with demos and jam sessions with no regard for either their artistic intent or for what fans might want. Both albums charted, with Small Faces reaching number twelve and From The Beginning reaching number sixteen, neither doing as well as their first album had, despite the Immediate album, especially, being a much better record. This was partly because the Marriott/Lane partnership was becoming far more equal. Kenney Jones later said "During the Decca period most of the self-penned stuff was 99% Steve. It wasn't until Immediate that Ronnie became more involved. The first Immediate album is made up of 50% Steve's songs and 50% of Ronnie's. They didn't collaborate as much as people thought. In fact, when they did, they often ended up arguing and fighting." It's hard to know who did what on each song credited to the pair, but if we assume that each song's principal writer also sang lead -- we know that's not always the case, but it's a reasonable working assumption -- then Jones' fifty-fifty estimate seems about right. Of the fourteen songs on the album, McLagan sings one, which is also his own composition, "Up the Wooden Hills to Bedfordshire". There's one instrumental, six with Marriott on solo lead vocals, four with Lane on solo lead vocals, and two duets, one with Lane as the main vocalist and one with Marriott. The fact that there was now a second songwriter taking an equal role in the band meant that they could now do an entire album of originals. It also meant that their next Marriott/Lane single was mostly a Lane song. "Itchycoo Park" started with a verse lyric from Lane -- "Over bridge of sighs/To rest my eyes in shades of green/Under dreaming spires/To Itchycoo Park, that's where I've been". The inspiration apparently came from Lane reading about the dreaming spires of Oxford, and contrasting it with the places he used to play as a child, full of stinging nettles. For a verse melody, they repeated a trick they'd used before -- the melody of "My Mind's Eye" had been borrowed in part from the Christmas carol "Gloria in Excelsis Deo", and here they took inspiration from the old hymn "God Be in My Head": [Excerpt: The Choir of King's College Cambridge, "God Be in My Head"] As Marriott told the story: "We were in Ireland and speeding our brains out writing this song. Ronnie had the first verse already written down but he had no melody line, so what we did was stick the verse to the melody line of 'God Be In My Head' with a few chord variations. We were going towards Dublin airport and I thought of the middle eight... We wrote the second verse collectively, and the chorus speaks for itself." [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "Itchycoo Park"] Marriott took the lead vocal, even though it was mostly Lane's song, but Marriott did contribute to the writing, coming up with the middle eight. Lane didn't seem hugely impressed with Marriott's contribution, and later said "It wasn't me that came up with 'I feel inclined to blow my mind, get hung up, feed the ducks with a bun/They all come out to groove about, be nice and have fun in the sun'. That wasn't me, but the more poetic stuff was." But that part became the most memorable part of the record, not so much because of the writing or performance but because of the production. It was one of the first singles released using a phasing effect, developed by George Chkiantz (and I apologise if I'm pronouncing that name wrong), who was the assistant engineer for Glyn Johns on the album. I say it was one of the first, because at the time there was not a clear distinction between the techniques now known as phasing, flanging, and artificial double tracking, all of which have now diverged, but all of which initially came from the idea of shifting two copies of a recording slightly out of synch with each other. The phasing on "Itchycoo Park" , though, was far more extreme and used to far different effect than that on, say, Revolver: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "Itchycoo Park"] It was effective enough that Jimi Hendrix, who was at the time working on Axis: Bold as Love, requested that Chkiantz come in and show his engineer how to get the same effect, which was then used on huge chunks of Hendrix's album. The BBC banned the record, because even the organisation which had missed that the Nice who "is always there when I need some speed" was a drug dealer was a little suspicious about whether "we'll get high" and "we'll touch the sky" might be drug references. The band claimed to be horrified at the thought, and explained that they were talking about swings. It's a song about a park, so if you play on the swings, you go high. What else could it mean? [Excerpt: The Small Faces, “Itchycoo Park”] No drug references there, I'm sure you'll agree. The song made number three, but the group ran into more difficulties with the BBC after an appearance on Top of the Pops. Marriott disliked the show's producer, and the way that he would go up to every act and pretend to think they had done a very good job, no matter what he actually thought, which Marriott thought of as hypocrisy rather than as politeness and professionalism. Marriott discovered that the producer was leaving the show, and so in the bar afterwards told him exactly what he thought of him, calling him a "two-faced", and then a four-letter word beginning with c which is generally considered the most offensive swear word there is. Unfortunately for Marriott, he'd been misinformed, the producer wasn't leaving the show, and the group were barred from it for a while. "Itchycoo Park" also made the top twenty in the US, thanks to a new distribution deal Immediate had, and plans were made for the group to tour America, but those plans had to be scrapped when Ian McLagan was arrested for possession of hashish, and instead the group toured France, with support from a group called the Herd: [Excerpt: The Herd, "From the Underworld"] Marriott became very friendly with the Herd's guitarist, Peter Frampton, and sympathised with Frampton's predicament when in the next year he was voted "face of '68" and developed a similar teenage following to the one the Small Faces had. The group's last single of 1967 was one of their best. "Tin Soldier" was inspired by the Hans Andersen story “The Steadfast Tin Soldier”, and was originally written for the singer P.P. Arnold, who Marriott was briefly dating around this time. But Arnold was *so* impressed with the song that Marriott decided to keep it for his own group, and Arnold was left just doing backing vocals on the track: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "Tin Soldier"] It's hard to show the appeal of "Tin Soldier" in a short clip like those I use on this show, because so much of it is based on the use of dynamics, and the way the track rises and falls, but it's an extremely powerful track, and made the top ten. But it was after that that the band started falling apart, and also after that that they made the work generally considered their greatest album. As "Itchycoo Park" had made number one in Australia, the group were sent over there on tour to promote it, as support act for the Who. But the group hadn't been playing live much recently, and found it difficult to replicate their records on stage, as they were now so reliant on studio effects like phasing. The Australian audiences were uniformly hostile, and the contrast with the Who, who were at their peak as a live act at this point, couldn't have been greater. Marriott decided he had a solution. The band needed to get better live, so why not get Peter Frampton in as a fifth member? He was great on guitar and had stage presence, obviously that would fix their problems. But the other band members absolutely refused to get Frampton in. Marriott's confidence as a stage performer took a knock from which it never really recovered, and increasingly the band became a studio-only one. But the tour also put strain on the most important partnership in the band. Marriott and Lane had been the closest of friends and collaborators, but on the tour, both found a very different member of the Who to pal around with. Marriott became close to Keith Moon, and the two would get drunk and trash hotel rooms together. Lane, meanwhile, became very friendly with Pete Townshend, who introduced him to the work of the guru Meher Baba, who Townshend followed. Lane, too, became a follower, and the two would talk about religion and spirituality while their bandmates were destroying things. An attempt was made to heal the growing rifts though. Marriott, Lane, and McLagan all moved in together again like old times, but this time in a cottage -- something that became so common for bands around this time that the phrase "getting our heads together in the country" became a cliche in the music press. They started working on material for their new album. One of the tracks that they were working on was written by Marriott, and was inspired by how, before moving in to the country cottage, his neighbours had constantly complained about the volume of his music -- he'd been particularly annoyed that the pop singer Cilla Black, who lived in the same building and who he'd assumed would understand the pop star lifestyle, had complained more than anyone. It had started as as fairly serious blues song, but then Marriott had been confronted by the members of the group The Hollies, who wanted to know why Marriott always sang in a pseudo-American accent. Wasn't his own accent good enough? Was there something wrong with being from the East End of London? Well, no, Marriott decided, there wasn't, and so he decided to sing it in a Cockney accent. And so the song started to change, going from being an R&B song to being the kind of thing Cockneys could sing round a piano in a pub: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "Lazy Sunday"] Marriott intended the song just as an album track for the album they were working on, but Andrew Oldham insisted on releasing it as a single, much to the band's disgust, and it went to number two on the charts, and along with "Itchycoo Park" meant that the group were now typecast as making playful, light-hearted music. The album they were working on, Ogden's Nut-Gone Flake, was eventually as known for its marketing as its music. In the Small Faces' long tradition of twisted religious references, like their songs based on hymns and their song "Here Come the Nice", which had taken inspiration from a routine about Jesus and made it about a drug dealer, the print ads for the album read: Small Faces Which were in the studios Hallowed be thy name Thy music come Thy songs be sung On this album as they came from your heads We give you this day our daily bread Give us thy album in a round cover as we give thee 37/9d Lead us into the record stores And deliver us Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake For nice is the music The sleeve and the story For ever and ever, Immediate The reason the ad mentioned a round cover is that the original pressings of the album were released in a circular cover, made to look like a tobacco tin, with the name of the brand of tobacco changed from Ogden's Nut-Brown Flake to Ogden's Nut-Gone Flake, a reference to how after smoking enough dope your nut, or head, would be gone. This made more sense to British listeners than to Americans, because not only was the slang on the label British, and not only was it a reference to a British tobacco brand, but American and British dope-smoking habits are very different. In America a joint is generally made by taking the dried leaves and flowers of the cannabis plant -- or "weed" -- and rolling them in a cigarette paper and smoking them. In the UK and much of Europe, though, the preferred form of cannabis is the resin, hashish, which is crumbled onto tobacco in a cigarette paper and smoked that way, so having rolling or pipe tobacco was a necessity for dope smokers in the UK in a way it wasn't in the US. Side one of Ogden's was made up of normal songs, but the second side mixed songs and narrative. Originally the group wanted to get Spike Milligan to do the narration, but when Milligan backed out they chose Professor Stanley Unwin, a comedian who was known for speaking in his own almost-English language, Unwinese: [Excerpt: Stanley Unwin, "The Populode of the Musicolly"] They gave Unwin a script, telling the story that linked side two of the album, in which Happiness Stan is shocked to discover that half the moon has disappeared and goes on a quest to find the missing half, aided by a giant fly who lets him sit on his back after Stan shares his shepherd's pie with the hungry fly. After a long quest they end up at the cave of Mad John the Hermit, who points out to them that nobody had stolen half the moon at all -- they'd been travelling so long that it was a full moon again, and everything was OK. Unwin took that script, and reworked it into Unwinese, and also added in a lot of the slang he heard the group use, like "cool it" and "what's been your hang-up?": [Excerpt: The Small Faces and Professor Stanley Unwin, "Mad John"] The album went to number one, and the group were justifiably proud, but it only exacerbated the problems with their live show. Other than an appearance on the TV show Colour Me Pop, where they were joined by Stanley Unwin to perform the whole of side two of the album with live vocals but miming to instrumental backing tracks, they only performed two songs from the album live, "Rollin' Over" and "Song of a Baker", otherwise sticking to the same live show Marriott was already embarrassed by. Marriott later said "We had spent an entire year in the studios, which was why our stage presentation had not been improved since the previous year. Meanwhile our recording experience had developed in leaps and bounds. We were all keenly interested in the technical possibilities, in the art of recording. We let down a lot of people who wanted to hear Ogden's played live. We were still sort of rough and ready, and in the end the audience became uninterested as far as our stage show was concerned. It was our own fault, because we would have sussed it all out if we had only used our brains. We could have taken Stanley Unwin on tour with us, maybe a string section as well, and it would have been okay. But we didn't do it, we stuck to the concept that had been successful for a long time, which is always the kiss of death." The group's next single would be the last released while they were together. Marriott regarded "The Universal" as possibly the best thing he'd written, and recorded it quickly when inspiration struck. The finished single is actually a home recording of Marriott in his garden, including the sounds of a dog barking and his wife coming home with the shopping, onto which the band later overdubbed percussion, horns, and electric guitars: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "The Universal"] Incidentally, it seems that the dog barking on that track may also be the dog barking on “Seamus” by Pink Floyd. "The Universal" confused listeners, and only made number sixteen on the charts, crushing Marriott, who thought it was the best thing he'd done. But the band were starting to splinter. McLagan isn't on "The Universal", having quit the band before it was recorded after a falling-out with Marriott. He rejoined, but discovered that in the meantime Marriott had brought in session player Nicky Hopkins to work on some tracks, which devastated him. Marriott became increasingly unconfident in his own writing, and the writing dried up. The group did start work on some new material, some of which, like "The Autumn Stone", is genuinely lovely: [Excerpt: The Small Faces, "The Autumn Stone"] But by the time that was released, the group had already split up. The last recording they did together was as a backing group for Johnny Hallyday, the French rock star. A year earlier Hallyday had recorded a version of "My Way of Giving", under the title "Je N'Ai Jamais Rien Demandé": [Excerpt: Johnny Hallyday, "Je N'Ai Jamais Rien Demandé"] Now he got in touch with Glyn Johns to see if the Small Faces had any other material for him, and if they'd maybe back him on a few tracks on a new album. Johns and the Small Faces flew to France... as did Peter Frampton, who Marriott was still pushing to get into the band. They recorded three tracks for the album, with Frampton on extra guitar: [Excerpt: Johnny Hallyday, "Reclamation"] These tracks left Marriott more certain than ever that Frampton should be in the band, and the other three members even more certain that he shouldn't. Frampton joined the band on stage at a few shows on their next few gigs, but he was putting together his own band with Jerry Shirley from Apostolic Intervention. On New Year's Eve 1968, Marriott finally had enough. He stormed off stage mid-set, and quit the group. He phoned up Peter Frampton, who was hanging out with Glyn Johns listening to an album Johns had just produced by some of the session players who'd worked for Immediate. Side one had just finished when Marriott phoned. Could he join Frampton's new band? Frampton said of course he could, then put the phone down and listened to side two of Led Zeppelin's first record. The band Marriott and Frampton formed was called Humble Pie, and they were soon releasing stuff on Immediate. According to Oldham, "Tony Calder said to me one day 'Pick a straw'. Then he explained we had a choice. We could either go with the three Faces -- Kenney, Ronnie, and Mac -- wherever they were going to go with their lives, or we could follow Stevie. I didn't regard it as a choice. Neither did Tony. Marriott was our man". Marriott certainly seemed to agree that he was the real talent in the group. He and Lane had fairly recently bought some property together -- two houses on the same piece of land -- and with the group splitting up, Lane moved away and wanted to sell his share in the property to Marriott. Marriott wrote to him saying "You'll get nothing. This was bought with money from hits that I wrote, not that we wrote," and enclosing a PRS statement showing how much each Marriott/Lane
Today's show features music performed by Johnny Shines and Little Walter
Today's show features music performed by Little Walter and B.B. King & Gladys Knight
Today's show features music performed by Little Walter and W.C. Handy
#charliemusselwhite #elvis #chicagoblues #memphisblues #harmonicaparty Charlie Musselwhite joins Mark Hummel's Harmonica Party for a conversation with the legendary Harp player. Charlie talks about growing up in Memphis and going to the Amusement Park and movies with Elvis Presley and the Memphis Mafia. Charlie remembers his unique childhood that brought him to music and to the blues. Charlie tells Mark about the move to Chicago and trying to find a place in the blues scene, First working in a record store and sharing the stage with Chicago Blues legends Lew Soloff, Muddy Waters, Junior Wells, Sonny Boy Williamson, Buddy Guy, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, and Big Walter Horton. Charlie Musselwhite recent recordings include Grammy nominated releases with Elvin Bishop #elvinbishop Ben Harper #benharper . Please SUBSCRIBE to Mark Hummel's Harmonica Party YouTube Channel. Mark Hummel Accidental Productions
Together, Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon electrified and spread all over the world the music known as The Blues!In this episode, we return to the Profiles In The Blues series with the story of Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon, both key figures in the Chicago Blues scene, tracing back to their Mississippi roots. The Imbalanced Boys gauge their impact in their own time, as well as the future of Rock & Roll!Other characters come to play in this story: Leonard Chess, Howlin' Wolf, and Little Walter among them. Top up your drinks, and kick back for a fine ride!During this episode, the guys mention the following links/sources:-Willie Dixon on loudersound.com-I Am The Blues piece on Willie on PastePlease check out our sponsors:Boldfoot Socks https://boldfoot.comCrooked Eye Brewery https://crookedeyebrewery.com/Don't forget that you can find all of our episodes, on-demand, for free right here on our web site: https://imbalancedhistory.com/
Together, Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon electrified and spread all over the world the music known as The Blues!In this episode, we return to the Profiles In The Blues series with the story of Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon, both key figures in the Chicago Blues scene, tracing back to their Mississippi roots. The Imbalanced Boys gauge their impact in their own time, as well as the future of Rock & Roll!Other characters come to play in this story: Leonard Chess, Howlin' Wolf, and Little Walter among them. Top up your drinks, and kick back for a fine ride!During this episode, the guys mention the following links/sources:-Willie Dixon on loudersound.com-I Am The Blues piece on Willie on PastePlease check out our sponsors:Boldfoot Socks https://boldfoot.comCrooked Eye Brewery https://crookedeyebrewery.com/Don't forget that you can find all of our episodes, on-demand, for free right here on our web site: https://imbalancedhistory.com/
I am beyond giddy for this guest episode, as it is with the absolute legendary artist, the one, the only, Bloodshot Bill. Tune in and learn a little on how he picked up the drums and guitar along with some wild stories while on the road. As always, the guest picks the episode playlist. Find Bloodshot Bill on Instagram under BloodshotBill Peruse through his website at Bloodshotbill.com Check out all his old and new tunes on Youtube, Spotify, Apple, and more! Little Walter. Crazy Mixed Up World Little Johnny and the Silvertones. Rock Til the End of Time The Vibes. Crying For You Art Neville. Arabian Love Call Bloodshot Bill. Dark Lonely Streets Bloodshot Bill. Dancing Shoes Public Enemy. Lost At Birth Missy Elliot. Pass that Dutch Background: Mar-Keys. This Thing (Parts 1 and 2)
NOTE: This episode went up before the allegations about Dylan, in a lawsuit filed on Friday, were made public on Monday night. Had I been aware of them, I would at least have commented at the beginning of the episode. Episode one hundred and thirty of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan, and the controversy over Dylan going electric, Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a ten-minute bonus episode available, on "Hold What You've Got" by Joe Tex. 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/ Erratum A couple of times I refer to “CBS”. Dylan's label in the US was Columbia Records, a subsidiary of CBS Inc, but in the rest of the world the label traded as “CBS Records”. I should probably have used “Columbia” throughout... Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by Dylan. Much of the information in this episode comes from Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties by Elijah Wald, which is recommended, as all Wald's books are. I've used these books for all the episodes involving Dylan: Bob Dylan: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon is a song-by-song look at every song Dylan ever wrote, as is Revolution in the Air, by Clinton Heylin. Heylin also wrote the most comprehensive and accurate biography of Dylan, Behind the Shades. I've also used Robert Shelton's No Direction Home, which is less accurate, but which is written by someone who knew Dylan. The New Yorker article by Nat Hentoff I talk about is here. And for the information about the writing of "Like a Rolling Stone", I relied on yet another book by Heylin, All the Madmen. Dylan's albums up to 1967 can all be found in their original mono mixes on this box set. And Dylan's performances at Newport from 1963 through 1965 are on this DVD. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript There's a story that everyone tells about Bob Dylan in 1965, the story that has entered into legend. It's the story that you'll see in most of the biographies of him, and in all those coffee-table histories of rock music put out by glossy music magazines. Bob Dylan, in this story, was part of the square, boring, folk scene until he plugged in an electric guitar and just blew the minds of all those squares, who immediately ostracised him forever for being a Judas and betraying their traditionalist acoustic music, but he was just too cool and too much of a rebel to be bound by their rules, man. Pete Seeger even got an axe and tried to cut his way through the cables of the amplifiers, he was so offended by the desecration of the Newport Folk Festival. And like all these stories, it's an oversimplification but there's an element of truth to it too. So today, we're going to look at what actually happened when Dylan went electric. We're going to look at what led to him going electric, and at the truth behind the legend of Seeger's axe. And we're going to look at the masterpiece at the centre of it all, a record that changed rock songwriting forever. We're going to look at Bob Dylan and "Like a Rolling Stone": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone"] While we've seen Dylan turn up in all sorts of episodes -- most recently the episode on "Mr. Tambourine Man", the last time we looked at him in detail was in the episode on "Blowin' in the Wind", and when we left him there he had just recorded his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, but it had not yet been released. As we'll see, Dylan was always an artist who moved on very quickly from what he'd been doing before, and that had started as early as that album. While his first album, produced by John Hammond, had been made up almost entirely of traditional songs and songs he'd learned from Dave van Ronk or Eric von Schmidt, with only two originals, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan had started out being produced by Hammond, but as Hammond and Dylan's manager Albert Grossman had come to find it difficult to work together, the last few tracks had been produced by Tom Wilson. We've mentioned Wilson briefly a couple of times already, but to reiterate, Wilson was a Black Harvard graduate and political conservative whose background was in jazz and who had no knowledge of or love for folk music. But Wilson saw two things in Dylan -- the undeniable power of his lyrics, and his vocals, which Wilson compared to Ray Charles. Wilson wanted to move Dylan towards working with a backing band, and this was something that Dylan was interested in doing, but his first experiment with that, with John Hammond, hadn't been a particular success. Dylan had recorded a single backed with a band -- "Mixed-Up Confusion", backed with "Corrina, Corrina", a version of an old song that had been recorded by both Bob Wills and Big Joe Turner, but had recently been brought back to the public mind by a version Phil Spector had produced for Ray Peterson. Dylan's version of that song had a country lope and occasional breaks into Jimmie Rodgers style keening that foreshadow his work of the late sixties: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Corrina, Corrina (single version)"] A different take of that track was included on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, an album that was made up almost entirely of originals. Those originals fell into roughly two types -- there were songs like "Masters of War", "Blowin' in the Wind", and "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" which dealt in some way with the political events of the time -- the fear of nuclear war, the ongoing conflict in Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement and more -- but did so in an elliptical, poetic way; and there were songs about distance in a relationship -- songs like "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright", which do a wonderful job at portraying a young man's conflicted feelings -- the girl has left him, and he wants her back, but he wants to pretend that he doesn't. While it's always a bad idea to look for a direct autobiographical interpretation of Dylan's lyrics, it seems fairly safe to say that these songs were inspired by Dylan's feelings for his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, who had gone travelling in Europe and not seen him for eight months, and who he was worried he would never see again, and he does seem to have actually had several conflicting feelings about this, ranging from desperation for her to come back through to anger and resentment. The surprising thing about The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan is that it's a relatively coherent piece of work, despite being recorded with two different producers over a period of more than a year, and that recording being interrupted by Dylan's own travels to the UK, his separation from and reconciliation with Rotolo, and a change of producers. If you listened to it, you would get an impression of exactly who Dylan was -- you'd come away from it thinking that he was an angry, talented, young man who was trying to merge elements of both traditional English folk music and Robert Johnson style Delta blues with poetic lyrics related to what was going on in the young man's life. By the next album, that opinion of Dylan would have to be reworked, and it would have to be reworked with every single album that came out. But The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan came out at the perfect time for Dylan to step into the role of "spokesman for a generation" -- a role which he didn't want, and to which he wasn't particularly suited. Because it came out in May 1963, right at the point at which folk music was both becoming hugely more mainstream, and becoming more politicised. And nothing showed both those things as well as the Hootenanny boycott: [Excerpt: The Brothers Four, “Hootenanny Saturday Night”] We've talked before about Hootenanny, the folk TV show, but what we haven't mentioned is that there was a quite substantial boycott of that show by some of the top musicians in folk music at the time. The reason for this is that Pete Seeger, the elder statesman of the folk movement, and his old band the Weavers, were both blacklisted from the show because of Seeger's Communist leanings. The Weavers were --- according to some sources -- told that they could go on if they would sign a loyalty oath, but they refused. It's hard for those of us who weren't around at the time to really comprehend both just how subversive folk music was considered, and how seriously subversion was taken in the USA of the early 1960s. To give a relevant example -- Suze Rotolo was pictured on the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Because of this, her cousin's husband, who was in the military, lost his security clearance and didn't get a promotion he was in line for. Again, someone lost his security clearance because his wife's cousin was pictured on the cover of a Bob Dylan album. So the blacklisting of Seeger and the Weavers was considered a serious matter by the folk music community, and people reacted very strongly. Joan Baez announced that she wouldn't be going on Hootenanny until they asked Seeger on, and Dylan, the Kingston Trio, Dave van Ronk, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, and Peter, Paul, and Mary, among many others, all refused to go on the show as a result. But the odd thing was, whenever anyone *actually asked* Pete Seeger what he thought they should do, he told them they should go on the TV show and use it as an opportunity to promote the music. So while the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul, and Mary, two of the biggest examples of the commercialisation of folk music that the serious purists sneered at, were refusing to go on the TV in solidarity with a Communist, that Communist's brother, Mike Seeger, happily went on Hootenanny with his band the New Lost City Ramblers, and when the Tarriers were invited on to the show but it clashed with one of their regular bookings, Pete Seeger covered their booking for them so they could appear. Dylan was on the side of the boycotters, though he was not too clear on exactly why. When he spoke about the boycott on stage, this is what he had to say: [Excerpt: Dylan talks about the boycott. Transcript: "Now a friend of mine, a friend of all yours I'm sure, Pete Seeger's been blacklisted [applause]. He and another group called the Weavers who are around New York [applause] I turned down that television show, but I got no right [applause] but . . . I feel bad turning it down, because the Weavers and Pete Seeger can't be on it. They oughta turn it down. They aren't even asked to be on it because they are blacklisted. Uh—which is, which is a bad thing. I don't know why it's bad, but it's just bad, it's bad all around."] Hootenanny started broadcasting in April 1963, just over a month before The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan came out, and so it would have been a good opportunity for publicity for him -- but turning the show down was also good publicity. Hootenanny wouldn't be the only opportunity to appear on TV that he was offered. It would also not be the only one he turned down. In May, Dylan was given the opportunity to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show, but he agreed on one condition -- that he be allowed to sing "Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues". For those who don't know, the John Birch Society is a far-right conspiratorial organisation which had a huge influence on the development of the American right-wing in the middle of the twentieth century, and is responsible for perpetuating almost every conspiracy theory that has exerted a malign influence on the country and the world since that time. They were a popular punching bag for the left and centre, and for good reason -- we heard the Chad Mitchell Trio mocking them, for example, in the episode on "Mr. Tambourine Man" a couple of weeks ago. So Dylan insisted that if he was going to go on the Ed Sullivan Show, it would only be to perform his song about them: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues"] Now, the Ed Sullivan Show was not interested in having Dylan sing a song that would upset a substantial proportion of its audience, on what was after all meant to be an entertainment show, and so Dylan didn't appear on the show -- and he got a big publicity boost from his principled refusal to make a TV appearance that would have given him a big publicity boost. It's interesting to note in this context that Dylan himself clearly didn't actually think very much of the song -- he never included it on any of his albums, and it remained unreleased for decades. By this point, Dylan had started dating Joan Baez, with whom he would have an on-again off-again relationship for the next couple of years, even though at this point he was also still seeing Suze Rotolo. Baez was one of the big stars of the folk movement, and like Rotolo she was extremely politically motivated. She was also a fan of Dylan's writing, and had started recording versions of his songs on her albums: [Excerpt: Joan Baez, "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"] The relationship between the two of them became much more public when they appeared together at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963. The Newport Folk Festival had started in 1959, as a spinoff from the successful Newport Jazz Festival, which had been going for a number of years previously. As there was a large overlap between the jazz and folk music fanbases -- both musics appealed at this point to educated, middle-class, liberals who liked to think of themselves as a little bit Bohemian -- the Jazz Festival had first started putting on an afternoon of folk music during its normal jazz programme, and then spun that off into a whole separate festival, initially with the help of Albert Grossman, who advised on which acts should be booked (and of course included several of the acts he managed on the bill). Both Newport festivals had been shut down after rioting at the 1960 Jazz Festival, as three thousand more people had turned up for the show than there was capacity for, and the Marines had had to be called in to clear the streets of angry jazz fans, but the jazz festival had returned in 1962, and in 1963 the folk festival came back as well. By this time, Albert Grossman was too busy to work for the festival, and so its organisation was taken over by a committee headed by Pete Seeger. At that 1963 festival, even though Dylan was at this point still a relative unknown compared to some of the acts on the bill, he was made the headliner of the first night, which finished with his set, and then with him bringing Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary, Pete Seeger and the Freedom Singers out to sing with him on "Blowin' in the Wind" and "We Shall Overcome". To many people, Dylan's appearance in 1963 was what launched him from being "one of the rising stars of the folk movement" to being the most important musician in the movement -- still just one of many, but the first among equals. He was now being talked of in the same terms as Joan Baez or Pete Seeger, and was also starting to behave like someone as important as them -- like he was a star. And that was partly because Baez was promoting Dylan, having him duet with her on stage on his songs -- though few would now argue that the combination of their voices did either artist any favours, Baez's pure, trained, voice, rubbing up against Dylan's more idiosyncratic phrasing in ways that made both sound less impressive: [Excerpt: Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, "With God On Our Side (live at Newport 1963)"] At the end of 1963, Dylan recorded his third album, which came out in early 1964. The Times They Are A-Changin' seems to be Dylan's least personal album to this point, and seems to have been written as a conscious attempt to write the kind of songs that people wanted and expected from him -- there were songs about particular recent news events, like "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll", the true story of the murder of a Black woman by a white man, and "Only a Pawn in Their Game", about the murder of the Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers. There were fictional dramatisations of the kind of effects that real-world social problems were having on people, like "North Country Blues", in which the callous way mining towns were treated by capital leads to a woman losing her parents, brother, husband, and children, or "The Ballad of Hollis Brown", about a farmer driven to despair by poverty who ends up killing his whole family and himself. As you can imagine, it's not a very cheery album, but it's one that impressed a lot of people, especially its title track, which was very deliberately written as an anthem for the new social movements that were coming up: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "The Times They Are A-Changin'"] But it was a bleak album, with none of the humour that had characterised Dylan's first two albums. Soon after recording the album, Dylan had a final split with Rotolo, went travelling for a while, and took LSD for the first time. He also started to distance himself from Baez at this point, though the two would remain together until mid 1965. He seems to have regarded the political material he was doing as a mistake, as something he was doing for other people, rather than because that was what he wanted to do. He toured the UK in early 1964, and then returned to the US in time to record his fourth album, Another Side of Bob Dylan. It can be argued that this is the point where Dylan really becomes himself, and starts making music that's the music he wants to make, rather than music that he thinks other people want him to make. The entire album was recorded in one session, along with a few tracks that didn't make the cut -- like the early version of "Mr. Tambourine Man" with Ramblin' Jack Elliott that we heard in the episode on that song. Elliott was in attendance, as were a number of Dylan's other friends, though the album features only Dylan performing. Also there was the journalist Nat Hentoff, who wrote a full account of the recording session for the New Yorker, which I'll link in the show notes. Dylan told Hentoff "“There aren't any finger-pointing songs in here, either. Those records I've already made, I'll stand behind them, but some of that was jumping into the scene to be heard and a lot of it was because I didn't see anybody else doing that kind of thing. Now a lot of people are doing finger-pointing songs. You know—pointing to all the things that are wrong. Me, I don't want to write for people anymore. You know—be a spokesman. Like I once wrote about Emmett Till in the first person, pretending I was him. From now on, I want to write from inside me, and to do that I'm going to have to get back to writing like I used to when I was ten—having everything come out naturally." Dylan was right to say that there were no finger-pointing songs. The songs on Another Side of Bob Dylan were entirely personal -- "Ballad in Plain D", in particular, is Dylan's take on the night he split up with Suze Rotolo, laying the blame -- unfairly, as he would later admit -- on her older sister. The songs mostly dealt with love and relationships, and as a result were ripe for cover versions. The opening track, in particular, "All I Really Want to Do", which in Dylan's version was a Jimmie Rodgers style hillbilly tune, became the subject of duelling cover versions. The Byrds' version came out as the follow-up to their version of "Mr. Tambourine Man": [Excerpt: The Byrds, "All I Really Want to Do"] But Cher also released a version -- which the Byrds claimed came about when Cher's husband Sonny Bono secretly taped a Byrds live show where they performed the song before they'd released it, and he then stole their arrangement: [Excerpt: Cher, "All I Really Want to Do"] In America, the Byrds' version only made number forty on the charts, while Cher made number fifteen. In the UK, where both artists were touring at the time to promote the single, Cher made number nine but the Byrds charted higher at number four. Both those releases came out after the album came out in late 1964, but even before it was released, Dylan was looking for other artists to cover his new songs. He found one at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, where he met Johnny Cash for the first time. Cash had been a fan of Dylan for some time -- and indeed, he's often credited as being the main reason why CBS persisted with Dylan after his first album was unsuccessful, as Cash had lobbied for him within the company -- and he'd recently started to let that influence show. His most recent hit, "Understand Your Man", owed more than a little to Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right", and Cash had also started recording protest songs. At Newport, Cash performed his own version of "Don't Think Twice": [Excerpt: Johnny Cash, "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right"] Cash and Dylan met up, with June Carter and Joan Baez, in Baez's hotel room, and according to later descriptions they were both so excited to meet each other they were bouncing with excitement, jumping up and down on the beds. They played music together all night, and Dylan played some of his new songs for Cash. One of them was "It Ain't Me Babe", a song that seems at least slightly inspired by "She Loves You" -- you can sing the "yeah, yeah, yeah" and "no, no, no" together -- and which was the closing track of Another Side of Bob Dylan. Cash soon released his own version of the song, which became a top five country hit: [Excerpt: Johnny Cash, "It Ain't Me Babe"] But it wasn't long after meeting Cash that Dylan met the group who may have inspired that song -- and his meeting with the Beatles seems to have confirmed in him his decision that he needed to move away from the folk scene and towards making pop records. This was something that Tom Wilson had been pushing for for a while -- Wilson had told Dylan's manager Albert Grossman that if they could get Dylan backed by a good band, they'd have a white Ray Charles on their hands. As an experiment, Wilson took some session musicians into the studio and had them overdub an electric backing on Dylan's acoustic version of "House of the Rising Sun", basing the new backing on the Animals' hit version. The result wasn't good enough to release, but it did show that there was a potential for combining Dylan's music with the sound of electric guitars and drums: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, “House of the Rising Sun (electric version)”] Dylan was also being influenced by his friend John Hammond Jr, the blues musician son of Dylan's first producer, and a veteran of the Greenwich Village folk scene. Hammond had decided that he wanted to show the British R&B bands what proper American blues sounded like, and so he'd recruited a group of mostly-Canadian musicians to back him on an electric album. His "So Many Roads" album featured three members of a group called Levon and the Hawks -- Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, and Robbie Robertson -- who had recently quit working for the Canadian rockabilly singer Ronnie Hawkins -- plus harmonica player Charlie Musselwhite and Mike Bloomfield, who was normally a guitarist but who is credited on piano for the album: [Excerpt: John Hammond, Jr. "Who Do You Love?"] Dylan was inspired by Hammond's sound, and wanted to get the same sound on his next record, though he didn't consider hiring the same musicians. Instead, for his next album he brought in Bruce Langhorne, the tambourine man himself, on guitar, Bobby Gregg -- a drummer who had been the house drummer for Cameo-Parkway and played on hits by Chubby Checker, Bobby Rydell and others; the session guitarists Al Gorgoni and Kenny Rankin, piano players Frank Owens and Paul Griffin, and two bass players, Joseph Macho and William Lee, the father of the film director Spike Lee. Not all of these played on all the finished tracks -- and there were other tracks recorded during the sessions, where Dylan was accompanied by Hammond and another guitarist, John Sebastian, that weren't used at all -- but that's the lineup that played on Dylan's first electric album, Bringing it All Back Home. The first single, "Subterranean Homesick Blues" actually takes more inspiration than one might imagine from the old-school folk singers Dylan was still associating with. Its opening lines seem to be a riff on "Taking it Easy", a song that had originally been written in the forties by Woody Guthrie for the Almanac Singers, where it had been a song about air-raid sirens: [Excerpt: The Almanac Singers, "Taking it Easy"] But had then been rewritten by Pete Seeger for the Weavers, whose version had included this verse that wasn't in the original: [Excerpt: The Weavers, "Taking it Easy"] Dylan took that verse, and the basic Guthrie-esque talking blues rhythm, and connected it to Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business" with its rapid-fire joking blues lyrics: [Excerpt: Chuck Berry, "Too Much Monkey Business"] But Dylan's lyrics were a radical departure, a freeform, stream-of-consciousness proto-psychedelic lyric inspired as much by the Beat poets as by any musician -- it's no coincidence that in the promotional film Dylan made for the song, one of the earliest examples of what would become known as the rock video, the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg makes an appearance: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Subterranean Homesick Blues"] "Subterranean Homesick Blues" made the top forty in the US -- it only made number thirty-nine, but it was Dylan's first single to chart at all in the US. And it made the top ten in the UK -- but it's notable that even over here, there was still some trepidation about Dylan's new direction. To promote his UK tour, CBS put out a single of "The Times They Are A-Changin'", and that too made the top ten, and spent longer on the charts than "Subterranean Homesick Blues". Indeed, it seems like everyone was hedging their bets. The opening side of Bringing it All Back Home is all electric, but the B-side is made up entirely of acoustic performances, though sometimes with a little added electric guitar countermelody -- it's very much in the same style as Dylan's earlier albums, and seems to be a way of pulling back after testing the waters, of reassuring people who might have been upset by the change in style on the first side that this was still the same Dylan they knew. And the old Dylan certainly still had plenty of commercial life in him. Indeed, when Dylan went to the UK for a tour in spring of 1965, he found that British musicians were trying to copy his style -- a young man called Donovan seemed to be doing his best to *be* Dylan, with even the title of his debut hit single seeming to owe something to "Blowing in the Wind": [Excerpt: Donovan, "Catch the Wind (original single version)"] On that UK tour, Dylan performed solo as he always had -- though by this point he had taken to bringing along an entourage. Watching the classic documentary of that tour, Dont Look Back, it's quite painful to see Dylan's cruelty to Joan Baez, who had come along on the expectation that she would be duetting with him occasionally, as he had dueted with her, but who is sidelined, tormented, and ignored. It's even worse to see Bob Neuwirth, a hanger-on who is very obviously desperate to impress Dylan by copying all his mannerisms and affectations, doing the same. It's unsurprising that this was the end of Dylan and Baez's relationship. Dylan's solo performances on that tour went down well, but some of his fans questioned him about his choice to make an electric record. But he wasn't going to stop recording with electric musicians. Indeed, Tom Wilson also came along on the tour, and while he was in England he made an attempt to record a track with the members of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers -- Mayall, Hughie Flint, Eric Clapton, and John McVie, though it was unsuccessful and only a low-fidelity fragment of it circulates: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan and the Bluesbreakers, "If You Gotta Go, Go Now"] Also attending that session was a young wannabe singer from Germany who Dylan had taken up with, though their dalliance was very brief. During the session Dylan cut a demo of a song he planned to give her, but Nico didn't end up recording "I'll Keep it With Mine" until a couple of years later. But one other thing happened in England. After the UK tour, Dylan travelled over to Europe for a short tour, then returned to the UK to do a show for the BBC -- his first full televised concert. Unfortunately, that show never went ahead -- there was a party the night before, and Dylan was hospitalised after it with what was said to be food poisoning. It might even actually have been food poisoning, but take a listen to the episode I did on Vince Taylor, who was also at that party, and draw your own conclusions. Anyway, Dylan was laid up in bed for a while, and took the opportunity to write what he's variously described as being ten or twenty pages of stream of consciousness vomit, out of which he eventually took four pages of lyrics, a vicious attack on a woman who was originally the protagonist's social superior, but has since fallen. He's never spoken in any detail about what or who the subject of the song was, but given that it was written just days after his breakup with Baez, it's not hard to guess. The first attempt at recording the song was a false start. On June the fifteenth, Dylan and most of the same musicians who'd played on his previous album went into the studio to record it, along with Mike Bloomfield, who had played on that John Hammond album that had inspired Dylan and was now playing in the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Bloomfield had been surprised when Dylan had told him that he didn't want the kind of string-bending electric blues that Bloomfield usually played, but he managed to come up with something Dylan approved of -- but the song was at this point in waltz time: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone (early version)"] The session ended, but Joe Macho, Al Gorgoni and Bobby Gregg stayed around after the session, when Tom Wilson called in another session guitarist to join them in doing the same trick he'd done on "House of the Rising Sun", overdubbing new instruments on a flop acoustic record he'd produced for a Greenwich Village folk duo who'd already split up. But we'll hear more about "The Sound of Silence" in a few weeks' time. The next day, the same musicians came back, along with one new one. Al Kooper had been invited by Wilson to come along and watch the session, but he was determined that he was going to play on whatever was recorded. He got to the session early, brought his guitar and amp in and got tuned up before Wilson arrived. But then Kooper heard Bloomfield play, realised that he simply couldn't play at anything remotely like the same standard, and decided he'd be best off staying in the control room after all. But then, before they started recording "Like a Rolling Stone", which by now was in 4/4 time, Frank Owens, who had been playing organ, switched to piano and left his organ on. Kooper saw his chance -- he played a bit of keyboards, too, and the song was in C, which is the easiest key to play in. Kooper asked Wilson if he could go and play, and Wilson didn't exactly say no, so Kooper went into the studio and sat at the organ. Kooper improvised the organ line that became the song's most notable instrumental part, but you will notice that it's mixed quite low in the track. This is because Wilson was unimpressed with Kooper's playing, which is technically pretty poor -- indeed, for much of the song, Kooper is a beat behind the rest of the band, waiting for them to change chords and then following the change on the next measure. Luckily, Kooper is also a good enough natural musician that he made this work, and it gave the song a distinctive sound: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone"] The finished record came in at around six minutes -- and here I should just mention that most books on the subject say that the single was six minutes and thirteen seconds long. That's the length of the stereo mix of the song on the stereo version of the album. The mono mix on the mono album, which we just heard, is five minutes fifty-eight, as it has a shorter fade. I haven't been able to track down a copy of the single as released in 1965, but usually the single mix would be the same as the mono album mix. Whatever the exact length, it was much, much, longer than the norm for a single -- the Animals' "House of the Rising Sun" had been regarded as ridiculously long at four and a half minutes -- and Columbia originally wanted to split the song over two sides of a single. But eventually it was released as one side, in full: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone"] That's Bruce Langhorne there playing that rather sloppy tambourine part, high in the mix. The record made the top five in the UK, and reached number two in the US, only being held off from the top spot by "Help!" by the Beatles. It would, however, be the last track that Tom Wilson produced for Dylan. Nobody knows what caused their split after three and a half albums working together -- and everything suggests that on the UK tour in the Spring, the two were very friendly. But they had some sort of disagreement, about which neither of them would ever speak, other than a comment by Wilson in an interview shortly before his death in which he said that Dylan had told him he was going to get Phil Spector to produce his records. In the event, the rest of the album Dylan was working on would be produced by Bob Johnston, who would be Dylan's regular producer until the mid-seventies. So "Like a Rolling Stone" was a major break in Dylan's career, and there was another one shortly after its release, when Dylan played the Newport Folk Festival for the third time, in what has become possibly the single most discussed and analysed performance in folk or rock music. The most important thing to note here is that there was not a backlash among the folk crowd against electric instruments. The Newport Folk Festival had *always* had electric performers -- John Lee Hooker and Johnny Cash and The Staple Singers had all performed with electric guitars and nobody had cared. What there was, was a backlash against pop music. You see, up until the Beatles hit America, the commercial side of folk music had been huge. Acts like the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul, and Mary, The Chad Mitchell Trio, and so on had been massive. Most of the fans at the Newport Folk Festival actually despised many of these acts as sell-outs, doing watered-down versions of the traditional music they loved. But at the same time, those acts *were* doing watered-down versions of the traditional music they loved, and by doing so they were exposing more people to that traditional music. They were making programmes like Hootenanny possible -- and the folkies didn't like Hootenanny, but Hootenanny existing meant that the New Lost City Ramblers got an audience they would otherwise not have got. There was a recognition, then, that the commercialised folk music that many of them despised was nonetheless important in the development of a thriving scene. And it was those acts, the Kingston Trios and Peter, Paul, and Marys, who were fast losing their commercial relevance because of the renewed popularity of rock music. If Hootenanny gets cancelled and Shindig put on in its place, that's great for fans of the Righteous Brothers and Sam Cooke, but it's not so great if you want to hear "Tom Dooley" or "If I Had a Hammer". And so many of the old guard in the folk movement weren't wary of electric guitars *as instruments*, but they were wary of anything that looked like someone taking sides with the new pop music rather than the old folk music. For Dylan's first performance at the festival in 1965, he played exactly the set that people would expect of him, and there was no problem. The faultlines opened up, not with Dylan's first performance, but with the performance by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, as part of a history of the blues, presented by Alan Lomax. Lomax had no objection to rock and roll -- indeed, earlier in the festival the Chambers Brothers, a Black electric group from Mississippi, had performed a set of rock and R&B songs, and Lomax had come on stage afterwards and said “I'm very proud tonight that we finally got onto the Newport Folk Festival our modern American folk music: rock 'n' roll!” But Lomax didn't think that the Butterfield band met his criteria of "authenticity". And he had a point. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band were an integrated group -- their rhythm section were Black musicians who had played with Howlin' Wolf -- and they'd gained experience through playing Chicago blues on the South Side of Chicago, but their leader, Butterfield, was a white man, as was Mike Bloomfield, their guitarist, and so they'd quickly moved to playing clubs on the North side, where Black musicians had generally not been able to play. Butterfield and Bloomfield were both excellent musicians, but they were closer to the British blues lovers who were making up groups like the Rolling Stones, Animals, and Manfred Mann. There was a difference -- they were from Chicago, not from the Home Counties -- but they were still scholars coming at the music from the outside, rather than people who'd grown up with the music and had it as part of their culture. The Butterfield Band were being promoted as a sort of American answer to the Stones, and they had been put on Lomax's bill rather against his will -- he wanted to have some Chicago blues to illustrate that part of the music, but why not Muddy Waters or Howlin' Wolf, rather than this new group who had never really done anything? One he'd never even heard -- but who he knew that Albert Grossman was thinking about managing. So his introduction to the Butterfield Blues Band's performance was polite but hardly rapturous. He said "Us white cats always moved in, a little bit late, but tried to catch up...I understand that this present combination has not only caught up but passed the rest. That's what I hear—I'm anxious to find out whether it's true or not." He then introduced the musicians, and they started to play an old Little Walter song: [Excerpt: The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, "Juke"] But after the set, Grossman was furious at Lomax, asking him what kind of introduction that was meant to be. Lomax responded by asking if Grossman wanted a punch in the mouth, Grossman hurled a homophobic slur at Lomax, and the two men started hitting each other and rolling round in the dirt, to the amusement of pretty much everyone around. But Lomax and Grossman were both far from amused. Lomax tried to get the Festival board to kick Grossman out, and almost succeeded, until someone explained that if they did, then that would mean that all Grossman's acts, including huge names like Dylan and Peter, Paul, and Mary, would also be out. Nobody's entirely sure whose idea it was, but it seems to have been Grossman who thought that since Bloomfield had played on Dylan's recent single, it might be an idea to get the Butterfield Blues Band to back Dylan on stage, as a snub to Lomax. But the idea seems to have cohered properly when Grossman bumped into Al Kooper, who was attending the festival just as an audience member. Grossman gave Kooper a pair of backstage passes, and told him to meet up with Dylan. And so, for Dylan's performance on the Sunday -- scheduled in the middle of the day, rather than as the headliner as most people expected, he appeared with an electric guitar, backed by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and Al Kooper. He opened with his recent single "Maggie's Farm", and followed it with the new one, "Like a Rolling Stone": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone (live at Newport)"] After those two songs, the group did one more, a song called "Phantom Engineer", which they hadn't rehearsed properly and which was an utter train wreck. And then they left the stage. And there was booing. How much booing, and what the cause was, is hard to say, but everyone agrees there was some. Some people claim that the booing was just because the set had been so short, others say that the audience was mostly happy but there were just a few people booing. And others say that the booing mostly came from the front -- that there were sound problems that meant that while the performance sounded great to people further back, there was a tremendous level of distortion near the front. That's certainly what Pete Seeger said. Seeger was visibly distraught and angry at the sounds coming from the stage. He later said, and I believe him, that it wasn't annoyance at Dylan playing with an electric band, but at the distorted sound. He said he couldn't hear the words, that the guitar was too loud compared to the vocals, and in particular that his father, who was an old man using a hearing aid, was in actual physical pain at the sound. According to Joe Boyd, later a famous record producer but at this time just helping out at the festival, Seeger, the actor Theodore Bikel, and Alan Lomax, all of whom were on the festival board, told Boyd to take a message to Paul Rothchild, who was working the sound, telling him that the festival board ordered him to lower the volume. When Boyd got there, he found Rothchild there with Albert Grossman and Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul, and Mary, who was also on the board. When Boyd gave his message, Yarrow responded that the board was "adequately represented at the sound controls", that the sound was where the musicians wanted it, and gave Boyd a message to take back to the other board members, consisting of a single raised middle finger. Whatever the cause of the anger, which was far from universal, Dylan was genuinely baffled and upset at the reaction -- while it's been portrayed since, including by Dylan himself at times, as a deliberate act of provocation on Dylan's part, it seems that at the time he was just going on stage with his new friends, to play his new songs in front of some of his old friends and a crowd that had always been supportive of him. Eventually Peter Yarrow, who was MCing, managed to persuade Dylan to go back on stage and do a couple more numbers, alone this time as the band hadn't rehearsed any more songs. He scrounged up an acoustic guitar, went back on, spent a couple of minutes fiddling around with the guitar, got a different guitar because something was wrong with that one, played "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue", spent another couple of minutes tuning up, and then finally played "Mr. Tambourine Man": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Mr. Tambourine Man (live at Newport)"] But that pause while Dylan was off stage scrounging an acoustic guitar from somewhere led to a rumour that has still got currency fifty-six years later. Because Peter Yarrow, trying to keep the crowd calm, said "He's gone to get his axe" -- using musicians' slang for a guitar. But many of the crowd didn't know that slang. But they had seen Pete Seeger furious, and they'd also seen, earlier in the festival, a demonstration of work-songs, sung by people who kept time by chopping wood, and according to some people Seeger had joined in with that demonstration, swinging an axe as he sang. So the audience put two and two together, and soon the rumour was going round the festival -- Pete Seeger had been so annoyed by Dylan going electric he'd tried to chop the cables with an axe, and had had to be held back from doing so. Paul Rothchild even later claimed to have seen Seeger brandishing it. The rumour became so pervasive that in later years, even as he denied doing it, Seeger tried to explain it away by saying that he might have said something like "I wish I had an axe so I could cut those cables". In fact, Seeger wasn't angry at Dylan, as much as he was concerned -- shortly afterwards he wrote a private note to himself trying to sort out his own feelings, which said in part "I like some rock and roll a great deal. Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters. I confess that, like blues and like flamenco music, I can't listen to it for a long time at a stretch. I just don't feel that aggressive, personally. But I have a question. Was the sound at Newport from Bob's aggregation good rock and roll? I once had a vision of a beast with hollow fangs. I first saw it when my mother-in-law, who I loved very much, died of cancer... Who knows, but I am one of the fangs that has sucked Bob dry. It is in the hope that I can learn that I write these words, asking questions I need help to answer, using language I never intended. Hoping that perhaps I'm wrong—but if I am right, hoping that it won't happen again." Seeger would later make his own electric albums, and he would always continue to be complimentary towards Dylan in public. He even repeatedly said that while he still wished he'd been able to hear the words and that the guitar had been mixed quieter, he knew he'd been on the wrong side, and that if he had the time over he'd have gone on stage and asked the audience to stop booing Dylan. But the end result was the same -- Dylan was now no longer part of the Newport Folk Festival crowd. He'd moved on and was now a pop star, and nothing was going to change that. He'd split with Suze, he'd split with Joan Baez, he'd split with Tom Wilson, and now he'd split with his peer group. From now on Dylan wasn't a spokesman for his generation, or the leader of a movement. He was a young man with a leather jacket and a Stratocaster, and he was going to make rock music. And we'll see the results of that in future episodes.
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