Podcast appearances and mentions of Lloyd Price

Jeffrey Madoff is, as you will discover, quite a fascinating and engaging person. Jeff is quite the creative entrepreneur as this episode's title says. But he really is so much more.   He tells us that he came by his entrepreneurial spirit and mindset honestly. His parents were both entrepreneurs and passed their attitude onto him and his older sister. Even Jeffrey's children have their own businesses.   There is, however, so much more to Jeffrey Madoff. He has written a book and is working on another one. He also has created a play based on the life of Lloyd Price. Who is Lloyd Price? Listen and find out. Clue, the name of the play is “Personality”. Jeff's next book, “Casting Not Hiring”, with Dan Sullivan, is about the transformational power of theater and how you can build a company based on the principles of theater. It will be published by Hay House and available in November of this year.   My conversation with Jeff is a far ranging as you can imagine. We talk about everything from the meaning of Creativity to Imposture's Syndrome. I always tell my guests that Unstoppable Mindset is not a podcast to interview people, but instead I want to have real conversations. I really got my wish with Jeff Madoff. I hope you like listening to this episode as much as I liked being involved in it.       About the Guest:   Jeffrey Madoff's career straddles the creative and business side of the arts. He has been a successful entrepreneur in fashion design and film, and as an author, playwright, producer, and adjunct professor at Parsons School of Design. He created and taught a course for sixteen years called “Creative Careers Making A Living With Your Ideas”, which led to a bestselling book of the same name . Madoff has been a keynote speaker at Princeton, Wharton, NYU and Yale where he curated and moderated a series of panels entitled "Reframing The Arts As Entrepreneurship”. His play “Personality” was a critical and audience success in it's commercial runs at People's Light Theater in Pennsylvania and in Chicago and currently waiting for a theater on The West End in London.   Madoff's next book, “Casting Not Hiring”, with Dan Sullivan, is about the transformational power of theater and how you can build a company based on the principles of theater. It will be published by Hay House and available in November of this year. Ways to connect Jeffrey:   company website: www.madoffproductions.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/b-jeffrey-madoff-5baa8074/ www.acreativecareer.com Instagram: @acreativecareer   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Well, hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. We're glad to have you on board with us, wherever you happen to be. Hope the day is going well for you. Our guest today is Jeffrey Madoff, who is an a very creative kind of person. He has done a number of things in the entrepreneurial world. He has dealt with a lot of things regarding the creative side of the arts. He's written plays. He taught a course for 16 years, and he'll tell us about that. He's been a speaker in a variety of places. And I'm not going to go into all of that, because I think it'll be more fun if Jeffrey does it. So welcome to unstoppable mindset. We are really glad you're here and looking forward to having an hour of fun. And you know, as I mentioned to you once before, the only rule on the podcast is we both have to have fun, or it's not worth doing, right? So here   Jeffrey Madoff ** 02:13 we are. Well, thanks for having me on. Michael, well, we're really glad   Michael Hingson ** 02:17 you're here. Why don't we start as I love to do tell us kind of about the early Jeffrey growing up, and you know how you got where you are, a little bit or whatever.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 02:28 Well, I was born in Akron, Ohio, which at that time was the rubber capital of the world. Ah, so that might explain some of my bounce and resilience. There   Michael Hingson ** 02:40 you go. I was in Sandusky, Ohio last weekend, nice and cold, or last week,   Jeffrey Madoff ** 02:44 yeah, I remember you were, you were going to be heading there. And, you know, Ohio, Akron, which is in northern Ohio, was a great place to grow up and then leave, you know, so my my childhood. I have many, many friends from my childhood, some who still live there. So it's actually I always enjoy going back, which doesn't happen all that often anymore, you know, because certain chapters in one's life close, like you know, when my when my parents died, there wasn't as much reason to go back, and because the friends that I had there preferred to come to New York rather than me go to Akron. But, you know, Akron was a great place to live, and I'm very fortunate. I think what makes a great place a great place is the people you meet, the experiences you have. Mm, hmm, and I met a lot of really good people, and I was very close with my parents, who were entrepreneurs. My mom and dad both were so I come by that aspect of my life very honestly, because they modeled the behavior. And I have an older sister, and she's also an entrepreneur, so I think that's part of the genetic code of our family is doing that. And actually, both of my kids have their own business, and my wife was entrepreneurial. So some of those things just carry forward, because it's kind of what, you know, what did your parents do? My parents were independent retailers, and so they started by working in other stores, and then gradually, both of them, who were also very independent people, you know, started, started their own store, and then when they got married, they opened one together, and it was Women's and Children's retail clothing. And so I learned, I learned a lot from my folks, mainly from the. Behavior that I saw growing up. I don't think you can really lecture kids and teach them anything, yeah, but you can be a very powerful teacher through example, both bad and good. Fortunately, my parents were good examples. I think   Michael Hingson ** 05:14 that kids really are a whole lot more perceptive than than people think sometimes, and you're absolutely right, lecturing them and telling them things, especially when you go off and do something different than you tell them to do, never works. They're going to see right through it.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 05:31 That's right. That's right. And you know, my kids are very bright, and there was never anything we couldn't talk about. And I had that same thing with my parents, you know, particularly my dad. But I had the same thing with both my parents. There was just this kind of understanding that community, open communication is the best communication and dealing with things as they came up was the best way to deal with things. And so it was, it was, it was really good, because my kids are the same way. You know, there was always discussions and questioning. And to this day, and I have twins, I have a boy and girl that are 31 years old and very I'm very proud of them and the people that they have become, and are still becoming,   Michael Hingson ** 06:31 well and still becoming is really the operative part of that. I think we all should constantly be learning, and we should, should never decide we've learned all there is to learn, because that won't happen. There's always something new,   Jeffrey Madoff ** 06:44 and that's really what's fun. I think that you know for creativity and life at large, that constant curiosity and learning is fuel that keeps things moving forward, and can kindle the flame that lights up into inspiration, whether you're writing a book or a song or whatever it is, whatever expression one may have, I think that's where it originates. Is curiosity. You're trying to answer a question or solve a problem or something. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 07:20 and sometimes you're not, and it's just a matter of doing. And it doesn't always have to be some agenda somewhere, but it's good to just be able to continue to grow. And all too often, we get so locked into agendas that we don't look at the rest of the world around us.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 07:41 I Well, I would say the the agenda in and of itself, staying curious, I guess an overarching part of my agenda, but it's not to try to get something from somebody else, right, other than knowledge, right? And so I guess I do have an agenda in that. That's what I find interesting.   Michael Hingson ** 08:02 I can accept that that makes sense.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 08:06 Well, maybe one of the few things I say that does so thank you.   Michael Hingson ** 08:10 I wasn't even thinking of that as an agenda, but just a way of life. But I hear what you're saying. It makes sense. Oh, there are   Jeffrey Madoff ** 08:17 people that I've certainly met you may have, and your listeners may have, also that there always is some kind of, I wouldn't call it agenda, a transactional aspect to what they're doing. And that transactional aspect one could call an agenda, which isn't about mutual interest, it's more what I can get and or what I can sell you, or what I can convince you of, or whatever. And I to me, it's the the process is what's so interesting, the process of questioning, the process of learning, the process of expressing, all of those things I think are very powerful, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 09:03 yeah, I hear what you're saying. So for you, you were an Akron did you go to college there? Or what did you do after high school? So   Jeffrey Madoff ** 09:11 after high school, I went to the University of Wisconsin, ah, Madison, which is a fantastic place. That's right, badgers, that's right. And, and what really cinched the deal was when I went to visit the school. I mean, it was so different when I was a kid, because, you know, nowadays, the kids that my kids grew up with, you know, the parents would visit 18 schools, and they would, you know, they would, they would file for admission to 15 schools. And I did one in my parents. I said to them, can I take the car? I want to go check out the University. I was actually looking at Northwestern and the University of Wisconsin. And. And I was in Evanston, where Northwestern is located. I didn't see any kids around, and, you know, I had my parents car, and I finally saw a group of kids, and I said, where is everybody? I said, Well, it's exam week. Everybody's in studying. Oh, I rolled up the window, and without getting out of the car, continued on to Madison. And when I got to Madison, I was meeting somebody behind the Student Union. And my favorite band at that time, which was the Paul Butterfield blues band, was giving a free concert. So I went behind the Student Union, and it's a beautiful, idyllic place, lakes and sailboats and just really gorgeous. And my favorite band is giving a free concert. So decision made, I'm going University of Wisconsin, and it was a great place.   Michael Hingson ** 10:51 I remember when I was looking at colleges. We got several letters. Got I wanted to major in physics. I was always science oriented. Got a letter from Dartmouth saying you ought to consider applying, and got some other letters. We looked at some catalogs, and I don't even remember how the subject came up, but we discovered this University California campus, University California at Irvine, and it was a new campus, and that attracted me, because although physically, it was very large, there were only a few buildings on it. The total population of undergraduates was 2700 students, not that way today, but it was back when I went there, and that attracted me. So we reached out to the chair of the physics department, whose name we got out of the catalog, and asked Dr Ford if we could come and meet with him and see if he thought it would be a good fit. And it was over the summer between my junior and senior year, and we went down, and we chatted with him for about an hour, and he he talked a little physics to me and asked a few questions, and I answered them, and he said, you know, you would do great here. You should apply. And I did, and I was accepted, and that was it, and I've never regretted that. And I actually went all the way through and got my master's degree staying at UC Irvine, because it was a great campus. There were some professors who weren't overly teaching oriented, because they were so you research oriented, but mostly the teachers were pretty good, and we had a lot of fun, and there were a lot of good other activities, like I worked with the campus radio station and so on. So I hear what you're saying, and it's the things that attract you to a campus. Those count. Oh,   Jeffrey Madoff ** 12:35 yeah. I mean, because what can you really do on a visit? You know, it's like kicking the tires of a car, right? You know? Does it feel right? Is there something that I mean, sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you do meet a faculty member or someone that you really connect with, and that causes you to really like the place, but you don't really know until you're kind of there, right? And Madison ended up being a wonderful choice. I loved it. I had a double major in philosophy and psychology. You know, my my reasoning being, what two things do I find really interesting that there is no path to making a good income from Oh, philosophy and psychology. That works   Michael Hingson ** 13:22 well you possibly can from psychology, but philosophy, not hardly   Jeffrey Madoff ** 13:26 No, no. But, you know, the thing that was so great about it, going back to the term we used earlier, curiosity in the fuel, what I loved about both, you know, philosophy and psychology used to be cross listed. They were this under the same heading. It was in 1932 when the Encyclopedia Britannica approached Sigmund Freud to write a separate entry for psychology, and that was the first time the two disciplines, philosophy and psychology, were split apart, and Freud wrote that entry, and forever since, it became its own discipline, but the questions that one asks, or the questions that are posed in Both philosophy and psychology, I still, to this day, find fascinating. And, you know, thinking about thinking and how you think about things, I always find very, very interesting.   Michael Hingson ** 14:33 Yeah, and the whole, the whole process, how do you get from here to there? How do you deal with anything that comes up, whether it's a challenge or just fulfilling the life choices that you make and so on. And philosophy and psychology, in a sense, I think, really are significantly different, but they're both very much thinking oriented.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 14:57 Oh, absolutely, it. And you know, philosophy means study of life, right? What psychology is, yeah, so I understand why they were bonded, and now, you know, understand why they also separated. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 15:15 I'll have to go look up what Freud said. I have never read that, but I will go find it. I'm curious. Yeah,   Jeffrey Madoff ** 15:23 it's it's so interesting. It's so interesting to me, because whether you believe in Freud or not, you if you are knowledgeable at all, the impact that he had on the world to this day is staggeringly significant. Yeah, because nobody was at posing those questions before, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 15:46 yeah. And there's, there's no doubt that that he has had a major contribution to a lot of things regarding life, and you're right, whether you buy into the view that he had of a lot of things isn't, isn't really the issue, but it still is that he had a lot of relevant and interesting things to say, and he helps people think that's right, that's right. Well, so what did you do? So you had a double major? Did you go on and do any advanced degree work? No,   Jeffrey Madoff ** 16:17 you know it was interesting because I had thought about it because I liked philosophy so much. And I approached this professor who was very noted, Ivan Saul, who was one of the world Hegelian scholars, and I approached him to be my advisor. And he said, Why do you want me to be your advisor? And I said, because you're one of the most published and respected authors on that subject. And if I'm going to have an advisor, I might as well go for the person that might help me the most and mean the most if I apply to graduate schools. So I did in that case certainly had an agenda. Yeah, and, and he said, you know, Jeff, I just got back from the world Hegelian conference in Munich, and I found it very depressing as and he just paused, and I said, why'd you find it depressing? And he said, Well, there's only one or two other people in the world that I can speak to about Hegel. And I said, Well, maybe you want to choose a different topic so you can make more friends. That depressing. That doesn't sound like it's a mix, you know, good fit for life, right? But so I didn't continue to graduate studies. I took graduate courses. I started graduate courses the second semester of my sophomore year. But I thought, I don't know. I don't want to, I don't want to gain this knowledge that the only thing I can do is pass it on to others. It's kind of like breathing stale air or leaving the windows shut. I wanted to be in a world where there was an idea exchange, which I thought would be a lot more interesting. Yeah. And so there was a brief period where I thought I would get a doctorate and do that, and I love teaching, but I never wanted to. That's not what I wanted to pursue for those reasons.   Michael Hingson ** 18:35 So what did you end up doing then, once you got   Jeffrey Madoff ** 18:37 out of college? Well, there was a must have done something I did. And there's a little boutique, and in Madison that I did the buying for. And it was this very hip little clothing store. And Madison, because it was a big campus, you know, in the major rock bands would tour, they would come into the store because we had unusual things that I would find in New York, you know, when I was doing the buying for it, and I get a phone call from a friend of mine, a kid that I grew up with, and he was a year older, he had graduated school a year before me, and he said, Can you think of a gig that would earn more than bank interest? You know, I've saved up this money. Can you think of anything? And I said, Well, I see what we design. I mean, I see what we sell, and I could always draw. So I felt like I could design. I said, I'll start a clothing company. And Michael, I had not a clue in terms of what I was committing myself to. I was very naive, but not stupid. You know, was ignorant, but not stupid. And different. The difference between being ignorant and being stupid is ignorant. You can. Learn stupids forever, yeah, and that started me on this learning lesson, an entrepreneurial learning lesson, and there was, you know, quite formative for me. And the company was doubling in size every four months, every three months, and it was getting pretty big pretty quick. And you know, I was flying by the seat of my pants. I didn't really know what I was doing, but what I discovered is I had, you know, saleable taste. And I mean, when I was working in this store, I got some of the sewers who did the alterations to make some of my drawings, and I cut apart a shirt that I liked the way it fit, so I could see what the pieces are, and kind of figure out how this all worked. So but when I would go to a store and I would see fabric on the bolt, meaning it hadn't been made into anything, I was so naive. I thought that was wholesale, you know, which it wasn't and but I learned quickly, because it was like you learn quickly, or you go off the edge of a cliff, you go out of business. So it taught me a lot of things. And you know the title of your podcast, the unstoppable, that's part of what you learn in business. If you're going to survive, you've gotta be resilient enough to get up, because you're going to get knocked down. You have to persevere, because there are people that are going to that you're competing with, and there are things that are things that are going to happen that are going to make you want to give up, but that perseverance, that resilience, I think probably creativity, is third. I think it's a close call between perseverance and resilience, because those are really important criteria for a personality profile to have if you're going to succeed in business as an entrepreneur.   Michael Hingson ** 22:05 You know, Einstein once said, or at least he's credited with saying, that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, right and and the reality is that good, resilient. People will look at things that didn't go right, and if they really look at them, they'll go, I didn't fail. Yeah, maybe I didn't go right. I may have made a mistake, or something wasn't quite right. What do I do to fix it so that the next time, we won't have the same problem? And I think that's so important. I wrote my book last year, live like a guide dog, true stories from a blind man and his dogs about being brave, overcoming adversity and moving forward in faith. And it's all about learning to control fear, but it's also all about learning from dogs. I've had eight guide dogs, and my wife had a service dog, and it's all about learning from dogs and seeing why they live in an environment where we are and they feed off of us, if you will. But at the same time, what they don't do is fear like we do. They're open to trust, and we tend not to be because we worry about so many things, rather than just looking at the world and just dealing with our part of it. So it is, it is interesting to to hear you talk about resilience. I think you're absolutely right that resilience is extremely important. Perseverance is important, and they do go together, but you you have to analyze what it is that makes you resilient, or what it is that you need to do to keep being resilient.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 23:48 Well, you're right. And one of the questions that you alluded to the course that I taught for 16 years at Parsons School of Design, which was my course, was called creative careers, making a living with your ideas. And I would ask the students, how many of you are afraid of failing? And probably more than three quarters of the class, their hands went up, and I said to them, you know, if that fear stops you, you'll never do anything interesting, because creativity, true creativity, by necessity, takes you up to and beyond the boundaries. And so it's not going to be always embraced. And you know, failure, I think everyone has to define it for themselves. But I think failure, to me, is and you hear that, you know, failure is a great way to learn. I mean, it's a way. To learn, but it's never not painful, you know, and it, but it is a way to learn if you're paying attention and if you are open to that notion, which I am and was, because, you know, that kind of risk is a necessary part of creativity, going where you hadn't gone before, to try to find solutions that you hadn't done before, and seeing what works. And of course, there's going to be things that don't, but it's only failure if you stop doing what is important to you. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 25:39 well, I think you're absolutely right. And one of the things that I used to do and still do, but it started when I was working as program director of our radio station at UC Irvine, was I wanted people to hear what they sounded like on the radio, because I always listened to what I said, and I know it helped me, but getting the other radio personalities to listen to themselves was was well, like herding cats, it just wasn't doable. And what we finally did is we set up, I and the engineer of the radio station, set up a recorder in a locked cabinet, and whenever the board went on in the main studio, the microphone went on, it recorded. So we didn't need to worry about the music. All we wanted was what the people said, and then we would give people the cassettes. And one of the things that I started saying then, and I said it until, like about a year ago, was, you know, you're your own worst critic, if you can learn to grow from it, or if you can learn to see what's a problem and go on, then that's great. What I learned over the last year and thought about is I'm really not my own worst critic. I'm my own best teacher, because I'm the only one who can really teach me anything, and it's better to shape it in a positive way. So I am my own best teacher. And so I think you're right. If you really want to talk about the concept of failure, failure is when you won't get back up. Failure is when you won't do anything to learn and grow from whatever happens to you, even the good stuff. Could I have done it better? Those are all very important things to do.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 27:19 No, I agree. So why did you think it was important for them to hear their voice?   Michael Hingson ** 27:25 Because I wanted them to hear what everyone else heard. I wanted them to hear what they sounded like to their listeners. And the reality is, when we got them to do that, it was, I say it was incredible, but it wasn't a surprise to me how much better they got. And some of those people ended up going into radio broadcasting, going into other kinds of things, but they really learned to hear what everyone else heard. And they they learned how to talk better. They learn what they really needed to improve upon, or they learn what wasn't sounding very good to everyone else, and they changed their habits.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 28:13 Interesting, interesting. So, so part of that also helps them establish a certain on air identity. I would imagine finding their own voice, so to speak, right,   Michael Hingson ** 28:30 or finding a better voice than they than they had, and certainly a better voice than they thought they had. Well, they thought they had a good voice, and they realized maybe it could be better. And the ones who learned, and most of them really did learn from it, came out the better for it.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 28:49 So let me ask you a personal question. You have been sightless since birth? Is that correct?   Michael Hingson ** 28:56 Yeah, I've been blind since birth. And   Jeffrey Madoff ** 28:59 so on a certain level, I was trying to think about this the other night, and how can I phrase this? On a certain level, you don't know what you look like,   Michael Hingson ** 29:15 and from the standpoint of how you look at it, yeah, yeah.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 29:19 And so, so two, that's two questions. One is so many of us for good and bad, our identity has to do with visual first, how do you assess that new person?   Michael Hingson ** 29:39 I don't look at it from a visual standpoint as such. I look at it from all the other senses that I have and use, but I also listen to the person and see how we interact and react to. Each other, and from that, I can draw pretty good conclusions about what an individual is like, so that I can decide if that's a a lovely person, male or female, because I'm using lovely in the sense of it's the kind of person I want to know or not, and so I don't obviously look at it from a visual standpoint. And although I know Helen Keller did it some, I'm not into feeling faces. When I was in college, I tried to convince girls that they should let me teach them Braille, but they had no interest in me showing them Braille, so we didn't do that. I actually a friend of mine and I once went to a girls dorm, and we put up a sign. Wanted young female assistant to aid in scientific Braille research, but that didn't go anywhere either. So we didn't do it. But so Braille pickup. Oh, Braille pickup. On the other hand, I had my guide dog who was in in my current guide dog is just the same chick magnet right from the get go, but, but the the reality is that visual is, I think there's a lot to be said for beauty is only skin deep in a lot of ways. And I think that it's important that we go far beyond just what one person looks like. People ask me all the time, well, if you could see again, would you? Or if you could see, would you? And my response is, I don't need to. I think there's value in it. It is a sense. I think it would be a great adventure, but I'm not going to spend my life worrying about that. Blindness isn't what defines me, and what defines me is how I behave, how I am, how I learn and grow, and what I do to be a part of society and and hopefully help society. I think that's more important.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 31:53 You know, I agree with you, and it's it's also having been blind since birth. It's not like you had a you had an aspect that you lost for some reason, right?   Michael Hingson ** 32:04 But I know some people who became blind later in life, who attended centers where they could learn about what it was like to be blind and learn to be a blind person and and really adapted to that philosophy and continue to do what they did even before they lost their their eyesight, and were just as successful as they ever were, because it wasn't so much about having eyesight, although that is a challenge when you lose it, but it was more important to learn that you could find alternatives to do the same things that you did before. So   Jeffrey Madoff ** 32:41 if you ever have read Marvel Comics, and you know Daredevil has a heightened sense of a vision, or you know that certain things turn into a different advantage, is there that kind of in real life, compensatory heightened awareness of other senses.   Michael Hingson ** 33:08 And the answer is not directly. The answer is, if you choose to heighten those senses and learn to use them, then they can be a help. It's like SEAL Team Six, or Rangers, or whatever, they learn how to observe. And for them, observing goes far beyond just using their eyesight to be able to spot things, although they they certainly use that, but they have heightened all of their other senses because they've trained them and they've taught themselves how to use those senses. It's not an automatic process by any definition at all. It's not automatic. You have to learn to do it. There are some blind people who have, have learned to do that, and there are a number that have not. People have said, well, you know, could any blind person get out of the World Trade Center, and like you did, and my response is, it depends on the individual, not necessarily, because there's so many factors that go into it. If you are so afraid when something like the World Trade Center events happen that you become blinded by fear, then you're going to have a much harder time getting out than if you let fear be a guide and use it to heighten the senses that you have during the time that you need that to occur. And that's one of the things that live like a guide dog is all about, is teaching people to learn to control fear, so that in reality, they find they're much more effective, because when something happens, they don't expect they adopt and adapt to having a mindset that says, I can get through this, and fear is going to help.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 34:53 That's fascinating. So one I could go on in this direction, I'll ask you, one, one other. Question is, how would you describe your dreams?   Michael Hingson ** 35:08 Probably the same way you would, except for me, dreaming is primarily in audio and other interactions and not using eyesight. But at the same time, I understand what eyesight is about, because I've thought about it a lot, and I appreciate that the process is not something that I have, but I understand it, and I can talk about light and eyesight all day. I can I when I was when it was discovered that I was blind for the first several years, I did have some light perception. I never as such, really even could see shadows, but I had some light perception. But if I were to be asked, How would you describe what it's like to see light? I'm not sure how I would do that. It's like asking you tell me what it's like to see put it into words so that it makes me feel what you feel when you see. And it's not the excitement of seeing, but it's the sensation. How do you describe that sensation? Or how do you describe the sensation of hearing their their senses? But I've yet to really encounter someone who can put those into words that will draw you in. And I say that from the standpoint of having done literally hundreds or 1000s of speeches telling my story about being in the World Trade Center, and what I tell people today is we have a whole generation of people who have never experienced or had no memory of the World Trade Center, and we have another generation that saw it mainly from TV and pictures. So they their, their view of it was extremely small. And my job, when I speak is to literally bring them in the building and describe what is occurring to me in such a way that they're with me as we're going down the stairs. And I've learned how to do that, but describing to someone what it's like to see or to hear, I haven't found words that can truly do that yet. Oh,   Jeffrey Madoff ** 37:15 fascinating. Thank you.   Michael Hingson ** 37:20 Well, tell me about creativity. I mean, you do a lot of of things, obviously, with with creativity. So what is creativity?   Jeffrey Madoff ** 37:29 I think that creativity is the compelling need to express, and that can manifest in many, many, many different ways. You have that, you know, just it was fascinating here you talk about you, describing what happened in Twin Towers, you know. And so, I think, you know, you had a compelling need to process what was a historic and extraordinary event through that unique perception that you have, and taking the person, as you said, along with you on that journey, you know, down the stairs and out of the Building. I think it was what 78 stories or something, right? And so I think that creativity, in terms of a trait, is that it's a personality trait that has a compelling need to express in some way. And I think that there is no such thing as the lightning bolt that hits and all of a sudden you come up with the idea for the great novel, The great painting, the great dance, the great piece of music. We are taking in influences all the time and percolating those influences, and they may come out, in my case, hopefully they've come out in the play that I wrote, personality and because if it doesn't relate to anybody else, and you're only talking to yourself, that's you know, not, not. The goal, right? The play is to have an audience. The goal of your book is to have readers. And by the way, did your book come out in Braille?   Michael Hingson ** 39:31 Um, yeah, it, it is available in Braille. It's a bit. Actually, all three of my books are available in with their on demand. They can be produced in braille, and they're also available in audio formats as well. Great.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 39:43 That's great. So, yeah, I think that person, I think that creativity is it is a fascinating topic, because I think that when you're a kid, oftentimes you're told more often not. To do certain things than to do certain things. And I think that you know, when you're creative and you put your ideas out there at a very young age, you can learn shame. You know, people don't like what you do, or make fun of what you do, or they may like it, and it may be great, but if there's, you know, you're opened up to that risk of other people's judgment. And I think that people start retreating from that at a very young age. Could because of parents, could because of teachers, could because of their peer group, but they learn maybe in terms of what they think is emotional survival, although would never be articulated that way, at putting their stuff out there, they can be judged, and they don't like being judged, and that's a very uncomfortable place to be. So I think creativity is both an expression and a process.   Michael Hingson ** 40:59 Well, I'll and I think, I think you're right, and I think that it is, it is unfortunate all too often, as you said, how children are told don't do this or just do that, but don't do this, and no, very few people take the next logical step, which is to really help the child understand why they said that it isn't just don't. It should be. Why not? One of my favorite stories is about a student in school once and was taking a philosophy class. You'll probably have heard this, but he and his classmates went in for the final exam, and the instructor wrote one word on the board, which was why? And then everybody started to write. And they were writing furiously this. This student sat there for a couple of minutes, wrote something on a paper, took it up, handed it in, and left. And when the grades came out, he was the only one who got an A. And the reason is, is because what he put on his paper was, why not, you know, and, and that's very, very valid question to ask. But the reality is, if we really would do more to help people understand, we would be so much better off. But rather than just telling somebody what to do, it's important to understand why?   Jeffrey Madoff ** 42:22 Yeah, I remember when I was in I used to draw all the time, and my parents would bring home craft paper from the store that was used to wrap packets. And so they would bring me home big sheets I could do whatever I wanted on it, you know, and I would draw. And in school I would draw. And when art period happened once or twice a week, and the teacher would come in with her cart and I was drawing, that was when this was in, like, the middle 50s, and Davy Crockett was really a big deal, and I was drawing quite an intricate picture of the battle at the Alamo. And the teacher came over to me and said she wanted us to do crayon resist, which is, you know, they the watercolors won't go over the the crayon part because of the wax and the crayon. And so you would get a different thing that never looked good, no matter who did it, right? And so the teacher said to me, what are you doing? And I said, Well, I'm drawing. It's and she said, Why are you drawing? I said, Well, it's art class, isn't it? She said, No, I told you what to do. And I said, Yeah, but I wanted to do this. And she said, Well, you do what I tell you, where you sit there with your hands folded, and I sat there with my hands folded. You know I wasn't going to be cowed by her. And I've thought back on that story so often, because so often you get shut down. And when you get shut down in a strong way, and you're a kid, you don't want to tread on that land again. Yeah, you're afraid,   Michael Hingson ** 44:20 yeah. Yeah. And maybe there was a good reason that she wanted you to do what she wanted, but she should have taken the time to explain that right, right now, of course, my question is, since you did that drawing with the Alamo and so on, I'm presuming that Davy Crockett looked like Fess Parker, right? Just checking,   Jeffrey Madoff ** 44:42 yeah, yep, yeah. And my parents even got me a coon   Michael Hingson ** 44:47 skin hat. There you go, Daniel Boone and David Crockett and   Jeffrey Madoff ** 44:51 Davy Crockett and so there were two out there. Mine was actually a full coon skin cap with the tail. And other kids had it where the top of it was vinyl, and it had the Disney logo and a picture of Fess Parker. And I said, Now I don't want something, you know, and you are correct, you are correct. It was based on fess Barker. I think   Michael Hingson ** 45:17 I have, I had a coons kid cap, and I think I still do somewhere. I'm not quite sure where it is, but it was a real coonskin cap with a cake with a tail.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 45:26 And does your tail snap off? Um, no, yeah, mine. Mine did the worst thing about the coonskin cap, which I thought was pretty cool initially, when it rained, it was, you know, like you had some wet animal on your Well, yes, yeah, as you did, she did, yeah, animal on your head, right? Wasn't the most aromatic of the hub. No,   Michael Hingson ** 45:54 no, it's but Huh, you got to live with it. That's right. So what is the key to having great creative collaborations? I love collaborating when I wrote my original book, Thunder dog, and then running with Roselle, and then finally, live like a guide dog. I love the idea of collaborating, and I think it made all three of the books better than if it had just been me, or if I had just let someone else do it, because we're bringing two personalities into it and making the process meld our ideas together to create a stronger process.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 46:34 I completely agree with you, and collaboration, for instance, in my play personality, the director Sheldon apps is a fantastic collaborator, and as a result, has helped me to be a better writer, because he would issue other challenges, like, you know, what if we looked at it this way instead of that way? What if you gave that power, that that character, the power in that scene, rather than the Lloyd character? And I loved those kinds of challenges. And the key to a good collaboration is pretty simple, but it doesn't happen often enough. Number one is listening. You aren't going to have a good collaboration if you don't listen. If you just want to interrupt and shut the other person down and get your opinion out there and not listen, that's not going to be good. That's not going to bode well. And it's being open. So people need to know that they're heard. You can do that a number of ways. You can sort of repeat part of what they said, just so I want to understand. So you were saying that the Alamo situation, did you have Davy Crockett up there swinging the rifle, you know? So the collaboration, listening, respect for opinions that aren't yours. And you know, don't try to just defeat everything out of hand, because it's not your idea. And trust developing a trust with your collaborators, so that you have a clearly defined mission from the get go, to make whatever it is better, not just the expression of one person's will over another. And I think if you share that mission, share that goal, that the other person has earned your trust and vice versa, that you listen and acknowledge, then I think you can have great collaboration. And I've had a number of great collaborators. I think I'm a good collaborator because I sort of instinctively knew those things, and then working with Sheldon over these last few years made it even more so. And so that's what I think makes a really great collaboration.   Michael Hingson ** 49:03 So tell me about the play personality. What's it about? Or what can you tell us about it without giving the whole thing away?   Jeffrey Madoff ** 49:10 So have you ever heard of Lloyd Price?   Michael Hingson ** 49:14 The name is familiar. So that's   Jeffrey Madoff ** 49:16 the answer that I usually get is, I'm not really sure. Yeah, it's kind of familiar. And I said, Well, you don't, probably don't know his name, but I'll bet you know his music. And I then apologize in advance for my singing, you know, cause you've got walk, personality, talk, personality, smile, oh yeah, yeah. I love that song, you know. Yeah. Do you know that song once I did that, yes, yeah. So Lloyd was black. He grew up in Kenner, Louisiana. It was he was in a place where blacks were expected to know their place. And. And if it was raining and a white man passed, you'd have to step into a mud puddle to let them pass, rather than just working by each other. And he was it was a tough situation. This is back in the late 1930s and what Lloyd knew is that he wanted to get out of Kenner, and music could be his ticket. And the first thing that the Lloyd character says in the play is there's a big dance opening number, and first thing that his character says is, my mama wasn't a whore. My dad didn't leave us. I didn't learn how to sing in church, and I never did drugs. I want to get that out of the way up front. And I wanted to just blow up all the tropes, because that's who Lloyd was, yeah, and he didn't drink, he didn't learn how to sing in church. And, you know, there's sort of this baked in narrative, you know, then then drug abuse, and you then have redeemed yourself. Well, he wasn't like that. He was entrepreneurial. He was the first. He was the it was really interesting at the time of his first record, 1952 when he recorded Lottie, Miss Claudia, which has been covered by Elvis and the Beatles and Bruce Springsteen and on and on. There's like 370 covers of it. If you wanted to buy a record by a black artist, you had to go to a black owned record store. His records couldn't get on a jukebox if it was owned by a white person. But what happened was that was the first song by a teenager that sold over a million copies. And nobody was prejudiced against green, which is money. And so Lloyd's career took off, and it The story tells about the the trajectory of his career, the obstacles he had to overcome, the triumphs that he experienced, and he was an amazing guy. I had been hired to direct, produce and direct a short documentary about Lloyd, which I did, and part of the research was interviewing him, and we became very good friends. And when I didn't know anything about him, but I knew I liked his music, and when I learned more about him, I said, Lloyd, you've got an amazing story. Your story needs to be told. And I wrote the first few scenes. He loved what I wrote. And he said, Jeff, I want you to do this. And I said, thank you. I want to do it, but there's one other thing you need to know. And he said, What's that? And I said, You're the vessel. You're the messenger, but your story is bigger than you are. And he said, Jeff, I've been waiting for years for somebody to say that to me, rather than just blowing more smoke up my ass. Yeah. And that started our our collaboration together and the story. And it was a great relationship. Lloyd died in May of 21 and we had become very close, and the fact that he trusted me to tell his story is of huge significance to me. And the fact that we have gotten such great response, we've had two commercial runs. We're moving the show to London, is is is really exciting. And the fact that Lloyd, as a result of his talent and creativity, shattered that wall that was called Race music in race records, once everybody understood on the other side that they could profit from it. So there's a lot of story in there that's got a lot of meat, and his great music   Michael Hingson ** 54:04 that's so cool and and so is it? Is it performing now anywhere, or is it? No, we're   Jeffrey Madoff ** 54:12 in between. We're looking actually, I have a meeting this this week. Today is February 11. I have a meeting on I think it's Friday 14th, with my management in London, because we're trying to get a theater there. We did there in October, and got great response, and now we're looking to find a theater there.   Michael Hingson ** 54:37 So what are the chance we're going to see it on Broadway?   Jeffrey Madoff ** 54:41 I hope a very good chance Broadway is a very at this point in Broadway's history. It's it's almost prohibitively expensive to produce on Broadway, the West End has the same cache and. Yeah, because, you know, you think of there's that obscure British writer who wrote plays called William Shakespeare. You may have heard of   Michael Hingson ** 55:07 him, yeah, heard of the guy somewhere, like, like, I've heard of Lloyd Price, yeah, that's   Jeffrey Madoff ** 55:15 it. And so I think that Broadway is certainly on the radar. The first step for us, the first the big step before Broadway is the West End in London. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 55:30 that's a great place to go. It is.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 55:32 I love it, and I speak the language, so it's good. Well, there you   Michael Hingson ** 55:35 are. That helps. Yes, well, you're a very creative kind of individual by any standard. Do you ever get involved with or have you ever faced the whole concept of imposter syndrome?   Jeffrey Madoff ** 55:48 Interesting, you mentioned that the answer is no, and I'll tell you why it's no. And you know, I do a fair amount of speaking engagements and that sort of thing, and that comes up particularly with women, by the way, imposter syndrome, and my point of view on it is, you know, we're not imposters. If you're not trying to con somebody and lying about what you do, you're a work in progress, and you're moving towards whatever it is that your goals are. So when my play became a produced commercial piece of theater and I was notarized as a playwright, why was that same person the day before that performance happened? And so I think that rather than looking at it as imposter, I look at it as a part of the process, and a part of the process is gaining that credibility, and you have to give yourself permission to keep moving forward. And I think it's very powerful that if you declare yourself and define yourself rather than letting people define you. So I think that that imposter syndrome comes from that fear, and to me, instead of fear, just realize you're involved in the process and so you are, whatever that process is. And again, it's different if somebody's trying to con you and lie to you, but in terms of the creativity, and whether you call yourself a painter or a musician or a playwright or whatever, if you're working towards doing that, that's what you do. And nobody starts off full blown as a hit, so to speak. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 57:44 well, I think you're absolutely right, and I think that it's all about not trying to con someone. And when you are doing what you do, and other people are involved, they also deserve credit, and people like you probably have no problem with making sure that others who deserve credit get the credit. Oh, absolutely, yeah, I'm the same way. I am absolutely of the opinion that it goes back to collaboration. When we're collaborating, I'm I'm very happy to talk about the fact that although I started the whole concept of live like a guide dog, carry Wyatt Kent and I worked on it together, and the two of us work on it together. It's both our books. So each of us can call it our book, but it is a collaborative effort, and I think that's so important to be able to do,   Jeffrey Madoff ** 58:30 oh, absolutely, absolutely, you know, the stuff that I was telling you about Sheldon, the director, you know, and that he has helped me to become a better writer, you know, and and when, as as obviously, you have experienced too, when you have a fruitful collaboration, it's fabulous, because you're both working together to create the best possible result, as opposed to self aggrandizement, right?   Michael Hingson ** 59:03 Yeah, it is. It is for the things that I do. It's not about me and I and I say it all the time when I'm talking to people who I'd like to have hire me to be a speaker. It's not about me, it's about their event. And I believe I can add value, and here's why I think I can add value, but it's not about me, it's about you and your event, right? And it's so important if, if you were to give some advice to somebody starting out, or who wants to be creative, or more creative and so on, what kind of advice would you give them?   Jeffrey Madoff ** 59:38 I would say it's more life advice, which is, don't be afraid of creative risk, because the only thing that you have that nobody else has is who you are. So how you express who you are in the most unique way of who you are? So that is going to be what defines your work. And so I think that it's really important to also realize that things are hard and always take more time than you think they should, and that's just part of the process. So it's not easy. There's all these things out there in social media now that are bull that how people talk about the growth of their business and all of this stuff, there's no recipe for success. There are best practices, but there's no recipes for it. So however you achieve that, and however you achieve making your work better and gaining the attention of others, just understand it's a lot of hard work. It's going to take longer than you thought, and it's can be incredibly satisfying when you hit certain milestones, and don't forget to celebrate those milestones, because that's what's going to give you the strength to keep going forward.   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:07 Absolutely, it is really about celebrating the milestones and celebrating every success you have along the way, because the successes will build to a bigger success. That's right, which is so cool. Well, this has been a lot of fun. We've been doing this for an hour. Can you believe it? That's been great. It has been and I really appreciate you being here, and I I want to thank all of you who are listening, but please tell your friends to get into this episode as well. And we really value your comments, so please feel free to write me. I would love to know what you thought about today. I'm easy to reach. It's Michael M, I C H, A, E, L, H i at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S i b, e.com, or you can always go to our podcast page, which is Michael hingson, M, I C H, A, E, L, H i N, G, s o n.com/podcast, where you can listen to or access all the of our podcasts, but they're also available, as most likely you've discovered, wherever you can find podcasts, so you can get them on Apple and all those places and wherever you're listening. We do hope you'll give us a five star review. We really value your reviews, and Jeff has really given us a lot of great insights today, and I hope that you all value that as well. So we really would appreciate a five star rating wherever you're listening to us, and that you'll come back and hear some more episodes with us. If you know of anyone who ought to be a guest, Jeff, you as well. Love You to refer people to me. I'm always looking for more people to have on because I do believe that everyone in the world is unstoppable if you learn how to accept that and move forward. And that gets back to our whole discussion earlier about failure or whatever, you can be unstoppable. That doesn't mean you're not going to have challenges along the way, but that's okay. So we hope that if you do know people who ought to be on the podcast, or if you want to be on the podcast and you've been listening, step up won't hurt you. But again, Jeff, I want to thank you for being here. This has been a lot of fun, and we really appreciate your time. Thank   Jeffrey Madoff ** 1:03:16 you, Michael, for having you on. It was fun. You   **Michael Hingson ** 1:03:23 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Hoy en La Gran Travesía viajamos hasta el año 1959 en un programa donde podréis escuchar a Buddy Holly, Ray Charles, Isley Brothers, The Shirelles, Lloyd Price, Link Wray, Eddie Cochran, Barrett Strong, Elvis Presley, Dion and the Belmonts, Chuck Berry, Nina Simone, Billie Holiday... entre muchos otros. 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: Gin1975, Alberto Velasco, Poncho C, Don T, Francisco Quintana, Gastón Nicora, Con,, 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 Lloyd Price and Fats Domino

Maybe it's just me, but I've got a real sweet spot for when, in the midst of all the chaos of exploding into the world's biggest band and becoming the greatest songwriters alive, the Beatles blow off steam by pulling out a song from their garage band days. "Slow Down," written by New Orleanian Larry Williams (protege to Little Richard and Lloyd Price) was recorded during the sessions for the A Hard Day's Night album, when John's early rock and roll voice is arguably at it's peak. Those screams...good lawdy, indeed ! It feels carefree and joyous, they're not fretting over if this new song is going to be the next big hit, they're just hitting the release valve and letting go all that pressure, just playing rock and roll for the fun of it. I love those moments. Bad news, folks: Julia's not with us today. Good news, folks: our podpals from Blotto Beatles are! We love any chance to catch up with our Blotto bros, and this time was no exception (well, except for Julia's absence). We talk about the trouble with Larrys, Beatle footware, covers, the Fest for Beatle Fans, and so much more! If you're not listening to Blotto Beatles, you should be, so check it out! What do you think about "Slow Down" at #76? Too high? Too low? Let us know in the comments on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠find us now on Bluesky!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Be sure to check out ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.rankingthebeatles.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and grab a Rank Your Own Beatles poster, some of our new Revolver-themed merch, a shirt, a jumper, whatever you like! And if you're digging what we do, don't forget to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Buy Us A Coffee⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!

Send us a textWelcome to Guess the Year! This is an interactive, competitive podcast series where you will be able to play along and compete against your fellow listeners. Here is how the scoring works:10 points: Get the year dead on!7 points: 1-2 years off4 points: 3-5 years off1 point: 6-10 years offGuesses can be emailed to drandrewmay@gmail.com or texted using the link at the top of the show notes (please leave your name).I will read your scores out before the next episode, along with the scores of your fellow listeners! Please email your guesses to Andrew no later than 12pm EST on the day the next episode posts if you want them read out on the episode (e.g., if an episode releases on Monday, then I need your guesses by 12pm EST on Wednesday; if an episode releases on Friday, then I need your guesses by 12 pm EST on Monday). Note: If you don't get your scores in on time, they will still be added to the overall scores I am keeping. So they will count for the final scores - in other words, you can catch up if you get behind, you just won't have your scores read out on the released episode. All I need is your guesses (e.g., Song 1 - 19xx, Song 2 - 20xx, Song 3 - 19xx, etc.). Please be honest with your guesses! Best of luck!!The answers to today's ten songs can be found below. If you are playing along, don't scroll down until you have made your guesses. .....Have you made your guesses yet? If so, you can scroll down and look at the answers......Okay, answers coming. Don't peek if you haven't made your guesses yet!.....Intro song: Not Like Us by Kendrick Lamar (2024)Song 1: Private Eyes by Daryl Hall & John Oates (1981)Song 2: Lawdy Miss Clawdy by Lloyd Price (1952)Song 3: Into the Mystic by Van Morrison (1970)Song 4: Sleep Walk by Santo & Johnny (1959)Song 5: Queen by Perfume Genius (2014)Song 6: The Way It Is by Bruce Hornsby & the Range (1986)Song 7: He's So Fine by The Chiffons (1963)Song 8: Higher Love by Steve Winwood (1986)Song 9: Say Yes to Heaven by Lana Del Rey (2023)Song 10: Only You (And You Alone) by The Platters (1955)

Mondo and Piley are joined in the studio by Lloyd Price for a chat about several of his musical projects including Massive Ego and Agency-V   Back It Up - Neal Francis Rock Minus Zero - Peter Smith Davy O'Brian - Duffy Power Love Thy Self - Dandy Warhols Tennis Elbow - Electric Peanut Butter Company Love (Your Pain Goes Deep) - Kelly Finnigans What Is Love - The Friction This Time - Agency-V To The Endless - Motorcycle Display Team Spent The Day In Bed - Dana Gillespie Lanoola Goes Limp - Bob Thiele Emergency Poor Sidran  - Ben Sidran Cherryade - WHITEY Joyboy - His Lordship In Your Own Darkness - Massive Ego Cold Eyes - ACTORS  

The music festival promoters hustle hard to secure a plane to Zaire. Finally on board, all the artists are nearly killed by James Brown and his oversized ego. Despite the high drama, the flight is a magical experience for all aboard when the musicians turn the plane into an epic jam session. This shared joy carries the crew through to Zaire. Upon arrival, they are greeted by the drums and voices of The Motherland. Meanwhile, fight promoters scramble to rearrange the weekend after Foreman’s cut and, in doing so, find out who President Mobutu really is. LITERARY REFERENCES “The Greatest, My Own Story”by Muhammad Ali (autobiography) “By George” by George Foreman (autobiography) “Hit Me, Fred” by Fred Wesley (autobiography) “LATIN NY” (Magazine, Issue No. 20, Nov 1974 Editor-in-Chief, Diane Weathers) Courtesy of Lola! Love OTHER MEDIA US State Department cables (available online in the US State Dept Archives and Wikileaks: https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1974KINSHA07638_b.html) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Fight promoter Don King and his business partner Hank Schwartz join forces with African strong man, President Mobutu of Zaire to put on an epic boxing event. To up the star power of this international affair, Don King joins forces with Hugh Masekela and Stuart Levine to build the three-day music festival, Zaire ‘74. It will serve as the lead-in to the next great superfight. As Ali and Foreman get into fighting shape, jazzman Hugh Masekela pushes both musical and social boundaries, strengthening the bond between Black Americans and their roots. REFERENCE BOOKS: “The Rumble in the Jungle” by Lewis Erenberg “Ali: A Life” by Jonathan Eig “Only in America” by Don King (autobiography) “The Fight” by Norman Mailer “The Harder They Fall: Celebrities Tell Their Real Life Stories of Addiction and Recovery” by Gary Stromberg “Hit Me, Fred” by Fred Wesley (autobiography) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Don King swans into the boxing world and manages to get both Ali and Foreman to trust him completely. By working their egos and their dreams of a huge payday –– Don King's able to persuade the two heavyweights into setting a date for a new title fight. The twist? This title bout, Ali's latest attempt to reclaim his lost crown, will take place in Kinshasa, Zaire. Ali nicknames their upcoming fight: The Rumble in the Jungle. NEWS REPORTS (AVAILABLE ON NEWSPAPERS.COM) “The Akron Beacon” March 25, 1974 “Philadelphia Daily News” March 25, 1974 "Akron Beacon" March 29, 1974 REFERENCE BOOKS “Ali: A Life” by Jonathan Eig “Only in America” by Don King (autobiography) “Lawdy Miss Clawdy: The True King of the ‘50s” by Lloyd Price and William Waller (autobiography)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this episode of HR Like a Boss, John interviews entrepreneur, clothing designer, and playwright B. Jeffrey Madoff to discuss the importance of collaboration and building effective teams in business. Madoff highlights how success in both business and life revolves around relationships, trust, and clear communication. They explore the challenges and benefits of remote work, stressing the need for setting expectations and maintaining team cohesion, even in virtual settings. Madoff shares his vision of HR leadership as engaging with others, making them feel heard, valued, and respected, ultimately building strong, lasting relationships. ABOUT B. JEFFERY MADOFF B. Jeffrey Madoff is the founder of Madoff Productions and is known for his unique abilities in creativity, storytelling, and entrepreneurship. He has had a prolific career spanning fashion design, producing, and directing commercials, documentaries, music videos, television, live streaming events, brand stories for prestigious clients such as Ralph Lauren, Victoria's Secret, Tiffany, Harvard School for Public Health, Raymond James, and Radio City Music Hall. Madoff's ability to craft compelling narratives has made him a sought-after director, speaker, and educator. He has been a featured speaker at Wharton School, Princeton University, and NYU. He created a course called “Creative Careers Making a Living With Your Ideas”, which he taught at Parsons School of Design for fifteen years. Madoff wrote a best-selling book of the same name, based on his class. His passion for storytelling and creativity culminated in the creation of the groundbreaking musical, "Personality: The Lloyd Price Musical." This captivating production, written by Madoff, tells the amazing story of the legendary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, Lloyd Price. Lloyd was the first teenager to sell over a million records and shattered the wall called “race music”. Premiering in June of 2023 to sold-out audiences at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago, "Personality" received critical acclaim for its powerful storytelling and unforgettable music.

Jordan Sollof, reporter at Digital Health News, is joined by Lloyd Price and Mohammad Al-Ubaydli to talk about procurement and why the NHS is so difficult to sell to. From their own experience, Price, a healthtech founder, mergers and acquisitions advisor and non-executive director for various digital health companies, and Al-Ubaydli, founder and chief executive of digital health social enterprise, Patients Know Best, shine a light on the main issues that can make selling to the NHS a challenge. The pair discuss success stories of startups which have successfully sold to the NHS, before assessing whether companies and suppliers need to take more care in ensuring they are pitching the right solution to the right organisation. They give their views on whether the NHS procurement process has become overcomplicated, a point raised in a session at Rewired 2024, and speculate whether the forthcoming Procurement Act (which was originally due to come into force in October 2024, but has been delayed until February 2025) will solve some issues and make it easier for those selling in the health technology sector. Finally, the guests predict what they anticipate will happen in the coming months and years, including whether the NHS will become a simpler system as a whole to sell to or if we will still be having the same conversation about difficulties selling in a few years' time. Guests: Lloyd Price, health tech founder, mergers and acquisitions advisor and non-executive director for various digital health companies Mohammad Al-Ubaydli, founder and chief executive of Patients Know Best  

My guest this week is Trevor McShane, the musical alter ego for high-power entertainment attorney Neville Johnson, who has won more than $350 million for actors, writers and musicians who were shortchanged their fair share of royalties from both major film studios and record labels. Called “one of the most feared litigators in Hollywood” by the Los Angeles Times and named a “Legal Legend” by The Hollywood Reporter, Neville began his career working for Yoko Ono on matters related to The Beatles' catalog. He's gone on to represent many celebrities and/or their estates in a variety of contractual, accounting and intellectual property disputes, including John Lennon, Buddy Holly, Michelle Phillips, Richard Dreyfuss, Rick Nelson, Sylvester Stallone, members of Earth, Wind and Fire, Mitch Ryder, Lloyd Price and others. Neville has also written a number of books, including two about the legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, that are available from his Cool Titles publishing company. As Trevor McShane, Neville has released a number of well-regarded releases that have grown his Spotify followers to 100,000 and 150,000 on YouTube. During our interview Neville and I spoke about keeping his music life as Trevor separate from his legal practice, what he learned from the legendary John Wooden, transitioning to being a litigator, AI copyright, and so much more. I spoke with Neville via zoom from his office in Beverly Hills.  On the intro I looked at UMG settling its dispute with TikTok, and how music gear retail is changing before our eyes.

This week's show, after a ELO elegy: brand new Redd Kross, Michael Head, Torrey, Kelley Stoltz La Luz, Idaho, and Decemberists, plus Rolling Stones, Lloyd Price, Todd Rundgren, Kinks, Neil Young, Delroy Wilson, and Bonnie Guitar; and R.I.P. Duane Eddy ...

Hace 80 años, en 1944, el empresario musical Art Rupe lanzó su primera referencia con el sello Juke Box que poco después se transformaría en Specialty Records, desde donde despegó la carrera de Little Richard. Repasamos la trayectoria de esta disquera de Los Ángeles, una de las más importantes a la hora de recorrer el camino que llevó del blues, el rhythm n’ blues o el jump blues hacia aquello que acabó llamándose rock’n’roll.Playlist;(sintonía) SEPIA TONES “Boogie #1” (1944)THE BLUES WOMAN “Voo it Voo it” (1946)ROY MILTON and HIS SOLID SENDERS “R.M. Blues” (1946)JOE LUTCHER and HIS SOCIETY CATS “The rockin’ boogie” (1947)JIMMY LIGGINS and HIS DROPS OF JOY “Cadillac boogie” (1948)LLOYD PRICE “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” (1952)PERCY MAYFIELD “Please send me someone to love” (1950)EDDIE “GUITAR SLIM” JONES “The things that I used to do” (1953)FRANKIE LEE SIMS “Lucy mae Blues” (1953)EARL KING “I’m your best bet baby” (1954)LITTLE RICHARD “Tutty Frutty” (1955)LITTLE RICHARD “Slippin’ and slidin’” (1956)LARRY WILLIAMS “Short Fat Fannie” (1957)LARRY WILLIAMS “Slow down” (1958)DON and DEWEY “Justine” (1958)SAM COOKE “I’ll come running back to you” (1957)Escuchar audio

Today's show features music performed by Mary Flower and Lloyd Price

From representing Yoko Ono to winning class action lawsuits on behalf of actors and musicians, Neville Johnson and his partner Douglas Johnson (no relationship) have built one of the most interesting and successful entertainment law practices in the nation, specializing in representing “talent” as opposed to the business side of the industry.  Join Rahul and Ben for a fascinating discussion with Neville and Doug, as they describe how they got their start in this practice, recount some of their most interesting cases, and talk about trends in entertainment law resulting from new technologies. About Neville Johnson - Senior PartnerWebsite: Johnson and Johnson, LLP Law Firm | Johnson and Johnson, LLP (jjllplaw.com) Professional Experience:Neville L. Johnson graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California, Berkeley (1971).  He received his law degree from Southwestern Law School (1975), graduating near the top of his class.  He has tried over 28 civil jury trials and over 70 civil trials and arbitrations without a jury. He is a member of the invitation-only American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA), and is on the Board of Governors of the Consumer Attorneys of Los Angeles (CAALA since 2005), the Board of Directors of the national organization Public Justice, and on the Board of Governors of the Beverly Hills Bar Association 2013-2015 and 2020-2022 (BHBA). Johnson is a long-time member of the invitation-only Los Angeles Copyright Society, and on the Board of The California Society of Entertainment Lawyers. He was nominated for Trial Lawyer of the Year in 2005 by CAALA.  He was Co-Chair of the Entertainment Law Section of the Beverly Hills Bar Association from 2009 to 2011. He has been on the Planning Committee of the USC Entertainment Law Institute since 2011. He has appeared in courts in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Nevada, New York, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Tennessee, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. In 2020, Mr. Johnson and his team secured a verdict in a Right of Publicity case of over 9 Million Dollars in damages, and over 7 Million Dollars in attorneys fees. Mr. Johnson has litigated and settled countless cases against a wide array of defendants concerning royalty accounting, profit participation, publicity rights, idea theft, copyright infringement, and many other entertainment law matters. He has also served as an adjunct professor at Southwestern Law School since 2012, where he teaches Entertainment and Media Litigation. However, his greatest pride has been in defending the privacy rights of all citizens against the worst malefactors in the media. His work in this field was perhaps best summarized by Professor David A. Elder, a leading expert on the law of privacy, who published the following special dedication in his treatise, Privacy Torts: To Neville L. Johnson… who has led the charge, often successfully (and always creatively and with great passion) in exposing some of the worst outrages of media newsgathering. Neville ranks with Brandeis and Warren as the great defenders of privacy. All America is in his debt. Mr. Johnson has practiced entertainment law and IP law since 1975 [except for 10 months in 1977-78 when he was a Public Defender (juvenile) in Los Angeles County and handled over 100 matters, including two murder trials and one attempted murder trial]. Mr. Johnson has represented many well-known celebrities and entertainment concerns. The firm currently represents Sylvester Stallone in net profit litigation, and many other writers, directors, actors, producers, musicians, models, and JoJo Siwa, the biggest teen star in the world. He and his firm have been lead counsel in many class actions, including pioneering class actions in the entertainment industry against the entertainment unions, major record companies and motion picture companies. The firm has also handled a number of consumer class actions. The firm handles 15 to 20 right of publicity cases a year. Mr. Johnson is a frequent lecturer and written extensively on entertainment, copyright and media and other legal topics, including in London, England  (Entertainment attorneys based in the UK, London Branch of Entertainment Section of BHBA), Cannes, France (MIDEM, the international music convention), New York (ABA Forum on Communications Section, and Entertainment Law Section and New York Bar Assn.: Entertainment Law Section), Nashville (ABA Entertainment Law Section), Las Vegas (ABA Entertainment Law Section), Miami, Arizona State University, Stanford University, U.C. Berkeley, Loyola Law School, Southwestern Law School, USC Entertainment Law Institute annual forum (3 times) as well as the undergraduate school, California Western School of Law, California State University, Northridge, and many times to the Entertainment Section of the BHBA as a panelist or moderator), the Intellectual Property Section of Los Angeles County Bar Assn., and Berklee College of Music (Boston). Johnson & Johnson LLP, based in Beverly Hills, California, is a litigation firm that specializes in complex litigation with a particular emphasis on entertainment, intellectual property, right of publicity, privacy, defamation, consumer issues, and class actions. Mr. Johnson and the firm also negotiate business and entertainment agreements. Representative Matters:Obtained a 9.6 Million Dollar jury verdict after a seven week jury trial for claim of violation of the right of publicity, Hansen v. The Coca Cola Company, the largest verdict for a right of publicity case in the history of the United States. The trial court also awarded 7.4 million dollars in attorneys' fees.Obtained a unanimous landmark privacy ruling from the California Supreme Court in Sanders v. American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. (1999) 20 Cal.4th 907, a decision that is included in multiple casebooks and taught in law schools across the country.Obtained a published California Court of Appeal opinion representing fitness celebrity Richard Simmons in right of privacy claims against a magazine and private eye for placing a GPS tracker on a car. Simmons v. Bauer Media (2020)Represented numerous victims (both individually and in a class action) of notorious wiretapper Anthony Pellicano and other liable parties, including obtaining a favorable partial affirmance of a significant sanctions award by the California Court of Appeal in Gerbosi v. Gaims, Weil, West & Epstein LLP (2011) 193 Cal.App.4th 435, which concerned a law firm's use of Pellicano's services.Pioneered the use of class actions against studios and record labels for improperly accounting to artists regarding royalties and profit participation, obtaining multiple eight-figure settlements therefrom. Represented many individuals in profit participation claims, including Sylvester Stallone, Jack Klugman, Richard Dreyfuss and Mike Connors.Represented the heir of songwriter Gram Parsons in Parsons v. Tickner (1995) 31 Cal.App.4th 1513, defeating a statute of limitations defense and establishing a fiduciary duty claim against a music publisher.Represented numerous legendary musicians and/or their estates on a variety of contractual, accounting, and intellectual property matters, including John Lennon, Buddy Holly, Michelle Phillips, Rick Nelson, P.F. Sloan, members of Earth, Wind and Fire, Mitch Ryder, Lloyd Price and many others.Obtained a $15 million award in a jury trial business fraud case. Honors:He has been repeatedly selected by Super Lawyers as one of the top entertainment attorneys in Southern California (top 5% of attorneys as voted by peers). In 2020, 2021 and 2022 Super Lawyer and his peers named him one of the top 100 attorneys in Southern California, the only entertainment attorney on the list, he was named one of the top 100 Power Lawyers in Entertainment Law by The Hollywood Reporter every year since, 2008, and in 2020 moved to a new permanent category and designated a “Legal Legend.” He has also been designated numerous times one of the top lawyers in entertainment by Variety and Los Angeles legal newspapaer The Daily Journal. He was nominated as Trial Lawyer of the Year by the California Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles. He is a fellow at the American Law Institute (only 2% of all attorneys are members).  In 2020 he was honored as Alumnus of the Year by the Biederman Entertainment Law Institute at Southwestern Law School.   A law review article about his career is Richard and Calvert, “Suing the Media, Supporting the First Amendment: the Paradox of Neville Johnson and the Battle for Privacy,” 67 Albany Law Review 1097 (2004). On June 23, 2015, the Los Angeles Times did a major profile (front page, Business Section) on his career, “Contract Sport, ‘Go-to' L.A. Lawyer Says Hollywood Studios Are Shortchanging His Clients,” noting that Johnson & Johnson is one of the few firms successfully taking on the entertainment establishment on a regular basis. The cover story of the July 2016, issue of Attorney at Law magazine is about Neville Johnson.  The Los Angeles Business Journal profiled him on its first page, “Lawyer Up,” (September 9, 2019). Speaking Engagements:He is a frequent speaker, including in London, England [Entertainment attorneys based in the UK, London Branch of Entertainment Section of Beverly Hills Bar Association (BHBA)], Cannes, France (MIDEM, the international music convention), the Intellectual Property Section of Los Angeles County Bar Assn., and Berklee College of Music (Boston); and the Los Angeles Copyright Society. New York (ABA Forum on Communications Section, and Entertainment Law Section and New York Bar Assn.: Entertainment Law Section), Nashville (ABA Entertainment Law Section), Las Vegas (ABA Entertainment Law Section), Miami, Arizona State University, Stanford University, U.C. Berkeley, Loyola Law School, Southwestern Law School, USC Entertainment Law Institute annual forum (3 times) as well as the undergraduate school, California Western School of Law, California State University, Northridge, and many times to the Entertainment Section of the BHBA as a panelist or moderator),  SInce 2011 he has moderated the panel on ethical issues for the annual Year in Review for the Entertainment Section of the Beverly Hills Bar Association. Publications: Johnson & Johnson, “Interesting New Developments About Which All Practitioners Should be Aware,” 31 New York State Bar Assn, Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Journal 56 (2020); Johnson, Johnson, Smolla & Tweed, “Defamation and Invasion of Privacy in the Internet Age,” 25 Southwestern Journal of International Law 9 (2019) Johnson & Johnson, “Trouble in Tinseltown, Los Angeles Daily Journal (April 23, 2019); “My Big Mouth,” Los Angeles Daily Journal (March 29, 2019); Johnson & Johnson, “Entertainment Contracts with Minors in New York and California, 30 New York State Bar Assn, Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Journal 75 (2019); Johnson & Johnson, “A New Way to Revive a Corporation?,” Los Angeles Daily Journal (October 18, 2016); Johnson & Johnson, “Hollywood Docket: One Sided World,” 27 New York State Bar Assn, Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Journal 32 (2016); Johnson & Elder, “Maybe America Needs More Peter Thiels,” Los Angeles Daily Journal (August 8, 2016); “We've Lost Control,” Los Angeles Daily Journal (June 16, 2016); “Talent Agency Act Survives Suit, Clarity Remains Elusive,” Los Angeles Daily Journal (May 10, 2013); “The Man Who Seduced Hollywood,” 36 Los Angeles Lawyer 41(September 2013); “Remedies for Web Defamation,” California Lawyer 36 (May 2013); “To Find Employment as a Lawyer, You Must Market Yourself,” 36 Los Angeles Lawyer 12 (June 2013); “Ten Rules for Success in the Practice of Law, 31 Los Angeles Lawyer 12 (June 2008); Chapter, Johnson & Aradi, “Defamatory Tweeting and Other Name and Likeness Violations” in Building Your Artist's Brand as a Business, International Association of Entertainment Lawyers (2012) (includes a discussion of right of publicity); Chapter, Johnson & Fowler, “Litigation: How to Draft Defensively Without Killing the Deal” in Licensing of Music from BC to AD (Before the Change/After Digital), International Association of Entertainment Lawyers (2014); Elder, Johnson & Rishwain, “Establishing Constitutional Malice for Defamation and Privacy/False Light Claims When Hidden Cameras and Deception Are Used by the Newsgatherer,” 22 Loyola of Los Angeles Entertainment Law Review 327 (2002); “New Developments in California Privacy and Defamation Law,” 23 California Litigation 21 (2010); Johnson & Johnson, “What Happened to Unjust Enrichment in California? The Deterioration of Equity in the California Courts,” 44 Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 277 (2010); Johnson & Walsh, “The Danger of “Anti-Libel Tourism” Litigation in the United States, 32 Los Angeles Lawyer 44 (December 2009); Johnson, “Privacy and the First Amendment”, California Litigation (2006); co-author “Caught in the Act,” Los Angeles Lawyer (1998) (an analysis of trends in the right of privacy); Johnson & Lang, The Personal Manager in the California Entertainment Industry, 52 Southern California Law Review 375 (1979)(a definitive article on the regulation of talent agents, personal managers, and the interplay of entertainment unions and guilds in that nexus). He co-authored chapters on music publishing and personal managers in The Musician's Business & Legal Guide (2017 5th edition), and wrote the authorized and best-selling biography of the greatest coach in the history of sports, The John Wooden Pyramid of Success (Second Edition 2004). Since 2012, Neville and Douglas Johnson have taught a course on entertainment and media litigation as Adjunct Professors at Southwestern School of Law.  From 2011-2014, he was one of the panelists teaching the Los Angeles County Bar Association new admittees course on class actions; and since 2011 he has moderated the panel on ethical issues for the annual Year in Review for the Entertainment Section of the Beverly Hills Bar Association.  Professional Associations:American Board of Trial Advocates (invitation only)Association of Business Trial LawyersBeverly Hills Bar Association Co-Chair Entertainment Section, 2009-2011Board of Governors, 2012-2015, 2020-2022Consumer Attorneys Association of Los AngelesBoard of Governors, 2005-PresentConsumer Attorneys of CaliforniaLos Angeles Copyright Society (invitation only)Los Angeles County Bar AssociationLoyola Productions [Filmmaking arm of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits)]Co-Chair of the Board, 2009-PresentNational Association of Recording Arts and Sciences (Grammy organization)Voting Member (as the recording artist professionally known as Trevor McShane)Public Justice (National organization advocating for consumers and fundamental rights)Board of Governors, 2011-PresentUSC Entertainment Law InstitutePlanning Board, 2011-Present Education:J.D., Southwestern University School of Law, 1975B.A., University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, 1971 Practice Areas:Media LawEntertainment LawEntertainment Class ActionsPrivacy LawComplex Business Litigation Matters, including breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty and fraudRight of Publicity (wrongful use of name and likeness)Copyright Infringement and Theft of Idea casesIssues involving the entertainment unions Admissions:CaliforniaUnited States Supreme Court  About Douglas Johnson - Managing PartnerWebsite: Johnson and Johnson, LLP Law Firm | Johnson and Johnson, LLP (jjllplaw.com) Professional Experience:Mr. Johnson is well known for handling high-profile and high-impact entertainment matters. His clients include producers, actors, directors, writers, production companies, music artists, composers, music publishers, and independent record labels. He is well-known for his successes in royalty disputes, profit participation disputes, right of publicity cases, and theft of idea cases for film and television.  Mr. Johnson also handles invasion of privacy and libel cases, business disputes, and class actions.  Mr. Johnson has been repeatedly named by Super Lawyer as a top intellectual property litigator for more than a decade, representing the top 2.5% of the profession in Southern California. Mr. Johnson also serves as outside general counsel for WorldStarHipHop.com, a popular music and pop culture website, where he deals with cutting-edge copyright, media, and right of privacy issues.  Mr. Johnson has handled numerous copyright infringement lawsuits in Federal Court for Worldstar.   Since co-founding Johnson & Johnson, Mr. Johnson has been at the forefront of developing California's right of publicity laws. He regularly represents celebrities, models, and professional athletes in litigation against defendants who have wrongfully used their images.  He has litigated cases up to the California Supreme Court, advocating for precedent to protect the rights of all Californians from those who would seek to profit from their names, images, and likenesses without authorization. Mr. Johnson's advocacy in this area of law extends to his participation on speaking panels, publication of scholarly articles, and educating law students on the importance of these rights.  Mr. Johnson recently litigated a right of publicity case that resulted in a 9.6 million jury award and an attorney fee award of 7 million against Coca-Cola and Monster Energy for building their Hubert's Lemonade brand around the name of the founder of Hansen Juices, Hubert Hansen.  Mr. Johnson also received a seven-figure jury award in a right of publicity case for an actor/supermodel.   Representative Matters:Handled profit participation disputes on behalf of Sylvester Stallone (Demolition Man, Expendables, and the Rocky Films), Glen Larson (Magnum PI, Knight Rider, Fall Guy, Battlestar Galactica), Ed Weinberger (Amen), Richard Dreyfuss (Goodbye Girl, Mr. Holland's Opus, and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, and What About Bob?), Raymond Wagner (Turner and Hooch), Jack Klugman (Quincy, Odd Couple), Mike Connors (Mannix), the Estate of Charles Bronson (St. Ives, Telefon), Mort Engelberg (Hot Stuff and Smokey And The Bandit), and the owners of the Friday 13th horror franchise.  Lead counsel in a class action against Sony Music, resulting in $12.7 million settlement and 36% uplift in ongoing foreign streaming royalties in Nelson v. Sony (S.D.N.Y) benefiting thousands of legacy recordings artists; currently co-counsel in similar litigation on behalf of legacy artists signed to Warner and Universal. Lead Counsel defending RatPac inidea theft case over the 2018 Melissa McCarthy movie, Life of the Party. (case dismissed on Motion for Summary Judgment).Lead Counsel representing producer in a dispute over turnaround rights to the film Rush Hour 4.  Lead Counsel for Janet Jackson in a royalty dispute with her label.  Obtained $5.35 million in retrospective relief and an estimated $3.1 million in savings over the next three years in Risto v. AFM & SAG-AFTRA (C.D. Cal.) for non-featured performers who receive royalties from the AFM & SAG-AFTRA Intellectual Property Rights Distribution Fund.Obtained a seven-figure settlement as lead counsel in a major talent management dispute for actress Karrueche Tran after successfully freezing all her manager's assets in Tran v. Muhammad (C.D. Cal.)Currently representing the leading production music company in North America on a variety of copyright matters both in and out of litigation-see, e.g., Associated Production Music v. The Vail Corp. (C.D. Cal.)Co-counsel in class actions against major Hollywood studios alleging endemic underpayment on home video and new digital media for pre-1982 movies for writers, producers, actors, and directors.  In those cases, Mr. Johnson handled the settlement with Universal for $25 million, the settlement with Fox for $12.6 million, and the settlements with Sony and Paramount.Mr. Johnson was co-counsel in three class actions against the record industry companies over digital download royalties of underpayments to artists (Temptations/Motels/Ronee Blakely), resulting in eight-figure settlements.  The cases dealt head-on with unresolved points of law as to the classification of digital downloads, and the rights of artists to receive royalties in the face of changing technology. Mr. Johnson has litigated several high-profile libel actions against large media companies, resulting in several mid-seven-figure settlements.  Recently he represented Richard Simmons against In-Touch Magazine. In May 2020, he argued and won an Anti-SLAPP appeal for Mr. Simmons.With his partner, Neville L. Johnson, he settled three class actions against the Directors Guild of America, Writers Guild of America, and Screen Actors Guild of America for tens of millions of dollars of unpaid foreign levies.  Defended blues icon B.B. King in a case seeking declaratory relief regarding the right to produce a film about his life, resulting in dismissal of the lawsuit.Obtained a seven-figure jury verdict in Oregon U.S. District Court on behalf of a music artist and record company in a copyright infringement case.Represented business owner in arbitration in a partnership dispute resulting in a seven-figure award for the client.Wrongful death and civil rights case resulting in reorganization of staffing and training at a county jail. The matter was featured on the cover of the Sacramento News & Review and constituted the largest settlement in the nation at the time for such a case. Thought Leadership:Panelist, CalCPA: Entertainment Industry Conference (June 21, 2022)Panelist, Beverly Hills Bar Association, Entertainment Law Year in Review, Ethics (January 13, 2020)Adjunct Professor, Entertainment and Media Litigation, Southwestern School of Law, (2012 to Present)Panelist, “Backend Optics: Profit Participations Through Different Lenses,” Beverly Hills Bar Association, Entertainment Law Section, (2018)Panelist, “I'm a Celebrity, You Can't Do That, (Can You?), California Society of Entertainment Lawyers, (2018)Panelist, “Entertainment Year in Review: Entertainment Litigation With Stars Of The Bar,” Beverly Hills Bar Association, Entertainment Law Section, (2017)Panelist, “The Right of Publicity: The State of The Current Law,” Beverly Hills Bar Association, Entertainment Law Section, (2014)The Ever-Evolving Courtroom Drama of Net Profits, Donald L. Stone's Inn of St. Ives, (2012)Panelist, Right of Publicity: How Much Is Your Client Really Worth?, Beverly Hills Bar Association, Entertainment Law Section, (2012)Panelist, Current Issues in Right of Likeness, Defamation and Privacy, Beverly Hills Bar Association, Entertainment Law Section, (2011)Panelist, Injuries Without Remedies, Loyola Law School's Legal Symposium, (2011) Sample Publications:The Troubling Trend of Online Exceptionalism to Copyright's Separate Accrual Rule, New York State Bar Association, Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Journal, Vol. 34, No. 2, (Summer 2023)Florida sides with California on delayed discovery in copyright cases, Daily Journal (March 3, 2023)The Second and Ninth Circuits Diverge on Copyright Law's Discovery Rule, New York State Bar Association, Arts and Sports Law Journal, Vol 33, No. 2 (Fall 2022)The Top 3 Copyright Law Developments of 2022 (So Far), New York State Bar Association, Arts and Sports Law Journal, Vol. 33, No. 2, (Spring 2022)Say Goodbye to Back-End Deals, New York State Bar Association, Arts and Sports Law Journal, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Fall 2021)3 Music Litigation Developments in 2020-2021, Daily Journal (October 23, 2021)Contract, Fraud, and Libel Damages, Journal of Consumer Attorneys Associations for Southern California, Advocate Magazine (October 2021).  3 Music Litigation Developments in 2020-2021, Daily Journal (September 16, 2021)Recent Developments In Entertainment Law: Defamation Jurisdiction, Copyright, and Talent Contest Agreements (Summer 2021)Black Windows: Scarlett Jo vs Disney, Daily Journal, (July 6, 2021)Recent Right of Privacy Developments, Daily Journal, (July 22, 2021)Developments In Libel, Social Media, Privacy and The Right of Publicity, (Spring 2021)Copyright Developments in 2020, New York State Bar Association, Arts and Sports Journal, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Sring 2021)Pandemic-era Appellate Rulings Take on Arbitration, Los Angeles Daily Journal (April 22, 2021)Recent Interesting Cases, New York State Bar Association, Arts and Sports Law Journal, Vol. 31, No. 2, (Spring 2020)Hollywood Docket: Trending: Data Privacy, Copyright Trolling, And A Clause To Keep In Mind, New York State Bar Association, (June 6, 2020)Recent Development In Copyright Law, Daily Journal, (August 2, 2020)COVID-19 And The Return To Film Production In California, Los Angeles Daily Journal, (July 13, 2020)Interesting New Developments About Which All Practitioners Should Be Aware Of, New York State Bar Association, Arts and Sports Law Journal, Vol. 31, No. 1, (Winter 2020)My Big Mouth, Journal of Consumer Attorneys Association for Southern California, Advocate Magzine, (December 2019)Entertainment Contracts With Minors in New York and California, New York State Bar Association, Arts and Sports Law Journal, Vol. 30, No. 1, (Spring 2019)Defamation and Invasion of Privacy in the Internet Age, Southwestern Journal of International Law, Volume XXV (2019)When Will Legal Communication Result In Liability? Los Angeles Daily Journal, (Mar 29, 2019)Entertainment Contracts With Minors: Clarification Needed, Los Angeles Daily Journal, (Nov. 27, 2018)Tales and Lessons Regarding the Right of Publicity, USC Entertainment Law Spotlight, Issue 2, (2018)Hollywood Docket: Tales and Lessons Regarding the Right of Publicity, New York State Bar Association, Arts and Sports Law Journal, No. 2, (Summer 2018)Hollywood Docket: Essential Clauses for Drafting an Ironclad Release and Consent Agreement, New York State Bar Association, Arts and Sports Law Journal, Vol. 29, No. 1, (Spring, 2018)Before You Sign That Deal At Cannes…Produced By, Producers Guild of America, (April/May 2017)Hollywood Docket: Making the Perfect Pitch, New York State Bar Association, Arts and Sports Law Journal, Vol. 27, No.3, (Fall/Winter 2017)Hollywood Docket: One-Sided World, New York State Bar Association, Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Journal, Vol 27, No. 2., (Summer, 2016)A New Way to Revive a Corporation, Los Angeles Daily Journal, (Oct 26, 2016)Hollywood Docket: Social Media, the Law, and You, New York State Bar Association, Arts and Sports Law Journal, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Fall 2016)What Happened to Unjust Enrichment in California? The Deterioration of Equity in the California Courts, Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review, Vol. 44:277 (Fall 2010) Published Cases:Gerbosi v. Gaims, Weil, West & Epstein, LLP (2011) 193 Cal.App.4th 435Walker v. Geico General Ins. Co. (9th Cir. 2009) 558 F.3d 1025Simmons v. Bauer Media Group USA, LLC (2020) 50 Cal App.5th 1037Education:J.D., University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law, 2000, Dean's ListB.A., University of Southern California, 1996, Dean's List Practice Areas:Entertainment LitigationComplex Business LitigationClass Action LitigationIntellectual Property LitigationDefamation, Media, and First Amendment LawRights of Privacy and Publicity Admissions:California   

"Tunes of the Season: Phish, Grateful Dead, and Merry Jams"Larry Mishkin   discusses Christmas-themed songs performed by various artists, including The Who and Grateful Dead. Larry delves into The Who's rock opera "Tommy," particularly focusing on the song "Christmas" and its critical reception. He transitions to discussing Grateful Dead's rendition of Chuck Berry's "Run, Rudolph, Run" performed at the Felt Forum in 1971 and analyzes its significance in the band's repertoire.Larry further explores the potential residency of bands like Dead & Company at the Sphere in Las Vegas, following U2's shows there. He touches on Phish's upcoming performances at the same venue and discusses the difficulty in acquiring tickets for these highly anticipated shows.Later, Larry reminisces about New Year's Eve shows by various bands, specifically mentioning Grateful Dead's memorable performances during the countdown. He also features unconventional Christmas renditions by Phish and Jerry Garcia with David Grisman..Produced by PodConx   Theme – Rock n Roll ChristmasIf you were in the Mishkin household earlier this morning, you might have heard this blasting out of the speakers:INTRO:               ChristmasThe WhoFebruary 14, 1970University of Leeds, Leeds, England  aka  “Live At Leeds”The Who - Christmas - Live At Leeds (with Footage) (youtube.com)2:00 – 3:17 "Christmas" is a song written by Pete Townshend and is the seventh song on The Who's rock opera Tommy. On the original LP, it opens the second side of the album.  Tommy is the fourth studio album by the English rock band the Who, first released on 19 May 1969.[2] Primarily written by guitarist Pete Townshend, Tommy is a double album and an early rock opera that tells the story of Tommy Walker and his experiences through life. The song tells how on Christmas morning, Tommy's father is worried about Tommy's future, and soul. His future is jeopardized due to being deaf, dumb, and blind.[2] The lyrics contrast religious themes such as Christmas and Jesus Christ with Tommy's ignorance of such matters. The rhetorical question, "How can he be saved from the eternal grave?" is asked about Tommy's condition and adds speculation as to the nature of original sin and eternal salvation. In the middle of the song, "Tommy can you hear me?" is repeated, with Tommy responding, "See me, feel me, touch me, heal me." "Christmas" was praised by critics. Richie Unterberger of AllMusic called it an "excellent song."[5]Rolling Stone's Mac Randall said it was one of several "prime Pete Townshend songs" on the album.[6] A review in Life by Albert Goldman considered it beautiful and highlighted the song's "croaking chorus".[7] James Perone said it was "perhaps one of the best sleeper tracks of the collection." Townshend came up with the concept of Tommy after being introduced to the work of Meher Baba, and he attempted to translate Baba's teachings into music. Recording on the album began in September 1968, but took six months to complete as material needed to be arranged and re-recorded in the studio. Tommy was acclaimed upon its release by critics, who hailed it as the Who's breakthrough. Its critical standing diminished slightly in later years; nonetheless, several writers view it as an important and influential album in the history of rock music. The Who promoted the album's release with an extensive tour, including a live version of Tommy, which lasted throughout 1969 and 1970. Key gigs from the tour included appearances at Woodstock, the 1969 Isle of Wight Festival, the University of Leeds, the Metropolitan Opera House, and the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival. The live performances of Tommy drew critical praise and revitalised the band's career. Live at Leeds is the first live album by English rock band the Who. It was recorded at the University of Leeds Refectory on 14 February 1970, and is their only live album that was released while the group were still actively recording and performing with their best-known line-up of Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, John Entwistle and Keith Moon. The album was released on 11 May 1970 by Decca and MCA in the United States,[2] and by Track and Polydor in the United Kingdom. It has been reissued on several occasions and in several different formats. Since its release, Live at Leeds has been ranked by several music critics as the best live rock recording of all time SHOW No. 1:                   Run Rudolph RunGrateful DeadFelt Forum at MSG, NYCDecember 7, 1971Track No. 10Grateful Dead Live at Felt Forum, Madison Square Garden on 1971-12-07 : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive0:11 – 1:54 Run Rudolph Run"[2][3][4] is a Christmas song written by Chuck Berry but credited to Johnny Marks and M. Brodie due to Marks' trademark on the character of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.[5][note 1] It was published by St. Nicholas Music (ASCAP) and was first recorded by Berry in 1958, released as a single on Chess Records.It has since been covered by numerous other artists, sometimes with the title "Run Run Rudolph".[16] The song is a 12-bar blues, musically similar to Berry's popular and recognizable song "Johnny B. Goode", and melodically similar to his song "Little Queenie", the latter of which was released shortly after, in 1959.During its initial chart run, Berry's 1958 recording peaked at number 69 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in December 1958.[22] Sixty years later, the single re-entered the Hot 100 chart at number 45 (on the week ending January 5, 2019), reaching an overall peak position of number 10 on the week ending January 2, 2021, following its third chart re-entry, becoming Berry's third top-ten hit and his first since 1972's "My Ding-a-Ling". In doing so, it broke the record for the longest climb to the top 10 since its first entry in December 1958, at 62 years and two weeks.This Ciip:Out of Brokedown Palace and into You Win AgainPlayed a total of 7 times.This was the first timeLast:  December 15, 1971 Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, MI  SHOW No. 2:     Little Drummer BoyPhishJuly 3, 1999Coca Cola Lakewood Amphitheatre, Atlanta, GAPhish - The Little Drummer Boy - 7/3/1999 - Atlanta, GA (youtube.com)Start to 1:30 Out of Contact to close the second set.  Played it again as the first encore (into, Won't You Come Home Bill Bailery starring Page's dad, Jack, on vocals and kazoo. "The Little Drummer Boy" (originally known as "Carol of the Drum") is a Czechoslovakian popular Christmas song written by American composer Katherine Kennicott Davis in 1941.[1] First recorded in 1951 by the Austrian Trapp Family, the song was further popularized by a 1958 recording by the Harry Simeone Chorale; the Simeone version was re-released successfully for several years, and the song has been recorded many times since.[2] In the lyrics, the singer relates how, as a poor young boy, he was summoned by the Magi to the Nativity of Jesus. Without a gift for the Infant, the little drummer boy played his drum with approval from Jesus' mother, Mary, recalling, "I played my best for him" and "He smiled at me". Phish has only performed the song three times during the month of December – the debut performance segueing out of “Mike's Song” and into “Whipping Post,” a tease during the 12/28/94 “Weekapaug Groove,” and jammed out of the “YEM” vocal jam (12/2/99) (which melted down until Jon was left singing it to close the set). But the song was jammed out of season during “My Friend, My Friend” (3/18/93) and “Stash” (7/15/93), and teased during “Weekapaug Groove” and “Big Ball Jam” (4/9/94), “Wilson” (8/13/97), “Silent in the Morning” (7/4/99), and "Wilson" (4/16/04). This version is generally considered to be Fishman's most memorable version.  SHOW No. 3:     God Rest Ye Merry GentlemenJerry Garcia and David GrismanNovember 9, 1991Warfield Theater, S.F.God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - Jerry Garcia - Bing videoStart – 1:37Out of The Two Sisters to close second set "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen" is an English traditional Christmas carol. It is in the Roxburghe Collection (iii. 452), and is listed as no. 394 in the Roud Folk Song Index. It is also known as "Tidings of Comfort and Joy", and by other variant incipits. An early version of this carol is found in an anonymous manuscript, dating from the 1650s it appeared in a parody published in 1820 by William Hone.               Story here is the way Jerry and David play so tight, trading off leads and filling in gaps.  A great sound for a traditional tune.  There are many sides of Jerry and we don't get to see all of them.  Nice to take a break from the traditional Dead stuff and take a look in at what else Garcia was doing during that creative period of his life. SHOW No. 4:                   Stagger LeeGrateful DeadDecember 30, 1985Track No. 6Grateful Dead Live at Oakland Coliseum on 1985-12-30 : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet ArchiveStart – 1:32 As is made clear by the opening lyrics, this is a tale about events that unfolded and played out on Christmas: “1940 Xmas Eve with a full moon over town”.  On some occasions, Jerry was  known to substitute in “Christmas” Eve. "Stagger Lee", also known as "Stagolee" and other variants, is a popular American folk song about the murder of Billy Lyons by "Stag" Lee Shelton, in St. Louis, Missouri, at Christmas 1895. The song was first published in 1911 and first recorded in 1923, by Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians, titled "Stack O' Lee Blues". A version by Lloyd Price reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1959. The historical Stagger Lee was Lee Shelton, an African-American pimp living in St. Louis, Missouri, in the late 19th century. He was nicknamed Stag Lee or Stack Lee, with a variety of explanations being given: he was given the nickname because he "went stag" (went to social events unaccompanied by a person of the opposite sex); he took the nickname from a well-known riverboat captain called Stack Lee; or, according to John and Alan Lomax, he took the name from a riverboat owned by the Lee family of Memphis called the Stack Lee, which was known for its on-board prostitution.[2] Shelton was well known locally as one of the Macks, a group of pimps who demanded attention through their flashy clothing and appearance.[3] In addition to those activities, he was the captain of a black Four Hundred Club, a social club with a dubious reputation. On Christmas night in 1895, Shelton and his acquaintance William "Billy" Lyons were drinking in the Bill Curtis Saloon. Lyons was also a member of St. Louis' underworld, and may have been a political and business rival to Shelton. Eventually, the two men got into a dispute, during which Lyons took Shelton's Stetson hat.[5]Subsequently, Shelton shot Lyons, recovered his hat, and left.[6] Lyons died of his injuries, and Shelton was charged, tried, and convicted of the murder in 1897. He was paroled in 1909, but returned to prison in 1911 for assault and robbery. He died in incarceration in 1912. The Grateful Dead frequently played and eventually recorded a version of the tale which focuses on the fictionalized hours after the death of "Billy DeLyon", when Billy's wife Delia tracks down Stagger Lee in a local saloon and "she shot him in the balls" in revenge for Billy's death. Based on the traditional song "Stagger Lee", "Stagolee" or "Stack O'Lee." Robert Hunter wrote a version that he performed solo, and Jerry Garcia subsequently re-ordered the lyrics and rewrote the music for the Grateful Dead's version. More recently Bob Weir has also been performing some of the older traditional versions with Ratdog. Dead released it on Shakedown Street, Nov. 8, 1978 Played 146 times by the Dead1st:  August 30, 1978Last:  June 18, 1995 Giants Stadium  OUTRO:              Santa Clause Is Coming To TownBruce Springsteen and the E Street BandCW Post University, Greenvale, NYDecember, 19756Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town (Live at C.W. Post College, Greenvale, NY - December 1975) - Bing video2:15 - 4:00               Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town" is a Christmas song featuring Santa Claus, written by J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie and first recorded by Harry Reser and His Band.[1] When it was covered by Eddie Cantor on his radio show in November 1934 it became a hit; within 24 hours, 500,000 copies of sheet music and more than 30,000 records were sold.[2][3] The version for Bluebird Records by George Hall and His Orchestra (vocal by Sonny Schuyler) was very popular in 1934 and reached the various charts of the day.[4] The song has been recorded by over 200 artists including Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters, the Crystals, Neil Diamond, Fred Astaire, Bruce Springsteen, Frank Sinatra, Bill Evans, Chris Isaak, the Temptations, The Pointer Sisters, the Carpenters, Michael Bublé, Luis Miguel, and the Jackson 5 A rock version by Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band was recorded on December 12, 1975, at C. W. Post College in Brookville, New York, by Record Plant engineers Jimmy Iovine and Thom Panunzio.[14][15] This version borrows the chorus refrain from the 1963 recording by the Crystals.[16] It was first released as a track on the 1981 Sesame Street compilation album, In Harmony 2, as well as on a 1981 promotional, radio-only, 7-inch single (Columbia AE7 1332).[17][18] Four years later, it was released as the B-side to "My Hometown," a single off the Born in the U.S.A. album.[19] Springsteen's rendition of the song has received radio airplay perennially at Christmastime for years; it appeared on Billboard magazine's Hot Singles Recurrents chart each year from 2002 to 2009 due to seasonal air play. Live performances of the song often saw the band encouraging the audience to sing some of the lyrics with—or in place of—the band's vocalists (usually the line "you'd better be good for goodness sake", and occasionally the key line "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town" as well). Sometimes, concert crowds would sing along with the entire song, and the band, who were known to encourage this behavior for the song, would do nothing to dissuade those audiences from doing so, instead welcoming the crowds' enthusiasm. This version remains a Springsteen concert favorite during the months of November and December (often concluding the show), and the band is among the few that keep it in their roster of songs during the holidays. Dead & Co at the Sphere?Phish – sold out fast Merry ChristmasHappy Holidays .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

Desde los hornos del sello barcelonés El Toro Records te presentamos las últimas seis referencias de la colección "Shouters" -Gritadores-, una serie de EP's en formato 7" de vinilo que reivindica el legado de grandes cantantes negros del rhythm n’ blues de los años 50 y su papel como pioneros del rock’n’roll. Playlist;“JOLLY BOY” SHEPARD “You care”OLLIE SHEPARD “My baby’s gone”JOLLY OLLIE “Baby blues”SCREAMIN’ JAY HAWKINS “Little demon (alternative take)”SCREAMIN’ JAY HAWKINS “Alligator wine (alternative take)”SCREAMIN’ JAY HAWKINS “I put a spell on you (alternative take)”LLOYD PRICE “Such a mess”LLOYD PRICE “The chicken and the bop”LLOYD PRICE “Georgianna”BOBBY LEWIS “Fire of love”BOBBY LEWIS “You better stop”BOBBY LEWIS “Mumbles blues”LLOYD “FATMAN” SMITH “Good gracious”LLOYD “FATMAN” SMITH “Miss Mushmouth”LLOYD “FATMAN” SMITH “Part-time sweetheart”JIMMY BREDLOVE “Killer diller”JIMMY BREDLOVE “Oo-whee, Good gosh a-mighty”JIMMY BREDLOVE “Whole lot-ta shakin’ goin’ on”LLOYD “FATMAN” SMITH “Where you been”Escuchar audio

Popular culture in 1959 was marked by a dynamic mix of artistic and societal shifts. The music scene was dominated by the rise of rock and roll shaping the sound of the era. It found itself rising above the simple adult contemporary and country sounds of the day. Iconic films such as “Some Like It Hot” and “Ben-Hur” showcased a diverse range of storytelling and cinematic styles and cultural narratives found a place in television, with shows like “The Twilight Zone” captivating audiences with thought-provoking and imaginative storytelling. The boomers were reaching their teen years, the space race was launched and a torch was about to be passed in Washington. Our show today spins the top tracks from each of the pop, country, R&B and rock charts reflecting a year of cultural transition, encapsulating the tension between traditional values and the evolving influences of a changing world. Everyone from Johnny Horton and Marty Robbins to Lloyd Price, The Fleetwoods, and Bobby Darin…all in one two hour show on KOWS Community Radio.

Episode 170 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Astral Weeks", the early solo career of Van Morrison, and the death of Bert Berns.  Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-minute bonus episode available, on "Stoned Soul Picnic" by Laura Nyro. 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/ Errata At one point I, ridiculously, misspeak the name of Charles Mingus' classic album. Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is not about dinner ladies. Also, I say Warren Smith Jr is on "Slim Slow Slider" when I meant to say Richard Davis (Smith is credited in some sources, but I only hear acoustic guitar, bass, and soprano sax on the finished track). Resources As usual, I've created Mixcloud playlists, with full versions of all the songs excerpted in this episode. As there are so many Van Morrison songs in this episode, the Mixcloud is split into three parts, one, two, and three. The information about Bert Berns comes from Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues by Joel Selvin. I've used several biographies of Van Morrison. Van Morrison: Into the Music by Ritchie Yorke is so sycophantic towards Morrison that the word “hagiography” would be, if anything, an understatement. Van Morrison: No Surrender by Johnny Rogan, on the other hand, is the kind of book that talks in the introduction about how the author has had to avoid discussing certain topics because of legal threats from the subject. Howard deWitt's Van Morrison: Astral Weeks to Stardom is over-thorough in the way some self-published books are, while Clinton Heylin's Can You Feel the Silence? is probably the best single volume on the artist. Information on Woodstock comes from Small Town Talk by Barney Hoskyns. Ryan Walsh's Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 is about more than Astral Weeks, but does cover Morrison's period in and around Boston in more detail than anything else. The album Astral Weeks is worth hearing in its entirety. Not all of the music on The Authorized Bang Collection is as listenable, but it's the most complete collection available of everything Morrison recorded for Bang. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before we start, a quick warning -- this episode contains discussion of organised crime activity, and of sudden death. It also contains excerpts of songs which hint at attraction to underage girls and discuss terminal illness. If those subjects might upset you, you might want to read the transcript rather than listen to the episode. Anyway, on with the show. Van Morrison could have been the co-writer of "Piece of My Heart". Bert Berns was one of the great collaborators in the music business, and almost every hit he ever had was co-written, and he was always on the lookout for new collaborators, and in 1967 he was once again working with Van Morrison, who he'd worked with a couple of years earlier when Morrison was still the lead singer of Them. Towards the beginning of 1967 he had come up with a chorus, but no verse. He had the hook, "Take another little piece of my heart" -- Berns was writing a lot of songs with "heart" in the title at the time -- and wanted Morrison to come up with a verse to go with it. Van Morrison declined. He wasn't interested in writing pop songs, or in collaborating with other writers, and so Berns turned to one of his regular collaborators, Jerry Ragavoy, and it was Ragavoy who added the verses to one of the biggest successes of Berns' career: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] The story of how Van Morrison came to make the album that's often considered his masterpiece is intimately tied up with the story we've been telling in the background for several episodes now, the story of Atlantic Records' sale to Warners, and the story of Bert Berns' departure from Atlantic. For that reason, some parts of the story I'm about to tell will be familiar to those of you who've been paying close attention to the earlier episodes, but as always I'm going to take you from there to somewhere we've never been before. In 1962, Bert Berns was a moderately successful songwriter, who had written or co-written songs for many artists, especially for artists on Atlantic Records. He'd written songs for Atlantic artists like LaVern Baker, and when Atlantic's top pop producers Leiber and Stoller started to distance themselves from the label in the early sixties, he had moved into production as well, writing and producing Solomon Burke's big hit "Cry to Me": [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "Cry to Me"] He was the producer and writer or co-writer of most of Burke's hits from that point forward, but at first he was still a freelance producer, and also produced records for Scepter Records, like the Isley Brothers' version of "Twist and Shout", another song he'd co-written, that one with Phil Medley. And as a jobbing songwriter, of course his songs were picked up by other producers, so Leiber and Stoller produced a version of his song "Tell Him" for the Exciters on United Artists: [Excerpt: The Exciters, "Tell Him"] Berns did freelance work for Leiber and Stoller as well as the other people he was working for. For example, when their former protege Phil Spector released his hit version of "Zip-a-Dee-Do-Dah", they got Berns to come up with a knockoff arrangement of "How Much is that Doggie in the Window?", released as by Baby Jane and the Rockabyes, with a production credit "Produced by Leiber and Stoller, directed by Bert Berns": [Excerpt: Baby Jane and the Rockabyes, "How Much is that Doggie in the Window?"] And when Leiber and Stoller stopped producing work for United Artists, Berns took over some of the artists they'd been producing for the label, like Marv Johnson, as well as producing his own new artists, like Garnet Mimms and the Enchanters, who had been discovered by Berns' friend Jerry Ragovoy, with whom he co-wrote their "Cry Baby": [Excerpt: Garnet Mimms and the Enchanters, "Cry Baby"] Berns was an inveterate collaborator. He was one of the few people to get co-writing credits with Leiber and Stoller, and he would collaborate seemingly with everyone who spoke to him for five minutes. He would also routinely reuse material, cutting the same songs time and again with different artists, knowing that a song must be a hit for *someone*. One of his closest collaborators was Jerry Wexler, who also became one of his best friends, even though one of their earliest interactions had been when Wexler had supervised Phil Spector's production of Berns' "Twist and Shout" for the Top Notes, a record that Berns had thought had butchered the song. Berns was, in his deepest bones, a record man. Listening to the records that Berns made, there's a strong continuity in everything he does. There's a love there of simplicity -- almost none of his records have more than three chords. He loved Latin sounds and rhythms -- a love he shared with other people working in Brill Building R&B at the time, like Leiber and Stoller and Spector -- and great voices in emotional distress. There's a reason that the records he produced for Solomon Burke were the first R&B records to be labelled "soul". Berns was one of those people for whom feel and commercial success are inextricable. He was an artist -- the records he made were powerfully expressive -- but he was an artist for whom the biggest validation was *getting a hit*. Only a small proportion of the records he made became hits, but enough did that in the early sixties he was a name that could be spoken of in the same breath as Leiber and Stoller, Spector, and Bacharach and David. And Atlantic needed a record man. The only people producing hits for the label at this point were Leiber and Stoller, and they were in the process of stopping doing freelance work and setting up their own label, Red Bird, as we talked about in the episode on the Shangri-Las. And anyway, they wanted more money than they were getting, and Jerry Wexler was never very keen on producers wanting money that could have gone to the record label. Wexler decided to sign Bert Berns up as a staff producer for Atlantic towards the end of 1963, and by May 1964 it was paying off. Atlantic hadn't been having hits, and now Berns had four tracks he wrote and produced for Atlantic on the Hot One Hundred, of which the highest charting was "My Girl Sloopy" by the Vibrations: [Excerpt: The Vibrations, "My Girl Sloopy"] Even higher on the charts though was the Beatles' version of "Twist and Shout". That record, indeed, had been successful enough in the UK that Berns had already made exploratory trips to the UK and produced records for Dick Rowe at Decca, a partnership we heard about in the episode on "Here Comes the Night". Berns had made partnerships there which would have vast repercussions for the music industry in both countries, and one of them was with the arranger Mike Leander, who was the uncredited arranger for the Drifters session for "Under the Boardwalk", a song written by Artie Resnick and Kenny Young and produced by Berns, recorded the day after the group's lead singer Rudy Lewis died of an overdose: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Under the Boardwalk"] Berns was making hits on a regular basis by mid-1964, and the income from the label's new success allowed Jerry Wexler and the Ertegun brothers to buy out their other partners -- Ahmet Ertegun's old dentist, who had put up some of the initial money, and Miriam Bienstock, the ex-wife of their initial partner Herb Abramson, who'd got Abramson's share in the company after the divorce, and who was now married to Freddie Bienstock of Hill and Range publishing. Wexler and the Erteguns now owned the whole label. Berns also made regular trips to the UK to keep up his work with British musicians, and in one of those trips, as we heard in the episode on "Here Comes the Night", he produced several tracks for the group Them, including that track, written by Berns: [Excerpt: Them, "Here Comes the Night"] And a song written by the group's lead singer Van Morrison, "Gloria": [Excerpt: Them, "Gloria"] But Berns hadn't done much other work with them, because he had a new project. Part of the reason that Wexler and the Erteguns had gained total control of Atlantic was because, in a move pushed primarily by Wexler, they were looking at selling it. They'd already tried to merge with Leiber and Stoller's Red Bird Records, but lost the opportunity after a disastrous meeting, but they were in negotiations with several other labels, negotiations which would take another couple of years to bear fruit. But they weren't planning on getting out of the record business altogether. Whatever deal they made, they'd remain with Atlantic, but they were also planning on starting another label. Bert Berns had seen how successful Leiber and Stoller were with Red Bird, and wanted something similar. Wexler and the Erteguns didn't want to lose their one hit-maker, so they came up with an offer that would benefit all of them. Berns' publishing contract had just ended, so they would set up a new publishing company, WEB IV, named after the initials Wexler, Ertegun, and Berns, and the fact that there were four of them. Berns would own fifty percent of that, and the other three would own the other half. And they were going to start up a new label, with seventeen thousand dollars of the Atlantic partners' money. That label would be called Bang -- for Bert, Ahmet, Neshui, and Gerald -- and would be a separate company from Atlantic, so not affected by any sale. Berns would continue as a staff producer for Atlantic for now, but he'd have "his own" label, which he'd have a proper share in, and whether he was making hits for Atlantic or Bang, his partners would have a share of the profits. The first two records on Bang were "Shake and Jerk" by Billy Lamont, a track that they licensed from elsewhere and which didn't do much, and a more interesting track co-written by Berns. Bob Feldman, Richard Gottehrer, and Jerry Goldstein were Brill Building songwriters who had become known for writing "My Boyfriend's Back", a hit for the Angels, a couple of years earlier: [Excerpt: The Angels, "My Boyfriend's Back"] With the British invasion, the three of them had decided to create their own foreign beat group. As they couldn't do British accents, they pretended to be Australian, and as the Strangeloves -- named after the Stanley Kubrick film Dr  Strangelove -- they released one flop single. They cut another single, a version of "Bo Diddley", but the label they released their initial record through didn't want it. They then took the record to Atlantic, where Jerry Wexler said that they weren't interested in releasing some white men singing "Bo Diddley". But Ahmet Ertegun suggested they bring the track to Bert Berns to see what he thought. Berns pointed out that if they changed the lyrics and melody, but kept the same backing track, they could claim the copyright in the resulting song themselves. He worked with them on a new lyric, inspired by the novel Candy, a satirical pornographic novel co-written by Terry Southern, who had also co-written the screenplay to Dr Strangelove. Berns supervised some guitar overdubs, and the result went to number eleven: [Excerpt: The Strangeloves, "I Want Candy"] Berns had two other songs on the hot one hundred when that charted, too -- Them's version of "Here Comes the Night", and the version of Van McCoy's song "Baby I'm Yours" he'd produced for Barbara Lewis. Three records on the charts on three different labels. But despite the sheer number of charting records he'd had, he'd never had a number one, until the Strangeloves went on tour. Before the tour they'd cut a version of "My Girl Sloopy" for their album -- Berns always liked to reuse material -- and they started performing the song on the tour. The Dave Clark Five, who they were supporting, told them it sounded like a hit and they were going to do their own version when they got home. Feldman, Gottehrer, and Goldstein decided *they* might as well have the hit with it as anyone else. Rather than put it out as a Strangeloves record -- their own record was still rising up the charts, and there's no reason to be your own competition -- they decided to get a group of teenage musicians who supported them on the last date of the tour to sing new vocals to the backing track from the Strangeloves album. The group had been called Rick and the Raiders, but they argued so much that the Strangeloves nicknamed them the Hatfields and the McCoys, and when their version of "My Girl Sloopy", retitled "Hang on Sloopy", came out, it was under the band name The McCoys: [Excerpt: The McCoys, "Hang on Sloopy"] Berns was becoming a major success, and with major success in the New York music industry in the 1960s came Mafia involvement. We've talked a fair bit about Morris Levy's connection with the mob in many previous episodes, but mob influence was utterly pervasive throughout the New York part of the industry, and so for example Richard Gottehrer of the Strangeloves used to call Sonny Franzese of the Colombo crime family "Uncle John", they were so close. Franzese was big in the record business too, even after his conviction for bank robbery. Berns, unlike many of the other people in the industry, had no scruples at all about hanging out with Mafiosi. indeed his best friend in the mid sixties was Tommy Eboli, a member of the Genovese crime family who had been in the mob since the twenties, starting out working for "Lucky" Luciano. Berns was not himself a violent man, as far as anyone can tell, but he liked the glamour of hanging out with organised crime figures, and they liked hanging out with someone who was making so many hit records. And so while Leiber and Stoller, for example, ended up selling Red Bird Records to George Goldner for a single dollar in order to get away from the Mafiosi who were slowly muscling in on the label, Berns had no problems at all in keeping his own label going. Indeed, he would soon be doing so without the involvement of Atlantic Records. Berns' final work for Atlantic was in June 1966, when he cut a song he had co-written with Jeff Barry for the Drifters, inspired by the woman who would soon become Atlantic's biggest star: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Aretha"] The way Berns told the story in public, there was no real bad blood between him, Wexler, and the Erteguns -- he'd just decided to go his own way, and he said “I will always be grateful to them for the help they've given me in getting Bang started,” The way Berns' wife would later tell the story, Jerry Wexler had suggested that rather than Berns owning fifty percent of Web IV, they should start to split everything four ways, and she had been horrified by this suggestion, kicked up a stink about it, and Wexler had then said that either Berns needed to buy the other three out, or quit and give them everything, and demanded Berns pay them three hundred thousand dollars. According to other people, Berns decided he wanted one hundred percent control of Web IV, and raised a breach of contract lawsuit against Atlantic, over the usual royalty non-payments that were endemic in the industry at that point. When Atlantic decided to fight the lawsuit rather than settle, Berns' mob friends got involved and threatened to break the legs of Wexler's fourteen-year-old daughter, and the mob ended up with full control of Bang records, while Berns had full control of his publishing company. Given later events, and in particular given the way Wexler talked about Berns until the day he died, with a vitriol that he never used about any of the other people he had business disputes with, it seems likely to me that the latter story is closer to the truth than the former. But most people involved weren't talking about the details of what went on, and so Berns still retained his relationships with many of the people in the business, not least of them Jeff Barry, so when Barry and Ellie Greenwich had a new potential star, it was Berns they thought to bring him to, even though the artist was white and Berns had recently given an interview saying that he wanted to work with more Black artists, because white artists simply didn't have soul. Barry and Greenwich's marriage was breaking up at the time, but they were still working together professionally, as we discussed in the episode on "River Deep, Mountain High", and they had been the main production team at Red Bird. But with Red Bird in terminal decline, they turned elsewhere when they found a potential major star after Greenwich was asked to sing backing vocals on one of his songwriting demos. They'd signed the new songwriter, Neil Diamond, to Leiber and Stoller's company Trio Music at first, but they soon started up their own company, Tallyrand Music, and signed Diamond to that, giving Diamond fifty percent of the company and keeping twenty-five percent each for themselves, and placed one of his songs with Jay and the Americans in 1965: [Excerpt: Jay and the Americans, "Sunday and Me"] That record made the top twenty, and had established Diamond as a songwriter, but he was still not a major performer -- he'd released one flop single on Columbia Records before meeting Barry and Greenwich. But they thought he had something, and Bert Berns agreed. Diamond was signed to Bang records, and Berns had a series of pre-production meetings with Barry and Greenwich before they took Diamond into the studio -- Barry and Greenwich were going to produce Diamond for Bang, as they had previously produced tracks for Red Bird, but they were going to shape the records according to Berns' aesthetic. The first single released from Diamond's first session, "Solitary Man", only made number fifty-five, but it was the first thing Diamond had recorded to make the Hot One Hundred at all: [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Solitary Man"] The second single, though, was much more Bert Berns' sort of thing -- a three-chord song that sounded like it could have been written by Berns himself, especially after Barry and Greenwich had added the Latin-style horns that Berns loved so much. Indeed according to some sources, Berns did make a songwriting suggestion -- Diamond's song had apparently been called "Money Money", and Berns had thought that was a ridiculous title, and suggested calling it "Cherry Cherry" instead: [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Cherry Cherry"] That became Diamond's first top ten hit. While Greenwich had been the one who had discovered Diamond, and Barry and Greenwich were the credited producers on all Diamond's records  as a result, Diamond soon found himself collaborating far more with Barry than with Greenwich, so for example the first number one he wrote, for the Monkees rather than himself, ended up having its production just credited to Barry. That record used a backing track recorded in New York by the same set of musicians used on most Bang records, like Al Gorgoni on lead guitar and Russ Savakus on bass: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "I'm a Believer"] Neil Diamond was becoming a solid hit-maker, but he started rubbing up badly against Berns. Berns wanted hits and only hits, and Diamond thought of himself as a serious artist. The crisis came when two songs were under contention for Diamond's next single in late 1967, after he'd had a whole run of hits for the label. The song Diamond wanted to release, "Shilo", was deeply personal to him: [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Shilo"] But Bert Berns had other ideas. "Shilo" didn't sound like a hit, and he knew a hit when he heard one. No, the clear next single, the only choice, was "Kentucky Woman": [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Kentucky Woman"] But Berns tried to compromise as best he could. Diamond's contract was up for renewal, and you don't want to lose someone who has had, as Diamond had at that point, five top twenty hits in a row, and who was also writing songs like "I'm a Believer" and "Red Red Wine". He told Diamond that he'd let "Shilo" come out as a single if Diamond signed an extension to his contract. Diamond said that not only was he not going to do that, he'd taken legal advice and discovered that there were problems with his contract which let him record for other labels -- the word "exclusive" had been missed out of the text, among other things. He wasn't going to be recording for Bang at all any more. The lawsuits over this would stretch out for a decade, and Diamond would eventually win, but the first few months were very, very difficult for Diamond. When he played the Bitter End, a club in New York, stink bombs were thrown into the audience. The Bitter End's manager was assaulted and severely beaten. Diamond moved his wife and child out of Manhattan, borrowed a gun, and after his last business meeting with Berns was heard talking about how he needed to contact the District Attorney and hire a bodyguard. Of the many threats that were issued against Diamond, though, the least disturbing was probably the threat Berns made to Diamond's career. Berns pointed out to Diamond in no uncertain terms that he didn't need Diamond anyway -- he already had someone he could replace Diamond with, another white male solo singer with a guitar who could churn out guaranteed hits. He had Van Morrison: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl"] When we left Van Morrison, Them had just split up due to the problems they had been having with their management team. Indeed, the problems Morrison was having with his managers seem curiously similar to the issues that Diamond was having with Bert Berns -- something that could possibly have been a warning sign to everyone involved, if any of them had known the full details of everyone else's situation. Sadly for all of them, none of them did. Them had had some early singles success, notably with the tracks Berns had produced for them, but Morrison's opinion of their second album, Them Again, was less than complimentary, and in general that album is mostly only remembered for the version of Bob Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue", which is one of those cover versions that inspires subsequent covers more than the original ever did: [Excerpt: Them, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue"] Them had toured the US around the time of the release of that album, but that tour had been a disaster. The group had gained a reputation for incredible live shows, including performances at the Whisky A-Go-Go with the Doors and Captain Beefheart as their support acts, but during the tour Van Morrison had decided that Phil Solomon, the group's manager, was getting too much money -- Morrison had agreed to do the tour on a salary, rather than a percentage, but the tour had been more successful than he'd expected, and Solomon was making a great deal of money off the tour, money that Morrison believed rightfully belonged to him. The group started collecting the money directly from promoters, and got into legal trouble with Solomon as a result. The tour ended with the group having ten thousand dollars that Solomon believed -- quite possibly correctly -- that he was owed. Various gangsters whose acquaintance the group had made offered to have the problem taken care of, but they decided instead to come to a legal agreement -- they would keep the money, and in return Solomon, whose production company the group were signed to, would get to keep all future royalties from the Them tracks. This probably seemed a good idea at the time, when the idea of records earning royalties for sixty or more years into the future seemed ridiculous, but Morrison in particular came to regret the decision bitterly. The group played one final gig when they got back to Belfast, but then split up, though a version of the group led by the bass player Alan Henderson continued performing for a few years to no success. Morrison put together a band that played a handful of gigs under the name Them Again, with little success, but he already had his eyes set on a return to the US. In Morrison's eyes, Bert Berns had been the only person in the music industry who had really understood him, and the two worked well together. He had also fallen in love with an American woman, Janet Planet, and wanted to find some way to be with her. As Morrison said later “I had a couple of other offers but I thought this was the best one, seeing as I wanted to come to America anyway. I can't remember the exact details of the deal. It wasn't really that spectacular, money-wise, I don't think. But it was pretty hard to refuse from the point of view that I really respected Bert as a producer. I'd rather have worked with Bert than some other guy with a bigger record company. From that angle, it was spectacular because Bert was somebody that I wanted to work with.” There's little evidence that Morrison did have other offers -- he was already getting a reputation as someone who it was difficult to work with -- but he and Berns had a mutual respect, and on January the ninth, 1967, he signed a contract with Bang records. That contract has come in for a lot of criticism over the years, but it was actually, *by the standards in operation in the music business in 1967*, a reasonably fair one. The contract provided that, for a $2,500 a year advance, Bang would record twelve sides in the first year, with an option for up to fifty more that year, and options for up to four more years on the same terms. Bang had the full ownership of the masters and the right to do what they wanted with them. According to at least one biographer, Morrison added clauses requiring Bang to actually record the twelve sides a year, and to put out at least three singles and one album per year while the contract was in operation. He also added one other clause which seems telling -- "Company agrees that Company will not make any reference to the name THEM on phonograph records, or in advertising copy in connection with the recording of Artist." Morrison was, at first, extremely happy with Berns. The problems started with their first session: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl (takes 1-6)"] When Morrison had played the songs he was working on for Berns, Berns had remarked that they sounded great with just Morrison and his guitar, so Morrison was surprised when he got into the studio to find the whole standard New York session crew there -- the same group of session players who were playing for everyone from the Monkees to Laura Nyro, from Neil Diamond to the Shangri-Las -- along with the Sweet Inspirations to provide backing vocals. As he described it later "This fellow Bert, he made it the way he wanted to, and I accepted that he was producing it... I'd write a song and bring it into the group and we'd sit there and bash it around and that's all it was -- they weren't playing the songs, they were just playing whatever it was. They'd say 'OK, we got drums so let's put drums on it,' and they weren't thinking about the song, all they were thinking about was putting drums on it... But it was my song, and I had to watch it go down." The first song they cut was "Brown-Eyed Girl", a song which Morrison has said was originally a calypso, and was originally titled "Brown-skinned Girl", though he's differed in interviews as to whether Berns changed the lyric or if he just decided to sing it differently without thinking about it in the session. Berns turned "Brown-Eyed Girl" into a hit single, because that was what he tended to do with songs, and the result sounds a lot like the kind of record that Bang were releasing for Neil Diamond: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl"] Morrison has, in later years, expressed his distaste for what was done to the song, and in particular he's said that the backing vocal part by the Sweet Inspirations was added by Berns and he disliked it: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl"] Morrison has been very dismissive of "Brown-Eyed Girl" over the years, but he seems not to have disliked it at the time, and the song itself is one that has stood the test of time, and is often pointed to by other songwriters as a great example of the writer's craft. I remember reading one interview with Randy Newman -- sadly, while I thought it was in Paul Zollo's "Songwriters on Songwriting" I just checked that and it's not, so I can't quote it precisely -- in which he says that he often points to the line "behind the stadium with you" as a perfect piece of writing, because it's such a strangely specific detail that it convinces you that it actually happened, and that means you implicitly believe the rest of the song. Though it should be made very clear here that Morrison has always said, over and over again, that nothing in his songs is based directly on his own experiences, and that they're all products of his imagination and composites of people he's known. This is very important to note before we go any further, because "Brown-Eyed Girl" is one of many songs from this period in Morrison's career which imply that their narrator has an attraction to underage girls -- in this case he remembers "making love in the green grass" in the distant past, while he also says "saw you just the other day, my how you have grown", and that particular combination is not perhaps one that should be dwelt on too closely. But there is of course a very big difference between a songwriter treating a subject as something that is worth thinking about in the course of a song and writing about their own lives, and that can be seen on one of the other songs that Morrison recorded in these sessions, "T.B. Sheets": [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "T.B. Sheets"] It seems very unlikely indeed that Van Morrison actually had a lover die of tuberculosis, as the lover in the song does, and while a lot of people seem convinced that it's autobiographical, simply because of the intensity of the performance (Morrison apparently broke down in tears after recording it), nobody has ever found anyone in Morrison's life who fits the story in the song, and he's always ridiculed such suggestions. What is true though is that "T.B. Sheets" is evidence against another claim that Morrison has made in the past - that on these initial sessions the eight songs recorded were meant to be the A and B sides of four singles and there was no plan of making an album. It is simply not plausible at all to suggest that "T.B. Sheets" -- a slow blues about terminal illness, that lasts nearly ten minutes -- was ever intended as a single. It wouldn't have even come close to fitting on one side of a forty-five. It was also presumably at this time that Berns brought up the topic of "Piece of My Heart". When Berns signed Erma Franklin, it was as a way of getting at Jerry Wexler, who had gone from being his closest friend to someone he wasn't on speaking terms with, by signing the sister of his new signing Aretha. Morrison, of course, didn't co-write it -- he'd already decided that he didn't play well with others -- but it's tempting to think about how the song might have been different had Morrison written it. The song in some ways seems a message to Wexler -- haven't you had enough from me already? -- but it's also notable how many songs Berns was writing with the word "heart" in the chorus, given that Berns knew he was on borrowed time from his own heart condition. As an example, around the same time he and Jerry Ragavoy co-wrote "Piece of My Heart", they also co-wrote another song, "Heart Be Still", a flagrant lift from "Peace Be Still" by Aretha Franklin's old mentor Rev. James Cleveland, which they cut with Lorraine Ellison: [Excerpt: Lorraine Ellison, "Heart Be Still"] Berns' heart condition had got much worse as a result of the stress from splitting with Atlantic, and he had started talking about maybe getting open-heart surgery, though that was still very new and experimental. One wonders how he must have felt listening to Morrison singing about watching someone slowly dying. Morrison has since had nothing but negative things to say about the sessions in March 1967, but at the time he seemed happy. He returned to Belfast almost straight away after the sessions, on the understanding that he'd be back in the US if "Brown-Eyed Girl" was a success. He wrote to Janet Planet in San Francisco telling her to listen to the radio -- she'd know if she heard "Brown-Eyed Girl" that he would be back on his way to see her. She soon did hear the song, and he was soon back in the US: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl"] By August, "Brown-Eyed Girl" had become a substantial hit, making the top ten, and Morrison was back in the States. He was starting to get less happy with Berns though. Bang had put out the eight tracks he'd recorded in March as an album, titled Blowin' Your Mind, and Morrison thought that the crass pseudo-psychedelia of the title, liner notes, and cover was very inappropriate -- Morrison has never been a heavy user of any drugs other than alcohol, and didn't particularly want to be associated with them. He also seems to have not realised that every track he recorded in those initial sessions would be on the album, which many people have called one of the great one-sided albums of all time -- side A, with "Brown-Eyed Girl", "He Ain't Give You None" and the extended "T.B. Sheets" tends to get far more love than side B, with five much lesser songs on it. Berns held a party for Morrison on a cruise around Manhattan, but it didn't go well -- when the performer Tiny Tim tried to get on board, Carmine "Wassel" DeNoia, a mobster friend of Berns' who was Berns' partner in a studio they'd managed to get from Atlantic as part of the settlement when Berns left, was so offended by Tim's long hair and effeminate voice and mannerisms that he threw him overboard into the harbour. DeNoia was meant to be Morrison's manager in the US, working with Berns, but he and Morrison didn't get on at all -- at one point DeNoia smashed Morrison's acoustic guitar over his head, and only later regretted the damage he'd done to a nice guitar. And Morrison and Berns weren't getting on either. Morrison went back into the studio to record four more songs for a follow-up to "Brown-Eyed Girl", but there was again a misunderstanding. Morrison thought he'd been promised that this time he could do his songs the way he wanted, but Berns was just frustrated that he wasn't coming up with another "Brown-Eyed Girl", but was instead coming up with slow songs about trans women. Berns overdubbed party noises and soul backing vocals onto "Madame George", possibly in an attempt to copy the Beach Boys' Party! album with its similar feel, but it was never going to be a "Barbara Ann": [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Madame George (Bang version)"] In the end, Berns released one of the filler tracks from Blowin' Your Mind, "Ro Ro Rosey", as the next single, and it flopped. On December the twenty-ninth, Berns had a meeting with Neil Diamond, the meeting after which Diamond decided he needed to get a bodyguard. After that, he had a screaming row over the phone with Van Morrison, which made Berns ill with stress. The next day, he died of a heart attack. Berns' widow Ilene, who had only just given birth to a baby a couple of weeks earlier, would always blame Morrison for pushing her husband over the edge. Neither Van Morrison nor Jerry Wexler went to the funeral, but Neil Diamond did -- he went to try to persuade Ilene to let him out of his contract now Berns was dead. According to Janet Planet later, "We were at the hotel when we learned that Bert had died. We were just mortified, because things had been going really badly, and Van felt really bad, because I guess they'd parted having had some big fight or something... Even though he did love Bert, it was a strange relationship that lived and died in the studio... I remember we didn't go to the funeral, which probably was a mistake... I think [Van] had a really bad feeling about what was going to happen." But Morrison has later mostly talked about the more practical concerns that came up, which were largely the same as the ones Neil Diamond had, saying in 1997 "I'd signed a contract with Bert Berns for management, production, agency and record company,  publishing, the whole lot -- which was professional suicide as any lawyer will tell you now... Then the whole thing blew up. Bert Berns died and I was left broke." This was the same mistake, essentially, that he'd made with Phil Solomon, and in order to get out of it, it turned out he was going to have to do much the same for a third time.  But it was the experience with Berns specifically that traumatised Morrison enough that twenty-five years later he would still be writing songs about it, like "Big Time Operators": [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Big Time Operators"] The option to renew Morrison's contracts with Berns' companies came on the ninth of January 1968, less than two weeks after Berns' death. After his death, Berns' share of ownership in his companies had passed to his widow, who was in a quandary. She had two young children, one of whom was only a few weeks old, and she needed an income after their father had died. She was also not well disposed at all towards Morrison, who she blamed for causing her husband's death. By all accounts the amazing thing is that Berns lived as long as he did given his heart condition and the state of medical science at the time, but it's easy to understand her thinking. She wanted nothing to do with Morrison, and wanted to punish him. On the other hand, her late husband's silent partners didn't want to let their cash cow go. And so Morrison came under a huge amount of pressure in very different directions. From one side, Carmine DiNoia was determined to make more money off Morrison, and Morrison has since talked about signing further contracts at this point with a gun literally to his head, and his hotel room being shot up. But on the other side, Ilene Berns wanted to destroy Morrison's career altogether. She found out that Bert Berns hadn't got Morrison the proper work permits and reported him to the immigration authorities. Morrison came very close to being deported, but in the end he managed to escape deportation by marrying Janet Planet. The newly-married couple moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to get away from New York and the mobsters, and to try to figure out the next steps in Morrison's career. Morrison started putting together a band, which he called The Van Morrison Controversy, and working on new songs. One of his earliest connections in Massachusetts was the lead singer of a band called the Hallucinations, who he met in a bar where he was trying to get a gig: [Excerpt: The Hallucinations, "Messin' With the Kid"] The Hallucinations' lead singer was called Peter Wolf, and would much later go on to become well-known as the singer with the J. Geils Band. He and Morrison became acquaintances, and later became closer friends when they realised they had another connection -- Wolf had a late-night radio show under the name Woofa Goofa, and he'd been receiving anonymous requests for obscure blues records from a fan of the show. Morrison had been the one sending in the requests, not realising his acquaintance was the DJ. Before he got his own band together, Morrison actually guested with the Hallucinations at one show they did in May 1968, supporting John Lee Hooker. The Hallucinations had been performing "Gloria" since Them's single had come out, and they invited Morrison to join them to perform it on stage. According to Wolf, Morrison was very drunk and ranted in cod-Japanese for thirty-five minutes, and tried to sing a different song while the band played "Gloria". The audience were apparently unimpressed, even though Wolf shouted at them “Don't you know who this man is? He wrote the song!” But in truth, Morrison was sick of "Gloria" and his earlier work, and was trying to push his music in a new direction. He would later talk about having had an epiphany after hearing one particular track on the radio: [Excerpt: The Band, "I Shall Be Released"] Like almost every musician in 1968, Morrison was hit like a lightning bolt by Music From Big Pink, and he decided that he needed to turn his music in the same direction. He started writing the song "Brand New Day", which would later appear on his album Moondance, inspired by the music on the album. The Van Morrison Controversy started out as a fairly straightforward rock band, with guitarist John Sheldon, bass player Tom Kielbania, and drummer Joey Bebo. Sheldon was a novice, though his first guitar teacher was the singer James Taylor, but the other two were students at Berklee, and very serious musicians. Morrison seems to have had various managers involved in rapid succession in 1968, including one who was himself a mobster, and another who was only known as Frank, but one of these managers advanced enough money that the musicians got paid every gig. These musicians were all interested in kinds of music other than just straight rock music, and as well as rehearsing up Morrison's hits and his new songs, they would also jam with him on songs from all sorts of other genres, particularly jazz and blues. The band worked up the song that would become "Domino" based on Sheldon jamming on a Bo Diddley riff, and another time the group were rehearsing a Grant Green jazz piece, "Lazy Afternoon": [Excerpt: Grant Green, "Lazy Afternoon"] Morrison started messing with the melody, and that became his classic song "Moondance": [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Moondance"] No recordings of this electric lineup of the group are known to exist, though the backing musicians remember going to a recording studio called Ace recordings at one point and cutting some demos, which don't seem to circulate. Ace was a small studio which, according to all the published sources I've read, was best known for creating song poems, though it was a minor studio even in the song-poem world. For those who don't know, song poems were essentially a con aimed at wannabe songwriters who knew nothing about the business -- companies would advertise you too could become a successful, rich, songwriter if you sent in your "song poems", because anyone who knew the term "lyric" could be presumed to know too much about the music business to be useful. When people sent in their lyrics, they'd then be charged a fee to have them put out on their very own record -- with tracks made more or less on a conveyor belt with quick head arrangements, sung by session singers who were just handed a lyric sheet and told to get on with it. And thus were created such classics prized by collectors as "I Like Yellow Things", "Jimmy Carter Says 'Yes'", and "Listen Mister Hat". Obviously, for the most part these song poems did not lead to the customers becoming the next Ira Gershwin, but oddly even though Ace recordings is not one of the better-known song poem studios, it seems to have produced an actual hit song poem -- one that I don't think has ever before been identified as such until I made a connection, hence me going on this little tangent. Because in researching this episode I noticed something about its co-owner, Milton Yakus', main claim to fame. He co-wrote the song "Old Cape Cod", and to quote that song's Wikipedia page "The nucleus of the song was a poem written by Boston-area housewife Claire Rothrock, for whom Cape Cod was a favorite vacation spot. "Old Cape Cod" and its derivatives would be Rothrock's sole evident songwriting credit. She brought her poem to Ace Studios, a Boston recording studio owned by Milton Yakus, who adapted the poem into the song's lyrics." And while Yakus had written other songs, including songs for Patti Page who had the hit with "Old Cape Cod", apparently Page recorded that song after Rothrock brought her the demo after a gig, rather than getting it through any formal channels. It sounds to me like the massive hit and classic of the American songbook "Old Cape Cod" started life as a song-poem -- and if you're familiar with the form, it fits the genre perfectly: [Excerpt: Patti Page, "Old Cape Cod"] The studio was not the classiest of places, even if you discount the song-poems. Its main source of income was from cutting private records with mobsters' wives and mistresses singing (and dealing with the problems that came along when those records weren't successful) and it also had a sideline in bugging people's cars to see if their spouses were cheating, though Milton Yakus' son Shelly, who got his start at his dad's studio, later became one of the most respected recording engineers in the industry -- and indeed had already worked as assistant engineer on Music From Big Pink. And there was actually another distant connection to Morrison's new favourite band on these sessions. For some reason -- reports differ -- Bebo wasn't considered suitable for the session, and in his place was the one-handed drummer Victor "Moulty" Moulton, who had played with the Barbarians, who'd had a minor hit with "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl?" a couple of years earlier: [Excerpt: The Barbarians, "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl?"] A later Barbarians single, in early 1966, had featured Moulty telling his life story, punctuated by the kind of three-chord chorus that would have been at home on a Bert Berns single: [Excerpt: The Barbarians, "Moulty"] But while that record was credited to the Barbarians, Moulton was the only Barbarian on the track, with the instruments and backing vocals instead being provided by Levon and the Hawks. Shortly after the Ace sessions, the Van Morrison Controversy fell apart, though nobody seems to know why. Depending on which musician's story you listen to, either Morrison had a dream that he should get rid of all electric instruments and only use acoustic players, or there was talk of a record deal but the musicians weren't good enough, or the money from the mysterious manager (who may or may not have been the one who was a mobster) ran out. Bebo went back to university, and Sheldon left soon after, though Sheldon would remain in the music business in one form or another. His most prominent credit has been writing a couple of songs for his old friend James Taylor, including the song "Bittersweet" on Taylor's platinum-selling best-of, on which Sheldon also played guitar: [Excerpt: James Taylor, "Bittersweet"] Morrison and Kielbania continued for a while as a duo, with Morrison on acoustic guitar and Kielbania on double bass, but they were making very different music. Morrison's biggest influence at this point, other than The Band, was King Pleasure, a jazz singer who sang in the vocalese style we've talked about before -- the style where singers would sing lyrics to melodies that had previously been improvised by jazz musicians: [Excerpt: King Pleasure, "Moody's Mood for Love"] Morrison and Kielbania soon decided that to make the more improvisatory music they were interested in playing, they wanted another musician who could play solos. They ended up with John Payne, a jazz flute and saxophone player whose biggest inspiration was Charles Lloyd. This new lineup of the Van Morrison Controversy -- acoustic guitar, double bass, and jazz flute -- kept gigging around Boston, though the sound they were creating was hardly what the audiences coming to see the man who'd had that "Brown-Eyed Girl" hit the year before would have expected -- even when they did "Brown-Eyed Girl", as the one live recording of that line-up, made by Peter Wolf, shows: [Excerpt: The Van Morrison Controversy, "Brown-Eyed Girl (live in Boston 1968)"] That new style, with melodic bass underpinning freely extemporising jazz flute and soulful vocals, would become the basis of the album that to this day is usually considered Morrison's best. But before that could happen, there was the matter of the contracts to be sorted out. Warner-Reprise Records were definitely interested. Warners had spent the last few years buying up smaller companies like Atlantic, Autumn Records, and Reprise, and the label was building a reputation as the major label that would give artists the space and funding they needed to make the music they wanted to make. Idiosyncratic artists with difficult reputations (deserved or otherwise), like Neil Young, Randy Newman, Van Dyke Parks, the Grateful Dead, and Joni Mitchell, had all found homes on the label, which was soon also to start distributing Frank Zappa, the Beach Boys, and Captain Beefheart. A surly artist who wants to make mystical acoustic songs with jazz flute accompaniment was nothing unusual for them, and once Joe Smith, the man who had signed the Grateful Dead, was pointed in Morrison's direction by Andy Wickham, an A&R man working for the label, everyone knew that Morrison would be a perfect fit. But Morrison was still under contract to Bang records and Web IV, and those contracts said, among other things, that any other label that negotiated with Morrison would be held liable for breach of contract. Warners didn't want to show their interest in Morrison, because a major label wanting to sign him would cause Bang to raise the price of buying him out of his contract. Instead they got an independent production company to sign him, with a nod-and-wink understanding that they would then license the records to Warners. The company they chose was Inherit Productions, the production arm of Schwaid-Merenstein, a management company set up by Bob Schwaid, who had previously worked in Warners' publishing department, and record producer Lewis Merenstein. Merenstein came to another demo session at Ace Recordings, where he fell in love with the new music that Morrison was playing, and determined he would do everything in his power to make the record into the masterpiece it deserved to be. He and Morrison were, at least at this point, on exactly the same page, and bonded over their mutual love of King Pleasure. Morrison signed to Schwaid-Merenstein, just as he had with Bert Berns and before him Phil Solomon, for management, record production, and publishing. Schwaid-Merenstein were funded by Warners, and would license any recordings they made to Warners, once the contractual situation had been sorted out. The first thing to do was to negotiate the release from Web IV, the publishing company owned by Ilene Berns. Schwaid negotiated that, and Morrison got released on four conditions -- he had to make a substantial payment to Web IV, if he released a single within a year he had to give Web IV the publishing, any album he released in the next year had to contain at least two songs published by Web IV, and he had to give Web IV at least thirty-six new songs to publish within the next year. The first two conditions were no problem at all -- Warners had the money to buy the contract out, and Merenstein's plans for the first album didn't involve a single anyway. It wouldn't be too much of a hardship to include a couple of Web IV-published tracks on the album -- Morrison had written two songs, "Beside You" and "Madame George", that had already been published and that he was regularly including in his live sets. As for the thirty-six new songs... well, that all depended on what you called a song, didn't it? [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Ring Worm"] Morrison went into a recording studio and recorded thirty-one ostensible songs, most of them lasting one minute to within a few seconds either way, in which he strummed one or two chords and spoke-sang whatever words came into his head -- for example one song, "Here Comes Dumb George", just consists of the words "Here Comes Dumb George" repeated over and over. Some of the 'songs', like "Twist and Shake" and "Hang on Groovy", are parodying Bert Berns' songwriting style; others, like "Waiting for My Royalty Check", "Blowin' Your Nose", and "Nose in Your Blow", are attacks on Bang's business practices. Several of the songs, like "Hold on George", "Here Comes Dumb George", "Dum Dum George", and "Goodbye George" are about a man called George who seems to have come to Boston to try and fail to make a record with Morrison. And “Want a Danish” is about wanting a Danish pastry. But in truth, this description is still making these "songs" sound more coherent than they are. The whole recording is of no musical merit whatsoever, and has absolutely nothing in it which could be considered to have any commercial potential at all. Which is of course the point -- just to show utter contempt to Ilene Berns and her company. The other problem that needed to be solved was Bang Records itself, which was now largely under the control of the mob. That was solved by Joe Smith. As Smith told the story "A friend of mine who knew some people said I could buy the contract for $20,000. I had to meet somebody in a warehouse on the third floor on Ninth Avenue in New York. I walked up there with twenty thousand-dollar bills -- and I was terrified. I was terrified I was going to give them the money, get a belt on the head and still not wind up with the contract. And there were two guys in the room. They looked out of central casting -- a big wide guy and  a tall, thin guy. They were wearing suits and hats and stuff. I said 'I'm here with the money. You got the contract?' I remember I took that contract and ran out the door and jumped from the third floor to the second floor, and almost broke my leg to get on the street, where I could get a cab and put the contract in a safe place back at Warner Brothers." But the problem was solved, and Lewis Merenstein could get to work translating the music he'd heard Morrison playing into a record. He decided that Kielbania and Payne were not suitable for the kind of recording he wanted -- though they were welcome to attend the sessions in case the musicians had any questions about the songs, and thus they would get session pay. Kielbania was, at first, upset by this, but he soon changed his mind when he realised who Merenstein was bringing in to replace him on bass for the session. Richard Davis, the bass player -- who sadly died two months ago as I write this -- would later go on to play on many classic rock records by people like Bruce Springsteen and Laura Nyro, largely as a result of his work for Morrison, but at the time he was known as one of the great jazz bass players, most notably having played on Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch: [Excerpt: Eric Dolphy, "Hat and Beard"] Kielbania could see the wisdom of getting in one of the truly great players for the album, and he was happy to show Davis the parts he'd been playing on the songs live, which Davis could then embellish -- Davis later always denied this, but it's obvious when listening to the live recordings that Kielbania played on before these sessions that Davis is playing very similar lines. Warren Smith Jr, the vibraphone player, had played with great jazz musicians like Charles Mingus and Herbie Mann, as well as backing Lloyd Price, Aretha Franklin, and Janis Joplin. Connie Kay, the drummer, was the drummer for the Modern Jazz Quartet and had also played sessions with everyone from Ruth Brown to Miles Davis. And Jay Berliner, the guitarist, had played on records like Charles Mingus' classic The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady: [Excerpt: Charles Mingus: "Mode D - Trio and Group Dancers, Mode F - Single Solos & Group Dance"] There was also a flute player whose name nobody now remembers. Although all of these musicians were jobbing session musicians -- Berliner came to the first session for the album that became Astral Weeks straight from a session recording a jingle for Pringles potato chips -- they were all very capable of taking a simple song and using it as an opportunity for jazz improvisation. And that was what Merenstein asked them to do. The songs that Morrison was writing were lyrically oblique, but structurally they were very simple -- surprisingly so when one is used to listening to the finished album. Most of the songs were, harmonically, variants of the standard blues and R&B changes that Morrison was used to playing. "Cyprus Avenue" and "The Way Young Lovers Do", for example, are both basically twelve-bar blueses -- neither is *exactly* a standard twelve-bar blues, but both are close enough that they can be considered to fit the form. Other than what Kielbania and Payne showed the musicians, they received no guidance from Morrison, who came in, ran through the songs once for them, and then headed to the vocal booth. None of the musicians had much memory of Morrison at all -- Jay Berliner said “This little guy walks in, past everybody, disappears into the vocal booth, and almost never comes out, even on the playbacks, he stayed in there." While Richard Davis later said “Well, I was with three of my favorite fellas to play with, so that's what made it beautiful. We were not concerned with Van at all, he never spoke to us.” The sound of the basic tracks on Astral Weeks is not the sound of a single auteur, as one might expect given its reputation, it's the sound of extremely good jazz musicians improvising based on the instructions given by Lewis Merenstein, who was trying to capture the feeling he'd got from listening to Morrison's live performances and demos. And because these were extremely good musicians, the album was recorded extremely quickly. In the first session, they cut four songs. Two of those were songs that Morrison was contractually obliged to record because of his agreement with Web IV -- "Beside You" and "Madame George", two songs that Bert Berns had produced, now in radically different versions: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Madame George"] The third song, "Cyprus Avenue", is the song that has caused most controversy over the years, as it's another of the songs that Morrison wrote around this time that relate to a sexual or romantic interest in underage girls. In this case, the reasoning might have been as simple as that the song is a blues, and Morrison may have been thinking about a tradition of lyrics like this in blues songs like "Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl". Whatever the cause though, the lyrics have, to put it mildly, not aged well at all: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Cyprus Avenue"] That song would be his standard set-closer for live performances for much of the seventies. For the fourth and final song, though, they chose to record what would become the title track for the album, "Astral Weeks", a song that was a lot more elliptical, and which seems in part to be about Morrison's longing for Janet Planet from afar, but also about memories of childhood, and also one of the first songs to bring in Morrison's fascination with the occult and spirituality,  something that would be a recurring theme throughout his work, as the song was partly inspired by paintings by a friend of Morrison's which suggested to him the concept of astral travel: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Astral Weeks"] Morrison had a fascination with the idea of astral travel, as he had apparently had several out-of-body experiences as a child, and wanted to find some kind of explanation for them. Most of the songs on the album came, by Morrison's own account, as a kind of automatic writing, coming through him rather than being consciously written, and there's a fascination throughout with, to use the phrase from "Madame George", "childhood visions". The song is also one of the first songs in Morrison's repertoire to deliberately namecheck one of his idols, something else he would do often in future, when he talks about "talking to Huddie Leadbelly". "Astral Weeks" was a song that Morrison had been performing live for some time, and Payne had always enjoyed doing it. Unlike Kielbania he had no compunction about insisting that he was good enough to play on the record, and he eventually persuaded the session flute player to let him borrow his instrument, and Payne was allowed to play on the track: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Astral Weeks"] Or at least that's how the story is usually told -- Payne is usually credited for playing on "Madame George" too, even though everyone agrees that "Astral Weeks" was the last song of the night, but people's memories can fade over time. Either way, Payne's interplay with Jay Berliner on the guitar became such a strong point of the track that there was no question of bringing the unknown session player back -- Payne was going to be the woodwind player for the rest of the album: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Astral Weeks"] There was then a six-day break between sessions, during which time Payne and Kielbania went to get initiated into Scientology -- a religion with which Morrison himself would experiment a little over a decade later -- though they soon decided that it wasn't worth the cost of the courses they'd have to take, and gave up on the idea the same week. The next session didn't go so well. Jay Berliner was unavailable, and so Barry Kornfeld, a folkie who played with people like Dave Van Ronk, was brought in to replace him. Kornfeld was perfectly decent in the role, but they'd also brought in a string section, with the idea of recording some of the songs which needed string parts live. But the string players they brought in were incapable of improvising, coming from a classical rather than jazz tradition, and the only track that got used on the finished album was "The Way Young Lovers Do", by far the most conventional song on the album, a three-minute soul ballad structured as a waltz twelve-bar blues, where the strings are essentially playing the same parts that a horn section would play on a record by someone like Solomon Burke: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "The Way Young Lovers Do"] It was decided that any string or horn parts on the rest of the album would just be done as overdubs. It was two weeks before the next and final session for the album, and that featured the return of Jay Berliner on guitar. The session started with "Sweet Thing" and "Ballerina", two songs that Morrison had been playing live for some time, and which were cut in relatively quick order.  They then made attempts at two more songs that didn't get very far, "Royalty", and "Going Around With Jesse James", before Morrison, stuck for something to record, pulled out a new lyric he'd never performed live, "Slim Slow Slider". The whole band ran through the song once, but then Merenstein decided to pare the arrangement down to just Morrison, Payne (on soprano sax rather than on flute), and Warren Smith Jr: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Slim Slow Slider"] That track was the only one where, after the recording, Merenstein didn't compliment the performance, remaining silent instead – Payne said “Maybe everyone was just tired, or maybe they were moved by it.” It seems likely it was the latter. The track eventually got chosen as the final track of the album, because Merenstein felt that it didn't fit conceptually with anything else -- and it's definitely a more negative track than the oth

Welcome back to another episode of the richer geek Podcast. Today we're going to try something different, something new. Joining us today is Jeffrey Madoff, Founder & CEO of Madoff Productions, Adjunct  Professor at Parsons School for Design, Author of “Creative Careers”, Executive Producer & Playwright. Jeffrey's drive to tell unique stories has culminated in  “PERSONALITY, The Lloyd Price Musical”, a play he wrote and is producing about  Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Legend, Lloyd Price. It premiered at People's Light  Theater in Pennsylvania in March of '22, garnered great reviews, and played to  sold-out audiences. Personality opens at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago in  June of 2023. Find complete show notes and more information at therichergeek.com/podcast

Hometown Radio 08/25/23 6p: King Harris takes us to music school with Sam Cooke & Lloyd Price

Has Mike got an insider scoop for you today!He recently got back from a great adventure in Chicago. On top of a couple of days of Strategic Coach with Dan, they went to see the new Lloyd Price musical, “Personality”.Their good friend, Jeffrey Madoff, has been working on it for the last 6 years and they've been able to be privy to the entire creative process, so it was pretty cool for them to finally see it live on stage.In case you didn't know, “Personality” is a musical about the life of pioneering 1950's rock n' roll star Lloyd Price, written by documentary filmmaker, Jeff Madoff. Lloyd Price was one of the very first rock stars, with huge hits like “Personality” and “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” – you'll definitely recognize his music when you hear it.Dan tells the story of having lunch with Jeffrey in New York 6 years ago. After hearing all about the musical, he and his wife, Babs, knew right then and there they wanted to be a part of it and invested immediately.He's been watching the musical progress from an early reading of the script to secret backers' workshops in NYC. He said from the very first workshop it was clear this was going to be an iconic, timeless musical that would run for decades.Now that Mike has seen the Chicago production himself, he couldn't agree more — the music, the costumes, the set design, the performers...everything is absolute perfection. It's one of the tightest, most spectacular live performances Mike has ever seen.Beyond the incredible production, Dan and Mike also geek out about the fascinating history of the evolution of the entertainment industry. Like how classic Hollywood studios tightly controlled their stars' images, compared to today's overexposure on social media. Today's entertainers have way more independence, but also greater pressure to cultivate their personal brand 24/7.They also touch on how everyone in Hollywood is fearful about what's going to happen with Ai. It's Mike's opinion that in the entertainment industry, having strikes and expecting the world to stay the same, is putting a nail in the coffin of a lot of Hollywood.Don't misunderstand, Mike has a tremendous amount of respect for entertainers and the creative process. It is a hard business, but the world is changing.All this to say - if you're anywhere near Chicago, you absolutely MUST get tickets to “Personality” immediately! The cast, crew, and creative team have poured their souls into this musical for 6 long years, and the love shows in every song, every dance number, every scene.Dan and Mike truly believe this will be a Broadway smash for decades to come.Key Takeaways (00:09) We are in a Golden Era of what's possible in the world of entertainment (04:13) Funding the musical (08:05) The tightness of the production (18:52) The shifting entertainment landscape (22:26) The golden age of movie stars (32:11) Mike's predictions for the future of Hollywood Additional Resources Check out the Musical, “Personality” - https://www.personalitymusical.com/ Download Mike's free Ai Superpower Accelerator Toolkit to Multiply Your Productivity 10x or More! Ai Superpower Accelerator Directory by Mike Koenigs Get a copy of Mike's new book, “Punch The Elephant” - https://sales.mikekoenigs.com/

Today's conversation is with the wise and wonderful, multi-talented Jeffery Madoff! Watch now on the Vibrant Visionaries Network. Jeffery shares the fascinating story behind bringing […] Read More

In this episode of Cloudlandia, we navigate the intriguing notion that our world as we know it is entirely constructed by individuals just like us. From the mundane aspects of traffic rules to the profound sacred texts influencing civilizations, it's all the product of the human mind.   SHOW HIGHLIGHTS The world as we know it is entirely constructed by individuals like us, with everything from traffic rules to profound sacred texts being the product of the human mind. The art of argument is discussed, with insights from Jerry Spence's enlightening book. The best argument won is one that doesn't feel like a fight. They explore the perception of change and how a single country's decision can shift the global landscape. Embracing change and moving fluidly in a world in constant flux is important. Dean and Dan take a nostalgic trip through the transformative era of 1950 to 1980, discussing the assimilation of technological advancements like electricity, radio, television, cars, planes, and telephones. Exploration of the future of entertainment includes pondering whether YouTube could be the new generational torchbearer for cross-generational awareness of stars. The evolution of work is discussed, including the importance of strategic coaching in achieving success. The right people can make a world of difference. It's not just about working hard, but also about working smart. They explore how everything is made up by specific individuals, including the fear that gripped society at the advent of automobiles and how we've evolved to take speed for granted. They discuss the importance of winning arguments and how the best way to win is to not make it feel like an argument. It also explores how people perceive change differently. The podcast compares the 1950s and the present day in terms of success, discussing how quickly a book can be produced now, thanks to the internet and Zoom. The importance of having a designer who can understand and deliver what is desired is emphasized. Links: WelcomeToCloudlandia.com StrategicCoach.com DeanJackson.com ListingAgentLifestyle.com TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Dan Sullivan welcome. We're being recorded, that's right. Welcome, always welcome. Dean Jackson Welcome to cloudland here, that's right. We're, we're always recording. Well we're always Everything is recorded. Dan Sullivan Yeah, nobody's in charge, and and life's not fair. Dean Jackson Exactly right. I'm holding in my hand my Geometry for staying cool and calm book yeah it's very exciting. Dan Sullivan Yeah, this one has gotten Kind of surprising to me anyway. Just, it sort of clicks. Those three things seem to do some Mental geometry, you know, when you put the three of them together as a triangle. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Dean Jackson I love it and the I was once the cartoons like that's my. You know my process for reading the book is. I like I open up the inside cover and I see the overview of the Graphical overview within cartoons and tells you the whole Everything you need to know, kind of just looking at it. I love this guessing and betting. It's very good. Then I go to the contents and I look at the titles of Chapters and I'm very interested in, and haven't gotten to yet, chapter 750 out of 8 billion. I'm not sure what that's, the cops. Yet but, then I go and I read the headlines, the chapters and the. You know your opening statements that you say about them. So, chapter one everything's made up. You realize that everything in the world is always made up by specific individuals. And then I skip to the cartoons, mm-hmm in between the chapters that I look at those and I see the Yep. Gandhi was making it up, confucius was making it up. Everybody seems to be that. They've been making it up since the beginning of time, right to three to today. Yeah, I'm making it up. Dan Sullivan I love it. You're making it? Yeah, we, we've been making it up. This whole thing got made up. Dean Jackson Yeah, but the interesting thing. Dan Sullivan I mean, the interesting thing is that I have people say well, you know what about, like sacred books? And I said well, I said, and they said aren't they divinely inspired? And I said, yeah, they're a finally inspired, but it takes somebody to write them down. Right, Right then you and you, and you hope you hope they got it right. Yeah, yeah, but what it does is, I notice in the I just brought it up as a talking point in maybe five or six workshops, both free zone, in ten times and you can see people they have this almost like little mental jolt. They get a jolt and they say, wow, that's true, isn't? I said, yeah, so you can make things up, so you're freed up to make anything. I said everybody else does it, why don't you do it? And then nobody's in charge. And they said, well, what's in charge? I said rules are in charge. We make up rules and you know, send every situation, if people are cooperating and doing things together, make they make up rules. You know, not not necessarily at one time, but they gradually put up a set of rules. You know, if we approach things this way, things work. You know, think of traffic. You know think of if there were no rules. Dean Jackson Right, exactly, that's one of the frightening things about driving in India, say oh yeah, I was just thinking of India. Dan Sullivan I mean, you don't need brakes, you just need a horn. Dean Jackson And get quick reflexes. Dan Sullivan And and a lot of determination. Yeah, exactly. Dan Sullivan Sensor. You're right, you're first and you're right. These are all good things. Yeah, I was thinking about that one day. We were going, you know, on the Gardner Expressway in Toronto and we were, you know the traffic was flowing really, really quickly. You know it was 50 of these 50, you know 50 miles an hour and you know there were hundreds of cars In sight going both ways and I said, if you took somebody in time, traveled them back a century, back to 1923, and you put them in this situation, they, they would go catatonic in about 60 seconds. Just the Motion, yeah, yeah, and but we take it completely normal. And what normalizes it? We know, we know everybody else knows the rules. Dean Jackson Yeah, I understood. I Think I remember reading that people when automobiles were first getting started, that people there was fear that your brain might explode at speed. Oh yeah, 30 miles an hour. Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Dan Sullivan Yeah, well, and I think that there's. I Don't think that was a stupid worry, you know, we just had never, experienced. Nobody had ever experienced speed like that. You know, yeah, and I think one of the attractions of Maritime travel, let's say, two or three centuries ago, like one of those sailing ships with full sails and, you know, properly constructed, you know the whole structure of the boat was meant for speed and you know they could get up to, you know, if they had a tide with them and they have current with them and everything else, they get up to 30 miles an hour. You know, at some speeds, you know, and this were sailing ships, you know, and that must have been extraordinarily thrilling to. That was about it, for you know, all of human history, up until trains. Dean Jackson Horses, I guess I mean. Dan Sullivan Think about probably about 30 horses, horses probably about 30, you know, they would be. They would be that that fast and you know. But then all of a sudden, geez, you know, you know they were getting in. And from the Wright brothers, in 1903, I think, the Wright brothers, their first flight, you know, which lasted about 15 seconds, and and to Even the second world war, at the end of the war, they were introducing jets that could fly 500, 450, 500 miles an hour. Let's just yeah. But we've just showed you that the human brain adjusted these things, we normalize. Yeah, you know, Well, number one skills that humans have is we can normalize new situations really quite quickly. Yeah, that's true. People saying you know this, all this AI stuff, yeah, I don't think our brains. So I said we'll normalize it just like we did anything else, you know we will normalize it. Dean Jackson It's so. It's so true. I've been getting, I've been seeing a lot of you know, what I wouldn't call AI enabled. You know, you know I've been seeing a lot of AI content or outreach, and you can. I was thinking about Jerry Spence and he wrote a great book called how to Argue and Win Every Time, and he said that our brains are equipped with psychic tentacles that are reaching out and testing everything for truth and realness and congruence, and these psychic tentacles can detect what he calls the sin clank of the counterfeit. I thought that's the truth. Dan Sullivan You could tell that something was not written by a person. Yeah, I mean, on my birthday there was a company party for me. They do it all the time. Usually they lied to me in some way to think it's something else, and there's this big party. When they put it in your schedule, they're not gonna have to lie, and so, anyway, I go in and there's, this person gets up and, on behalf of the company, gives this very, very flattering talk about me. And I could tell she was five seconds into it, this chat, gpt, I could just tell. So afterwards I went up to her and I said, did you get a little art of AI help with that? And she said, yeah, I did a show. And I said, yeah, right, and you know, what's missing is that we have a feel that there's a heart there, there's a mind there, there's a soul there when it's human. Dean Jackson What do you know? You know what one of the what I take as one of the highest compliments I've ever received about an email that I sent is Kim White said to me, or Daniel said to me, that you know. He says I know that these emails that you're sending are sent to thousands of people, but when I got it I always think it feels like you're speaking right to me and that was really that was really something you know. As a guy who's a energy plumber worker, you know whose whole thing is being coming into energy, yeah. Dan Sullivan Well, it's really interesting. We went to see we're in Chicago today and Joe and Eunice and Mike Koenigs were here early, so they come in for Monday and Tuesday, but they came in yesterday and then Daniel White was with us and we went down to the theater to see personality because Joe hadn't seen it and the others hadn't seen it and there was an extraordinary actress in this play, or I don't know her last name, but her first name is Alexandria, and she plays the role of Lloyd Price's wife and she turns out to be a complete and total scammer. Like she's getting them for his money, she's getting them for his celebrity and everything like that, and when he goes through rough times she gives him a rough time, you know, and anyway and then later on. she plays a completely different person who seems great. That's actually the person depicted in the play is Bertha Franklin, who is the, who is the older sister of Bertha Franklin, okay, and she seems this great hit to actually Janice Joplin became famous for her called A Piece of my Heart, and she just knocks it out. And then afterwards I meet her and it turns out she's 19 years old. You know, she's 19 years old and she's easily portraying someone in their 30s, you know. And as an actress, as a singer, the way she moves and everything, you get a sense that she's you know. And but I was introduced to her by Jeff Mattoff, who was the producer and writer of the play, and I said I wanna pay you a compliment and I said I want you to know how much I totally disliked you as the play won you. Just, we're just a horrible person. And she said, oh, oh, thank you very much. That feels so great. Dean Jackson That feels great that you I love it, I love it yeah. Dan Sullivan Because she was supposed to. I mean, that's it calls for her. To be that type of person and she nailed it, but she's 19,. You know she's 19 years old and it was really quite you know, but you really, I mean I, but I spotted her from the moment she came on stage. This is a scammer. I can tell this person is a scammer. You know, oh, that's amazing, but I do think you're going back to the jury spent comment that you made. I'm gonna read that book. I'm always interested in winning. Dan Sullivan I'm always interested in winning an argument, you know. Dean Jackson Yeah, yeah, no, I would highly recommend. I mean, I tried to avoid. Dan Sullivan I tried to avoid them, but I said you know I can't avoid them, I wanna win. Dean Jackson Well, and this is he's talking and this is like it's like one of my top five wisdom books ever, like it's, I think, one of the biggest impacts on me and his. Of course, you know who Jerry is the attorney, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a defendant of Mel DeMarco's and the whole thing's never lost a case and the. You know he thinks in the proactive thing about. You know he's using argument in the sense of your idea. You're more persuasive, what you're more persuasive. Dean Jackson You're a person. That's what the lawyers make an argument. What's your argument for your idea? here no. Dean Jackson And this is how he's presenting things, and it's just been such a such an amazing, such an amazing thing, so I would highly recommend it. Dan Sullivan I've never experienced Dean Jackson in an argument but, maybe it's all argument. Dean Jackson It's all argument. That's what he's saying. That's exactly right, the best way to win is to win. Dan Sullivan Actually, you've never seen Dean when he wasn't arguing. Dean Jackson That's right. That's it feels like that's the point of it. It's the best way to win an argument is to not make it feel like you're in an argument. Yes. Dan Sullivan It's just, you're in normal experience. Yeah, right, yeah, but the thing of normalizing. Peter DM Monace and I had a podcast about three weeks ago and he was talking about the future and everything else. I said you know one thing I've noticed? I said and I've got I'm closing in on 80 years of dealing with the future. You know probably didn't yeah, really. You know probably didn't really have it as a mental capacity 80 years of guessing and batting Six or yes, ain't batting, but I said, you know something when you get to the future, it's always normal, it always feels normal when you get to the future, yeah, no matter how different it was from the past. The moment you get there and you're and. I go back to your, the Jerry Spence line, that every second we're feeling out what's coming next. Okay, and so it's not like you suddenly went from white to black or you went from light to dark and then you went through infinite little second by second, gradations of adjusting yourself to a new set of circumstances. Yeah, yeah, yeah you are absolutely right and that's, you've closed down your thinking and you're not taking in the new stuff. You know, I mean, that's also possible. And then you know, I say people, people sense that something's changing in different ways. Some people, some people. All you need is to touch their head with a feather and they say oh, something new is happening. Some people. Dan Sullivan you need a sledgehammer and some people need a Mack truck. Dean Jackson Yes, exactly Wow. Yeah. Dan Sullivan But the big thing is that I'm super sensitive, you know, to changes of circumstances or something I notice is out of place or something's happening. And I get that sense about the whole world right now. And I think you know I'm very influenced by Peter Zion's take that we've been living in essentially an artificial world since the end of the Second World War and it's been overseen by one country and its military just to keep trade routes reliable and on time. And now that country's decided that they've done that for enough and they don't want to do that anymore and they want to get back to their own affairs. And everything vibrates and shakes just because of that one decision. Yeah. Dean Jackson Yeah, that really is. I mean, you look at it, you think about it since the, it's true, right Since the. You know, I often think back then to that, the big change, the book from 1950. And. Dean Jackson I think if we were to look at the you know, the big change from you know, 1973 to 2023, that's been, that's really you think about all of the changes that are going to take place. And what I really wonder is are we entering into another phase of the period from you know, 1950 to 1980 where there's not a lot of, where it's more of a normalization? Right by 1950, what you were saying is it feels normal. By 1950, it felt normal that you have electricity and radio and you go to the movies, and you've got TV now and you've got an automobile and you're living in the suburbs and we're flying on planes and everybody's got a telephone. All those things felt probably normal. Dan Sullivan Why was it that I was in 1950 and felt normal to me? Felt normal to me Exactly, yeah. Dean Jackson So you didn't feel the sense of why, then, how it was to go from, you know, not having these things to having them, and you enjoyed that 30 year period where, I mean, what would you call the difference between you know, like, do you buy into that premise that from 1950 to 1980, there weren't the same level of changes from 1900 to 1950, or was it just a mass of migrations? Dan Sullivan Yeah, I mean you can take cars, for example you know, Cars were kind of stylish up until about the early 50s and then they started taking on this very, very conforming they you know, they got a lot longer, they got a lot bigger and they were like rodeoids. Dean Jackson Right, right, exactly they can't. Dan Sullivan and that continued and meanwhile they were getting blindsided. In the 60s I probably started low in the 50s with Volkswagen, but then you started getting these really small sort of stylish imported cars, you know as they came over. And then they really got their clock cleaned in the 70s, you know, but there was. I mean you don't look back at that period, 1950 to 1980, as a particularly stylish or the only one I can think of that, and they really stuck to. their look was Corvette, corvette came in around 54, I think 1954 is when it came in. And it was, and Thunderbird came in at the same time. This was Ford. You know Chevy was Corvette and Ford was the Thunderbird, and then Thunderbird went all over the place. You know it changed every and then it disappeared and then they brought it back. But the Corvette if you look at a Corvette for this year 2023, and you look back at the original Corvette, you can see that this is the same car with numerous, you know, technological changes. But no, it's very definitely a Corvette today and it was a Corvette back there. They've made the only American car that I can think of that maintained its look over that long period of time, but it was great. It was great to begin with and they didn't screw it up, you know. But planes, you know. 1950s, you were already when the first 707, the first well, you had the DeHavilland comet. That was the British plane, was the first real no worthy, and that was around 1950. And they could do 550 miles an hour. And they do 550 miles an hour. Well, they still don't do that because that's the optimum speed for the combination of fuel, passengers, cargo, and that is 550, you know, I gotcha, yeah, but I think you're right, I think you're really right. And computers were coming in, but they weren't a big deal in 1980 yet, right. Dean Jackson Exactly, there was the beginning of them. It was like you either. If you were looking back now, like on it, if you were paying attention, you would have seen the seed of everything was kind of getting into position. The transition from mainframe to personal computing. That was a big thing but it took a while to you know. It took another decade to get to that level. Dan Sullivan Yeah, really, television was still the trade networks. Dean Jackson That's exactly it. I mean from 1950 to 1980, it was really just the three networks and that's where everybody had a very homogenous experience. You know everybody watched the same. You know I love Lucy and Guns Most. Ed Sullivan Show. Dan Sullivan Ed. Dean Jackson Sullivan Show Exactly. Dan Sullivan Yeah, yeah. Dean Jackson So when the Beatles came, all they had to do was be in one place. Yeah. Dean Jackson And on the Ed Sullivan Show they're automatically a rantic. Dan Sullivan You could see it in music too. Yeah, If you look at the last 10 years, let's say, of the biggest grossing concert tours, they're all guys, mostly guys who are in their 70s. Because they became famous. Dan Sullivan They became famous when there was a national audience. Yes, that's right, there's not a national audience for any particular star these days. Dean Jackson Well, that's where I was going with this that there is, in a way, that YouTube. Is that now for the new generations, right, like they're growing up? The kids that grew up now they all know who Mr Beast is, they all know Casey Neistat, they all know the top YouTube star way more than television. Dan Sullivan Well, here's a question I have for you, though. What I noticed is that there was a continuity between the generations, in other words, that when Elvis came on, people in their 50s saw Elvis, people at five saw Elvis on the. Ed. Dean Jackson Sullivan Show. Dan Sullivan I don't think you have this cross generation awareness of great stars. Dean Jackson That's true. That's exactly right, because nobody, not everybody's gathered around the television with their TV dinners watching the same shows all three generations and one now watching them with the kids and the parents and the grandparents. Oh, what are we going to watch on television tonight? They're often in the room with their iPods and their phones looking at their own individual, everybody's their own individual. Entertainment director. Dopamine dealer. Yeah, it's interesting. Dan Sullivan My sense and here I'm kind of interpreting the predictions that Peter Zion is making about the way the world's going to go on the future it's actually going to look quite a bit like the world looked like before the First World War, so back in 1914. So what he says is. There's now going to be regional markets and regional political alliances. He gives a series of examples of that Anywhere that the US pulls its military out of, and the first area where the US has pulled its military out of is the Middle East. There's no presence of the US military in the Eastern Mediterranean or the Red. Dean Jackson Sea. Dan Sullivan The reason is the US is self-sufficient for oil. They're completely self-sufficient for oil and gas. The US is the lead exporter now of fossil fuels. I think, that's why the rest of the all of a sudden, there's this anti-fossil fuel movement. I mean it's one of the reasons. There's never one reason for anything. It's always a confluence of different forces. But the US was just doubled down on the Middle East because they needed the oil. The economy needed the oil, the world that they traded with needed the oil, so they had to protect the sources of oil. But fracking fracking is one of the great breakthroughs. They can get fuel out of the rocks and it's really good oil. It's really. I mean, it looks like baby oil when it comes out. It's like Johnson's baby oil. It's the purest, cleanest oil in the world because it's just oil. There's no grime and dirt and everything that comes up with it, just the oil comes up and then the gas comes along with it. And that changed the world. Dan Sullivan I mean that just utterly changed the world. There's one event in the last 30 years, since the Soviet collapse, that changed the world. It was the fracking, the American fracking revolution and Texas Permian basis, because once the US doesn't need anybody else's fossil fuels, then they rethink their entire military, they rethink their entire political, they rethink their entire economic view towards the world and they're the spoon that stirs the global soup. Yeah, so I think that was a huge change and I think that a lot of the changes that are taking place right now are a function of that breakthrough. Because it's a transportation breakthrough, because you saw all you want about electricity those freighters aren't electric. Dean Jackson That's true, but it's funny, the US military the staples are nuclear submarines and ships that can go forever. Dan Sullivan Seven years, seven years without I think the subs are seven years. The aircraft carriers, I think, are about the same and they've had no killing accidents with those since 1953. So it's 70 years. They've had crises, but nobody's been killed. Dan Sullivan There's been no radiation and I think that's coming back in a big way. I think that they've Mike Wanler, who is a free zone terrific guy from Wyoming, and he's in the process of manufacturing these little micro reactors. I mean, people think of a nuclear reactor and that looks like the Taj Mahal, it looks like the US capital, it's like with huge smoke stacks. These are the size of a standard carrier box. So if you think they're 40 feet or 20 feet, the ones that go on board ship or they're on trains or they're on semis, and this is about 40 feet, so you can walk into it. It's probably about six feet, six feet by six, eight feet by eight feet. I don't know what the dimensions are exactly, but and it's a nuke, it's a little nuclear station. They use spent nuclear. They use this spent nuclear fuel or they have a new kind of salt compound that they use. So think of it. You're building a factory, like outside there's a lot of factories. I see the area north of Toronto now the number of warehouses and factories that are going in. They're immense. Up the 404 and up the 400. Dean Jackson And anyway. Dan Sullivan But the US is going. Us, Canada, mexico are going through a huge reindustrialization with new factories. But you're outside the city and you got a farm line. You got 600 acres of land and you built a factory on it. What you do is you bring in the little nuclear power plant first, and then the entire energy that's needed for building the factory is supplied by that little nuclear plant. And then when it's built, the nuclear plant powers the factory and it's manufacturing thing, and you don't go to the grid at all. You don't have to pull any electricity from the grid at all. Dean Jackson Wow, that's a big deal. Totally self-contained, it is a big deal. Dan Sullivan Yeah, you're putting in a new housing development, I think it's north of Las Vegas they're building a new 100,000 person city. It's called the Galaxy City. It has put a nuclear, it has put in three or four of these little nuclear plants into it and you don't have to. You build the houses, you build the stores, you build the businesses, you build everything, but it comes from the little nuclear plant. I think that's breakthrough. Dan Sullivan I think that's a breakthrough. Dean Jackson Yeah, and that's the model of it, I guess, in process right now. Yeah. Dan Sullivan Yeah, actually, paul Van Dijn, who's a FreeZone member, has got the complete engineering contract for that new city. Wow. Dean Jackson Yeah, these are amazing times, you know, like I think. But, they're completely normal. What does it look like now in a normalized world where you can literally go? Dan Sullivan anywhere you tell people this sort of thing, they say, oh, that's interesting, that's interesting yeah. Yeah. Dan Sullivan Yankees went last night. Right exactly. Oh. Dan Sullivan Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift, you know she's got 150 million hours. Now they're having trouble getting ticket story concerts now and they're stealing the pirating live stream from her concerts and I said, oh, that's interesting. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Dean Jackson Yeah, I wonder. You know the? So if that is true, then if we're in a stage right now- where you know. I mean Cloudlandia is, less than you know, viably, 25 years old in the first 25 years of it here. Everything, all of these things are normalized here. If we equate right now 2023 with 1953 kind of thing that all the infrastructure of the big factories innovation wave. All of that was in place. We had, you know, radio, television, automobiles, movies, all of that. Whowhat's the similar playbook for thriving in this? You know, next 25 years? Where it's not, you know, I think. If you look at AI, I don't see anything on the horizon that is as big an innovation, possibly, as what the Internet and all of that has brought for us. Dan Sullivan Yeah, because AI is only meaningful because of the Internet. Dean Jackson Right, it's. I think the pinnacle achievement of the Internet is that we've gotten to a point where you know there's an artificial intelligence that knows everything that's happened on the Internet so far and can access. Dan Sullivan No it doesn't know anything that you want to find out. You can find out with a few prompts. Yeah, I think that's it. Dan Sullivan It doesn't think. It doesn't feel, it doesn't understand it just smells like sardars. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dan Sullivan I think that's a big deal. But you know, what really strikes me is the huge difference from the 1950s because I was, you know, fully active through that entire decade of the 1950s is that the way to succeed was to kind of be good at standardized, conforming activities where you were guaranteed employment. You were guaranteed you know, lifetime employment if you, you know, got into the right place, and it seems to me that that is 180 degrees changed. Dean Jackson Yeah, yeah, that there's now. Dan Sullivan you look, just be good at just just be good at nine word emails, that's right. Dean Jackson That's the truth, isn't it? And that's it. Dan Sullivan Yeah, or little more creative new book every quarter. Dean Jackson Yeah, so I think, what's going to be fun is to, you know, track the zeitgeist with your, with your trail of 90 minute books. That's kind of a you know how many is this? Now, which one is this? Dan Sullivan This is the one. The one you're reading is 34. And, and I'm just getting to the final stages of the 35. I do it by quarters, so it's quarter 34, book 34. And this is quarter 35. I did, I started on my um in my right, you know, within six months after my 70th birthday, and I said, you know, next 25 years, I think I'll write a hundred books. A hundred books, yeah. Dan Sullivan Yeah and uh, so I'm, I'm on track, you know, and um, but the the thing about it is is that, um, and we had the conversations back then of how fast you could, you know, turn out a book, and we had a little one week contest where we both created a book and one week, and you know, and uh, and and so the the whole point is that it's just a quarterly process, you know, as part of the it's just normalized. For a lot of people, writing a book is the scariest, scariest project of their, of their life, you know you know, right, yeah, um, uh, you know. On their gravestones says didn't get the book finished. Right, I mean you know, or uh, we're on chapter 38. Dan Sullivan I said well, I saw that problem, just make each chapter a book. Yeah, right, exactly. Dan Sullivan Yeah, so the, I think the um thing is. But think about 1950. I couldn't even conceive of how you could turn out a book like that, you know yeah you know, it's all internet based teamwork. I mean, everything I do is internet. I've been cartoonist. I see him about once a year, you know personally. He lives in Prince Edward Island and, uh, the smallest of the Canadian provinces. Uh, way out, way out of these kind of Cape Coddage type of place. And you know and I see him. He's in Scotland. He's living for Scotland for two weeks tomorrow, so we'll have a little interruption. But uh, you know it's all on the internet he's, and zoom has been a wonderful breakthrough, you know. Yeah, he can actually draw the pictures. Dean Jackson Do you um? Do you storyboard the, the cartoons, or talk about what, what you're seeing for them? Dan Sullivan No no no, he just gets the rate on. You know, he gives a page on zoom so we're off to the side. You know our two little pictures are up to the side. And then he draws the two page outline, because there are always two pages in the book format. And then he we say you know, I think this starts in the center. I says I think something in the center and I think it's a person and the one thing we uh, at a certain point we just didn't pay any attention to the galley in the middle the you know the separation of the two pages we just treated it as a single page and that was a great right. Exactly, and then we um uh I have a fast filter that I've created laying out what the chapter headings are and what the context of the chapter is, and then we read it through and I talked to him and I said, okay, so what's this look like? You know what's this look like. You know where's it start. Where's the center of action? Yeah, center is a lower left hand corner, is it? And yeah, if you look through the cartoons to this one, you'll notice that the real energetic center of the cartoon moves around. Dean Jackson Yeah, yes, I love it. I mean, I'm looking at the. Nobody's in charge, you're completely free with the, the arrows in the path and it's just. Yeah, I like that idea of just treating the whole two pages as one. Yeah, one thing that makes sense, yeah. Dan Sullivan And if you um said to people you don't mind the separation between the pages and the middle because you have to do that for the book, and I said, yeah, I don't know they're, they're, they're. Their mind has eliminated that separating thing down the center of the human brain. Yeah, treats it as one thing you know. And I said oh no there's a separation down the middle of every cartoon picture and I said really, and I said yeah, look. And they said, oh my, I never saw it. Right, that's great yeah. Dean Jackson It's very obvious in the what the world is made up by you. Yeah, just big circle. But as you're looking at it, it looks like one one thing I like this I'm, you know, I have a um, you got to have a wonderful designer who, uh, you know, can do these kind of things. It's so, uh, it's so nice to be able to articulate with words what you're looking for and have somebody be able to interpret that and deliver what you're looking for, you know. Dan Sullivan Well, the interesting thing is, uh, t um, uh, we have two kind of artistic skills with Amish. Amish is Amish, mcdonald is my cartoonist name, and we've been working together now for you know long, long time, you know. But the other thing that's happened is the technology has gotten so good, okay, and uh, we were just finishing one off before he took off for Scotland and literally um, dean, I could say I said okay, let's put that into the complete color spectrum, and he hit a button and the whole background was a complete color, you know, sort of like a. It went from the colors of the spectrum and but it was sort of a continuous change. You know, it wasn't right, uh, separate colors. And I said, okay, now uh, the characters here. I said let's move the characters around a little, and he moved them around and everything like that. And I can remember first working with my first computer artist back in 1990, let's say, and the changes that Hamish and I just made in about. I would say two minutes would take two and a half days. Dean Jackson Yeah, and that amazing right. Dan Sullivan Chip speed and the great capabilities of software, you know, yeah, and it's. I mean it just goes together. I mean we used to, we used to take about um, I would say it would take about three days, three days of three, the three days work to get a cartoon done, and now we do the storyboard and he checks in the next day and he's got it almost completed. Artwork. Mm, hmm. Dean Jackson Yeah, so, uh, that's great, yeah, that's great. Dan Sullivan And I think that's a I. You know the fact that he can do that, and uh actual intelligence right? Yeah Well, evan Ryan, who was one of our panel speakers on a, he's got a neat little book and we're going to send it out. Maybe you already have it, but it's called AI as a teammate. Okay, and uh, he's putting our entire company, 130 of our team members, through uh starting in September, and it's six modules, two hours each, and all they do is analyze their work between what's their unique ability and what shouldn't. Somebody else could do, so anything a who can do. Then you find the AI who, who can actually do it without having to hire another person. Dean Jackson Oh, nice, I mean. So that's yeah, talking about being able to for people to uh multiply, you know yeah. Dan Sullivan Yeah. But he says, uh, people freak out about this word AI. He says zoom is AI. He said the internet is the AI. He said you know all the programs you use on the computer you know already from you, know from Apple or from ours are mostly Apple, you know in design is artificial intelligence. He says it's just automation. He says don't talk about artificial intelligence. He says it's just automated. Okay A machine function can do what a person used to be able to do. He says that's all that it is. And he said you know, that's been going on for a long time. Dean Jackson Yeah, well, and you still have to just think about what you're trying to do. Yeah, you still have to understand what the outcome you want. Yeah, yeah. Dan Sullivan Yeah. Yeah. Dan Sullivan That's the big skill. Dean Jackson The big skill is being able to identify what you want. Dan Sullivan Yeah, yeah, that is the skill of skills that is. That is that is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How many years? Dean Jackson did you do that every day? You said, well, it wouldn't be the same without our appearance from theory. Dan Sullivan Yeah, Well, it just shows you that you know that there's real progress to be made in that field, Anyway, anyway, yeah, I did 25 years. Dean Jackson I have 25 years every day. Dan Sullivan What do I want? Every day for except for 12. Dan Sullivan So there's 9,131 days and 25 years. And I did it 9,119 days and you know and and and and. What I got really good at over that period is just, in any situation, kind of knowing what I want, you know and and and. The one thing I cut off of you know I want this and the next. If you wrote that down for an AI program, they'd say the next word is because. And I said I just leave the because off because I want the truth, because is some sort of fiction. I'm making it up to make it. Everything is made up. Yeah, yeah, everything is made up, yeah. And so so I got real good at that and, you know, my life changed from the first day to the 25th day. My life really changed. Coach came into existence, my partnership with Babs came into existence, strategies, strategy circle, and then a whole bunch of other tools came into existence, you know. So, yeah, it's a great skill. I mean, if you know, if, how would these? Dean Jackson is there? What were the? Were there any particular prompts? Let's call it in modern terms that you would use or or no, I just I would go through that process yeah. Dan Sullivan Well, I just had to do this every day. You know that that was I committed myself. I had just gone through a divorce and a bankruptcy on the same day, in August of 1978. And I said you know, the only way I'm going to come to grips with this is to take total responsibility for what's happened up until now. So no blaming anyone else, no saying and no going back and reworking it. If only I had done. I said, let's just accept it, that and that I wasn't. And I said, I came to the conclusion all that bad stuff had happened because I wasn't telling myself what I wanted. Okay, I was expecting other people to tell me what. Dean Jackson I wanted and. Dan Sullivan I said so next 25 years, I'm just going to get really good at telling myself what I actually want and that's it. That's. That was the only requirement and it could be a set it had to be at least a sentence. It could be a whole page, it could be two pages, but it had to be at least a sentence once a day, and I just did it for. I just did it for. I had notebook after notebook after notebook after notebook. And yeah and we had a flood, you know, in our business last August and all these files were in the basement. That got flooded and disrupted and they're all gone all the, all the files, all my notes are gone and I feel so, and I feel so freed up. Right right. Dan Sullivan Did you ever? Look at those Did you ever. No no, never went back and the and the reason is it was the skill. Dan Sullivan it was the skill I was developing. That wasn't what I wrote down, Right yeah. Dean Jackson Yeah, yeah, this is that's really but we went to Matt. Dan Sullivan if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't never been in position to me to Because you never would have started strategic coach or never would have gotten off the ground, started looking for certain kinds of people. Right. Dan Sullivan You being one of them. Well, I'm glad you're here I wanted someone who is incredibly smart, and if only he'd apply himself. Dean Jackson And a lot of them. You want a lot of those people. Dan Sullivan Yeah, and money comes easy, money comes easy. Yeah, the great ones, and once they have a purpose, the money flows, yeah. So anyway, I got to jump early because I have a little bit of a question, Okay my friend Daniel Wait in about five minutes but real pleasure. Yeah, thanks for the feedback on the geometry book. You know, this one surprised me. You know, this one caught me by surprise. Dean Jackson Well, it's fantastic, like I was curious what it was going to be about. You know, when you look at the, just the title geometry for staying cool and calm. And now, as I look through the content, this is my. I'm going to pretend I'm hopping on a flight to Chicago right now. Yeah, toronto, and read the whole book in one hour. That's my, that's my next hour right now, yeah, good. Dan Sullivan Alrighty. I got a question yeah, thank you very much. Dean Jackson Next week I'm good. Okay, good, me too. Dan Sullivan Bye, okay, bye.

Reabrimos las puertas de ese club subterráneo para ofrecerte una sesión sin palabras ni interrupciones. Todo el material que escucharás procede de los recopilatorios Big Balls que cada año compila el DJ Francho para regalarlos en cada edición del festival Rockin Race Jamboree. Playlist; (sintonía) LOS SIETE DE JOHN BARRY "La amenaza" FATS DOMINO "Estoy viviendo bien" ROSCO GORDON "Seguramente te amo" LLOYD PRICE "El pollo y el bop" BROOK BENTON "Hurtin' inside" PAUL ANKA "Uh Uh" JOHNNY RIVERS "Foolkiller" LOS TOKENS "A-B-C- 1-2-3" DELL MACK "No se puede juzgar un libro por la portada PEREZ PRADO "El giro de hava nagila" LOS CHICOS DE PELUCHE "Jezabel" KIP TYLER "Jungle hop" LOS SEIS PASTEL "No puedo bailar" JIMMY FAUTHEREE "No puedo encontrar el pomo de la puerta" COLLAY y LOS SATÉLITES "Chica de al lado" WALLY DEANE y HIS FLIPS "Drag on" BIG SUNNY y HIS FURYS "Fail" EDDIE KANE "Un nuevo tipo de amor" TOMMY ROE "Oh Carol" LOS CASUALS "Mustang 2+2" DON y DEWEY "Just a little lovin'" RAY y LINDY "Big Betty" THE AVENGERS "Tema de Batman" EDDIE BOND "Aquí viene el tren" SONIDOS INCORPORADOS "Rinky dink" RICHARD BERRY "Rock rock rock" Escuchar audio

Jeffrey Madoff and Dan Sullivan explore the concept of complexity within simplicity in various forms of entertainment. Drawing parallels to other fields like watch-making, architecture, and design, they emphasize the importance of presenting intricate work in a way that appears effortless and beautiful. This notion of packing complexity into simplicity holds significant implications for entrepreneurs seeking to create innovative and compelling experiences. In This Episode:Dan talks about a 1984 performance of Sergio Mendes's “Never Gonna Let You Go” he recently saw online. Rick Beato, of the session musicians who worked on the song, was amazed by the incredible complexity of what seemed like a simple pop tune.Jeffrey explains the “complications” in watch-making, and how they're prized in more expensive watches.Dan highlights the significance of Shakespeare, whose complex characters continue to provide insight into human nature hundreds of years after the author's death.Because of his Ohio farmland roots, Dan Sullivan feels a connection with blue-collar workers like mechanics, drivers, and dock workers. Jeffrey also highlights the shift in societal re-evaluation of the value of front-line workers during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.The pair discuss the life and work ethos of Lloyd Price, the subject of Jeffrey's musical currently running in Chicago. They highlight his never-changing perspective towards his roots and his grounded personality throughout his successful career.Frenetic modern social platforms like TikTok and “fast fashion” demonstrate the short lifespan of work that's simple without context.Something that seems simple can contain a great deal of complexity, and understanding this requires an appreciation for context. Resources:Learn more about Jeffrey MadoffDan Sullivan and Strategic Coach“Never Gonna Let You Go” live in Tokyo, with Sergio Mendes, Joe Pizzulo and Kate YanaiPersonality: The Lloyd Price Musical 

Performer Saint Aubyn joins the show to discuss Personality: The Lloyd Price Musical, now playing at the Studebaker Theater until September 3rd.

It turns out this guest is the older version of our very own Alan Seales. Get ready for excellent Dad jokes and a lot of laughs. Seriously though - Jeffery Madoff has a wildly inventive and creative brain and a masterful entrepreneurial spirit. For Jeff, barriers are simply not something that exists because his creative spirit always finds a way to thrive.  Jeff is a Fashion designer, teacher, author, playwright, and producer who helps dispel the myth that artists can't be good business people and that good business people can't be creative!  Jeff has directed award-winning commercials, documentaries, and web content for clients such as Ralph Lauren, Victoria's Secret, Tiffany, Radio City, The American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and Harvard University just to name a few. He's also the writer and producer for “PERSONALITY” a play based on Rock and roll hall of fame artist, Lloyd Price that just opened in Chicago in June 2023. Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn, Instagram, and his website.  Get Jeff's book: Creative Careers: Making a Living with Your Ideas See Personality in Chicago Make sure to follow this podcast everywhere you find podcasts, leave a rating and a review, and slip into our Instagram DMs at @wasitchance. More about Heather via @vickeryandco on Instagram, @Braveheather on TikTok, and listen to The Brave Files More about Alan via @theatre_podcast on Instagram and listen to The Theatre Podcast with Alan Seales EPISODE TAKEAWAYS: Jeff had no plan on what he was going to do but he was always seduced by ideas. Fashion design was never a passion but an opportunity.  He did have some merchandising experience from his parent's business when he was younger. Jeff put his designs on the back of a motorcycle, headed to Chicago, and made a name for himself. We make sense of our lives through the rearview mirror. By the age of 22, Jeff had over 100 people working for him. When Jeff decided to move to NYC he lost his financial backing. So he closed his company in Wisconsin and took off. As a young man with long hair in the 70's Jeff had to prove he had financial backing in order to be taken seriously.  Jeff has embraced opportunity over and over again through meeting other people, embracing storytelling, and being willing to simply try things that interested him. If you're paying attention everything you do plays a part in everything else you do. It's easier to start at the top and work your way down. You never know until you try and there's no reason not to go big. Jeff believes that you shouldn't say no to yourself. You shouldn't say no to yourself. If you're passionate about something give it a try. There are enough people that will say no to you. Don't say no to yourself. Jeff was his own fallback position. There was no other Plan B. He focuses on the goals rather than the obstacles in the way. The way to “run distance” is to break it down into smaller milestones and then celebrate those milestones. Perseverance is more important than talent. Jeff says he's smart enough to know what he doesn't know. After being a guest speaker for a class at Parsons, Jeff took a job as a part-time professor (he was actually hired by Tim Gunn!). His class is about Creative Careers. The way you talk to yourself makes a big difference in how successful you'll be. Opportunities are not opportunities if you don't recogonize them.  It was absolute chance that Jeff was introduced to Lloyd Price and that's what eventually led to Jeff writing and producing Personality which is now running in Chicago. Don't wait for someone else to make magic happen in your life, do it yourself. There's courage and there's confidence. Confidence is a capability that comes from repetition. Courage is stepping off the edge of the cliff and not knowing what's going to happen.  Doing a play is like a start-up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jeffrey Madoff and Dan Sullivan provide a captivating behind-the-scenes look into the world of theater production, as Jeffrey's play Personality: The Lloyd Price Musical enters previews at Chicago's Studebaker Theater. From the initial table read to the tension-filled tech rehearsals, the duo offer insights into the intricate and collaborative creative process leading up to a pre-Broadway premiere. In This Episode:Jeffrey and Dan discuss the premier of Personality: The Lloyd Price Musical, which opens in Chicago this week.Jeffrey talks about the rehearsal process and how the creative team approached the play, creatively and technically.Dan and Jeffrey examine the differences between theater in the past and today. Dan points out that theater in the past required a lot of creativity and skill, while today's theater is more technologically advanced.The Tony Award-winning set designer for Personality used LED screens to show a range of different settings, yet manages to keep the experience from feeling like watching a movie.Professional actors must quickly adapt to changes in their roles, whether it be music, lighting, or dance changes.The person in charge of the wigs is given as a perfect example of someone who'll never be replaced by technology.The success of the play depends on how well it's received by audiences over its 12-week run.Dan: “A lot of clichés shatter when they encounter reality.” Resources: Personality, The Lloyd Price Musical — running June 2 through September 3 at Chicago's Studebaker Theater in the Fine Arts Building, 410 S Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL

“The more you learn, the more options you can create for yourself, as long as you don't have the fear of trying something new. It opened me up to new ways of thinking and looking at things - I believe that helped foster my world view about work, about what I wanted to do…”In this episode, we dive deep into leadership - which is always what the show is about, but from a different take this week. My guest has been very generous with his time, expertise, and sharing his life's journey so we can deliver an interview that aims to encourage our creative side to create a living that is sustainable and true to our principles, skill sets, passion, and purpose.Joining me on the mic is someone with decades of professional experience and has been invited to prestigious shows including The Tim Ferriss Show to inspire people all around the world, from different industries, and age groups…ABOUT OUR GUEST B. Jeffrey Madoff's career spans fashion design, film production, directing, and teaching. He is also a bestselling author & playwright.Among his clients are Ralph Lauren, Tiffany, Victoria's Secret, The American Academy of Dramatic Arts, Harvard School for Public Health, and Radio City Music Hall.Madoff is an adjunct professor at Parsons School of Design in NYC. His book, “Creative Careers: Making a Living With Your Ideas”, an Amazon Bestseller, is based on his class. He has been a featured speaker at Princeton, NYU, and Wharton School. He recently produced and curated a five part series entitled, “Reframing the Arts as Entrepreneurship” at The Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale University.Madoff wrote and is producing a play, “Personality: The Lloyd Price Musical”, about the life of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame legend Lloyd Price opening June 2, 2023 at The Studebaker Theater in Chicago.You can learn more about B Jeffrey Madoff and his work here:https://www.linkedin.com/in/b-jeffrey-madoff-5baa8074ABOUT OUR HOSTKen Eslick is an Entrepreneur, Author, Podcaster, Tony Robbins Trainer, Life Coach, Husband of 35+ Years, and Grandfather. Ken currently spends his time as the President & Founder of The Leaders Lab where he and his team focus on Senior Leadership Acquisition. They get founders the next level C-Suite Leaders they need to go from being an Inc. Magazine 5000 fastest growing company to $100,000,000 + in revenue.  You can learn more about Ken and his team at theleaderslab.coListen to more episodes on Mission Matters:https://missionmatters.com/author/ken-eslick/

Hometown Radio 05/05/23 6p: First we lean about Lloyd Price and then The Beatles during April 1964

Who is B. Jeffrey Madoff? B. Jeffrey Madoff is the founder of Madoff Productions, based in New York City. A gifted storyteller and incisive interviewer, Jeff has used those talents to help position major brands such as Ralph Lauren, Victoria's Secret, Radio City Music Hall, and the Harvard School for Public Health.   Jeff began his career as a fashion designer. He was chosen one of the top 10 designers in the U.S. then switched careers to film and video production. He has since expanded his reach to include teaching, book and playwriting, and theatrical producing.   He is an adjunct professor at Parsons School for Design, teaching a course he developed called “Creativity: Making a Living with Your Ideas”. Every week Madoff has a conversation with a guest from a wide variety of fields, from artists and entrepreneurs to venture capitalists and business leaders. The book about his class, “Creative Careers: Making a Living with Your Ideas”, was published by Hachette in 2019. The podcast launched in 2021.   Jeff has been a featured speaker at Wharton School, NYU Steinhardt, North Carolina State, SXSW Brazil, Google Next and many others.    He has written and is producing a play based on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame legend, Lloyd Price.   How to Connect with B. Jeffery? Website 1: www.ACreativeCareer.com Website 2: www.MadoffProductions.com LinkedIn: www.LinkedIn.com/in//B-Jeffrey-Madoff-5baa8074 Instagram: www.Instagram.co/ACreativecareer --------------------------------------- Download Dr. Vic's FREE eBook on The Mindset Solution: https://drvic.systeme.io/the-mindset-solution-ebook   Do You Want to Learn How to Have Success Effortlessly? Are you looking to double your profits, create financial freedom/independence, create more fulfillment, work less, make more, and have more freedom and time with your loved ones?   If you answered "YES" to any of these, let us set up a call to discover how I can accelerate that process for you.  Just visit the link below and set up a time that works best for you to connect.   www.CallwithDrVic.com

Jeffrey Madoff's first career was as a fashion designer. He was chosen one of the top 10 designers in the U.S.  Switching careers to film production, he has directed award winning commercials, documentaries and web content around the world for clients such as Ralph Lauren, Victoria's Secret, and Tiffany. His book, “Creative Careers: Making a Living with Your Ideas,” is an Amazon Bestseller based on the class he teaches at Parsons School of Design in NYC. Madoff's play, “Personality: The Lloyd Price Musical,” about the life of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame legend Lloyd Price, had its world premiere in 2022.

Originally broadcast November 13, 2022We just moved our upload of our weekly soul radio show over from Mixcloud to this podcast! This is episode 237 of the radio show, episode 1 as a podcast.It's another Sunday night dance party, with 2 packed hours of soul and R&B. There's a few British tunes in the mix tonight, along with Garnet Mimms, Tony Clarke, Anna King, Otis Redding, Brice Coefield, Lloyd Price, and that 60s Gary US Bonds stormer that somehow never got pressed to vinyl until the 80s! Plus, James plays a record that wants to be in his collection but that he's not sure about.Willie Mitchell-That Driving BeatGarnet Mimms-Prove It to MeBo Diddley-Let The Kids DanceThe Precisions-Why GirlTony Clarke-Landslide The Winstons-Amen, BrotherJackie Ross-Jerk and TwineElvis Presley-Rubberneckin'Richie Wallace-Darling, You Done Me WrongSteve Alaimo and Betty Wright-I'm ThankfulThe Premieres-I'm Better Off Now (Than I Was Before)The Delacardos-Hold Back The TearsSolomon Burke-How Many TimesAnna King-The Big ChangeBobby Harris-More of the JerkRazzy and the Neighborhood Kids-I Hate HateOtis Redding-I'm Depending On YouBrice Coefield-TemptedThe Isley Brothers-Move Over and Let Me DanceThe Lemonade-CharadeThe Straight LifeThe Drifters-I've Got Sand In My ShoesThe "D"-Men-No Hope for MeWillie Tee-I Want Somebody (To Show Me the Way Back Home)Monopoly LTD.-Underdog's ChildGary "U.S." Bonds-I Wanna HollerDouble Feature-Baby, Get Your Head Screwed OnPaul Ank-My Baby's Comin' HomeLloyd Price and His Orchestra and Chorus-Oh, Lady LuckTommy Good-Baby I Miss YouDave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich-Last Night In SohoSusan Barrett-It's No SecretThe Small Faces-Almost GrownThe Fascinations-Girls Are Out to Get You100 Proof (Aged In Soul)-Love Is Sweeter (The Second Time Around)Dave 'Baby' Cortez-Rinky Dink Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

And we're back! As promised, our fine friend Dustin Prince continues to hang with us in GoodList Studios for Part 2 of our final Cover Songs Series installment. Since Top Ten Cover Songs Volume 10 is a double episode, this week will cover #15-11 of our supersized playlist. Viva le covers!If you missed Part 1, listen here:https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/alltimetopten/episodes/2022-10-24T04_00_00-07_00Check out the Complete Cover Songs playlist on Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4MYLdxgfChXizjkH8Jg7ax?si=125d0fb631fd49efThanks to new Patreon Club member Stephane Herridge for joining our little group! Tomorrow - November 1st - those fine folks will enjoy a bonus podcast as The Numbers Girl's BFF Shannon Hurley joins for Top Ten Opening Lyrics, a rewards episode for $10 tier member Terry McGinley. Get into these monthly bonus episodes by joining for as little as $2 a month:https://www.patreon.com/alltimetopten

Continuing on from our last episode, which looked at the early development of Rhythm and Blues, part two focuses on the amazing career of Lloyd Price. When he was interviewed for the NAMM Oral History collection in 2016, Lloyd provided an up-close and personal look at some of his classic recordings and how they influenced a generation of music makers. Join us and our special guest Jonah Del Fiorentino!

Jeffrey Madoff is the Founder & CEO of Madoff Productions, a New York based creative production company. He has directed award winning commercials, documentaries and web content around the world. Madoff is an adjunct professor at Parsons, The New School of Design. He teaches a course he developed called “Creative Careers: Making a Living with Your Ideas”, where he interviews a wide range of entrepreneurs, artists, writers, and business leaders about their journey. Hachette Book Group published his book, “Creative Careers, Making a Living with Your Ideas”, which was an Amazon Best Seller. Madoff is a sought after speaker and consultant on how to create a brand, having produced the brand videos for Ralph Lauren, Victoria's Secret, The Harvard School for Public Health, The American Academy of Dramatic Arts and many others. He has been a keynote speaker at Wharton School, NYU Steinhardt, Princeton University, Google Next, and the New York City Economic Development Commission. Madoff works with investment banks and private equity such as Lazard, Raymond James and Mid-Ocean Partners to produce brand stories to position companies for sale, acquisition, and investment. He is on the Board of Advisors for Artolution, a global organization that is focused on developing local leaders in the arts to use collaborative art-making as a tool for communities to share their stories with the world. Artolution focuses on the long-term needs of crisis-affected communities. Madoff has written and is producing a play entitled “Personality: The Lloyd Price Musical”, about the life of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame legend Lloyd Price. It had its world premiere March 13, 2022 at People's Light Theater in Malvern, Pennsylvania. Madoff graduated with honors from the University of Wisconsin with degrees in philosophy & psychology. He was also on the wrestling team, which combined with his academic studies prepared him for a life in the film business.

If you haven't been paying attention (and, based on the download statistics, you haven't), I'm part of a second podcast, where I take on more of a support role than as the lead voice. The show is called Words and Movies, in which my partner Sean Gallagher and I choose a pair of films and find the links between them. In an upcoming episode, we discuss a film from 2007 called Honeydripper, starring Danny Glover. There's a scene involving Glover's character and a blind musician played by Keb' Mo', who sings a couple of bars of "Stagger Lee," causing Glover to mutter, "I hate that song." We don't find out why until later in the film, but (spoiler alert) it's because when he was younger, he'd been in an incident similar to the one outlined in the song. The interesting thing here, though, is that the song "Stagger Lee" was always about one man killing another. But when Lloyd Price recorded the song, he recorded two versions: one in which one man kills another over a dice game, and another where they merely get into a fight over a pretty girl. (The second version was for American Bandstand and for radio consumption in more conservative areas of the country.) The experience that Glover's character went through as a younger man appears to be a mashup of both versions of the song. At any rate, "Stagger Lee" as a song has a very rich history, and it turns out to be rooted in a true story. Many times, when doing the research for an episode I reach a point where the more I dig, the more I find myself going in circles. This time, I tapped a rich mine of information, to the point where I found myself having to decide what to keep and what to toss to keep the episode to a reasonable length. Enjoy! Click here for a transcript of this episode. Click here to become a Patron of the show.

In the summer of 1997, “six men climbed to the top of Mt Tabor, pulling their creations of death and destruction behind them,” according to the organization. And the PDX Adult Soapbox Derby was born. More than two decades later, Mt. Tabor Park continues to host the race. It features cars built for speed and others built for style. Jason de Parrie-Turner is the PR director of the derby and board member at large. LLoyd Price is a racer in the derby. They join us with details on this year's race.

Twitter: @podgaverockInsta: @podgaverockSpecial Guest Host: Matt BaetzLloyd Price “Stagger Lee” single from the 1958 released on ABC-Paramount. Written by Lloyd Price and produced by Don Costa.Personel:Lloyd Price – lead vocalsMerritt Mel Dalton– saxClarence Johnson– pianoJohn Patton– bassCharles McClendon and Eddie Saunders - tenor saxTed Curson - trumpetSticks Simpkins - drumsCover:Performed by Josh Bond and Matt BaetzIntro Music:"Shithouse" 2010 release from "A Collection of Songs for the Kings". Written by Josh Bond. Produced by Frank Charlton.Other Artists Mentioned:Taj MahalThe Grateful Dead

Twitter: @podgaverockInsta: @podgaverockSpecial Guest Host: Matt BaetzLloyd Price “Stagger Lee” single from the 1958 released on ABC-Paramount. Written by Lloyd Price and produced by Don Costa.Personel:Lloyd Price – lead vocalsMerritt Mel Dalton– saxClarence Johnson– pianoJohn Patton– bassCharles McClendon and Eddie Saunders - tenor saxTed Curson - trumpetSticks Simpkins - drumsCover:Performed by Josh BondIntro Music:"Shithouse" 2010 release from "A Collection of Songs for the Kings". Written by Josh Bond. Produced by Frank Charlton.Other Artists Mentioned:My Morning JacketNathaniel Rateliffe and the Night SweatsDurand Jones and the IndicatorsFather John MistyMarlon WilliamsGreen Day “American Idiot”Jack HarloweDua LipaLocal NativesMac DeMarcoClaude VonStrokeLarry JuneTokimonstaParcelsSam FenderKhruiangbinVin ScullyJuan SotoKeith RichardsThe Rolling Stones “Exile on Main Street”Pink Floyd “Astronomy Domine”David GilmourEddie VedderMick JaggerSteve MarriottThe Small FacesThe WhoRoger DaltryRod StewartRon WoodThe Faces “Stay With Me”The Faces “Ohh La La”Humble PieThe Grateful DeadJanis JoplinBig Brother and the Holding CompanyDonna Jean GodcheauxRodrigo and Gabr iellaRick DankoPaul McCartneyRichard ManuelGarth HudsonThe Band “Music From the Big Pink”The Beatles “Something”George HarrisonRoger WatersJimi HendrixThe Band of Gypsys “Changes”Pink Floyd “Mettle”Pink Floyd “Animals”RushTalking HeadsNeil PeartGeddy LeeAlex LifesonDavid ByrneAxl RoseJon Bon JoviGuns n RosesBon JoviNeil YoungThe Animals “House of the Rising Son”Adam SandlerJimmy FallonShel SilverstienSteve MartinZach GalafanaikisFats Domino “Kansas City”The Diamonds “The Stroll”Bobby Darin “Mac the Knife”Taj MahalThe Grateful Dead “Shakedown Street”Mississippi John HurtSamuel L JacksonBlack Snake MoanPaul AnkaFrank SinatraLloyd Price “Lawdy Miss Clawdy”Little RichardAmerican BandstandDick ClarkThe Doors “Light My Fire”ElvisFred Waring's PennsylvaniansWC HandyDuke EllingtonWoody GuthrieCab CallowayThe Beatles “Strawberry Fields Forever”The GodfatherCCR “Long As I Can See the Light”Dave von RonkELOFats DominoLloyd Price “Personality”Chubby Checker “Let's Twist Again”Otis Day and the Knights “Shout”Jerry Lee Lewis “Crazy Arms”Buddy HollyDion “Runaround Sue”Reba McIntyre “Fancy”Charlie Daniels Band “Devil Went Down to Georgia”Bob Dylan “Hurricane”The Steve Miller Band “Take the Money and Run”The Everly Brothers “Wake Up, Little Suzie”Ma RaineyAmy WinehouseHugh LaurieThe Beatles “Rocky Racoon”Jim Croce “You Don't Mess Around With Jim”Jim Croce “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown”Lynyrd Skynyrd “Gimme Three Steps”New Riders of the Purple Sage “Panama Red”Pacific, Gas, and ElectricDeathproofCountry FunkWilson PickettIke and Tina TurnerNick Cave and the Bad SeedsNeil Diamond

They call Delbert McClinton the Godfather of Americana for a reason.  Across the span of a 60 year career, he's played with everyone. Little Richard and Jimmy Reed. Muddy Waters. Willy Nelson. Tom Petty. Mavis Staples. BB King. ​​He's written songs performed by Emmylou Harris, Etta James, Vince Gill, George Strait, Martina McBride. He even taught a young John Lennon the finer points of the harmonica.  His blend of country, soul and blues is a sound that has endured for 60 years. He's somehow found himself at the center of the Texas music scene, the California music scene, the Nashville music scene, even the Muscle Shoals music scene. He's a musician's musician, releasing more than 30 albums and winning four Grammys and the Americana Association's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019. He's witnessed entire genres of music come and go and he's seen America change in the process. He's, quite simply, a legend. And now he's released his latest album, "Outdated Emotion," which is a tribute to the artists that first inspired him. Across 16 tracks, he's recorded songs by Hank Williams, Jimmy Reed, Little Richard, Ray Charles, Lloyd Price and others. These are some of the songs and artists from which all of modern American music sprang. They're songs that endure and ones that Delbert still loves. Today on the Reckon Interview, Delbert McClinton joins us to discuss what these songs meant to him, stories from six decades on the road, how the music industry has changed and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Episode 149 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Respect", and the journey of Aretha Franklin from teenage gospel singer to the Queen of Soul. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifteen-minute bonus episode available, on "I'm Just a Mops" by the Mops. 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/ Also, people may be interested in a Facebook discussion group for the podcast, run by a friend of mine (I'm not on FB myself) which can be found at https://www.facebook.com/groups/293630102611672/ Errata I say "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby to a Dixie Melody" instead of "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody". Also I say Spooner Oldham co-wrote "Do Right Woman". I meant Chips Moman. Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by Aretha Franklin. My main biographical source for Aretha Franklin is Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin by David Ritz, and this is where most of the quotes from musicians come from. I also relied heavily on I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You by Matt Dobkin. Information on C.L. Franklin came from Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America by Nick Salvatore. Rick Hall's The Man From Muscle Shoals: My Journey from Shame to Fame contains his side of the story. Country Soul by Charles L Hughes is a great overview of the soul music made in Muscle Shoals, Memphis, and Nashville in the sixties. Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The Southern Dream Of Freedom is possibly less essential, but still definitely worth reading. And the I Never Loved a Man album is available in this five-album box set for a ludicrously cheap price. But it's actually worth getting this nineteen-CD set with her first sixteen Atlantic albums and a couple of bonus discs of demos and outtakes. There's barely a duff track in the whole nineteen discs. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start this episode,  I have to say that there are some things people may want to be aware of before listening to this. This episode has to deal, at least in passing, with subjects including child sexual abuse, intimate partner abuse, racism, and misogyny. I will of course try to deal with those subjects as tactfully as possible, but those of you who may be upset by those topics may want to check the episode transcript before or instead of listening. Those of you who leave comments or send me messages saying "why can't you just talk about the music instead of all this woke virtue-signalling?" may also want to skip this episode. You can go ahead and skip all the future ones as well, I won't mind. And one more thing to say before I get into the meat of the episode -- this episode puts me in a more difficult position than most other episodes of the podcast have. When I've talked about awful things that have happened in the course of this podcast previously, I have either been talking about perpetrators -- people like Phil Spector or Jerry Lee Lewis who did truly reprehensible things -- or about victims who have talked very publicly about the abuse they've suffered, people like Ronnie Spector or Tina Turner, who said very clearly "this is what happened to me and I want it on the public record". In the case of Aretha Franklin, she has been portrayed as a victim *by others*, and there are things that have been said about her life and her relationships which suggest that she suffered in some very terrible ways. But she herself apparently never saw herself as a victim, and didn't want some aspects of her private life talking about. At the start of David Ritz's biography of her, which is one of my main sources here, he recounts a conversation he had with her: "When I mentioned the possibility of my writing an independent biography, she said, “As long as I can approve it before it's published.” “Then it wouldn't be independent,” I said. “Why should it be independent?” “So I can tell the story from my point of view.” “But it's not your story, it's mine.” “You're an important historical figure, Aretha. Others will inevitably come along to tell your story. That's the blessing and burden of being a public figure.” “More burden than blessing,” she said." Now, Aretha Franklin is sadly dead, but I think that she still deserves the basic respect of being allowed privacy. So I will talk here about public matters, things she acknowledged in her own autobiography, and things that she and the people around her did in public situations like recording studios and concert venues. But there are aspects to the story of Aretha Franklin as that story is commonly told, which may well be true, but are of mostly prurient interest, don't add much to the story of how the music came to be made, and which she herself didn't want people talking about. So there will be things people might expect me to talk about in this episode, incidents where people in her life, usually men, treated her badly, that I'm going to leave out. That information is out there if people want to look for it, but I don't see myself as under any obligation to share it. That's not me making excuses for people who did inexcusable things, that's me showing some respect to one of the towering artistic figures of the latter half of the twentieth century. Because, of course, respect is what this is all about: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Respect"] One name that's come up a few times in this podcast, but who we haven't really talked about that much, is Bobby "Blue" Bland. We mentioned him as the single biggest influence on the style of Van Morrison, but Bland was an important figure in the Memphis music scene of the early fifties, which we talked about in several early episodes. He was one of the Beale Streeters, the loose aggregation of musicians that also included B.B. King and Johnny Ace, he worked with Ike Turner, and was one of the key links between blues and soul in the fifties and early sixties, with records like "Turn on Your Love Light": [Excerpt: Bobby "Blue" Bland, "Turn on Your Love Light"] But while Bland was influenced by many musicians we've talked about, his biggest influence wasn't a singer at all. It was a preacher he saw give a sermon in the early 1940s. As he said decades later: "Wasn't his words that got me—I couldn't tell you what he talked on that day, couldn't tell you what any of it meant, but it was the way he talked. He talked like he was singing. He talked music. The thing that really got me, though, was this squall-like sound he made to emphasize a certain word. He'd catch the word in his mouth, let it roll around and squeeze it with his tongue. When it popped on out, it exploded, and the ladies started waving and shouting. I liked all that. I started popping and shouting too. That next week I asked Mama when we were going back to Memphis to church. “‘Since when you so keen on church?' Mama asked. “‘I like that preacher,' I said. “‘Reverend Franklin?' she asked. “‘Well, if he's the one who sings when he preaches, that's the one I like.'" Bland was impressed by C.L. Franklin, and so were other Memphis musicians. Long after Franklin had moved to Detroit, they remembered him, and Bland and B.B. King would go to Franklin's church to see him preach whenever they were in the city. And Bland studied Franklin's records. He said later "I liked whatever was on the radio, especially those first things Nat Cole did with his trio. Naturally I liked the blues singers like Roy Brown, the jump singers like Louis Jordan, and the ballad singers like Billy Eckstine, but, brother, the man who really shaped me was Reverend Franklin." Bland would study Franklin's records, and would take the style that Franklin used in recorded sermons like "The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest": [Excerpt: C.L. Franklin, "The Eagle Stirreth Her Nest"] And you can definitely hear that preaching style on records like Bland's "I Pity the Fool": [Excerpt: Bobby "Blue" Bland, "I Pity the Fool"] But of course, that wasn't the only influence the Reverend C.L. Franklin had on the course of soul music. C.L. Franklin had grown up poor, on a Mississippi farm, and had not even finished grade school because he was needed to work behind the mule, ploughing the farm for his stepfather. But he had a fierce intelligence and became an autodidact, travelling regularly to the nearest library, thirty miles away, on a horse-drawn wagon, and reading everything he could get his hands on. At the age of sixteen he received what he believed to be a message from God, and decided to become an itinerant preacher. He would travel between many small country churches and build up audiences there -- and he would also study everyone else preaching there, analysing their sermons, seeing if he could anticipate their line of argument and get ahead of them, figuring out the structure. But unlike many people in the conservative Black Baptist churches of the time, he never saw the spiritual and secular worlds as incompatible. He saw blues music and Black church sermons as both being part of the same thing -- a Black culture and folklore that was worthy of respect in both its spiritual and secular aspects. He soon built up a small circuit of local churches where he would preach occasionally, but wasn't the main pastor at any of them. He got married aged twenty, though that marriage didn't last, and he seems to have been ambitious for a greater respectability. When that marriage failed, in June 1936, he married Barbara Siggers, a very intelligent, cultured, young single mother who had attended Booker T Washington High School, the best Black school in Memphis, and he adopted her son Vaughn. While he was mostly still doing churches in Mississippi, he took on one in Memphis as well, in an extremely poor area, but it gave him a foot in the door to the biggest Black city in the US. Barbara would later be called "one of the really great gospel singers" by no less than Mahalia Jackson. We don't have any recordings of Barbara singing, but Mahalia Jackson certainly knew what she was talking about when it came to great gospel singers: [Excerpt: Mahalia Jackson, "Precious Lord, Take My Hand"] Rev. Franklin was hugely personally ambitious, and he also wanted to get out of rural Mississippi, where the Klan were very active at this time, especially after his daughter Erma was born in 1938. They moved to Memphis in 1939, where he got a full-time position at New Salem Baptist Church, where for the first time he was able to earn a steady living from just one church and not have to tour round multiple churches. He soon became so popular that if you wanted to get a seat for the service at noon, you had to turn up for the 8AM Sunday School or you'd be forced to stand. He also enrolled for college courses at LeMoyne College. He didn't get a degree, but spent three years as a part-time student studying theology, literature, and sociology, and soon developed a liberal theology that was very different from the conservative fundamentalism he'd grown up in, though still very much part of the Baptist church. Where he'd grown up with a literalism that said the Bible was literally true, he started to accept things like evolution, and to see much of the Bible as metaphor. Now, we talked in the last episode about how impossible it is to get an accurate picture of the lives of religious leaders, because their life stories are told by those who admire them, and that's very much the case for C.L. Franklin. Franklin was a man who had many, many, admirable qualities -- he was fiercely intelligent, well-read, a superb public speaker, a man who was by all accounts genuinely compassionate towards those in need, and he became one of the leaders of the civil rights movement and inspired tens of thousands, maybe even millions, of people, directly and indirectly, to change the world for the better. He also raised several children who loved and admired him and were protective of his memory. And as such, there is an inevitable bias in the sources on Franklin's life. And so there's a tendency to soften the very worst things he did, some of which were very, very bad. For example in Nick Salvatore's biography of him, he talks about Franklin, in 1940, fathering a daughter with someone who is described as "a teenager" and "quite young". No details of her age other than that are given, and a few paragraphs later the age of a girl who was then sixteen *is* given, talking about having known the girl in question, and so the impression is given that the girl he impregnated was also probably in her late teens. Which would still be bad, but a man in his early twenties fathering a child with a girl in her late teens is something that can perhaps be forgiven as being a different time. But while the girl in question may have been a teenager when she gave birth, she was *twelve years old* when she became pregnant, by C.L. Franklin, the pastor of her church, who was in a position of power over her in multiple ways. Twelve years old. And this is not the only awful thing that Franklin did -- he was also known to regularly beat up women he was having affairs with, in public. I mention this now because everything else I say about him in this episode is filtered through sources who saw these things as forgivable character flaws in an otherwise admirable human being, and I can't correct for those biases because I don't know the truth. So it's going to sound like he was a truly great man. But bear those facts in mind. Barbara stayed with Franklin for the present, after discovering what he had done, but their marriage was a difficult one, and they split up and reconciled a handful of times. They had three more children together -- Cecil, Aretha, and Carolyn -- and remained together as Franklin moved on first to a church in Buffalo, New York, and then to New Bethel Church, in Detroit, on Hastings Street, a street which was the centre of Black nightlife in the city, as immortalised in John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillun": [Excerpt: John Lee Hooker, "Boogie Chillen"] Before moving to Detroit, Franklin had already started to get more political, as his congregation in Buffalo had largely been union members, and being free from the worst excesses of segregation allowed him to talk more openly about civil rights, but that only accelerated when he moved to Detroit, which had been torn apart just a couple of years earlier by police violence against Black protestors. Franklin had started building a reputation when in Memphis using radio broadcasts, and by the time he moved to Detroit he was able to command a very high salary, and not only that, his family were given a mansion by the church, in a rich part of town far away from most of his congregation. Smokey Robinson, who was Cecil Franklin's best friend and a frequent visitor to the mansion through most of his childhood, described it later, saying "Once inside, I'm awestruck -- oil paintings, velvet tapestries, silk curtains, mahogany cabinets filled with ornate objects of silver and gold. Man, I've never seen nothing like that before!" He made a lot of money, but he also increased church attendance so much that he earned that money. He had already been broadcasting on the radio, but when he started his Sunday night broadcasts in Detroit, he came up with a trick of having his sermons run long, so the show would end before the climax. People listening decided that they would have to start turning up in person to hear the end of the sermons, and soon he became so popular that the church would be so full that crowds would have to form on the street outside to listen. Other churches rescheduled their services so they wouldn't clash with Franklin's, and most of the other Black Baptist ministers in the city would go along to watch him preach. In 1948 though, a couple of years after moving to Detroit, Barbara finally left her husband. She took Vaughn with her and moved back to Buffalo, leaving the four biological children she'd had with C.L. with their father.  But it's important to note that she didn't leave her children -- they would visit her on a regular basis, and stay with her over school holidays. Aretha later said "Despite the fact that it has been written innumerable times, it is an absolute lie that my mother abandoned us. In no way, shape, form, or fashion did our mother desert us." Barbara's place in the home was filled by many women -- C.L. Franklin's mother moved up from Mississippi to help him take care of the children, the ladies from the church would often help out, and even stars like Mahalia Jackson would turn up and cook meals for the children. There were also the women with whom Franklin carried on affairs, including Anna Gordy, Ruth Brown, and Dinah Washington, the most important female jazz and blues singer of the fifties, who had major R&B hits with records like her version of "Cold Cold Heart": [Excerpt: Dinah Washington, "Cold Cold Heart"] Although my own favourite record of hers is "Big Long Slidin' Thing", which she made with arranger Quincy Jones: [Excerpt: Dinah Washington, "Big Long Slidin' Thing"] It's about a trombone. Get your minds out of the gutter. Washington was one of the biggest vocal influences on young Aretha, but the single biggest influence was Clara Ward, another of C.L. Franklin's many girlfriends. Ward was the longest-lasting of these, and there seems to have been a lot of hope on both her part and Aretha's that she and Rev. Franklin would marry, though Franklin always made it very clear that monogamy wouldn't suit him. Ward was one of the three major female gospel singers of the middle part of the century, and possibly even more technically impressive as a vocalist than the other two, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Mahalia Jackson. Where Jackson was an austere performer, who refused to perform in secular contexts at all for most of her life, and took herself and her music very seriously, and Tharpe was a raunchier, funnier, more down-to-earth performer who was happy to play for blues audiences and even to play secular music on occasion, Ward was a *glamorous* performer, who wore sequined dresses and piled her hair high on her head. Ward had become a singer in 1931 when her mother had what she later talked about as a religious epiphany, and decided she wasn't going to be a labourer any more, she was going to devote her life to gospel music. Ward's mother had formed a vocal group with her two daughters, and Clara quickly became the star and her mother's meal ticket -- and her mother was very possessive of that ticket, to the extent that Ward, who was a bisexual woman who mostly preferred men, had more relationships with women, because her mother wouldn't let her be alone with the men she was attracted to. But Ward did manage to keep a relationship going with C.L. Franklin, and Aretha Franklin talked about the moment she decided to become a singer, when she saw Ward singing "Peace in the Valley" at a funeral: [Excerpt: Clara Ward, "Peace in the Valley"] As well as looking towards Ward as a vocal influence, Aretha was also influenced by her as a person -- she became a mother figure to Aretha, who would talk later about watching Ward eat, and noting her taking little delicate bites, and getting an idea of what it meant to be ladylike from her. After Ward's death in 1973, a notebook was found in which she had written her opinions of other singers. For Aretha she wrote “My baby Aretha, she doesn't know how good she is. Doubts self. Some day—to the moon. I love that girl.” Ward's influence became especially important to Aretha and her siblings after their mother died of a heart attack a few years after leaving her husband, when Aretha was ten, and Aretha, already a very introverted child, became even more so. Everyone who knew Aretha said that her later diva-ish reputation came out of a deep sense of insecurity and introversion -- that she was a desperately private, closed-off, person who would rarely express her emotions at all, and who would look away from you rather than make eye contact. The only time she let herself express emotions was when she performed music. And music was hugely important in the Franklin household. Most preachers in the Black church at that time were a bit dismissive of gospel music, because they thought the music took away from their prestige -- they saw it as a necessary evil, and resented it taking up space when their congregations could have been listening to them. But Rev. Franklin was himself a rather good singer, and even made a few gospel records himself in 1950, recording for Joe Von Battle, who owned a record shop on Hastings Street and also put out records by blues singers: [Excerpt: C.L. Franklin, "I Am Climbing Higher Mountains" ] The church's musical director was James Cleveland, one of the most important gospel artists of the fifties and sixties, who sang with groups like the Caravans: [Excerpt: The Caravans, "What Kind of Man is This?" ] Cleveland, who had started out in the choir run by Thomas Dorsey, the writer of “Take My Hand Precious Lord” and “Peace in the Valley”, moved in with the Franklin family for a while, and he gave the girls tips on playing the piano -- much later he would play piano on Aretha's album Amazing Grace, and she said of him “He showed me some real nice chords, and I liked his deep, deep sound”. Other than Clara Ward, he was probably the single biggest musical influence on Aretha. And all the touring gospel musicians would make appearances at New Bethel Church, not least of them Sam Cooke, who first appeared there with the Highway QCs and would continue to do so after joining the Soul Stirrers: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers, "Touch the Hem of his Garment"] Young Aretha and her older sister Erma both had massive crushes on Cooke, and there were rumours that he had an affair with one or both of them when they were in their teens, though both denied it. Aretha later said "When I first saw him, all I could do was sigh... Sam was love on first hearing, love at first sight." But it wasn't just gospel music that filled the house. One of the major ways that C.L. Franklin's liberalism showed was in his love of secular music, especially jazz and blues, which he regarded as just as important in Black cultural life as gospel music. We already talked about Dinah Washington being a regular visitor to the house, but every major Black entertainer would visit the Franklin residence when they were in Detroit. Both Aretha and Cecil Franklin vividly remembered visits from Art Tatum, who would sit at the piano and play for the family and their guests: [Excerpt: Art Tatum, "Tiger Rag"] Tatum was such a spectacular pianist that there's now a musicological term, the tatum, named after him, for the smallest possible discernible rhythmic interval between two notes. Young Aretha was thrilled by his technique, and by that of Oscar Peterson, who also regularly came to the Franklin home, sometimes along with Ella Fitzgerald. Nat "King" Cole was another regular visitor. The Franklin children all absorbed the music these people -- the most important musicians of the time -- were playing in their home, and young Aretha in particular became an astonishing singer and also an accomplished pianist. Smokey Robinson later said: “The other thing that knocked us out about Aretha was her piano playing. There was a grand piano in the Franklin living room, and we all liked to mess around. We'd pick out little melodies with one finger. But when Aretha sat down, even as a seven-year-old, she started playing chords—big chords. Later I'd recognize them as complex church chords, the kind used to accompany the preacher and the solo singer. At the time, though, all I could do was view Aretha as a wonder child. Mind you, this was Detroit, where musical talent ran strong and free. Everyone was singing and harmonizing; everyone was playing piano and guitar. Aretha came out of this world, but she also came out of another far-off magical world none of us really understood. She came from a distant musical planet where children are born with their gifts fully formed.” C.L. Franklin became more involved in the music business still when Joe Von Battle started releasing records of his sermons, which had become steadily more politically aware: [Excerpt: C.L. Franklin, "Dry Bones in the Valley"] Franklin was not a Marxist -- he was a liberal, but like many liberals was willing to stand with Marxists where they had shared interests, even when it was dangerous. For example in 1954, at the height of McCarthyism, he had James and Grace Lee Boggs, two Marxist revolutionaries, come to the pulpit and talk about their support for the anti-colonial revolution in Kenya, and they sold four hundred copies of their pamphlet after their talk, because he saw that the struggle of Black Africans to get out from white colonial rule was the same struggle as that of Black Americans. And Franklin's powerful sermons started getting broadcast on the radio in areas further out from Detroit, as Chess Records picked up the distribution for them and people started playing the records on other stations. People like future Congressman John Lewis and the Reverend Jesse Jackson would later talk about listening to C.L. Franklin's records on the radio and being inspired -- a whole generation of Black Civil Rights leaders took their cues from him, and as the 1950s and 60s went on he became closer and closer to Martin Luther King in particular. But C.L. Franklin was always as much an ambitious showman as an activist, and he started putting together gospel tours, consisting mostly of music but with himself giving a sermon as the headline act. And he became very, very wealthy from these tours. On one trip in the south, his car broke down, and he couldn't find a mechanic willing to work on it. A group of white men started mocking him with racist terms, trying to provoke him, as he was dressed well and driving a nice car (albeit one that had broken down). Rather than arguing with them, he walked to a car dealership, and bought a new car with the cash that he had on him. By 1956 he was getting around $4000 per appearance, roughly equivalent to $43,000 today, and he was making a *lot* of appearances. He also sold half a million records that year. Various gospel singers, including the Clara Ward Singers, would perform on the tours he organised, and one of those performers was Franklin's middle daughter Aretha. Aretha had become pregnant when she was twelve, and after giving birth to the child she dropped out of school, but her grandmother did most of the child-rearing for her, while she accompanied her father on tour. Aretha's first recordings, made when she was just fourteen, show what an astonishing talent she already was at that young age. She would grow as an artist, of course, as she aged and gained experience, but those early gospel records already show an astounding maturity and ability. It's jaw-dropping to listen to these records of a fourteen-year-old, and immediately recognise them as a fully-formed Aretha Franklin. [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "There is a Fountain Filled With Blood"] Smokey Robinson's assessment that she was born with her gifts fully formed doesn't seem like an exaggeration when you hear that. For the latter half of the fifties, Aretha toured with her father, performing on the gospel circuit and becoming known there. But the Franklin sisters were starting to get ideas about moving into secular music. This was largely because their family friend Sam Cooke had done just that, with "You Send Me": [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "You Send Me"] Aretha and Erma still worshipped Cooke, and Aretha would later talk about getting dressed up just to watch Cooke appear on the TV. Their brother Cecil later said "I remember the night Sam came to sing at the Flame Show Bar in Detroit. Erma and Ree said they weren't going because they were so heartbroken that Sam had recently married. I didn't believe them. And I knew I was right when they started getting dressed about noon for the nine o'clock show. Because they were underage, they put on a ton of makeup to look older. It didn't matter 'cause Berry Gordy's sisters, Anna and Gwen, worked the photo concession down there, taking pictures of the party people. Anna was tight with Daddy and was sure to let my sisters in. She did, and they came home with stars in their eyes.” Moving from gospel to secular music still had a stigma against it in the gospel world, but Rev. Franklin had never seen secular music as sinful, and he encouraged his daughters in their ambitions. Erma was the first to go secular, forming a girl group, the Cleo-Patrettes, at the suggestion of the Four Tops, who were family friends, and recording a single for Joe Von Battle's J-V-B label, "No Other Love": [Excerpt: The Cleo-Patrettes, "No Other Love"] But the group didn't go any further, as Rev. Franklin insisted that his eldest daughter had to finish school and go to university before she could become a professional singer. Erma missed other opportunities for different reasons, though -- Berry Gordy, at this time still a jobbing songwriter, offered her a song he'd written with his sister and Roquel Davis, but Erma thought of herself as a jazz singer and didn't want to do R&B, and so "All I Could Do Was Cry" was given to Etta James instead, who had a top forty pop hit with it: [Excerpt: Etta James, "All I Could Do Was Cry"] While Erma's move into secular music was slowed by her father wanting her to have an education, there was no such pressure on Aretha, as she had already dropped out. But Aretha had a different problem -- she was very insecure, and said that church audiences "weren't critics, but worshippers", but she was worried that nightclub audiences in particular were just the kind of people who would just be looking for flaws, rather than wanting to support the performer as church audiences did. But eventually she got up the nerve to make the move. There was the possibility of her getting signed to Motown -- her brother was still best friends with Smokey Robinson, while the Gordy family were close to her father -- but Rev. Franklin had his eye on bigger things. He wanted her to be signed to Columbia, which in 1960 was the most prestigious of all the major labels. As Aretha's brother Cecil later said "He wanted Ree on Columbia, the label that recorded Mahalia Jackson, Duke Ellington, Johnny Mathis, Tony Bennett, Percy Faith, and Doris Day. Daddy said that Columbia was the biggest and best record company in the world. Leonard Bernstein recorded for Columbia." They went out to New York to see Phil Moore, a legendary vocal coach and arranger who had helped make Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge into stars, but Moore actually refused to take her on as a client, saying "She does not require my services. Her style has already been developed. Her style is in place. It is a unique style that, in my professional opinion, requires no alteration. It simply requires the right material. Her stage presentation is not of immediate concern. All that will come later. The immediate concern is the material that will suit her best. And the reason that concern will not be easily addressed is because I can't imagine any material that will not suit her." That last would become a problem for the next few years, but the immediate issue was to get someone at Columbia to listen to her, and Moore could help with that -- he was friends with John Hammond. Hammond is a name that's come up several times in the podcast already -- we mentioned him in the very earliest episodes, and also in episode ninety-eight, where we looked at his signing of Bob Dylan. But Hammond was a legend in the music business. He had produced sessions for Bessie Smith, had discovered Count Basie and Billie Holiday, had convinced Benny Goodman to hire Charlie Christian and Lionel Hampton, had signed Pete Seeger and the Weavers to Columbia, had organised the Spirituals to Swing concerts which we talked about in the first few episodes of this podcast, and was about to put out the first album of Robert Johnson's recordings. Of all the executives at Columbia, he was the one who had the greatest eye for talent, and the greatest understanding of Black musical culture. Moore suggested that the Franklins get Major Holley to produce a demo recording that he could get Hammond to listen to. Major Holley was a family friend, and a jazz bassist who had played with Oscar Peterson and Coleman Hawkins among others, and he put together a set of songs for Aretha that would emphasise the jazz side of her abilities, pitching her as a Dinah Washington style bluesy jazz singer. The highlight of the demo was a version of "Today I Sing the Blues", a song that had originally been recorded by Helen Humes, the singer who we last heard of recording “Be Baba Leba” with Bill Doggett: [Excerpt: Helen Humes, "Today I Sing the Blues"] That original version had been produced by Hammond, but the song had also recently been covered by Aretha's idol, Sam Cooke: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "Today I Sing the Blues"] Hammond was hugely impressed by the demo, and signed Aretha straight away, and got to work producing her first album. But he and Rev. Franklin had different ideas about what Aretha should do. Hammond wanted to make a fairly raw-sounding bluesy jazz album, the kind of recording he had produced with Bessie Smith or Billie Holiday, but Rev. Franklin wanted his daughter to make music that would cross over to the white pop market -- he was aiming for the same kind of audience that Nat "King" Cole or Harry Belafonte had, and he wanted her recording standards like "Over the Rainbow". This showed a lack of understanding on Rev. Franklin's part of how such crossovers actually worked at this point. As Etta James later said, "If you wanna have Black hits, you gotta understand the Black streets, you gotta work those streets and work those DJs to get airplay on Black stations... Or looking at it another way, in those days you had to get the Black audience to love the hell outta you and then hope the love would cross over to the white side. Columbia didn't know nothing 'bout crossing over.” But Hammond knew they had to make a record quickly, because Sam Cooke had been working on RCA Records, trying to get them to sign Aretha, and Rev. Franklin wanted an album out so they could start booking club dates for her, and was saying that if they didn't get one done quickly he'd take up that offer, and so they came up with a compromise set of songs which satisfied nobody, but did produce two R&B top ten hits, "Won't Be Long" and Aretha's version of "Today I Sing the Blues": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Today I Sing the Blues"] This is not to say that Aretha herself saw this as a compromise -- she later said "I have never compromised my material. Even then, I knew a good song from a bad one. And if Hammond, one of the legends of the business, didn't know how to produce a record, who does? No, the fault was with promotion." And this is something important to bear in mind as we talk about her Columbia records. Many, *many* people have presented those records as Aretha being told what to do by producers who didn't understand her art and were making her record songs that didn't fit her style. That's not what's happening with the Columbia records. Everyone actually involved said that Aretha was very involved in the choices made -- and there are some genuinely great tracks on those albums. The problem is that they're *unfocused*. Aretha was only eighteen when she signed to the label, and she loved all sorts of music -- blues, jazz, soul, standards, gospel, middle-of-the-road pop music -- and wanted to sing all those kinds of music. And she *could* sing all those kinds of music, and sing them well. But it meant the records weren't coherent. You didn't know what you were getting, and there was no artistic personality that dominated them, it was just what Aretha felt like recording. Around this time, Aretha started to think that maybe her father didn't know what he was talking about when it came to popular music success, even though she idolised him in most areas, and she turned to another figure, who would soon become both her husband and manager. Ted White. Her sister Erma, who was at that time touring with Lloyd Price, had introduced them, but in fact Aretha had first seen White years earlier, in her own house -- he had been Dinah Washington's boyfriend in the fifties, and her first sight of him had been carrying a drunk Washington out of the house after a party. In interviews with David Ritz, who wrote biographies of many major soul stars including both Aretha Franklin and Etta James, James had a lot to say about White, saying “Ted White was famous even before he got with Aretha. My boyfriend at the time, Harvey Fuqua, used to talk about him. Ted was supposed to be the slickest pimp in Detroit. When I learned that Aretha married him, I wasn't surprised. A lot of the big-time singers who we idolized as girls—like Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughan—had pimps for boyfriends and managers. That was standard operating procedure. My own mother had made a living turning tricks. When we were getting started, that way of life was part of the music business. It was in our genes. Part of the lure of pimps was that they got us paid." She compared White to Ike Turner, saying "Ike made Tina, no doubt about it. He developed her talent. He showed her what it meant to be a performer. He got her famous. Of course, Ted White was not a performer, but he was savvy about the world. When Harvey Fuqua introduced me to him—this was the fifties, before he was with Aretha—I saw him as a super-hip extra-smooth cat. I liked him. He knew music. He knew songwriters who were writing hit songs. He had manners. Later, when I ran into him and Aretha—this was the sixties—I saw that she wasn't as shy as she used to be." White was a pimp, but he was also someone with music business experience -- he owned an unsuccessful publishing company, and also ran a chain of jukeboxes. He was also thirty, while Aretha was only eighteen. But White didn't like the people in Aretha's life at the time -- he didn't get on well with her father, and he also clashed with John Hammond. And Aretha was also annoyed at Hammond, because her sister Erma had signed to Epic, a Columbia subsidiary, and was releasing her own singles: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Hello Again"] Aretha was certain that Hammond had signed Erma, even though Hammond had nothing to do with Epic Records, and Erma had actually been recommended by Lloyd Price. And Aretha, while for much of her career she would support her sister, was also terrified that her sister might have a big hit before her and leave Aretha in her shadow. Hammond was still the credited producer on Aretha's second album, The Electrifying Aretha Franklin, but his lack of say in the sessions can be shown in the choice of lead-off single. "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody" was originally recorded by Al Jolson in 1918: [Excerpt: Al Jolson, "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody"] Rev. Franklin pushed for the song, as he was a fan of Jolson -- Jolson, oddly, had a large Black fanbase, despite his having been a blackface performer, because he had *also* been a strong advocate of Black musicians like Cab Calloway, and the level of racism in the media of the twenties through forties was so astonishingly high that even a blackface performer could seem comparatively OK. Aretha's performance was good, but it was hardly the kind of thing that audiences were clamouring for in 1961: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody"] That single came out the month after _Down Beat_ magazine gave Aretha the "new-star female vocalist award", and it oddly made the pop top forty, her first record to do so, and the B-side made the R&B top ten, but for the next few years both chart success and critical acclaim eluded her. None of her next nine singles would make higher than number eighty-six on the Hot One Hundred, and none would make the R&B charts at all. After that transitional second album, she was paired with producer Bob Mersey, who was precisely the kind of white pop producer that one would expect for someone who hoped for crossover success. Mersey was the producer for many of Columbia's biggest stars at the time -- people like Barbra Streisand, Andy Williams, Julie Andrews, Patti Page, and Mel Tormé -- and it was that kind of audience that Aretha wanted to go for at this point. To give an example of the kind of thing that Mersey was doing, just the month before he started work on his first collaboration with Aretha, _The Tender, the Moving, the Swinging Aretha Franklin_, his production of Andy Williams singing "Moon River" was released: [Excerpt: Andy Williams, "Moon River"] This was the kind of audience Aretha was going for when it came to record sales – the person she compared herself to most frequently at this point was Barbra Streisand – though in live performances she was playing with a small jazz group in jazz venues, and going for the same kind of jazz-soul crossover audience as Dinah Washington or Ray Charles. The strategy seems to have been to get something like the success of her idol Sam Cooke, who could play to soul audiences but also play the Copacabana, but the problem was that Cooke had built an audience before doing that -- she hadn't. But even though she hadn't built up an audience, musicians were starting to pay attention. Ted White, who was still in touch with Dinah Washington, later said “Women are very catty. They'll see a girl who's dressed very well and they'll say, Yeah, but look at those shoes, or look at that hairdo. Aretha was the only singer I've ever known that Dinah had no negative comments about. She just stood with her mouth open when she heard Aretha sing.” The great jazz vocalist Carmen McRea went to see Aretha at the Village Vanguard in New York around this time, having heard the comparisons to Dinah Washington, and met her afterwards. She later said "Given how emotionally she sang, I expected her to have a supercharged emotional personality like Dinah. Instead, she was the shyest thing I've ever met. Would hardly look me in the eye. Didn't say more than two words. I mean, this bitch gave bashful a new meaning. Anyway, I didn't give her any advice because she didn't ask for any, but I knew goddamn well that, no matter how good she was—and she was absolutely wonderful—she'd have to make up her mind whether she wanted to be Della Reese, Dinah Washington, or Sarah Vaughan. I also had a feeling she wouldn't have minded being Leslie Uggams or Diahann Carroll. I remember thinking that if she didn't figure out who she was—and quick—she was gonna get lost in the weeds of the music biz." So musicians were listening to Aretha, even if everyone else wasn't. The Tender, the Moving, the Swinging Aretha Franklin, for example, was full of old standards like "Try a Little Tenderness": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Try a Little Tenderness"] That performance inspired Otis Redding to cut his own version of that song a few years later: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Try a Little Tenderness"] And it might also have inspired Aretha's friend and idol Sam Cooke to include the song in his own lounge sets. The Tender, the Moving, the Swinging Aretha Franklin also included Aretha's first original composition, but in general it wasn't a very well-received album. In 1963, the first cracks started to develop in Aretha's relationship with Ted White. According to her siblings, part of the strain was because Aretha's increasing commitment to the civil rights movement was costing her professional opportunities. Her brother Cecil later said "Ted White had complete sway over her when it came to what engagements to accept and what songs to sing. But if Daddy called and said, ‘Ree, I want you to sing for Dr. King,' she'd drop everything and do just that. I don't think Ted had objections to her support of Dr. King's cause, and he realized it would raise her visibility. But I do remember the time that there was a conflict between a big club gig and doing a benefit for Dr. King. Ted said, ‘Take the club gig. We need the money.' But Ree said, ‘Dr. King needs me more.' She defied her husband. Maybe that was the start of their marital trouble. Their thing was always troubled because it was based on each of them using the other. Whatever the case, my sister proved to be a strong soldier in the civil rights fight. That made me proud of her and it kept her relationship with Daddy from collapsing entirely." In part her increasing activism was because of her father's own increase in activity. The benefit that Cecil is talking about there is probably one in Chicago organised by Mahalia Jackson, where Aretha headlined on a bill that also included Jackson, Eartha Kitt, and the comedian Dick Gregory. That was less than a month before her father organised the Detroit Walk to Freedom, a trial run for the more famous March on Washington a few weeks later. The Detroit Walk to Freedom was run by the Detroit Council for Human Rights, which was formed by Rev. Franklin and Rev. Albert Cleage, a much more radical Black nationalist who often differed with Franklin's more moderate integrationist stance. They both worked together to organise the Walk to Freedom, but Franklin's stance predominated, as several white liberal politicians, like the Mayor of Detroit, Jerome Cavanagh, were included in the largely-Black March. It drew crowds of 125,000 people, and Dr. King called it "one of the most wonderful things that has happened in America", and it was the largest civil rights demonstration in American history up to that point. King's speech in Detroit was recorded and released on Motown Records: [Excerpt: Martin Luther King, "Original 'I Have a Dream' Speech”] He later returned to the same ideas in his more famous speech in Washington. During that civil rights spring and summer of 1963, Aretha also recorded what many think of as the best of her Columbia albums, a collection of jazz standards  called Laughing on the Outside, which included songs like "Solitude", "Ol' Man River" and "I Wanna Be Around": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Wanna Be Around"] The opening track, "Skylark", was Etta James' favourite ever Aretha Franklin performance, and is regarded by many as the definitive take on the song: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Skylark"] Etta James later talked about discussing the track with the great jazz singer Sarah Vaughan, one of Aretha's early influences, who had recorded her own version of the song: "Sarah said, ‘Have you heard of this Aretha Franklin girl?' I said, ‘You heard her do “Skylark,” didn't you?' Sarah said, ‘Yes, I did, and I'm never singing that song again.” But while the album got noticed by other musicians, it didn't get much attention from the wider public. Mersey decided that a change in direction was needed, and they needed to get in someone with more of a jazz background to work with Aretha. He brought in pianist and arranger Bobby Scott, who had previously worked with people like Lester Young, and Scott said of their first meeting “My first memory of Aretha is that she wouldn't look at me when I spoke. She withdrew from the encounter in a way that intrigued me. At first I thought she was just shy—and she was—but I also felt her reading me...For all her deference to my experience and her reluctance to speak up, when she did look me in the eye, she did so with a quiet intensity before saying, ‘I like all your ideas, Mr. Scott, but please remember I do want hits.'” They started recording together, but the sides they cut wouldn't be released for a few years. Instead, Aretha and Mersey went in yet another direction. Dinah Washington died suddenly in December 1963, and given that Aretha was already being compared to Washington by almost everyone, and that Washington had been a huge influence on her, as well as having been close to both her father and her husband/manager, it made sense to go into the studio and quickly cut a tribute album, with Aretha singing Washington's hits: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Cold Cold Heart"] Unfortunately, while Washington had been wildly popular, and one of the most important figures in jazz and R&B in the forties and fifties, her style was out of date. The tribute album, titled Unforgettable, came out in February 1964, the same month that Beatlemania hit the US. Dinah Washington was the past, and trying to position Aretha as "the new Dinah Washington" would doom her to obscurity. John Hammond later said "I remember thinking that if Aretha never does another album she will be remembered for this one. No, the problem was timing. Dinah had died, and, outside the black community, interest in her had waned dramatically. Popular music was in a radical and revolutionary moment, and that moment had nothing to do with Dinah Washington, great as she was and will always be.” At this point, Columbia brought in Clyde Otis, an independent producer and songwriter who had worked with artists like Washington and Sarah Vaughan, and indeed had written one of the songs on Unforgettable, but had also worked with people like Brook Benton, who had a much more R&B audience. For example, he'd written "Baby, You Got What It Takes" for Benton and Washington to do as a duet: [Excerpt: Brook Benton and Dinah Washington, "Baby, You Got What it Takes"] In 1962, when he was working at Mercury Records before going independent, Otis had produced thirty-three of the fifty-one singles the label put out that year that had charted. Columbia had decided that they were going to position Aretha firmly in the R&B market, and assigned Otis to do just that. At first, though, Otis had no more luck with getting Aretha to sing R&B than anyone else had. He later said "Aretha, though, couldn't be deterred from her determination to beat Barbra Streisand at Barbra's own game. I kept saying, ‘Ree, you can outsing Streisand any day of the week. That's not the point. The point is to find a hit.' But that summer she just wanted straight-up ballads. She insisted that she do ‘People,' Streisand's smash. Aretha sang the hell out of it, but no one's gonna beat Barbra at her own game." But after several months of this, eventually Aretha and White came round to the idea of making an R&B record. Otis produced an album of contemporary R&B, with covers of music from the more sophisticated end of the soul market, songs like "My Guy", "Every Little Bit Hurts", and "Walk on By", along with a few new originals brought in by Otis. The title track, "Runnin' Out of Fools", became her biggest hit in three years, making number fifty-seven on the pop charts and number thirty on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Runnin' Out of Fools"] After that album, they recorded another album with Otis producing, a live-in-the-studio jazz album, but again nobody involved could agree on a style for her. By this time it was obvious that she was unhappy with Columbia and would be leaving the label soon, and they wanted to get as much material in the can as they could, so they could continue releasing material after she left. But her working relationship with Otis was deteriorating -- Otis and Ted White did not get on, Aretha and White were having their own problems, and Aretha had started just not showing up for some sessions, with nobody knowing where she was. Columbia passed her on to yet another producer, this time Bob Johnston, who had just had a hit with Patti Page, "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte": [Excerpt: Patti Page, "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte"] Johnston was just about to hit an incredible hot streak as a producer. At the same time as his sessions with Aretha, he was also producing Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, and just after the sessions finished he'd go on to produce Simon & Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence album. In the next few years he would produce a run of classic Dylan albums like Blonde on Blonde, John Wesley Harding, and New Morning, Simon & Garfunkel's follow up Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme, Leonard Cohen's first three albums, and Johnny Cash's comeback with the Live at Folsom Prison album and its follow up At San Quentin. He also produced records for Marty Robbins, Flatt & Scruggs, the Byrds, and Burl Ives during that time period. But you may notice that while that's as great a run of records as any producer was putting out at the time, it has little to do with the kind of music that Aretha Franklin was making then, or would become famous with. Johnston produced a string-heavy session in which Aretha once again tried to sing old standards by people like Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern. She then just didn't turn up for some more sessions, until one final session in August, when she recorded songs like "Swanee" and "You Made Me Love You". For more than a year, she didn't go into a studio. She also missed many gigs and disappeared from her family's life for periods of time. Columbia kept putting out records of things she'd already recorded, but none of them had any success at all. Many of the records she'd made for Columbia had been genuinely great -- there's a popular perception that she was being held back by a record company that forced her to sing material she didn't like, but in fact she *loved* old standards, and jazz tunes, and contemporary pop at least as much as any other kind of music. Truly great musicians tend to have extremely eclectic tastes, and Aretha Franklin was a truly great musician if anyone was. Her Columbia albums are as good as any albums in those genres put out in that time period, and she remained proud of them for the rest of her life. But that very eclecticism had meant that she hadn't established a strong identity as a performer -- everyone who heard her records knew she was a great singer, but nobody knew what "an Aretha Franklin record" really meant -- and she hadn't had a single real hit, which was the thing she wanted more than anything. All that changed when in the early hours of the morning, Jerry Wexler was at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals recording a Wilson Pickett track -- from the timeline, it was probably the session for "Mustang Sally", which coincidentally was published by Ted White's publishing company, as Sir Mack Rice, the writer, was a neighbour of White and Franklin, and to which Aretha had made an uncredited songwriting contribution: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Mustang Sally"] Whatever the session, it wasn't going well. Percy Sledge, another Atlantic artist who recorded at Muscle Shoals, had turned up and had started winding Pickett up, telling him he sounded just like James Brown. Pickett *hated* Brown -- it seems like almost every male soul singer of the sixties hated James Brown -- and went to physically attack Sledge. Wexler got between the two men to protect his investments in them -- both were the kind of men who could easily cause some serious damage to anyone they hit -- and Pickett threw him to one side and charged at Sledge. At that moment the phone went, and Wexler yelled at the two of them to calm down so he could talk on the phone. The call was telling him that Aretha Franklin was interested in recording for Atlantic. Rev. Louise Bishop, later a Democratic politician in Pennsylvania, was at this time a broadcaster, presenting a radio gospel programme, and she knew Aretha. She'd been to see her perform, and had been astonished by Aretha's performance of a recent Otis Redding single, "Respect": [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Respect"] Redding will, by the way, be getting his own episode in a few months' time, which is why I've not covered the making of that record here. Bishop thought that Aretha did the song even better than Redding -- something Bishop hadn't thought possible. When she got talking to Aretha after the show, she discovered that her contract with Columbia was up, and Aretha didn't really know what she was going to do -- maybe she'd start her own label or something. She hadn't been into the studio in more than a year, but she did have some songs she'd been working on. Bishop was good friends with Jerry Wexler, and she knew that he was a big fan of Aretha's, and had been saying for a while that when her contract was up he'd like to sign her. Bishop offered to make the connection, and then went back home and phoned Wexler's wife, waking her up -- it was one in the morning by this point, but Bishop was accustomed to phoning Wexler late at night when it was something important. Wexler's wife then phoned him in Muscle Shoals, and he phoned Bishop back and made the arrangements to meet up. Initially, Wexler wasn't thinking about producing Aretha himself -- this was still the period when he and the Ertegun brothers were thinking of selling Atlantic and getting out of the music business, and so while he signed her to the label he was originally going to hand her over to Jim Stewart at Stax to record, as he had with Sam and Dave. But in a baffling turn of events, Jim Stewart didn't actually want to record her, and so Wexler determined that he had better do it himself. And he didn't want to do it with slick New York musicians -- he wanted to bring out the gospel sound in her voice, and he thought the best way to do that was with musicians from what Charles Hughes refers to as "the country-soul triangle" of Nashville, Memphis, and Muscle Shoals. So he booked a week's worth of sessions at FAME studios, and got in FAME's regular rhythm section, plus a couple of musicians from American Recordings in Memphis -- Chips Moman and Spooner Oldham. Oldham's friend and songwriting partner Dan Penn came along as well -- he wasn't officially part of the session, but he was a fan of Aretha's and wasn't going to miss this. Penn had been the first person that Rick Hall, the owner of FAME, had called when Wexler had booked the studio, because Hall hadn't actually heard of Aretha Franklin up to that point, but didn't want to let Wexler know that. Penn had assured him that Aretha was one of the all-time great talents, and that she just needed the right production to become massive. As Hall put it in his autobiography, "Dan tended in those days to hate anything he didn't write, so I figured if he felt that strongly about her, then she was probably going to be a big star." Charlie Chalmers, a horn player who regularly played with these musicians, was tasked with putting together a horn section. The first song they recorded that day was one that the musicians weren't that impressed with at first. "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)" was written by a songwriter named Ronnie Shannon, who had driven from Georgia to Detroit hoping to sell his songs to Motown. He'd popped into a barber's shop where Ted White was having his hair cut to ask for directions to Motown, and White had signed him to his own publishing company and got him to write songs for Aretha. On hearing the demo, the musicians thought that the song was mediocre and a bit shapeless: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You) (demo)"] But everyone there was agreed that Aretha herself was spectacular. She didn't speak much to the musicians, just went to the piano and sat down and started playing, and Jerry Wexler later compared her playing to Thelonius Monk (who was indeed one of the jazz musicians who had influenced her). While Spooner Oldham had been booked to play piano, it was quickly decided to switch him to electric piano and organ, leaving the acoustic piano for Aretha to play, and she would play piano on all the sessions Wexler produced for her in future. Although while Wexler is the credited producer (and on this initial session Rick Hall at FAME is a credited co-producer), everyone involved, including Wexler, said that the musicians were taking their cues from Aretha rather than anyone else. She would outline the arrangements at the piano, and everyone else would fit in with what she was doing, coming up with head arrangements directed by her. But Wexler played a vital role in mediating between her and the musicians and engineering staff, all of whom he knew and she didn't. As Rick Hall said "After her brief introduction by Wexler, she said very little to me or anyone else in the studio other than Jerry or her husband for the rest of the day. I don't think Aretha and I ever made eye contact after our introduction, simply because we were both so totally focused on our music and consumed by what we were doing." The musicians started working on "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)", and at first found it difficult to get the groove, but then Oldham came up with an electric piano lick which everyone involved thought of as the key that unlocked the song for them: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)"] After that, they took a break. Most of them were pleased with the track, though Rick Hall wasn't especially happy. But then Rick Hall wasn't especially happy about anything at that point. He'd always used mono for his recordings until then, but had been basically forced to install at least a two-track system by Tom Dowd, Atlantic's chief engineer, and was resentful of this imposition. During the break, Dan Penn went off to finish a song he and Spooner Oldham had been writing, which he hoped Aretha would record at the session: [Excerpt: Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham, "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man"] They had the basic structure of the song down, but hadn't quite finished the middle eight, and both Jerry Wexler and Aretha Franklin chipped in uncredited lyrical contributions -- Aretha's line was "as long as we're together baby, you'd better show some respect to me". Penn, Oldham, Chips Moman, Roger Hawkins, and Tommy Cogbill started cutting a backing track for the song, with Penn singing lead initially with the idea that Aretha would overdub her vocal. But while they were doing this, things had been going wrong with the other participants. All the FAME and American rhythm section players were white, as were Wexler, Hall, and Dowd, and Wexler had been very aware of this, and of the fact that they were recording in Alabama, where Aretha and her husband might not feel totally safe, so he'd specifically requested that the horn section at least contain some Black musicians. But Charlie Chalmers hadn't been able to get any of the Black musicians he would normally call when putting together a horn section, and had ended up with an all-white horn section as well, including one player, a trumpet player called Ken Laxton, who had a reputation as a good player but had never worked with any of the other musicians there -- he was an outsider in a group of people who regularly worked together and had a pre-existing relationship. As the two outsiders, Laxton and Ted White had, at first, bonded, and indeed had started drinking vodka together, passing a bottle between themselves, in a way that Rick Hall would normally not allow in a session -- at the time, the county the studio was in was still a dry county. But as Wexler said, “A redneck patronizing a Black man is a dangerous camaraderie,” and White and Laxton soon had a major falling out. Everyone involved tells a different story about what it was that caused them to start rowing, though it seems to have been to do with Laxton not showing the proper respect for Aretha, or even actually sexually assaulting her -- Dan Penn later said “I always heard he patted her on the butt or somethin', and what would have been wrong with that anyway?”, which says an awful lot about the attitudes of these white Southern men who thought of themselves as very progressive, and were -- for white Southern men in early 1967. Either way, White got very, very annoyed, and insisted that Laxton get fired from the session, which he was, but that still didn't satisfy White, and he stormed off to the motel, drunk and angry. The rest of them finished cutting a basic track for "Do Right Woman", but nobody was very happy with it. Oldham said later “She liked the song but hadn't had time to practice it or settle into it I remember there was Roger playing the drums and Cogbill playing the bass. And I'm on these little simplistic chords on organ, just holding chords so the song would be understood. And that was sort of where it was left. Dan had to sing the vocal, because she didn't know the song, in the wrong key for him. That's what they left with—Dan singing the wrong-key vocal and this little simplistic organ and a bass and a drum. We had a whole week to do everything—we had plenty of time—so there was no hurry to do anything in particular.” Penn was less optimistic, saying "But as I rem

Thank you for reading Broadway Drumming 101. This post is public, so feel free to share it.Born in Manhattan and raised in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, Clint de Ganon was six years old when he started drum lessons. Clint studied drumset with many great teachers in high school, including the great Sonny Igo and Gary Chester.After moving to NYC, Clint met bassist Gordon Edwards at a jam session at Mikell's. Gordon introduced Clint to Cornell Dupree. This meeting led to many opportunities to perform and record with an incredible list of artists; Cissy Houston, Brooke Benton, Jon Tropea, The Manhattan Transfer, The Fab Faux, Lloyd Price, Bob James, Chuck Loeb, Michael Franks, Will Lee, Hiram Bullock, Blood, Sweat, & Tears, Stuff, Tom Scott, Liza Minnelli, Phoebe Snow, Tony Conniff, Christopher Cross, The Blues Brothers, Take 6, Renée Fleming, Paula Cole, Donovan, Elvis Costello, Dionne Warwick, Jimmy Buffet and the great Billy Preston.Clint enjoys guesting every season with the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall and occasionally with the Houston Symphony. He has performed with dozens of orchestras over the years, including the Boston Pops, the National Symphony, the LA Phil, the Baltimore Symphony, the Colorado Symphony, and many others.For several seasons now, Clint has played drums for the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. He was recently cast to be on-camera, where he can be seen in several episodes of the show's fifth & final season. Other TV and movie appearances include Halston, Letterman, The View, Good Morning America, My Crazy Ex-GF, & Saturday Night Live.Clint was recently honored to be the drummer on the new Stephen Spielberg remake of “West Side Story and made a brief appearance in the movie too!Clint held the drum chair for 13 Broadway musicals; “Beautiful,” “Hairspray,” “Catch Me If You Can,” “Bonnie & Clyde,” “Footloose,” “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “Rocky Horror Live,” and many others. He originated the drum books for 9 of these shows and played drums on the movie “Hairspray” and the tv show “Hairspray Live.”Clint proudly endorses Yamaha Drums, Zildjian Cymbals, Promark Drumsticks, & Attack drum heads.To continue producing the high-quality podcasts you're listening to, publishing engaging newsletter content, and posting YouTube videos, and we would appreciate any financial contributions you can make. At this time, we have no advertisers, and we'd like to keep it that way. Our staff is small but growing. We can only produce this show with listener contributions from people like you!There are a couple of ways you can do that:You can sign up to be a monthly or annual subscriber here:Contribute through PayPal at PayPal.Me/broadwaydrumming101Donate with Venmo: @broadwaydrumming101Or help keep us caffeinated by buying us a cup of coffee (or a week's worth) at buymeacoffee.com/BD101We appreciate any support you can give!Clayton Craddock hosts the Broadway Drumming 101 Podcast and Newsletter. He has held the drum chair in several hit broadway and off-broadway musicals, including Tick, tick…BOOM!, Altar Boyz, Memphis The Musical, Lady Day At Emerson's Bar and Grill and Ain't Too Proud.The Broadway Drumming 101 Instagram page: InstagramThe Broadway Drumming 101 YouTube page: YouTubeFor more about Clayton, click HERE Get full access to Broadway Drumming 101 at broadwaydrumming101.substack.com/subscribe

Born in Manhattan and raised in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, Clint de Ganon was six years old when he started drum lessons. Clint studied drumset with many great teachers in high school, including the great Sonny Igo and Gary Chester. After moving to NYC, Clint met bassist Gordon Edwards at a jam session at Mikell's. Gordon introduced Clint to Cornell Dupree. This meeting led to many opportunities to perform and record with an incredible list of artists; Cissy Houston, Brooke Benton, Jon Tropea, The Manhattan Transfer, The Fab Faux, Lloyd Price, Bob James, Chuck Loeb, Michael Franks, Will Lee, Hiram Bullock, Blood, Sweat, & Tears, Stuff, Tom Scott, Liza Minnelli, Phoebe Snow, Tony Conniff, Christopher Cross, The Blues Brothers, Take 6, Renée Fleming, Paula Cole, Donovan, Elvis Costello, Dionne Warwick, Jimmy Buffet and the great Billy Preston. Clint enjoys guesting every season with the New York Pops at Carnegie Hall and occasionally with the Houston Symphony. He has performed with dozens of orchestras over the years, including the Boston Pops, the National Symphony, the LA Phil, the Baltimore Symphony, the Colorado Symphony, and many others.For several seasons now, Clint has played drums for the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. He was recently cast to be on-camera, where he can be seen in several episodes of the show's fifth & final season. Other TV and movie appearances include Halston, Letterman, The View, Good Morning America, My Crazy Ex-GF, & Saturday Night Live.Clint was recently honored to be the drummer on the new Stephen Spielberg remake of “West Side Story and made a brief appearance in the actual movie too! Clint held the drum chair for 13 Broadway musicals; “Beautiful,” “Hairspray,” “Catch Me If You Can,” “Bonnie & Clyde,” “Footloose,” “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “Rocky Horror Live,” and many others. He originated the drum books for 9 of these shows and played drums on the movie “Hairspray” and the tv show “Hairspray Live.”Clint proudly endorses Yamaha Drums, Zildjian Cymbals, Promark Drumsticks, & Attack drum heads.To continue the high-quality content flowing into your email inbox, we would appreciate any financial contributions you can make. If you'd like to become a voluntarily paid subscriber, click this red button and sign up to be a monthly or annual subscriber – or, if you are feeling super generous, be a Founding Member:You can also contribute ANY amount you wish by using these methods.* Buy me a cup of coffee (or a week's worth) by clicking here.* Check: send a simple email to broadwaydrumming101@substack.com and ask where you can send that glorious piece of paper.• PayPal. PayPal.Me/broadwaydrumming101• Venmo: @broadwaydrumming101I appreciate your support!Clayton Craddock hosts the Broadway Drumming 101 Podcast and Newsletter. He has held the drum chair in several hit broadway and off-broadway musicals, including Tick, tick…BOOM!, Altar Boyz, Memphis The Musical, Lady Day At Emerson's Bar and Grill and Ain't Too Proud.The Broadway Drumming 101 Instagram page: InstagramThe Broadway Drumming 101 YouTube page: YouTubeFor more about Clayton, click HERE Get full access to Broadway Drumming 101 at broadwaydrumming101.substack.com/subscribe

"The Rumble in the Jungle" featured heavyweight boxing legends, Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, but they were not the only legends who gathered in Zaire in the fall of 1974. The music festival known as Zaire '74 brought African and African American music icons such as B.B. King, Bill Withers, Manu Dibango, and the Godfather of Soul, James Brown together in what Lloyd Price envisioned as a day "the beat would return to its roots." This episode of For the Record: The 70s examines the importance of both the fight and the music festival in an era when Ali and many of the musicians who performed in Zaire were at turning points in their careers. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/amy-lively/message

Jeffrey Madoff is the founder of Madoff Productions, based in New York City. A gifted storyteller and incisive interviewer, Jeff has used those talents to help position major brands such as Ralph Lauren, Victoria's Secret, Radio City Music Hall, and the Harvard School for Public Health.  Jeff began his career as a fashion designer. He was chosen one of the top 10 designers in the U.S. then switched careers to film and video production. He has since expanded his reach to include teaching, book and playwriting, and theatrical producing.  He is an adjunct professor at Parsons School for Design, teaching a course he developed called “Creativity: Making a Living with Your Ideas”. Every week Madoff has a conversation with a guest from a wide variety of fields, from artists and entrepreneurs to venture capitalists and business leaders. The book about his class, “Creative Careers: Making a Living with Your Ideas”, was published by Hachette in 2019. The podcast launched in 2021.  Jeff has recently been a guest on The Tim Ferriss Show and Entrepreneurs on Fire with John Lee Dumas. He has also been a featured speaker at Wharton School, NYU Steinhardt, North Carolina State, SXSW Brazil, Google Next and many others.  He has written and is producing a play based on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame legend, Lloyd Price. CONNECT WITH JEFF Email: Jeff@MadoffProductions.com Web: ACreativeCareer.com Web: MadoffProductions.com LinkedIn: /B-Jeffrey-Madoff-5baa8074 Instagram: @ACreativecareer

Episode 134 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “In the Midnight Hour", the links between Stax, Atlantic, and Detroit, and the career of Wilson Pickett. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a fifteen-minute bonus episode available, on "Mercy Mercy" by Don Covay. 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/ Errata I say “After Arthur Alexander had moved on to Monument Records” – I meant to say “Dot Records” here, the label that Alexander moved to *before* Monument. I also misspeak at one point and say "keyboard player Chips Moman", when I mean to say "keyboard player Spooner Oldham". This is correct in the transcript/script, I just misread it. Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by Pickett. The main resource I used for the biographical details of Wilson Pickett was In the Midnight Hour: The Life and Soul of Wilson Pickett. Information about Stax comes primarily from two books: Soulsville USA: The Story of Stax by Rob Bowman, and Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion by Robert Gordon. Country Soul by Charles L Hughes is a great overview of the soul music made in Muscle Shoals, Memphis, and Nashville in the sixties. The episodes of Cocaine and Rhinestones I reference are the ones on Owen Bradley and the Nashville A-Team. And information on the Falcons comes from Marv Goldberg. Pickett's complete Atlantic albums can be found in this excellent ten-CD set. For those who just want the hits, this single-CD compilation is significantly cheaper. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A quick note before I start, just to say that this episode contains some discussion of domestic abuse, drug use, and abuse of employees by their employer, and one mention of an eating disorder. Also, this episode is much longer than normal, because we've got a lot to fit in. Today we're going to move away from Motown, and have a look at a record recorded in the studios of their great rival Stax records, though not released on that label. But the record we're going to look at is from an artist who was a bridge between the Detroit soul of Motown and the southern soul of Stax, an artist who had a foot in both camps, and whose music helped to define soul while also being closer than that of any other soul man to the music made by the white rock musicians of the period. We're going to look at Stax, and Muscle Shoals, and Atlantic Records, and at Wilson Pickett and "In the Midnight Hour" [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett: "In the Midnight Hour"] Wilson Pickett never really had a chance. His father, Wilson senior, was known in Alabama for making moonshine whisky, and spent time in prison for doing just that -- and his young son was the only person he told the location of his still. Eventually, Wilson senior moved to Detroit to start earning more money, leaving his family at home at first. Wilson junior and his mother moved up to Detroit to be with his father, but they had to leave his older siblings in Alabama, and his mother would shuttle between Michigan and Alabama, trying vainly to look after all her children. Eventually, Wilson's mother got pregnant while she was down in Alabama, which broke up his parents' marriage, and Wilson moved back down to Alabama permanently, to live on a farm with his mother. But he never got on with his mother, who was physically abusive to him -- as he himself would later be to his children, and to his partners, and to his bandmates. The one thing that Wilson did enjoy about his life in Alabama was the gospel music, and he became particularly enamoured of two gospel singers, Archie Brownlee of the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi: [Excerpt: The Mississippi Blind Boys, "Will My Jesus Be Waiting?"] And Julius Cheeks of the Sensational Nightingales: [Excerpt: The Sensational Nightingales, "God's World Will Never Pass Away"] Wilson determined to become a gospel singer himself, but he couldn't stand living with his mother in rural Alabama, and decided to move up to be with his father and his father's new girlfriend in Detroit.  Once he moved to Detroit, he started attending Northwestern High School, which at the time was also being attended by Norman Whitfield, Florence Ballard, and Melvin Franklin. Pickett also became friendly with Aretha Franklin, though she didn't attend the same school -- she went to school at Northern, with Smokey Robinson -- and he started attending services at New Bethel Church, the church where her father preached. This was partly because Rev. Franklin was one of the most dynamic preachers around, but also because New Bethel Church would regularly feature performances by the most important gospel performers of the time -- Pickett saw the Soul Stirrers perform there, with Sam Cooke singing lead, and of course also saw Aretha singing there. He joined a few gospel groups, first joining one called the Sons of Zion, but he was soon poached by a more successful group, the Violinaires. It was with the Violinaires that he made what is almost certainly his first recording -- a track that was released as a promo single, but never got a wide release at the time: [Excerpt: The Violinaires, "Sign of the Judgement"] The Violinaires were only moderately successful on the gospel circuit, but Pickett was already sure he was destined for bigger things. He had a rivalry with David Ruffin, in particular, constantly mocking Ruffin and saying that he would never amount to anything, while Wilson Pickett was the greatest. But after a while, he realised that gospel wasn't where he was going to make his mark. Partly his change in direction was motivated by financial concern -- he'd physically attacked his father and been kicked out of his home, and he was also married while still a teenager, and had a kid who needed feeding. But also, he was aware of a certain level of hypocrisy among his more religious acquaintances. Aretha Franklin had two kids, aged only sixteen, and her father, the Reverend Franklin, had fathered a child with a twelve-year-old, was having an affair with the gospel singer Clara Ward, and was hanging around blues clubs all the time. Most importantly, he realised that the audiences he was singing to in church on Sunday morning were mostly still drunk from Saturday night. As he later put it "I might as well be singing rock 'n' roll as singing to a drunken audience. I might as well make me some money." And this is where the Falcons came in. The Falcons were a doo-wop group that had been formed by a Black singer, Eddie Floyd, and a white singer, Bob Manardo. They'd both recruited friends, including bass singer Willie Schofield, and after performing locally they'd decided to travel to Chicago to audition for Mercury Records. When they got there, they found that you couldn't audition for Mercury in Chicago, you had to go to New York, but they somehow persuaded the label to sign them anyway -- in part because an integrated group was an unusual thing. They recorded one single for Mercury, produced by Willie Dixon who was moonlighting from Chess: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "Baby That's It"] But then Manardo was drafted, and the group's other white member, Tom Shetler, decided to join up along with him. The group went through some other lineup changes, and ended up as Eddie Floyd, Willie Schofield, Mack Rice, guitarist Lance Finnie, and lead singer Joe Stubbs, brother of Levi. The group released several singles on small labels owned by their manager, before having a big hit with "You're So Fine", the record we heard about them recording last episode: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "You're So Fine"] That made number two on the R&B charts and number seventeen on the pop charts. They recorded several follow-ups, including "Just For Your Love", which made number 26 on the R&B charts: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "Just For Your Love"] To give you some idea of just how interrelated all the different small R&B labels were at this point, that was originally recorded and released on Chess records. But as Roquel Davis was at that point working for Chess, he managed to get the rights to reissue it on Anna Records, the label he co-owned with the Gordy sisters -- and the re-released record was distributed by Gone Records, one of George Goldner's labels. The group also started to tour supporting Marv Johnson. But Willie Schofield was becoming dissatisfied. He'd written "You're So Fine", but he'd only made $500 from what he was told was a million-selling record. He realised that in the music business, the real money was on the business side, not the music side, so while staying in the Falcons he decided he was going to go into management too. He found the artist he was going to manage while he was walking to his car, and heard somebody in one of the buildings he passed singing Elmore James' then-current blues hit "The Sky is Crying": [Excerpt: Elmore James, "The Sky is Crying"] The person he heard singing that song, and accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, was of course Wilson Pickett, and Schofield signed him up to a management contract -- and Pickett was eager to sign, knowing that Schofield was a successful performer himself. The intention was at first that Schofield would manage Pickett as a solo performer, but then Joe Stubbs got ideas above his station, and started insisting that the group be called "Joe Stubbs and the Falcons", which put the others' backs up, and soon Stubbs was out of the group. This experience may have been something that his brother later had in mind -- in the late sixties, when Motown started trying to promote groups as Lead Singer and The Group, Levi Stubbs always refused to allow his name to go in front of the Four Tops. So the Falcons were without a lead singer. They tried a few other singers in their circle, including Marvin Gaye, but were turned down. So in desperation, they turned to Pickett. This wasn't a great fit -- the group, other than Schofield, thought that Pickett was "too Black", both in that he had too much gospel in his voice, and literally in that he was darker-skinned than the rest of the group (something that Schofield, as someone who was darker than the rest of the group but less dark than Pickett, took offence at). Pickett, in turn, thought that the Falcons were too poppy, and not really the kind of thing he was at all interested in doing. But they were stuck with each other, and had to make the most of it, even though Pickett's early performances were by all accounts fairly dreadful. He apparently came in in the wrong key on at least one occasion, and another time froze up altogether and couldn't sing. Even when he did sing, and in tune, he had no stage presence, and he later said “I would trip up, fall on the stage and the group would rehearse me in the dressing room after every show. I would get mad, ‘cos I wanted to go out and look at the girls as well! They said, ‘No, you got to rehearse, Oscar.' They called me Oscar. I don't know why they called me Oscar, I didn't like that very much.” Soon, Joe Stubbs was back in the group, and there was talk of the group getting rid of Pickett altogether. But then they went into the studio to record a song that Sam Cooke had written for the group, "Pow! You're in Love". The song had been written for Stubbs to sing, but at the last minute they decided to give Pickett the lead instead: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "Pow! You're in Love"] Pickett was now secure as the group's lead singer, but the group weren't having any success with records. They were, though, becoming a phenomenal live act -- so much so that on one tour, where James Brown was the headliner, Brown tried to have the group kicked off the bill, because he felt that Pickett was stealing his thunder. Eventually, the group's manager set up his own record label, Lu Pine Records, which would become best known as the label that released the first record by the Primettes, who later became the Supremes.  Lu Pine released the Falcons' single "I Found a Love",   after the group's management had first shopped it round to other labels to try to get them to put it out: [Excerpt: The Falcons, "I Found a Love"] That song, based on the old Pentecostal hymn "Yes Lord", was written by Pickett and Schofield, but the group's manager, Robert West, also managed to get his name on the credits. The backing group, the Ohio Untouchables, would later go on to become better known as The Ohio Players. One of the labels that had turned that record down was Atlantic Records, because Jerry Wexler hadn't heard any hit potential in the song. But then the record started to become successful locally, and Wexler realised his mistake. He got Lu Pine to do a distribution deal with Atlantic, giving Atlantic full rights to the record, and it became a top ten R&B hit. But by this point, Pickett was sick of working with the Falcons, and he'd decided to start trying for a solo career. His first solo single was on the small label Correc-Tone, and was co-produced by Robert Bateman, and featured the Funk Brothers as instrumental backing, and the Primettes on vocals. I've seen some claims that the Andantes are on there too, but I can't make them out -- but I can certainly make out the future Supremes: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Let Me Be Your Boy"] That didn't do anything, and Pickett kept recording with the Falcons for a while, as well as putting out his solo records. But then Willie Schofield got drafted, and the group split up. Their manager hired another group, The Fabulous Playboys, to be a new Falcons group, but in 1964 he got shot in a dispute over the management of Mary Wells, and had to give up working in the music industry. Pickett's next single, which he co-wrote with Robert Bateman and Sonny Schofield, was to be the record that changed his career forever. "If You Need Me" once again featured the Funk Brothers and the Andantes, and was recorded for Correc-Tone: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "If You Need Me"] Jerry Wexler was again given the opportunity to put the record out on Atlantic, and once again decided against it. Instead, he offered to buy the song's publishing, and he got Solomon Burke to record it, in a version produced by Bert Berns: [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "If You Need Me"] Burke wasn't fully aware, when he cut that version, that Wilson Pickett, who was his friend, had recorded his own version. He became aware, though, when Double-L Records, a label co-owned by Lloyd Price, bought the Correc-Tone master and released Pickett's version nationally, at the same time as Burke's version came out. The two men were annoyed that they'd been put into unwitting competition, and so started an unofficial nonaggression pact -- every time Burke was brought into a radio station to promote his record, he'd tell the listeners that he was there to promote Wilson Pickett's new single. Meanwhile, when Pickett went to radio stations, he'd take the opportunity to promote the new record he'd written for his good friend Solomon Burke, which the listeners should definitely check out. The result was that both records became hits -- Pickett's scraped the lower reaches of the R&B top thirty, while Burke, as he was the bigger star, made number two on the R&B chart and got into the pop top forty. Pickett followed it up with a soundalike, "It's Too Late", which managed to make the R&B top ten as there was no competition from Burke. At this point, Jerry Wexler realised that he'd twice had the opportunity to release a record with Wilson Pickett singing, twice he'd turned the chance down, and twice the record had become a hit. He realised that it was probably a good idea to sign Pickett directly to Atlantic and avoid missing out. He did check with Pickett if Pickett was annoyed about the Solomon Burke record -- Pickett's response was "I need the bread", and Wilson Pickett was now an Atlantic artist. This was at the point when Atlantic was in something of a commercial slump -- other than the records Bert Berns was producing for the Drifters and Solomon Burke, they were having no hits, and they were regarded as somewhat old-fashioned, rooted in a version of R&B that still showed its roots in jazz, rather than the new sounds that were taking over the industry in the early sixties. But they were still a bigger label than anything else Pickett had recorded for, and he seized the opportunity to move into the big time. To start with, Atlantic teamed Pickett up with someone who seemed like the perfect collaborator -- Don Covay, a soul singer and songwriter who had his roots in hard R&B and gospel music but had written hits for people like Chubby Checker.  The two got together and recorded a song they wrote together, "I'm Gonna Cry (Cry Baby)": [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "I'm Gonna Cry (Cry Baby)"] That did nothing commercially -- and gallingly for Pickett, on the same day, Atlantic released a single Covay had written for himself, "Mercy Mercy", and that ended up going to number one on the R&B chart and making the pop top forty. As "I'm Gonna Cry" didn't work out, Atlantic decided to try to change tack, and paired Pickett with their established hitmaker Bert Berns, and a duet partner, Tami Lyn, for what Pickett would later describe as "one of the weirdest sessions on me I ever heard in my life", a duet on a Mann and Weil song, "Come Home Baby": [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett and Tami Lyn, "Come Home Baby"] Pickett later said of that track, "it didn't sell two records", but while it wasn't a hit, it was very popular among musicians -- a few months later Mick Jagger would produce a cover version of it on Immediate Records, with Ronnie Wood, Keith Richards, and the Georgie Fame brass section backing a couple of unknown singers: [Excerpt: Rod Stewart and P.P. Arnold, "Come Home Baby"] Sadly for Rod Stewart and P.P. Arnold, that didn't get past being issued as a promotional record, and never made it to the shops. Meanwhile, Pickett went out on tour again, substituting on a package tour for Clyde McPhatter, who had to drop out when his sister died. Also on the tour was Pickett's old bandmate from the Falcons, Mack Rice, now performing as Sir Mack Rice, who was promoting a single he'd just released on a small label, which had been produced by Andre Williams. The song had originally been called "Mustang Mama", but Aretha Franklin had suggested he call it "Mustang Sally" instead: [Excerpt: Sir Mack Rice, "Mustang Sally"] Pickett took note of the song, though he didn't record it just yet -- and in the meantime, the song was picked up by the white rock group The Young Rascals, who released their version as the B-side of their number one hit, "Good Lovin'": [Excerpt: The Young Rascals, "Mustang Sally"] Atlantic's problems with having hits weren't only problems with records they made themselves -- they were also having trouble getting any big hits with Stax records. As we discussed in the episode on "Green Onions", Stax were being distributed by Atlantic, and in 1963 they'd had a minor hit with "These Arms of Mine" by Otis Redding: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "These Arms of Mine"] But throughout 1964, while the label had some R&B success with its established stars, it had no real major breakout hits, and it seemed to be floundering a bit -- it wasn't doing as badly as Atlantic itself, but it wasn't doing wonderfully. It wasn't until the end of the year when the label hit on what would become its defining sound, when for the first time Redding collaborated with Stax studio guitarist and producer Steve Cropper on a song: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "Mr. Pitiful"] That record would point the way towards Redding's great artistic triumphs of the next couple of years, which we'll look at in a future episode. But it also pointed the way towards a possible future sound for Atlantic. Atlantic had signed a soul duo, Sam & Dave, who were wonderful live performers but who had so far not managed to translate those live performances to record. Jerry Wexler thought that perhaps Steve Cropper could help them do that, and made a suggestion to Jim Stewart at Stax -- Atlantic would loan out Sam & Dave to the label. They'd remain signed to Atlantic, but make their records at Stax studios, and they'd be released as Stax records. Their first single for Stax, "A Place Nobody Can Find", was produced by Cropper, and was written by Stax songwriter Dave Porter: [Excerpt: Sam and Dave, "A Place Nobody Can Find"] That wasn't a hit, but soon Porter would start collaborating with another songwriter, Isaac Hayes, and would write a string of hits for the duo. But in order to formalise the loan-out of Sam and Dave, Atlantic also wanted to formalise their arrangement with Stax. Previously they'd operated on a handshake basis -- Wexler and Stewart had a mutual respect, and they simply agreed that Stax would give Atlantic the option to distribute their stuff. But now they entered into a formal, long-term contract, and for a nominal sum of one dollar, Jim Stewart gave Atlantic the distribution rights to all past Stax records and to all future records they released for the next few years. Or at least, Stewart *thought* that the agreement he was making was formalising the distribution agreement. What the contract actually said -- and Stewart never bothered to have this checked over by an entertainment lawyer, because he trusted Wexler -- was that Stax would, for the sum of one dollar, give Atlantic *permanent ownership* of all their records, in return. The precise wording was "You hereby sell, assign and transfer to us, our successors or assigns, absolutely and forever and without any limitations or restrictions whatever, not specifically set forth herein, the entire right, title and interest in and to each of such masters and to each of the performances embodied thereon." Jerry Wexler would later insist that he had no idea that particular clause was in the contract, and that it had been slipped in there by the lawyers. Jim Stewart still thought of himself as the owner of an independent record label, but without realising it he'd effectively become an employee of Atlantic. Atlantic started to take advantage of this new arrangement by sending other artists down to Memphis to record with the Stax musicians. Unlike Sam and Dave, these would still be released as Atlantic records rather than Stax ones, and Jerry Wexler and Atlantic's engineer Tom Dowd would be involved  in the production, but the records would be made by the Stax team. The first artist to benefit from this new arrangement was Wilson Pickett, who had been wanting to work at Stax for a while, being a big fan of Otis Redding in particular. Pickett was teamed up with Steve Cropper, and together they wrote the song that would define Pickett's career. The seeds of "In the Midnight Hour" come from two earlier recordings. One is a line from his record with the Falcons, "I Found a Love": [Excerpt: The Falcons, "I Found a Love"] The other is a line from a record that Clyde McPhatter had made with Billy Ward and the Dominoes back in 1951: [Excerpt: Billy Ward and the Dominoes, "Do Something For Me"] Those lines about a "midnight hour" and "love come tumbling down" were turned into the song that would make Pickett's name, but exactly who did what has been the cause of some disagreement. The official story is that Steve Cropper took those lines and worked with Pickett to write the song, as a straight collaboration. Most of the time, though, Pickett would claim that he'd written the song entirely by himself, and that Cropper had stolen the credit for that and their other credited collaborations. But other times he would admit "He worked with me quite a bit on that one". Floyd Newman, a regular horn player at Stax, would back up Pickett, saying "Every artist that came in here, they'd have their songs all together, but when they leave they had to give up a piece of it, to a certain person. But this person, you couldn't be mad at him, because he didn't own Stax, Jim Stewart owned Stax. And this guy was doing what Jim Stewart told him to do, so you can't be mad at him." But on the other hand, Willie Schofield, who collaborated with Pickett on "I Found a Love", said of writing that "Pickett didn't have any chord pattern. He had a couple of lyrics. I'm working with him, giving him the chord change, the feel of it. Then we're going in the studio and I've gotta show the band how to play it because we didn't have arrangers. That's part of the songwriting. But he didn't understand. He felt he wrote the lyrics so that's it." Given that Cropper didn't take the writing credit on several other records he participated in, that he did have a consistent pattern of making classic hit records, that "In the Midnight Hour" is stylistically utterly different from Pickett's earlier work but very similar to songs like "Mr. Pitiful" cowritten by Cropper, and Pickett's longstanding habit of being dismissive of anyone else's contributions to his success, I think the most likely version of events is that Cropper did have a lot to do with how the song came together, and probably deserves his credit, but we'll never know for sure exactly what went on in their collaboration. Whoever wrote it, "In the Midnight Hour" became one of the all-time classics of soul: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "In the Midnight Hour"] But another factor in making the record a success -- and in helping reinvent the Stax sound -- was actually Jerry Wexler. Wexler had started attending sessions at the Stax studios, and was astonished by how different the recording process was in the South. And Wexler had his own input into the session that produced "In the Midnight Hour". His main suggestion was that rather than play the complicated part that Cropper had come up with, the guitarist should simplify, and just play chords along with Al Jackson's snare drum. Wexler was enthusing about a new dance craze called the Jerk, which had recently been the subject of a hit record by a group called the Larks: [Excerpt: The Larks, "The Jerk"] The Jerk, as Wexler demonstrated it to the bemused musicians, involved accenting the second and fourth beats of the bar, and delaying them very slightly. And this happened to fit very well with the Stax studio sound. The Stax studio was a large room, with quite a lot of reverb, and the musicians played together without using headphones, listening to the room sound. Because of this, to stay in time, Steve Cropper had started taking his cue not just from the sound, but from watching Al Jackson's left hand going to the snare drum. This had led to him playing when he saw Jackson's hand go down on the two and four, rather than when the sound of the snare drum reached his ears -- a tiny, fraction-of-a-second, anticipation of the beat, before everyone would get back in sync on the one of the next bar, as Jackson hit the kick drum. This had in turn evolved into the whole group playing the backbeat with a fractional delay, hitting it a tiny bit late -- as if you're listening to the echo of those beats rather than to the beat itself. If anyone other than utterly exceptional musicians had tried this, it would have ended up as a car crash, but Jackson was one of the best timekeepers in the business, and many musicians would say that at this point in time Steve Cropper was *the* best rhythm guitarist in the world, so instead it gave the performances just enough sense of looseness to make them exciting. This slight delayed backbeat was something the musicians had naturally fallen into doing, but it fit so well with Wexler's conception of the Jerk that they started deliberately exaggerating it -- still only delaying the backbeat minutely, but enough to give the record a very different sound from anything that was out there: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "In the Midnight Hour"] That delayed backbeat sound would become the signature sound of Stax for the next several years, and you will hear it on the run of classic singles they would put out for the next few years by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Carla Thomas, Booker T. and the MGs, Eddie Floyd and others. The sound of that beat is given extra emphasis by the utter simplicity of Al Jackson's playing. Jackson had a minimalist drum kit, but played it even more minimally -- other than the occasional fill, he never hit his tom at all, just using the kick drum, snare, and hi-hat -- and the hi-hat was not even miced, with any hi-hat on the actual records just being the result of leakage from the other mics. But that simplicity gave the Stax records a power that almost no other records from the period had: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "In the Midnight Hour"] "In the Midnight Hour" made number one on the R&B charts, and made number twenty-one on the pop charts, instantly turning Pickett from an also-ran into one of the major stars of soul music. The follow-up, a soundalike called "Don't Fight It", also made the top five on the R&B charts. At his next session, Pickett was reunited with his old bandmate Eddie Floyd. Floyd would soon go on to have his own hits at Stax, most notably with "Knock on Wood", but at this point he was working as a staff songwriter at Stax, coming up with songs like "Comfort Me" for Carla Thomas: [Excerpt: Carla Thomas, "Comfort Me"] Floyd had teamed up with Steve Cropper, and they'd been... shall we say, "inspired"... by a hit for the Marvelettes, "Beechwood 45789", written by Marvin Gaye, Gwen Gordy and Mickey Stevenson: [Excerpt: The Marvelettes, "Beechwood 45789"] Cropper and Floyd had come up with their own song, "634-5789", which Pickett recorded, and which became an even bigger hit than "In the Midnight Hour", making number thirteen on the pop charts as well as being Pickett's second R&B number one: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "634-5789"] At the same session, they cut another single. This one was inspired by an old gospel song, "Ninety-Nine and One Half Won't Do", recorded by Sister Rosetta Tharpe among others: [Excerpt: Sister Rosetta Tharpe, "Ninety-Nine and One Half Won't Do"] The song was rewritten by Floyd, Cropper, and Pickett, and was also a moderate R&B hit, though nowhere as big as "634-5789": [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Ninety-Nine and One Half Won't Do"] That would be the last single that Pickett recorded at Stax, though -- though the reasoning has never been quite clear. Pickett was, to put it as mildly as possible, a difficult man to work with, and he seems to have had some kind of falling out with Jim Stewart -- though Stewart always said that the problem was actually that Pickett didn't get on with the musicians. But the musicians disagree, saying they had a good working relationship -- Pickett was often an awful person, but only when drunk, and he was always sober in the studio. It seems likely, actually, that Pickett's move away from the Stax studios was more to do with someone else -- Pickett's friend Don Covay was another Atlantic artist recording at Stax, and Pickett had travelled down with him when Covay had recorded "See Saw" there: [Excerpt: Don Covay, "See Saw"] Everyone involved agreed that Covay was an eccentric personality, and that he rubbed Jim Stewart up the wrong way. There is also a feeling among some that Stewart started to resent the way Stax's sound was being used for Atlantic artists, like he was "giving away" hits, even though Stax's company got the publishing on the songs Cropper was co-writing, and he was being paid for the studio time. Either way, after that session, Atlantic didn't send any of its artists down to Stax, other than Sam & Dave, who Stax regarded as their own artists. Pickett would never again record at Stax, and possibly coincidentally once he stopped writing songs with Steve Cropper he would also never again have a major hit record with a self-penned song. But Jerry Wexler still wanted to keep working in Southern studios, and with Southern musicians, and so he took Pickett to FAME studios, in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. We looked, back in the episode on Arthur Alexander, at the start of FAME studios, but after Arthur Alexander had moved on to Monument Records, Rick Hall had turned FAME into a home for R&B singers looking for crossover success. While Stax employed both Black and white musicians, FAME studios had an all-white rhythm section, with a background in country music, but that had turned out to be absolutely perfect for performers like the soul singer Joe Tex, who had himself started out in country before switching to soul, and who recorded classics like "Hold What You Got" at the studio: [Excerpt: Joe Tex, "Hold What You Got"] That had been released on FAME's record label, and Jerry Wexler had been impressed and had told Rick Hall to call him the next time he thought he had a hit. When Hall did call Wexler, Wexler was annoyed -- Hall phoned him in the middle of a party. But Hall was insistent. "You said to call you next time I've got a hit, and this is a number one". Wexler relented and listened to the record down the phone. This is what he heard: [Excerpt: Percy Sledge, "When a Man Loves a Woman"] Atlantic snapped up "When a Man Loves a Woman" by Percy Sledge, and it went to number one on the pop charts -- the first record from any of the Southern soul studios to do so. In Wexler's eyes, FAME was now the new Stax. Wexler had a bit of culture shock when working at FAME, as it was totally unlike anything he'd experienced before. The records he'd been involved with in New York had been mostly recorded by slumming jazz musicians, very technical players who would read the music from charts, and Stax had had Steve Cropper as de facto musical director, leading the musicians and working out their parts with them. By contrast, the process used at FAME, and at most of the other studios in what Charles Hughes describes as the "country-soul triangle" of Memphis, Muscle Shoals, and Nashville, was the process that had been developed by Owen Bradley and the Nashville A-Team in Nashville (and for a fuller description of this, see the excellent episodes on Bradley and the A-Team in the great country music podcast Cocaine and Rhinestones). The musicians would hear a play through of the song by its writer, or a demo, would note down the chord sequences using the Nashville number system rather than a more detailed score, do a single run-through to get the balance right, and then record. Very few songs required a second take. For Pickett's first session at FAME, and most subsequent ones, the FAME rhythm section of keyboard player Spooner Oldham, guitarist Jimmy Johnson, bass player Junior Lowe and drummer Roger Hawkins was augmented with a few other players -- Memphis guitarists Chips Moman and Tommy Cogbill, and the horn section who'd played on Pickett's Stax records, moonlighting. And for the first track they recorded there, Wexler wanted them to do something that would become a signature trick for Pickett over the next couple of years -- record a soul cover version of a rock cover version of a soul record. Wexler's thinking was that the best way for Pickett to cross over to a white audience was to do songs that were familiar to them from white pop cover versions, but songs that had originated in Pickett's soul style. At the time, as well, the hard backbeat sound on Pickett's hits was one that was more associated with white rock music than with soul, as was the emphasis on rhythm guitar. To modern ears, Pickett's records are almost the definition of soul music, but at the time they were absolutely considered crossover records. And so in the coming months Pickett would record cover versions of Don Covay's "Mercy Mercy", Solomon Burke's "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love", and Irma Thomas' "Time is on My Side", all of which had been previously covered by the Rolling Stones -- and two of which had their publishing owned by Atlantic's publishing subsidiary. For this single, though, he was recording a song which had started out as a gospel-inspired dance song by the R&B singer Chris Kenner: [Excerpt: Chris Kenner, "Land of a Thousand Dances"] That had been a minor hit towards the bottom end of the Hot One Hundred, but it had been taken up by a lot of other musicians, and become one of those songs everyone did as album filler -- Rufus Thomas had done a version at Stax, for example. But then a Chicano garage band called Cannibal and the Headhunters started performing it live, and their singer forgot the lyrics and just started singing "na na na na", giving the song a chorus it hadn't had in its original version. Their version, a fake-live studio recording, made the top thirty: [Excerpt: Cannibal and the Headhunters, "Land of a Thousand Dances"] Pickett's version was drastically rearranged, and included a guitar riff that Chips Moman had come up with, some new lyrics that Pickett introduced, and a bass intro that Jerry Wexler came up with, a run of semiquavers that Junior Lowe found very difficult to play. The musicians spent so long working on that intro that Pickett got annoyed and decided to take charge. He yelled "Come on! One-two-three!" and the horn players, with the kind of intuition that comes from working together for years, hit a chord in unison. He yelled "One-two-three!" again, and they hit another chord, and Lowe went into the bass part. They'd found their intro. They ran through that opening one more time, then recorded a take: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Land of a Thousand Dances"] At this time, FAME was still recording live onto a single-track tape, and so all the mistakes were caught on tape with no opportunity to fix anything, like when all but one of the horn players forget to come in on the first line of one verse: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Land of a Thousand Dances"] But that kind of mistake only added to the feel of the track, which became Pickett's biggest hit yet -- his third number one on the R&B chart, and his first pop top ten. As the formula of recording a soul cover version of a rock cover version of a soul song had clearly worked, the next single Pickett recorded was "Mustang Sally", which as we saw had originally been an R&B record by Pickett's friend Mack Rice, before being covered by the Young Rascals. Pickett's version, though, became the definitive version: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Mustang Sally"] But it very nearly wasn't. That was recorded in a single take, and the musicians went into the control room to listen to it -- and the metal capstan on the tape machine flew off while it was rewinding. The tape was cut into dozens of tiny fragments, which the machine threw all over the room in all directions. Everyone was horrified, and Pickett, who was already known for his horrific temper, looked as if he might actually kill someone. Tom Dowd, Atlantic's genius engineer who had been a physicist on the Manhattan Project while still a teenager, wasn't going to let something as minor as that stop him. He told everyone to take a break for half an hour, gathered up all the randomly-thrown bits of tape, and spliced them back together. The completed recording apparently has forty splices in it, which would mean an average of a splice every four seconds. Have a listen to this thirty-second segment and see if you can hear any at all: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Mustang Sally"] That segment has the one part where I *think* I can hear one splice in the whole track, a place where the rhythm hiccups very slightly -- and that might well just be the drummer trying a fill that didn't quite come off. "Mustang Sally" was another pop top thirty hit, and Wexler's crossover strategy seemed to have been proved right -- so much so that Pickett was now playing pretty much all-white bills. He played, for example, at Murray the K's last ever revue at the Brooklyn Paramount, where the other artists on the bill were Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, the Young Rascals, Al Kooper's Blues Project, Cream, and the Who. Pickett found the Who extremely unprofessional, with their use of smoke bombs and smashing their instruments, but they eventually became friendly. Pickett's next single was his version of "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love", the Solomon Burke song that the Rolling Stones had also covered, and that was a minor hit, but his next few records after that didn't do particularly well. He did though have a big hit with his cover version of a song by a group called Dyke and the Blazers. Pickett's version of "Funky Broadway" took him to the pop top ten: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Funky Broadway"] It did something else, as well. You may have noticed that two of the bands on that Paramount bill were groups that get called "blue-eyed soul". "Soul" had originally been a term used for music made by Black people, but increasingly the term was being used by white people for their music, just as rock and roll and rhythm and blues before it had been picked up on by white musicians. And so as in those cases, Black musicians were moving away from the term -- though it would never be abandoned completely -- and towards a new slang term, "funk". And Pickett was the first person to get a song with "funk" in the title onto the pop charts. But that would be the last recording Pickett would do at FAME for a couple of years. As with Stax, Pickett was moved away by Atlantic because of problems with another artist, this time to do with a session with Aretha Franklin that went horribly wrong, which we'll look at in a future episode. From this point on, Pickett would record at American Sound Studios in Memphis, a studio owned and run by Chips Moman, who had played on many of Pickett's records. Again, Pickett was playing with an all-white house band, but brought in a couple of Black musicians -- the saxophone player King Curtis, and Pickett's new touring guitarist, Bobby Womack, who had had a rough few years, being largely ostracised from the music community because of his relationship with Sam Cooke's widow. Womack wrote what might be Pickett's finest song, a song called "I'm in Love" which is a masterpiece of metrical simplicity disguised as complexity -- you could write it all down as being in straight four-four, but the pulse shifts and implies alternating bars of five and three at points: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "I'm In Love"] Womack's playing on those sessions had two effects, one on music history and one on Pickett. The effect on music history was that he developed a strong working relationship with Reggie Young, the guitarist in the American Sound studio band, and Young and Womack learned each other's styles. Young would later go on to be one of the top country session guitarists, playing on records by Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers, Waylon Jennings and more, and he was using Womack's style of playing -- he said later "I didn't change a thing. I was playing that Womack style on country records, instead of the hillbilly stuff—it changed the whole bed of country music." The other effect, though, was a much more damaging one. Womack introduced Pickett to cocaine, and Pickett -- who was already an aggressive, violent, abusive, man, became much more so. "I'm in Love" went to number four on the R&B charts, but didn't make the pop top forty. The follow-up, a remake of "Stagger Lee", did decently on the pop charts but less well on the R&B charts. Pickett's audiences were diverging, and he was finding it more difficult to make the two come together. But he would still manage it, sporadically, throughout the sixties. One time when he did was in 1968, when he returned to Muscle Shoals and to FAME studios. In a session there, the guitarist was very insistent that Pickett should cut a version of the Beatles' most recent hit. Now obviously, this is a record that's ahead in our timeline, and which will be covered in a future episode, but I imagine that most of you won't find it too much of a spoiler when I tell you that "Hey Jude" by the Beatles was quite a big hit: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hey Jude"] What that guitarist had realised was that the tag of the song gave the perfect opportunity for ad-libbing. You all know the tag: [Excerpt: The Beatles, "Hey Jude"] And so on. That would be perfect for a guitar solo, and for Pickett to do some good soul shouting over. Neither Pickett nor Rick Hall were at all keen -- the Beatles record had only just dropped off number one, and it seemed like a ridiculous idea to both of them. But the guitarist kept pressing to do it, and by the time the other musicians returned from their lunch break, he'd convinced Pickett and Hall. The record starts out fairly straightforward: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Hey Jude"] But it's on the tag when it comes to life. Pickett later described recording that part -- “He stood right in front of me, as though he was playing every note I was singing. And he was watching me as I sang, and as I screamed, he was screaming with his guitar.”: [Excerpt: Wilson Pickett, "Hey Jude"] That was not Pickett's biggest hit, but it was one of the most influential. It made the career of the guitarist, Duane Allman, who Jerry Wexler insisted on signing to his own contract after that, and as Jimmy Johnson, the rhythm guitarist on the session said, "We realised then that Duane had created southern rock, in that vamp." It was big enough that Wexler pushed Pickett to record a whole series of cover versions of rock songs -- he put out versions of "Hey Joe", "Born to be Wild" and "You Keep Me Hangin' On" -- the latter going back to his old technique of covering a white cover version of a Black record, as his version copied the Vanilla Fudge's arrangement rather than the Supremes' original. But these only had very minor successes -- the most successful of them was his version of "Sugar Sugar" by the Archies. As the sixties turned into the seventies, Pickett continued having some success, but it was more erratic and less consistent. The worlds of Black and white music were drifting apart, and Pickett, who more than most had straddled both worlds, now found himself having success in neither. It didn't help that his cocaine dependency had made him into an egomaniac. At one point in the early seventies, Pickett got a residency in Las Vegas, and was making what by most standards was a great income from it. But he would complain bitterly that he was only playing the small room, not the big one in the same hotel, and that the artist playing the big room was getting better billing than him on the posters. Of course, the artist playing the big room was Elvis Presley, but that didn't matter to Pickett -- he thought he deserved to be at least that big. He was also having regular fights with his record label. Ahmet Ertegun used to tell a story -- and I'm going to repeat it here with one expletive cut out in order to get past Apple's ratings system. In Ertegun's words “Jerry Wexler never liked Crosby, Stills & Nash because they wanted so much freaking artistic autonomy. While we were arguing about this, Wilson Pickett walks in the room and comes up to Jerry and says, ‘Jerry,' and he goes, ‘Wham!' And he puts a pistol on the table. He says, ‘If that [Expletive] Tom Dowd walks into where I'm recording, I'm going to shoot him. And if you walk in, I'm going to shoot you. ‘Oh,' Jerry said. ‘That's okay, Wilson.' Then he walked out. So I said, ‘You want to argue about artistic autonomy?' ” As you can imagine, Atlantic were quite glad to get rid of Pickett when he decided he wanted to move to RCA records, who were finally trying to break into the R&B market. Unfortunately for Pickett, the executive who'd made the decision to sign him soon left the company, and as so often happens when an executive leaves, his pet project becomes the one that everyone's desperate to get rid of.  RCA didn't know how to market records to Black audiences, and didn't really try, and Pickett's voice was becoming damaged from all the cocaine use. He spent the seventies, and eighties going from label to label, trying things like going disco, with no success. He also went from woman to woman, beating them up, and went through band members more and more quickly as he attacked them, too. The guitarist Marc Ribot was in Pickett's band for a short time and said, (and here again I'm cutting out an expletive) " You can write about all the extenuating circumstances, and maybe it needs to be put in historical context, but … You know why guys beat women? Because they can. And it's abuse. That's why employers beat employees, when they can. I've worked with black bandleaders and white bandleaders who are respectful, courteous and generous human beings—and then I've worked with Wilson Pickett." He was becoming more and more paranoid. He didn't turn up for his induction in the rock and roll hall of fame, where he was scheduled to perform -- instead he hid in his house, scared to leave. Pickett was repeatedly arrested throughout this time, and into the nineties, spending some time in prison, and then eventually going into rehab in 1997 after being arrested for beating up his latest partner. She dropped the charges, but the police found the cocaine in his possession and charged him with that. After getting out, he apparently mellowed out somewhat and became much easier to get along with -- still often unpleasant, especially after he'd had a drink, which he never gave up, but far less violent and more easy-going than he had been. He also had something of a comeback, sparked by an appearance in the flop film Blues Brothers 2000. He recorded a blues album, It's Harder Now, and also guested on Adlib, the comeback duets album by his old friend Don Covay, singing with him and cowriting on several songs, including "Nine Times a Man": [Excerpt: Don Covay and Wilson Pickett, "Nine Times a Man"] It's Harder Now was a solid blues-based album, in the vein of similar albums from around that time by people like Solomon Burke, and could have led to Pickett having the same kind of late-career resurgence as Johnny Cash. It was nominated for a Grammy, but lost in the category for which it was nominated to Barry White. Pickett was depressed by the loss and just decided to give up making new music, and just played the oldies circuit until 2004, at which point he became too ill to continue. The duet with Covay would be the last time he went into the studio. The story of Pickett's last year or so is a painful one, with squabbles between his partner and his children over his power of attorney while he spent long periods in hospital, suffering from kidney problems caused by his alcoholism, and also at this point from bulimia, diabetes, and more. He was ill enough that he tried to make amends with his children and his ex-wife, and succeeded as well as anyone can in that situation. On the eighteenth of January 2006, two months before his sixty-fifth birthday, his partner took him to get his hair cut and his moustache shaped, so he'd look the way he wanted to look, they ate together at his assisted living facility, and prayed together, and she left around eleven o'clock that night. Shortly thereafter, Pickett had a heart attack and died, alone, some time close to the midnight hour.

Episode 122 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs is a double-length (over an hour) look at “A Change is Gonna Come” by Sam Cooke, at Cooke's political and artistic growth, and at the circumstances around his death. This one has a long list of content warnings at the beginning of the episode, for good reason... 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 "My Guy" by Mary Wells.   Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. For this episode, he also did the re-edit of the closing theme. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources No Mixcloud this week due to the number of songs by one artist. My main source for this episode is Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke by Peter Guralnick. Like all Guralnick's work, it's an essential book if you're even slightly interested in the subject. Information on Allen Klein comes from Fred Goodman's book on Klein. The Netflix documentary I mention can be found here. This is the best compilation of Sam Cooke's music for the beginner, and the only one to contain recordings from all four labels (Specialty, Keen, RCA, and Tracey) he recorded for. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start this episode, a brief acknowledgement --  Lloyd Price plays a minor role in this story, and I heard as I was in the middle of writing it that he had died on May the third, aged eighty-eight. Price was one of the great pioneers of rock and roll -- I first looked at him more than a hundred episodes ago, back in episode twelve -- and he continued performing live right up until the start of the coronavirus outbreak in March last year. He'll be missed. Today we're going to look at one of the great soul protest records of all time, a record that was the high point in the career of its singer and songwriter, and which became a great anthem of the Civil Rights movement. But we're also going to look at the dark side of its creator, and the events that led to his untimely death. More than most episodes of the podcast, this requires a content warning. Indeed, it requires more than just content warnings. Those warnings are necessary -- this episode will deal with not only a murder, but also sexual violence, racialised violence, spousal abuse, child sexual abuse, drug use and the death of a child, as well as being about a song which is in itself about the racism that pervaded American society in the 1960s as it does today. This is a story from which absolutely nobody comes out well, which features very few decent human beings, and which I find truly unpleasant to write about. But there is something else that I want to say, before getting into the episode -- more than any other episode I have done, and I think more than any other episode that I am *going* to do, this is an episode where my position as a white British man born fourteen years after Sam Cooke's death might mean that my perspective is flawed in ways that might actually make it impossible for me to tell the story properly, and in ways that might mean that my telling of the story is doing a grave, racialised, injustice. Were this song and this story not so important to the ongoing narrative, I would simply avoid telling it altogether, but there is simply no way for me to avoid it and tell the rest of the story without doing equally grave injustices. So I will say this upfront. There are two narratives about Sam Cooke's death -- the official one, and a more conspiratorial one. Everything I know about the case tells me that the official account is the one that is actually correct, and *as far as I can tell*, I have good reason for thinking that way. But here's the thing. The other narrative is one that is held by a lot of people who knew Cooke, and they claim that the reason their narrative is not the officially-accepted one is because of racism. I do not think that is the case myself. In fact, all the facts I have seen about the case lead to the conclusion that the official narrative is correct. But I am deeply, deeply, uncomfortable with saying that. Because I have an obligation to be honest, but I also have an obligation not to talk over Black people about their experiences of racism. So what I want to say now, before even starting the episode, is this. Listen to what I have to say, by all means, but then watch the Netflix documentary Remastered: The Two Killings of Sam Cooke, and *listen* to what the people saying otherwise have to say. I can only give my own perspective, and my perspective is far more likely to be flawed here than in any other episode of this podcast. I am truly uncomfortable writing and recording this episode, and were this any other record at all, I would have just skipped it. But that was not an option. Anyway, all that said, let's get on with the episode proper, which is on one of the most important records of the sixties -- "A Change is Gonna Come": [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "A Change is Gonna Come"] It's been almost eighteen months since we last looked properly at Sam Cooke, way back in episode sixty, and a lot has happened in the story since then, so a brief recap -- Sam Cooke started out as a gospel singer, first with a group called the Highway QCs, and then joining the Soul Stirrers, the most popular gospel group on the circuit, replacing their lead singer.  The Soul Stirrers had signed to Specialty Records, and released records like "Touch the Hem of His Garment", written by Cooke in the studio: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers, "Touch the Hem of His Garment"] Cooke had eventually moved away from gospel music to secular, starting with a rewrite of a gospel song he'd written, changing "My God is so wonderful" to "My girl is so lovable", but he'd released that under the name Dale Cook, rather than his own name, in case of a backlash from gospel fans: [Excerpt: Dale Cook, "Lovable"] No-one was fooled, and he started recording under his own name. Shortly after this, Cooke had written his big breakthrough hit, "You Send Me", and when Art Rupe at Specialty Records was unimpressed with it, Cooke and his producer Bumps Blackwell had both moved from Specialty to a new label, Keen Records. Cooke's first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show was a disaster -- cutting him off half way through the song -- but his second was a triumph, and "You Send Me" went to number one on both the pop and R&B charts, and sold over a million copies, while Specialty put out unreleased earlier recordings and sold over half a million copies of some of those. Sam Cooke was now one of the biggest things in the music business. And he had the potential to become even bigger. He had the looks of a teen idol, and was easily among the two or three best-looking male singing stars of the period. He had a huge amount of personal charm, he was fiercely intelligent, and had an arrogant selfishness that came over as self-confidence -- he believed he deserved everything the world could offer to him, and he was charming enough that everyone he met believed it too. He had an astonishing singing voice, and he was also prodigiously talented as a songwriter -- he'd written "Touch the Hem of His Garment" on the spot in the studio after coming in with no material prepared for the session. Not everything was going entirely smoothly for him, though -- he was in the middle of getting divorced from his first wife, and he was arrested backstage after a gig for non-payment of child support for a child he'd fathered with another woman he'd abandoned. This was a regular occurrence – he was as self-centred in his relationships with women as in other aspects of his life -- though as in those other aspects, the women in question were generally so smitten with him that they forgave him everything. Cooke wanted more than to be a pop star. He had his sights set on being another Harry Belafonte. At this point Belafonte was probably the most popular Black all-round entertainer in the world, with his performances of pop arrangements of calypso and folk songs: [Excerpt: Harry Belafonte, "Jamaica Farewell"] Belafonte had nothing like Cooke's chart success, but he was playing prestigious dates in Las Vegas and at high-class clubs, and Cooke wanted to follow his example. Most notably, at a time when almost all notable Black performers straightened their hair, Belafonte left his hair natural and cut it short. Cooke thought that this was very, very shrewd on Belafonte's part, copying him and saying to his brother L.C. that this would make him less threatening to the white public -- he believed that if a Black man slicked his hair back and processed it, he would come across as slick and dishonest, white people wouldn't trust him around their daughters. But if he just kept his natural hair but cut it short, then he'd come across as more honest and trustworthy, just an all-American boy. Oddly, the biggest effect of this decision wasn't on white audiences, but on Black people watching his appearances on TV. People like Smokey Robinson have often talked about how seeing Cooke perform on TV with his natural hair made a huge impression on them -- showing them that it was possible to be a Black man and not be ashamed of it. It was a move to appeal to the white audience that also had the effect of encouraging Black pride. But Cooke's first attempt at appealing to the mainstream white audience that loved Belafonte didn't go down well. He was booked in for a three-week appearance at the Copacabana, one of the most prestigious nightclubs in the country, and right from the start it was a failure. Bumps Blackwell had written the arrangements for the show on the basis that there would be a small band, and when they discovered Cooke would be backed by a sixteen-piece orchestra he and his assistant Lou Adler had to frantically spend a couple of days copying out sheet music for a bigger group. And Cooke's repertoire for those shows stuck mostly to old standards like "Begin the Beguine", "Ol' Man River", and "I Love You For Sentimental Reasons", with the only new song being "Mary, Mary Lou", a song written by a Catholic priest which had recently been a flop single for Bill Haley: [Excerpt: Bill Haley and the Comets, "Mary, Mary Lou"] Cooke didn't put over those old standards with anything like the passion he had dedicated to his gospel and rock and roll recordings, and audiences were largely unimpressed. Cooke gave up for the moment on trying to win over the supper-club audiences and returned to touring on rock and roll package tours, becoming so close with Clyde McPhatter and LaVern Baker on one tour that they seriously considered trying to get their record labels to agree to allow them to record an album of gospel songs together as a trio, although that never worked out. Cooke looked up immensely to McPhatter in particular, and listened attentively as McPhatter explained his views of the world -- ones that were very different to the ones Cooke had grown up with. McPhatter was an outspoken atheist who saw religion as a con, and who also had been a lifelong member of the NAACP and was a vocal supporter of civil rights. Cooke listened closely to what McPhatter had to say, and thought long and hard about it. Cooke was also dealing with lawsuits from Art Rupe at Specialty Records. When Cooke had left Specialty, he'd agreed that Rupe would own the publishing on any future songs he'd written, but he had got round this by crediting "You Send Me" to his brother, L.C.  Rupe was incensed, and obviously sued, but he had no hard evidence that Cooke had himself written the song. Indeed, Rupe at one point even tried to turn the tables on Cooke, by getting Lloyd Price's brother Leo, a songwriter himself who had written "Send Me Some Lovin'", to claim that *he* had written "You Send Me", but Leo Price quickly backed down from the claim, and Rupe was left unable to prove anything. It didn't hurt Cooke's case that L.C., while not a talent of his brother's stature, was at least a professional singer and songwriter himself, who was releasing records on Checker Records that sounded very like Sam's work: [Excerpt: L.C. Cooke, "Do You Remember?"] For much of the late 1950s, Sam Cooke seemed to be trying to fit into two worlds simultaneously. He was insistent  that he wanted to move into the type of showbusiness that was represented by the Rat Pack -- he cut an album of Billie Holiday songs, and he got rid of Bumps Blackwell as his manager, replacing him with a white man who had previously been Sammy Davis Jr.'s publicist. But on the other hand, he was hanging out with the Central Avenue music scene in LA, with Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Eugene Church, Jesse Belvin, and Alex and Gaynel Hodge. While his aspirations towards Rat Packdom faltered, he carried on having hits -- his own "Only Sixteen" and "Everybody Loves to Cha-Cha-Cha", and he recorded, but didn't release yet, a song that Lou Adler had written with his friend Herb Alpert, and whose lyrics Sam revised, "Wonderful World". Cooke was also starting a relationship with the woman who would become his second wife, Barbara. He'd actually had an affair with her some years earlier, and they'd had a daughter, Linda, who Cooke had initially not acknowledged as his own -- he had many children with other women -- but they got together in 1958, around the time of Cooke's divorce from his first wife. Tragically, that first wife then died in a car crash in 1959 -- Cooke paid her funeral expenses. He was also getting dissatisfied with Keen Records, which had been growing too fast to keep up with its expenses -- Bumps Blackwell, Lou Adler, and Herb Alpert, who had all started at the label with him, all started to move away from it to do other things, and Cooke was sure that Keen weren't paying him the money they owed as fast as they should.  He also wanted to help some of his old friends out -- while Cooke was an incredibly selfish man, he was also someone who believed in not leaving anyone behind, so long as they paid him what he thought was the proper respect, and so he started his own record label, with his friends J.W. Alexander and Roy Crain, called SAR Records (standing for Sam, Alex, and Roy), to put out records by his old group The Soul Stirrers, for whom he wrote "Stand By Me, Father", a song inspired by an old gospel song by Charles Tindley, and with a lead sung by Johnnie Taylor, the Sam Cooke soundalike who had replaced Cooke as the group's lead singer: [Excerpt: The Soul Stirrers, "Stand By Me, Father"] Of course, that became, as we heard a few months back, the basis for Ben E. King's big hit "Stand By Me". Cooke and Alexander had already started up their own publishing company, and were collaborating on songs for other artists, too. They wrote "I Know I'll Always Be In Love With You", which was recorded first by the Hollywood Flames and then by Jackie Wilson: [Excerpt: Jackie Wilson, "I Know I'll Always Be in Love With You"] And "I'm Alright", which Little Anthony and the Imperials released as a single: [Excerpt: Little Anthony and the Imperials, "I'm Alright"] But while he was working on rock and roll and gospel records, he was also learning to tap-dance for his performances at the exclusive white nightclubs he wanted to play -- though when he played Black venues he didn't include those bits in the act. He did, though, perform seated on a stool in imitation of Perry Como, having decided that if he couldn't match the energetic performances of people like Jackie Wilson (who had been his support act at a run of shows where Wilson had gone down better than Cooke) he would go in a more casual direction.  He was also looking to move into the pop market when it came to his records, and he eventually signed up with RCA Records, and specifically with Hugo and Luigi. We've talked about Hugo and Luigi before, a couple of times -- they were the people who had produced Georgia Gibbs' soundalike records that had ripped off Black performers, and we talked about their production of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", though at this point they hadn't yet made that record. They had occasionally produced records that were more R&B flavoured -- they produced "Shout!" for the Isley Brothers, for example -- but they were in general about as bland and middle-of-the-road a duo as one could imagine working in the music industry. The first record that Hugo and Luigi produced for Cooke was a song that the then-unknown Jeff Barry had written, "Teenage Sonata". That record did nothing, and the label were especially annoyed when a recording Cooke had done while he was still at Keen, "Wonderful World", was released on his old label and made the top twenty: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "Wonderful World"] Cooke's collaboration with Hugo and Luigi would soon turn into one that bore a strong resemblance to their collaboration with the Isley Brothers -- they would release great singles, but albums that fundamentally misunderstood Cooke's artistry; though some of that misunderstanding may have come from Cooke himself, who never seemed to be sure which direction to go in. Many of the album tracks they released have Cooke sounding unsure of himself, and hesitant, but that's not something that you can say about the first real success that Cooke came out with on RCA, a song he wrote after driving past a group of prisoners working on a chain gang. He'd originally intended that song to be performed by his brother Charles, but he'd half-heartedly played it for Hugo and Luigi when they'd not seen much potential in any of his other recent originals, and they'd decided that that was the hit: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "Chain Gang"] That made number two on the charts, becoming his biggest hit since "You Send Me". Meanwhile Cooke was also still recording other artists for SAR -- though by this point Roy Crain had been eased out and SAR now stood for Sam and Alex Records. He got a group of Central Avenue singers including Alex and Gaynel Hodge to sing backing vocals on a song he gave to a friend of his named Johnny Morisette, who was known professionally as "Johnny Two-Voice" because of the way he could sound totally different in his different ranges, but who was known to his acquaintances as "the singing pimp", because of his other occupation: [Excerpt: Johnny Morisette, "I'll Never Come Running Back to You"] They also thought seriously about signing up a young gospel singer they knew called Aretha Franklin, who was such an admirer of Sam's that she would try to copy him -- she changed her brand of cigarettes to match the ones he smoked, and when she saw him on tour reading William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich -- Cooke was an obsessive reader, especially of history -- she bought her own copy. She never read it, but she thought she should have a copy if Cooke had one.  But they decided that Franklin's father, the civil rights leader Rev. C.L. Franklin, was too intimidating, and so it would probably not be a good idea to get involved. The tour on which Franklin saw Cooke read Shirer's book was also the one on which Cooke made his first public stance in favour of civil rights -- that tour, which was one of the big package tours of the time, was meant to play a segregated venue, but the artists hadn't been informed just how segregated it was. While obviously none of them supported segregation, they would mostly accept playing to segregated crowds, because there was no alternative, if at least Black people were allowed in in roughly equal numbers. But in this case, Black people were confined to a tiny proportion of the seats, in areas with extremely restricted views, and both Cooke and Clyde McPhatter refused to go on stage, though the rest of the acts didn't join in their boycott. Cooke's collaboration with Hugo and Luigi remained hit and miss, and produced a few more flop singles, but then Cooke persuaded them to allow him to work in California, with the musicians he'd worked with at Keen, and with René Hall arranging rather than the arrangers they'd employed previously. While the production on Cooke's California sessions was still credited to Hugo and Luigi, Luigi was the only one actually attending those sessions -- Hugo was afraid of flying and wouldn't come out to the West Coast. The first record that came out under this new arrangement was another big hit, "Cupid", which had vocal sound effects supplied by a gospel act Cooke knew, the Sims twins -- Kenneth Sims made the sound of an arrow flying through the air, and Bobbie Sims made the thwacking noise of it hitting a target: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "Cupid"] Cooke became RCA's second-biggest artist, at least in terms of singles sales, and had a string of hits like "Twistin' the Night Away", "Another Saturday Night", and "Bring it On Home to Me", though he was finding it difficult to break the album market. He was frustrated that he wasn't having number one records, but Luigi reassured him that that was actually the best position to be in: “We're getting number four, number six on the Billboard charts, and as long as we get that, nobody's gonna bother you. But if you get two or three number ones in a row, then you got no place to go but down. Then you're competition, and they're just going to do everything they can to knock you off.” But Cooke's personal life had started to unravel. After having two daughters, his wife gave birth to a son. Cooke had desperately wanted a male heir, but he didn't bond with his son, Vincent, who he insisted didn't look like him. He became emotionally and physically abusive towards his wife, beating her up on more than one occasion, and while she had been a regular drug user already, her use increased to try to dull the pain of being married to someone who she loved but who was abusing her so appallingly. Things became much, much worse, when the most tragic thing imaginable happened. Cooke had a swim in his private pool and then went out, leaving the cover off. His wife, Barbara, then let the children play outside, thinking that their three-year-old daughter Tracey would be able to look after the baby for a few minutes. Baby Vincent fell into the pool and drowned. Both parents blamed the other, and Sam was devastated at the death of the child he only truly accepted as his son once the child was dead. You can hear some of that devastation in a recording he made a few months later of an old Appalachian folk song: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "The Riddle Song"] Friends worried that Cooke was suicidal, but Cooke held it together, in part because of the intervention of his new manager, Allen Klein. Klein had had a hard life growing up -- his mother had died when he was young, and his father had sent him to an orphanage for a while. Eventually, his father remarried, and young Allen came back to the family home, but his father was still always distant. He grew close to his stepmother, but then she died as well.  Klein turned up at Cooke's house two days after the baby's funeral with his own daughter, and insisted on taking Cooke and his surviving children to Disneyland, telling him "You always had your mother and father, but I lost my mother when I was nine months old. You've got two other children. Those two girls need you even more now. You're their only father, and you've got to take care of them." Klein was very similar to Cooke in many ways. He had decided from a very early age that he couldn't trust anyone but himself, and that he had to make his own way in the world. He became hugely ambitious, and wanted to reach the very top. Klein had become an accountant, and gone to work for Joe Fenton, an accountant who specialised in the entertainment industry.  One of the first jobs Klein did in his role with Fenton was to assist him with an audit of Dot Records in 1957, called for by the Harry Fox Agency. We've not talked about Harry Fox before, but they're one of the most important organisations in the American music industry -- they're a collection agency like ASCAP or BMI, who collect songwriting royalties for publishing companies and songwriters. But while ASCAP and BMI collect performance royalties -- they collect payments for music played on the radio or TV, or in live performance -- Harry Fox collect the money for mechanical reproduction, the use of songs on records. It's a gigantic organisation, and it has the backing of all the major music publishers. To do this audit, Klein and Fenton had to travel from New York to LA, and as they were being paid by a major entertainment industry organisation, they were put up in the Roosevelt Hotel, where at the time the other guests included Elvis, Claude Rains, and Sidney Poitier. Klein, who had grown up in comparative poverty, couldn't help but be impressed at the money that you could make by working in entertainment. The audit of Dot Records found some serious discrepancies -- they were severely underpaying publishers and songwriters. While they were in LA, Klein and Fenton also audited several other labels, like Liberty, and they found the same thing at all of them. The record labels were systematically conning publishing companies out of money they were owed. Klein immediately realised that if they were doing this to the major publishing companies that Harry Fox represented, they must be doing the same kind of thing to small songwriters and artists, the kind of people who didn't have a huge organisation to back them up.  Unfortunately for Klein, soon after he started working for Fenton, he was fired -- he was someone who was chronically unable to get to work on time in the morning, and while he didn't mind working ridiculously long hours, he could not, no matter how hard he tried, get himself into the office for nine in the morning. He was fired after only four months, and Fenton even recommended to the State of New Jersey that they not allow Klein to become a Certified Public Accountant -- a qualification which, as a result, Klein never ended up getting. He set up his own company to perform audits of record companies for performers, and he got lucky by bumping in to someone he'd been at school with -- Don Kirshner. Kirshner agreed to start passing clients Klein's way, and his first client was Ersel Hickey (no relation), the rockabilly singer we briefly discussed in the episode on "Twist and Shout", who had a hit with "Bluebirds Over the Mountain": [Excerpt: Ersel Hickey, "Bluebirds Over the Mountain"] Klein audited Hickey's record label, but was rather surprised to find out that they didn't actually owe Hickey a penny. It turned out that record contracts were written so much in the company's favour that they didn't have to use any dodgy accounting to get out of paying the artists anything.  But sometimes, the companies would rip the artists off anyway, if they were particularly unscrupulous. Kirshner had also referred the rockabilly singer/songwriter duo Buddy Knox and Jimmy Bowen to Klein. Their big hit, "Party Doll", had come out on Roulette Records: [Excerpt: Buddy Knox, "Party Doll"] Klein found out that in the case of Roulette, the label *were* actually not paying the artists what they were contractually owed, largely because Morris Levy didn't like paying people money. After the audit, Levy did actually agree to pay Knox and Bowen what they were owed, but he insisted that he would only pay it over four years, at a rate of seventy dollars a week -- if Klein wanted it any sooner, he'd have to sue, and the money would all be eaten up in lawyers' fees. That was still better than nothing, and Klein made enough from his cut that he was able to buy himself a car.  Klein and Levy actually became friends -- the two men were very similar in many ways -- and Klein learned a big lesson from negotiating with him. That lesson was that you take what you can get, because something is better than nothing. If you discover a company owes your client a hundred thousand dollars that your client didn't know about, and they offer you fifty thousand to settle, you take the fifty thousand. Your client still ends up much better off than they would have been, you've not burned any bridges with the company, and you get your cut. And Klein's cut was substantial -- his standard was to take fifty percent of any extra money he got for the artist. And he prided himself on always finding something -- though rarely as much as he would suggest to his clients before getting together with them. One particularly telling anecdote about Klein's attitude is that when he was at Don Kirshner's wedding he went up to Kirshner's friend Bobby Darin and told him he could get him a hundred thousand dollars. Darin signed, but according to Darin's manager, Klein only actually found one underpayment, for ten thousand copies of Darin's hit "Splish Splash" which Atlantic hadn't paid for: [Excerpt: Bobby Darin, "Splish Splash"] However, at the time singles sold for a dollar, Darin was on a five percent royalty, and he only got paid for ninety percent of the records sold (because of a standard clause in contracts at that time to allow for breakages). The result was that Klein found an underpayment of just four hundred and fifty dollars, a little less than the hundred thousand he'd promised the unimpressed Darin. But Klein used the connection to Darin to get a lot more clients, and he did significantly better for some of them. For Lloyd Price, for example, he managed to get an extra sixty thousand dollars from ABC/Paramount, and Price and Klein became lifelong friends. And Price sang Klein's praises to Sam Cooke, who became eager to meet him.  He got the chance when Klein started up a new business with a DJ named Jocko Henderson. Henderson was one of the most prominent DJs in Philadelphia, and was very involved in all aspects of the music industry. He had much the same kind of relationship with Scepter Records that Alan Freed had with Chess, and was cut in on most of the label's publishing on its big hits -- rights he would later sell to Klein in order to avoid the kind of investigation that destroyed Freed's career. Henderson had also been the DJ who had first promoted "You Send Me" on the radio, and Cooke owed him a favour. Cooke was also at the time being courted by Scepter Records, who had offered him a job as the Shirelles' writer and producer once Florence Greenberg had split up with Luther Dixon. He'd written them one song, which referenced many of their earlier hits: [Excerpt: The Shirelles, "Only Time Will Tell"] However, Cooke didn't stick with Scepter -- he figured out that Greenberg wasn't interested in him as a writer/producer, but as a singer, and he wasn't going to record for an indie like them when he could work with RCA. But when Henderson and Klein started running a theatre together, putting on R&B shows, those shows obviously featured a lot of Scepter acts like the Shirelles and Dionne Warwick, but they also featured Sam Cooke on the top of the bill, and towards the bottom of the bill were the Valentinos, a band featuring Cooke's touring guitarist, Bobby Womack, who were signed to SAR Records: [Excerpt: The Valentinos, "It's All Over Now"] Klein was absolutely overawed with Cooke's talent when he first saw him on stage, realising straight away that this was one of the major artists of his generation. Whereas most of the time, Klein would push himself forward straight away and try to dominate artists, here he didn't even approach Cooke at all, just chatted to Cooke's road manager and found out what Cooke was like as a person. This is something one sees time and again when it comes to Cooke -- otherwise unflappable people just being absolutely blown away by his charisma, talent, and personality, and behaving towards him in ways that they behaved to nobody else. At the end of the residency, Cooke had approached Klein, having heard good things about him from Price, Henderson, and his road manager. The two had several meetings over the next few months, so Klein could get an idea of what it was that was bothering Cooke about his business arrangements. Eventually, after a few months, Cooke asked Klein for his honest opinion. Klein was blunt. "I think they're treating you like a " -- and here he used the single most offensive anti-Black slur there is -- "and you shouldn't let them." Cooke agreed, and said he wanted Klein to take control of his business arrangements. The first thing Klein did was to get Cooke a big advance from BMI against his future royalties as a songwriter and publisher, giving him seventy-nine thousand dollars up front to ease his immediate cash problems. He then started working on getting Cooke a better recording contract. The first thing he did was go to Columbia records, who he thought would be a better fit for Cooke than RCA were, and with whom Cooke already had a relationship, as he was at that time working with his friend, the boxer Muhammad Ali, on an album that Ali was recording for Columbia: [Excerpt: Muhammad Ali, "The Gang's All Here"] Cooke was very friendly with Ali, and also with Ali's spiritual mentor, the activist Malcolm X, and both men tried to get him to convert to the Nation of Islam. Cooke declined -- while he respected both men, he had less respect for Elijah Mohammed, who he saw as a con artist, and he was becoming increasingly suspicious of religion in general. He did, though, share the Nation of Islam's commitment to Black people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and presenting themselves in a clean-cut way, having the same vision of Black capitalism that many of his contemporaries like James Brown shared. Unfortunately, negotiations with Columbia quickly failed. Klein believed, probably correctly, that record labels didn't have to do anything to sell Sam Cooke's records, and that Cooke was in a unique position as one of the very few artists at that time who could write, perform, and produce hit records without any outside assistance. Klein therefore thought that Cooke deserved a higher royalty rate than the five percent industry standard, and said that Cooke wouldn't sign with anyone for that rate. The problem was that Columbia had most-favoured-nations clauses written into many other artists' contracts. These clauses meant that if any artist signed with Columbia for a higher royalty rate, those other artists would also have to get that royalty rate, so if Cooke got the ten percent that Klein was demanding, a bunch of other performers like Tony Bennett would also have to get the ten percent, and Columbia were simply not willing to do that. So Klein decided that Cooke was going to stay with RCA, but he found a way to make sure that Cooke would get a much better deal from RCA, and in a way which didn't affect any of RCA's own favoured-nations contracts.  Klein had had some involvement in filmmaking, and knew that independent production companies were making films without the studios, and just letting the studios distribute them. He also knew that in the music business plenty of songwriters and producers like Leiber and Stoller and Phil Spector owned their own record labels. But up to that point, no performers did, that Klein was aware of, because it was the producers who generally made the records, and the contracts were set up with the assumption that the performer would just do what the producer said. That didn't apply to Sam Cooke, and so Klein didn't see why Cooke couldn't have his own label. Klein set up a new company, called Tracey Records, which was named after Cooke's daughter, and whose president was Cooke's old friend J.W. Alexander. Tracey Records would, supposedly to reduce Cooke's tax burden, be totally owned by Klein, but it would be Cooke's company, and Cooke would be paid in preferred stock in the company, though Cooke would get the bulk of the money -- it would be a mere formality that the company was owned by Klein. While this did indeed have the effect of limiting the amount of tax Cooke had to pay, it also fulfilled a rule that Klein would later state -- "never take twenty percent of an artist's earnings. Instead give them eighty percent of yours". What mattered wasn't the short-term income, but the long-term ownership. And that's what Klein worked out with RCA. Tracey Records would record and manufacture all Cooke's records from that point on, but RCA would have exclusive distribution rights for thirty years, and would pay Tracey a dollar per album. After thirty years, Tracey records would get all the rights to Cooke's recordings back, and in the meantime, Cooke would effectively be on a much higher royalty rate than he'd received before, in return for taking a much larger share of the risk. There were also changes at SAR. Zelda Sands, who basically ran the company for Sam and J.W., was shocked to receive a phone call from Sam and Barbara, telling her to immediately come to Chicago, where Sam was staying while he was on tour. She went up to their hotel room, where Barbara angrily confronted her, saying that she knew that Sam had always been attracted to Zelda -- despite Zelda apparently being one of the few women Cooke met who he never slept with -- and heavily implied that the best way to sort this would be for them to have a threesome. Zelda left and immediately flew back to LA. A few days later, Barbara turned up at the SAR records offices and marched Zelda out at gunpoint. Through all of this turmoil, though, Cooke managed to somehow keep creating music. And indeed he soon came up with the song that would be his most important legacy. J.W. Alexander had given Cooke a copy of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, and Cooke had been amazed at "Blowin' in the Wind": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Blowin' in the Wind"] But more than being amazed at the song, Cooke was feeling challenged. This was a song that should have been written by a Black man. More than that, it was a song that should have been written by *him*. Black performers needed to be making music about their own situation. He added "Blowin' in the Wind" to his own live set, but he also started thinking about how he could write a song like that himself. As is often the case with Cooke's writing, he took inspiration from another song, this time "Ol' Man River", the song from the musical Showboat that had been made famous by the actor, singer, and most importantly civil rights activist Paul Robeson: [Excerpt: Paul Robeson, "Ol' Man River"] Cooke had recorded his own version of that in 1958, but now in early 1964 he took the general pace, some melodic touches, the mention of the river, and particularly the lines "I'm tired of livin' and scared of dyin'", and used them to create something new. Oddly for a song that would inspire a civil rights anthem -- or possibly just appropriately, in the circumstances, "Ol' Man River" in its original form featured several racial slurs included by the white lyricist, Oscar Hammerstein, and indeed Robeson himself in later live performances changed the very lines that Cooke would later appropriate, changing them as he thought they were too defeatist for a Black activist to sing: [Excerpt: Paul Robeson, "Ol' Man River (alternative lyrics)"] Cooke's song would keep the original sense, in his lines "It's been too hard livin' but I'm afraid to die", but the most important thing was the message -- "a change is gonna come". The session at which he recorded it was to be his last with Luigi, whose contract with RCA was coming to an end, and Cooke knew it had to be something special. Rene Hall came up with an arrangement for a full orchestra, which so overawed Cooke's regular musicians that his drummer found himself too nervous to play on the session. Luckily, Earl Palmer was recording next door, and was persuaded to come and fill in for him.  Hall's arrangement starts with an overture played by the whole orchestra: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "A Change is Gonna Come"] And then each verse features different instrumentation, with the instruments changing at the last line of each verse -- "a change is gonna come". The first verse is dominated by the rhythm section: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "A Change is Gonna Come"] Then for the second verse, the strings come in, for the third the strings back down and are replaced by horns, and then at the end the whole orchestra swells up behind Cooke: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "A Change is Gonna Come"] Cooke was surprised when Luigi, at the end of the session, told him how much he liked the song, which Cooke thought wouldn't have been to Luigi's taste, as Luigi made simple pop confections, not protest songs. But as Luigi later explained, "But I did like it. It was a serious piece, but still it was him. Some of the other stuff was throwaway, but this was very deep. He was really digging into himself for this one." Cooke was proud of his new record, but also had something of a bad feeling about it, something that was confirmed when he played the record for Bobby Womack, who told him "it sounds like death". Cooke agreed, there was something premonitory about the record, something ominous. Allen Klein, on the other hand, was absolutely ecstatic. The track was intended to be used only as an album track -- they were going in a more R&B direction with Cooke's singles at this point. His previous single was a cover version of Howlin' Wolf's "Little Red Rooster”: [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "Little Red Rooster"] And his next two singles were already recorded -- a secularised version of the old spiritual "Ain't That Good News", and a rewrite of an old Louis Jordan song. Cooke was booked on to the Johnny Carson show, where he was meant to perform both sides of his new single, but Allen Klein was so overwhelmed by "A Change is Gonna Come" that he insisted that Cooke drop "Ain't That Good News" and perform his new song instead. Cooke said that he was meant to be on there to promote his new record. Klein insisted that he was meant to be promoting *himself*, and that the best promotion for himself would be this great song. Cooke then said that the Tonight Show band didn't have all the instruments needed to reproduce the orchestration. Klein said that if RCA wouldn't pay for the additional eighteen musicians, he would pay for them out of his own pocket. Cooke eventually agreed. Unfortunately, there seems to exist no recording of that performance, the only time Cooke would ever perform "A Change is Gonna Come" live, but reports from people who watched it at the time suggest that it made as much of an impact on Black people watching as the Beatles' appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show two days later made on white America. "A Change is Gonna Come" became a standard of the soul repertoire, recorded by Aretha Franklin: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "A Change is Gonna Come"] Otis Redding: [Excerpt: Otis Redding, "A Change is Gonna Come"] The Supremes and more. Cooke licensed it to a compilation album released as a fundraiser for Martin Luther King's campaigning, and when King was shot in 1968, Rosa Parks spent the night crying in her mother's arms, and they listened to "A Change is Gonna Come". She said ”Sam's smooth voice was like medicine to the soul. It was as if Dr. King was speaking directly to me.” After his Tonight Show appearance, Cooke was in the perfect position to move into the real big time. Allen Klein had visited Brian Epstein on RCA's behalf to see if Epstein would sign the Beatles to RCA for a million-dollar advance. Epstein wasn't interested, but he did suggest to Klein that possibly Cooke could open for the Beatles when they toured the US in 1965.  And Cooke was genuinely excited about the British Invasion and the possibilities it offered for the younger musicians he was mentoring. When Bobby Womack complained that the Rolling Stones had covered his song "It's All Over Now" and deprived his band of a hit, Cooke explained to Womack first that he'd be making a ton of money from the songwriting royalties, but also that Womack and his brothers were in a perfect position -- they were young men with long hair who played guitars and drums. If the Valentinos jumped on the bandwagon they could make a lot of money from this new style. But Cooke was going to make a lot of money from older styles. He'd been booked into the Copacabana again, and this time he was going to be a smash hit, not the failure he had been the first time. His residency at the club was advertised with a billboard in Times Square, and he came on stage every night to a taped introduction from Sammy Davis Jr.: [Excerpt: Sammy Davis Jr. introducing Sam Cooke] Listening to the live album from that residency and comparing it to the live recordings in front of a Black audience from a year earlier is astonishing proof of Cooke's flexibility as a performer. The live album from the Harlem Square Club in Florida is gritty and gospel-fuelled, while the Copacabana show has Cooke as a smooth crooner in the style of Nat "King" Cole -- still with a soulful edge to his vocals, but completely controlled and relaxed. The repertoire is almost entirely different as well -- other than "Twistin' the Night Away" and a ballad medley that included "You Send Me", the material was a mixture of old standards like "Bill Bailey" and "When I Fall In Love" and new folk protest songs like "If I Had a Hammer" and "Blowin' in the Wind", the song that had inspired "A Change is Gonna Come": [Excerpt: Sam Cooke, "Blowin' in the Wind"] What's astonishing is that both live albums, as different as they are, are equally good performances. Cooke by this point was an artist who could perform in any style, and for any audience, and do it well. In November 1964, Cooke recorded a dance song, “Shake”, and he prepared a shortened edit of “A Change is Gonna Come” to release as its B-side. The single was scheduled for release on December 22nd. Both sides charted, but by the time the single came out, Sam Cooke was dead. And from this point on, the story gets even more depressing and upsetting than it has been. On December the eleventh, 1964, Sam Cooke drove a woman he'd picked up to an out-of the-way motel. According to the woman, he tore off most of her clothes against her will, as well as getting undressed himself, and she was afraid he was going to rape her. When he went to the toilet, she gathered up all of her clothes and ran out, and in her hurry she gathered up his clothes as well. Some of Cooke's friends have suggested that she was in fact known for doing this and stealing men's money, and that Cooke had been carrying a large sum of money which disappeared, but this seems unlikely on the face of it, given that she ran to a phone box and called the police, telling them that she had been kidnapped and didn't know where she was, and could they please help her? Someone else was on the phone at the same time. Bertha Lee Franklin, the motel's manager, was on the phone to the owner of the motel when Sam Cooke found out that his clothes were gone, and the owner heard everything that followed. Cooke turned up at the manager's office naked except for a sports jacket and shoes, drunk, and furious. He demanded to know where the girl was. Franklin told him she didn't know anything about any girl. Cooke broke down the door to the manager's office, believing that she must be hiding in there with his clothes. Franklin grabbed the gun she had to protect herself. Cooke struggled with her, trying to get the gun off her. The gun went off three times. The first bullet went into the ceiling, the next two into Cooke. Cooke's last words were a shocked "Lady, you shot me".  Cooke's death shocked everyone, and immediately many of his family and friends started questioning the accepted version of the story. And it has to be said that they had good reason to question it. Several people stood to benefit from Cooke's death -- he was talking about getting a divorce from his wife, who would inherit his money; he was apparently questioning his relationship with Klein, who gained complete ownership of his catalogue after his death, and Klein after all had mob connections in the person of Morris Levy;  he had remained friendly with Malcolm X after X's split from the Nation of Islam and it was conceivable that Elijah Muhammad saw Cooke as a threat; while both Elvis and James Brown thought that Cooke setting up his own label had been seen as a threat by RCA, and that *they* had had something to do with it. And you have to understand that while false rape accusations basically never happen -- and I have to emphasise that here, women just *do not* make false rape accusations in any real numbers -- false rape accusations *had* historically been weaponised against Black men in large numbers in the early and mid twentieth century. Almost all lynchings followed a pattern -- a Black man owned a bit of land a white man wanted, a white woman connected to the white man accused the Black man of rape, the Black man was lynched, and his property was sold off at far less than cost to the white man who wanted it. The few lynchings that didn't follow that precise pattern still usually involved an element of sexualising the murdered Black men, as when only a few years earlier Emmett Till, a teenager, had been beaten to death, supposedly for whistling at a white woman. So Cooke's death very much followed the pattern of a lynching. Not exactly -- for a start, the woman he attacked was Black, and so was the woman who shot him -- but it was close enough that it rang alarm bells, completely understandably. But I think we have to set against that Cooke's history of arrogant entitlement to women's bodies, and his history of violence, both against his wife and, more rarely, against strangers who caught him in the wrong mood. Fundamentally, if you read enough about his life and behaviour, the official story just rings absolutely true. He seems like someone who would behave exactly in the way described. Or at least, he seems that way to me. But of course, I didn't know him, and I have never had to live with the threat of murder because of my race. And many people who did know him and have had to live with that threat have a different opinion, and that needs to be respected. The story of Cooke's family after his death is not one from which anyone comes out looking very good. His brother, L.C., pretty much immediately recorded a memorial album and went out on a tribute tour, performing his brother's hits: [Excerpt: L.C. Cooke, "Wonderful World"] Cooke's best friend, J.W. Alexander, also recorded a tribute album. Bertha Franklin sued the family of the man she had killed, because her own life had been ruined and she'd had to go into hiding, thanks to threats from his fans. Cooke's widow, Barbara, married Bobby Womack less than three months after Cooke's death -- and the only reason it wasn't sooner was that Womack had not yet turned twenty-one, and so they were not able to get married without Womack's parents' permission. They married the day after Womack's twenty-first birthday, and Womack was wearing one of Sam's suits at the ceremony. Womack was heard regularly talking about how much he looked like Sam. Two of Cooke's brothers were so incensed at the way that they thought Womack was stepping into their brother's life that they broke Womack's jaw -- and Barbara Cooke pulled a gun on them and tried to shoot them. Luckily for them, Womack had guessed that a confrontation was coming, and had removed the bullets from Barbara's gun, so there would be no more deaths in his mentor's family. Within a few months, Barbara was pregnant, and the baby, when he was born, was named Vincent, the same name as Sam and Barbara's dead son.  Five years later, Barbara discovered that Womack had for some time been sexually abusing Linda, her and Sam's oldest child, who was seventeen at the time Barbara discovered this. She kicked Womack out, but Linda sided with Womack and never spoke to her mother again. Linda carried on a consensual relationship with Bobby Womack for some time, and then married Bobby's brother Cecil (or maybe it's pronounced Cee-cil in his case? I've never heard him spoken about), who also became her performing and songwriting partner. They wrote many songs for other artists, as well as having hits themselves as Womack and Womack: [Excerpt: Womack and Womack, "Teardrops"] The duo later changed their names to Zek and Zeriiya Zekkariyas, in recognition of their African heritage. Sam Cooke left behind a complicated legacy. He hurt almost everyone who was ever involved in his life, and yet all of them seem not only to have forgiven him but to have loved him in part because of the things he did that hurt them the most. What effect that has on one's view of his art must in the end be a matter for individual judgement, and I never, ever, want to suggest that great art in any way mitigates appalling personal behaviour. But at the same time, "A Change is Gonna Come" stands as perhaps the most important single record we'll look at in this history, one that marked the entry into the pop mainstream of Black artists making political statements on their own behalf, rather than being spoken for and spoken over by well-meaning white liberals like me. There's no neat conclusion I can come to here,  no great lesson that can be learned and no pat answer that will make everything make sense. There's just some transcendent, inspiring, music, a bunch of horribly hurt people, and a young man dying, almost naked, in the most squalid circumstances imaginable.